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Chapter Text

The hour is late when Alicent Hightower, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, returns from the King's chambers.

She walks with an awkward gait, doing her best to keep his seed from leaking down her thighs, and her cheeks burn as she quietly thanks her sworn shield before stumbling through the open doorway and slamming it shut behind her. In the privacy of her own chambers, she can lean her head against the door, let the tears fall silently, and admit to herself that she has just returned from a particularly... difficult visit. She hardly had time to undress before Viserys ordered her to turn around and covered her head with a pillow. As his hands left bruises on her thighs and he rutted inside her from behind, she could hear him grunting out a name through the fabric covering her ears.

Aemma.

Just the memory of it makes her want to scream. All she endures for him, and he cannot even bring himself to acknowledge her presence when he is inside her.

She scolds herself. It is not her place to think such things. It is she who has failed time and time again to properly prepare herself to accept her husband as a wife should. In truth, she should be grateful; since he took at last to smearing that slimy jelly on himself before joining with her, the discomfort of the act has lessened considerably, and is now but a shadow of what it was that first agonizing night. There is no point in wishing for more. He will do as he wills, and she... will do as she must.

She does not have long to reflect on these truths, though. Mere moments after entering her chambers, she is startled from her reverie by the sound of a throat being cleared, and she turns, blinking, to see the King's daughter waiting atop her bed, legs crossed and a fierce scowl on her young face. Before she can even form the question that leaps to the surface of her mind--how, by all the Seven, had the Princess managed to enter her chambers undetected--the troublesome girl has already begun to speak.

"'Ser Criston protects the Princess from her enemies, but who protects the Princess from Ser Criston?'" Rhaenyra quotes, her eyebrow arched, her thin fingers drumming against the soft sheets beside her. "Isn't that what you said at court today, dear stepmother? It was on everyone's lips, you know. How you put my virtue to question before all the lords and ladies of the realm. Why, one would almost think you want them to believe mine own sworn shield is spending his nights defiling me." She smiles sardonically, pursing her lips. "Of course, that cannot be true."

Alicent heaves out a tired sigh and studies the girl before her. No, that is not quite right. At six-and-ten her stepdaughter is not a girl anymore, not really, but nor is she yet a woman; rather, she is at that peculiar age in which her eyes shine with the insolence of youth that thinks itself something more. She has swapped the modest beige dresses of years past for daring, low-cut gowns of red and black that accentuate her growing curves and also call attention to the fact that, nominally at least, she is the heir to the throne. The Queen thinks darkly upon the attention that these features bring from the countless knights and lords who blatantly lust after Rhaenyra's body and inheritance in varying proportions, and reflects that it does little to curb her stepdaughter's headstrong nature.

On any other night, Alicent would take that responsibility upon herself, and, after calling her stepdaughter an ungrateful brat or worse, would listen to Rhaenyra as she answered in kind, each tearing into the other with sharpened words until they parted, blood pumping with renewed anger and exasperation. On this night, though, she finds that she is in no mood for their usual games. Instead, she closes her eyes, leans back against the door, and murmurs, "What do you want, Rhaenyra?"

If the Princess notices her stepmother's unusual attitude, she does not show it. "I want to know what you were really thinking!" she exclaims. "Ser Criston is a good and honest knight. You and I both know he would never sully his white cloak as you implied he might on his own, so my only conclusion can be that you think I would seduce him into it. Do you think so little of me, stepmother?" There is a note of hurt in Rhaenyra's voice, and for a moment, Alicent is reminded of the first time the Princess called her by that title, of the anguished quiver in her voice before she spat it out like a curse. Then, she focuses back on Rhaenyra's words and has to suppress the urge to scoff.

Her own adolescence happened so long ago that it sometimes feels like prehistory, like it is composed of layers beneath layers that she would have to dig and scrape and burrow through to so much as touch it. Still, there are things she remembers, even from half a lifetime away. She remembers scurrying behind her older brother Gwayne as he took her out into the city under their father's nose, giggling madly all the while. She remembers listening in wide-eyed silence to the ribald tales his fellow squires exchanged as they drank and laughed. She remembers one of them exclaiming I swear, her cunt tasted like strawberries, and Gwayne's face going beet-red when she asked him innocently what that meant. And, of course, she remembers the moment she met the young Princess.

It is natural, she thinks, to remember endings.

The truth Rhaenyra does not want to hear is that it is not a matter of how much or little she thinks of her. Cole is only a man like any other, and white cloak or no, he is not immune to her stepdaughter's considerable charms. The Queen has seen the way his gaze lingers on the Princess, and though rationally she can hardly blame him for following his nature, it makes her blood boil nonetheless. Yet this is nothing compared to the sick, dizzy feeling that overtakes her when she notes how receptive of his attentions Rhaenyra seems, when she sees her laughing at some quiet word from her sworn shield or imagines her pressing soft lips to his in private. She wants to shake her, to scream at her that though she has bled for many moons now she is still not a woman in truth, still younger than the Queen was when she was wed to her father. She does not, cannot understand how her girlish fancies will curdle and wilt in the face of the harsh reality of the marriage bed.

She thinks of saying this. Of describing in gruesome detail the pain she will feel when she at last gives up her maidenhead. Of watching the light dim in her eyes as she realizes that dreams of romance and pleasure at the hands of a gallant knight are just that, and that only grim duty lies before her when she eventually marries. Of taking her by the shoulders and screaming in her face I am only trying to protect you, you ridiculous, shortsighted girl! Perhaps then she would learn to savor what remains of her girlhood, would not be in such a rush to give it away.

Besides, she thinks with a stab of sickening dread in her stomach, Prince Aegon is far too young as of yet, and if she marries before he comes of age...

She does not permit that line of thought to continue. Instead, she sighs again and steps forward, not meeting Rhaenyra's eyes. "I am sure I think as much or as little of you as you think of me, Princess," she says quietly. "Now, if that is all, I ask that you please leave me be. The hour is quite late."

There is a stillness in the air, disturbed only by the sound of their breathing, as the Princess leans forward. Her eyes have narrowed, and the way they study Alicent makes her shift uncomfortably in place. Several seconds pass, and then, at last, her stepdaughter breaks the silence with a single, quiet question.

"What's wrong?"

The Queen makes an impatient gesture. "The hour is late, as I said. I do not know why you presume something must be wrong. I--"

And yet, to her horror, she cannot bring herself to finish the sentence. It is like there is something in her throat, strangling her, and suddenly the Princess has risen from the bed to stand before her. There is a shadow in the girl's eyes, a serious cast to her lovely face as she reaches out to tenderly trace the tear tracks that Alicent realizes, belatedly, she must have seen the moment the distance between them narrowed.

"He hurts you, doesn't he," Rhaenyra whispers, and it is so like this foolish child to make something so simple out of something so complex. She knows nothing of duty, of sacrifice, of the chains of tradition that bind the real world together. She'll paint their lives as some grand romance, cast Alicent as the hapless victim, and smugly act as though she suddenly understands it all, even, the Queen now sees, if it means making her own father into the villain of the piece. It makes Alicent wants to scoff, to snap at Rhaenyra and tear into her until the soft, pitying look in her eyes hardens back into cold indifference.

She finds that she cannot.

It is as if a chasm has opened up under her feet, rooting her in place. She is caught, spellbound, as the shock and dismay on her stepdaughter's face gives way to determination that leads her to pull closer, to wrap her arms around Alicent in a maddeningly tender embrace. Gentle breaths tickle the auburn curls that fall around her neck as Rhaenyra lays one soft kiss upon her cheek, and then another, and then another, until, suddenly...

Her lips are pressed against Alicent's.

The kiss is clumsy and hesitant, inexperienced, yet her lips are soft and warm and unexpected and so unlike the King's that the Queen's mind goes blank for a moment. Her heart seems to stutter to a halt in her chest, and perhaps it is because of this, this brief moment in which she no longer works, that she leans in at first. A little sound comes from Rhaenyra's throat, a sound of surprise or perhaps delight, and she presses still closer, fingers sliding up the back of Alicent's neck to comb through her hair and massage her scalp. The way the Princess touches her is gentle as a dove yet sly as a serpent; it is as if the little minx has calculated the perfect way to drive her to madness. She can feel her stepdaughter's heart pounding in time with her own through layers of cloth and flesh, a drumbeat calling her, tempting her, luring her to the edge of a black pit of sin. At some point--she could not say exactly when--Rhaenyra manages to switch their positions, to swing Alicent around until she stands between the Princess and the bed. Though its sheets are made of the finest silks, never before have they seemed so inviting.

It is only when Alicent feels her stepdaughter's wet tongue probing insistently at her lips that she comes to her senses.

The Queen jerks away, ignoring the broken whine that emerges lewdly from her stepdaughter's throat as she does. Rhaenyra stumbles forward, the sudden movement having disrupted her balance, hands falling to her sides from where they had been slowly creeping down the Queen's back as if to feel as much of her as they could through her thin nightgown. Thus distracted, the girl does nothing to avoid the sharp, stinging slap that follows.

The Princess lifts shaking fingers up to the red mark her stepmother's open palm has left upon her cheek. Though it must smart, her eyes are dark, her pupils wide. Her tongue flicks out and slides slowly, sensually across her lips, as if to taste the Queen on them.

"There you are," Rhaenyra sighs. "I wondered if you were even still in there, underneath all the pomp and piety."

Alicent's heart is like a warhorse in her chest, galloping away. And by the gods, what has she done?

What has the Princess made her do?

"What... what in all the seven hells has come over you?" she chokes out, crossing her arms over her chest to stop herself from shaking. "What have you done?"

Rhaenyra steps closer again, driving the Queen to back up still further, until her the backs of her knees collide with the edge of the bed. "What have I done? Only what you wanted," the Princess says, her voice so soft it is almost a whisper, before she amends, "What we both wanted."

Alicent can smell her stepdaughter all around her, the smell of lavender and a hint of something else, a rich, musky scent that stirs up strange feelings from deep within her. She stammers out weakly, "Since you have apparently forgotten, I am a woman--and, and married, Princess! To your father, no less."

"Believe me, I've noticed," the Princess murmurs, her eyes drifting down. With a flash of horror, Alicent realizes that in crossing her arms she has inadvertently pulled the thin material of her nightgown taut over her breasts, leaving the outline of her nipples--far harder than they ought to be on such a warm evening, though she cannot imagine why--perfectly visible before her stepdaughter's greedy gaze. She lets out a quiet squeak, then raises her arms further to protect her modesty, doing her best to ignore the smirk that overtakes Rhaenyra's face. The Princess continues, "As for your marriage... your marriage is like a castle built on sand. Father does not honor you, nor protect you, nor love you. Not the way a husband should. Not the way I would."

Rhaenyra speaks madness, and Alicent cannot begin to fathom why. Surely she cannot believe the words that pass through her lips! And if she does not, then why could she possibly--

Realization strikes her. Her eyes narrow, and she pushes forward from the bed to seize her stepdaughter by the arm, eliciting a soft gasp in response. She understands now, can see only one explanation for Rhaenyra's behavior, even though the thought sparks both fury and a curious sinking feeling in her stomach. This is nothing but a vile trick, another move in this endless game they find themselves compelled to play. Clearly, the Princess means to tempt her into some temporary lapse of morals, which she intends to then leverage in order to wrest her from her position.

If she thinks Alicent will be so easily lured from the path of virtue, she has underestimated her stepmother dearly.

The Queen's voice is cold and harsh when she hisses out, "Do not presume to besmirch my loyalty to your father, Princess. He is the King! He rules and protects the Seven Kingdoms and our house, and I--"

"But he doesn't make you happy," Rhaenyra interrupts, and her voice is so heavy with pent-up emotion that it strikes Alicent dumb, the rage and certainty fading back into a sea of confusion. "Anyone with eyes can see that you are miserable with him. They'd only need watch you, and believe me when I say that I have. For years I've watched little else."

Brow furrowed and lips parted, Alicent can only watch as her stepdaughter reaches up to cradle her cheek and proclaims with glistening eyes, "I love you, Alicent Hightower. I think I always have, ever since I was a little girl. I knew you'd never look at me the same way, but I held on to hope, even when you were cruel to me. No," she corrects herself with a chuckle before continuing, "especially when you were cruel to me, I think. Because I took it as a sign that a part of you still cared."

Alicent's breath comes quickly in the following moments, the Princess waiting with bright, hopeful eyes for her answer. She reaches for the anger that consumed her before; yet in the face of her stepdaughter's earnest, honest gaze, she cannot find it. Finally, she wets her lips and chokes out, "Enough, Rhaenyra. Enough. You must not say such things. If anyone heard..." Her father's face, twisted into a scowl, flashes before her mind's eye, and she flinches before continuing, "Any hint of impropriety from the Princess could cause a scandal that would endanger your future prospects."

Rhaenyra, however, does not seem to share her concerns. "Do you think I have not heard the whispers, Alicent? All the lords of the realm seem to want to discuss of late is how my majority has come at last, how I should be married soon... and how my behavior puts my prospects in jeopardy." She shrugs carelessly. "Let them talk. Let the lords become reluctant to hitch their sons to my dragon's claws so she might carry them to glory. It is they who would benefit from such a match, not I. You think I am some silly girl, overeager to welcome one of them into my bed, but that could not be further from the truth. I do not wish to be married at all. Unless..."

She straightens up, raising her chin defiantly, before striking the tattered remnants of Alicent's composure with her deepest blow yet.

"I will be queen one day," the Princess says. "Not a consort but a ruling queen, as has not been seen in Westeros since long before the Conqueror forged the Seven Kingdoms into one. And when I am queen, I will change things. I... I could marry you. All the lords and septons could not stop us if we willed it. If any of them tried, I could make his castle into another Harrenhal, melt the marble walls of the Starry Sept, show them all what fate awaits those who defy the will of House Targaryen..."

Dimly, Alicent becomes aware of the way her nails are digging into her knuckles, almost hard enough to draw blood. She feels a crazed laugh bubbling up in her chest as her stepdaughter's impassioned rant continues. When you are queen? You naive, foolish girl, she wants to say. You will never be queen. The lords of Westeros will never suffer a woman to ascend the Iron Throne. No matter your threats, one woman, even a dragonrider, cannot subdue them alone. Not as long as they have an alternative to rally behind.

She does not say this aloud, of course. It would only serve to hurt the poor girl, to dash apart the hope that lies cradled within her, and Alicent finds that she does not wish for that anymore. The anger she felt when she thought her stepdaughter was trying to manipulate her into error is all gone now, and in its place there is only regret.

This is all her fault.

Alicent reaches forward, pulling her stepdaughter into a firm but gentle embrace. "Princess," she murmurs into silver hair as Rhaenyra gasps before slowly relaxing, "I understand why you are doing this. You are confused. You regret the... rift that has grown between us since I was wed to your father, and you mistake that feeling for something else. There is no shame in wanting to bridge that rift, but--"

Rhaenyra has stiffened in her arms, though, and makes as if to pull away. "How dare you," she says tightly. "Who are you to tell me what I feel, what I want?"

"No, listen to me!" the Queen insists, holding her stepdaughter tightly, urgently as she squirms in her grip. "I will not speak a word of what has transpired this night, but I need you to promise me something in return. You must promise not to do this again--not with me, nor with anyone else. It is against the gods." At Rhaenyra's responding scoff, she adds, "And if that is not sufficient, then know that it is also against your own best interests. As princess, as heir to the throne, your virtue must be beyond reproach."

Rhaenyra's lips are pursed. With her customary stubbornness, she objects, "Uncle Daemon says--"

The Queen's grip tightens, cutting her stepdaughter off. "Daemon. I should have known he was the one filling your head with this nonsense. I will speak with him."

Before she can rise and extricate herself, though, Rhaenyra pushes forward. There is an odd desperation in the way she flings herself upon her, carrying them both down onto the bed. Her skirt rises up as she parts her legs in order to straddle Alicent's thigh.

"Tell me you don't want this." She whispers the words into Alicent's neck, planting gentle kisses upon it before she leans in and breathes into her ear, "Tell me you aren't just dripping for me right now."

"Dripping?"

The confusion must show on Alicent's face, because her stepdaughter's eyes widen and then soften. She takes the Queen's hand, and Alicent watches, befuddled, heart pounding, as she pulls it down only to slide it up smooth, warm flesh, up and under her crimson skirt until suddenly it encounters damp cloth.

Alicent understands, then, what she is feeling. She understands what the strange sensation that has begun to gather between her own thighs is, too. What the Princess feels for her, and what she feels for the Princess. What she would feel for her husband, if she weren't so... wrong.

"Feel that," her stepdaughter breathes. "Feel what you do to me. How much I want you. And tell me that you don't feel the same."

She cannot help but wonder how it would feel if Rhaenyra's smallclothes disappeared, if they ceased their wretched interference and left nothing between her fingertips and her stepdaughter's bare, dripping cunt. As if possessed, she flexes her fingers. Rhaenyra's eyelids flutter closed, and her lips part to let out a little gasp.

"Do you do this when you are alone, Princess?" the Queen whispers.

"Yes," the Princess stammers. She looks so pretty like this, her lips red and swollen, her eyes blown out, her chest heaving.

"Do you think of me when you do?"

"Yes..."

Alicent watches, fascinated, as Rhaenyra's hips start to roll, grinding her clothed cunt against her stepmother's fingers.

"Do you think of anyone else?"

For the first time, there is a hint of shame on Rhaenyra's beautiful face.

The thoughts that come over the Queen then are... frightening. She imagines pushing the Princess down over her knee, pulling up her skirt, and smacking her bottom until she sobs, until she wails that she'll never, ever touch herself while thinking of someone else again. She imagines tearing away her smallclothes and plunging two fingers into her dripping cunt while she writhes in her lap, trying desperately to get away. She imagines withdrawing her fingers and raising them to her lips, there to taste the coppery tang of her broken maidenhead.

No, she doesn't just imagine. She... she wants.

She shoves the Princess away.

Behind her, in the corner of the room, stands a tall mirror, angled so that Alicent can see both herself and the Princess. She looks into it, now, unable as yet to meet Rhaenyra's eyes. With unkempt auburn hair and knuckles scratched red and raw, her own reflection looks wild, unhinged, as for the Princess, with her legs still spread wide even as she casts her lustful gaze upon her stepmother...

There is only one word Rhaenyra's reflection evokes: whore.

Alicent keeps her eyes fixed on the mirror. Her own brown eyes stare back at her. "You are no queen," she says shakily. "You are nothing but a deviant and a harlot, and you... you disgust me."

The words are every bit as violent as her imagined actions.

In the mirror, Alicent sees Rhaenyra flinch and draw back. At last, there is more than just a hint of shame in her eyes. Her lower lip trembles in anguish. It does not make Alicent feel as good as it should.

Finally, the Princess swallows, blinks, and tightens her jaw, before saying, "Well. If that is so, I suppose we have nothing more to say to each other, stepmother. Try not to think of me the next time Father shoves his withered old cock into your dusty cunt. You might actually enjoy it, and we certainly cannot have that. The gods might not approve, after all."

The Princess storms away, her departing footsteps echoing in the Queen's mind. Long after she has gone, Alicent continues to stare into the mirror. There is a mad part of her that wants to throw something at it, shattering her reflection into tiny pieces. There is another, equally mad part of her that wants to raise her fingers to her lips, flick out her tongue, and taste what remains of Rhaenyra upon their tips. She wonders if she would taste like strawberries.

