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Confíteor Deo omnipoténti et vobis, fratres, quia peccávi nimis cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa.

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.

There is a banging on the door whilst they are in Council. Rhaenyra is almost of a mind to ignore it; she means to fight a war, she is planning to fight a war, she does not have time for idle trifles and disrespect shown to the seriousness of the matter. But the banging continues, and continues, until she motions for whoever it is to be brought in. Maester Gerardys all but sprints into the room, looking more wild eyed than Rhaenyra has ever seen him before. 

"Your Grace." His voice is graver than she has ever heard it either. "I have news from King's Landing." 

Shamefully, crawling up from some dark, secret place, her first thought flies to Alicent. An urgent message from the capital, could anything have happened to her? Rhaenyra nearly opens her mouth to ask, her mind already racing with images of a bier, built small for Alicent's slender delicacy, rolling through the streets, before she composes herself. She is a girl no longer; she cannot immediately look to Alicent Hightower, who is no longer a friend but the mother to an enemy. And there are many reasons why missives come from King's Landing. Perhaps her traitorous brother has renounced her throne upon realizing the harshness of rule. Perhaps the populace has risen against him. Perhaps Daemon's mark was true and One-Eye was slain. 

She dares not hope for it; Gerardys's countenance speaks to calamity, not relief. 

"What news?" Jace asks from his place by her side. 

Gerardys sucks in a breath. "Your nephew, Your Grace, the Prince Jaehaerys, is dead." Rhaenyra takes a moment to place him. Jaehaerys, the boy of the twins born to Aegon and Helaena. Barely older than her own Aegon, a small thing, but sweet to look on, from the little she saw of him when she was last at the Red Keep, watching him reach his arms from his mother to his father. She remembers the smile on her traitor brother's face, when he pecked at his son's cheek, the surety with which Helaena held her boy, and her heart pangs with a phantom ache, a twin to the gnawing pit that has been her Luke's absence. 

"How?" she asks. She bites back a crueler retort, a wonder at why this is a concern of her's. For whatever else, her half-siblings have lost a child, the cruelest torment to subject any parent to, no matter their litany of other faults. 

"He was slain," Gerardys says gravely. 

"Slain?" Someone on her Council sucks in a sharp breath as she repeats the word. "Why? Who would put a little child to the sword? For what purpose?" 

"Your Grace..." There is a hesitance on Gerardys's face now, and his eyes flit to her Queensguard, the shining blades of the swords that hang on their belts. 

"Speak freely, Maester," Rhaenyra says with a wave of her hand. "I would not mistreat you for simple reports." 

"Nothing has been truly confirmed," he cautions. "But there are stories, spread by all in the city, and they share commonalities. They say that it was two assassins, low men of Flea Bottom, who stole their way into the Red Keep by some nefarious means. That they knew your sister had a tradition of taking her three children to bid good night to their grandmother, your dear late father's wife, and so set a trap." Alicent. "They restrained the Queen Dowager and slew her bedmate, and lay in wait for their targets, barricading them all in the room as soon as they entered." They restrained Alicent, they attacked Alicent, Alicent, her Alicent. "It is there that they killed the boy, after threatening them all with death. There are whispers even that the mother was made to choose who to die, between the children." 

Rhaenyra hears Jace make a quiet, stricken sound next to her. When she turns to look at him, his face is ashen. "Cruelty," he whispers, aghast. "I grew up with Helaena, she is sweet, she is gentle, who would ever..." 

"The stories have another point of similarity, my prince," Gerardys says heavily. "That the assassins informed their victims, before striking young Jaehaerys's head from his shoulders, that this was retribution. That they named it a son for a son." 

An eye for an eye, a son for a son. Lucerys shall be avenged. 

Rhaenyra remembers those words, Daemon's scrawl on the parchment, having already departed to give her the revenge they both knew was needed. But that was not this. That could not be this. This is no retribution. A little boy, his head chopped off in front of his siblings, his mother, his grandmother, what justice could there be in that? An attack against her sister, against her Alicent, what comfort could she find in that? It had been Aemond and Vhagar to blame for the cruel demise of her boy, Daemon knew that, he had been the one to bring her that terrible message. He would not...He could not...

Rhaenyra feels as though her gown constricts her ability to breathe now, when Jace presses a hand to his face and Ser Alfred turns to stare at her with wide eyes. "Your Grace." His voice is shocked, horrified, and Rhaenyra bristles. 

"I had naught to do with this!" she declares hotly. "And I bid you think twice before you accuse your sovereign of cold murder, ser." 

"I do not accuse, your Grace," Ser Alfred says, clearly placating. "But you have suffered a terrible blow, a great loss. Perhaps the promise of vengeance —"

"Drove me mad?" she spits. "Are you suggesting, ser Alfred, that in my grief I was driven to order the decapitation of a child?" 

"An action taken in haste. In the aftermath of unfathomable —" 

Rhaenyra's fist comes down hard on the table. "Yes, unfathomable." She fights the dragon within her, the one that urges her to reach out and slap him for his insolence. She is his Queen; she must be shown as worthy of respect as he must show that he can give it. If she lashes out, he will merely take her for a child, not his leader. "The death of a child is a pain I know too well, having lost my own son, and you dare to suggest that I would inflict such a thing, inflict that very same torment, upon my sweet sister, of all people! Helaena is an innocent, and you would do well to mind yourself before you say that I would have her harmed for that in which she is blameless." 

Ser Alfred lowers his eyes. "My apologies, your Grace." 

A son for a son. The words echo within her ears, pound at her skull. Cutthroats in the Red Keep, telling their victims that she is the architect of their doom. As if Aegon's little boy could bring back her own, that one assassination could scrub the stain from the other, that unjust death is justice indeed. And others whispering it too, to the point where it has come to Dragonstone. To the point where others here may even see it as such. 

"This Council is dismissed," she says, already moving to leave. "Gerardys, any further news from the city, no matter how small, you come and tell me at once." He nods, his heavy chain clanking around his neck as he turns to go, before a thought comes to her. "Gerardys!" 

"Your Grace?" 

"The whispers that say that those men stole into the castle..." He nods. "Do they have any idea as to how?" 

Gerardys looks at her almost mournfully. "None, your Grace," he tells her. "All say it was as if they simply appeared in the Queen Dowager's chambers, like ghosts or rats." Rhaenyra thinks of the passages throughout the Red Keep, the secret tunnels to get from the city to the very interior, with none the wiser. She thinks of how Daemon was the one to tell her of their existence. To show her how to use them to sneak in and out of the castle, like a ghost or a rat. 

