Chapter Text
Knock, knock, knock.
Small raps against the wood were the first thing Alyssa heard at the edge of morning. The sun had risen only a few moments before; she always left her window ajar so the first ray of light would wake her, though in truth she usually opened her eyes long before it did. This time was no different. The sky was still young, and the silence of the castle had not yet been broken by the bustle of servants nor by the guards' boots pacing the halls.
She did not let too much time pass before receiving her visitors. First she let out a long sigh. Then, with little grace and even less enthusiasm, she rose from the bed and opened the door herself. It was not her habit to do so; she usually let her handmaidens wait as long as was needed. But since she had left them standing longer than usual, a small burst of courtesy pushed her to move.
The moment she opened the door, the ritual of every morning began without need for words. The three women set their tools down on the floor beside the threshold, and at once laid their hands upon her, a routine of years. They untied her nightgown and lifted it over her head to place it gently in the basket they themselves had brought. They were the same rough hands as always that touched her with respect, though also with the haste of those who know the day has barely begun and the list of tasks they have with the princess is long.
As soon as Alyssa stood completely naked before her most trusted servants, they led her to the tub. It was small. Her own, the one at the Targaryen stronghold, was larger than her brothers', larger even than the king's own; she knew this because her brother Aegon complained about it every time he found willing ears to listen. He complained about her a great deal, in truth, though he had no cause to. she managed to have things simply through the decency of staying sober. Nor did she much care for the jealous mutterings of a drunkard barely distinguishable from the servants by the silver hair he did not even bother to wash.
She cursed under her breath as she stepped into the water. It was colder than usual, and that alone was enough for her to cast a sharp look at the eldest woman, the one who gave orders to the rest of the girls. The woman did not meet her gaze; she kept her eyes lowered and answered in a calm voice:
"The night was colder than it tends to be, my princess. I beg you forgive such an oversight."
Alyssa snorted, sinking a little deeper into the water.
"Excuses, and more excuses. See that it does not happen again. If the night insists on being cold, then let it be you who turns it into a summer's night."
"It shall be done as you command, princess” the woman replied, bowing her head slightly before returning to her tasks.
The perfumes they used were the same ones her father had given her as a child, after one of his hunting excursions. He had told the story so many times that she already felt it as her own, tthat he had come across a merchant on the road, and that upon catching that scent he had thought of her at once. It was the first time Alyssa felt, if only for a moment, a certain power over her older sister; something she would never confess aloud, of course. In every comparison there exist only two paths, to win or to lose, and she knew all too well that she would always lose against the heir to the Iron Throne.
Cold and trembling, she finally stepped out of the tub, her body perfumed like a goddess, but her spirit as fragile as a sheet of paper carried by the wind. The towels quickly soaked up the water still trickling down her skin, though the hands holding them moved slowly, carefully, knowing that any rough touch would redden her skin, and that would bring on a severe scolding, though the princess would deny it before anyone, everyone in the palace knew her temper burned as bright as fire. Her father used to joke that she was as untamable as fire, and that it was in her blood, her Targaryen blood, the blood of the great dynasty that tamed dragons.
It was the smell of firewood that pulled her from her deep reverie. Her hair, already drained of every drop the cloth had managed to absorb, was being combed beside the fire, until the heat of the flames took care of stealing away the last moisture still clinging to the strands. Only one of the handmaidens tended to her hair; the others went through the repertoire of dresses, deliberating in silence over which would be chosen for that day. There was nothing of particular importance about the day beginning, beyond a funeral. Lady Laena Velaryon had died. Her uncle's wife, the mother of her cousins, and, if she was not mistaken in counting the bonds of blood, her cousin as well. The branches of the Targaryen tree tangled together like threads of a single tapestry, and there was nothing poetic in that. Pathetic, perhaps, would be the fairer word. Or perhaps it was simply her mother's blood speaking through her, silently rejecting the great tradition of the most important house in all the known world, the same one that was hers as well.
Her hair was dry at last, and the ladies already had their choice ready. There was little to no black in her wardrobe; green predominated with an almost stubborn insistence, more out of the devotion her mother professed to her own house than out of any taste of Alyssa's. If it were up to her mother, even the princess's hair would end up dyed that same green.
When her handmaidens showed her a dress of dark green, nearly black, she felt distaste draw itself across her face without her being able to help it. She made no effort at all to hide it. Her eyes then settled on Meredith, who watched with a certain disappointment the women she had spent years training. She sighed; either way, the choice came down to dark green or black, with no trace of that purple which gave Alyssa so much pleasure. It did not suit the occasion, and they both knew it.
"If I must wear such a garment” Alyssa said, her voice heavy with a disdain she did not bother to hide, "I shall suffer a dreadful death, and let my own blood stain that green a red worthy of remembrance. Yours, then, will be the blame for so obscene a death."
Meredith let out a brief laugh, barely contained, the kind only permitted to those who have earned the right to laugh before a princess without fear of reprisal.
"You always say you shall die of green, my lady, and yet here I stand, speaking with you and not with a ghost. You have worn green on more occasions than I can count, and the promise, to this day, remains unfulfilled."
How did that woman dare address a princess in such a way, a princess whose single fingernail was worth more than any servant in the castle? A single plea before her father, the king, would have been enough to ensure that old woman never served anywhere again. That is what anyone listening to such a conversation from outside would think, utterly ignorant of what lay between the two of them. But Meredith was not just anyone. That woman was a treasure. Her treasure. Alyssa would tear out the tongue with her own hands of anyone who dared speak ill of the old woman, whose love and loyalty toward her surpassed, she dared to think, even her own mother's.
"I am merely awaiting the right moment, and it might well be today. Mind your words, then, old woman, for they could be the last you ever hear from my lips. What better occasion than to celebrate two funerals in one."
