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Alicent sends the page from the history book. the one that she’s been unfolding and refolding for years, has kept all this time. Rhaenyra had gone cold since her marriage to Viserys had been announced, and had only ever gone colder still, while Alicent thought she would burn up with it, thought she’d burn with everyone gone unsaid. Syrax might as well have turned her to ashes, for the way that she could not let go of her anger, her jealousy, her love. But she hadn’t known. Hadn’t known what it was that made her burn so brightly, made her feel as though she couldn’t keep it all inside.
It was a war of succession, like so many others that had come before, men sending out men and dragons and making plans , and Alicent and Rhaenyra being the only ones to show restraint. She’d offered her terms. Rhaenyra had not accepted them, but she had not refused them outright. Rhaenys had been right; she would be welcomed at Dragonstone with an explanation, with knowledge of her father’s plans, and then left to rot in a well appointed suite of rooms, as befitting her station. She didn’t want it, exile to one distant corner of Dragonstone, exile with her lady’s maids and her servants and waiting desperately for just one visit.
But she did want , had wanted every second since she had left that Sept, had thought of nothing but Rhaenys’s hands on her since she had returned to find that no one but Criston had noticed her missing. Criston, who she had simply snapped at to mind his business, and had been sulking ever since, made worse by the terms offered to Rhaenyra, who she knew he thought should die screaming. That decision was not his to make, and he was not her sworn sword so that he could have opinions.
She wanted to be gone from here, from the small council that she could feel her father thought she no longer had a place in, his little puppet Aegon more pliable than she was now. How long until he told her she should return to her duties of mother and grandmother, how long until she was left to sit in her rooms with Helaena, nothing but her needlepoint and her faith to entertain her. It was no better than captivity on Dragonstone, and she’s not thinking clearly these days, unable to focus on anything but that which she had been missing out on.
No decisions have been made, she tells herself again and again, and every night she dreams of white hair, hazy and confused, kissing and heat and it’s like something within her has woken up. All this so she can hover behind Aegon’s seat at small council and ignore the eyes of men upon her, men that think that she does not deserve a place here without even knowing about the needy thing that she has become. She is changed, and she thinks of Rhaenys knowing that, knowing that as she had told her she could come to Dragonstone whenever she wished. Rhaenys knew she would be back, that now that she knew what this was, what she could want, it would consume her. She feels as though she has gone up in flames, and the only person she can blame is herself, for boundaries crossed that can never be uncrossed, feelings indulged in that she had been successfully keeping at arm’s length for years.
Dreams and confusion and no one to talk to, not even able to visit the Sept, unable to stop herself from blushing whenever she sees a statue of the Mother. Confessions that need to be made but she does not think she can even say the words. The star of the Seven has never felt so heavy, dangling around her neck like a chain, like a recrimination. She should feel guilty, she shouldn’t be repeating every second in her mind, shouldn’t be thinking of Rhaenys’s hands in the candlelight of the Sept, or the way that she’d looked at her like she could see right through her, the way the flames had glinted in her eyes. Shouldn’t be thinking of letters she could send, ones that beg she returns, letters that ask her back to the same place. It’s too dangerous. There’s no pretence, now, no belief that what she does is right.
Everyone must be able to smell it on her, the change, the way that she yearns, waking up in tangled bedclothes with a dampness between her legs that has never been an affliction that haunted her before. And it does feel like an affliction, within these walls, left here in a space her desires have outgrown. Her desires have outgrown herself, have eclipsed that which she thought she knew. She barely has the energy to fight them these days, not now she knows what they are, what she is.
She’s thinking of ways to leave the castle before she’s even accepted that she’s going to do it. Lord Harrold Westerling would help her, if he had made it out of the castle alive before the repercussions of his dramatic decision to spurn his white cloak had time to take hold. He would be allowed back into the Red Keep - his daughter had married Jason Lannister, and there was ostensibly a king now that he could return for. If he hadn’t left for Dragonstone already. The longer she waits the more likely it is she’ll have to make a different plan, and she shivers at the thought of turning to Lord Larys for help.
The Lord Commander comes back to her when she asks. He remembers when she was a girl, when her and Rhaenyra had whispered secrets and she had attentively paid attention to her lessons, to her duties. If he sees the changes in her he doesn’t comment, and Alicent wonders if maybe he knew who she was all along, even though she never has.
“I was expecting you to be gone to Dragonstone,” she starts, and he freezes up, eyeing her like he imagines this is leading to a beheading. His white cloak stands out against his armour in the darkness of her rooms, even her serving girls banished, and she sees his eyes scan the room, more than familiar to him, reassuring himself of exits, like he’s expecting Criston to jump out and challenge him.
“I merely did not wish to participate in regicide, my Queen,” he murmurs, and even that is more brazen than she had expected.
“I would not ask you to, unlike my father,” she pauses, surveys him for a moment, and knows that even if he did not help her he would not tell anyone what they have discussed. He’s known them both since they were girls. There’s no one but herself that regrets more bitterly the fractured relationship between her and Rhaenyra. “I need your help.”