She does neither. Instead, she eventually lowers herself to lie atop the covers. She tosses and turns, and at last falls into an uneasy sleep plagued by the look of devastation that her words inflicted upon her stepdaughter's beautiful face.

Alicent first meets the young Princess Rhaenyra the day she arrives in King's Landing.

Walking through the halls of the Red Keep, the Lord Hand's daughter takes in her surroundings with a mix of awe and trepidation. She has been left unattended for the first time since she stepped down from the carriage that brought her from Oldtown to be at her father's side for reasons as yet unknown, and her feet carry her past draconic heraldry and walls bedecked with tapestries depicting scenes of a bizarre and scandalous nature. A fierce blush rises to her cheeks after she pauses to peer at one of them--surely the old Valyrians did not do that with their dragons--and, light-headed, she averts her gaze and quickens her pace, not stopping again until at last she finds herself stepping out of the stone corridors and into the warm spring air of the Red Keep's godswood.

When she pauses to catch her breath, though, a curious sound reaches her ears. It is like the whimper of a distressed child, but it stops and starts abruptly, as though whoever is producing it is trying very hard to keep quiet. Brow furrowed, she casts her gaze about, and it is not long before it falls upon the source of the sound at the end of a dirt path.

There, under the shade of a red-leafed weirwood tree, a girl of seven or eight years sits hunched over, face buried in her tightly-gripped knees. Her dress is a long, modest, but clearly finely-embroidered gown of Arryn blue, and her hair is Targaryen silver. Occasional muffled sniffles filter through the material. At one point, Alicent thinks she hears her blow her nose.

Cautiously, Alicent picks her way toward the girl. Her shoes make hardly a sound as she traverses the dirt path. All the while, the face of the Old Gods of the North stares at her from the tree's carved face, and though she knows better than to put any stock in any god other than the Seven Who Are One, she feels an odd prickling on her neck, as if those pagan gods really are watching and judging her as she walks.

Alicent is a short distance away when the girl gives a start and looks up at her with bleary eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Her eyes are a striking, pale shade of violet, the color of lilacs, and if those are not enough to confirm that this girl is exactly who Alicent expected her to be, the impetuous frown that twists her young face surely is.

"What do you want?" the little Princess Rhaenyra huffs. Her voice is raspy, and her lower lip trembles as she speaks, and Alicent...

Alicent feels her heart melt.

"What is the matter, sweetling?" she asks, kneeling next to her.

The Princess turns her head away, a stubborn scowl on her face. "I don't want to talk about it," she mutters.

"I see. I suppose I shall have to talk about something, then. Let me see..." She makes a show of pondering, making a fist with one hand and resting her chin upon it as she studies the girl's Valyrian features, before a flash of inspiration strikes her. "You know, when my father and I were riding into the city this morning, a great shadow fell over our wheelhouse, and when I peeked out, I caught a glimpse of something flying overhead. It was long and red, like a serpent, and for a moment its wings eclipsed the sun. I don't think I've ever seen such a magnificent beast." She finds she is not lying; though the sight of the dragon certainly struck terror in her heart, it also inspired a sense of awe and wonder and underscored just how far from home she really was.

The Princess has perked up at her words, and Alicent congratulates herself mentally. Of course talk of dragons would be just the thing to distract her.

Rhaenyra begins chattering immediately, her words coming so quickly Alicent finds herself struggling to keep up with them. "That's my uncle's dragon, Caraxes! People sometimes say he's ugly, but I like the way he looks. It makes him stand out more, you know? He was probably out hunting; he likes to coast over the Blackwater and swoop down to pluck fish out of the sea. One time, I saw him with a fish in his claws that was this big!" She sits up and stretches her little arms out as wide as they will go, then widens her eyes in excitement as if something has just occurred to her. "Oh, I have a dragon too, you know! Her name is Syrax. I've had her since I was a baby; she's grown with me, although she grows a lot faster than I do. Would you like to meet her? Oh! And! One thing you should know first. Dragons aren't beasts," she says seriously, narrowing her eyes and tapping a pudgy finger on Alicent's nose. "Don't ever call them that; they need to know you respect them. They may not be able to speak to you the way I can, but they're as smart as any person. No, smarter!"

"Duly noted," Alicent laughs. "And as for meeting her... some other time, perhaps. My journey has been long, and I fear it has left me quite hungry, my lady." Her eyes widen, and she flounders for a moment. Was that the appropriate way to address the King's daughter? Should she have called her, instead, "Your Grace," or else "my Princess"? She cannot remember, though she is sure her father has addressed the subject in the past.

Thankfully, the Princess herself does not seem to have noticed or cared. Instead, she simply lowers her voice, and in a conspiratorial whisper, says, "Sometimes, after my lessons--listening to Septa Marlow drone on and on always makes me hungry, you see--I sneak lemon cakes from the kitchens when the cooks aren't looking." She puffs herself up and adds, "They haven't caught me once."

Alicent smiles. Eyes twinkling, she asks, "Can you keep a secret?" When Rhaenyra nods rapidly in response, she leans in and says, "I used to do the same thing when I was your age, back home in Oldtown."

"No," the Princess gasps.

"Oh yes, though I will admit I was not quite so skilled. In fact, once--gods this was humiliating--I was caught in the act holding a whole tray. I had just slipped out the kitchens when I came face-to-face with none other than the very septa whose lessons I had just left. I was so startled that I tripped over the hem of my skirt, the tray went went flying, and the cakes ended up splattered all over her gown." Her eyes lose focus, and she murmurs wistfully, "Mother gave me quite the scolding after that."

The Princess does not notice the shift in Alicent's mood; she has doubled over in peals of uncontrollable laughter, and only with great effort is she able to get out her next words. "I'll have to get you some of ours sometime. I bet they're better. It's the capital! Everything is better here." When her giggles have at last started to fade away, she adds with a faint blush, "Though I suppose Oldtown has its charms too."

In the silence that follows, Alicent forces a smile. She tries desperately to focus, to think of something else to say to keep the Princess distracted. It takes her a beat too long, though, and she watches as the grin falls from the girl's face while warm gusts of wind stir the red leaves overhead. The silence stretches on, and it is Rhaenyra, not Alicent, who ultimately shuffles closer, steels herself, and with the faintest tremble in her voice, breaks it.

"I heard the maesters talking with my father this morning," she says. "I didn't... understand everything, but they were talking about my mother, and the babe she's carrying, and the ones she's lost before, and..." She takes a shuddering breath before seeming to visibly force out the last words. "I think she's going to die."

Alicent thinks of her own mother and the smell of incense that lingered after the Silent Sisters wrapped her cold corpse. She thinks also of the old King Jaehaerys and how his weathered old faced had seized up and breathed its last as she sat reading at his side. She reaches out and carefully wraps an arm around Rhaenyra's shoulders.

"Queen Aemma is strong, Princess," she says. "I do not know what you heard, but I know that much. I will not lie to you and claim that I know what the morrow will bring, but... I know that she is going to fight with everything she has to stay with you."

The Princess swallows and gives a jerky nod. "That's what my mother said, I think. More or less. The childbed is our battlefield, or something."

"So she is not only strong, but wise as well. I should very much like to meet her."

Rhaenyra only hums, leaning into her touch and closing her eyes briefly. Then, they pop open, and she sits up in a burst of energy. "Wait! What is your name?"

Alicent allows a gentle laugh to fall from her lips. "I'll certainly tell you, but I cannot help but ask why you ask with such urgency, sweetling."

"You were nice to me," the Princess mutters shyly, looking down and hiding her eyes behind the curtain of her hair. "Mother is always saying I should try to remember people's names when they're nice to me."

"Well, we wouldn't want to disappoint her, would we?" Alicent teases before adding with a soft smile, "And my name is Alicent. I am the Lord Hand's daughter."

"Alicent," the girl says slowly, as if to sense out how it feels on her lips. "That's a pretty name," she decides, and burrows deeper into her new friend's arms.

And though Alicent is barely more than a child herself, she sits there in the shade of the heart tree and under the eyes of heathen gods, and she comforts the little princess like a mother would, petting her hair softly as she cries.

It is with great fury and righteous purpose that the Queen storms through the halls of the Red Keep. Prince Daemon's door is unguarded, and so when she arrives at it she does not stop to wait but simply bursts through, heedless of the sounds coming from within... and then freezes.

The Prince is not alone. There are two women in the room with him.

The first sits, fully-nude and with legs spread wide, at the head of his bed. She is objectively beautiful; her hair is long and black, her breasts are small and firm, and her well-defined abdominal muscles make an alluring sight of her bare stomach. Her features strike the Queen as Essosi (from one of the Free Cities, perhaps, or possibly even further), and there is an intense, almost seductive look on her face when she casts her gaze to the door to identify the source of the interruption.

Yet it is not this first woman who truly captures the Queen's attention. No, that honor belongs to the second, the one standing bent over with her head between the first's thighs while Daemon holds her arms behind her back and fucks into her from behind.

Alicent cannot tear her eyes away. This second woman has the distinctive silver hair that marks her as a descendant of Old Valyria, and for one heart-stopping moment, Alicent mistakes the woman for her stepdaughter, thinks it is the Princess who is moaning like a whore while she takes her uncle's cock and burrows her head between another woman's thighs. But no; though she cannot see the silver-haired woman's face, on closer inspection it is clear that her hair is not quite the right shade, her limbs not quite the right length.

A strange mixture of emotions overtakes Alicent at the thought. Relief that her first impression was not correct, certainly. Anger that it was even a possibility she needed to consider, as well. There is more, though, and she finds herself feeling somewhat afraid to discover what remains.

Rather than interrogate her feelings too closely, she focuses on the scene before her.

She can hear the slapping of wet skin against wet skin as Daemon thrusts repeatedly into the second woman. She can see his red, stiff cock, sliding in and out of puffy pink folds. She can smell a familiar musky scent, one that first caught her attention the night before, one that she now recognizes must be arousal. Little muffled sounds come from the second woman's throat as the black-haired woman makes a fist in her silver hair, holding her head in place as Daemon pushes her forward again and again, and is that her tongue Alicent sees against the first woman's--

"Ah, if it isn't my brother's beloved wife," Daemon's voice rings out carelessly, if also a bit breathlessly. "If you'll allow me a moment, I'll be with you shortly." His thrusts pick up speed, and then, with a grunt, he pulls out. His cock erupts, spraying seed across the silver-haired woman's back.

Alicent knows she should look away. Yet still, for some unknowable reason, she finds she cannot. There is something strangely fascinating about the sight of the milky white liquid dripping down smooth skin, settling at first into the grooves created by muscle and bone beneath the woman's bare flesh and then sliding loose once more when those muscles flex and shift. Even defiled as she is, she continues to lap dutifully at the black-haired woman's cunt. Her right hand, now free of Daemon's grip, slips down between her own thighs, and Alicent's mind flashes back to what she did--no, she corrects, what the Princess made her do--the night before. She stifles a gasp.

"But forgive me, my Queen! I should not neglect to introduce you to my companions." Daemon gives a mocking bow, his softening cock jiggling almost comically between his thighs as he does, and flings his arm out, gesturing toward the black-haired woman. "This is Mysaria. And the girl with the talented tongue... remind me, what was her name again?"

Mysaria's voice is breathy, an inscrutable look on her face when she says in a thick Lyseni accent, "Her name is Shiera." Her fingers comb through Shiera's silver hair.

When Alicent says nothing in response, still rooted to the entryway, the wryly amused look on the Prince's face morphs into a sneer. "What? Surely you aren't scandalized. You've taken my brother's cock plenty of times, you must have. Or do you make him fuck you through your clothes, hidden in the dark, never looking upon each other's naked bodies because to do so would be a sin against your precious Faith?"

At that, the Queen gathers herself at last, stepping forward into the Prince's room and closing the door behind her. "I suppose I should not be surprised at your debauchery while your lady wife languishes at home, alone and forgotten," she begins, raising her chin. "If anything your decency in not spilling inside this girl is what ought to surprise me--I'd have thought you would have little compunction about siring a bastard or two on your playthings. Though you need not have bothered. I assure you that if your goal is to offend the Faith, you do so just as much either way. Whether by performing such acts purely for the pleasure of it, with no hope of producing a child, or by filling this girl with your spawn, you are equally sinful in the eyes of the Seven."

"Ah yes, of course," Daemon says, nodding theatrically. "I never can remember all of these rules. Do not misunderstand me, Your Grace. I would be perfectly willing to find release inside her; it's just that she looks so pretty covered in my seed..." He trails off in a way that seems to deliberately imply something. The Queen cannot imagine what it could be.

At that moment, Mysaria lets out an unseemly groan that has Alicent's ears burning. Her thighs press together around Shiera's head, and as she tips her head back, all her muscles seem to tighten at once before suddenly relaxing. Falling back on the bed with a sigh, she releases the silver-haired woman, who wastes no time in scrambling up onto the bed, bracing her knees on either side of Mysaria's stomach, and rubbing herself frantically back and forth across those well-defined abdominal muscles Alicent caught herself admiring when she first entered the room.

As discreetly as she can, Alicent presses her legs together under her skirt.

Daemon, meanwhile, has padded his way over to a small table nearer both to the entryway and to Alicent. A glass of water sits atop it, and he helps himself to a sip before turning to her and asking with narrowed eyes, "Now, would you mind explaining why you have decided to grace us with your presence?"

Composing herself, the Queen tilts her head back to meet his eyes in an accusatory glare and says, "You have been filling the Princess Rhaenyra's head with ridiculous notions."

Daemon's eyes widen, and he seems to be fighting a smirk. "I see. And just what are these ridiculous notions, my Queen?"

"They do not bear repeating. Just heed my warning, Prince Daemon: neither the King nor I will suffer you to continue your attempts to... corrupt her. If you cannot bring yourself to treat her with the dignity and respect her position commands, then stay away from her."

Daemon takes a moment to respond. When he does, his voice is low, dangerous. "So it is on my brother's behalf that you have come, then?"

The Queen steels herself before replying, "I am certain that I speak with his voice on this matter."

The Prince sets the glass down carefully, and then he begins to stalk forward. He still has not bothered to cover up, and her eyes are drawn with trepidation to his cock. It is hard again, and shining, and she realizes with a start that it is still covered with slick left by Shiera's cunt. When he backs her up against the door and wraps one strong hand around her arm, she lets out a quiet gasp.

She is sure that she has never experienced physical attraction to her husband's brother before, not even when she was young and unwed and he seemed the dashing knight, the younger, more handsome alternative to the man her father wanted for her, rather than the scoundrel she has since come to know him to be. She is sure, also, that she is not experiencing it now. Yet there is something about this situation that evokes a strange reaction in her. Against her will, her eyes are drawn to the two women on the bed. Mysaria's inscrutable gaze is fixed upon her, and as for Shiera, her movements have grown increasingly choppy, her sweat-slicked hair tossing back and forth with each rotation of her hips, and every couple of seconds a frustrated wail emerges from her throat. If Daemon were to push her down and force that slick cock of his between her lips, would she taste Shiera on it? If he pushed up her skirt and pried apart her thighs and tried to slide inside her, would Shiera's residual arousal make it easy for him?

She is horrified to realize that he wouldn't even need it. Years of trying and failing to prepare herself properly for her husband, and somehow, now, her body has deigned to do what it was designed to do. It is enough to drive one to madness.

"So," she says, her voice trembling only slightly, "Now we see the true depths of your depravity. Do you hate your brother so much that you would defile his wife just to get back at him? Unhand me."

For one terrifying moment, he just smirks. Then, with a chuckle, he pushes back, spins away. "Peace, my Queen," he says, sauntering back to the table where his glass awaits. "While you are no doubt a remarkably beautiful woman, I fear you are not to my tastes."

At that, something inside Alicent shifts. The fog that settled over her mind when she entered the room and saw the vile activities its current occupants were engaged in lifts, and she feels the fury that consumed her as she made her way through the halls of the Red Keep resurface with a vengeance. How dare he speak in so cavalier a tone of his "tastes," when they both know perfectly well what his words imply? How dare he treat his niece's virtue as fitting subject matter for his careless jests?

She charges forward, sees his eyes widen in surprise when she takes hold of his arm and leans in close. "Do you think I am blind?" she spits, struggling to keep her voice low. "Do you think the marked resemblance between your plaything and my stepdaughter is lost on me? I see the way you look at her. I know you Targaryens have queer customs, but she is not your sister or your cousin! She is your niece!"

He shrugs. "I've no idea what you're talking about." Before she can erupt once more, he continues, "But, suppose I did. Closer unions have been made between my kin. It's how we keep the blood of the dragon strong. Not that you would know anything about that, Lady Hightower."

She stares at him, aghast, before grinding out, "As I said, I know about your customs, the reasons behind them, and the allowances the Seven in their wisdom have made for them. Unions between siblings may be closer by some measure, but that is beside the point." There is a strange ringing in her ears, a howling in her chest as her mind works to resolve the question of what it is that truly vexes her so. Daemon is well over a decade Rhaenyra's senior, she tells herself. His proper role as her uncle is to guide and protect her, and for him to betray that role, to seek to prey upon her instead just like every other man in this gods-damned keep--

Her mind flashes, then, to an image first of the King, and then of her own father. You might wear one of your mother's dresses. Before she can dwell overmuch, though, she hears Daemon's voice cutting her off.

"Ah, you misunderstand me," he says casually. "I was not referring to that well-known practice. No, I was referring to something older, something that dates back to the days of the Old Valyria. You might recall, my Queen, that how we first bonded with the dragons is something of a mystery. Some say we used blood magic to chain their wills to ours. Some say they bestowed their favor upon us freely, making it a gift, a reward for some service rendered."

He takes a step forward, closing in on her once again, and lowers his voice to a whisper, as if to keep his words private between the two of them. Alicent feels a chill run up her spine. "Some even say that the service in question was of a decidedly carnal nature, making the phrase the blood of the dragon far more literal than is commonly assumed. Well, you've seen the tapestries."

A smirk splits his face at that, and Alicent can only stare, dumbstruck, as he steps away again, tossing over his shoulder, "No one knows the truth, of course. Any reliable record was lost with the Doom. But one thing is sure: in those early days, few indeed had the gift. Our ancestors were well aware of how precious it was, and to preserve it, to ensure that it would pass on through the generations, there was no taboo they would not break. They did not stop at joining brothers with sisters. Fathers would fuck their daughters. Mothers would fuck their sons. There are even stories, though I do not know if I believe them, of cases in which one or more of the parties involved exhibited certain draconic features, allowing fathers and sons or mothers and daughters to breed as well. And compared to that, even an uncle and his niece would not be so shocking, would it?"

"Certain... draconic... what?" Alicent sputters. She feels a fit of hysteria coming over her, the ringing in her ears growing louder and louder.

"Forgive me, Your Grace; I should have known someone with your background would not be as familiar with certain details as someone born into this family would be." At another time, the thinly-veiled insult might have driven her into a rage, but now she can only listen as Daemon explains, "Dragons have no fixed gender, you see. Their forms are as changeable as the flame itself; one year, Syrax might mate with Caraxes and bear his offspring, only for Caraxes to be the one to lay eggs the next. We call them by male and female names, but in truth that is something we have imposed upon them, not something inherent in their natures. They are majestic, wild creatures, unbound by the structures and strictures of mankind. I suppose that pretending they are more similar to us than they are helps us to cope with that fact."

