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When you were two and ten, you prayed to the Seven and thanked them for not giving Rhaenyra a brother.
It was a selfish prayer. You didn't want her to be taken away. You didn't want her to be married. She was your best friend, the only person you ever needed in the world.
It was a selfish prayer.
It was, perhaps, the last time you were ever selfish.
The thing is, you don't understand. You don't understand why, or what. You don’t know what is happening to you, because you don't know this kind of love.
You know the songs your mother sang you to sleep with, and you know how to sew fine embroidery, and you know how to keep your face without emotion at court. You know the exact amount of steps from your bedchamber to Rhaenyra’s, and you know that when you wear her favourite dress the fabric is too tight, and your chest aches so much you can't breathe.
You know your favourite kind of Arbor Red, but you don't really like the taste, so Rhaenyra takes the cup from you and sticks her pinky out and does an impression of your father as she drinks it. You laugh so hard your tears run all over your cheeks, and you want these to be the only kind of tears you ever shed for her.
“Will you cry at my wedding?” she asks, as she dabs at your cheeks with a dragon embroidered handkerchief.
You don't tell her about your prayer. Instead, you smile. “I can't imagine you getting married,” you say. “Who would you even wed?”
“I don’t know,” she says, in a way that tells you she already has an answer. Your heart thuds, strong. Your chest is still tight, even though you're not wearing her dress anymore.
She traces shapes on the back of your hand. You turn it over and lock your fingers with hers.
“Come on,” you say. You don’t want to hear the answer. You do want to hear the answer. You want to stare it in the face, and think of all the ways you can defeat it.
“It's silly,” Rhaenyra says. Her cheeks are red, but she's watching you closely.
“Come on!” you repeat. “Who could be silly—wait, don't tell me it's Laenor Velaryon?”
“No!” she squeals, and she smacks your shoulder with your joined hands. “Gods no. Please, like he's ever looked at a woman in his life.”
“Rhaenyra!” you gasp. She rolls her eyes.
“What? It's so obvious! He's too busy—” she starts giggling “—too bus– sorry. Too busy p— Sorry! Too busy polishing other men's swords—” she dissolves into a fit of laughter, and so do you, again, and your ribs hurt, and your cheeks hurt from smiling and your chest hurts, and you never want to be away from her again.
She dabs her eyes, and you both lie down together, opposite each other like a pair of closed parentheses. There is nothing between you except your hands. Rhaenyra takes yours from where you hold them against your chest, and places them above her heart.
Her skin is warm through the silk of her dress.
“Who do you think you'll wed?” she asks you, instead.
“I don't know”, you say. You don't say ‘I don't care, as long as they stay at court and we can keep being like this’, because that seems preposterous. You don't say ‘I don't think about marriage because it would take me away from you’, because that sounds even worse.
“You would be a good wife, Alicent,” Rhaenyra says. Her heart beats a little faster beneath your palm. You try not to think about how soft her breast is. “Unlike me.”
“That's not true,” you say. “Whoever marries you will be the luckiest man in the realm.”
She laughs, small, one corner of her mouth upturned.
“What about Prince Daemon?” she asks. It is like she has dropped a hot coal into your mouth. You swallow it whole, unasked. Your throat burns.
“His grace would never allow it,” you say. It's the best you can do. You do not like Daemon. You have never liked Daemon.
Rhaenyra sighs. “I know.”
(You will never like Daemon. Your father despises him, and as you grow you learn your father’s words are snake’s words, laced with sweetness and venom. But your father was right about Daemon. He is an insidious man. You will never like Daemon.)
“There must be someone else,” you say.
She pouts. Chews her bottom lip, then shrugs.
Her breast is soft beneath your palm. There will never be anyone else.
This is your duty, you tell yourself. This is your duty. You are a good woman. You have done what your father asked you to, and tomorrow you will wed the King.
“You will make a good queen,” Rhaenyra tells you. You know every one of her expressions, but you cannot read her. You have never seen her look this way, and you never will again.
You clasp her hands in yours. “I don’t know how to be a queen,” you admit.
“I don’t think anyone does,” she says. “But I know you. There’s not a person in the Seven Kingdoms who couldn’t adore you.”
You take a breath, and something wells within you. A single red leaf falls from the weirwood above. The Old Gods watch as she asks you to promise her this:
“Look after him, will you?”
And you tell her yes, because you could never say anything else.
She trusts you to love her father, but the truth is you love her, and this is a truth that cannot be spoken.
She trusted you to love her father, and you did. He is kind, as she was. He is good, as she was. He loves someone else, as she did.
You know. You know.
Viserys rots from the inside. His soft flesh gives way to his soft bones, peeling back and revealing all the tender parts of him that remind you of her.
She trusted you to love her father. You love her father. You love your husband. You love the King. You care for him even as he wastes away. She hates you, and you hate her, and she betrayed you, but you care for him.
At your last dinner, you care for him. You love him. You love her. You tell her you love her, in the only way you can. In the secret language you used to share when you’d hide your hair in your hoods and sneak into the kitchens and steal hot pastries off the counters.
Language changes. The words come out wrong. Your smile is wrong. There are crow’s feet around her eyes, and her husband watches you, and you have never liked him, and your husband watches you, and you know he loves you, but it's not the right kind of love.
It’s not the love you had for her. Ten. Twenty years ago. Sitting beneath the weirwood together. You could have kissed her. What stopped you? Was it these shackles you have locked yourself in? Was it the hot coal she pushed down your throat?
Still: you are a good wife. You are a good woman. You do your duty. You keep your promise.
*
Your son kills her son.
Your son kills her son.
Her son took your son's eye.
A mother loves her children more than anything.
Your son kills her son.
Blackwater Bay churns. Helaena looks more like her father than you. Wary, wasting. Losing track of time. She says Aemond will lose his eye, and you remind her he has already lost it. She says Aegon is hiding, but you dragged him from his whorehouse yesterday. She says she sees the dragons die, and Lucerys Velaryon is at the bottom of Shipbreaker Bay.
You think, somewhere on Dragonstone, you can hear Rhaenyra weep.
You sit in Rhaenyra’s bedchambers. You pour yourself a cup of wine, and you stick your pinky out, and you cry so hard your entire body threatens to fall apart. You still hate Arbor Red, and you still love her, and your son killed her son, and the whole realm will fall into a war that she hates, and you hate, and her father would have hated.
She has his heart, you think. Good, and warm, and striving for a peace that is now impossible. She has your heart, but you are not sure what good it is, and you gave it to her far too late.
Maybe if Rhaenyra had had a brother, this never would have happened. She would have wed him, and you could have been happy. You could have been friends, still.
Instead you prayed selfishly. Instead you did something for yourself, and in the end you cost everyone everything.
You kneel in the sept. You clasp your hands together. The sunlight pierces through the glass, scattering a thousand rainbows on the tiles before you.
You wonder if she prays for you.
You decide, in the end, that it doesn’t really matter.