“I am at your disposal, Your Grace,” he nods, and she almost smiles. He’d long been their moral compass, long offered something like unbiased advice, and she knows he wants no part in this war. He doesn’t want to be used as a sellsword in this war of succession any more than she wants to participate in it.
“I wish to go to Dragonstone,” she announces, and he nods. “I will need your help.”
He frowns for a moment, and she thinks he struggles with his next question. “Are you abdicating, Your Grace?”
“My son has already taken my position but I am,” she searches for the word for a second, before admitting it for what it is. “I am surrendering. To Queen Rhaenyra.”
“You support her right to the throne?”
“I do not take back what my late husband said solely to me in his last moments, but this…” she trails off, shakes her head. “It is not what I planned. I had hoped she would have agreed to the very reasonable terms that had been offered.”
“You know her better than that,” he rumbles, and it feels like it had when she was a girl, when he had watched from the sidelines as Rhaenyra threw herself headlong into some scheme or other, and had dragged Alicent after that.
“That I do, Lord Westerling,” she sighs, and looks away.
“I will get to preparations, Your Grace,” he nods and turns and she catches him.
“Oh, one last moment, Ser Harrold,” he turns back and she can’t help the flinty smile, the way her jaw tenses. “Do make sure Ser Criston knows nothing about our voyage.”
“Of course,” and his smile is something like relief, like he knows the ways that Criston’s rage and his bitterness have twisted him, like he knows of his outbursts and his cruelties, and the way in which he treats Rhaenyra. She thinks Ser Harrold has always been kind to her, forgiving of her mistakes. He probably knows about Harwin Strong, and he forgives her for it, like Alicent had always struggled to, had overlooked it like he had overlooked her propensity for trouble. She was born to be a dragon, and she had grown into it well, and he had been around for long enough to recognise it as growing pains, as the indulgences those who were born to rule could be forgiven for.
She knows she can’t talk to Aegon or Aemond. Will have to leave them without a goodbye, will have to hope that one day they’ll understand, because she can’t let them try to stop her. Aegon will panic, tell her father, and she’ll be locked up here instead of on Dragonstone before she can even blink. She has done what she could, has brought them up in this world that has left scars on them both. Helaena she can’t leave without a goodbye, her one girl, her only daughter. The one she had been sorriest to bear, her hardest pregnancy. She had long known the choices and horrors that would come to her, had always bitterly regretted how she could not adequately prepare her for them.
“I have to go away,” she says, after she has checked her daughter’s rooms for servants, sitting in her blackest dress (for mourning, she explains within her head, only to herself, even when there is no longer need for artifice. She knows what she seeks) and Helaena simply nods.
“You’re going to her,” she states, and Alicent nods, sighs.
“You always were my most perceptive one. My perfect little girl,” she brushes the hair out of her eyes, holds her hand between hers. She allows her closeness, like she hasn’t since she was very young, and she knows that Helaena perhaps understands her position better than she herself does.
“We won’t meet again,” and her knack for prophecy means Alicent believes it to be true, had known it in her heart, had let that propel her here even when she could not, should not, risk detection.
“I wish you could come with me.”
“Dragonstone is not for me. I wish you happiness, Mother.”
“I wish I could have given you a better life than this,” she murmurs, barely able to look at her, her failings and this selfish decision crashing down on her.
“I am perfectly content, kept within my gilded cage. I’ll miss you, though.”
“I’ll miss you too, my dearest heart.” And words and kindnesses had been so hard for her in recent years, had been so strained and she had been so full with her bitterness, but she had always reached out for her and been rebuffed, had never stopped reaching, and this last meeting Helaena simply smiles and allows her, allows her to hold onto her for one long moment that she knows offers Helaena no comfort. Continues to smile even as she leaves her, leaving before she stays too long, leaving before she knows she’ll no longer be able to. Their paths diverge here, they have to.
------
She knows the dragon sees them long before they make dock, knows her presence has been reported. They fly a white sail. She thinks it is the only thing that stops them from being torn asunder by dragon flame.
She is greeted by Daemon. She thinks this voyage might be over before it has begun, until she sees Rhaenys lingering further up the path. He looks back at her, far behind them, and she sees the way her eyes harden. So she’s to protect her, then. The thought almost causes her to blush, and it will, later, but here she must draw herself up, make herself impenetrable, knowing that Daemon is the most likely to dismiss her. Knowing that Daemon will pounce upon her every weakness. She’s never trusted him.
“Alicent Hightower, have you turned on those who made you?”
“Only those who wished to see me crushed beneath their heels, Ser Daemon.” She will not refer to his elevation to royalty; he was the one who did not deserve it, who her late husband had never wanted to see on the throne. The throne was not his, however much he continued to circle it. She would not act like it was.
“Here to make your apologies and beg girlish forgiveness?”