He pauses for a moment and casts his gaze back toward the bed, where Shiera still rubs herself back and forth rhythmically, like an animal, atop her mistress. Her whimpers have grown increasingly distressed as the conversation has gone on, and there is a look of boredom on Mysaria's face. Suddenly, Daemon's eyes alight with a cruel, mocking gleam, and he says to Alicent, "Wouldn't it be something if those stories were true, though! Imagine, goodsister, what life would be like if you were like a she-dragon, if you could sprout a cock of your own whenever the mood struck you. What would you do with it, I wonder? Would you remain pious and chaste, and keep it bound up beneath layers of green? Or would it have a will of its own, the way it sometimes seems ours do, and yank you about by the hips until you took it out, strode up to some willing whore like dear Shiera there, and," he smacks his palms together, "rammed it home?"

The Prince seems to find the idea hilarious, and a part of Alicent starts to form a retort: something about how mayhaps in such a world he would be able to fulfill one of his own fondest wishes, and be the Visenya to his brother's Aegon in a way that went beyond mere metaphor. She cannot bring her lips to form the words, though, for the rest of her has been consumed. The ringing in her ears has reached a crescendo as she thinks about the scene Daemon described. As she thinks about the vile, deviant behavior of the Targaryens' distant Valyrian ancestors.

As she thinks about her stepdaughter's tongue pleading for entry between her closed lips.

Daemon, meanwhile, observes her reaction closely, a strange look on his face. In a daze, she reflects that this is probably just want he wanted: to shock her with his talk of depravity, to coax a look of disgust from her (for surely her face could show nothing else) and revel in having shaken the pious queen to her core. And yet, what follows next is... odd.

The Prince squints briefly before his eyes widen as if he has found something unexpected. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then stops, closes it once more.... and lets out a high-pitched giggle.

This shakes the Queen out of her trance. "What? What?" she snaps furiously, but he just shakes his head, still laughing.

"Oh, I could tell you, I suppose," he says, and his knowing smirk serves only to vex her further, "but I think it would be more interesting to let you work it out for yourself."

At the offended, exasperated look on her face, he only laughs harder.

A blur of motion from the bed catches the Queen's attention then, along with a loud exclamation of "Enough!" Mysaria has pushed Shiera off, leaving a shiny strip on her stomach and eliciting a wail as she sends the other woman tumbling to the floor.

Alicent watches, unblinking, as Shiera scrambles to her knees and starts to babble almost incoherently, "No, no, mistress, please, I promise I'm close, just give me a little longer--"

The silver-haired woman squeaks when Mysaria slaps her wet cheek before taking hold of her chin and saying with a disapproving tut, "You have had long enough, girl. If you cannot find your release in the time allowed to you, you do not deserve it."

Something stirs within Alicent then, at the sight of Shiera groveling at the other woman's feet. It's pathetic, she tells herself. It's obscene.

It's intoxicating.

She steps forward, as if caught on a hook.

Mysaria's eyes widen in surprise when the Queen approaches the bed and lays a gentle hand on Shiera's bare shoulder, startling her into twisting her head around to meet the Queen's gaze in the process. Even Daemon has gone quiet.

The girl is younger than Alicent had expected her to be, though still older than the Princess by several years at least. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her hair messy with sweat and her cheeks glistening with other fluids. Alicent can hardly stand to see the results of the cruel treatment to which Mysaria and Daemon have subjected her; her determination to intervene intensified, she draws herself up to her full height and, in a stern but kind voice, asks, "Do you know who I am?"

"Y-yes, Your Grace," the girl stammers. Her lip still quivers, and surely it is only protectiveness that leads Alicent to reach forward and cup her cheek where Mysaria slapped her, to run her thumb lightly over her damp lower lip. She can feel her palm sticking slightly to her skin. The girl's lips part slightly, and she lets out a quiet gasp.

"I will not presume to tell you how to live your life," the Queen says. "I do not know what twist of fate has led you to into this Mysaria's employ, and if you wish to remain with her, I will voice no protest. However, know this, sweetling: if you ever need somewhere to go, there is a place for you among my handmaids. I believe myself to be a fair mistress, and I dare say from what I have seen I will treat you better than your current one does."

And it is with an odd sort of glee that she turns from the girl that looks so much like her stepdaughter, letting her hand fall from her cheek after giving it the lightest of tugs to dislodge it. The amusement in her goodbrother's eyes is gone, replaced by astonishment and a hint of anger.

Good, she thinks as she walks by, meeting his gaze with a thin smile. She was only ever a substitute for the one you truly wanted.

She does not notice the calculating look in Mysaria's eyes when she leaves. She does, however, feel Shiera's eyes fixed on her departing back. Weeks later, when the girl arrives at the door to her chambers clean and fresh-faced and ready to work, she welcomes her in with a smile.

Chapter Text

Alicent wrinkles her nose against the sulfuric smell of dragons' breath as the little princess tugs excitedly on her hand, looking nervously upon the gaping maw of the Dragonpit. Yet Rhaenyra's enthusiasm is infectious, and Alicent finds herself laughing giddily even as her heart pounds, stumbling forward into the dark as their joined footsteps echo against the stone tunnel walls.

The Princess seems to know the way forward instinctively, and it is not long before they emerge from the tunnels into a larger chamber. Sunlight filtering in through cracks in the ceiling falls upon the chamber's center, where it illuminates the coiled, scaled form of a great, golden beast, seemingly fast asleep. Alicent cannot help but gasp when the Princess drops her hand and dashes forward, and she watches, eyes wide, as the dragon stirs, lifting its horned head and blinking at the girl before letting out a deep, ferocious roar and lunging forward.

To her shock, she hears laughter coming from the Princess, and watches, amazed, as the creature's leathery snout bumps against her, bowling her over before nudging repeatedly at her supine form.

The dragon's head is twice as large as that of a horse, and it seems to take no effort at all for it to push Rhaenyra onto her back. Yet the Princess shows no fear; she merely reaches up to stroke golden scales until her laughter subsides. Then, she murmurs something in a language Alicent cannot understand before twisting to beckon Alicent toward her. "Come on!" she insists. "She wants to meet you."

Alicent steps cautiously into the chamber, hitching her skirt up at the waist, raising and lowering her feet in slow, deliberate movements so as not to startle the giant creature whose reptilian eyes are now fixed upon her. "Are you sure?" she calls back, the quiver in her voice betraying her nerves. "She looks to me as though she wants to eat me."

"Don't be silly! She knows you are a friend. Look!" Rhaenyra has scrambled back to her feet now, and she darts toward Alicent, closing a little hand on her sleeve to tug her forward. The wry phrase so much for moving cautiously flashes through Alicent's mind, and before she can fully process what is happening, she finds herself directly beside a creature of legend.

The dragon's massive eye, a field of green divided in twain by the black, catlike slit that is its pupil, blinks twice as it swivels toward her, regarding her from beneath the intimidating ridge of its brow. Alicent has to suppress a fearful squeak when the dragon shifts in place, tossing its head and letting out a low rumble from deep within its chest. Rhaenyra is right beside her, though, and the girl's boundless enthusiasm has a calming effect, albeit a slight one. She steels her nerves and, at Rhaenyra's encouraging nod, reaches forward.

She holds her breath. Her heart pounds. Her hand trembles. By the Seven, what was she thinking, letting the Princess drag her down to what will surely be her demise? All it would take would be a casual swipe of its claws or a huff of its fiery breath. No mortal man or woman was ever meant to so much as exist in the presence of such power, and within moments, she will surely be nothing but a grim reminder as to why...

Her fingertips graze golden scales, once, twice. The dragon does not stir. She presses forward, her open palm falling now upon the beast's snout.

Suddenly, with another low rumble, the dragon moves.

Alicent's heart leaps into her throat. She wills herself to move, to scream, to do anything but await the Stranger's embrace within the dragon's jaws, and yet she finds she cannot. She can do nothing but stand, still as a statue, hand outstretched, as the creature flexes its massive, coiled neck and... preens?

The pulse-pounding terror that just moments ago consumed her gives way to astonishment as the dragon seems almost to lightly nuzzle her hand. Mindlessly, she starts to stroke its snout in turn. She feels lightheaded, giddy, infused with a euphoria not unlike the kind that warriors describe experiencing after having evaded a deadly blow. The dragon's scales are leathery and warm to the touch: fire made flesh indeed.

"Alicent, meet my best friend." Rhaenyra's words are soft, almost a whisper, disturbing the silence and little else. "This is Syrax."

The young Hightower does not know how long she spends there by the side of the newly-appointed heir to the throne, feeling the heat radiating from the magnificent creature's hide while it rises and falls under her touch. Eventually, perhaps growing bored at last with the attention, Syrax lets out a huff and slinks away into the dark, her heavy steps kicking up clouds of ash and dust as she goes, leaving a stunned Alicent to watch next to a grinning Rhaenyra. She feels a strange sense of loss at the dragon's departure.

"I can already ride her, you know! They say I am the youngest dragonrider anyone can remember," the Princess boasts, a proud glimmer in her eyes before she suddenly turns bashful. Tilting her face down and peering up shyly through her eyelashes, she mumbles hesitantly, "I wonder if... sometime, you might accompany me?"

Alicent blinks, shaking herself, and lets out a shuddering laugh. "I think it will be some years yet before Syrax is large enough to saddle two," she says, and privately thanks the Seven that that is the case. Though her fear of Rhaenyra's beloved companion has diminished somewhat as a result of this encounter, she is far from ready to be swept off into the sky.

Rhaenyra's nose scrunches up. Forgetting her brief bout of uncharacteristic shyness, the Princess stomps her foot, flings herself to the ground dramatically, and exclaims in frustration, "Years? But that's so long!"

"Oh sweetling," Alicent says indulgently, kneeling down to run her fingers through Rhaenyra's silver locks with nary a thought for the ash and soot that will befoul her dress the moment it touches stone, "it only seems long now because you are still so young. But believe me when I tell you this: the more you age, the more quickly time passes."

Nothing underscores that truth more than the ways the Princess herself has changed in the time Alicent has known her. Less than a year since the day they met, and the girl is already so much taller than she was then, now a mere head shorter than Alicent herself. On that day, Rhaenyra reached out to her for comfort, and found in her the rock to which she would cling through the worst of her grief. On that day, Alicent had no idea what her father had planned for her.

On that day, the Queen was still alive.

There is a distant, contemplative look in Rhaenyra's eyes now, as if Alicent's words have struck some chord within her. Alicent gives her a moment, then nudges her gently on the shoulder. "You have that look in your eyes again," she says. "Tell me what it is that burdens you so, Princess."

"Just... thinking about the future, I suppose," Rhaenyra says after a moment. She lets out a sigh, then continues. "I hear things in the Red Keep. Whispers from the lords and ladies. Just the other day, even mine own cousin, Princess Rhaenys. They all..." She takes a deep breath. "They all say that the realm will never accept a queen. I believe my cousin's exact words were that men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne."

Alicent looks at the gentle girl beside her and tries to imagine her grown, astride her dragon, bellowing commands to it in High Valyrian as it flies to and fro above a field of writhing, striving bodies, a field of blood and flesh and fire. It seems a ridiculous thought, and yet a part of her cannot help but shiver. "You are a dragonrider, Princess," she says at last. "They'll have no choice but to accept you."

"So I should rule by fear, then? Like another Maegor, before my father's grandfather rose up and inspired his own followers to impale him on the jagged edges of the throne?" The Princess lets out a harsh laugh and wipes at her eye. "I don't know what I'm doing," she admits, her voice wavering. "I don't know... I don't know why Father named me his heir."

Alicent thinks she does, though. She thinks back to her conversations with the King, to the things he confessed to her alone when she visited him in his chambers. She thinks back to the screams that pierced the air when the maesters cut into his wife's womb. She thinks about a father and husband, wracked with guilt over the consequences of his actions, and his futile attempt to atone for them.

She keeps her thoughts to herself. No need to burden the poor girl further.

They sit in silence for a while. It is the Princess who finally breaks it, a tentative "Alicent?" falling from her lips.

"Yes, sweetling?"

"Do you think I'll make a good queen?"

She thinks back on the day not long after the former Queen's passing when the King defied centuries of tradition to name his daughter heir. She thinks back on how anxious and alone and determined she looked in the heavy, richly embroidered cloak of black and gold that sat upon her little shoulders while the gathered lords and ladies knelt before her to swear their allegiance. She thinks back also on the cold, calculating look in her own father's eyes when he at last made his intentions clear. You might wear one of your mother's dresses, he said, and what could she do but obey?

Heart in her throat, she leans down and presses her lips to the girl's forehead. "You will make a fine queen," she whispers, and at that moment, at least, she is sure of it.

Many moons have passed since the night the Princess accosted the Queen in her chambers, speaking vile suggestions and seeking to tempt her into sin. Rhaenyra's nameday has come and gone. At seven and ten, none can claim she is not a woman grown in the eyes of gods and men... and yet, despite everything, the Queen still sees the young, naive girl that she is at heart. She still has hope that with proper guidance, her stepdaughter might be brought back from the path toward ruin.

Rhaenyra has grown cold to her once more, whatever madness seized her seemingly having been left behind in the night of their... indiscretion. Her eyes have turned back to Ser Criston and Prince Daemon in earnest; often, Alicent spies her whispering in her sworn shield's ear or standing altogether too close to her uncle as they speak to each other in High Valyrian. Whenever she tries to intervene, the Princess simply smirks, turns away, and persists in the behavior the Queen sought to correct. She can only surmise it a fit of childish pique, Rhaenyra's response to being spurned by her stepmother, and it does not bother her.

Or if it does, it is only because she is concerned--for Rhaenyra's reputation, for the crown's, and, yes, for the Princess herself.

That is what she tries to tell herself, at least. Yet it does nothing to quell the sick feeling of guilt and shame that claws its way up her chest when she remembers the way the Princess was able to coax something from her that her husband never could. When she remembers that sometimes, when she joins Viserys in his bed, she cannot help but close her eyes and try to imagine Rhaenyra in his place, to summon up that feeling once again. It is a futile effort; they may share blood, but the King's body bears little resemblance to his daughter's. It is wrinkly and old and a little foul-smelling, and at any rate the roles her mind conjures up for them are all wrong. Still, even if she does not truly succeed, she knows that in the eyes of the Seven, it is still a sin. Against her will, the Princess has made her into a sinner.

And so, on one day that begins much like any other, she locks herself alone in the royal bath, her guard standing vigil outside, and prepares to sink into the pool of water kept warm by a bed of burning coals hidden underneath.

This is a vice she indulges in only rarely. Bathing is understood by all right-minded faithful to be for cleanliness, not for pleasure, and public bathhouses are well-known to be hotbeds of all sorts of sinful activity. Thus it is that she usually takes her baths quickly and efficiently, in a small metal tub of tepid water in the privacy of her own chambers, attended by a servant or two to make the process go faster. Of late, this service is often performed by Shiera alone, and it has not escaped the Queen's notice that her eyes and hands often linger in places they shouldn't, on her shoulders or her collarbones or even on other, more intimate parts. She does not begrudge the girl this small sin. Shiera is a common woman, not a queen or a princess or even a lady, and at any rate there is no doubt that Daemon and Mysaria subjected her to countless indignities before the Queen rescued her from their grasp. It is not surprising that she has come to cope with the burdens of her past in this way.

Let no one say the Queen is not a magnanimous mistress.

Yet Alicent's mind and body are uneasy of late, her insufferable stepdaughter never far from her thoughts, and she feels... tainted as a result. She desires to submerge herself entire, to make what would be a sin in public into a private sacrament and in so doing to be washed clean.

She lets her gown and shift fall, exchanging them for a bathing gown meant to preserve her modesty, and sinks into the blissfully hot water with a pleased moan. Part of her wishes to stay for a while, to enjoy a long soak alone, but she knows that to do so would be too great an indulgence, would defeat her very reason for being here. Instead, she sets about cleaning herself meticulously but efficiently. She takes the bar of soap waiting beside her head on the edge of the bath in hand and starts to rub it against her skin, first around her neck and shoulders and collarbones, then across her arms and inside her elbows and armpits. Unused to doing this for herself, her cheeks burn as she parts the front of her gown to slide it across her chest and stomach. Finally, she reaches down and lifts up the hem, allowing her to also scrub her feet, her legs, her thighs, and finally the little patch of hair at their apex.

It is at that moment that the door opens.

Alicent lets out a squeak as she rapidly lifts her arm, shoves the hem of her gown back down, and feels the soap fly from her hand. It hits the stone floor behind her and slides several meters across it, coming to rest, finally, at the new arrival's feet.

"I hope you'll forgive the intrusion, Your Grace," the object of her ire says with a familiar insolent smirk. "Your guard was quite reluctant to let me through, but I've just returned from a flight on Syrax and I desperately need a bath, so I fear I had little choice but to command him to do so anyway. People are always telling me I smell of dragon afterward... seven hells, you should know!"

True to her words, the Princess is clad in her riding gear, all black leather and cloth with shoulders made up to look like the scales of a dragon, and she carries a smell of smoke and cinder into the room with her. It is a flattering look on her, made even more so by her flushed cheeks and messy, windswept hair, and Alicent, curiously, finds herself momentarily unable to speak.

Then, with seemingly no regard for her stepmother's presence, Rhaenyra begins to undress.

That shocks Alicent out of her stupor. "P-princess," she stammers as Rhaenyra slides her hands out of her leather gloves and kicks off her boots, "is there not somewhere else you can take your bath? Or, if you will but wait a short while, I am very close to being finished here, so--"

"Oh, not to worry!" the Princess interrupts carelessly before beginning to undo the clasps holding the overcoat-like outer layer of her gear in place. "The bath is large enough for both of us."

Part of Alicent thinks, dimly, that she ought to look away, ought to let her stepdaughter have a modicum of privacy. There is a challenging look in Rhaenyra's lilac eyes, though, and it freezes her gaze in place. She reaches back with one hand to blindly grasp onto the edge of the bath, watching as Rhaenyra lifts her coat over her head and tosses it to the side. Rather than a shift, she wears a pair of garments underneath: below, a long, tight article that resembles a man's trousers, and above, a short strip of cloth that wraps around her chest several times and seems intended to hold it in place. Together, they leave her stomach and shoulders bare. Her pelvic bones peak out from the top of the trousers, and in a moment of madness Alicent imagines how they would feel between her teeth.

She thinks, at first, that the Princess might stop there, might slip into the water still dressed in these garments that pass for her smallclothes, and she almost lets out a laugh when Rhaenyra gives an impish grin and starts to unwrap the cloth from around her chest. Far be it from Rhaenyra to have a shred of modesty, of dignity! Her only gesture in that direction is, as the cloth falls to her side, to raise one arm up over her growing breasts, shielding her nipples from view even as the pressure causes tantalizing mounds of flesh to peek out from above her arm in the process.

The last step is for Rhaenyra to shuck her trousers, and she turns away as she does so, exposing the smooth skin of her back to her stepmother's eyes in the process. As she pushes them down over her hips and moves to step out of them, one of her feet seems to get stuck inside the leg, and she makes a show of trying to shake it free before sighing out, "Ah, hells." She tosses a look at Alicent over her shoulder, holding one hand over her mouth as though to shield a smirk, and says, "Pardon me, stepmother; I shall join you in just a moment!"

Then, she bends over to free her foot from the bunched fabric.

The act seems calculated to show off the strong, lean muscles in her ass and thighs, well-toned from all their time spent clinging to a dragon's back. From betwixt her legs, Alicent catches the barest glimpse of her cunt, peeking out like a kitten's nose as it hides from view between its master's feet. Alicent tightens her grip on the bath's edge, the wet stone digging into her palm. Then, Rhaenyra's foot slips free, and she rises back up with a shout of triumph. "All done!" she chirps, spinning to face Alicent with her left arm still covering her breasts and her right hand shielding her cunt before bounding forward and sliding into the water at last.