She then set about putting on the life-ruining green dress and let her hair be braided in a foul mood that none of the handmaidens dared remark upon aloud. It was long. Very long, far longer than anyone outside those four walls could imagine. And only her servants knew that, a secret without purpose. Those who crossed paths with her outside the chambers that concealed such intimacy only ever came to know the bathed version, perfumed, dressed in the finest cloth and combed with such care that she might well be mistaken for the queen herself. And that, precisely, was what her mother intended to make of her, she knew for certain. She wanted to turn her into a queen in waiting. To marry her off, likely, to her own brother Aegon, perhaps in the hope that Alyssa might, in time, manage to make that boy's head work, something that seemed about as likely as a sword through the heart. Or perhaps her mother only hoped that the fruit of the two of them would give rise to a new generation of religious fanatics, as devout and blind as she herself was.
What truly mattered was that Aegon would be king. She did not yet know how they would manage it, but manage it they would. Her father, King Viserys, was so deeply in love with Rhaenyra that he would gladly send them all to the Wall should any of them dare utter a single word against her, so changing the old man's mind on the matter of succession was about as simple as slaying a dragon with one's bare hands. It was possible they would end up usurping her when she least expected it, or simply kill her outright, whichever the family found easier to carry out.
Rhaenyra was kind, that Alyssa could never honestly deny. Laenor was even more so. Alyssa had felt, for a brief period of her life, a small infatuation with Laenor, until her mother, Alicent, remarked without much subtlety how shameful it was that the man dishonored his name by lying with other men. Alyssa never managed to see the shame in it. She simply nodded and let the matter drop.
She walked in her life-ruining dress, moving through the halls of the place with a firm stride. The servants bowed as she passed, and that gesture, repeated over and over, made her feel more powerful than she deep down knew she deserved to feel. Perhaps it was simply because they were obliged to do so, while she, with all the pride she could muster, kept her head held high without even needing to return the greeting. Rhaenyra, by contrast, greeted people, or at least cast a glance at whoever crossed her path, which earned her points among the servants. Something to be expected, after all, if one is the first woman named heir to the Iron Throne and must embody, day after day, something more than the mere definition of perfection.
The first familiar face the ever-perfect Alyssa came across was that of her brother Aemond. She felt, if only for a moment, a small comfort at finding someone close to her in a place that did not belong to her. This was not her home. It was House Velaryon's, and everything in it, from the stones to the people who dwelled among them, seemed to breathe a different kind of cold, older and deeper than that of winter itself. Alyssa found it strange to see him awake so early, though she soon thought that perhaps he too had failed to find sleep, the whole castle wrapped as it was in that grim air that only recent death knows how to steep into the walls.
The princess approached from behind and left a brief kiss on her younger brother's crown, which made him jump, startled. He calmed as soon as he recognized the laugh, half sinister, that could only belong to his sister. It was known by everyone in the Red Keep that the princess's laugh, however much she strove to make it sweet, always ended up breaking into something far more wicked.
"What are you doing awake at this hour, little one? You might well have slept a bit longer, and spared yourself that look of dismay you're wearing."
The boy lowered his head, and she could do nothing but roll her eyes at the gesture. Aemond had the habit of feeling less of a prince whenever he fell into emotions that, in his view, he should not allow himself to feel. He had, however, a good heart. Alyssa, without thinking too much on it, lifted his chin with two fingers to make him look at her directly. She then gave him a smile meant to be comforting, which ended up coming across as somewhat unsettling rather than reassuring. Once she confirmed her brother had no intention of sharing that moment of fragility, she chose to ruffle his hair without mercy, until she drew a complaint out of him.
"Come” she said, taking him by the arm and dragging him along with her down the hall. "Let us go see in which corner of the castle we might find Aegon, sprawled out like the drunkard he is."
The walk felt light to them. Alyssa and Aemond kept up a conversation that, in truth, was more a monologue than a conversation: the elder spoke without pause, while the younger offered, every so often, some small sign that he was still listening.
"And so I told mother that, if I were betrothed to Aegon, I would kill him the very wedding night, and that finding a second husband after that would prove a rather complicated task." Alyssa let out a clear, almost childish laugh. "She detests Targaryen customs so much, and yet she does not seem to detest them nearly as much when she needs incest to please grandfather."
Though the young woman's voice brimmed with amusement, her face did not fully match the joke. Her eyes traced her brother's countenance, whose loyalty to the queen was worthy of admiration, even when it proved incomprehensible. Alyssa could never quite understand what it was, exactly, that Aemond found so fascinating about their mother, such that he despised every sharp remark she tossed off so lightly; but, deep down, she found it amusing to witness. She had a theory that her brother had been steeped in the sadness their mother carried with her, in the nights he heard her weeping behind doors he believed closed, and in the injustices he saw repeat themselves day after day before his very eyes. Perhaps the boy's sensitivity was nothing more than a reflection of Queen Hightower's own, and one could only hope it would not, with the years, turn him into what she was today.
"Aegon is a drunkard” said Aemond, "but he shall be king all the same."
"Ugh, what a great king he shall be” Alyssa cut in, with a snort that did nothing to hide her scorn, "He would sell the whole kingdom for a cup of wine and a free night on the Street of Silk."
Aemond stopped walking and gripped his sister's arm. The young woman did not feel threatened by her brother, who stood nearly a head taller than her, but that sudden boldness of his stirred in her, strangely, a bit of pride.
"If you do not marry him, mother will have Helaena do it instead, and well you know it."
"Then I am sorry for it. Were you the one who wished to wed her? Then do so yourself: fly off together to the Free Cities and return turned into husband and wife. I, on the other hand, shall be handed over to death, though it seems my future troubles you little, so long as yours remains free of any stain."
"No, that is not it. I am sorry if that is what you feel from me, but it is your duty, as the eldest of the sisters, to marry him. So tradition dictates."
"Traditions, traditions. Rhaenyra is the heir, and Aegon is not. Is that not enough for traditions to go straight to hell?"
Aemond quickened his pace, without turning to look at her.
"Believe what you please, sister. Your head is as hard as stone."