Rhaenyra is not entirely sure why it is Rhaenys she seeks out first and foremost. The Princess was never one for counsel or wisdom, ever since Rhaenyra was proclaimed heir, too embittered by the loss of the throne. And then later, too grieved by the death of Laenor. Rhaenyra feels a twinge in her chest at the memory. Is that all I am now? she wonders to herself, thinking on the litany of titles given to the Targaryen monarchs. Thinking that they all take on the responsibility of being, among other things, the Protector of the Realm. Thinking about what she is, now and forevermore. Is that me? A butcher of mother's sons? 

"Have you heard?" she asks as she enters. No preamble, no pleasantries. Not in this. 

Rhaenys's face is somber, almost sad. "Yes," she says simply. "The poor child. His poor mother." Rhaenyra's heart clenches. They all share something now, her and Rhaenys and Helaena. The loss of a son, the perpetuation of evil and violence. 

Rhaenyra thinks of Daemon, his honeyed voice, after Driftmark. He had said nothing to which she disagreed, nothing that she had not already thought herself, that Laenor's claim to Driftmark would forever be her's through Lucerys, that the marriage was unhappy, that with Harwin's loss she must either live forever in the celibacy required of a septa or take another lover and incur yet more sneers and snickers from the commons. But she has wondered, at times, if she would have gone as far as she had dared, had Daemon stayed in Pentos. If he had not been there, tantalizing as a fruit pie to a starving man, his fire setting her blood aflame, his touch scalding upon her bare skin, would she have languished with Laenor for the rest of her life? 

She made her choice. A foolish choice, made by a foolish woman who had no care for the pain she would inflict, but a choice all the same. 

"It was not me," she says quietly now. Rhaenys stares at her. "If you have heard the news you no doubt know what the stories say." A son for a son. 

"I believe you," Rhaenys tells her. Rhaenyra is shocked by the relief that floods in her at that. "I fear, though, that the realm may not." And Rhaenyra knows that she is speaking true in that. Already the people of King's Landing think her a murderess, and no doubt others will as the rumors spread. "This weakens you, Rhaenyra." 

"I know." The weight about her shoulders feels heavy, impossibly heavy, the same heaviness she felt when Alicent first placed the cloak she wore to her investiture upon her shoulders. "I fear..." She stops, twists the rings on her fingers, feels the agitation shifting under her skin. "I fear what this has all wrought, within the realm."

Not just the murder of little Jaehaerys and the burgeoning consequences, but more. What all of this, this war that shifts ever closer, will do to them all. 

"I know you are to patrol the Gullet with Meleys," Rhaenyra says carefully. "But I have need of you before that. Anywhere you can, deliver my message, that what happened to Prince Jaehaerys was a tragedy, an affront, a crime. That I grieve for my father's children." Alicent's children, a traitorous voice whispers in her mind. Children that might have been your's, if you had been born the boy Viserys desperately craved and Otto Hightower could sate his ambitions with you. She had thought it often enough, in the early years of her father's second marriage, as Alicent's belly oft swelled with child and she seethed at the injustice.

Alicent was her's, but her father took her. And if Rhaenyra had been a prince, her mother would still be alive and Alicent would still belong with her. They would be wed, they would have children. Aegon could have been her own son. 

"Tell all that what happened was done in my name but without my leave, without my approval." Jaehaerys could have been her grandchild. "And that I will endeavor, to the best of my ability, to find justice." 

"Will you?" Rhaenyra rears, ready to protest, but there is no judgment in Rhaenys's tone. A sad curiosity, and a hint at inquisition in her eye, but none of the harshness and disbelief that had soured their encounters after Laenor. After what she did to Laenor. 

"A Queen bears a responsibility to her people." Her father told her that the sovereign needed to protect Westeros. Her siblings by him count amongst that number, regardless of all else. "And neither Helaena nor any of her children deserved this." 

"Nor Alicent?" Rhaenys asks. 

Rhaenyra thinks of Alicent holding her in her arms after her mother's funeral. She thinks of Alicent cradling the infant Aegon to her breast. She thinks of Alicent's sneers at the birth of each of her own children. She thinks of Alicent's hand in her's after Daemon returned to court. She thinks of Alicent slicing her skin with the knife she wielded in defense of her son after he was attacked by her's. She thinks of Alicent's caress upon the scar. She thinks of Alicent taking her throne. She thinks of Alicent's conciliation and memories that she sent with her father. She thinks of Alicent's son killing her own. She thinks of Alicent watching her child suffer. She thinks of Alicent bloodied and assaulted in her name. She thinks of Alicent watching her grandson die. She thinks of Alicent's face, Alicent's smile, Alicent's eyes.

"Nor Alicent." 

Daemon is still in the wind. Rhaenyra prays that it is merely a long return, that he knows not that news has traveled out of King's Landing. Her father had always said that Daemon was unpredictable, and dangerous when out of sight. As a child she'd thought her father weak-willed and her uncle daring, but now...

Perhaps Rhaenyra was weak-willed too, merely in a different way. Weak-willed to Daemon, his charm, his hold on her, the kindness he would bestow, the gleam of his eyes. Weak-willed in that she closed her ears to the story of the man who had sliced his way through the smallfolk of King's Landing, the whispers of the state Rhea Royce was found in and the scattered pieces of her shattered, bloody skull all through the grass, the stories Rhaena told Jace and Luke of his absence in their upbringing in Pentos. Weak-willed in that she shut her eyes to his decision to send Baela away to Driftmark for ten years, to his abandonment of her in the city's brothel during their night of revelry, to the looks of disgust Jace would send his way at all opportunities. 

Weak-willed in that she did not see this man she married, this man who left her to suffer the loss of their daughter alone, who dared put his hands on her, his queen, who had given full-throated agreement and encouragement to her knowledge that Laenor Velaryon needed to die in order for them to be together. Weak-willed in that she did not see that he would take her grief and her rage and use it to settle age old scores, to attack innocents to fulfill his own prejudices. 

How often had Rhaenyra heard him rage about their blood being stained with Otto Hightower's? How often had she said nothing, remembering how the Hand had smiled at her one moment and then sent his own daughter, of an age with her, to her father's bed, to beget a son to usurp her claim? How little had she spoken against his mania when it came to the Hightowers and their perceived slights against him, when she thought of the dismissive wave of Alicent's elegant hand, the shining queen surrounded by her trueborn Targaryen sons, removing her stepdaughter from her presence with nary a word because Rhaenyra was now beneath her? 

She is no longer merely Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, but her Grace the Queen, the first of her name, but she feels still naïve as a child in this. She did not see a threat for what it was, blinded by lust and infatuation and even a form of love, and now her husband has murdered a little boy and stained her name and reign with it. 

"You were Daemon's paramour, in King's Landing, were you not?" Rhaenyra remembers that they called her more than just Mysaria. They called her the White Worm, they called her Lady Misery. It seems apt.

"Yes, your Grace." She knows she need not fear Mysaria, not with Ser Erryk at her back, not with Mysaria defenseless in her chambers and he with his blade at the ready should she even attempt to draw near. But Mysaria's was Daemon's, and she knows his secrets. That gives her power. "Though he has not touched me since you two were wedded." 