“I am here to see the queen,” she says, and the only thing that stops her from walking past him is his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
“Far be it from me to stop you,” he moves to the side, and when she proceeds past him and looks up, Rhaenys is gone. The danger has passed. She suddenly yearns fiercely to see her again, is suddenly full of memories of a moment shared, memories that have dogged her every step, her every thought, on this uncertain journey. She blushes, then, knowing what she has willingly brought herself into. There is something about her presence here that has a certain undeniability. She has brought herself into the dragon’s jaws in the hope of one more touch. One more moment.
Rhaenys stands waiting for her in the doorway of what she will realise later is their war room. She can barely hear herself think over the rushing of blood in her ears, in her face, and she’s reaching for her before she can even think. She can’t think, not standing in front of her looking up into her face as Rhaenys easily takes her hands in hers, as she rushes to a stop closer to her than she should, closer than she should be with an audience.
“Alicent,” Rhaenys murmurs, a smile on her lips, a voice just for her. She can’t help the smile that follows, the way her body relaxes. For once she’s not thinking about whether anyone can see it.
“Princess Rhaenys,” she says, and there’s something warm and low that she doesn’t recognise in her voice, something that she blushes to hear. She’s said everything, she sees it in the way Rhaenys shifts, the way she fights to hide a smile, too composed to blush in a way Alicent hasn’t time or reason to learn. Rhaenys let’s go of one of her hands and turns to face the room before she can betray herself further, and when she meets Rhaenyra’s gaze across the painted table all she can think is that she’s been caught.
“The Queen Mother, Alicent Hightower,” Rhaenys announces her to the room, still holding one of her hands, but she lets go when Alicent moves forward to greet the queen, staying back. This is between the two of them, now. She bends the knee, knows that her apology is at least deserving of that.
“My Queen,” she pronounces, voice clear and strong in the silence of the room, and when she looks up from bended knee Rhaenyra is considering her. “I prostrate myself before you to apologise. My father has orchestrated a coup, has usurped the throne, and I will take my fair punishment willingly.”
“Rise,” Rhaenyra murmurs, and her skirts rustling are the loudest thing in the room. Almost as loud as her heartbeat strumming in her ears. She has never felt shame like she has now, waiting in silence for the axe to fall. She hadn’t known what her father planned, but her queen has no reason to believe that. She thinks of Rhaenys behind her, gaze steady upon her back, and prays to the Seven like she hasn’t in weeks. The pendant still lies behind the high neck of her gown. She hasn’t known how she could possibly take it off, even as she hasn’t known how she can possibly still believe.
“Do you accept me as the rightful heir?”
“I do, Your Grace,” and her whole body is trembling, hands together like she can stop herself from breaking apart.
“You will be imprisoned in your guest rooms, for now,” she turns to one of the servants hovering nearby. “Prepare rooms for the former queen and her entourage. Ensure she has ample space.” When she turns back something in her eyes has softened, something flinty receding. Alicent knows she looks stunned. If Rhaenyra was anyone else she would have been subjected to further humiliation. Knows that several people in this room would have beheaded her for her place in her father’s treason.
She looks back, meets Rhaenys’s gaze, and thus fortified she faces Rhaenyra again, knowing that she must thank her for such light punishment, for capture befitting her station. Sees how Rhaenyra’s gaze flicks between the two of them, a crease forming between her eyebrows, like they’re a puzzle she can’t quite solve. Alicent wonders if she wears her wanting all over her face, if Rhaenyra can sense the things within her that have changed, the truths she has had to face.
“I thank you for your gracious treatment, my queen,” and she cannot quite bring herself to say anything more.
“We will need to talk later; I am sure there is much insight you can give me on your father’s plans. However I am sure you are weary from your journey,” she beckons to a different servant than before. “Jeyne will show you to your rooms.”
Alicent nods her head and bends her knees as far as she can let herself, and as she walks out of the room she meets Rhaenys’s eyes again, and she doesn’t know what her expression says except that she knows Rhaenys hears it. That Rhaenys sees her, what she has come here for, the simple truth of it. She needs to be touched again. Knows that she has chosen between her father’s shape of her and the truth that Rhaenys has awoken within her. Rhaenys has heard her call and wants to answer it.
------
The door is not locked but one of Daemon’s men stands outside of it, and she knows she should rest before Rhaenyra comes knocking. She has a war to win, but Alicent’s mind has never been further from it, she does not care about succession and crowns as she paces the considerably lavish space given to her. She is exhausted from her journey, she is nervous and jittery, she’s about to tear her cuticles apart. She is allowed to keep the lady’s maids she brought with her, though she knows they will also be interrogated later. She allows them to undress her, slips into a new bed that will, from this moment on, be hers. Part of her chosen prison.
They both make her wait, in the end. Rhaenyra comes in with her breakfast in the morning, asks her questions about Storm’s End and her father’s plans and doesn’t comment on the page that had been sent with her terms of surrender. Does not let her know if she is forgiven, if she is allowed to be let back in. There is far too much between them for that, too many years, too many bitternesses and betrayals. She is content to wait, for now. Rhaenys makes her wait even longer, and the first time she visits it is in full armour, hair mussed like she has been riding, and Alicent is relieved to see her.