As Rhaenyra settles in with a groan, Alicent splutters, shaking her head as she recovers from the splash her stepdaughter's entrance made in the bath. It takes a moment, but she soon feels her skin prickling as she notices that Rhaenyra's eyes have settled upon her. Looking down, she flushes. Her compunctions about modesty led her to put on a bathing gown before entering a semi-public bath, even one reserved for use by members of the royal family, but she perhaps overestimated the gown's effectiveness. She is painfully aware, now, of how thin it is, how it clings to her skin once wet, how it leaves her nipples perfectly visible beneath it, and it should not surprise her that the filthy little temptress she calls stepdaughter lets her eyes linger on them shamelessly. When she looks back up to meet Rhaenyra's gaze, the girl has the audacity to wink at her before biting her lip and letting out a shuddering breath.

Suddenly aware, as well, of the suds of soap still clinging to her neck and torso, Alicent does the only thing she can think to do in this situation, the thing she has planned to do since entering the bath. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and plunges beneath the surface.

Sound becomes muffled as water floods her ears--and ahh, there it is, that feeling she craved, that feeling of warmth rushing over her skin and carrying her filthiness away. Yet somehow, it isn't enough; it floods over her face and into her ears and nose, but there are places left untouched, hidden places under her eyelids or behind her lips or between her thighs. She needs to open them up, to let the cleansing water in to scour away her sin, to let it douse the flames she can feel licking at her soul. The urge becomes unbearable, and it drives her to a truly foolhardy act.

She opens her eyes, and for the first time she beholds her stepdaughter's body in all its glory.

Light filters in through the water, making Rhaenyra's skin seem to shine with an ethereal glow. Her dragonrider's muscles contract and flex as she squirms in place. Her left arm no longer shields her bosom from Alicent's gaze; instead, her left hand holds tight to her right breast, forming little lumps of soft flesh that peek out from between slender fingers. Two of those fingers slide against the sides of her nipple, which has hardened into an inviting peak as if to prepare for a feeding, and the Queen suddenly realizes what it is about her stepdaughter's breasts that draws her eyes to them so. They have grown fuller even than her own, ready to give milk, to give life, and in so doing they have shown her that she was a fool.

She can no longer see Rhaenyra as nothing but a girl. Her stepdaughter is a young woman now, for good or for ill, and all her efforts to protect her, to instill discipline in her, will come to naught.

Her gaze drifts further down, then, before stuttering to a halt at the juncture of Rhaenyra's thighs. Her right hand is still between them, but much like her left, it is no longer doing anything whatsoever to maintain her last sliver of modesty. Far from it, in fact; instead, two fingers frame her cunt, rubbing lazily against puffy pink folds and holding them open as if to invite her stepmother to look deeper in. At the apex of her slit, a third finger circles a little nub of flesh, slowly at first but at a pace that increases gradually, and Alicent feels her pulse start to pound as she realizes that her stepdaughter is... pleasuring herself, right here in front of her, in the same water as her, this water that was meant to cleanse her of sin but instead seems more likely to soak her in it. She thinks back to the way Mysaria coated Shiera's face with the physical signs of her pleasure and imagines the water coating her own skin with the physical signs of Rhaenyra's.

A heavy fog has fallen over the Queen's mind. She is so close, and they are alone. No one will disturb them here. She could have her stepdaughter right now. Swim forward and push her depraved little head under the surface of the water, hold her there until she emerges sputtering and gasping and cleansed of impure thoughts. Better still, give her what she wants; mount her face and squeeze her head between her thighs, using air and water as carrot and stick to make her put out her tongue for her Queen, grinding down, smothering her until her filthy desires for the taste of her stepmother's cunt are forever tied in her mind to the sensation of drowning. Then, when she's gasping for breath and tears are running down flushed cheeks from those beautiful lilac eyes, hoist her up onto the edge of the bath to let those wonderfully toned buttocks flex and spasm as her stepmother invades the pretty pink cunt she has been so eager tease her with, breaks her maidenhead with her nails, and lets the blood she draws in the process run down to mingle with the warm water surrounding them as she swallows her screams and shows her once and for all what her desires have wrought...

The need to breathe snaps Alicent out of her trance. Alarmed, she pushes up on the edge of the bath and scrambles out with a splash, not giving a care for how tight her bathing gown clings to her figure, how much it must expose to her stepdaughter's hungry gaze now that she is out of the water.

"Going so soon, Your Grace?" the Princess says in a breathy voice, almost a pant, one perfect eyebrow raised over hooded eyes.

"Apologies, Princess," Alicent stammers in response. "I've just recalled, I... I have an important... I must go."

She can feel her stepdaughter's eyes upon her as she dries herself as quickly as she can, wringing excess water from her hair and bathing gown. Her skin feels hot and sensitive to the touch, and she tells herself it is just the lingering effect of the warm bath. Once she is no longer dripping, she gathers her discarded clothing up in her arms and exits the room, her feet slapping noisily against the stone floor as she goes. The Princess stays uncharacteristically quiet throughout the process.

There is an antechamber between the royal bath and the hall where her guard awaits, and the Queen pauses there to collect herself, catch her breath, and change out of her bathing gown. She does not think she takes very long to do so, but perhaps she loses herself in her thoughts for a moment. Just as she finishes dressing, she hears a strange sound come from the bath: a soft moan, as if from pain.

Concern bubbles up inside her, and she feels an urge to burst back in. Instead, she catches herself and peeks carefully through the crack in the doorway.

Her stepdaughter's eyes are closed, head flung back against the edge of the bath, wet silver tresses stretched out across stone. Her breasts poke up above the surface of the water like shiny, heaving, wet hills, and though Alicent cannot see them, somehow she knows that somewhere below her hands are working frantically between her thighs.

A fury seizes her. How dare the Princess of the realm make such a wanton display of herself, like she is some common whore! She wants burst in, haul her out by her hair kicking and screaming, fling her over her knee and smack those wet, firm asscheeks, wrap her hands around her neck and squeeze, twist her nipples until she screams. No doubt she is thinking of Daemon or Cole, and--

One of Rhaenyra's hands emerges from beneath the surface of the water. A little flash of white peeks out from between her fingers, and as she raises it up and rubs it across the tips of her breasts with a softly-moaned phrase that sounds suspiciously like my Queen, Alicent realizes that it is the same bar of soap that she used to clean herself, that not too long ago was slipping beneath her bathing gown and sliding, with very different purpose, against the thatch of hair covering her own wet cunt.

--she wants to wrap her lips around abused nipples and suck, lay her out on the stone floor as bathwater drips from her shining body, flip her around and press her chest against the edge of the bath, letting her nipples scrape against rough stone as she hoists up her smooth thigh and slides her fingers into her pretty, pink--

Cheeks burning, Alicent retreats. Behind her, she thinks she hears the Princess laughing.

"I intend to marry the Lady Alicent Hightower before spring's end."

The King's announcement causes a stir amongst the gathered members of his small council. Lord Corlys seems to take particular umbrage, standing, shouting something, gesticulating wildly... and yet Alicent can hardly find it in her to care. Her eyes are drawn inexorably toward the Princess, who has dropped the carafe of wine she was holding, letting it clatter to the ground, its contents running red like blood across the stone floor. There is a look of such shock on Rhaenyra's face as to eclipse any other concern, and Alicent feels her stomach drop. When the Princess turns and runs out of the room, she chases after her without a word or even a glance backward, leaving the flabbergasted council behind even as several of its members call after them.

The Princess is already out of sight, and yet somehow, Alicent knows just where she would go. Where else but the very spot in which they first met over a year before, the very spot in which Alicent held Rhaenyra and comforted her as she cried over the thought of losing her mother...

The godswood.

It is not long before her feet are retracing the steps she took on that day, and soon, she finds the Princess just where she expected: curled up beneath the heart tree, shoulders shaking in distress. She feels an awful sense of familiarity. All of this has happened before.

"Rhaenyra," she says softly, hesitantly, and her stepdaughter-to-be's head burrows further into her arms. "Please look at me, sweetling."

"How long?" The question is muffled behind layers of fabric and flesh, Rhaenyra refusing still to so much as raise her head, and yet Alicent understands it perfectly.

She owes the girl honesty, she thinks, and so it is only after moment's hesitation that she reveals the truth. "My father sent me to him not long after..." She trails off when Rhaenyra's head snaps up, seeing a glimmer of recognition in her eyes that says she understands what has been left unsaid. Not long after the Queen passed.

"Do you want to marry him?"

Want. Such a strange word.

"I... have a duty, sweetling," Alicent explains haltingly, but the Princess just scoffs as she continues, "It doesn't matter what I want."

It is a beautiful spring day, and the sound of birds chirping and the rustling of red leaves in a gentle breeze seems utterly incongruous with the heavy silence that settles between them. Rhaenyra seems content to continue to glare into the distance, and so, after some time, Alicent takes it upon herself to break it.

"I know I could never replace your mother," the future Queen begins shakily, and then pauses, surprised, when the girl fixes her with a disbelieving stare, as if she has just said something monumentally foolish.

"You think that is why I am upset?"

"Is it not?" Alicent asks, brow furrowed.

"No! It's..." Rhaenyra huffs, sniffles, flings her arms out in frustration as she tries to articulate what she means. "It's like he is taking everyone from me. First, it was Mother, with his relentless desire to create a son. Then, it was Uncle Daemon, not even a week later. And now he is taking you away, too. It isn't fair. Soon, I will have no one."

And suddenly Alicent understands. The impotent, childish rage that overtook the little Princess. The possessiveness over the unlikely friend that helped her through the worst moments of her life. The grief at knowing that there is nothing she can do to change what is to come.

Alicent settles down next to the girl with a sigh, smoothing down her skirt as she rests her back against the rough bark of the heart tree. After a moment, the Princess shuffles closer and, as if by instinct, lays her head upon her lap. Alicent's fingers start to comb idly through silver locks as she tries to find the words that will comfort her, just as she has so many times before.

"Listen to me, sweetling. Your father loves you, just as I do. You told me once that you did not understand why he named you heir, remember? I think... I think that is why. It was his way of showing you his love for you. He is not trying to take anything from you. He will... have me, it is true, but in a very different way from the way you do. I'm not going anywhere, alright?"

Rhaenyra's head twists around, and she stares up at Alicent with a petulant frown on her girlish face for a moment before muttering, "I never asked to be heir."

Alicent lets out a light laugh. "Oh, believe me, I know."

The meager attempt at breaking the tension fails, and Rhaenyra barrels on as if Alicent said nothing. "If he thinks that is how he can make up for what he has taken, he is wrong," she says before taking a deep breath and grinding out, "I... I hate him. I do not wish to share you with him. You were mine first."

At that, Alicent flinches. Unconsciously, her hand forms a fist in Rhaenyra's silver hair. At the wince that briefly mars the girl's face, she quickly releases it, resuming her gentle strokes by way of an apology, and then says in the most commanding tone she can manage, "You mustn't say that, Princess."

"Why not?" Rhaenyra asks stubbornly, crossing her arms.

For a thousand reasons, Alicent thinks, but settles on, "Because you do not mean it." Rhaenyra's eyes flash, but before she can interrupt, Alicent continues, "I never told you this, but... not long before I came here, I lost mine own mother. I think I saw a bit of myself in you, that first day we met under the leaves of this tree. Believe me, also, when I say that there are times that I resent that I am Otto Hightower's daughter. But he wants what is best for me, I know it. Is that not what a family is for? To look out for us, to act in our best interests, even when we do not know what those are?"

Rhaenyra is listening quietly now, and Alicent, sensing that she is at last getting through to her, reaches down to grab one of her hands. "Once your father and I have married, that is what I will be for you, too. That is not so bad, is it? It is a mistake to look at this as if your father is taking me away from you. If anything, we'll be closer than ever. We'll be a family! Wouldn't you like that?"

The Princess sniffles once more and briefly nods, then flings her arms around Alicent's neck. As she leans down to let the girl's stubby limbs reach, Alicent presses her lips to her forehead and promises with all the sincerity she can muster, "I will always be here for you, my sweet daughter."

The weeks after that pass quickly, and it is not long before she is standing in the sept before her husband-to-be as vows are exchanged and her maiden's cloak, emblazoned with the image of the Hightower, is exchanged for one of red and black that depicts a three-headed dragon. She looks upon the aged, smiling face that she has grown to know so well over these past moons, and though she feels faintly nervous, her heart does not beat for him the way she always imagined it would. There is no feeling of anticipation, no longing, no yearning; it is nothing like the feeling described in the romances she would sneak back to her room from the library in Oldtown when she was younger, when the stories reached their ends and the ladies and their knights were finally joined under the eyes of the Seven.

I should have expected as much, she thinks to herself. They were only stories, after all.

The feast that follows passes in a blur, the many guests swirling about her in their laughter and revelry. Throughout it, the Princess is her anchor, never straying far, pouring her wine and meeting her eyes every so often to give her little, encouraging smiles. It is this, far more than any kiss or gesture of romance from the King, that fills her heart, and when she kisses Rhaenyra on the cheek in thanks, she reflects that if the stories misled her about the strength of a wife's love for her husband, she is grateful that they did not mislead her about the strength of a mother's for her daughter.

When it is time for the bedding ceremony and her nerves are at their highest, Rhaenyra chooses to flout tradition and accompany Alicent instead of her father. She knows that as the girl's stepmother it is her duty to correct such behavior, but she also knows that it is the presence of the scowling Princess as much as any fear of the King's own wrath that prevents any of the men ushering her along from taking too many liberties with their new Queen. So she makes no comment, simply flashing her stepdaughter a loving smile when she is delivered at last to her husband with her modesty in tatters. The last thing she sees before the door to the bedchamber slams shut is Rhaenyra peeking in with wide, curious eyes.

She does not like to dwell overmuch on what follows. What matters is that only a few moons later, the maesters tell her that she is with child. Gods willing, you will bear the King a son, her father's voice whispers treacherously in her mind, and quickly, shamefully, she prays that the life growing inside her is a daughter.

The night after her ill-considered misadventure in the royal bath, blessedly alone in her bed, the Queen dreams.

She finds herself in a scene she does not often care to revisit: the day of her marriage. And yet it is not quite right, she realizes; she is older, now, and she wears no maiden's cloak as she stands before the septon. She casts her gaze around and about, the imperious looks on the faces of the statues of the Seven seeming to stare down upon her in judgment, and gasps at what she sees.

Walking slowly up the aisle, clad in a beautiful dress of white, silver, and gold and bedecked with all manner of jewelry, is her stepdaughter. Across her shoulders stretches an equally-ornate cloak of red and black. The candles around them illuminate her lilac eyes, making little sparkles appear in them, and when she comes to stand beside the Queen, a joyful smile lights up her face. They turn to face each other, and in a daze, Alicent says the words under the septon's guidance and thinks back to what was missing during her wedding to Viserys all those years before. Somehow, this impossible, farcical ceremony joining her to her own stepdaughter has conjured up the feelings that were missing back then, the yearning that the stories promised.

When the time comes for them to kiss, she is the one who presses her tongue insistently at Rhaenyra's lips this time. They part with little resistance, letting her in to explore and plunder as she wills. She hears scandalized murmurs from the guests but pays them no mind, pulling her stepdaughter closer as the septon's words ring in her ears.

One flesh, one heart, one soul... now and forever.

The scene shifts.

They are in the King's bedchambers, now; it is their wedding night, and her stepdaughter-turned-wife is laid out before her atop the bed, an offering of flesh. When the Queen looks down at her own body, she gasps. Beneath her bare torso and between her legs where her cunt should be, what can only be a cock juts out instead. It is red and veiny and engorged with blood, just like her husband's was on her previous wedding night, just like Daemon's was when she saw him with his whores, and her mind flashes back to what the Prince told her about dragons and the ancient Valyrians who first tamed them. Would it yank you about by the hips until you took it out, strode up to some willing whore and rammed it home, he asked, and the sights and sounds before her make her understand the temptation like none other possibly could.

Her stepdaughter is whimpering, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed. The sheets are bunched up around her naked form, her strong thighs parted to display her slick, dripping cunt. Its outer lips are curled; they look a little like rose petals. Alicent steps forward, takes hold of her cock with one hand, and starts to tease them with its tip.

At that, Rhaenyra lets out a desperate whine. "Please, stepmother," she pants. "I have been waiting for this for so long. I need you. Do not make me wait any longer."

The Queen leans forward to stroke her stepdaughter's cheek, pushing her legs still further apart in the process and dragging the shaft across her slit, coating it in her arousal. The Princess groans, then, lifting her hips eagerly to continue sliding her cunt against Alicent's cock.

And perhaps it is this, this shameless, wanton eagerness, that arouses the Queen's suspicion. She ignores the sound of distress the Princess makes as she pulls back. Her fingers probe at Rhaenyra's cunt, feeling her out, feeling the gush of wetness that comes from within her. For a moment, she allows herself to be distracted, lets her fingertips trace up and down between her stepdaughter's slit and ass, rubbing the wetness into smooth skin and coaxing the girl's hips into a series of rapid thrusts as she does so. Then, she drags them back up to dip inside experimentally, feeling for Rhaenyra's maidenhead.

Her fingers slide easily into her stepdaughter's warm, wet cavern, meeting no resistance. She feels Rhaenyra tighten around them as if to hold them inside, and when she meets her eyes with a gasp, the little slut has the audacity to smirk.

"What is the matter, stepmother?" she gasps out, taunting her, as if to claim some power over her even as she lies before her naked and open, chest heaving with each heavy breath she takes. "You didn't really think you would be the first, did you? I--"

With that, the Queen seizes her Princess by the throat. Rhaenyra's words are cut off with a whimper, and as she squirms beneath her, Alicent wonders who it was. Her uncle? Her sworn shield? She supposes it does not matter. Either way, she must teach her stepdaughter a lesson.

She remembers, then, something that the King has on occasion demanded of her. It confused her, at first. The marital act was for the purpose of producing heirs, and this version of it could surely never do so. Yet it is the duty of a queen to please her king, and so she gave no protest when he turned her over and took what he wanted.

Since their first coupling, she has known that there is something wrong with her. Her body does not make it easy for him to slide his cock inside her cunt as it should, and eventually, he took to smearing a jelly on himself beforehand to facilitate the act. This act is different, though, and even though he always used that same jelly when performing it, it still hurt just as much as that first time he planted his seed within her. She can only imagine that he did it to punish her when she displeased him.

Perhaps a part of him knew the shameful thoughts that haunted her mind.

Rhaenyra's cunt is soaked, but Alicent's cock is still dry, and she imagines for a moment the pain her stepdaughter would feel if she flipped her over and forced her cock inside the one hole her stepdaughter has yet to let someone fuck. Her tears would fall so prettily, and she would know, now and forever, who she belonged to. Yes, just as Viserys used this act to punish his wife, so too could Alicent use it to punish hers.

And yet...

She wants to put a babe inside her stepdaughter. She wants to see her grow fat with child, her breasts swelling with milk to nourish it. More than anything else, she wants to see her birth a dragon-riding girl with violet eyes and auburn hair. Why else would the gods have seen fit to grant her the cock that protrudes even now from betwixt her thighs, stretching plaintively toward her stepdaughter's waiting cunt? Nor can she afford to tarry. Time is of the essence. Her stepdaughter has proven herself a whore, and it is only a matter of time before someone else fucks a babe into her.