"I care little for that," Rhaenyra says with a shake of her head. She has always known that Daemon has wanted others, desired others, been with others, even after they said their vows on this very island. It means nothing to her now; if all she knew of him was that he had slid between the sheets of other women and fucked them rather than his sworn wife, she would be quite content. 

"Then what do you care for, your Grace?" Mysaria asks, in her lilting voice. 

"Did Daemon come to you before he left Dragonstone?" Rhaenyra asks. Mysaria nods. "What did you discuss?" 

"He wished for ways to come into contact with some denizens of King's Landing that we once knew, in our time together."

Rhaenyra takes in a deep breath. "What, specifically, was he looking for?" 

"In his words?" Mysaria tilts her head. "Someone cruel, and someone brutal. For a plan he meant to enact, as a consequence to the fate of your child." Rhaenyra is Queen, and as such she is able to fight her flinch. Whilst she grieved, Daemon and his once-mistress plotted to harm others in her name, with no care to her. To her suffering. To the suffering of others, to Helaena and her children. 

"You admit, then, that you knew," she says quietly. "You knew his intentions towards Prince Jaehaerys." 

"Towards one of Aegon Targaryen's sons," Mysaria responds. "To my understanding, your Grace, either would do." Rhaenyra remembers what Gerardys said. The rumors, that Helaena was made to choose which of her children must be put to the slaughter. She wonders if that was Daemon as well, another way to torture one of Hightower blood, or a game devised by that someone cruel he asked Mysaria to help him find. 

"You knew Daemon meant to commit murder," Rhaenyra continues. 

Mysaria looks at her for a long moment, and again Rhaenyra feels anger, blooming hot in her chest. There is no contrition, no regret on her face. She lived in the city long after Daemon had left, long after Rhaenyra herself had left even. She must have seen Helaena giving acts of charity to the people, seen little Jaehaerys's sweet face if he ever accompanied his mother, seen Alicent as she journeyed to the sept. And yet, Rhaenyra sees nothing in Mysaria's eyes. 

"I knew." 

Rhaenyra draws herself up, motions for Ser Erryk to step forward. "Then Ser Erryk, I will have you place this woman under arrest." She fixes Lady Misery with a glare. "You have conspired to commit a heinous crime, and upon finding out the scope of it you did not come to me, your lawful queen. I will not see you mistreated, but you will be kept under guard and made to answer for this." A child! she wants to scream. A little boy! He had barely lived and his blood stains the ground now! Stains you! Stains me!

Ser Erryk grabs Mysaria tightly by the elbow and begins to drag her away. To whatever credit can be given to her, she does not resist, does not struggle or shout or even condemn. Instead, she merely casts a glance to a stack of raven scrolls on a desk by the window, then watches Rhaenyra as she follows her eyes. 

"More instructions from Daemon?" Rhaenyra wonders, feeling a twinge of a sneer on her face. 

Something like a smile almost grace's Mysaria's. "Letters from the Queen Dowager Alicent Hightower, in truth," she says quietly. And Rhaenyra feels as she does whenever Syrax swoops sharply downward whilst they're in the air, her heart in her throat and her stomach falling to her feet.

Letters from Alicent. 

"Ser Erryk, send someone to fetch these to me and bring them to my chambers," she hears herself say. She thinks he responds with At once, your Grace, thinks she hears the sound of his and Mysaria's footfalls fading away. She sees them not, she just stares at the letters. There is one, half unfurled, and Rhaenyra recognizes Alicent's neat handwriting, the even strokes of her pen. Rhaenyra had never been able to make her writing half as fine, try as Alicent had to teach her the patience for it. She snatches the letter and begins the walk back to her rooms, wills herself not to unfurl it until she has her privacy. 

She lasts only half the journey before she ducks into an alcove. 

Rhaenyra, it reads.

I pray that this comes unexpected, and that I am the first to deliver this news to you, grievous though it is. My old companion, it pains me to inform you, and I hope it is I who informs you rather than another, that your son Lucerys Velaryon is dead. I will spare you the details, though if you seek them from me I will give them to you. I must beseech you to know that this was no design of our's. This calamity was entirely unexpected and undesired, and I swear to you, both I and my son, the King, are ready to give you as much recompense for this loss as we can. 

Rhaenyra, you were once dear to me, and I to you. And in that spirit, in the spirit of what we were to one another, everything that ever was between us, I beg of you not to act swiftly, to assume ill intent. I promise you, upon all the Seven, there was none. My heart aches for you and your family. If there was a way to reverse this course, that Lucerys might live, I would take it gladly, not only for the realm's sake but for your's. I wish for nothing more than that your son might be returned to you unharmed. I am heartsick at the thought of your pain.

Please, please do not allow this to steel your heart against us, or against peace. In the name of the love we both bore your late father. In the name of the love we bore each other in our girlhood. Please. I say prayers for your son nightly.

I am so sorry. 

Alicent

She reads the words, over and over, hungry for them, starving almost. In some macabre way, it feels as though they soothe something, as though they chase away a small part of the ache Luke's death has left inside her, the way it had been when she fell into Alicent's embraces after her mother's death. Rhaenyra looks up and realizes that she is near where Luke's room once was. Her cheeks are already damp with tears. 

Gerardys brings her news from King's Landing. They cry out in the streets for justice against Prince Jaehaerys's killers, she hears. Thousands wept as his little bier made its way to the pyre during the funeral, she hears. They called out for their beloved Queen Alicent, their dearest Queen Helaena, she hears. Hearts broke to watch the grieving mothers weep for their children, both dead and alive, she hears. The execution of every rat-catcher in the city is filled with throngs thirsting for blood, she hears. They blame her, she hears. They call her a monster, she hears. They call her a murderer, she hears. 

There are some who believe her words on it, especially as news of her actions against Mysaria spreads. But the Vale has grown colder towards her, no doubt remembering the fate of Rhea Royce, the Westerlands and the Reach and Stormlands more firmly lost than they ever were before, King's Landing, the very seat of her power, despises her to her bones, and even some on her Council still glance at her askance. Rhaenyra wants to scream at them sometimes, to say that it was not her, it was Daemon, Daemon, Daemon. She is the only among them who knows the depth of how it feels to lose a child; she cannot bear the idea of causing another such sorrow, causing innocents such sorrow, as Helaena has been cursed to endure. But a part of her knows that it would mean nothing, that they would see it as hysteria, a guilty woman attempting in vain to defend herself. Many of the lords on her Council would gladly believe the worst in members of her sex, Rhaenyra knows that all too well. They follow her because they swore an oath to her father, not for love of her. She must appear as much king as queen. As the rumors swell and the stories spread of Jaehaerys's final moments, it chafes her more and more. 

