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You’ve gone too far, Rhaenyra Targaryen had the audacity to say, making Alicent want to cry out in anguish.
Her husband’s Valyrian steel dagger hovered in the air between them. Everyone’s shocked eyes were on it, her poor boy's remaining eye tracking her. All the rest disappeared; Rhaenyra’s sons had as little presence as their absent supposed father. The world had narrowed to the two of them, joined in a deadly embrace. She realized she was the one holding the knife.
“I?” she asked incredulously. The dagger wavered. “What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law—”
Rhaenyra’s eyes flickered to the blade and back again. Alicent strained against her fingers as she held her wrist. Rhaenyra had been stronger than her since childhood, but she was possessed of a mother’s fury.
“—While you flout all to do as you please.”
“Alicent, let her go,” Viserys said. It struck her that he used none of his authority to do the right thing. How could he be expected to protect the realm when he failed to defend his own son? It would always be Rhaenyra over her and over their children until death put an end to his choosing. And Rhaenyra would never put anything else first.
“Where is duty?” she demanded. “Where is sacrifice? It’s trampled under your pretty foot again.”
“Release the blade, Alicent,” said her father.
For once, she refused to listen. She was digging into Rhaenyra’s arm, and she longed for a pound of flesh, to take instead of being taken from. Rhaenyra’s other hand was on her neck, her thumb like a stain upon her throat.
“I’m flattered you think any part of me is pretty,” Rhaenyra said in a low voice. Her expression was cool, but within her gaze, a challenge simmered.
Heat rose to her cheeks. “That’s not what I—you jape even now.”
“Do I?”
She looked to the blade, then jerked forward and smothered her mouth with her own. Her entire body went rigid in response, the dagger clattering to the floor. Rhaenyra’s eyes were closed as she maneuvered to her outstretched, empty hand and pulled it down, squeezing it hard. It was an intimate mirage. She wouldn't do such a thing, not in front of their family. Not amidst an outrage.
Lightning pulsed from Rhaenyra’s lips to hers, awakening her numb flesh. The new sensation took hold of her and shook her by the soul as she remained locked in place, her feet rebelling against the urge to leap back. She gripped her with white-knuckled fingers to weather the storm. She was rapidly coming alive. Her eyes had shut to blot out the shapes of witnesses surrounding them like the audience at a mummer show, while her lips opened fully and began to move with Rhaenyra’s. What did Rhaenyra want? To drain the life from her, to suck her prey dry as Ser Criston had accused her of doing? Alicent returned the kiss to steal some of it back, as if she could tear out a piece of freedom through her mouth.
She gasped into Rhaenyra for breath, for life, when a tongue slid itself deep inside. She is a whore, Alicent reminded herself after her surprise. No doubt she knows all a harlot’s tricks. Rhaenyra's mouth lied even when she wasn’t speaking, capturing hers like they were lovers. But she kept kissing her as though she had no room for anyone else.
The only other kisses she had endured were the feeble kind from her lord husband, and he had called her by the wrong name. Though father and daughter were both Targaryens, only one radiated heat. She felt it as their bodies melted into each other, her hand burning where it cupped Rhaenyra’s back. She felt it through the crinkled dark fabric of her gown, through the texture of her tongue. Suddenly, she remembered her position and ripped herself away, biting Rhaenyra’s lip hard enough to draw blood. Rhaenyra ran her tongue along it before adopting a small, self-satisfied smile.
“How dare you?” Alicent asked furiously, making a show of wiping her mouth.
Rhaenyra gave her a knowing look. “Now they see you as you are.”
She felt like she had been stripped bare. Her eyes darted across the room to take in the sea of faces illuminated by firelight. They had all hardened toward her. Ser Criston looked on the verge of vomiting, Viserys more ill than usual. Aegon had gone slack-jawed like a dunce, which would have amused her under lighter circumstances. If only she could erase her mistake, scrub it clean. They saw, they knew, and she was condemned.
“Do not mourn me, Mother,” Aemond said, seemingly detached from the brewing scandal. “It was a fair exchange.”
She brought her attention to the ugly wound that once held his eye, bright and full of wonder.
“I may have lost an eye, but I gained a dragon.”
Any other child would have been devastated by the loss, not treated it as a bargain struck in the street. She saw through his attempt to comfort her, his stiff upper lip. It added insult to injury that he was forced to be the bigger man when he was still small. His disfigured face was serene.
“This vile display ends here,” Viserys said. What about morality, Alicent wanted to say, but she had lost the right. Her outburst had seen to that. She licked her lips, but could only taste shame. When Rhaenyra made her advance, she should have drawn back to cover herself with a shroud of decency. Her crime of assault would be weighed against the princess’s degeneracy, and she might have emerged the victor. Instead, she won nothing except a feeling she thought she had buried along with the rest of her youth.
Lord Corlys stood with Rhaenyra, as did Daemon. The rogue prince eyed her thoughtfully, unlike the dismissiveness coming off him in waves whenever she was in his vicinity. She had the sense he was estimating her for the first time, though she lacked the nerve to stare back. Ser Criston retrieved the dagger from where it had fallen and shot her a look of confused betrayal as he rose. She almost said something to him, but the words died in her throat. Anything she had to say would have come out wrong.
Alicent wanted to scratch at her nails, another craving she thought she had purged. Aemond leaned into her chest and held her hand before she could start to pick, looking across the divide to Rhaenyra and her boys. Jace and Luke were forlorn mirrors of each other. Their mother was shameless, staring her down amongst her supporters and carrying none of the blame for kissing her first. The bulk of it lay with her for her attack; they would be whispering madwoman soon enough. She stroked her son's soft silvery hair to soothe herself. Time would diminish Aemond’s scars, and he could cover the wound with an eyepatch, but there was no masking the chasm between their households. They would never be the same again.
“Alicent,” Viserys said sharply.
She bowed her head in deference to her husband and followed him as he hobbled out of the silent hall with Aegon behind her. The feel of Aemond's hand in hers was all she could bear to focus on considering what had just transpired. Meanwhile, Rhaenyra's eyes bored into her back, passing judgment. The weight of it crushed her like her husband’s body.
It made her feel sick to the core.
Viserys said nothing on the way back to their chambers, stayed as still as a corpse when she hugged Aemond tight and kissed a stitch on his brow. At least he could live with no regrets. His brother squinted at her with a silent question in his eyes but accepted her love nonetheless. She had recently walked in on his experimentation, crude youthful fumblings. She hoped Aegon of all people could forget whatever it was she had done with Rhaenyra. It was a sinful error, a lapse of decorum, madness brought about by great stress. It would not define her.
Once she was alone with Viserys in the chill of his displeasure, she decided she had to say something.
“I’m so sor—”
“Don’t, Alicent,” he sighed. “Just don’t.” He shuffled out of his clothes and went to bed facing the other wall. She heard a laborious gasp and then halting, conscious breaths. Alicent wondered what he could be thinking, which of her actions earned more of his ire: assaulting his daughter, or allowing her kiss? She lay on her back for some time with her hands on her stomach and formed twin prayers.
One to the Father, for justice.
One to the Mother, to keep her family whole.
(When she next sees her father, he asks her if she means to destroy them. She apologizes until her mouth goes numb and secludes herself for a very long time.)