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Rhaenyra is a woman grown when her mother dies. The loss is visceral and all consuming, and the fire of her mother’s pyre calls to her in her grief.

The ashes of Queen Aemma are lost in the wind a mere sennight before she is subjected to such agony again when her father declares he is to remarry.

“The throne is secure,” she appeals, crazed and desperate and aching. “I have three heirs, three boys. There is no need for more.”

Her father waves her away, his own grief seeming to have shrunk him more than his illness ever has. He is hunched in his wheeled chair, a shadow of the man he was, no trace of the former king in the curve of his slumped spine or the frown of his mouth.

“King Jaehaerys had his Fossoway girl in his final years. I only wish for mine own.”

“King Jaehaerys never married after the loss of his queen,” she pleads.

Her father huffs. “I could hardly bring the girl to court and tie her to my bedside with no incentive, Rhaenyra. Besides, Otto promises she is a good girl, thoughtful and kind. The image of her mother. She will be a good queen, one the realm needs.”

Mother was a good queen, she rages. She would still be good if you were not so obsessed with a prophesied son.

Rhaenyra once thought if she gave her father many grandsons, many male heirs of heirs, he may leave his wife be. She was wrong.

“The girl is just that,” she tries once more. “Your Hand reaches beyond his station and attempts to gift you a child bride.”

“She is young,” her father concedes. “Has yet to bleed, according to her septa.”

Rhaenyra rages in her own mind. Mother bled. For decades, Mother bled for you.

“Not even a woman.” Rhaenyra spins her mother’s ring around her finger. “She will not know what to do with the queenly title.”

Her father nods, as if she has given sage advice. She should know better than to think he would take it.

“I agree,” he says heavily. “Which is why she will be one of your ladies in waiting until she does. She could learn the Keep, learn the court. You could teach her how to be a queen the realm will adore.” He pats her on her cheek before waving to his attendant. “You’ll do right by her, Rhaenyra. I know you will.”

Calculated fury simmers beneath her skin as her father is wheeled away. Assigned the role of preparing the realm’s new queen, Rhaenyra intends to do the task right.

Lady Alicent of House Hightower—soon to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms—is introduced the following day in Rhaenyra’s solar by her haughty father, the Lord Hand, Ser Otto.

His only daughter is frightfully young for her duty. Her hair is thick and healthy and the colour of a weirwood in autumn, her body slender and untouched by age or motherhood. Her face is open and honest—she is scared, Rhaenyra sees plainly—and her eyes are wide and guileless. There is no deception attached to the girl’s soul.

Lady Alicent is dressed in a beautiful green gown, far nicer than Rhaenyra’s own black mourning dress, and the slight does not go unnoticed.

The girl curtseys, shaky but poised. “Princess Rhaenyra.” Her voice wavers. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hope we will be fast friends.”

For all her sweetness, Rhaenyra allows herself a day of hatred.

She sends Lady Alicent off with Elinda and spends the rest of her day with her sons. She revises High Valyrian with Jace, the history of House Velaryon with Luke, and—disastrously—table manners with Joff. Rhaenyra spends one more day solely as their mother, because if her machinations go according to plan, she will be so much more in a short while.

The following day, she invites Alicent to break her fast.

“I did not want to intrude,” the girl rushes to say, face flushed red and youthful. Rhaenyra feels as though she has aged ten years in ten days. “My father said I was to be your lady, but I knew you would have many more experienced and worldly women by your side. I told him I’d be closer to a hindrance than help, but he insisted.”

Today, Alicent wears pale blue. It suits her, but this colour is just as calculated as the green. She wonders if the girl is aware she dons Arryn colours.

“I had a frightfully busy day,” Rhaenyra explains, eschewing etiquette by pouring a cup of tea for Alicent, and then herself. “Truthfully, I did not expect you so soon. I was not aware you were already in the city when my father told me you were to wed.”

The girl turns redder, more flustered. “I apologise, Princess. I was told you knew, and that you offered to teach me how to be a good queen, until my—my moon blood comes.”

Rhaenyra smiles with teeth. “With purpose, I am often the last to be informed,” she reveals, and watches the way Lady Alicent’s face falls. “Lesson one.” She leans over to grasp the girl’s hand, her fingers torn and bloody. “Trust no one here, sweet girl. None but myself.”