And then Ser Erryk is dead. Rhaenyra will always remember the horror of waking to the clash of swords against each other, watching as the two brothers dueled, unsure of which one was her protector and which was her assassin, knowing that this must be an attempt at retribution for Jaehaerys. She will always remember the brief fear that perhaps it was the villain who had won, only for Ser Erryk to turn away from the corpse of his brother, eyes wet with misery before going startlingly vacant. She will always remember how the moment of joy that he triumphed turned to ash on her tongue as he fell upon his sword, even as she rushed towards him. She will always remember how, despite being Queen, in so many ways she is still so powerless. 

She will always remember watching the blood of kin mingle on the floor of her bedchamber. 

They hold a funeral for Ser Erryk, even one for his traitorous brother, that they may always be together now, in death, and then Rhaenyra assembles her lords before her in the chamber of the Conquerors' Painted Table. She stares at the map of the realm, her realm, for a long time. 

"We must call a halt to the hostilities," she says, almost to herself. Her lords erupt all at once, even Jace looks at her aghast, and her hand smacks down hard on the table. "Silence!" For once, they listen. "Whatever war we thought this would be, it has become naught but a circle. The violence begets only more violence. Luke, Aegon's son, Ser Erryk and his brother, who comes now to avenge that? Or shall I send someone to take revenge for an attack on me? Where, pray, does it all end?" 

"With your Grace upon the Iron Throne, your throne," Jace says hotly. He is looking at her as he did when he was a boy, unsure and angry in the face of it and aching for a place to put it. Rhaenyra knows it well; she still recognizes it at times in herself. 

"My throne is a symbol of my greater fiefdom, my son," she says. "And that fiefdom is Westeros. My duty is to Westeros, all of Westeros. With every drop of blood spilled, I fail in that duty." She feels tired, wishes she could just shutter her eyes and rest her head. "The murder of Prince Jaehaerys does not return my Lucerys to me. It heals no wound, it eases no pain. I have no doubt that, had Ser Erryk's brother succeeded, Aegon and Helaena would still be mired in suffering just as they were before." 

"Then what do you mean to do?" Jace asks. "Surrender?" he spits the word as though it were a curse. 

"No." Even with all of this, this is still her throne. Her birthright. "But it cannot go on like this. You say you remember Helaena fondly, that you cared for her, do you imagine this will be the last she will suffer? That she may not incur more hurts as war goes on, perhaps even to the children that remain to her? Or that our side will suffer no further losses? Are you prepared, my boy, to lose friends, to lose family, in battle?" He remains tight lipped with unhappiness. "I remember your cavorting with the traitor Aegon, when you were boys, the affection you once had, are you truly prepared to bring about his death, by your own hands if needs be? Even further, you are a man grown." Her voice wavers in that, though mercifully it does not crack. "You would be expected to fight, to defend your own claim of your inheritance. Shall we lose you as well?" 

"Never, Mother," Jace says instantly, clearly without thinking. But it is hollow; Rhaenyra knows that, if war goes on, they could all die. Her boy, Rhaenys and Corlys, any number of allies that remain to them. And in war, innocents are so rarely spared. What could happen to Joffrey and little Aegon and Viserys? To Jaehaera and Maelor and Helaena? To Alicent? 

"In any case," Rhaenyra continues, taking a moment to squeeze her son's hand before turning back to her Council. "Grieved though I am for my murdered son, I am no longer the party most severely hurt in this conflict. To be seen to callously press my claim, without any attempt at peacemaking, will only lend further credence to the rumors that I orchestrated the atrocity done in the Red Keep."

To keep fighting for her throne, she must stop fighting for her throne. 

Rhaenyra paces for a day in her chambers, twisting her rings, wondering what to do. She has kept all dragons purely defensive. She has informed all allies that remain to her to stay their marches, though to still keep vigilant. She has written and scratched half a dozen missives, unsure what to say, what to even ask for. Dear brother, terribly sorry for the murder of your son, now please give me my throne that you stole? 

Little of what Rhaenyra could send would be a comfort to Aegon, she knows. He was still so little when the distance grew between her and his mother, with no recollection of the few times she had tried with him, earlier. It had been a fonder memory for her, a rare occasion where she allowed herself to take an interest in her father's son and listened to him attempt to babble out her name in clumsy baby speak, reaching his small hands to play with the loose curls of her hair. Rhaenyra remembers that she enjoyed it, balancing him on her knee, the sound of his laughter. It had been the first time she had wondered that perhaps she did want a child of her own, in spite of the dangers, in spite of the fate of her mother. 

Aegon will remember none of that.

"Your Grace." Maester Gerardys is unobtrusive as he enters. 

"What news?" Rhaenyra steels herself for more reports, more stories of how the people of her realm despise her for a killer of children. 

"Prince Daemon is soon to arrive," he says instead. "Caraxes has been spotted descending to the dragons' keep." Daemon will return. Daemon will be here momentarily, and Rhaenyra wants...

What does she want? She wants to scream and rage at him. She wants to go straight to him, heedless of who else is there, and pummel at his chest with her fists. She wants him to tell her that it is all lies and he ordered no such deed. She wants to ask him why, in the name of all the gods, he possibly thought he could do this. She wants him to show contrition and beg for her mercy. She wants him to fall on his sword the way Ser Erryk did. She wants, she wants, she wants...

Naught to do with Daemon. 

"Have men waiting for him as soon as he dismounts," Rhaenyra orders. "He is to be confined to his chambers, disarmed, under guard. No one sees him without leave of myself or the Prince Jacaerys in my absence." What Rhaenyra wants, she knows, is to be nowhere near Daemon at all. 

Rhaenyra imagines she can still feel the warmth of Syrax between her thighs, even now, in the sept. The flames of the candles flickering on all the surfaces remind her of the gold in Syrax's eyes, she imagines. Or perhaps it is the way her heart races, the way it does when the she-dragon takes a turn in the air too suddenly. It holds that same risk, being here in King's Landing, in the sept at the center of the city, watching as the entourage that surrounds Alicent Hightower makes its way to the transept altars. 

It was an easy enough thing to do. She still has the occasional contact in the capital herself, and it was no great feat to fly Syrax enough out of the way to remain unseen and then sneak her way here, donning a septa's habit so that she may be unnoticed, to cover the Targaryen silver-gold of her hair. In the days after finding out of the theft of her throne, Rhaenyra had both mourned and cursed her decision to abscond to Dragonstone, to allow the populace to forget her, but in this moment it is useful. She is able to pass amongst them to arrive at their beloved queen, and they do not know her enough to stop her. There are no worshippers at the sept, so early in the morning, but there are still the working members of the faithful, and fortunately they do not impede her approach. She is able to watch, unmolested, as Alicent approaches the candles that sparkle upon the gems of her gown, her veil spilling down her back, her personal guard all around her. 