Alyssa laughed and let it be, pressing no further. He was a little one, yes, but a little one who grew more like their mother with each passing day, and that, in truth, was what most struck fear into the princess. Of all her siblings, it was Aemond she liked best, beyond question. Aegon, her twin, was nothing more than a drunkard of some renown. Helaena was sweet, yes, but also strange in a way Alyssa found hard to name, and it took only a short while in her company for her head to begin aching. And Daeron was in Oldtown, which, frankly, was the best thing that could have happened to any of them. Alyssa wrote to her younger brother now and then, though the news that came from Oldtown proved about as entertaining as watching an hourglass empty grain by grain.
She walked alone again. Servants. Handmaidens. House Velaryon's family. Friends of the Velaryons. A worthy crowd for a funeral soon to be held. She wished, more than anything, to head to the kitchens and eat whatever was set before her, only to then vomit it all up and miss the entire ceremony under the convenient pretext of sudden illness. She realized this would not be necessary; turning down the hall, she came upon another green just as dreadful as her own. That alone, simply that, was enough to turn her stomach. She would have recognized her mother's bearing anywhere in the world, even blindfolded.
Reluctantly, she went to greet her. Denying the greeting would have served no purpose; after all, her mother was the queen consort and, above all else, her mother. Alicent's gaze slowly drifted down to her daughter's dress, and Alyssa, without any ceremony, spun on her heel to shamelessly show off her poor sense of taste. She even allowed herself a mocking curtsy, and it was then that the queen let out a sigh heavy with weariness.
"Can you not set aside your antics, even at a time such as this?"
"I do not think Lady Laena would mind, mother."
She looked back and found, as was to be expected, her mother's guard dog: Ser Criston Cole, who instructed the princes in the art of the sword. In her view, he was a pleasant-looking man, but rather a fool. Any grown man capable of holding a grudge against children who barely reached his waist was, by unwritten law, a great fool. Her mother, on the other hand, held a particular fondness for him, so Alyssa supposed the two of them must share a certain resentment toward Rhaenyra, since, according to the gossip circulating around the castle, that knight had once been the elder princess's personal guard. She thought, for the fun of it, that she might well beg her father to grant her Cole as her own personal knight, just to annoy her mother; but then she would have to endure her mother's anger for weeks, and also have Cole report her every move, like the palace rat he was.
Judging by the faces of those present and the murmurs beginning to spread through the halls, the hour of the burial must have been drawing near. The saddest part of that day, however, was not the death of Lady Laena, her aunt and mother of her cousins, but the fact that she had spent the whole morning wandering back and forth, bothering almost no one, instead of devoting herself to some activity she truly enjoyed, like swimming, losing herself in some book bigger than her own head, or chasing cats through the gardens until one of them decided to scratch her. Now, to make matters worse, her feet ached without relief, for her footwear had recently changed on account of her newfound maturity, and she now had to wear shoes considerably higher than those she was used to.
Alyssa walked alongside her mother and her siblings, who had all arrived at once, as though summoned by a single voice. Her grandfather, whom she had not seen in a long while, must surely have sent someone to fetch them all without exception; Aegon in particular, capable as he was of paying some stranger to take him to the nearest brothel rather than to the funeral. She remembered little of her grandfather, but he must be someone truly peculiar for her mother to remain always on guard, and noticeably anxious, whenever his presence made itself known. If that man was even more controlling than her own mother, then all of them, half Targaryen, half Hightower, were very far from enjoying any control over their own lives.
Alyssa stood still, unmoving, in one spot. Her dress, at least, was long enough to hide the fact that she had no shoes on; she had slipped them off the moment she could. Beside her, her brother Aegon looked restless, visibly bored, though she could not understand how anyone could be bored amid so much gossip. Vaemond, Lord Corlys's brother and Laena's uncle, was delivering words that had little to do with the deceased, devoting himself instead, with barely concealed enthusiasm, to hurling remarks that were barely indirect at all, all of them aimed at Rhaenyra's bastards.
She would light a candle later, Alyssa thought, a candle for Laena. That funeral had turned into a farce, into one more opportunity to sow hatred rather than honor the love and memory the deceased deserved. She was not devoted to the Faith of the Seven with her mother's fervor, but she found in those rites something more symbolic than religious. At least a candle, a few words, and a brief prayer, amid a day so laden with double meanings, would be sincere toward Laena, free from the weight of politics and veiled criticism. The princess thought that, after all, Lady Laena well deserved a gesture as pure as that, if only for having endured, for so many years, marriage to Daemon Targaryen.
When the stone tomb fell into the sea, swallowed by the waters, there was only silence. She then felt a bony hand settle upon her shoulder, and unable to help herself, she covered that hand with her own, convinced it belonged to her mother. Alyssa believed, for a moment, that she felt in that touch all of Alicent's contained grief, and thought that perhaps, upon watching Rhaenys, the deceased's mother, something in her own mother had awoken, a protective instinct toward her daughter, a maternal reflex. But when the princess looked up, she understood that her mother was not looking at her at all, but at her elder sister. She pulled her hand away quickly, and, forgetting entirely that she had taken off her shoes at the very start of it all, walked off away from there.
The rocks on the ground hurt her bare feet. Even so, they proved infinitely more bearable than her dreadful shoes, which she had gladly rid herself of the moment no one was looking. She wished she could free herself just as easily from her dress. Driven by a feverish anger, or perhaps a feverish disappointment, she headed in the direction opposite the one the crowd was following, which was already moving toward the next stage of the burial. She longed to return to the chambers the Velaryons had assigned them, find a pair of flat shoes, burn that dress in the first hearth she came across, and put on, in its place, a purple one, as she would truly have liked from the very start. And what if it was not entirely fitting for the occasion? Would anyone dare say so to her face? Who would dare?