Lady Alicent is bruised from the inside out; isolated from feminine influence, she is motherless and sisterless, and daughter to a man who sees fit to barter her away like a broodmare. She knows little of the warmth of love and human kindness and the mere consideration for her own feelings. Rhaenyra uses Otto Hightower’s shortcomings to her own advantage, for the girl is too sweet to spend the next decade under her decaying father’s heaving body.

Her mother did not deserve it either, but while Rhaenyra could do nothing for Queen Aemma, she can help this too-young future queen.

Rhaenyra takes the young girl under her wing, and has her by her side at all hours of the day. They take meals together, dress together, and sleep together. Rhaenyra gives her advice and shows her court, has her practice dancing with Lucerys and diplomacy with Jacaerys and history with Joffrey. She treats her as a part of her little family, with soft exceptions.

Rhaenyra takes care to brush against her shoulder and graze her neck, to press a loving kiss on her bow lips, and to caress and squeeze at dress fittings.

Nothing untoward, but with purpose; with intent. Alicent flushes and stammers whenever she makes contact with her, and Rhaenyra knows the first hands to touch her will be her own.

She gains the girl’s trust, and four moons after her arrival, it comes to fruition. A normal morning turns the tides when they are greeted with bloodied sheets.

“I—I am to be queen,” Alicent whispers, eyes wide and trembling, the poised, confident girl she has become disappearing before Rhaenyra’s eyes, leaving only a terrified child. “I am to be wed. I am… I am a woman.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes trail over her burgeoning curves and the soft swell of her breasts, and decides. “In the eyes of the maesters, perhaps,” she says softly, and coaxes her from the bed and into a robe before calling on her maids. “But any woman will tell you the truth of it. None wake with their first moon blood changed. It is not the end of youth.”

Alicent trembles in her robe, pale face peeking through. “But the king—“

“Does not need to know.” There is a knock at the door. “A moment!” Rhaenyra turns back to Alicent and cups her cheeks. “Do you trust me, sweet girl?”

Alicent exhales. “Of course.”

“You’re a very good girl,” she praises, sweeping her thumbs across the apples of her cheeks before pulling the robe open.

“What are you…” Rhaenyra pushes her nightgown up until the girl’s bloodied cunt is bared for her to see, and Alicent shrieks. “Princess, what are you doing!?”

Rhaenyra shushes her as she swipes her hand over her mound, gathering the wet blood in her hands. She deftly pulls her own up and smears the blood over her own cunt, her thighs, her white nightgown until it could pass for own.

“Rhaenyra—“ Alicent cries, hands scrambling at her shoulders, her waist, her hips, anywhere she can touch in her panic.

“Calm yourself, sweet girl,” Rhaenyra soothes, and pulls the robe around Alicent tight once more. All evidence hidden from those outside the room. “Our secret, yes?”

Alicent nods, eyes wet with unshed tears and Rhaenyra, heart full, presses a kiss against her lips. Not chaste how she has kissed her for months, but wet and deep, her tongue forcing its way past plush lips and thrusting to meet Alicent’s, a mimicry of fucking, messy and slick and fucking decadent. She drinks up the soft, unsure moans of her little lady until another knock comes.

Rhaenyra settles Alicent on the chaise lounge, bundled up and dazed, and calls her maid in. 

“Marion,” she says to the old woman. “My moon blood has come early and my sheets are stained. Have them cleaned and replaced.” The maids nod and go to rush off. “A tub, too. The largest one, oh, and lemon cakes and honeyed milk.”

She wants to eat candied lemons from her little lady’s fingertips and pour milk between the soft swell of her breasts, but a glance at Alicent and her bruised lips and wide eyes has her waiting.

There will be time—later.

“Has Alicent’s moon blood arrived?” the Hand asks at a small council meeting a moon later, and Rhaenyra is sick with how her father seems to come alive at the prospect of her answer.

“Not yet,” she answers flatly, spinning her onyx orb between her fingers. 

Otto frowns. “Her mother was already with child at her age.”

Anger simmers under her skin. “Not every woman bleeds the same.”

“Aemma was younger still,” her father interjects, and Rhaenyra bites her tongue.

“If I may examine her,” the grand maester interjects. “This may be a sign of infertility, Your Grace. It wouldn’t do for the realm to have a barren queen.”

“My daughter is not barren,” Otto interjects heatedly, yet Rhaenyra knows his ire is borne from personal insult to his pride rather than that of Alicent’s supposed shortcomings.