"Leave me," she hears Alicent command, and Rhaenyra breathes a sigh of relief. 

"My Queen," one of the Hightower guardsmen, clad in a cloak that flames with the scarlet fires of their house sigil, begins, no doubt in an attempt to dissuade her. It reminds Rhaenyra of the way men on her Council, or even just on Dragonstone whilst she was still heir, would question her, and she thrums with borrowed indignation. 

"At once." Alicent's voice brooks no argument, and the guards diligently file out to stand, vigilant, at the doors. Even the septas bow their heads and take their leave, and Rhaenyra must press herself to the shadows to not be noticed as the one remainder.

She watches as Alicent, alone and bathed in the light, kneels and ignites a match. "Alerie Florent," Alicent says softly. "Viserys Targaryen." Rhaenyra's heart clenches. "Lucerys Velaryon." Her eyes sting, burn. "Jaehae-Jaehaerys Targaryen."

For each name, she lights a candle, and Rhaenyra sees the way that the flame trembles over the last one, just as Alicent stumbles over the final name. And Rhaenyra sees, as she lifts her folded hands together, bows her forehead and presses it to her fingertips, the lurid purple bruises on Alicent's wrists, the harsh burn of rope, the way a smear of dark blue crawls up her arm in the shape of another's fingers. Her headdress sits at a different angle than Rhaenyra remembers it; had they struck her? The assassins, had they wounded her as they used her as a lure? 

"Alicent." She says it softly, a breath out of her mouth, unsure if she even meant to speak it aloud or no. But Alicent hears her, jerks herself out of her prayer and scrambles to her feet. But she does not call out for her guards. 

"You dare?" she hisses. "Even here? Is no place sacred to you?"

"I am here in the spirit of peace," Rhaenyra says, trying to keep her breaths measured. It has only been a smattering of days since she and Alicent last saw one another, barely weeks, and yet it feels as if it has been years, lifetimes. It feels as though she should be seeing Alicent anew for the first time in an eternity, and yet all she feels is the way she felt when she came during the last days of her father's life. That her memory never gave Alicent any justice, never truly captured the softness of her lips, the way the candlelight brings out the red in the chestnut of her curls, the lashes around her doe's eyes, the slenderness of her waist. Rhaenyra notes too that there are dark circles under her eyes now where there had not been before. 

"What peace is it that you bring, then?" Alicent asks. Her tone is venomous. "As consequence of the last peace that you brought, my son can do nothing but plot revenge or spend all his time in his children's nursery for fear that they will be killed whilst he looks away. Jaehaera cries whenever other men draw near after the one you sent to my bedchamber threatened to force himself upon her. Maelor must live forever now with the knowledge that he was chosen to die by his own mother, only for his brother to be slain in turn." Rhaenyra's stomach churns at that, at watching Alicent's heaving breaths as she fights for control, the same way she always did whenever emotional. "My daughter can scarcely rise from her bed, let alone bear existence, because of this!" 

"And do you believe that the consequences of your own actions were so easy for me to bear?" Rhaenyra feels her blood go hot. "As a result of the theft of my throne, my own son is dead, and I left with not even a body to burn!" Her voice cracks sharply, and she wonders if she sees a minute flinch in Alicent's shoulders at that. 

"Is that why you've come here, then?" Alicent draws herself up, icy in her rage, Westeros's queen once again. "Recriminations and an attempt to plead the cause of your succession?"

Rhaenyra shakes her head, ignores the frisson of irritation at Alicent's dismissiveness. "No," she says quietly. "No, for whatever else, I come here only in the name of Prince Jaehaerys." Alicent reels.

"Do not —"

"I must." Alicent looks at her, eyes wide, and Rhaenyra presses on. "I swear to you, I knew nothing of what was plotted against Aegon's son, or any of you." 

There is something in Alicent's eyes that Rhaenyra cannot read, and it burns her, try though she does to push it away, that she cannot, when she once knew Alicent so well, and was so well known by her in return. "How can I believe that?" she asks. "When they came to us, calling themselves debt collectors, demanding a son for a son." 

"In the way that I have chosen to believe you," Rhaenyra says simply. "You told me that there was no intentionality, in what..." Her voice fails her again. A look flits across Alicent's face, and her lips part. Rhaenyra wonders what she will do if Alicent speaks on it now. Will she fall into her arms as she had done before as a girl? "I have chosen to believe it." Rhaenyra dares take a step forward, and Alicent does not retreat, though her back is still stiff and straight.

"It was no lie," Alicent whispers. "I would not be false with you, on such a thing."

"No." Rhaenyra's own voice is quiet too. "No, I know that you would not." For whatever else, Alicent is not deceitful. And despite everything, Rhaenyra knows that there is still a part of her soul that trusts her implicitly. It is, after all, why she has come here. "I did not know. I swear upon all the Seven." 

A pause. Consideration. "Daemon?" 

Rhaenyra nods. "He acted without my authority or my consent. In everything." Alicent presses a hand to her eyes, and Rhaenyra sees the raw marks on her wrists again. Some part of her longs to reach out, to touch, to soothe away whatever aches she has. 

"Why have you come, Rhaenyra?" she asks, folding her fingers together and staring straight at her. 

"You wrote to me that you wished for peace," Rhaenyra responds. "I tell you now that I desire the same. No more death." She thinks of the reports of Sunfyre the Golden burning little Jaehaerys's body. She thinks of Syrax, screaming alongside her once they found what remained of Luke and Arrax. 

"How do you propose we manage that?" Rhaenyra is ready to bristle at the derision, but there is none. Alicent simply regards her, her eyes almost beseeching, and Rhaenyra swallows past a tightness in her throat. 

"I would meet with your son," she says. My brother. "To discuss terms." 

"He will not come to Dragonstone," Alicent says immediately. "Even if he could bring it in himself to agree with it, no trusty advisor would ever allow him to do so." Her gaze flickers to the side, as if searching for any hidden guards Rhaenyra might have brought with her. "I am surprised your's allowed you to come here." 

"I am Queen," Rhaenyra says immediately. "I came of my own volition. No one commands me." She waits for Alicent's reproach, for her to press her son's traitorous claim directly to her own face.

Alicent says nothing. She simply regards her, with those dark, unfathomable eyes, and Rhaenyra struggles not to feel an ache at the peace that floods in her at the fantasy that Alicent may have ever acted as she does now, saying nothing in the face of Rhaenyra's inheritance, accepting her right to the throne. 

"I too will likely not be able to return here, though, to treat with him," Rhaenyra continues. 

"A place of neutrality then." Alicent considers the thought. "Harrenhal?" An apt location, Rhaenyra thinks. Where the lords of the realm chose her father rather than the Princess Rhaenys and her line. Rhaenyra has wondered, at times, what would have happened had the decision gone the other way. How many would still be alive? Her mother, for certain, Luke and Jaehaerys, Laenor, and mayhaps even her father himself, no throne to cut him to ribbons over the years as the wrong wife nurses him. 