Still, that doesn't mean the Queen can't have a little fun first.

She lays the bulbous head of her cock upon her stepdaughter's puffy lower lips, sliding it back and forth, dipping the tip inside just far enough that she can feel the moist flesh of her opening fluttering weakly in a vain attempt to grasp at it. She can feel the seed as it burbles up from deep inside her and starts to leak ever-so-slightly from the head. Wrapping one hand around her shaft, she slowly, carefully rubs it in... then, she slides the head of her cock down from her stepdaughter's slit, enjoying the way Rhaenyra's eyes widen when she feels it pushing forward between her asscheeks. "Wait, wait," the Princess starts to object, "I've never--stepmother, what the fuck..."

"You've never what?" the Queen asks silkily. "Never let someone defile you in quite this way? Never let whoever you gave your maidenhead stick his cock in here? I confess I am somewhat surprised, Princess, eager as you've been to give access to every other hole in your body away. Still, it seems only right that you should save at least something for your Queen."

The head of Alicent's cock slides up and down between the folds of her stepdaughter's cunt and the valley between her asscheeks, stroking the sensitive skin between, and presses--not hard enough to enter but just hard enough to threaten it--at her tight back entrance.

"But, very well. There will be plenty of time to punish you for being such a brazen little whore later. For now, it's your cunt I want."

With that, she lines herself up, holds her stepdaughter in place with a grip that is sure to leave red marks on her thighs, and buries herself to the hilt in a single swift thrust.

As she pushes in, a grimace twists her stepdaughter's face. Hands bunch up in the sheets beside her at the unexpected violence of her entrance. "It hurts, stepmother," she whines, but her cunt is tight and wet around Alicent's cock, and it feels as heavenly as she knew it would, as she knew it must, for why else would he have continued? The delicious warmth that envelops her is too much too resist. She remains buried inside, keeps going even as the body before her resists, tries to force her out, for who is the Princess to deny her Queen this, after teasing her with it again and again, after giving it up to whoever else so much as asked? Biting her lip, Alicent wrenches Rhaenyra's thigh up and pushes still deeper.

Just as Viserys did to her.

Watching, enraptured, as the tears run down her stepdaughter's pretty young face, Alicent slides her cock back until only the tip is still inside before ramming it back in over and over, the wet sound of bare skin slapping against bare skin urging her on. Suddenly, the scene shifts again, and they are not in the bedroom anymore but in the great hall, Rhaenyra laid out naked atop the table, the gathered lords and ladies and the King himself looking on in horror at this gruesome display of what the marriage bed truly is, surrounded by armed men the Queen somehow knows answer to her. The King moves forward as if to help his daughter, but Alicent nods to one of her faceless, featureless guards, who seizes him, holding his arms behind his back.

"Do you see, now, Princess?" she manages to say as she seesaws in and out. Rhaenyra has stopped struggling; she's lying limp now, her breasts swaying in time with her stepmother's thrusts, staring at the ceiling, and for a moment, Alicent sees herself, younger, just after the bedding ceremony with those curious eyes looking in on her, except this time they stay long enough to see the King thrusting between her legs, heedless of her tears.

Brat, she thinks viciously as she fucks the image of her younger self. Doesn't she know that she's earned this pain? Doesn't she know that it is her just punishment, unclean as she is, beset by immoral desires for other women?

Yet, there is something in her mind screaming at her, telling her that this is not right, that this is not how it would happen, and just like that, it is Rhaenyra enveloping her once again, Rhaenyra whose tears have vanished, whose tortured whimpers of pain have given way to ones of pleasure. She feels the bare skin of Rhaenyra's calf on her back, pulling her closer, no longer laying limp but thrusting her hips up, moaning like she had in the bath, pressing her hips flush with Alicent's and squeezing Alicent's cock inside her, kissing her neck, taking her ear between her lips and sucking, palming her breasts in between soft hands as she moans louder and louder, flashing an insolent smirk not only at the men gathered round but at her own father...

"Bring him closer," the Princess whispers, and as if responding to her command the guard holding Viserys pushes him forward. He looks haggard, haunted by the sight before him, and a savage glee overtakes the Queen.

Alicent reaches out, taking hold of the King's hair and jerking him toward them, forcing his gaze downward to where her cock is sliding in and out of his daughter's cunt. "Look, husband," she hisses. "Look at your daughter. Look how you failed to protect her from me. Listen to how she squeals like a Flea Bottom slattern as she takes your wife's cock." Tears stream down his blotchy cheeks, and for a moment Alicent is reminded of the look on his daughter's face just moments before. But Rhaenrya is laughing now, overcome by some strange mania, and suddenly there is a dagger in her hand, and with a single, swift motion, she cuts her father's throat.

With a gurgling sound, the King clutches at his neck and falls forward, collapsing onto the table beside them. As hot blood spurts from the wound, showering the two women, the Princess hooks her legs around the Queen's hips. Her eyes roll up, her hands tightening on her stepmother's shoulders just as her cunt tightens on her stepmother's cock, and she lets out a scream that has Alicent breaking her rhythm to slam into her as hard as she can, as fast as she can, until her cock pulses and spasms and erupts as it empties itself inside her stepdaughter's hot, shivering cunt.

For a moment, they rest together, catching their breath, still joined at the hilt. Then, as the haze in Alicent's mind clears, she glances over at the King's corpse. A pit forms in her stomach, and she staggers back, her cock sliding out of her stepdaughter and slapping against the girl's thigh with an obscenely wet sound as she does.

"Rhaenyra," she chokes out, lip trembling, "I..."

But the Princess just sits up, her stepmother's seed leaking from between her thighs and her father's blood dripping from along her arm, and shrugs, unbothered, before raising her hand to her face and licking the blood from her fingers like a cat cleaning its claws.

Or perhaps not a cat... but a dragon.

"You see, stepmother," Rhaenyra says once she has finished, seemingly content to ignore the blood splattered elsewhere on her body, "this is how it can be if we let it. If we let ourselves have what we both need. I need you. You need me. So what are you waiting for? Come and take me."

The loving smile on her stepdaughter's face feels like forgiveness, like absolution. The spend dripping down her thighs while her father's blood dries on the side of her face, though... that feels like the most irresistible of temptations.

As if the Princess is able to feel her stepmother's desires, she gives a seductive smirk, then turns around and falls forward on her hands and knees, presenting herself to the Queen much like she had when her foot caught on her trousers in the bath. "Go on," she says. "We both know what you want. Take it. Take the only maidenhead I have to give you."

The sight of her stepdaughter's well-muscled ass being offered up to be fucked is enough to make the Queen's cock stand at attention once again, and it only takes a moment for her to decide to step forward. She strokes her cock experimentally, jumping slightly at the sensation doing so produces. It is still slick from her stepdaughter's cunt, and she knows, somehow, that this slickness will be enough for what comes next.

As if growing impatient, Rhaenyra reaches behind her, using her hands to spread her buttocks apart. This is invitation enough for the Queen. She presses the head of her cock hesitantly against the little puckered hole between them for a second, then plunges in.

Just like fucking her stepdaughter's cunt, fucking her ass feels heavenly; it is not as slick and inviting as her cunt was, but it is even tighter, and the ring of muscle at Rhaenyra's entrance clings to her shaft as she plunges in and out like it wants to squeeze the seed out of her. The Princess takes her thrusts like a good little whore, grunting in time to their rhythm.

It is not long, though, before something strange starts to happen once more.

Rhaenyra's sounds grow higher, more distressed, until her voice no longer sounds like her voice at all. Her hair darkens from silver to auburn. Even her body shifts and morphs, and once again Alicent finds that she is staring down at her younger self, reliving the first time the King took her this way from his point of view... except now, the King's corpse lies cooling before them and a dagger lies on the table next to him. As if linked by some psychic connection, she can feel the sudden rage that comes over her other self as the girl takes up the dagger once again, the pain fueling her as she starts to hack and chop and slice. The blade makes horrid squelching sounds as it plunges into the King's head and body in time with the Queen's thrusts, sending blood and hair and brain matter splattering across the table over and over again until Alicent pulls out with a gasp and her cock pulses again and again, sending seed splattering across her younger self's thin, naked back.

The King's corpse no longer resembles the Viserys she knew. It looks like nothing so much as a mangled hunk of meat dressed up in a man's clothes. The sight makes her feel sick, as does the feeling of the bloody dagger in her own hand.

She blinks. When did...

She hears a dry, wracking sob, and looks down. She freezes in horror at the sight.

The girl before her is no longer her younger self but her stepdaughter, weeping, her body soaked in blood and spend. Yet her hands are clean, suspiciously so, and she keeps repeating with what breath she has, "Why... why... why..."

Alicent looks at the dagger in her own hands. She looks at the blood staining her palms red. She looks at her stepdaughter, broken and battered and curled up as if to protect herself.

She looks at her reflection in the table's polished surface, and she sees a monster.

She awakens with a start, cheeks soaked with tears, sheets soaked with sweat, smallclothes soaked with...something else. Her thighs are clenched together around her cunt, she feels an urge to grind it against something, remembers what she saw Rhaenyra do and wants to do the same.

She thinks she should lean over the corner of the bed and vomit, or scratch at her knuckles until they bleed, or rush down to the sept in her nightclothes and prostrate herself before the statues of the Seven.

She thinks she should do all those things. Instead, she slips a trembling hand between her thighs... and lets the flames of the seven hells roar ever higher.

Chapter Text

The Hand of the King paces restlessly to and fro in his daughter's chambers, a nigh-permanent scowl twisting his grizzled face. His constant motion conjures up a sick, dizzy feeling in the Queen's stomach, and her grip tightens on the cloth in her lap as she threads the needle through it with practiced movements, stitching the image of the Hightower into its surface. She is thankful for the task before her; it keeps her hands busy, keeps her from digging her nails into the blue velvet covering of the settee beneath her body or the soft living covering of the bones beneath her flesh.

Across the room, the wet nurse cradles Alicent's newborn son in her arms. She is a plump, smiling woman of five and thirty, a long-time servant of the Red Keep whose hearing tragically began to decline a year prior. She was distraught at first, fearful of what this loss would mean for her family if she were no longer able to work, and Alicent was moved to offer her a position in her own household indefinitely. Her father looked upon her with a quiet sort of pride in his eyes when she told him of this, and she thought at the time that her compassion was what impressed him.

Now, though, she thinks he may have simply been eager to secure for her a servant around whom he could speak his mind freely.

The Prince releases the wet nurse's nipple with a pop and a gurgle, and the Queen's eyes are drawn to him.

Aegon Targaryen, second of his name: an eponym that verges on being treasonous to speak, and yet one which her father wastes no opportunity to whisper in her ear. Yours is the son the King has long awaited. The Princess was nothing but a spare, a tool to keep the throne from falling into Daemon's grasp should the worst come to pass. It is only a matter of time before he names the young Prince heir in her stead.

She thinks it remarkable how poorly her father knows Viserys. Otto Hightower may have advised him throughout his reign, may have counseled him on treaties and tariffs and matters of state, but he has not sat with him late at night while he unburdens himself of all the worries and cares that eat away at him. He has not listened to him fondly reminisce upon his daughter's early years, when his family was happy and whole. He has not laid beneath him as he thrusts and grunts and sobs out his dead wife's name. Despite her father's long service to the Crown, the Queen knows what the Hand does not: in her husband's eyes, it is Aegon who is the spare.

And though it was the King who put the babe inside her, it was not he who paced impatiently outside her room during her labors, dragonrider's boots clomping noisily against the stone floor. When she screamed out in agony as her contractions overtook her, it was not the King who snarled angrily at the maesters, voice carrying through the closed door in its demands that she be given milk of the poppy to dull the pain. When she held her son for the first time and felt nothing but a gnawing emptiness within her, it was not the King who rushed to her side and met her gaze with a tremulous smile.

May the Mother forgive her, but there are times when she can hardly see the wrinkled, grabby thing in the wet nurse's arms as her son. In fact, in those first moments, the closest she came to doing so was when she passed him into the arms of the little princess who she was coming to see as a daughter, who held him gently and kissed his head and whispered, Hello, baby brother.

So consumed is Alicent by these thoughts that the girl in question's arrival takes her by surprise, even heralded as it is by the sound of successively-louder footsteps echoing against stone. Rhaenyra stumbles slightly as she bursts in, skids to a halt, and curtsies twice, first to the Queen and then to the Hand.

"Pardon me," she says, bouncing on her heels excitedly before seeming to force herself to slow down and speak calmly. "My Lord Hand, my Queen," she says, and Alicent raises her eyebrows at her stepdaughter's uncharacteristically formal tone, "I humbly request permission to take my brother the Prince flying with me today. It is a beautiful, windless, cloudless day; conditions are perfect for a first flight!"

An instinctive lurch of horror surges through Alicent, and when she glances at her father, she sees a look of shock on his face that surely mirrors her own. She knows the same images are rushing through his mind. A single wrong twist or jolt in midair. The Prince wailing as he falls from his sister's arms. The ground rushing up to meet him as the wind robs his little lungs of breath.

"Are you... sure that would be wise, Princess?" the Hand asks after a moment, but already the girl is nodding enthusiastically.

"The dragons are a part of us," she insists. "Him and me and all of House Targaryen. Their blood runs in our veins."

Alicent privately doubts the Princess even knows the meaning of what she says. Rather, she is merely repeating what her family has told her, repeating the phrase that sums up the myths and legends passed down from their ancestral homeland with an almost glib brevity. She cannot know all that it implies: that hers are a people apart, closer to gods than men, a claim from which they derive their right to rule. Yet she can see in the thunderous look that briefly passes over her father's face that those implications are not far from his mind. Otto Hightower has served the Crown long and loyally, but Alicent is his daughter, and she knows him better than any other. She knows the resentment that curdles like old milk in his heart, the resentment passed down from the time of his father's grandfather when, barely more than a century prior, the Valyrian interlopers subjugated the ancient and proud House Hightower with threats of fire and blood.

In the presence of the King, he hides it better, whether out of mere prudence or out of some twisted form of respect for his old companion. Perhaps he does not see the need to do so in the presence of the Princess.

Before her father can speak again, the Queen intercedes. "What the Lord Hand is trying to say, sweetling, is that your brother is still very young," she says, keeping her voice soft and warm. "Is it not a little early to be speaking of his first flight?"

Rhaenyra lets out a frustrated huff in response. "That does not matter. It is normal, and good, and... and traditional for us to start bonding with dragons when we are young. If his egg hatches, he will soon have a dragon of his own. It will grow alongside him, a true friend through his whole life. Do you not think he should learn what it is first?"

Alicent bites at her inner cheek. She pulls the thread through the cloth a little too hard, and it bunches up slightly as a result. "Smith spare my craft," she mutters in frustration before setting about correcting her error.

All the while, her stepdaughter is watching her, and it should not surprise the Queen that the remarkably perceptive girl sees her anxiety for what it is. Rhaenyra's eyes soften, and Alicent feels her father's incredulous gaze upon them as her stepdaughter approaches and lays a comforting hand upon her shoulder.

"Syrax will be as gentle as a mare with him, I promise," the Princess says earnestly. "My uncle took me up when I was only a few weeks old. Aegon will be as safe in the sky as in the Red Keep itself, just as I was then."

Alicent rolls her eyes in exasperation at that, but nevertheless sets her work aside, reaching up to cover Rhaenyra's hand with her own. "Mayhaps that is true," she allows. "Still, I think your uncle was a good deal older then than you are now. Not to mention Caraxes was full-grown and Syrax is as yet far from being so herself."

At that, the Princess says nothing. She simply stares at her stepmother with wide, plaintive eyes and a slight pout. Alicent huffs, thinking sourly that it is typical of Rhaenyra to believe that she could simply stick out her lower lip and get her way. Well, it won't be that simple. Not today. Not about this. She'll show her stepdaughter that it takes more than five seconds of pleading to get her to relent.

As it turns out, it takes six.

"What does your father the King have to say?" the Queen sighs finally, only to be met with silence and a sheepish look from her stepdaughter. Her lips purse as she suppresses a fond smile. "Ah, of course, I should have known: you have yet to ask him. Well, do not tarry overlong. Seek him out. If he consents, you may do as you wish."

"Father is on a hunt, though!" the Princess protests. "It will be days before he returns, and the weather is perfect now--"

"You have my answer, Rhaenyra," the Queen interrupts sternly, her grip tightening on her stepdaughter's hand in warning. "Be satisfied that it is not no."

Rhaenyra's shoulders droop, but there is a playful energy in her tone now when she asks, "Can I at least see him?" It leads Alicent to nod her assent with little resistance, dropping her stepdaughter's hand as she flounces away.

The Queen's heart feels full and warm as she watches Rhaenyra approach the wet nurse and carefully lean down to kiss press her lips to one of the few spots on the Prince's head not covered in wispy, pale hair. She thinks she hears the girl whisper, "Sorry, Egg. Next time."

She has almost forgotten her father's presence. However, as the Princess steps away from her brother, she curtsies to them again, saying, "By your leave, my Queen, my Lord Hand," and Alicent's gaze snaps back to him. His eyes are flat and cold as he nods to the Princess, and a sick feeling settles over Alicent's stomach. She does not notice her stepdaughter's own gaze flicking back and forth between Otto and herself on her way out, a small frown forming on her lips.

The Hand waits for the sound of Rhaenyra's footsteps to recede into the distance before he speaks. "I cannot understand what the King could be thinking," he says, his words like grinding millstones in Alicent's ears. "You have borne him a healthy, lively son, one who bears the Conqueror's name, and in doing so have ended a decade of uncertainty and doubt. Yet still he persists in this... farce. And with each day that passes without naming his only son heir, he sows more confusion among the lords of the realm."

"I do not see why they should be confused, Father," Alicent says mildly. Her palms are sweating, and she bunches the cloth in her lap up between them almost unconsciously. "My husband made his choice of heir clear when he had them all swear obeisance to Rhaenyra--yourself included."

The Hand scoffs. "That was only ever a temporary measure. A way to keep the throne from falling into the hands of a man who would surely become a second Maegor, if ever he got a taste of real power. But the Princess..." He shakes his head gravely. "I fear she has shown herself to be brash and impulsive, just like her uncle."

Alicent does not meet her father's eyes. Instead, she keeps her gaze trained on Aegon as he rocks, silently, in the wet nurse's arms. "She is young," she says. "I believe that with proper instruction, she can grow to be a good queen."

"She is a woman. Even if she were to grow to be as wise as Jaehaerys himself, the lords of Westeros would never accept her. Not when their King has a legitimate male heir of his own issue. If Rhaenyra takes the throne in her brother's stead, it will tear the realm apart. You must make Viserys see reason."

Alicent thinks of Queen Aemma and her daughter, of a father's guilt and remorse, and knows, with certainty: he never will. She says nothing.

There is a storm brewing in Otto's eyes, though, and it is not long before he grinds out, with a tone that tells her he can hardly believe what he is asking, "Do you not wish to see your son become king?"

"What mother wouldn't?" she asks in response, giving him a thin, fake smile, then starts when he barrels toward her, seizing her roughly by the arm. The cloth falls from her lap, the half-stitched pattern of the Hightower on its face settling atop her feet.

"Your affection for that girl will be your undoing," her father growls in her ear. "You, your son, our whole house. All will fall to ruin if you do not steel yourself to do what must be done."

Alicent's breaths are coming quickly. Across the room, the wet nurse's eyes widen in alarm. She makes as if to stand, clutching Aegon tight to her breast as she does so, but the Queen shakes her head so slightly as to be almost imperceptible, and she stops. Her brow remains furrowed in concern, though, even as Aegon bats irritably at the side of her face with his pudgy fingers.