To her misfortune, the princess did not get very far. Before her appeared a man with a bearing more composed than he ought to have, wearing an expression that seemed to mock her without need of words. Not with his mouth, though he might well have done so had he wished, but with his eyes. Her uncle Daemon possessed that kind of gaze that seemed to laugh at the whole world without any effort at all. He was a man of pleasing appearance, though considerably older than her. She wondered whether it might not have been fairer to the world if it were he who lay beneath the sea, and not his young wife. His second young wife. Both already dead. Whoever came to be his third wife would do well to tread carefully.
A biting remark could be seen coming from a mile off, and it was not long in arriving.
"With those strides, one would think you were fleeing, niece."
"Uncle” said Alyssa, without the venom that usually accompanied her voice. She had little desire to see anyone that day, and even less to get drawn into an argument with someone as prone to provocation as her uncle. If the princess had any luck, perhaps he would sense her unease and let her go on her way in peace. Or, if she shared the same luck as his late wives, in a few years they would end up married, and she would end up dead and reduced to ashes at some Valyrian funeral.
His expression did not change in the least, but his posture did. His hands, previously crossed behind his back, came undone, and everything about him seemed to herald the start of a proposal more serious than usual.
"My daughters are in the other hall, along with the rest of the guests."
Alyssa arched an eyebrow.
"I am glad for them. They know how to follow a crowd without getting lost."
Whatever little kindness remained in her uncle's expression seemed to vanish the very instant Alyssa's mouth closed after that remark. A flicker of irritation, already familiar in him, surfaced once more. He closed his eyes, sighed with the weariness of an old man, and simply looked at his niece, as though waiting for her to understand something without his needing to say it aloud. Then, resigned, he opened his mouth again.
"Show at least a little respect, and speak with them. They are but children. You, if the count is right, are a young lady. A bit of support from you would do them good after their mother's death."
Alyssa looked the man before her over carefully. The Rogue Prince. Little remained of that man in the figure standing in front of her now; it seemed he now busied himself cornering barefoot princesses in search of emotional comfort for his own daughters. She could have laughed in his face, a gesture that would in all likelihood have cost her her tongue, but she did not. Instead, she decided she had no wish to return to the crowd, and perhaps convinced she was doing the whole family a favor, said the one thing people tend to say when thinking has stopped being a priority.
"I am sure a father's comfort proves rather more effective than that of a distant relative."
Daemon's mouth twisted into a grimace, and Alyssa's, to her own misfortune, did not manage to close in time.
"If your wish is for me to play nursemaid to your daughters while you play at exchanging glances with my dear sister, then find someone else for the task. I do not intend to attend another funeral bearing the guilt of their fate."
"Mind that tongue, girl. You may be my brother's daughter by his Hightower whore, but your title does not erase mine. My Valyrian blood, pure and unstained, runs thicker than what flows through your veins, niece, and no bold remark of yours shall ever change that."
A large, firm hand settled on Alyssa's shoulder, forcing her to turn toward the gathered crowd. She felt there was no longer any way to refuse his request.
"I have no shoes” she said, as her only defense.
A snort escaped her uncle's lips.
"Have you gone mute along with losing your shoes? From what I can tell, you speak more than you ought, even with frozen feet."
Her elder uncle led her, without letting go, toward the place where most of the guests had gathered, absorbed in talk and discussions over matters that mattered little to Alyssa. Rhaena and Baela sat on a bench, both with long, downcast faces. She glanced briefly elsewhere, looking for someone she would rather talk to, or at least some skirt wide enough to hide behind. Her mother was in sight, alongside her ever-present guard dog. Her mother's gaze settled on Alyssa, and before she could even approach, the princess decided she would far rather endure an entire afternoon of torment beside her demon uncle than an afternoon of torment beside her mother. She then looped her arm through Daemon's, who barely raised an eyebrow at the sudden gesture. Her mother looked away from the two of them moments later, and there was no need to ask who was capable of provoking such a look of displeasure in Alicent: her sister.
Alyssa turned her head, with barely any discretion. She had already seen her by the tomb, yes, but back then her attention had been entirely fixed on the burial itself, on the coffin carved of stone and on the sea that would soon claim it as its own. Now, however, she could look at her calmly. She noticed her carefully braided hair, the structured profile of her face, the refined bearing that seemed to cost her no effort at all. She thought, for a moment, of the nickname her mother had tried to impose on her some time back, one that implied she was the most beautiful woman in the whole Targaryen house; but if anyone dared call her that, it would be nothing more than a well-meaning lie. Her sister, the heir to the throne, was the Realm's Delight, and Alyssa would never manage to wrest that title from her, however hard she tried.
She looked away the instant Rhaenyra spotted the two of them among the crowd. She also pulled away, almost without thinking, from Daemon's arm. She was certain she had gripped it too tightly during that flood of thoughts, so much so that she had ended up leaning on it as if she needed it to stay upright. She coughed, uncomfortable. Daemon's gaze settled on her once more.
"What would you have me say to your daughters?" Alyssa asked, with the sole wish of ending the conversation as soon as possible and leaving. She did not want to speak more words than strictly necessary, for then she ran the risk of never closing her mouth again, or, worse still, of her cousins being the ones unable to close theirs afterward.
"Why, women's matters. Surely you have a repertoire of topics capable of lifting the spirits of a pair of girls their age." The two of them held each other's gaze for a moment, each waiting for the other's answer. "Talk to them, damn it. You are quite foolish if you expect me to dictate word for word what to say to them."
Alyssa rolled her eyes. Rhaenyra, for her part, made no effort at all to hide her furtive glances toward Uncle Daemon. She thought, with a certain malice, that if the two of them were simply left alone once and for all, perhaps no usurpation at all would be needed in the end; it would be enough to marry her off to Daemon to ensure her a rather premature death. Alyssa glanced to one side and noticed, not far off, her father's ever more failing body. She thought, then, that although Daemon possessed a certain talent for ridding himself of his wives, he would hardly act quickly enough for Rhaenyra to die before the king himself did first.
"Let me speak with my sister. Greet my nephews. Let me be a bit courteous with the guests, and then I shall speak with your daughters. I promise you, uncle."