"Harrenhal," Rhaenyra agrees. 

Alicent nods. "I will do my best to convince him of your proposal," she says. "And I will write to you, to inform you of whatever news may come of that." 

It feels as if there is more she should say. It is unfathomable to think that, after all that has happened, all that has transpired since the death of her father, since the death of her mother even, all those years ago, that these words between them are now at an end. Not with all that has happened. Not with the dark shadows still under Alicent's eyes and the aching weight on Rhaenyra's shoulders as testimonials to all the horror. 

"I have ordered my forces to stand down," Rhaenyra cannot help but say. Alicent's eyes widen. "They remain at the ready, but they will not move in one way or another without my leave. You..." She twists her fingers together. "You have no need to fear any further harm, ever again." 

"Rhaenyra..."

She ought to say more. Or perhaps she ought not say anything at all, so as not to hear the way that Alicent's voice catches, the hitch in her breathing, in the still quiet of the sept. But Rhaenyra can feel the ever increasing urge she always feels whenever she sees Alicent Hightower, the urge to reach across all the space and all the years between them and clasp her hand, feel Alicent's skin under her own, and wash away everything that has passed between them, like water smoothing out the façade of a rock. It is a girlish urge, one she pushes down fiercely and turns away from, moves to steal her way back out of the sept and return to Syrax. It is a girlish urge, one she almost succumbs to as she feels Alicent's eyes on her back, watching her go. 

Within the hour of her return to the castle, there is already a raven from King's Landing. Maester Gerardys is good and loyal, always has been, and brings the message directly to her as soon as the raven touches down upon Dragonstone's aviary. 

Rhaenyra, 

You did not request it, but I pressed my son and he acquiesced. Our forces too will keep to themselves during this parley. I will write to you with the remainder of our answer in due course. 

Something thick unspools itself like a rope in Rhaenyra's chest, unburdens a weight from her shoulders, allows her to breathe easier. Jace has been clamoring ever since her return from Storm's End to patrol the skies with Vermax, even if only as an accompaniment to Rhaenys and her Red Queen, and every ask has sent a thrum of fear through her. But now, now there is no concern that wretched Vhagar might descend from the clouds to steal another of her sons. Aegon has kept himself on even footing with her, whether by his own decision or at Alicent's urging. 

Rhaenyra prays it is a way forward. 

She waits, perhaps longer than she should, before she summons Daemon. Not to her chambers, not to the room of the Conquerors' Painted Table, but to the Dragonstone throne room. Let him see her as the crown, not anything else. The guards bring him in, disarmed whilst they surround him and keep hands on the pommels of their swords, and still, despite it all, there is a swagger and ease to his steps, an insolence as he looks upon her. 

"Surely there is no need for this, Rhaenyra," he drawls, and her spine stiffens. 

"There is every need," she says coldly. 

She knows him; she sees the way his eyes harden, just a touch, as if he is affronted at apparent disrespect. "The need to confine me to my rooms like a child? To parade me before you like a prisoner, a common criminal?" 

"If I were not worried about your behavior when left unchecked," Rhaenyra cannot help but snap, "these measures would not be necessary." 

"They are never necessary!" Daemon yells suddenly. "I am your husband and your lord —"

"You are my subject!" She has never shouted at him. For all the tempestuousness of their union, it had never crescendoed to that point. But, she supposes, never had it crescendoed to him putting his hands around her throat the way he did before Luke died. "You are lord of nothing, and in this moment, I am nothing more than your queen." 

Rhaenyra sees the sneer before he fights it off of his face. "Then why have I been summoned here, your Grace?" He spits the honorific as if it were a curse, and Rhaenyra fights the instinctive urge to cringe back. Her nails scrape the armrests of the throne, hewed to the rock. She draws strength from the stone, the ancient power of Valyria, the last and first bastion of the strength of the Targaryens. 

"Some time ago," she says, keeping her voice as calm and even as she can, "whilst you were away, we received word from King's Landing." Daemon's face twitches. "My brother, your nephew, his son, a boy of only six years, had his head stricken from his shoulders in an act of cowardice and cruelty within the walls of the Red Keep. The stories that have spread throughout the city name you responsible. Deny nothing, I have already spoken to your Mysaria. She has told me she procured the assassins for you at your command."

Daemon is quiet for a moment. "You call him brother though he connived to steal the throne," he murmurs. 

"And that is not why you sent cutthroats after children." Rhaenyra fights the urge to scream. "You did not do it to punish Aegon for his theft, if you had you would have sent men to him directly rather than to an innocent." 

"The children had Hightower blood and remained a threat so long as they lived," Daemon says. "All I have done, I did to safeguard the sanctity of our blood, your blood." 

"No." Rhaenyra cannot bear to hear more, as if the child's heritage could truly be cause enough for his death. "No, you did no such thing. The reports all say the same, Daemon. That the men who forced Helaena to choose which child of her's was to be slain called it a son for a son." 

She is grateful that there are no others here. That, barring the men there to confine Daemon and protect her, they are utterly alone. That there is no audience for him to bluster towards, nor anyone to attempt to take his part. Or even anyone to stray from her goals, her need for him to admit what he has done, with no room for questions. No room for doubt. 

"I said as much to you," Daemon replies coolly. "In response to the unjust murder of your son, I promised you this and you brooked no argument then." 

"Am I to be blamed, then, that I did not peer into your heart and understand that you meant the slaughter of a little boy?" Rhaenyra demands. "No, Daemon. I took your promise of vengeance for my son to mean that you would deliver the one responsible to justice, as anyone might." 

"And I did precisely thus!" His eyes are hot. "Your brother, as you call him, was no innocent in this and deserved the punishment. Perhaps you do not know, with the way you spent that time cavorting about Storm's End —"

"Cavorting?!"

"But Aegon the Usurper embraced your son's murderer wholeheartedly, in King's Landing!" Daemon continues. Rhaenyra struggles to draw breath, to do anything except lunge at her husband and claw out his eyes. "He raised him up and kept him by his side and held true to him, and is therein every bit as culpable for what happened to Lucerys as the dragon herself." 

Her fingers tighten upon the stone once more. "Even if I were to accept such an explanation, and I tell you plainly now, I do not," she hisses. "You did not send men to attack even Aegon. You sent them to Helaena, to her children, to Alicent Hightower. You sent them after innocents." She almost flinches again when Daemon laughs, harsh and grating like the bark of a mongrel. 

"Ah!" His voice is high with malice and mirth. "Is that the true cause of your ire, Rhaenyra? You mourn the harm caused to the whore you called companion in your youth? Otto Hightower's daughter?" 