“I was older still before my blood came,” Rhaenyra interjects, although it is humiliating to talk of such with these callous men. “Besides, you may break her maidenhead, maester. A queen should be as pure as the Maiden on her wedding night.”

Her assurances ward off the scavengers for a moment, but Rhaenyra knows the time is coming. She cannot keep Alicent hidden behind her skirts forever, cannot save her from her fate.

That evening finds Rhaenyra lounging on her featherbed, guiding Alicent in playing her body like she has the harp.

With a kiss sealed in blood, the floodgates opened and Alicent became wild, desperate in her pursuit of pleasure, of giving and receiving. Rhaenyra has kept their lessons slow and sensual, long hours spent kissing and petting over small-clothes, but the girl’s appetite grows as she does, and soon Rhaenyra finds herself on the precipice of change.

“Not so quick,” Rhaenyra gentles, guiding Alicent’s hands in soft motions against her breasts. “They can be sensitive, especially now.”

Alicent wears a look of intense concentration as her fevered groping turns gentle, her fingertips brushing over Rhaenyra’s pebbled nipples with every pass.

Another agonising week of kisses and caresses pass until her moon blood passes and Rhaenyra allows her young charge free access to her body.

“They’re so big,” she breathes, staring up in undisguised awe as Rhaenyra straddles her hips, their mounds pressed together, only their cotton small-clothes between them. Alicent’s hands are petite like the rest of her, and Rhaenyra’s breasts spill out between her fingers. “Will mine get this large?”

Rhaenyra traces the line of Alicent’s own breasts, the soft peaks hardening under her gentle care. “Perhaps,” she allows, tweaking one nipple causing Alicent to squeal. “Once you have children, and if you allow them to suckle at your teats.” Rhaenyra bends down to kiss her, deep and slick and open-mouthed. She pulls back only when air becomes a necessity. “Queens aren’t often expected to do so, however. We have wet nurses.”

Alicent deflates. “I don’t want to have children,” she reveals, squeezing Rhaenyra’s breasts firmer. “I don’t want—” She inhales, finding her courage. “I don’t want to have the king’s children. I don’t want to marry the king.”

Rhaenyra’s heart sings. “We could be bound in blood,” she pushes—to test, to probe. “Yours and mine in a babe of our own.”

She sees the way Alicent struggles with the notion, battling her love of Rhaenyra—and oh, it is so plain to see on her pretty face—and her distaste for Viserys. Yet, and she rejoices, Rhaenyra is victorious.

“We could have one another way,” Alicent says meekly, as though Rhaenyra will strike her down. “I would hate to have to share your babe with someone else.”

Rhaenyra listens to the words left unsaid. I hate the king, I hate the idea of having a babe with him.

Rhaenyra smiles and soothes her, lowering herself down so she smothers the girl under her weight. 

Alicent’s hands wrap around her tight, pressed breast-to-breast, cunt-to-covered-cunt, so close they might as well be one being. 

“Sweet girl,” Rhaenyra croons into her ear, peppering her slender neck with kisses. “I would never make you do something you did not want to do.”

Alicent sobs, her barely restrained sadness rising to the surface. “But he is the king,” she cries, “and my father is Hand. I cannot disobey them.”

“My father may be the king,” Rhaenyra says softly, “and yours may be the Hand, but I am heir to the throne, and you are mine. Do not forget that.”

Her little lady sniffles. “If the betrothal is called off, I will be ruined,” she warbles. The shoulder of Rhaenyra’s shift dampens from her tears. “I will be married off to some fat old lord as his fifth wife, doomed to birth his twentieth babe. Rhaenyra, oh, I could not stand it, being separated from you. I will throw myself from—”

“None of that now,” Rhaenyra interrupts, snaking a hand down from Alicent’s cheek to her waist, her hip, her small-clothes. “There will be no speaking of that. Do you understand?”

Her tone is firm and brooks no other response but a nod against her shoulder. Rhaenyra rewards her lady by slipping her hand between their pressed bodies and into Alicent’s small-clothes, under the cotton to the damp thatch of hair over her slit.

“Good girl,” she praises, and Alicent shivers. “I am going to tell you my plan now. I have been preparing for this for a while, since the day I met you.” Before I met you, she adds silently, but her sensitive little girl does not need to know the depth of her anger. “But first I have to know you are ready to do whatever it takes to stay with me.”