"Your promises are worth about as much as a Targaryen without a dragon. Ah, forgive me” said the rogue, letting a smile slowly spread across his face.
"How old are you, uncle? Forty, perhaps? And still you busy yourself bothering a fourteen-year-old girl in the middle of a funeral. How amusing. In days past, Targaryens used to measure themselves against men of their own stature. Perhaps your age no longer allows you to face anyone worth facing."
Alyssa gave him a sweet smile before making her way toward her nephews, or, more precisely, toward her nephew Jace, since Luke lay, for the moment, outside her interest. Grief seemed to sit poorly on the boy, judging by the downcast expression he shared with Daemon's daughters. The princess had heard that both Lyonel Strong and Harwin Strong had recently died, which would explain, at least in part, that sorrow, if the rumors about her sister's children's bastardy held any truth.
Without warning and with no elegance whatsoever, she sat on the tower railing, beside her nephew Jace. She studied his brown curls and fair skin. He entirely lacked his father's silver hair, and certainly had not inherited Ser Laenor's dark skin either. A shame, she thought. Rhaenyra's children were sweet, no doubt, but they would never be fully well regarded, not even with Targaryen blood running through their veins. Strong blood seemed, indeed, to be just as strong as its own name suggested.
"I'll give you anything you want if you talk to Rhaena and Baela in my place."
"What?" the little heir blurted out.
"Rhaena and Baela have just lost their mother, you know? They're very sad, and if you look around, no one seems to be comforting them. I would do it, but I'm afraid I'm about as comforting as a stone in one's shoe. Would you do it in my place?"
The boy lowered his gaze, not answering right away. She leaned in a little, so that what came next would be a whisper only the two of them could hear.
"I don't mean to pick a fight with you, nephew, but I understand your sadness. I know you've lost someone important, even if you're not exactly in mourning for the person being grieved here today. But between two people who've lost someone dear, there's usually a certain comfort in finding one another. You understand me, don't you?"
Jace bit his lip, finding no answer. Rhaenyra approached upon noticing the expression on her son's face, and before Alyssa had to offer any explanation, she got down from the railing and gave him a couple of brief pats on the shoulder, without quite meeting his eyes. On her way toward less somber conversations, she glanced back and saw how Rhaenyra and Jace seemed to be discussing some matter of a certain importance. She smiled briefly, then erased the smile at once. It was not fitting. She spotted her mother in the distance and moved as far away as possible in the opposite direction. Daemon was talking with the king. Aegon and Aemond exchanged words while Helaena played with some insects she had found. She thought, for a fleeting instant, of throwing herself from the edge of the tower, but what her eyes found below was not a solitary ocean. On the shore of the beach, submerged to the waist, Ser Laenor was visibly going through a crisis. And how could he not, having just lost his twin, his other half. She wondered, for a moment, whether Aegon would react in a similar way if something were to happen to her. Though, thinking it over, it would be somewhat unfair to assume so, because if the situation were reversed, she would feel, above all, relief.
Laenor took a while to receive help. Corlys put on a small display, gesturing and calling one of his men, and after a brief moment, that man was already at his side, holding him by the arm as he pulled him from the water. Though there was nothing left worth looking at in that ocean, Alyssa kept watching regardless, unable to look away. She never got around to speaking with the twins. She did not much care that her promise had, in the end, turned out to be a well-meaning lie. She looked toward them once more: Jace seemed to be doing a rather better job than she herself would have managed. Aemond was there too, at her side, or rather, at Jace's side, which did not surprise Alyssa in the least.
Night fell, and at last Alyssa found herself alone in her chambers. She did not even let her servants help her undress. Whatever power game was usually played out each morning and each night was suspended that time; there would be no performance. She threw the dress into the fire without a second thought and walked naked about the room, letting the cold take hold of her skin during the brief while it took her to put on her nightgown. She put her feet in the tub as she sat on its edge, letting out a long sigh, heavy with the weight the whole day had piled on.
Her troubles were, after all, those of a more than privileged young woman. She knew well that there were girls her own age working in brothels, or worked to exhaustion in the fields, or slowly starving to death in some forgotten corner of the realm, while Alyssa's only real trouble that day had been having to wear a green dress for a few hours.
She undid her braids with no ceremony at all, not even bothering to smooth her hair out afterward. Her head ached from having it bound up for so long. Perhaps, she thought with a touch of dark humor, the simplest thing would be to cut it all off until she was completely bald. She took her now-rested feet out of the warm water, dried them carefully, and walked over to collapse onto the bed. She did not have to wait long before her body began to demand movement. That body of hers, as stubborn as she herself was, always called for a nighttime walk, and that night was no exception. She should have thought of it before undoing her braids: now her loose hair brushed against her knees, and that irritated her at once. With all the laziness in the world, she set about gathering it into a single thick braid and let it fall over her shoulder, toward the front. She put on some lilac-colored dress, whatever came to hand, and a pair of flat shoes, among the few she had been allowed to keep for the journey. She opened the door and paid no mind at all to the guards posted to watch over her room.
She wanted to go to the beach. She could not stop thinking about Laenor, about his crisis, about his loss. She wanted to know what it felt like to love a family member, a brother, so much that for a few moments the line between wanting death and wanting life grew blurred, almost indistinguishable. She had no intention of taking her own life, that much was clear to her, but the mere curiosity of the sea against her skin was consuming her from within. She was not a Velaryon; the sea did not call to her. Perhaps, she thought, the day Aegon died she would discover that, deep down, she had loved him after all, and it would be devouring fire that called to her instead. Though she doubted very much she could come out of that as unscathed as Laenor had.