“Patrolling?” she asks, as Rhaenys stands just inside of her closed door and her staff melt away with one impatient flick of her wrist. She burns to see her like this, so like she had been in that Sept, but wearing a weariness around her shoulders that she knows her father’s war has caused.
“I’m quite sure I shouldn’t be telling you that,” and her smile is warm but she waits, like she’s looking for something, like she wants to Alicent to state why she might be here.
“There’s no one for me to tell,” she returns, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t invite her closer. Still doesn’t know how to ask, even now she can recognise the wanting. And recognise it she does, her pulse fluttering just from Rhaenys, here, alone in a room where her transgressions can’t be witnessed.
“You could find a way, if you wished to,” and her eyes flick across her in a way that makes her wish she knew better how to reach out, how to pull her down onto this sofa that would not be nearly big enough for what she wants to do. She craves her closeness most of all, that warmth that Targaryen women seem to share, craves her boldness and her solidity against the crashing waves of this still so very new wanting.
“Do you think that I wish to?”
“I think you came here wishing for something,” and there’s something liquid and warm in her gaze now, something that hides just behind a teasing smile. Rhaenys remembers her too, remembers how she had held onto her for dear life, how she had wanted to bury herself in her.
“Pray tell?” she responds, like she’s playing some kind of game, like she’s drawing this out on purpose, like she wants Rhaenys to crack first. She wants, and wants and wants, but she does not know how to ask, regardless of lessons Rhaenys has already tried to bestow on her.
“Oh I would not presume to know your mind, Your Grace,” and the smile widens, flippant and light in the midday sun, days after Alicent has arrived. She has craved her so badly it has brought her here, and Rhaenys has kept her waiting, and now she asks more of her. It would be cruel if so much of her did not desire to give it. If she did not desire to give her anything she wished.
“I think you know more of it than you would have me think, standing so far away from me,” she manages, and Rhaenys moves closer, not quite within touching distance, and pauses.
“Would you have me closer still?” and she ignores how Alicent glares, all at once looking younger and less uncertain, frustration clear in the lines of her body, in her rigid shoulders.
“If it would please you, Princess,” she grits out, and Rhaenys settles on the sofa, still smiling serenely, the distance between them suitable as though there were a chaperone lingering off to the side.
“I think you know I am rather more preoccupied with what would please you.”
“And why is that? Does your lord husband not mind?” she snaps, and Rhaenys all but rolls her eyes, arm slung across the back of the sofa, the metal of her armour glinting next to the richness of the red fabric. Alicent wants the armour off her, wants to see her, the real shape of her without the metal plate, notes that the gauntlets had not even made it into the room. Wonders if as much as she prefers her riding clothes those have a simplicity that this armour does not allow her, fussy clasps and laces and buckles, wonders if the armour chafes at her like Alicent’s gowns always have.
“Corlys allows me my… appetites, just as I have always allowed him his. But you did not want me here to ask after the health of my marriage.”
“Is that what I am? Something you hunger for?” Rhaenys cocks her head to the side and considers her, something lazy and confident in her movements, something like knowing that Alicent can’t look away.
She leans closer then, and Alicent feels the heat of her, and she feels something leap in her throat, feels her heart thumping. “That’s up to you,” she whispers, breath warm on her face, eyes flicking down to her lips, and she tries to draw away, but Alicent catches her, one hand on her cheek.
She’s careful, slow, as she pulls her in, her eyes wide as Rhaenys scoots obligingly closer, eyes darting down to her lips, pulse strumming in her neck. Alicent watches, catalogues, sees , this time, that she wants this just as much as she does. She wants Rhaenys trembling like she is, wants her dishevelled and no longer caring for the game that Alicent is always playing, unable to dance around or mince words any longer. She gets close enough her eyes close, ready for a kiss that she puts off a little longer, let’s Rhaenys’s warm breath wash out of her in a rush from her open mouth.
She kisses her carefully, slowly, reorienting, letting herself catch up. She has travelled so far for this, and the desire has been simmering at the front of her mind since she saw Rhaenys again, roaring over her as soon as she had seen her lingering in her doorway, tiredness outlined on her face but with a smile waiting for her.
She pulls, Rhaenys settling into her lap, Alicent’s hands resting on her thighs, the one place where she isn’t covered by metal. She skims her hand up her side, surprised by the warmth, like the metal is a part of her, like the fire of her house can’t be contained even by her armour. Fire cannot kill a dragon but Alicent feels as though she might burn if she doesn’t get underneath it, wants to fight her way through the layers and layers of undershirt and gambeson and breastplate.
“Take it off,” she mutters, petulant, and hates the knowing way that Rhaenys smiles, settles back on her thighs. Hates the way her breathing is too fast and her cheeks flushed when all she has done is kiss her, the way her palms prickle as Rhaenys begins untying knots and sliding buckles. It’s awkward, something she usually has a lady’s maid to help her with, but she’s content to take her time, to make Alicent watch, eyes wide and thoughts so clearly scattered.