Alicent sighs in pleasure as Rhaenyra pets her hair, putting pressure against her hidden pearl. Her lady’s flower is drenched in slick wet, desperate for something she cannot yet name. “Yes,” she breathes, hips rolling, selfishly seeking touch. “Yes, Rhaenyra, I will do it. Anything.”

“Good girl,” she whispers and slips down, lower so the tips of her fingers graze over the slit before splitting her in two like a ripe peach. Alicent clutches her close. “So good for me, sweetling. The perfect girl, my perfect little wife. Are you listening?”

Alicent keens. “Yes, yes!”

“I have no intention of sharing you with my father,” she says, sliding her fingers through Alicent’s womanly juices, focusing gentle attention on her inner lips. “But I also do not wish for you to be sent away, which your father will surely try.” Rhaenyra trails back up to Alicent’s pearl, hard and throbbing, and rubs small, gentle circles over it with her thumb. Alicent jumps, twisting and turning, unsure whether to lean in or squirm away. “Alicent?”

“Rhaenyra,” she cries. “I do not—It feels too good. This must be—is this… is this coupling? Is this what one does in the marriage bed?”

Rhaenyra skirts over Alicent’s tight hole, shivering as it tries to suck her in, desperate to be fucked. Not yet—but soon.

“Not yet, sweet girl.” Rhaenyra softens the pressure, but it only serves to drive her madder. “Are you paying attention?”

“I am, I promise,” Alicent sobs, shivering with pleasure under her body, her peak cresting over like waves under her gentle ministrations. “Please, please, oh gods—Rhaenyra, I think I am going to wet myself. Rhaenyra, you have to—”

“My plan is for you to marry my father,” Rhaenyra reveals as Alicent tumbles over the edge in a moaning, shivering in rapture only she has ever been able to deliver. “Then, when he tries to bed you, we are going to kill him.”

Alicent is fraught with nerves on her wedding day, the girl catatonic when her father comes to see her under the guise of fatherly concern.

Rhaenyra sees through his charade. As the soon-to-be Queen Alicent’s mentor and almost step-daughter—the gods do have a sick sense of humour—she is afforded unrestrained access to the young bride. Ser Otto plainly disapproves of her presence, but he should be grateful. Because of her, Alicent will be a queen of the ages, her name remembered for centuries to come for her wedding day alone.

She could have just as easily turned her away from court, organised a stablehand to slip into her chambers and sent her back to Oldtown in disgrace. It is her innocence which charmed Rhaenyra, her sweetness of demeanour and cunt which attracted the princess.

Now, Alicent will be queen for the rest of her life.

“The wedding is easy,” Otto counsels, gaze resting just above her daughter’s head, vaguely in Rhaenyra’s direction. “Recite the correct words, and do as the High Septon says, and you will be fine.” He clears his throat. “It is the… bedding which will be the challenge, my girl.”

“There will be no bedding,” Rhaenyra drawls from her place by the window, Alicent’s maidencloak on her lap. She sews the final touches onto the sable, fine emeralds from the Summer Isles to represent the fire of the High Tower. A call to war for all the realm to witness.

“Pardon, Princess, but a bedding is tradition, even for a royal wedding.” He smiles, with teeth. “Your own was a delight for the realm.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes narrow, tracing the curve of the green flame to the onyx stone tower. “My father cannot withstand the groping of the women at court. His condition is far too fragile.” She tells no falsehoods. He would likely require a maester by his bedside for any bedding now. He did so with her mother in the final years of her life.

“The guests should not be denied the same of Alicent,” Otto counters, and Rhaenyra sets her needle down.

“Father—“ Alicent whispers, her voice but a warble.

“You sound quite interested in your own daughter’s bedding, Lord Hand.” Rhaenyra raises an eyebrow. “Do you not trust in my tutelage? I am a woman married and a mother blessed three times over. I have prepared Alicent perfectly, and a bedding is not required.”

“A bedding is good for the realm,” he argues, face made of stone. “The king agrees.”

Rhaenyra watches him; the firm line of his spine, how he stares down his nose at her. She can see, in her peripherals, how Alicent shakes. Ignored. Unnecessary. A warm body to gift the title queen for the advancement of one greedy man.

“Very well,” Rhaenyra acquiesces, lowering her eyes to return to her needlework. “Yet I must insist on tending to my father myself. I dread to think of what may happen to him in such a ruckus.” She laughs, self-deprecating. “As you said, I do remember my own bedding. The lords and ladies at court become quite aggressive when given leave.”

