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It was a long while before Rhaenyra faced Alicent again. Not simply because even the thought of seeing her churned Rhaenyra’s stomach, but because Alicent was avoiding her.
That made sense. Rhaenyra supposed if it had been announced unexpectedly that she was to wed Otto Hightower, Rhaenyra may not want to face Alicent’s wroth either.
No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Because Alicent was rarely wroth, whereas Rhaenyra had never been afraid of making someone angry. If their roles were reversed, Rhaenyra could not imagine a version where she wouldn’t have told Alicent what was happening, wroth be damned. Because Alicent must have known, mustn’t she? How long had Alicent been looking up toward Rhaenyra’s father, over Rhaenyra’s own head? And how much of this had been her own design?
Perhaps Alicent’s lack of wroth was the problem. If she had been angry, if she had thrown a fit, would she be where she was now? If she had just said, loudly and firmly that she did not want this—because how could she?—then the problem would not exist. And Rhaenyra could not fathom meekly giving in to a plot of this magnitude. Not one that had the potential to harm Rhaenyra herself, if what Princess Rhaenys told her proved to be true. No friend would do that. Certainly not one as special as Alicent had been.
As Alicent was. As she was. Rhaenyra clung to that thought, sitting dumbly by the mirror in her chambers. The same place Alicent had dressed her when she’d been declared heir to the throne, only half a year ago. It felt like an eternity now, and she ached for the ease they’d had between them then. She didn’t know if it was possible to ever have that back. And that stung like a thousand nettles in her skin.
Rhaenyra was aghast. Rhaenyra was in pain. But mostly, Rhaenyra was betrayed, and she wasn’t even sure whom she felt most betrayed by: her best friend or her father.
The night of the king’s announcement, Rhaenyra took her supper in her room and did not emerge from her chambers until morning.
❂
For a week after, Rhaenyra prowled the halls of the Red Keep. She walked voraciously, never pausing to dally and speak with anyone, rarely even bothering to reply when someone spoke to her by name. Least of all to her father, whom she simply pretended was not there at all.
But she walked and she walked and she walked, knowing that at some point Alicent would be there. She could not hide forever, and Rhaenyra had no interest in stooping to call Alicent to her chambers as she once had so liberally. Rhaenyra was the injured party. If Alicent wanted to make things right by her, she could very well find her own way to Rhaenyra’s door.
But she hadn’t. No one had come calling on her that first night nor the next two nights after. Not Alicent, not her father, not anyone. Rhaenyra had never felt so utterly alone, and with no other recourse to show her distress, she took to the halls.
Alicent managed to hide for an additional few days. It was clearly hiding, as well, seeing as Rhaenyra found her cowering under a staircase in an abandoned part of the castle, as if hoping the other girl would stomp blindly past her. But Rhaenyra would always notice her. It had been a gift, before, when she could pick out her best friend in any crowd in King’s Landing. But now Rhaenyra had this terrible image of the future where it was nothing but a curse.
Rhaenyra did not speak. She thought she would have a great deal to say once she got Alicent alone for the first time since the engagement, but she was wrong. All the hurt she felt, all the pain—there were no words to explain that. She could only stop at the stairwell and turn deadened eyes toward her friend.
“Rhaenyra,” Alicent said quietly. There was an anxious thrum to her voice that made a flare of anger burst to life in Rhaenyra’s chest. Rhaenyra did not want Alicent to be anxious or small or uncertain. She wanted Alicent to be bestial, to howl and rage with the same ferocity that Rhaenyra had been feeling this past week. She did not want timidity.
“I trusted you,” Rhaenyra managed, the words soft and choked with anger.
“I’ve done nothing to betray you,” Alicent said, though the thin, reedy quality to her voice seemed not to agree. “I did not know he was going to announce that—”
“Did you not?” Rhaenyra snapped back. She took a step close to Alicent, crowding her further back under the staircase, into the shadowed darkness there. “You knew you had been summoned to the small council for a reason. You knew it had something to do with the king. You had been courting him this entire time—”
“It wasn’t a courtship,” Alicent protested, taking a step back at Rhaenyra’s approach.
“Try again,” Rhaenyra forced out. Against her will, tears sprung up in her eyes. She did the best she could to stop any from falling. The last thing she needed was the final humiliation of being brought to tears before her once-friend. More than a friend. The girl she’d thought she’d face the whole world with. The girl she’d wanted to take up into the sky on Syrax, to share every worldly wonder they could find with. A girl she wasn’t certain she still recognized. “Because you can’t convince me my father chose you, of every girl at court, with no forewarning. There were better matches at hand and yet he still chose you. That speaks of some intimacy, does it not?”
“Truly, it was not like that. I never had any intent—” Rhaenyra scoffed, but Alicent continued on, “—to court him. It was not my dream to be your mother, Rhaenyra. I only sought to comfort him in the aftermath of your mother’s death.”
“As you sought to comfort me?” Rhaenyra said, so venomously that Alicent flinched.
“You were both in such pain,” Alicent said quietly. Her eyes shifted down, away from Rhaenyra’s. Whether that meant she was lying or simply couldn’t look Rhaenyra in the eyes, she did not know. “And I had come to think of your family like it was my own. I did not question the impulse.”
“Well,” Rhaenyra laughed humorlessly. “I wished you’d considered us less like family, if I’m being honest.”
“The king must remarry,” Alicent said, a note of irritation finally entering her voice. Good. Rhaenyra wanted to see her angry. “Is it truly so terrible that it is going to be me?”
“Is it truly so terrible?” Rhaenyra repeated incredulously. She took another step closer, and another, until Alicent’s back was pressed against the wall and Rhaenyra stood just a hairsbreadth away. Nowhere to escape now. Rhaenyra leaned her head in close, their breaths mixing as she lowered her voice to speak in Alicent’s ear. “I wanted you, Alicent. You know I did. In what way do you imagine I would be unaffected by your presence in my father’s bedchambers?”
When Alicent’s eyes met hers, they were icy cold. “You never had any need to be concerned about the future, Rhaenyra,” she said. “I did. And what lay between us was without a future. You know it, as do I. I have to find some path for myself, don’t I? And that path cannot be you.”
It was at that moment Rhaenyra realized that she had misjudged Alicent. She had been watching and waiting for her to come alive with rage the way Rhaenyra did, to spit fire like a dragon. But Alicent was no dragon, and her anger was not a thing made of fire. It was made of ice, and her steely glare would have frozen any lesser woman where she stood.
Rhaenyra still stood so close she could lean in just slightly and steal a kiss if she so pleased. She could practically feel the phantom touch of Alicent’s lips on hers, the memory of summer days past. Despite the anger simmering between them, she thought Alicent must feel it too, because she swayed forward, allowing their lips to brush ever so briefly against each other before she pulled away.
It was a cold kiss. Rhaenyra had never imagined that a kiss could be cold. She knew better now.
“Well,” Rhaenyra said, softly cutting. “Then I suppose this is where you and I end. But remember that I wasn’t the one who did this to us. That honor belongs to you, Mother.”
Alicent shook her head and looked away, clearly unamused by Rhaenyra’s lambasting. They had both pulled on their armor, facing each other like knights in the arena. Rhaenyra wondered if this was what it would be like for the rest of their days.
With one last look, Rhaenyra turned and left Alicent behind.