"Otto Hightower once again!" Rhaenyra fights the roll of her eyes. "Tell me true, Daemon, this depravity came naught from an attempt to help me. Rather it was your own will to strike yet another blow at your longtime foe, in revenge for, what? The throne you feel you lost?" Daemon's face reddens until it almost looks as though it purples, and Rhaenyra knows her words struck true. She wonders, idly, even in the face of her anger, how many have died for the sake of Daemon Targaryen's wounded pride. 

"Otto Hightower is our foe," he spits. "It was he who conspired to steal my brother's throne —" 

"My throne, Daemon!" she shouts now, and rises to her feet. It feels good, to tower over him for a change, while he stares up at her. "And even if it were not, it would not be your's. Never your's. Even if my father had not named me heir, he remarried. And Alicent Hightower gave him three healthy, living sons, and you would have had to bow to one of them, to one of Otto Hightower's grandsons, and call him your king and swear him your fealty." 

"Never." The conviction rings out in the throne room, with the same terrible sonorousness as Valyrian steel striking bone. 

"There it is, then," Rhaenyra murmurs. "Nothing you did was for me, or for my son, or for my claim. You used my loss as an excuse to act out your rage against Otto Hightower and those he cared for, and slaked your bloodlust in ordering that a little child be struck down." 

"You asked for vengeance. I gave you vengeance." His eyes do not leave her as she makes her way down the steps, and Rhaenyra feels a thrum of power in that. In the fact that Daemon regards her in almost the wary way one might a predator. "Whatever other motivations I might have had remain entirely superfluous." 

"You have given nothing," Rhaenyra tells him. Her guards stand at the ready, but he does not move towards her, even when they are at the same height. "Rather, you have wounded me. Immeasurably." 

"I have supported you," Daemon insists, voice low. "I have raised you up, helped you, bowed to you —"

"You have weakened me," Rhaenyra says bluntly. "You have weakened my claim. You have weakened my ability to rally others to my cause. You have weakened my ability to muster armies in my defense. You have weakened my standing amongst my lords and Council and the realm in its totality. You used me, to satisfy your own urges, as you've always done," his lusts, his grudges, his desires for greatness and glory, his petty grievances with others, "with no thinking of the cost or the consequences. Where, pray, is the loyalty in that?" 

"I will not have my loyalty called into question," Daemon snaps. Rhaenyra says nothing, only raises an eyebrow, and he sighs. "But if, in my loyalty, I have committed acts that have gone against your conscience, you have my apology." 

"You imagine it goes against my conscience to have you murder a little child," Rhaenyra scoffs. 

"I believe so, yes." Rhaenyra stares at him.

"You are pathetic," she whispers. He rears back as if struck. "You are pathetic, and you are more stupid a man than I could have ever fathomed. The damage you have come is incalculable. And unforgivable." She smooths her hands on the bodice of her gown, draws herself up. He is taller than her, now that they are on the same level of ground, but in this moment she feels as if her head touches the ceiling of the throne room. "He is to remain confined to separate chambers, on the far side of the keep, under strict and heavy guard." She does not speak this to him directly; for the first time since her girlhood, it truly feels as if Daemon is nothing to her. "Anyone who brings him food or clean linens or attends the barest needs must be changed every day, so as not to breed familiarity. He sees no one else without my leave. He communicates with no one." She wants to do more, order a proper punishment, for all he has done against her in this, but she does not. 

Rhaenyra knows that this is not truly her crime to punish. 

"My allied lords will never stand for this," Daemon tells her. 

"You have no lords," Rhaenyra says. "You have no lands, no true title to yourself, no proper position in my court or my father's before me. Any allies who might stand with you would be guilty of treason against their queen for a man of no true standing." And in the face of Syrax's maw, she will not allow them to dare it. That, she knows. "You are nothing." 

She does not wait to see what look he gives her then, the way his mouth would part to deny that, to offer a justification, perhaps even just to shout at her in his rage. She moves past him, lets him be a problem for her guards and whoever else might want to deal with him, and strides to leave the throne room.

"We are wedded, Rhaenyra!" he cries out. She stops, but does not turn to him. "Sworn to each other with the blood and faith of Valyria of old. I am father to your sons. It is not a thing easily undone." 

"No," Rhaenyra agrees softly. "It is not. And neither is the magnitude of your crimes." Against the boy. Against me.

Rhaenyra, 

My son Aegon has agreed to treat with you. He knows you mean to discuss a path towards peace, and in that he is willing to show an amenability. He will be at Harrenhal in two days time, as will I and my son Aemond. If you are not there by evenfall, we will assume that you no longer wish to meet and depart, and brook no further attempts at communication save for an unconditional surrender. 

You said I need not fear any harm from you. I am choosing to believe you in this, and in that spirit, this meeting remains a secret to all save those who will be present and my father, the Lord Hand. You will have no need to fear harm from us in turn. I choose to believe that there is no ambush, no danger to myself or my children, that you are true to your words that you spoke to me. Please give me no cause to regret that. I will see you soon. 

Alicent

Sunfyre the Golden is already flying about the ruined spires of Black Harren's castle when Rhaenyra arrives. His movements are jerky, uncoordinated, uncommon for the shimmering beauty of his figure. She is reminded of how Syrax flew when they were at Storm's End, as if the very movement hurt her wings; she is reminded of the way that every step felt like knives against the soles of her feet, in the early days after Daemon told her of what had been done to Luke. 

It feels apt, that Alicent has chosen Harrenhal. The same site where the lords of the realm chose her father over Princess Rhaenys, a great and ruined thing that feels almost like a harbinger of doom to come as she makes her way towards it, a representation of the tattered remains of her Luke and Prince Jaehaerys all at once. This once great castle, reduced to rubble by the flames and warmongering of Aegon the Conqueror, a symbol of Targaryen wrath, of blood and fire. Rhaenyra wonders how many other castles might be brought to such a state, if this burgeoning war between her and Aegon comes to fruition. 

"Rhaenyra Targaryen." Harrenhal has not been abandoned, in so many terms. From what she knows, it is still under the tentative control of Larys Strong, and some distant cousin of Lyonel's is the castellan whilst Larys remains at court, along with whatever straggles of Strongs remain. How many of them are here, how many have been told of this meeting, Rhaenyra does not know, and she still startles at the woman, slight and pale with long dark hair messily plaited, who speaks her name. The woman regards her for a moment, as they stand before one of Harrenhal's many ash-blackened gates, cool and almost disinterested, and Rhaenyra thinks for a moment that she can see a resemblance to Harwin. The woman turns, begins to walk, and Rhaenyra follows easily enough. 

Appropriately, the walk leads to the Kingspyre Tower, the place where House Hoare's line ended for all time. The woman nods to the heavy oak doors, and Rhaenyra takes a moment to draw a breath before she enters. 