"Listen to me, Alicent," the Hand says, his breath hot on her cheek. "You cannot allow your son to be alone with her, especially under such circumstances. You were foolish to give in to her demands. Do so often enough, and you may well find you have signed his death warrant."

"What are you suggesting, father?" Alicent whispers, blinking away the moisture that has gathered in her eyes. "That Rhaenyra would arrange for some mishap to befall her brother? Have you not seen how she dotes upon him? You must be mad to think she would ever do such a thing."

"Perhaps not now," he allows, his grip loosening slightly. "She is young still, and naive. But the time will come when she sees her brother for the challenge that he is. She may grow to see it as he ages, or she may hold on to her youthful affection right up until the King's death, but you and I both know that if the Princess ascends the throne war will follow. It will not matter how much she wishes it were otherwise: to secure her claim, she will have no choice but to put your son to the sword. I did not raise you to be a fool, daughter. I know you see the truth in my words."

Though his hand is on her arm and not her throat, Alicent still finds herself gasping for breath. Her vision swims. She feels her father's spittle landing against her cheek. It reminds her of her nights with the King. Still, through it all she manages to choke out, "If you believe that to be true, then you should be doing whatever is in your power to ensure that it does not come to pass! Instead, you insist upon relentlessly advancing my son as heir--"

A horrid, mirthless laugh interrupts her. "Power? What do you think power is, daughter? Words and promises, negotiations and alliances? No. Power comes from the edge of a blade or the tip of a spear. What I have is not power but influence. I whisper in the King's ear, and he listens if it suits him. I have no power but what he gives me. When the Conqueror and his sisters arrived in our land, they had no allies, no vassals, no influence, but they had dragons. And through their dragons, they had a power that no sword could match, a power that I could not hope to rival no matter what deals I struck or bargains I made. You, though... through your son, you will wield that same power. You are the mother of our future king, a king who will have a dragon of his own, and that gives you far more than just influence. Use him as an extension of yourself, and you will find that the power that forged the Seven Kingdoms into one is in your hands. Choose not to use it, and his blood will be on them, too."

He releases her, then, and departs without another word or even a glance back, his boots falling heavily on the stone floor as he crosses the threshold of her chambers. Alicent sags into her chair, fighting for control of her breath.

Slowly, the feeling of blind panic that overtook her as her father spoke fades. Her breath comes more slowly. Her heartbeat settles. After what feels like an eternity, she stands, crossing to where the wet nurse cradles her son with measured, careful steps that do little to reflect what has just transpired. She avoids the wet nurse's gaze as she gently takes the Prince from the other woman's nurturing embrace.

Aegon squirms in her arms. Her breath stirs his thin, silver hair that looks so much like his sister's, shining in the beams of sunlight that filter in through the curtains alongside motes of dust. His little face twists up, and he swipes at her crankily with one hand.

She swallows. It is as if her son knows, as if he can sense, in some instinctual way, the wretched emptiness within her heart. The squall that emerges from his little throat seems almost accusatory, an indictment of how very wrong she is, of how she is a failure as a mother, of how she refuses to do what she knows must be done.

Yet, as she holds him tighter, rocking him and trying in vain to hush his loud, irritating cries, something curious happens. A thought emerges, barely-formed, from within the depths of her mind, and it ignites into a faint glimmer of hope, however distant. It allows her to find the strength within herself to forge a new resolve: that if she cannot bring herself to love him as a mother should, the least she can do is protect him as a mother must.

Still, her thoughts are troubled. She goes about her day only half-aware of her surroundings, and when she has at last settled into her bed, she dreams of fire and blood, and of the screams of the dying as they echo through a long, moonless night.

Whenever the Queen sees her stepdaughter of late, her cheeks start to burn.

She catches herself casting her gaze to the girl's chest or her backside, and though Rhaenyra keeps them mostly covered in her daring crimson gowns, Alicent cannot help but remember what they looked like bare. Sometimes, she even finds herself imagining strange scenes, scenes that seem as though they could have come straight from the minds of the most perverse of her brother's fellow squires. Rhaenyra bent over the balustrade, moaning, her gown bunched up around her waist to let her growing breasts sway freely above the city while Alicent buries her fingers inside her from behind. Rhaenyra on her knees between Alicent's thighs, lapping at her cunt while Alicent sits naked upon the Iron Throne, the edges of the blades digging just deep enough into her skin to draw forth thin rivulets of blood for her to gather up onto her fingers and feed to her stepdaughter. Alicent with a cock like the one from her dream, taking the Princess on the bed next to her father's corpse while she cries.

She thinks Rhaenyra notices. There is a knowing, triumphant glimmer in her eyes now, and she's taken to doing things like bending especially far forward when she pours wine for the Queen during meetings of the Small Council or leaning over her shoulder when she is trying to read, pressing in close and inviting her to inhale the scent of lavender as it rises from her smooth, pale cheek.

The Princess is a fool. If she knew how vile and wicked her stepmother's fantasies were, she would surely flee. Perhaps she would seek out Ser Criston's protection, or, worse, her uncle's. The thought sends a chill down Alicent's spine, for she is grimly confident that if Daemon knew, he would kill her outright. She cannot blame him, in truth; in his position, she would likely do the same. She thanks the Seven that the Triarchy's renewed aggression in the Stepstones has drawn the Prince away from court for the time being.

Only rarely does her mind indulge itself in the most sinful fantasy of all: that instead of fighting her, instead of seeing her actions as a violation, Rhaenyra would smile and welcome her inside, whispering in her ear those beautiful, terrible words: I am yours and you are mine.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that she begins to spend more time than ever before in the sept. She kneels before the Seven, head bowed in supplication, begging for their forgiveness. Yet the feeling of relief that they brought in her childhood never comes. She would wonder at the cause, but in truth, she already knows: to be forgiven, one must first confess, and she never once allows herself to speak her sins aloud. Instead, she simply kneels amidst the soft light cast by the candles' flames and imagines them licking at her skin like the fires of the hells.

So she goes about her days, working and praying, stopping only to eat and sleep and bathe. Her nights are restless, plagued by unwanted thoughts and half-remembered dreams, and though she often finds herself imagining what she saw Rhaenyra doing beneath the water, what she herself did, just once, in the dark of the night that followed, she cannot bring herself to mimic the act. Not again. Not when she can feel the Seven watching her, testing her, judging her.

Alas, the flesh is weak, and it is only a matter of time before she reaches her breaking point.

After the... incident in the royal bath, she resolved, from that point on, to take her baths privately, and so she does this evening. She watches, hands laced together, back straight, as Shiera fills the burnished copper tub with heated water, then turns when she approaches to unlace her gown.

She sees the girl looking as she lets her smallclothes fall and steps daintily into the tub, her toes and heels and legs slipping smoothly beneath the surface of the water. As ever, Shiera's gaze lingers, and she sees the same hunger in her eyes that she sees in Daemon's and Criston's when they look upon the Princess. She is not blind; the maid's interest in her is obvious, and her attempts at seduction are equally so. She has deliberately left some of the laces on her shirt undone, belying the demure manner in which she looks up at the Queen from beneath her long eyelashes. The maid's pupils are wide and blown out, her red bottom lip tucked behind white teeth, and Alicent wonders whether her habit of painting her lips and face is something she picked up while in Mysaria's employ.

Inevitably, as her knees bend and fold and take her down, down, down, the warm water now coming all the way up to her collarbones, her mind wanders to what else the maid may have picked up.

She feels wet hands sliding through her hair and massaging her scalp, and she thinks of how dutifully the maid licked at her mistress, of how sleek and shiny her face looked when Mysaria was done using it for her own pleasure.

She feels a sponge's springy, uneven surface dragging through every recess and catching on every protrusion of her body as those same hands use it to scrub the day from her skin, and she thinks of the meal she took mere hours before, when she watched from across the table as Rhaenyra slipped a piece of some sweet delicacy from across the Narrow Sea between her lips, when she saw them purse sensually around it, when she listened to the indecent moan that came rumbling up from deep within her stepdaughter's chest.

She feels a bare palm slide briefly, as if by accident, against the hard little nub at the tip of her left breast before grazing her shoulder and her neck and her collarbone, and she thinks of the way her stepdaughter's warm body had felt pressing desperately up against her own while her tongue teased and twisted and tried to worm its way between her lips.

She thinks of all these things, feels all these things... and something within her snaps.

The maid has finished her routine by now, and she slowly lifts her hands from the water to set the sponge aside. If they linger a little longer than necessary, it is nothing unusual. Soon, she will withdraw, leaving the Queen to soak for a while in the warm water, returning only to help dry her off when the water begins to cool, her skin begins to prune, and she rises, at last, from the fleeting sanctuary the tub provides.

This time, though, Alicent stops her.

"Shiera, would you stay for a moment? There is something else I require of you."

Her heart pounds as she watches the maid's full lips part in surprise before she bows her head dutifully, her silver hair shining in the dim candlelight. Is she truly going to do this? There must be something truly wretched within her for her to even consider it, for her to picture herself taking advantage of this sweet, damaged girl with eyes clouded by infatuation, just like her stepdaughter. And Shiera is like her stepdaughter. Studying her now, with heavy curtains drawn over the windows so that not even the pale light of the moon can intrude, Alicent can almost see Rhaenyra in her, can see, likewise, why Mysaria chose her out of all the girls in her employ. It was a mere chance resemblance that led her down this path, that saw her turned over to Daemon and subjected to his cruel use. It was that same chance resemblance that led the Queen to intervene, to rescue her from that life.

The girl's gratitude toward her savior is, in itself, only natural. Yet it is now clear that her experiences twisted her, warped her, led her to display that gratitude in a decidedly unnatural way. Perhaps she merely seeks her savior's gentle touch as a way of banishing the memory of her rough treatment at the hands of her former mistress. Perhaps she does so instead out of some misplaced desire for control, for her Queen to need her as much as she needs her Queen. Either way, though, one thing is clear: whatever comes next, she has brought it upon herself. If she fancies herself a siren, able to cast her spell upon Alicent with nothing but a song and a little time spent flaunting herself like the whore she once was... she is wrong.

The Queen will show her who is truly in control.

"Is there something you want?" Alicent asks quietly, and the maid's eyes widen at the implicit offer. Hesitantly, she kneels beside the tub, seeming to hover in place briefly as she looks up from behind her eyelashes as if to beg for permission. When the Queen gives her a nod of encouragement, she leans in and presses their lips together.

It does not feel quite the way it did when the Princess did it. The maid's lips are shaped a little differently, and her tongue does not flick out to plead for access the way Rhaenyra's did. For a moment, that annoys Alicent, and she breaks the kiss to give voice to her displeasure. Before she has a chance to say anything, Shiera leans in even closer. She is hanging over the edge of the tub now, and Alicent feels her lips trailing slowly down her cheek. Finally, her tongue flicks out, and the Queen gasps when she feels it sliding sensuously over her neck. She wonders briefly if the girl can feel her pulse pounding against her tongue through her skin; then, she breathes in, and lets out another gasp. Just like her stepdaughter, Shiera smells of lavender.

Meanwhile, the maid's hands have begun to wander. They retrace the path they took mere minutes before, though this time they make no pretense of doing so by accident. Still, they are careful at first. They trace the tense muscles in Alicent's shoulders, and she tightens her grip on the edge of the tub. They trail down her sternum, and she buries her face deeper in the maid's beautiful silver hair. They ghost over her breasts, and in a moment of madness, the Queen lets out a moan.

At that, the hands stop for a moment, as if in shock. Then, slowly, they resume their movements. Emboldened, they cup her breasts fully, and Alicent presses up almost unconsciously, feeling her nipples rub against palms that are just starting to grow callused from the girl's work as a maid. This seems to fill Shiera with a new confidence, and her hands start to wander downward. While her tongue laves at the Queen's neck, her hands caress her ribs. When she bites gently at her collarbone, they slide over her hips. Down, down, down they move, sending little ripples through the surface of the water as they go, until they finally reach their ultimate destination, the place they belong, the place they were bound for from the very moment the Queen first saw her, trapped and helpless between the Prince and his paramour.

Soapy water sloshes over the edge of the tub as Alicent clenches her thighs around the hand between them, tightening her grip on the rim. The cool air and the warm water form a wonderful contrast of sensations on her skin. Yet it is nothing compared to what she feels as this wicked, sinful girl strokes the sensitive flesh between her thighs, a shameless smirk on her pretty, painted face... and gods, what is this feeling? It is nothing like the vaguely sick, swimming sensation she got in her stomach on those occasions when Viserys would poke clumsily at that same area, trying fruitlessly to prepare her to join with him. The closest thing she can remember is what she felt the night of that horrible, perverse dream, when she woke with her hand between her thighs and, shamefully, hidden by the cover of darkness, proceeded to... touch herself, over and over until her muscles shook and her vision went white. Yet even that was but a pale shadow compared to this. It feels like something is building up inside her, something strange and breathtaking and uncontrollable, and with each movement of the maid's dexterous fingers it grows stronger. And perhaps that is what makes this so different from before, for when her own hand was responsible for this feeling, it was firmly under her control. Now, it is not. Now, as she quivers and clenches and moans, she is entirely at another's mercy... something that becomes abundantly clear when she feels one of Shiera's fingers starting to slip inside her.

Panic runs through her, and she shoves the maid away.

Shiera's face is flushed, her hair disheveled, the sleeves and bodice of her simple servant's gown soaked through with sudsy water. Panting, she looks upon Alicent like she is the Mother incarnate, her eyes fixed hungrily upon her.

There is a part of Alicent that wants to scream at her, to banish this girl that looks so much like her stepdaughter from her chambers and back to the Flea Bottom brothel she once called home, to gnaw at her knuckles and prostrate herself before the Seven and beg for them to purge all thoughts of Rhaenyra from her mind. After all, all of these vile, sinful urges go back to her. The Princess of Dragonstone. The Realm's Delight. The heir to the fucking Iron Throne.

There is another part of her, though, that wants something quite different: a fire inside her, a burning feeling of pure need that pulses between her thighs. As she sits there in the cooling water, her bare skin pressed against smooth copper, her heart beating like a drum and pumping the raw essence of life through her veins, it only seems to grow more insistent. In a moment of startling clarity she realizes that she does not want this feeling gone. What she wants is to experience it on her own terms.

Let the hells take her if they will have her.

It is with a heady sensation of power and pleasure beyond anything she has experienced before that the Queen rises from the tub. She feels the water running off her skin, feels her nipples tightening in the chill air, and sees the maid watching with rapt attention. Fighting a smirk, she walks primly to the edge of the bed and sits. She leans back, spreads her legs, and beckons.

"Was that good, Your Grace?" the maid asks as she draws closer. Her tongue flicks out, wetting her lips. She does not look away from the thatch of damp auburn hair at the apex of Alicent's thighs for even a moment.

All in all, she is behaving well. Still, her voice is all wrong, and so the next words out of the Queen's mouth are a command. "Be quiet. And kneel."

The maid sinks to her knees. Heart beating still faster, the Queen runs her hands through her hair, so close and yet so far from the silver that haunts her dreams. When she feels the maid's tongue make its first hesitant lick against her throbbing cunt, she suppresses a hiss. The fur of the coverlet feels good on her bare skin. The soft hairs brush up against her every time she squirms, and she can feel them growing damp beneath her with what she knows must be the evidence of her own arousal. Once, such a thought might have disgusted her; now, it only excites her. She wants to soak her maid's face, just as she saw Mysaria do all those moons ago. As Shiera laps hungrily at her cunt, she makes a pair of fists in her hair, pulls, grinding the girl's nose almost by accident against a little nub that sends shocks of pleasure shooting through her, and--

Oh. Oh gods.

As she rides out the crescendo of pleasure that washes over her, clutching her thighs tight around her maid's head, flinging one leg over her shoulder and digging a still-dripping heel into the rough fabric covering her back, Alicent thinks madly that perhaps she understands her stepdaughter a little better now. If this is how it could be, if this is how she knew it could be, perhaps her eagerness to take a lover of her own was not so strange, after all.

Lying there afterward, panting while her sweet maid nuzzles her naked thigh and plays absently with the auburn curls that crown her cunt, she thinks she ought to feel guilty. No doubt she will, later, when the harsh light of the midday sun chases away the fog that clouds her mind. For now, though, all she can feel is relief.

She has found an outlet for her sinful desires; the Seven have blessed her with one in Shiera. It is astonishing how clear it all is, now that she sees the end result. It was, after all, her horror at the dream they sent her, and nothing else, that drove her into Shiera's embrace. No doubt, her actions this evening were sinful... but sometimes, she tells herself, it is acceptable to commit a lesser sin to avoid a greater one. And so it is that through this lesser sin, Rhaenyra has been spared. Better the consequences of her weakness be borne by this common-born girl, ruined already at the hands of others, than her sweet, willful, infuriating Princess.

There is just one matter to take care of now.

The Queen stirs, pushes herself up on her elbows, and looks down at Shiera where she rests. The girl remains in place for now, lazily burrowing into her thigh; however, her eyes open, and they flick up to her face attentively.

"The hour grows late," she says softly, but with an imperious edge. "It would be best if you were to be on your way soon."

An odd look flickers over the girl's face, but it is gone before Alicent can fully read it. She simply nods then in response, and with a quiet "yes, Your Grace," begins to stand.

"You understand, I am sure, that you can tell no one of this," the Queen continues as she watches Shiera begin to tidy herself up. That prompts more of a reaction, as the maid gives a start, swinging around to look upon her with an almost wounded expression.

"Of course, my Queen," she whispers in response, her tone dripping sincerity. "Your secrets are mine own. Just as I am yours."

The Queen nods slowly, then stands. As she approaches the maid, she notes with a deep sense of satisfaction and (she can privately admit) possessiveness that the girl's cheeks are slick and damp, shining in the candlelight. Shiera's eyes are wide, awestruck, and when the Queen pulls her into a kiss, she fancies that she can taste herself on the other woman's lips. Despite what her brother's fellow squires claimed in her presence all those years ago, the taste does not resemble that of strawberries. If anything, it is closer to the taste of salt, of skin and sweat. Still, there is something deliciously obscene about it.

When she breaks the kiss, she does not release her grip. "On second thought," she says, her voice rough and low, "I am, perhaps, not through with you just yet."

The girl's only response is to smile.

The Grand Sept is empty at this hour. The sun has just begun to peek above the horizon; its light bathes the checkered stone floor in a reddish glow. Alicent prefers it this way. Arriving at dawn, she can station her guards at the entrance and kneel before the Seven in solitude, free from the hustle and bustle that would come with other worshipers. Of course, as the Queen, she could command her guards to clear the sept at any time. She doubts the Seven would approve of such a selfish act, though... which would rather defeat the purpose of coming here in the first place.

Alicent holds a lit taper in her hand. Three unlit candles rest before her; she holds the taper to the wick of one, watching as it catches and starts to dance. Smoke starts to curl and rise from the bare flame, and for a moment, she feels a mad urge to put her hand in it, to hold it there and watch as hairs are vaporized and skin burns and cracks. Instead, she lights the two remaining candles in quick succession, then lifts the tip of the taper to her lips and blows, extinguishing it in an instant.

Kneeling before the altar, she presses her hands together and bows her head in prayer. First, for the late Queen Aemma and her kind smile. Second, for her own mother Alyrie and her firm hand. Third...

"I don't think I shall ever understand why you feel the need to pray so often."