She reached her destination and, before anything else, took off her shoes to feel the sand beneath her feet. It gave her a pleasant tingle. Then, standing on the shore, she realized that wet feet were about as refreshing as drinking mud, though that did not stop her from giving in to submerging the rest of her body. She had not brought a change of clothes. She could not afford to soak the ones she was wearing if she hoped to return to the castle unnoticed. She undid her braid. She already hated it. She took off her thin nightgown and waded into the cold water. It was freezing. Very freezing. She was certain that, upon returning, she would sit by the hearth for a long while. She waded until the water reached the middle of her body, just as she had seen her cousin do only hours before. She hoped to find some clarity. Something like catharsis. She hoped to find an answer as to whether she should marry Aegon. She hoped to know whether she should run away. Burn more dresses. Marry soon, or never marry at all. Kill her father. Speed up the course of things.
Before she could think it over any further, her neck was already submerged, completely soaked. Only her head showed above the surface, and her hair floated around her like a dark cloak. She had heard, as a child, legends of beings half fish, half woman, creatures that made the bottom of the sea their home. Some said they were beautiful beyond all comparison. Others swore they were hideous, and that their voice alone was enough to drive mad anyone who heard it. Even so, Alyssa found it hard to believe that the sea could truly hide beings who called such vastness home. She, certainly, did not feel at home within those waters. She felt, if anything, more lost than ever.
Alyssa liked to swim. She recalled, in particular, a time she had escaped the castle. Her mother had been more tiresome than usual, after it came to light, as gossip within those walls, that Rhaenyra wished to betroth her eldest son to Helaena. To Alyssa, at the time, that had meant nothing at all. At least Helaena would come to be queen, and at least Jace seemed, for now, a good-hearted boy. That fate, she had thought then, was better than the one awaiting her own future. But what mattered was not that, but that the rumor had led her mother to encourage — or rather allow — her grandfather's wish to settle into a grand proposal: to marry Helaena to Aemond, and Alyssa to Aegon. Marrying between twins struck Alyssa as an abomination, though, deep down, she suspected that rejection stemmed less from tradition itself and more from the fact that her own twin was far from good husband material.
With her head a tangled ball of thoughts, she had run off that time. She had no intention of fleeing entirely, of course, not truly; she was no fool. But she had needed to clear her head for a while, and she had managed it, at a nearby lake. She remembered having met a boy there, perhaps Aemond's age, who was trying to hunt some rabbit in the area. He had taught her to swim, and she, in exchange, had given him her green brooch, half payment, half genuine gift. She never saw him again on the visits she made to the lake afterward. She wondered, more than once, whether giving him the brooch had been a mistake, not so much for her own sake, but because that sudden absence could mean so many things, good as well as bad: perhaps he had died, or perhaps, thanks to the money the brooch had fetched, he no longer needed to hunt rabbits ever again. Or, then again, perhaps he had simply died.
She lowered her head until she was fully covered by the sea. The water there was different from that of the lake, thicker and considerably colder. Driftmark had little to do with King's Landing, and the cold already beginning to seep into her bones made that plain without mercy. She raised her head to breathe, and lowered it again at once. She did not realize how badly she had misjudged until she could no longer make it back to the surface. Her arms had gone still, and her legs barely moved, unable on their own to keep her afloat. In the midst of her panic, she opened her mouth to scream. In life, Alyssa had always been considered a chatterbox. She was not shy in the least. She spoke when she should, when she should not, and would even talk to stones if no one else cared to listen to her. She opened her mouth meaning to say something, anything, but instead of words, all that managed to get in was water. She coughed, and coughed, and coughed again. She was drowning all the same. She could not kick. She could not thrash. She felt made of stone. She was stone. She had not been carved and cast into the sea in some solemn ceremony, like Laena. No one would watch her from the shore, like Laenor. She was no Velaryon, but, through sheer stupidity, she would die as if she were.
She closed her eyes to stop seeing the blue surrounding her. She closed her eyes to grow accustomed, little by little, to the black that was drawing near. She never heard another body fall into the water, right behind her. Nor did she feel the exact moment strong arms seized her and dragged her out of the water. How could she have felt it, when by the time rescue arrived, Alyssa already found herself far closer to death than to life, so close that one might well doubt whether that rescue would arrive in time.
Alyssa did not know how much time had passed since she closed her eyes, but she remembered clearly having been submerged in the depths of the water, not lying on the sand as she was now. She felt her skin damp, which made the sand stick to her everywhere, clinging to every inch of her body. And suddenly she was in the air, though she rode no dragon. Her egg, after all, had never hatched, just like her siblings'. She touched neither ground nor sea. She was simply flying.
She was vomiting.
She was on the ground, suddenly, again. She then heard a clear voice, cursing with contained fury.
"Fuck" and something more, in a tongue she could not quite make out. She knew, without quite knowing how, that it had been some unkind name directed at her.
Alyssa finally opened her eyes, and kept vomiting, and coughing uncontrollably. She had to turn onto her side to manage it with some dignity, and once she finished, she let herself fall back onto the sand again, utterly exhausted.
"Are you out of your mind, woman?" The voice sounded furious, laden with a fear it tried to hide behind anger. He took the princess by the arms and pulled on them until he got her to sit up. "Did you wish to die and never be found?"
She had trouble recognizing the face of the man before her. Her first instinct was to raise her hand and try to touch his face, as though she needed to confirm with her fingers what her eyes had not yet managed to make out. It embarrassed her a little to take so long to recognize her own blood. She laughed, and her laugh came out dry, broken, and at once, from the lack of balance still gripping her, she ended up falling forward, her face crashing against his chest. And right there she vomited onto him whatever water still remained inside her. Again, she supposed, judging by the other "fuck" she heard escape her uncle's mouth.
"Tell me I am not naked on this beach, in the arms of my uncle, whose wife has just died."
That, oddly enough, was the only thing that managed to come out of her mouth. She did not mean to sound very logical; she truly could not. Alyssa thought the water must have damaged her brain. Perhaps forever.
"I have yet to hear a 'thank you' come out of that so ungrateful mouth."