By the time she’s reached the light linen undershirt Alicent is already grasping for her, hands bunched in the soft material, pulling her down into a kiss that contains all of the heat and desire she hadn’t been able to communicate before. Rhaenys kisses her willingly, forcefully, pressing her down into the sofa, hand in her hair. Alicent lets herself be kissed, breathing hard through her nose, her hands still locked in a grip on Rhaenys’s shirt, pulling her down even as she tries to press herself up. She can’t get close enough, not in her layers and layers of skirts, not in her corset, Rhaenys too tall to be able to push herself against her and continue kissing.
“I don’t suppose anyone’s ever used their mouth on you, have they, darling?” she murmurs against her lips, ignoring the way that Alicent’s hips raise, the way that she wants to grind down into her in response. She wants to taste her, wants to disappear under all those skirts, can finally get her out of them later, when she has her again. For now Alicent is already squirming, something like moans stuttering out on the tail ends of her breaths, the way her hands are grabbing her desperate and unceasing. She doesn’t bother to wait for an answer before she settles on her knees in front of her, Alicent staring at her, one hand at her mouth.
“You’ve done enough kneeling recently, let it be my turn,” and the smile on Rhaenys’s face is teasing, so confident, and all Alicent can do is whimper as hands find the bottom of her dress, as she starts to pull up the layers. When she gets to her thighs she kisses the soft skin there, worries her teeth against it and smiles as her legs part further for her. She can’t help biting a little, where it won’t matter if there’s marks, down where no one will see. Thinks of Alicent feeling the soreness when her thighs press together, thinks of physical reminders and marks upon her body, of her coming all this way for this. She presses a little harder and Alicent moans, and she knows she’s thinking the same thing, that Alicent wants the physical proof of what she wants. No deniability when she wears her marks for days after, a reminder of a sermon given, prayers made here on her knees to gods that Alicent is struggling to believe in, these days. But Rhaenys has seen enough of the Stranger to know that these holy oaths are kept private, that there is no cosmic justice.
There is only this, Alicent’s thighs trembling around her ears, her dress warm as it half covers her. If someone were to walk in now she could duck under voluminous skirts and continue her prayers and no one would be the wiser if it wasn’t for Alicent holding onto the arm of the sofa, covering her mouth with one hand as though that ever had a hope of muffling the sounds that spill out of her. She won’t stop moving, Rhaenys clamping her hands down on her thighs, Alicent whimpering and struggling against her, slumped down against the cushions like Rhaenys’s hands are the only thing that are holding her corporeal form together.
When she comes Rhaenys has to hold onto her so hard she thinks there’ll be bruises in the shape of her hands tomorrow, bruises to go along with the broken capillaries on the inside of her thighs, and she knows her hips will hurt from her squirming. She smiles as she withdraws, smug as she kisses Alicent, uncaring of her taste on her lips, and from the way that Alicent gasps, stutters something like a broken moan, she doesn’t mind.
“Help me out of my dress,” she half gasps, standing on shaky legs, and she tries desperately to even out her breathing as Rhaenys loosens her stays, moving quickly, eager even as she presses her own thighs together. When it’s loose enough to wriggle out of, Alicent steps out of it, leaves it on the floor, undoing layers of petticoats, leaving a trail of them as she disappears into her bedroom. Rhaenys has lost her boots by the time she follows her, but it’s Alicent who falls on her, grasping, pushing and pulling her onto the bed. “I want to see you,” she manages, quiet but something in her voice pulsing with urgency, and Rhaenys pulls off her shirt, her hands going to her wrapped breasts, Alicent frantically untying the laces on her riding trousers. She climbs up beside her even as she does, lays Rhaenys down when her breasts are uncovered, biting her collarbone in a way that she knows means she’ll have to keep to her high necked riding clothes over the next few days. She doesn’t care, not as her trousers come undone, not as Alicent tries to map the entire surface of her chest with her mouth.
“A little rushed, are we?” she half laughs, even though she’s breathless, ignoring the way her hips want to jump as Alicent makes enough space to easily slip her hand inside.
“Do you want me to stop?” Alicent bites back, but she doesn’t even pause, already cupping her, fingers seeking out where she’s wettest. She takes her time with this, like she couldn’t the last time, smiles against her skin when Rhaenys’s hips jerk as she ghosts over her clit.
They both moan when she sinks inside, pausing for a moment just like Rhaenys had in that Sept what feels like such a long time ago. Remembers what it’s like that Rhaenys was so focused on her pleasure, even as she wants to hurry, wants to see her fall apart, even as all she can concentrate on is the feel of her around her fingers, looking up to see the way her eyes have fallen closed and her cheeks are flushed. Rhaenys moans as she moves, her legs as open as they can be when restricted by the trousers that Alicent has shoved down around her thighs, laces trailing where she’s pulled them from their eyelets. Alicent moves closer, straddling one of her legs to hold it open, concentrating on Rhaenys to the point where she’s moving on instinct, where she feels like she’s purely been put on this earth to make her come.