Alicent suppresses a shriek. The Princess peeks her head out from behind a marble column, a teasing grin plastered across her face.

"Rhaenyra! What are you... I thought... how did you get in?" the Queen gasps, hand over her heart.

"Oh, it was easy," the girl says, shrugging. "I just scaled the back wall and squeezed in through the nearest window."

Alicent gapes in response. From inside the sept, the bottom rims of the tall, open windows through which air and light flow freely seem somewhat low to the floor. This fact hides the truth of the matter. The Sept rests atop a tall structure of stacked brick within which the septons, septas, and servants responsible for its daily operation are quartered; the main entrance itself can only be accessed by climbing up three flights of stairs. From the ground outside, the distance to the windows in question must be five meters or more.

"That was incredibly dangerous, Princess!" she scolds. "Had you fallen, you might have broken your legs or worse."

An indignant scowl overtakes her stepdaughter's face. "Well, the guards didn't give me much of a choice," she says petulantly. "Every time I've come to see you these past few days, they've turned me away. They kept saying you were busy, or out performing some queenly duty, or resting. I tried to explain that even if you were unwilling to see others, you would surely make an exception for me, but they simply refused to listen. Eventually, they even tried to tell me that I simply was not allowed to see you! Can you believe it? I've half a mind to feed the lot of them to Syrax."

Blinking, the Queen turns away. She trains her gaze on the altar, where dozens of burning candles form a ring around the seven-pointed star carved into its face. The three she lit seem to sputter and spark before her as she says, "That would be rather unfair of you, Princess. They were only following my command."

She hears a sharp intake of air, a soft, sad expression of disbelief as Rhaenyra whispers, "What?"

She forges on.

"It is not that I did not wish to see you," she explains, keeping her voice carefully neutral. "It is your brother, you see. The maesters have advised me that so long as he remains a babe, it is best if he is held only by myself and his wet nurse. I know how... willful you can be. Your presence here is proof enough of that. I suppose I thought it would be easiest to simply keep you apart for the time being."

"Oh," the Princess says quietly.

"This does mean that any plans you had to take him flying on Syrax will have to be postponed. I am sorry for that; I know you were eager to share your family's traditions with him. The maesters were quite insistent, though. Of course, you could ask the King to command me to permit you to take him anyway. He would do so if you asked, and I could not refuse him if he did. I trust you would not do such a thing, Princess?" She finally turns her gaze from the altar at that, looking upon her stepdaughter with one eyebrow quirked.

"Of course not!" Rhaenyra responds immediately, before continuing with a slight stutter, "I... he may be my brother, but he is your son. I understand that much. You do not have to worry, I promise."

Silence falls between them after that. The Queen watches as her stepdaughter fidgets with her sleeve. She is about to turn back to the altar when Rhaenyra finally speaks up, asking in a small, plaintive voice, "Alicent? You're not... angry with me, are you?"

"What cause could I possibly have to be angry with you, sweetling?" She gives her stepdaughter a sweet smile, and she wonders whether Rhaenyra can tell how false it is.

"I... I do not know," the Princess says hesitantly. "I just know that ever since I asked to take Aegon flying, you have been acting... strange. Distant, maybe? I see you out and about in the Red Keep, and you do not meet my eyes. I smile at you during supper, and you ignore me. I come to the door to your chambers, and your guards deny me entrance. If... if I offended you in some way, I am sorry. I did not intend to do so. I just want things to go back to the way they were."

The Queen stands suddenly, and the resulting disturbance in the air causes the candles upon the altar to flicker wildly. "I should be going," she says, doing her best to ignore the look of distress that mars her stepdaughter's features. "The dawn nears its end, and my presence will surely be required in the Keep this morn."

As she makes to leave, though, the Princess rushes forward in a panic, seizing hold of her gown's emerald sleeve. Her hand is small, her grip weak, and the Queen is sure that she could break free with ease if she wished. Still, she stops in her tracks, listening impassively as the Princess pleads, "Wait! Please, Alicent, tell me what I did wrong. Why are you being so cold? Whatever it is, I'll fix it, I swear!"

"Must we do this here, stepdaughter?" she asks in response, her voice a low, frustrated mutter. She feels a tenseness in her muscles, as if she were a serpent, coiled up and ready to strike.

If her stepdaughter takes note of her manner and the warning it should impart, she does not heed it. Instead, Rhaenyra simply barrels on: "I do not know what it is your father has been whispering in your ear--"

It is this that finally sets Alicent off. With a violent shake of her arm, she yanks her sleeve free from her stepdaughter's grip; then, she turns to face her, and in low, dangerous voice, says, "You want to speak of my father? Fine. Let us speak of my father."

Rhaenyra's eyes widen as the Queen stalks forward. If she was eager to speak before, she now seems to be having second thoughts (and well she should, Alicent thinks savagely). She stumbles as she backs up, but before she can fall the Queen catches her by her upper arm, steadying her while also constraining her.

"Did you think I wouldn't learn what you did?" the Queen hisses. "The King told me, Rhaenyra. He told me what you said when you came to plead your case, to convince him to permit you to whisk your brother off beyond the clouds. How you feared for my father's influence over me. How you feared, even, that he might be a danger to me. He asked me whether there was any truth to your fears, asked me whether I wished for him to be sent away, even said he would do it if I asked."

She knows that her voice has risen so much that it verges on becoming a scream, but she finds she does not care.

"I know not what madness drove you to say what you did. I have never known you to be callous or cruel, so I can only conclude that you were simply thoughtless. Trying as ever to have your way, ignorant of the damage you could cause in the process. Whatever your reasons, though, you must have been terribly convincing, because even when I insisted that your words were but the product of a flight of youthful fancy, he remained uncertain. I had to plead with him not to dismiss my father as Hand and send him back to Oldtown."

Her hand has tightened around her stepdaughter's arm. Perhaps it is just because of her own words, but she finds herself reminded of her father. Of the smell of meat on his breath when he spoke. Of the bruises his fingers left on her skin. When the Princess lets out a whimper in response, it startles her out of her haze; the piteous sound is enough to make her release her grip, sending the Princess staggering backward.

For a moment, all is silent save for the heavy sounds of their breathing. Rhaenyra's gaze is averted, her little shoulders rising rapidly as she catches her breath. Then she turns back to the Queen, eyes flashing, a defiant tilt to her chin, and says, "I may be young, but I am not stupid. I see how you are around him. I will not apologize for speaking the truth."

"He is the only one I have, Rhaenyra! In this entire godsforsaken city, he is my only family. And you tried to send him away from me." Alicent's words are tinged with disbelief. As she speaks, though, she seems to run out of steam; her words become more quiet, more resigned, and as she steps back toward the altar, she says, "You say you understand that Aegon is my son, that you will respect my decisions with regards to his upbringing. Yet how can I trust that this is true? Words are wind, Princess. How can I trust you, when you try to separate me from my family with whispered lies and rumors?"

The Princess is silent for a moment after that. Then, something within her seems to crack. In a small, devastated voice, she says, "I thought I was your family."

The Queen flinches almost imperceptibly. "Princess..." she murmurs in response, but Rhaenyra continues speaking. It is like a dam has burst; her words come out faster and faster now that she has begun, an unstoppable torrent, and Alicent feels the weight of each of them bearing down upon her.

"The day my father announced his plans, I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be alone, to grieve my losses in peace. You, though... you wouldn't let me. You chased me into the godswood. You told me we would be a family. You told me that even if you married him, I wouldn't lose you. And for a while, I believed you. Was... was all that a lie?"

Alicent sees the quiver on her stepdaughter's lips, the shine of unshed tears in her lilac eyes, and more than anything she wants to take her in her arms, whisper soft apologies in her ears, and brush fingers through her silver locks, to comfort her like she did so long before.

Instead, she opts to cruelly twist the knife.

"Of course not. You are no longer a young friend to be soothed and comforted, and you have never been a little sister to be coddled and pampered. For better or worse, you are my stepdaughter, and if you have grown into a spoiled, ungrateful brat, that is at least in part my responsibility." She can hardly recognize her own voice. Perhaps it is not truly her own. Still, she continues. "Do not worry, though. It is in our nature to err while we are yet maidens. Doing so invites correction, and in correcting us, our mothers show us how to be mothers ourselves. I know not what example Queen Aemma provided while she lived, but mine own mother was always quick to steer me back to the path of righteousness. I shall see that I do the same for you."

If Rhaenyra intended to respond, the Queen's callous words have rendered her speechless. Her mouth hangs open, and she looks dazed, as if struck with a sudden blow.

The Queen turns away and kneels once more at the altar. Her hands are clenched into fists, and hidden inside, her nails dig into her palms almost hard enough to draw blood. Keeping her gaze carefully trained on the flickering flames, she asks, "Was there anything else, Princess?"

She hears a deep breath, followed by a quiet sniffle. At last, in a shaky, anguished voice, her stepdaughter replies, "No. No, I... suppose there wasn't. Good day, stepmother."

In marked contrast to her stealthy arrival, Rhaenyra's footsteps are loud as she rushes away and toward the main entrance. The doors creak when she pushes them open, the aged oak straining under the pressure from her little limbs, and Alicent hears surprised shouts coming from the guards.

Her attention turns back to the nearest of the burning candles.

If she listens carefully, she can hear the way dollops of wax drip down its length as it burns, splattering against the metal pan beneath like venom squeezed from a viper's glands, filling the air with its smell. When she focuses in on it, she can almost tune out the sounds coming from the entrance, the clattering of armored boots, the gruff questioning of the guards, and the rapid taps of her stepdaughter's departing footsteps. She wonders how the wax would feel against her skin. She wonders if the burn would compare to the ache in her heart.

When she set out for the sept, she did not plan on this confrontation taking place--not yet, at least. Still, she knew it would occur, soon or late. To an observer, it might have seemed as though her anger got the better of her, like it spiraled out of control and emerged in a spontaneous eruption at just the wrong moment. Such an observer would be mistaken. Her anger toward the Princess was real enough, but the form that it took was calculated and precise, a temporary cruelty meant to spare them both greater pain. She needed to tear a rift between them, and she needed there to be a reason for it that her stepdaughter would understand.

Because however much she might wish it were otherwise, her father spoke the truth.

One day, the King will die. The succession hangs over the heads of both her son and her stepdaughter, and when the time comes, it will shatter any bond that might grow between them. When the time comes, one or both of them will fall.

There is still room for hope, though. Through the murk, she sees another path forward, one that, if she can arrange things just right, will spare them both. Aegon may be nigh on a decade younger than his sister, but he will not stay young forever, and if Rhaenyra remains unwed by the time he is a man grown, she may just be able to give her son the truest proof of her love that she could ever give him. She may just be able to give him his sister's hand.

It is a distant possibility, and to make it more than that, she will have to become more than the gentle older girl who happened to marry Rhaenyra's father. She will have to become her stepmother in truth, to control her youthful impulses and discipline her when she errs. Success is far from guaranteed, and until and unless it comes, her son will always pose a challenge. So she will do as her father asks. She will hack apart the invisible umbilical cord that connects her to this girl whose pain she feels in her own bones, this girl she has almost come to see as a daughter. She will cauterize the wound with the flames that lick at her soul, and she will bury far beneath the earth everything that makes her who she is. She will keep Rhaenyra and Aegon apart. It is... kinder to the both of them that they should not be close.

She hardens her heart, and she tells herself that this was necessary. It was difficult, but it was necessary, and more importantly, it is done. Yet the feeling of relief she was expecting does not come. Instead, there is a gnawing pit in her chest, and a part of her could swear she hears the sounds of dragons shrieking as they strive against each other in the skies above.

The three candles dance on before her, and the three names for whom she lit them echo in her mind: Aemma Arryn, Alyrie Florent... and Alicent Hightower.

She blows the candles out.

Alicent sometimes thinks of her life since becoming Queen as a rich, fertile field in which her regrets grow tall and strong, nourished by her sorrows. If this is so, the weeks that follow her first... encounter with Shiera comprise an uncharacteristically fallow period.

She goes about her daily routine as usual, assisting her husband as he prepares for the day, presiding over council meetings when his old bones and rotting limbs prevent him from mustering the strength to do so himself, biting her tongue when the lords bristle at her suggestions. At the end of the day she retires to her chambers, dismisses all save one of the maids who serve her, and avails herself of Shiera's particular services. Even the nights Viserys calls upon her are easier; she gets a sort of perverse thrill the first time she commands the girl to fall to her knees and eat his seed from her Queen's cunt.

Any guilt she feels is muted. Does she break faith with the King through her actions? Perhaps, but she remains attentive and never shirks her duties, and at any rate she knows his own brother to be guilty of far worse. Does she offend the Seven by doing so with another woman? Perhaps, but what she has done is nothing compared to the sin the Princess seems determined to lure her into. Does she use Shiera, treating her as nothing but a means to keep herself in check? Perhaps, but clearly the girl is happy to be used.

Still, she worries, sometimes, about what will happen if they are caught. The King is a doddering fool; she doubts he would believe rumors of her activities even if he heard them. No, it is her father she fears. He has eyes and ears aplenty throughout the Keep and beyond, as well she knows. They were lucky to avoid discovery the first time; from then on, she takes what measures she can to avoid it. She draws the curtains closed, sternly impresses upon the girl the importance that she leave no marks upon her skin, and though she cannot dismiss her guard for fear of arousing suspicion, she has Shiera bring a thick strip of cloth for Alicent to clench tight between her teeth, muffling any sounds of pleasure the maid's tongue draws from within her heaving chest. It is worth the effort. For the first time in many moons, she can meet her stepdaughter's smoldering, mocking gaze without flinching, secure in the knowledge that thanks to the gods' benevolence--made manifest in Shiera--the Princess is safe from the sinful desire that burns within her.

She should have known it would not last.

Her heart hammers in her chest as she rounds the corner and approaches the door to her chambers. Clutched to her chest, she holds a case of smooth, lacquered wood; it clatters and shakes on its hinges in her tight grip. She has just come from the Tower of the Hand, and throughout her journey, she has contended with trembling muscles and a sick sensation in her stomach. At first, these were marks of the panic that suffused her being; now, though, that panic has faded into the background, making way for an overbearing feeling of rage.

If her guard is surprised when she dismisses him, she does not notice. She no longer harbors any worries about how such an act might appear. After this afternoon's events, it hardly seems to matter.

When she enters her chambers, Shiera is waiting for her.

There is a skittish look in the maid's eyes, a nervous edge to her movements, and her mannerisms send a flash of renewed fury through the Queen's mind. Not two candlemarks have past since she last saw the girl, and when she did, the sight filled her with dread.

When she answered her father's summons and crossed the threshold into his chambers, only to nearly collide with Shiera as she quickly shuffled by, head bowed, a whispered I'm sorry reaching the Queen's ears as she passed. When her father's cold, severe gaze captured her eyes, sending shivers up her spine. When he spoke these words in a low hiss that still rings in her ears: Did you truly think you could conceal your little dalliance from me, daughter?

The ringing in her ears grows louder. She storms across the room, lays the case in her grasp carefully on the small stand beside the bed, and takes a deep breath before rounding, at last, on the maid. Her hands clench into fists at her sides. "How long?" she asks softly.

"I--I'm truly sorry, Your Grace," Shiera stammers. "The White Worm, she saved me from starving on the streets... I owe her everything. When she asked me to spy on you, I couldn't say no. I didn't know who she planned for me to pass the information to, I swear!"

The Queen hums. "You say you owe this White Worm everything. Yet, what do you owe me? If you give everything you are to her, will there be anything left for your Queen?"

The girl hangs her head. "...I suppose not."

"You suppose not," the Queen repeats. "Well, it is good to know you have some capacity for reasoning in that remarkably empty little head of yours. I note that you still have not answered my question. How long?"

"Since... since the beginning, Your Grace," Shiera whispers shamefully, eyes downcast.

If possible, the Queen's gaze grows even stormier. She allows the silence to stretch out for several seconds and watches pitilessly as her treacherous maid quivers in place and avoids her gaze. When at last she speaks again, she lets fall all pretense that this is a mere interrogation.

"Are you wearing smallclothes?" The maid's head snaps up in response to the Queen's words, and after a moment, she shakes her head. The Queen gives her an empty smile and says, "Good. I am glad that you can do something right. Now, I want you to unlace your gown and lower your sleeves for me."

Shiera's eyes widen, and she fumbles with the laces. After a moment, the garment parts in the middle, exposing her upper torso, and starts to slide from her shoulders and down her arms. When it reaches the point of hanging from her wrists like a set of soft cloth fetters, the Queen steps forward, stopping her from shaking it free, and says, "That is enough. Now, I want you lift this over your head," she taps the fabric wrapped around the maid's wrists with one hand, "get up onto the bed, and loop it around the bedpost."

The girl swallows and seems to hesitate, but when she sees the Queen's eyes narrow in response, she hurries to obey. Leaning forward shakily, she scoots close enough to the bedpost to use her elbows to balance on the bed even as her wrists hang from it, suspended by her own bunched-up gown.

Still fully clothed, the Queen steps up behind her half-naked maid, reaches down, and hikes up her skirt. She presses firmly down between the girl's shoulderblades, forcing her to collapse onto her chest. Her back is arched, now, offering her most intimate places up like meat on a platter, ready to be devoured. The Queen reaches out, curious, prods and probes, takes hold of one asscheek and pulls it aside, inspects the flesh before her clinically. The maid's skin is pale, almost translucent, and she can see the faint outline of thin blue veins beneath it; she wonders how much force it would take to break them. Unlike Alicent's own cunt, Shiera's is kept smooth and bare, as if she was just waiting to be fucked. Yet, when the Queen lets her hand wander, groping, feeling little folds of skin, dipping into the hollows created by joints and muscles, and finally edging down to caress the folds surrounding the girl's tight slit... she finds them bone-dry.

For a moment, she thinks she ought to stop. But then, the King never did, did he? Certainly not at first, and even later, when he began to take measures to make it easier on them both, he ultimately did so precisely when it suited him, no more and no less. As he should, she reminds herself. It was his right as King, and she served at his pleasure.

Just as what she does now is her right as Queen. Just as this whore serves at hers.

Her eyes flash. She bares her teeth, digs her nails into the firm flesh of the maid's upturned rump, and slides the tip of a single finger inside her.

A hiss of discomfort comes from the girl. The Queen welcomes it, revels in it, pushes forward in spite of it, and when the girl starts to scoot forward she raises her other hand and delivers a sharp, open-palmed slap, leaving a pretty red mark on her maid's left buttock. Shiera lets out a squeak at that, but stills, her shoulders rising and falling faster and faster. She is warm inside and a little wet, and the Queen's lips curl into a smirk as she adds a second finger.

"Does that hurt?" she asks.

"Y-yes my Queen," comes the stammered response.

"And whose fault is that?" The Queen's voice is rough and heavy, and, hidden from the maid's view, she has begun to rub her thighs together beneath her gown.

The maid is hesitant at first, her response a tentative, questioning sound that takes a sharp turn toward certainty when the Queen strikes her a second time: "I don't--mine! Mine, Your Grace!"

"That's right," the Queen agrees. "It is your fault, my little whore. Had you stayed loyal and true, there would be no cause for me to subject you to this torment. Had you spent your time preparing yourself to better serve your Queen instead of spying on her, it might not have come as torment at all. I want you to keep that in mind."

"I will, Your Grace!"

"Good."