Alicent exhales a shuddery sigh, and is ignored until her father departs, declaring he must ensure the visiting lords are pleased with their accommodations.

As though Rhaenyra has not already seen to it, as though she has not meticulously planned every second of this wedding.

“I do not want a bedding,” Alicent says once they are finally alone, mere moments before they are to depart to the Great Hall. She clings to Rhaenyra, as if at risk of being sent away. “I do not—my body is not for their eyes, Rhaenyra, it is yours, for now until forever.”

Rhaenyra softens at her lady’s pleas. She lifts Alicent’s hands to her mouth and presses a lingering kiss to her bruised knuckles.

“You are mine,” she promises, but her words are not enough.

“I will be—“ Alicent’s breath hitches, her panic clearly rising, “—I will be his in the eyes of the Seven, and as if we are not condemned enough, it is sacrilege to bed your husband’s kin. The gods will curse us and we will be discovered and—“

Rhaenyra shushes her and pulls her close, pressing Alicent’s head to her shoulder. Better Rhaenyra’s dress of black velvet be ruined with tears than Alicent’s Myrish lace. “Calm yourself, sweetling.”

“How can I be calm?” she cries, her voice muffled. “How can I when you ask me to… when we are to…”

Rhaenyra pulls the maiden’s cloak she has lovingly sewed from the chaise lounge and deftly drapes it over Alicent’s shoulders. The black and green are a startling mix, bright and toxic like wildfire. “Who gives this maiden?” she asks, voice clear and firm.

Alicent raises her head, eyes wide and watery. “What?”

“Who gives this maiden?” she repeats, patient.

“I… I do not—“

“Alicent.” Rhaenyra presses her thumb against her bottom lip. “Tell me.”

Alicent’s throat bobs, understanding blooming in her eyes. “I give this maiden,” she whispers, staring up at her, innocent in all things. Then, firmer, “I give myself.”

“We are but one heart,” Rhaenyra murmurs, and presses her hand over Alicent’s heart, delighting in her shivers. “We are one flesh, one soul, and cursed be he who would seek to tear us apart.”

Alicent’s eyes fall shut as she leans forward, her mouth barely forming the answering call. “Seven, I seal our souls, binding us as one for all eternity.”

Rhaenyra tugs the Hightower cloak from Alicent’s shoulders until it pools at their feet. Her own, while not a maidencloak, is embellished in Targaryen black and red and swallows the young girl from head to toe.

“I am yours and you are mine,” Rhaenyra declares, “from this day until the end of my days.”

“From this day until my last day,” Alicent whispers, and leans up.

Rhaenyra meets her in a kiss, delicate and chaste, as if it were their true wedding day. As if the realm were witnesses. As if the gods were truly watching from their heavenly home.

It is so very easy, Rhaenyra finds, to get what she wants.

“We shall never be apart now,” Rhaenyra promises, kissing her lips and her cheeks and her brow. “You may recite the words in the Great Hall, but in the eyes of the Seven, you are my wife.”

“I was made to be yours,” Alicent says, a sweeter declaration Rhaenyra has yet to hear.

The wedding is glorious as befitting the king and Rhaenyra spends the entire affair jittery and tense. Jacaerys, her sweet boy, inquires after her half a dozen times, and Lucerys offers to fetch her wine double that. She adores them. She is doing this for them, so their legitimacy may never be called into question, so they may never fight for their birthright against a spawn borne from Alicent’s womb.

When the speeches and the jousts and the feasts are at the end—and a cloak sewn with a ruby three-headed dragon is draped over Queen Alicent’s shoulders, courtesy of Ser Harrold and not the king for he is far too weak to even stand let alone lift the heavy fabric—Rhaenyra finally relaxes. She passes her cup to her eldest and tells her sons to retire for the evening, for they are both too young to witness such depravity.

(She decidedly ignores the fact that Alicent is but a year older than Jace, that she is wedded and soon to be bedded. Such is the way of noble girls destined for the callous childbed.)

The respectable lords of Westeros, deep in their cups and loose with merriment, take liberties beyond that of a normal bedding. While Rhaenyra escorts her father to his rooms, she is followed by Alicent’s shrieks as her dress is ripped from her flesh.

“I do love a wedding,” her father muses once his Kingsguard lifts him to his bed. His mind is muddled by milk of the poppy and Arbor gold, but even that cannot explain away his callous disregard for his new queen’s welfare. “Such a joyous occasion.”