She watches her flush rise up her chest, the way her body moves with the movement of her hand, using her hips and thigh for force, listening to the way that Rhaenys can’t catch her breath, moaning on each stuttering exhale. It’s so different, getting to see her, the way her heels dig into the bed and her upper body bows, and when she comes she feels it, walls fluttering around her fingers, tightening even as she tries to fuck her through it.
She’s still in her slip but she barely notices as Rhaenys pulls at it, drawing it up so she can cup her hip, guiding her down onto her thigh, and she realises she’s been making noise, is out of breath like she’s the one that had just been fucked. She feels entirely out of it as Rhaenys guides her, grinding her against her thigh, and she leans forward to kiss her again, moaning into her mouth, unable to get ahold of herself. She feels possessed as she presses her thigh against her in turn, breathing in Rhaenys’s shocked inhale, absorbing the way she jumps. It’s too soon, she’s still so sensitive, but she rocks back into her anyway, her other hand finding its way to the back of Alicent’s neck, holding her under sweaty curls.
Alicent comes on top of her, falling out of rhythm, her breathing seizing in a long silent moment, and she collapses against her, face buried in her neck, legs still tangled together, slip pulled up around her hips. Rhaenys’s trousers are still tangled around her knees but she can’t move, body liquified and her arms full of Alicent, and she presses a kiss to her forehead without thinking.
When she wakes it’s dark, and Alicent is gone, but she’s been tucked under the covers, her remaining garments removed. She’s a little surprised by the tenderness that displays, but Alicent seems to have a knack for surprising her. She finds a candle and matches at the bedside, and then she finds her clothes and her armour piled on a chair, folded neatly, and she dresses quickly, ignoring sticky thighs and aches from dragon riding and Alicent both.
She moves into the living room and finds Alicent squinting at a book by the light of a candle, and she can’t help the smile that follows, knowing that she had let her rest.
“Did I miss dinner?” she asks, voice scratchy, and Alicent’s head shoots up, cheeks pink even in the dim light.
“No, it is only just past five,” she murmurs, and Rhaenys smiles.
“Good, I’m starving,” and she almost laughs at the way Alicent ducks her head, blush renewed as she clearly remembers things said a few hours ago. “I’ll visit you again, your grace,” she promises, voice warm, and Alicent meets her eyes even as she looks at a loss as to what to say.
“Goodnight, Princess Rhaenys,” she manages, as she opens the door, and she doesn’t kiss her before she slips out however much she wants to, doesn’t linger for pleasantries or dinner and Alicent doesn’t ask her to. That’s not what this is.
------
It doesn’t take long for Rhaenyra to allow her the privilege of wandering the grounds; with a dragon constantly on patrol there is very little she can get away with, dragons and knights scattered across the island. She is still not allowed anywhere near the war room, but little glimpses of Rhaenys flying Meleys are far more fulfilling than any conversation as to tactics ever would be. Sometimes Rhaenys joins her, fresh off her dragon and smelling like sea breeze and something like brimstone, something sooty that Alicent remembers from Rhaenyra when they were young.
“Is she working you too hard?” she asks, smiling, as Rhaenys leans against a rock wall, fatigue lined on her face. She looks older, the burden of patrolling and constant flying on dragon back, but Alicent knows she looks older too, her children far away and her father’s war causing them all strain. She waits for news just as impatiently as Rhaenyra, knowing that reports of the greens' movements are all she is going to hear of her sons. Knowing that news will not come of Helaena, relieved that she is as far away from the fighting as she is.
“I volunteered,” she mutters, and winces as she stands. “Weeks of flying are taking their toll, it seems,” she smiles, something teasing. “I’m not as young as I once was.”
“None of us are, it seems,” Alicent can’t help the smile that returns, even as the wind whips her hair out of place and pulls at her clothes.
“Let us return to the castle, my queen,” Rhaenys offers her arm, gallant in armour, and Alicent takes it gladly, thinking fondly of her chambers and the warmth they will find there. She hasn’t reached out again, since that first time here, but they have been seeing each other regularly, and something within her strums at the thought of tensions buried underneath. She burns almost as hot as her Targaryen women these days, something passionate and huge snapping within her, but Rhaenys is sedate and steady by her side, warm through her armour.
Rhaenyra catches them on their way back in, asks Rhaenys questions about her patrol that Alicent wouldn’t have been allowed to listen to not long ago, but they’ve been talking, sort of, trying to build some kind of working relationship. She knows that Rhaenyra notes her and Rhaenys’s closeness, and she knows that she doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s not entirely sure what she makes of it, now, in outside settings, even as she feels as though her blood will never cool in her presence.
“You two have gotten close,” Rhaenyra says, after Rhaenys has nodded at them both and proceeded to her rooms for what Alicent is sure is a very well deserved nap.
“Yes, so we have,” she sniffs, aims for haughty and diplomatic. “It’s not exactly like Dragonstone is heaving with people I’d like to speak to.”
“I don’t believe I’d seen you speak to her before this,” she continues, ignoring it, her head cocked to the side like she’s trying to figure something out.