Said Daemon, before finally letting go of Alyssa's arms, which she had little by little managed to straighten. She ended up falling backward anyway. A sigh of annoyance reached her ears. The girl was already almost fully regaining her senses, so she very much wanted to answer him with something just as sharp, but it was that sudden awareness of the place, and of the position she found herself in, that left her utterly speechless. All the more so when Daemon lifted her arms without ceremony and fitted the dress over her, with the delicacy of one who has no time for subtleties. He himself, afterward, took off his own coat to place it over her shoulders. Alyssa did not know for what reason Daemon had happened to be on that very beach, at the exact moment she needed him; but whatever the reason, she thanked it with all her heart.
"What were you doing here alone, at this hour, in the water like a fool?" Daemon asked, no longer shouting, though the edge in his voice remained the same. He sat beside her on the sand, not quite looking at her, his gaze fixed on his hand as it played with the sand.
"Swimming” Alyssa answered, her voice still hoarse from the water she had swallowed. "I do it well, or at least I used to, before tonight."
Alyssa fell silent for a moment, her gaze lost on the same spot he was watching.
"I didn't want to die. I only wanted to feel something different for a moment. I don't know if that makes sense to you."
Daemon looked at her then, sidelong, with an expression Alyssa did not want to read as pity, though it did not quite read as anything else either.
"More sense than I'd like to admit."
Alyssa pressed her lips together. She had no intention of thanking him, not him, not with that self-satisfied smile surely already forming on his face at the mere thought of it. But something in her chest, something more honest than her pride, needed to say it anyway.
"I am grateful to whatever it was that brought you here tonight." There was a short silence. "Not to you. But to that, yes."
Daemon let out a brief, dry laugh, the first genuine one to escape him since he had pulled her from the water.
"Then thank your savior, Rhaenyra” he said, simply, as though that required no explanation at all.
Alyssa stared at him, stunned, as the pieces fell into place in her head far faster than she would have liked. She felt secondhand embarrassment climb up her neck, and with it, a newly discovered disgust she had not asked to feel. She pulled the coat off her shoulders more roughly than necessary and shoved it back at him, all but throwing it at his chest.
"Keep it. I don't want to know what else it's been on tonight."
Daemon, far from taking offense, smiled with something akin to pride.
"Come” he said, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to help her up. "Before someone else notices the princess decided to take a nighttime bath with her widowed uncle, and then we really will have a scandal on our hands."
"That is not what happened” she stressed, with a bluntness that left no room for doubt. "Do not take this the wrong way, and do not be offended, uncle, but I would sooner run my tongue over sandpaper ten times than even consider such a thing."
"How could I take it as an offense, when you said it so sweetly?" The man's voice came out more bitter than he meant to let show.
The two of them walked the rest of the way to the Velaryon stronghold in silence. Alyssa, who could only manage to stay quiet if her tongue were cut out at the root, remained mute the whole way, her tongue still intact. Upon arriving, even though the princess was now decently dressed, anyone who saw the two of them together, at that hour and in that state, would suspect at once the circumstances that had brought them there. She also had no idea how long she had spent swimming, nor how long she had been missing. Perhaps the guards were already growing uneasy at not having seen her return. And the last thing Alyssa wanted, after a day as dreadful as that one, was to have to answer questions from her family.
But she was ambushed by no guard, but by her own sister. Alyssa tried, at first, to feign ignorance; she even pressed her lips together as if to whistle carelessly, though she parted them again before completing the gesture, thinking better of it. They had done nothing wrong, after all. If anything, it was Rhaenyra who had slept with their uncle, not her. Everything was fine.
It was not fine.
It was not fine at all.
Rhaenyra arrived in a hurry, almost running, with an urgency quite unlike her. In all the years Alyssa had known her sister, she had never seen her so visibly anxious. The elder princess barely spared her little sister a glance; instead, she fixed all her attention on their uncle. Alyssa expected any manner of reproach, any accusation, anything but what she was actually about to hear: that both their kids had clashed with Aemond, after the boy claimed Vhagar as his own.
How much time had she lost at sea?
Daemon and Rhaenyra hurried off. Together. Alyssa's feet stayed rooted to the ground, unable to follow them. That her brother Aemond had gotten caught up in a fight struck her as almost unreal. The boy was not combative by nature; his temperament, as far as she knew, had always been mild. Or had been, until that night. To be fair, Alyssa did not believe, not for a moment, that he had been the one to start it all. She smiled, faintly, despite the gravity of the moment. Her brother had claimed a dragon, and not just any dragon: he had claimed nothing less than the oldest and largest of all those still living.
Then she stopped smiling. This was a serious matter. She did not run through the halls because, simply put, she could not; though she already felt somewhat better, the princess was still off-balance and her legs trembled uncontrollably. Nor did she know which way to go. She had lost track of both her sister and her uncle within seconds.
A head then peered out from a half-open door and beckoned her to come in.
"Do you not know how to follow crowds?" was all he said, by way of mockery. A clumsy jab from a clumsy remark, pulled from an equally clumsy conversation. She was not quite sure why that managed to irritate her, but it did. She chose to ignore it and headed straight to where her brother was. She knelt beside him, slowly. His skin around the eye had been stitched together with tight, still-fresh sutures. She also saw Aegon, whom Alicent was scolding without pause, demanding he explain where he had been all night. Alyssa nearly laughed when her mother uttered the word "wine" with such contempt, but she held it in; she did not want, under any circumstances, for her mother to notice her just then.
Her hair was still wet, dripping onto the floor around her, though at that moment she hardly cared.
"Aemond..." She could not finish the sentence. The king, who had already been beside himself from the very moment he arrived, demanded a clear explanation of what had happened. Aemond, along with Rhaenyra's sons and Daemon's daughters, all began shouting at once, each defending their own version of events. Alyssa's head had begun to ache in earnest.
She nearly fell when she tried to stand, but managed to catch herself in time on the back of the chair Aemond was sitting in.
Alicent argued with the king, insisting that Rhaenyra's sons had tried to kill the young prince. That, Alyssa thought, might well be true. Rhaenyra shot back at once, claiming it was her own sons who had been attacked first, and that they had only sought to defend themselves however they could. Alyssa, to some extent, gave credit to that version too.