“It is,” Rhaenyra murmurs as she lights the candles in his room, lays out a heavy robe of the softest lambs wool, and tries to slow her beating heart. “Are you comfortable, Father?”

Viserys laughs from his bed before he dissolves into a coughing fit. Rhaenyra pours him a cup of water to soothe his throat and helps him drink the entire contents, not a single drop wasted. “You are a good daughter, Rhaenyra,” he says, breathless once the attack has passed. “You’ve been very good to me. I hear you have been good to Alicent, also.”

Rhaenyra lowers her eyes. “She has become like a daughter to me,” she reveals, then laughs at herself. “How strange, for now she is my stepmother.”

Viserys chuckles wearily and closes his eyes. “Do you believe Aemma will forgive me?” he asks quietly, drifting into sleep.

Heart cold as ice, Rhaenyra pulls the covers up and tucks her father in. She presses a singular kiss on his brow, and turns away. “I am certain she is cursing your name.” He mumbles an unintelligible reply, and falls asleep. “Goodnight, Father.”

Ser Harrold and Ser Erryk guard her father’s door. They are good, loyal men. She will not see them harmed in the fallout.

“The evening has worn on the king,” she says quietly as she shuts the door behind her. “I bid you to allow him rest until Queen Alicent arrives, and only give her leave to enter the chamber.”

Rhaenyra retires to her room, and counts the minutes until she slips into the secret passageway and returns to the king’s apartment.

Soon to be hers, if the shuddering, shaking, silent queen is to be believed.

“He is dead,” Alicent cries, hunched and shivering, naked as the day of her birth save for tiny scraps of her shift. Her hair, once lovingly braided, is loose and tangled. There are blossoming bruises along her thighs, bloodiest fingernail marks on her arms. “The king is dead.”

Alicent may have been a means to an end, but she is Rhaenyra’s and Rhaenyra protects her pets.

“The king is not dead,” Rhaenyra corrects quietly as she drapes the heavy robe around Alicent’s shoulders, cocooning her from the horrors she will partake in. “He is… incapacitated with a strong dose of dreamwine. If he were to call for help, Ser Harrold would barge in, and for all the love he has for me, he is loyal to his king.” She smiles softly and squeezes Alicent’s cheeks. “I would rather not see your head on a spike, my love.”

Quietly and with measured breaths, Rhaenyra chooses a soft pillow of Arryn blue silk to kill her father. She wastes no time in pressing it firmly over her face’s sleeping face. His breathing is laboured against her hand and after a long moment, his limbs begin to thrash. His clawed hand grips her dress and pulls, but he is too drugged to stop her. He is too weak to do anything.

How could he have ever hoped to bed his nubile young queen?

Alicent cries quietly in the corner as his struggles slow and slow until his arms and legs slump into a boneless heap. Rhaenyra waits a moment longer before pulling the pillow away, taking her time to admire months of planning.

Her father is a corpse, as dead as her mother.

“Is he dead now?” Alicent asks softly, wetly.

“Yes, he is dead,” Rhaenyra confirms, turning to her little wife. “We are both queens now—almost.”

“Until your coronation?” Alicent asks as Rhaenyra approaches, stalking her prey.

“Yes,” she confirms, standing in front of Alicent and taking in her prize. She slips a hand into the slit of her robe and strokes over her breast, pinching her stiff nipple just to see her jump. “And until your bedding.”

Alicent’s eyes are wide. “But—“

“An unconsummated marriage is grounds for annulment.” Rhaenyra unties the robe, pushing it open. “An annulment means you are returned to your father’s House, and a virgin queen is surely a handsome prize.”

Alicent shakes. “You cannot let them—I am yours. I am your wife. I belong here, at your side, not—“

“Shh, of course you are.” Rhaenyra presses a gentle kiss on Alicent’s brow. “I look after what is mine.” She kisses her nose. “And you are, unequivocally, mine.” She kisses her bow lips, the image of the Maiden. “Lay on the bed, my little wife.”

“I… I cannot,” she cries, eyes darting to the morbid tableau. “Rhaenyra, he is there.”

“He is dead,” she soothes and directs Alicent backwards until she falls, landing next to the cooling corpse that was, a moment ago, her new husband. She is tense and wide eyed, and so very scared. “He cannot hurt you.”

Alicent resolutely does not look to her left. “That is not my primary concern.”

Rhaenyra leans down to lick at a perfect pink nipple, and before she takes it between her lips to suckle, whispers, “Perfect.”