“She’d been at court many times, both while you were there and while you weren’t,” she manages, but she thinks she might be blushing, knows she looks startled, backed into a corner. She wants to lash out, wants to bite Rhaenyra’s head off just for the asking, but that in itself will just make Rhaenyra more sure she has hit on a sore point .
“True enough,” she replies, shrugs, smiles. “I’m glad you’ve found someone to speak to. I know she too speaks fondly of my father.” Alicent almost chokes on that, knowing that Rhaenyra refers to the black of mourning she still wears, considers her own betrayals, him barely cold before she had met Rhaenys that first time. Him still alive when she had longed for anyone else’s touch but his.
“She does. I miss him,” and that is true, misses him as her friend, as confidant, the man he was before he was bedridden and addled by milk of the poppy. They had tried their best for the boys, for the throne, before he had gotten so ill and she had gotten so bitter, forced into the wheel of stations bigger than them.
“I do too,” Rhaenyra smiles, looks down, and Alicent grabs her hand on impulse, wonders if Daemon is her most trusted confidant too. Wonders if she can trust him, remembers what he had been like when they were girls. She doubts he has changed overly much, and still knows that Rhaenyra has always loved him, has always glorified him, looked up to him. She thinks that personally he has never held up when he has been looked upon from too close.
“I know that things are… Fraught. But we were close, once, before all this,” and it’s an echo, something said in a different almost apology. “He missed you. We both did.”
“Yes, well, it would have been very much easier for all of us if he had survived,” she replies, but it misses out on frosty, and she meets her eyes with something like a smile around her mouth, something that trembles. She’s always so vulnerable, all emotions, when Alicent had spent so long become icy, closed off, had spent so many years closing herself down.
“It would have been,” Alicent murmurs, and Rhaenyra’s grip tightens on her hand briefly before she lets go. “I should let you get back, your grace,” and Rhaenyra manages something more solid, something like a real smile, at the formality, nods and slips away. Alicent doesn’t know if things can be fixed, but she thinks she would like to try.
-------
Rhaenys sits on her sofa. Alicent always blushes to have her there, regardless of the distance that has been between them, regardless of her not putting a toe out of line. She’s been trying to recommit to her faith. Been trying to grasp control of her desires again, trying to simply enjoy what is turning out to be a pleasant friendship, trying to not give into sinful lusts and painful desires. She has made confession in the godswood, as there is no Sept here. Has whispered it to the trees and let them take it away, let them carry it to the ears of the Seven, and maybe the old gods, too. She seeks forgiveness from anyone who will listen.
“Does Rhaenyra know?” she asks, and Alicent looks up from her book.
“Know what?” she pretends, even as she blushes, even as she knows that Rhaenys refers to some kind of nebulous them .
“That we are,” she pauses, and that slightly smug smile comes back, the one she always wants to kiss off her face. The one she always wants to touch, the one that she knows Rhaenys knows infuriates and charms her. “Becoming so close?”
“She said that she was glad I had someone to talk to,” Alicent replies, and Rhaenys laughs.
“You two have been talking more, recently, haven’t you?”
“We’ve been trying,” she admits, and Rhaenys nods.
“Does she know that you were in love with her when you were girls?” And Alicent sucks in a breath that makes Rhaenys set her book aside, corner dogeared in a way that makes Alicent want to scream, and she squints at her like she’s confused for a moment before she realises. “Oh you poor thing, you didn’t know.” And she reaches out to grasp her hand, and Alicent snatches it away. Stands, turns her back to her.
“Alicent-“ she starts, rounding the sofa, but she flings out a hand, brings her to a stop.
“Don’t,” she takes a deep breath. “Get out,” she hisses, eventually, rounding on her with eyes full of tears and a mouth twisted like she is full of despair, and Rhaenys understands. Departs without another word, leaves her book dogeared on the sofa and leaves Alicent to her grief. It is just another loss.
Another thing that she can do nothing about, something she was too young to understand and had been taken away from before she could so much as hope to decipher it. Too much has changed, they are too different, too hardened by intervening years and intervening fights. There’s betrayals aplenty between them, enough sitting heavy in the air to ever stop that from being a possibility for them now.
She thinks of Rhaenyra asking her about her closeness with Rhaenys and wonders if she has always known what she could not see. If she knew what their girlish laughter and whispers at night could have led to, in a different world, if they had been different girls. If she had not been her father’s daughter, if Rhaenyra had not been the heir, if they had been in some other world than theirs. The impossibility rings through her, the knowledge of all that could not be. And Rhaenys, who could see it so clearly, who can see her , every part of her, in a way that makes no sense for what they are , which is rightfully nothing. They are friends. They are friends in the same way her and Rhaenyra had been friends once, only they are grown and far away from the pressures of her father’s games.