She pushes in deeper, hears a suppressed squeak, lets her fingertips roam inside the maid while her thumb caresses the smooth skin between her cunt and the puckered hole above it. At one point, the tip of her thumb brushes against its rim, and she watches with amusement as the girl's muscles seize and her holes contract and she seems to shrink in on herself. As if she were some wilting violet, and not someone who has had hundreds of fingers and tongues and cocks stuffed into every orifice of her body.

As if there were anything she could do to escape in the first place.

All the while, the tips of the Queen's fingers skate across her maid's spongy inner walls. They press in further and further as she goes. Come to me, my Princess, she thinks feverishly as her fingers curl, and though she wants desperately to say it out loud, she bites her tongue. It is not Rhaenyra before her now, but Shiera, not her innocent, incorrigible, infatuated stepdaughter but a faithless whore, one who has proven with word and deed that she can never be trusted with the secret shame that haunts Alicent's soul.

In the back of her mind, she hears her father's voice once more.

Calm yourself, daughter. I do not mean to condemn you for your affliction. It is true that the King could have your head on a spike for what you have done. Yet... he does not know. No one does save for me, your... serving girl... and the White Worm.

At some point she hears a change, subtle though it is, in the girl's breathing. Where once her breaths were quick and shallow and laden with anxiety, now they are deeper, heavier, straining with words unspoken. The Queen's fingers are knuckle-deep inside her, now, and those knuckles... are damp. Despite everything, this filthy harlot is starting to enjoy what her Queen is doing to her.

That will not do.

With her free hand, she reaches down and under, sliding it forward across the maid's firm abdomen and letting it settle over her right breast. She cups it almost tenderly at first, feels its weight in her hand, closes her fingers around soft, pliable flesh. A pebbled nipple brushes against her palm, and with a sudden viciousness, she pinches it between her fingertips, tugging and twisting, determined to inflict pain through the sensitive nerve endings that lie just beneath the skin, determined to punish this treacherous little slattern for daring to find pleasure where the Queen herself never could. Yet the desired outcome remains elusive; the maid lets out a breathy groan, but it seems more one of ecstasy than one of torment, an impression that is confirmed by the way her back arches, pressing her breast further into Alicent's hand.

The Queen feels her temper rising still further, a dark fury taking hold of her. Recalling the effect that doing so had on Shiera earlier, she strikes the girl's backside with all the strength she can muster, grinning savagely when she hears a shriek in response. Her left hand still buried in the girl's dampening cunt, she strikes her again and again, fascinated by the obscene way the her flesh ripples in response to her blows, the way veins burst and bruise her skin a lovely red. Though she feels the sting in her palm with each strike, she does not stop; the mild pain only spurs her on, drives her to seek out patches of skin that have not yet been struck, goads her into beating the girl viciously until her arm and palm start to ache, until the maid's shrieks have given way to whimpers and the Queen's cunt is simply dripping with need.

As is Shiera's, she realizes with a start, feeling the wetness that has pooled like honey in the shallow cup formed by her curved palm, just beneath the girl's sopping, twitching folds. And isn't that interesting? Isn't it simply fascinating how every effort she makes to discipline her maid for her transgressions is thwarted by the girl's sheer depravity? For a moment, she feels as if she might burst into hysterical laughter. It makes sense, though, and she feels rather foolish upon realizing the simple truth that this is natural. For a whore to find pleasure in pain, for her to revel, even, in her own degradation, is for her to be the way the gods have made her, the better to fulfill her role. If Alicent has never been able to do the same, it is not due to any failing on her part. The gods simply made her for other things. Better things.

The Queen feels an odd sense of relief wash over her at this realization. She pulls her fingers out of the girl, nearly gasps at the deliciously wet popping sound that comes in consequence, and raises them to her lips to taste them. She can feel her own arousal trickling down her thighs, and it is oh-so-tempting to seek out the service Shiera has provided in the past, to push her head down and hold it in place and put her to work in correcting this problem she has created. She knows the girl hasn't earned it, though, knows the girl has in fact forfeited any right to press her nose into the thatch of auburn curls at the apex of her Queen's thighs and drink deep.

Still, what Alicent has done so far is not nearly enough. She needs more.

Her gaze shifts to the small stand beside the bed, and her eyes fall on the wooden case she brought with her.

We may yet turn this to our advantage. The Princess is yet unwed, after all, and I believe that you may be able to ensure that she remains so. Take this, my daughter. It contains something the White Worm has fashioned, something that will help you with this task.

"Be still," she commands as she makes her way over to the stand, limbs quivering in anticipation. She fumbles with the clasps on the case, failing to open it several times in her haste to access its contents. She has seen them before, of course. When her father first handed the case over, her curiosity got the better of her, and, still dazed from the shock of her maid's betrayal, she thought little of opening it to glance inside... though once she did, she immediately regretted it, slamming it shut with burning cheeks before looking up to find her father studiously avoiding her gaze.

Now, as the case falls open once more, she takes the time to drink in the sight of the two objects before her. First, a leather harness, with loops and fastenings meant to hold it in place around the wearer's waist and upper thighs. Second, a long piece of smooth, black dragonglass, with a nub at one end designed to slot into place in the harness and with the rest carved and sanded and shaped with expert precision. Her very own cock with which to take her stepdaughter's maidenhead.

She is not sure quite what follows: how she sheds her gown, hikes up the skirt of her thin shift, and fastens the harness around her waist. She vaguely registers the commands she directs to her maid, the way the girl kneels half-naked at her feet and, with her pupils blown out, her lower lip caught beneath her teeth, and her head bowed in utter submission, helps to remove the offending articles of clothing before resuming her position on the bed. At last, though, the Queen stands behind her maid, looking down at the way the cock--her cock--extends from where it sits snugly fastened into the harness around her waist.

For a moment, she hesitates, teases the swollen, puffy lips of her maid's cunt with her cock's smooth, hard tip, feels a sense of vertigo as she remembers the similar scene from her dream. Then, the maid rocks backward with a whine and something that sounds like "please," and Alicent gives the girl's cunt a quick, open-palmed slap, smirks at the ensuing squeal, grabs hold of the girl's thighs... and pushes her way in with a single, sharp thrust.

The little whore is plenty ready, after all, and even if she weren't, the Queen is not sure it would bother her. She'd rather the girl not enjoy herself overmuch, after all.

She watches, enraptured, as the dragonglass disappears over and over, the girl's wet folds clinging to its length, each time emerging with a fresh coating of slick to make its surface shine in the sunlight that filters in through the windows. In her rush to confront the traitor, she was reckless, not having bothered to so much as draw the curtains. She finds now that she does not care, that she almost wants to haul this silver-haired whore with a marked resemblance to the Princess over to the window, hang her over the edge at the waist, and let all of King's Landing watch as their Queen takes her again and again. She finds her strokes imitating the rough, quick ones she saw Daemon use more so than the slow, ponderous ones that her husband tended to prefer. This pattern seems to be an effective one, at least for Shiera, who meets her thrust for thrust, her silver tresses plastered to her back with sweat, her rhythmic moans seeming to grow higher and higher in pitch as she chases her release.

And yet there is something strange, an odd, detached sort of feeling that comes over the Queen, as if she is watching someone else, as if she is not an active participant in her own actions. It is with some disappointment that she realizes that the fake cock doesn't feel like anything, that the sensations she dreamed of are not going to be magically channeled from the maid's hot, weeping cunt through the cock and into her. Oh, there are some sensations to speak of: she can feel a little splash of wetness coming from inside the girl with each thrust, can smell the heady scent of her arousal, can hear the way the sound of hips smacking against her wet flesh mingles with the sound of her forehead knocking rhythmically against the headboard. And, if Alicent pushes just right, the back of the cock rubs up against her, grinding against her own puffy, sensitive cunt. That, at least, gives her a little pleasure. It isn't enough, though, and when the maid's muscles seize and she screams out her release, letting loose a gush of liquid that soaks the sheets beneath them, the Queen feels another surge of fury.

This whore does not deserve the pleasure her Queen has given her. She deserves pain, anguish, suffering--she deserves to pay for betraying her Queen's trust--she deserves for the cock buried inside her to grow ten times in size, to split her apart starting from the groin--

And perhaps there is one way to make it so, or near enough.

The girl is stretched out, back arched, arms shaking in the aftermath of her peak, hanging from where the bunched-up material of her garment binds her to the bedpost. She does not react at first when Alicent reaches down and spreads her buttocks apart. Whores are accustomed such treatment, the Queen supposes as she withdraws from the maid's cunt with a wet pop. Her cock's surface is shiny and slick now, and as she eyes the tight ring of muscle that lies bare before her hungry eyes, she thinks it will like as not take only a little force to push it in.

It is when she drags her cock up, trailing the evidence of the maid's release across the sensitive skin between her cunt and her ass, that her actions finally prompt a reaction.

Shiera casts a glance over her shoulder, and her eyes widen. She begins to thrash in place, straining helplessly against the thick bundle of fabric holding her arms aloft. "Wait--wait, my Queen, please, no--"

"No?" the Queen interrupts, an odd, cruel sort of glee rising in her gut as she presses the hard, bulbous tip of her cock against the girl's tight hole. "And who are you, my dear whore, to deny your queen anything?"

"N-no one, Your Grace, and I'm sorry, just... please, not there, I can do anything else for you, I promise, but--"

"Oh sweetling," she coos, "do you still not understand that this is meant to be a punishment?" She pauses for a moment to line her cock up with the puckered hole between the little whore's spread asscheeks, tightens her grip, and rams it home.

The scream that follows is loud enough to echo through the halls of the Red Keep. And even though it should alarm her, should send her scrambling to ensure they have not been overheard, the Queen finds again that she does not care. She shivers at the blinding spike of pure pleasure it sends through her. It is beyond anything she has felt before, beyond anything simply lying back and letting this girl lap contentedly at her cunt could ever provide, and she finds herself mindlessly grinding against the base of her cock, her hips pressed flush against the girl's bruised, wet flesh, chasing that wonderful, incomparable sensation.

It isn't enough, though. It was not the pressure against her cunt that set her off, but the girl's reaction to her invasion; merely humping her ass like a bitch in heat does little. The feeling fades as quickly as it came, and as the girl's scream fades into a whimper, she pulls back, sliding her cock slowly out, inch by painful inch.

She reaches forward, wraps one arm around Shiera's throat to pull her closer, and leans in. "Remember, you deserve this," she whispers in the girl's ear. Then, she releases her, and as the maid falls forward, gasping for air, she thrusts herself in to the hilt once more.

A squeal like a stuck pig emerges from the girl's throat. Her hands slip their bonds, fall to the bed, scramble for purchase on the sheets as if to effect some sort of escape, but before they can the Queen makes a fist in her silver hair and tugs. Rearing bag, her face pointing almost directly up, the maid starts to babble and beg, "Yes, yes, I'm sorry, you're right my Queen, this is what I deserve, please use me..."

Mildly charming, perhaps, but such efforts at appeasement are not what the Queen desires, and so with a quick roll of her eyes she pushes the girl's head forward and down, grinding her face into the pillow. She recalls how Viserys did something similar on occasion, fucked her from behind while making her hide her face in the sheets so he could pretend she was his beloved Aemma. She pushes in and out, again and again, and as she listens to the little muffled gasps and pleas that sound out, she finds her vision blurring, her mind wandering to picture a different silver-haired girl. A maiden, not a maid. A princess, not a whore. A dragon, not a snake.

Words start to tumble from her lips.

"You take pleasure in this, don't you, you whore." My sweet daughter.

"You like the feeling of your Queen's cock pushing inside you." You've wanted it for years, haven't you?

"You don't deserve the pleasure, not after what you've done. Betraying my confidence. Carrying word of our dalliance to my father." Strutting about like some Flea Bottom harlot, putting yourself on display. Teasing me, tempting me, trying to drag me down into the hells with you.

"This is what you deserve..."

She pushes the girl's face further down, holding it there as if to suffocate her, fucking her relentlessly all the while. After several seconds, she tugs on her hair once more, letting her up to breathe, and the girl rises, gasping for air before choking out as soon as she is able, "No more, I can't take anymore, please, my Queen..."

"Yes, you can," the Queen insists in response.

"Please, it's too much!" the girl screams, shaking her head. She has begun to weep now, fat tears running down her cheeks, and she sobs and hiccups in a way that sounds almost theatrical to the Queen's ears.

Alicent spies the gag that they have used to silence her own cries of pleasure in the past, lying unobtrusively on the stand next to the bed as if it were some strange decoration, and, blood rushing through her veins, she reaches over to seize it. "Shut up, whore," she hisses, slapping the girl's cheek to force her to open her mouth before reaching around to pull the cloth over her face, thread it between her jaws, and press it against her tongue so that pitiful, unintelligible whimpers are the only sounds she can make.

The fight seems to go out of her after that.

Still, the Queen continues, seesawing in and out, in and out, grinding her cunt against the smooth, wide dragonglass bulb that rests against it with each thrust to coax what little pleasure she can out of it until she finds, at last, that sometimes a little is enough, and eventually--long after the maid has ceased to squirm beneath her, long after her pleas for mercy have stopped sounding, long after, in short, she has realized that they were falling on deaf ears and resigned herself to lying, exhausted, while her Queen uses her to chase her own pleasure--the Queen looks down, sees how utterly broken the girl looks, and feels that same exquisite feeling that accompanied that first agonized scream wash over her again as she reaches her peak.

As she shudders, as her inner walls tighten and spasm, she images them pumping some fluid up and out from deep inside her, filtering it through some channel in her cock to fill the girl's insides and leak from her when she sits. It would not be a way of breeding her with a child, of course--she'd need to fill a different hole to make that happen--but it would be a way of marking her claim all the same, of leaving a bit of herself inside.

There is nothing dripping from the girl's tight channel when the Queen withdraws. Still, Shiera has left a horrid mess on the coverlet, evidence of release after release, and while Alicent sets about cleaning herself, she bites her lip at the sight of the girl slowly turning, sitting up, and settling near the foot of the bed in a pool of her own spend.

Shameless.

After a moment, Shiera lifts her head and meets the Queen's gaze. Her face is splotchy, and the paint she wore on her face and around her eyes runs in streaks left by her tears. She wore it to make herself more beautiful, to entice and ensnare. Now, it imparts upon her a different kind of beauty: the beauty of destruction. It reminds the Queen of the way she looked when her former mistress was done with her, all those moons before. At the time, it moved her to pity; her heart seized up in her chest and led her to invite this cunning spider into her own home, her own bed.

Now, she looks upon her, and her heart is still as stone.

After a few quick breaths, the girl scrambles to her feet. Her limbs shudder as she approaches the Queen, trying to pull her into a kiss. The Queen meets her advance with a wrinkled nose and a quick, stinging slap to her cheek, and she rears back, falls to her knees, and gazes up plaintively. She looks pathetic, devastated, defiled, and her words come out as a broken whisper: "Please, Your Grace. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please..."

And how dare she?

"Get dressed... and get out," the Queen commands, her voice cold as the Wall itself.

The girl's face crumples up, the grief and regret coming off her in waves, and Alicent feels nothing. No sympathy. No remorse. For what did this foolish whore expect? Did she think she could so brashly cross the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and then work her way back into her confidence with a single show of submission? Her dismissal needs no justification, but a vicious, vengeful part of Alicent wants to offer one anyway. Because you betrayed me. Because you spat on my kindness. Because you nearly freed me, only to let me fall back into this most grievous of sins. This most grievous of sins...

At that moment, she comes to a realization, and it leads her to hold her tongue.

Instead, she simply watches as Shiera moves about in halting steps that belie her haste, gathering up her discarded clothing, stepping back into it piece by piece as quickly as her sore and thoroughly used body will allow, wincing periodically all the while. It is only when the girl stands fully-dressed, fidgeting with her hands hesitantly, eyes darting toward the door, that the Queen at last clears her throat and speaks once more.

"I trust that I have impressed upon you the consequences of keeping a loose tongue," she says. Her voice has a smoky timbre and a stern tone, and though she remains partially bare before the maid's eyes, she feels the thrill that comes from being utterly in control as strongly as ever.

She has seen many expressions cross her maid's lovely face. Desire. Distress. Hope. Now, for the first time, she sees raw, naked fear. It is... intoxicating.

"I won't speak a word, I swear," Shiera whispers, voice trembling.

The Queen studies her for a moment, then gives a short nod. "I know you won't."

After the maid's hasty, retreating footsteps have faded into the distance, the Queen reaches down and lets the harness fall, taking the dragonglass cock with it. Now alone, she lifts her fingers to her lips and tastes the slick that is left upon their tips once again. She wonders whether the Princess would taste any different.

With a sigh, she settles onto the bed, a thrill going through her as she feels the damp patch Shiera left on the coverlet against her bare skin. She has little else to distract her now, and she finds herself thinking back, first on her father's claim that her proclivities could be turned to their advantage, then on what she realized a few short minutes before, as she watched the maid scurry about like Balerion himself was on her heels.

She smiles.

It is a vicious, crazed thing, and she thinks that an observer would surely think her mad. She cares not. Perhaps her father meant for his words to bind her still further to his will; if so, they have proven woefully inadequate, for they have done the opposite. The weight of his judgment has fallen from her shoulders, and for the first time in nigh on a decade, she feels free. Like she is herself again.

For she now understands a truth that has thus far eluded her.

Her greatest sin could not be found in her queer thoughts or her unnatural lusts or even her wicked deeds. It happened instead in the very presence of the Seven, long ago, when she knelt at their altar and for no reason but cowardice resolved to burn out the love they had nurtured in her heart. The better to mother her Princess, she turned her back on everything that made her Alicent Hightower and stepped into the role of a cold, unfeeling Queen. But there is more to motherhood than a firm guiding hand. A true mother must provide discipline, yes, but kindness as well, must correct errors with sharp strikes before soothing the pain with gentle tenderness, must balance the harsh reprimands of an instructor with the indulgence of a loving parent. In trying to do what she thought she must, she had neglected much of what was in fact required of her; in trying to fulfill her duty as a mother, she had in fact failed in it. If she now sees a capricious irony in this, like she has been caught up in some divine prank, it is only because she now sees with clear eyes.

Oh, what a fool she has been, to believe that a common slattern like Shiera, who would think nothing of selling her secrets to the highest bidder, could ever be her salvation! To look upon her and think for even a second that she could be an adequate substitute for the one who plagued her dreams! She thought her twisted love for her stepdaughter a curse, but in truth it is a blessing--to turn her back on it, the deepest blasphemy. The Seven have smiled upon her. Just as they made Shiera to be nothing but a whore, to revel in being choked and stuffed and filled over and again with the spend of thousands, so too have they made Alicent for her role.

She knows now what she must do, knows now how she erred.

She will watch and wait, and when the right moment comes, she will claim what her stepdaughter has been dying to give her all this time. Doing so will not be difficult, she is sure. When she has made it so that no lord in all the realm will have the girl, she will offer a solution.... and a mere handful of years thence, Rhaenyra will be wed to her brother in the traditions of their house. Through him, the Princess and the Queen will be bound forever--a pact sealed in fire and blood.

Alicent pictures the dazed, anguished look on her stepdaughter's face when the Queen first tried to sever their bond, that day in the Grand Sept shortly after Aegon's birth. She pictures, also, the heartbreak in the girl's lilac eyes when she tried to repair that bond with a kiss, only to have the words deviant and harlot and worse flung at her in response. Alicent's heart aches, and for once, she does not try to suppress it.

"I am so, so sorry, my love," she whispers, and, her stepdaughter's beautiful face still fixed in her mind's eye, intones a solemn promise:

"Mother will see you soon."