She takes her time worshipping Alicent’s body. She kisses her neck and breasts, sucks deep bruises into the flesh of her chest and stomach to match her thighs, and crawls her way down until she laps her tongue in luxurious strokes across her soft, pale thighs.

“You tease me,” Alicent whispers, her desire barely restrained. Her glistening cunt is mere inches away from Rhaenyra’s face, and she cannot contain her want.

Rhaenyra spreads her little wife’s legs with gentle hands until she is bared. Her lips shine wetly, the scent of her heady and fresh like an unplucked flower. Her pearl is swollen and her lips puffy, and her channel contracts around nothing, desperate to be filled.

“I would never,” Rhaenyra whispers, circling her pearl as her finger slides inside with ease, Alicent’s cunt tight and greedy, sucking her in like she was made for it.

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent cries. “Princess.”

“You’re so warm,” Rhaenyra murmurs into her thigh. “And you’re clinging to me. Can you feel it? Are you doing it on purpose?”

“No, no, I’m not, I promise,“ Alicent babbles, body tense and hands scrambling against the sheets, her robe, Rhaenyra’s shoulders, seeking something to ground herself.

“So soft inside,” Rhaenyra murmurs and kisses closer to her cunt as she slides another finger alongside the first. Not too far, but she can feel the flesh of her maidenhead. “Are you ready, my love?”

Alicent whimpers, hips trembling from the effort to keep still. “I… am?”

“Good girl,” Rhaenyra hums before she seals her lips around Alicent’s pearl and sucks, timing it as she breaks through her maidenhead, and making her a queen in truth.

Alicent shrieks, so loud Rhaenyra wonders if she may draw the guards inside, but none do. They will explain it away as an exuberant bride and nothing more, ignoring the fact the supposed groom is incapacitated and addled with milk of the poppy.

Or dead.

“Are you alright?” Rhaenyra asks as she removes her fingers, smearing the bright red blood on the sheets between Alicent’s legs. “Was I too rough?”

“No,” Alicent gasps, hands scrambling to pull her closer. “Please, please do it again, I almost—“

Rhaenyra laughs and licks a stripe from her bloodied cunt to her clit, delighting in her squeal. “Do you feel good, sweet girl?”

“So good.” Alicent bucks her hips to Rhaenyra’s waiting month. “More, please.”

Her girl has no patience, and Rhaenyra is weak to her pleas. She devours her queen with deep sucks and forceful thrusts, her fingers curled upwards to touch upon the place inside her which sends her into a frenzy.

Alicent wails against the onslaught of pleasure and Rhaenyra drinks it up until her peak crests.

“Rhaenyra,” she gasps, thrashing in her grip as Rhaenyra pins her to the bed. “It feels so good, Rhaenyra, please—It’s coming, please don’t stop, I’m—oh, oh, oh Maiden, I’m—“

Alicent in rapture is a vision for the eyes. She tenses and curls in on herself, attempting to hide but Rhaenyra does not allow her to. She suckles her clit through her release until she is overcome and oversensitive, and it is only then that Rhaenyra releases her to survey the scene. 

Alicent, flushed and shivering in the wake of her release, and the pittance of blood underneath her. Barely a few drops, all up.

Rhaenyra leans over her father’s corpse to his bedside and pulls the Conqueror's dagger from its sheath. The edge cuts through her flesh like butter, and blood drips onto the white sheets like fresh snowfall. The stain is deep, and covers the pittance from Alicent’s maidenhead like it was never there.

“Will they believe that?” Alicent asks, breathless. “Is it enough?”

Rhaenyra bends down and kisses her, deep and ravenous and claiming until they share the same breath, until they own the same soul.

“Is it enough, sweetheart,” she says softly as she gets up from the bed. “Wait a moment before you call for help after I leave. When Ser Harrold asks what happened, you’ll say—“

“He collapsed during—during our coupling,” Alicent says quietly, face flushed but determined. There is no more fear in her eyes, no hesitance. Only contentment.

Rhaenyra kisses her little wife soundly once more before she bids her farewell and returns to her own apartments through the secret passageway.

She is tending to the shallow cut on her thigh when someone knocks on her door.

“The king is dead,” Ser Harrold says grimly, gently delivering the news to a delicate daughter. “You are the queen now, Your Grace.”

Rhaenyra closes her eyes and presses against the throbbing cut. “Bring me the widow queen, Ser Harrold. I wish to speak to her.”