She had loved her, and Rhaenyra had loved her too, all those years ago. Without marriage to her father they could have been such different people. Could have done so much more than fracture apart through perceived slights, could have been some kind of happy. Could have escaped on dragon back and eaten only cake. She thinks of those evenings sequestered with the king, of talking to him in the light of his wife’s death, of foolishly heading her father and trying to offer comfort. She had known Rhaenyra would see it as a betrayal, or she would have told her, regardless of what her father said. That was the moment she started to hide things from her, the moment when she had started to back away, to push herself down. She had torn herself apart for her father, and she had still ended up back here. Still had ended up, eventually, following her desires.
She knew, with an ultimate chiming finality, that it was too late for them. That what they had been was long lost, but she also knew that there was a way for them to be honest friends again, a way for her and Rhaenyra to put aside their past differences and their past issues to be close in a different way. They could be equals, and mothers, and women who choose to confide in each other, even if they could never be what they might have wanted so many years ago. She takes a deep breath. They have come a long way, a long way from the Red Keep and the suffocation of those walls. Rhaenyra will not begrudge her Rhaenys, not when she had understood Laenor, not when she had had her own discretions.
When she goes to Rhaenys and Corlys’s rooms it is to apologise, a few days later and her head levelled out, something like the knowledge that this had always been inside her helping her to understand. She does not need to apologise to the gods, only to apologise to her, who she had treated so harshly.
“Ah, I assume you are here to see my lady wife?” Corlys greets her calmly as he welcomes her in, standing. “I’ll fetch her, I believe she was just getting dressed to take her turn on patrol.”
He disappears, and when Rhaenys comes into the room she is alone, back as straight as ever, something wary in her gaze.
“Princess Rhaenys,” she starts, falling back on formalities, and she sees her mouth twist. She has been denying them both. She has been foolishly believing the gods care for this one indiscretion, foolishly following the words that she has been taught, the faith she has clung to. She steps forward and grabs her hands instead, an echo of another time, an echo of a desperate conversation long past. “I’m sorry, for my reaction, last time I saw you.”
“I surprised you,” Rhaenys murmurs, but she takes her hands anyway, holds on just as tight.
“You did,” she breathes, tries to relax. She has never been any good at apologising. “I did not handle it well.”
“Thank you for apologising,” she almost lets the tiny smile back, but she restrains it for a moment longer. “Have you thought upon what I said?”
“Constantly,” she admits, eyes wide and earnest as she looks up into her face. “You were not incorrect to suggest such a thing.”
“And now?” she asks, and Alicent can’t help the something like hope within her swells when she questions her current feelings, the only reason for wanting to know them obvious. She feels like a teenager again, Rhaenys’s hands gripped in sweaty palms, ridiculous when she has seen so much of her, when she has given so much of herself to her already.
“I would like to one day be her friend again. I have mourned what we lost, know what we once could have had is long past.” She searches her face with her eyes, takes in every micro expression, curses the way that Rhaenys can hold so much back even as her eyes take her apart.
“I do not wish to be a flimsy substitute,” she murmurs, and Alicent can’t help the surprise, can’t help but be moved by this display of insecurity from this unflappable woman.
“That has never been what you are to me,” and her voice is just as quiet, because she does not know how to explain. “You have shown me pleasure like no one ever has, you have reached out to me in such desolate times as these. You are my closest friend. I have wished for nothing but you, even as I have murmured my sins to the trees,” she pauses, feels her breath catch in her chest. “I would call it courting, if such a thing existed for us, as backwards as it may have been.”
“I rather hadn’t thought you’d noticed,” and she is smiling now, smiling as she tucks a wayward curl behind Alicent’s ear, brushes a thumb under her eye as though to catch a tear that may tremble there. Alicent’s eyes are huge and wet in the daytime light, and Rhaenys thinks she ought to put her out of her misery. “Come here, darling girl,” collecting her up in her arms to kiss her, slow and deep and unhurried, so unlike previous kisses shared. Alicent’s arms circle around her waist, her linen shirt reminding her of the last time she had been able to kiss her, and she can’t help the way she holds on tight, fingers digging into flesh and breath juddering out of her.
“Plenty of time for that,” she murmurs as she draws away, but there is something flushed and shining about her, too, something like a fire banked, and Alicent blinks rapidly to clear her own head.
“Your lord husband said you were going somewhere,” she says, striving to remember moments before, striving to regain her balance, even as neither of them move away, still pressed together.
“Yes, Meleys and I are needed, presently,” she takes a deep breath. “I should like to continue this on my return, if I may?”
“Of course,” she breathes out, all in a rush, and Rhaenys chuckles, smooths her flushed cheek with her thumb.
“I do hope you don’t attempt to return to the Seven while I’m gone,” she teases, and Alicent laughs, too high pitched and breathy, her hands trembling as she draws back.
“Only to pray for your swift return, Princess,” she returns, and draws herself to her full height, still unimpressive next to Rhaenys, hands clasped in front of her. “Safe travels.”
“I will return to you on the morrow, your grace,” she responds, and Alicent sees herself out, walks back to her rooms in a daze. Thinks of beginning something quite unlike anything she has ever had. Thinks of opportunities long gone and the honest gladness that fills her heart at the one that she is faced with now. She will wait for Rhaenys to return to her. She will wait for her.