"Vile insults were levied against them" said the heir, in a voice that demanded an immediate answer.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Alyssa looked at her mother. Then at Rhaenyra. Then at Aemond. Then at Daemon.
Everyone kept talking. Shouting, rather. The queen was trying, without much success, to dodge the one question capable of costing her her head on a pike. But Alicent would not manage to avoid it for much longer, because, though the queen and the heir might spend the whole night tearing each other apart with words, the king only wanted to know one thing: where Aemond had gotten the idea that the king's favorite daughter's sons were, in truth, bastards.
The queen's face said it all. Alyssa could almost see the life draining out of her, little by little. Everything, in that instant, hinged on what Aemond chose to say. But he would never, as far as Alyssa knew him, dare speak against his own mother.
"It was Aegon."
The girl closed her eyes. When she opened them, she managed to catch her twin brother's eye. She knew he was drunk. She knew he was a fool. She knew he behaved inappropriately with the servants when he thought no one was watching. She knew all that, and much more. More than she should know, really, because there had been several times she had found him at the window. Even so, in that moment, she could not help but think of Laenor. The sea had not given her the answer she sought, because her blood did not carry the salt that ran through the veins of the Velaryons; hers carried fire, and at that moment it burned out of control. Targaryen fire. Or perhaps, simply, fever.
Before the king could turn on his eldest son, Alyssa opened her mouth. Her tongue was as sharp as ever, her lungs dry from swallowing so much water, and she felt an immense urge for everyone, absolutely everyone present, to go to hell at once. She looked her mother directly in the eye, something she rarely allowed herself to do with such firmness, and let the words come out before fear had a chance to stop them.
"It was not Aegon who put that idea in his head, father. Nor is Aemond to blame for repeating what he has heard his whole life. If you seek someone to answer for this... stop looking at your children, and start looking at your wife."
Alicent regained her composure almost at once and turned her face toward the king, ready to defend herself.
"I have never taught my children to bear false witness” she said, her voice firm, though a slight tremor betrayed her on the last word. "If Aemond spoke those words, it was because he believed them true, my king. Not because I ordered him to say them."
"When one seeks understanding and care from someone, one ends up deciding that their word is sacred, and their deeds, the law itself."
The king took several moments to answer. His gaze remained fixed on Alicent, as though searching, in some corner of that no-longer-so-young face, for the girl he had married so many years before. Then, slowly, it settled on his daughter: her nightgown still damp and clinging to her body, her hair loose and dripping onto the tiles, her chin raised with a firmness that admitted no apology. For one fleeting instant, something in that image brought to mind a young Rhaenyra, standing before him in just the same way, years before, demanding to be heard.
"You think you know the world because you listen behind doors” said the queen, her voice aimed directly at Alyssa. "But you are nothing more than a child."
"Enough." The king tried, with what little authority remained in his voice, to appeal to the only thing he knew how to invoke in moments like these: shared blood, the name of the house, the duty to forgive one another as family. He demanded apologies. He demanded good will. He reminded them all, equally, that their king spoke before their father did, and that none of them had the right to deny him that.
No one apologized. No one extended a hand. To yield, Alyssa understood, was to admit what each of them had done, and to admit it was to lose the battle. Whoever yielded first was, without question, the guilty one; and in that hall, every person had something they were willing to fight for to the very end.
"That is insufficient” said Alicent, with a coldness that cut off any attempt at reconciliation at the root. "Aemond has been damaged, permanently, My King. 'Good will' cannot make him whole."
"I know, Alicent, but I cannot restore his eye."
"No, because it's been taken. There is a debt to be paid. I shall have one of her son's eyes in return."
A murmur ran through the entire hall. Alyssa looked at her mother in genuine terror. This was a side of her she never showed in public: her fury, her resentment, her hatred, all carefully swept under the rug for years, but which, sooner or later, was always bound to erupt.
"He is your son, Viserys. Your blood."
Alyssa crouched down again beside Aemond and whispered in his ear, so quietly that only he could hear her.
"The king will do nothing. But mother will. Tell me, Aemond, did you gain anything tonight, after all?"
The queen then called for Ser Criston Cole, demanding he bring her Lucerys Velaryon's eye. Cole did not move. He might be a fool, a stubborn man, a bastard in his own right, but he was not foolish enough to attack the heir's son in front of the king, not even if he had wanted to.
It was Alicent herself who seized the dagger from the king's hands and ran, as fast as she could, toward Luke, who was hiding behind his mother. Rhaenyra grabbed her by the arms, and the two of them wrestled desperately. Alyssa understood then, with a smile she could not hold back, that all of this was, deep down, a cruel joke. There was no room there for Aemond, nor for Aegon. No one existed but Rhaenyra. It had not been the eye that had pushed her mother to the edge, but jealousy, something that, thinking it over, did not surprise her all that much. Her mother, for all her speeches, was nothing more than a bitter woman. And they, her own children, had never been anything more than instruments toward a greater end.
"What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law. While you flout all to do as you please. Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? It's trampled under your pretty foot again. And now you take my son's eye, and to even that, you feel entitled."
Alyssa looked at her brother. She took his hand. It was still cold.
"Exhausting, wasn't it? Hiding beneath the cloak of your own righteousness. But now they see you as you are."
Her sister was a bitch. Everyone knew it. And yet, with that single line, she managed to unsettle her mother in a way no one else had managed that night, and Alicent, with no words left to counter her, could only lash out. Blood at once welled up from the open cut on Rhaenyra's wrist. Had Alyssa been king, she would have kept her own word to the letter; but instead of cutting out the tongues of those who called her sister's sons bastards, she would have cut off the hands of whoever dared spill royal blood with their own.
Aemond gripped his sister's hand tighter.
"Do not mourn me, Mother. It was a fair exchange. I may have lost an eye but I gained a dragon."
At least Aemond had gained something that night. Alyssa, on the other hand, had not the slightest idea that her simple betrayal of her mother would, later on, carry consequences of its own.