She knows she should spare a glance to Aegon and Alicent. They are who she is truly there to see, in truth, the other half of these talks that she's orchestrated to try and prevent the realm from descending into bloodshed. But standing at one of the ruined windows is Aemond Targaryen, and his dragon killed her boy. She cannot help but look at him, first and foremost. The angular cut of his jaw, the cool gaze in his eye, the great jagged scar Luke left on his face. She'd dreamed about that scar for days afterwards, when her father had returned with his family to court and she and Daemon had fled Driftmark for Dragonstone as Laenor's blood cooled. She dreamt of the little boy, the bloody scratches on his face, the painful tightness of the stitches over the deep wound, the bowl of blood by the maester's hands. 

She tries to find that little boy in the face of the murderer. She tries to find Alicent in the face of the murderer. Rhaenyra can see her so clearly in Aegon, in their shared wide eyes and full lips and delicate features, but the harsh, strong lines of Aemond Targaryen seem entirely foreign to her. She wonders if Luke thought the same, before he died. 

"You —" 

"My brother is my protector here," Aegon rasps. He is already seated at the table at the center of the chamber, next to Alicent. His voice sounds ruined; his eyes are red rimmed and underlaid with the darkest shadows; his face is pale and drawn. He looks unwell. "He stays." 

Rhaenyra watches as Alicent glances between her two boys. "Aegon, perhaps..." 

"No." It must say something, to the precarious state of affairs, that Alicent does not balk at Rhaenyra's interruption, where once she would have been affronted. Now, Alicent says nothing, as Rhaenyra looks to the youngest of her brothers present, takes in the rigidity of his posture. She has to hear. She has to know. "Your mother said, with regards to my..." 

Aemond's eye glitters, and it seems as though he almost takes pity on her, on her struggle to articulate the death of her own son. Mayhaps he has learned it from watching what befell his brother. "Our meeting at Storm's End was acrimonious," he says, voice low. "Vhagar felt it, and I imagine Arrax felt any of Prince Lucerys's apprehension. Departing as close as we did, flying as close as we were, Arrax felt threatened, and he attacked. Vhagar responded in kind, and —" Rhaenyra shakes her head, and Aemond stops. 

She can see it. She can see it, Luke's little dragon desperate with fear, turning to aggression. She can see Luke's face, the burgeoning panic, wonders if that was the last thing he ever felt, the last expression he ever had, before she pushes it far from her mind. 

"He tried to stop it." Aemond's words are barely a whisper. "I tried to stop it." 

The idea that we control the dragons is an illusion. 

Rhaenyra nods. Arrax was young, unskilled and untested, as was his rider; Luke likely knew not what to do when he felt his own dragon disobey him and attempt to fight rather than flee. And Vhagar is old, old and powerful enough to shake off any command given to her in the face of an affront, especially with her bond with Aemond fueling any ire. She can only hope, based on the ragged remains she found at Storm's End, that it was quick for her boy even if it was not for Arrax. 

"Well then." Rhaenyra knows she cannot forgive it. Not now, perhaps not even ever, but she has asked for an explanation and received it. She will let that be enough, for the moment, and turns to the man that sits her throne, sits near but not right next to him and Alicent at the great wooden table as Aemond stands near the window, still and silent. 

"You've come to surrender, then?" Aegon asks. He has none of Alicent's grace or subtlety. 

"No," Rhaenyra tells him plainly. "No more than you are here to surrender yourself, I am sure." Aegon's mouth curls. "If this continues between us, the realm will tear itself apart. House Targaryen will tear itself apart." 

"And you somehow mean to prevent that," Aegon says. "With no thought as to what comes after. You would sit the Iron Throne, when the people of King's Landing will never accept you in their city now, after what you've done." 

"I will tell you the same thing I have told the realm," Rhaenyra says. "The trespass was not mine." 

"What good does that do now?" Aegon's voice fractures sharply, as if split clean in two with a blade. When Alicent places her hand on his, he clutches at her fingers hard enough that Rhaenyra sees her wince. The place inside her that was rent apart when she learned of Luke's death aches dully. 

"We prevent more death," she tells him. "You still have children. I still have children. My sons, Princess Rhaenys's granddaughters, your boy and your girl. I would see that they live." 

He is silent for a moment, before he removes his hand from Alicent's and yanks it through the tangled snarls of his hair. "As would I," he mutters, eyes boring into her's. "Though I tell you now, those lives will not come at the cost of my throne." 

"Your throne, Aegon, is one you have only through theft," Rhaenyra cannot help but snap, thinking of the vows sworn to her beneath the shadow of those thousand swords, a shadow now ripped from her and given to another. 

"But it is mine." His words are no more than a hiss, but they are loud nonetheless, in this room. "The Iron Throne is my seat. In the streets, they call me king. They love my family, they cheered at my coronation, they flock to us for protection and leadership. They mourn my son, and no other. When they cry out for a queen, it is my wife or my mother. Not you. Never you." 

She knows. Oh, how she knows. Ever since she was a girl herself, as soon as Aegon came into the world, Rhaenyra has heard the smallfolk calling for him and his kingship. She still remembers the people of King's Landing, cheering for their boy prince, clamoring that he supplant her as heir, crowing insults at her name in the night. The realm accepted her only when it must, and discarded her as soon as there was another option, a better option. Had the populace ever been truly behind her, they would not have allowed the Greens to seize the Iron Throne from her. They would have fought for her, risen up for her, declared for her. But they never wanted her, and it burns her hot as dragonflame. 

Of course they never wanted me, Rhaenyra wants to scream, suddenly. I was not born with a cock between my legs. It was nothing the infant Aegon had ever done to make them flock to him so, simply the nature of his birth as the king's much longed for son. And for that they tossed her aside, gave her far harsher judgment than they ever gave him, or Daemon before him, or even Aemond and Daeron after him. She existed in their minds as a placeholder for the boy, and nothing she did, and nothing she refrained from doing, was able to change that. It is by virtue of his sex, and her's, that he has her throne, and that so many are able to accept it in spite of her father's wishes, and nothing more. An accident of birth, and she is swept aside, as she knew she would be, watching them cheer for him even after she had been invested as the Princess of Dragonstone before the whole of the realm. 

It is unfair. 

"This helps no one," Alicent says firmly, pinching at the bridge of her nose, her voice pulling Rhaenyra from her thoughts and back to this room. "We must focus on the matter at hand." 

"Indeed," Rhaenyra says. The time to take her half-brother to task must wait, if it ever arrives. She has a more important mission. "And in one aspect, you speak truly, Aegon. You cannot be seen as giving up, nor can I. There are lords who have sworn to me, who have stayed their hand only by my command and would be quick to act in defense of my claim. They would never support you, no more than those who swore to you would move to support me," she adds when he opens his mouth to protest. "Our resolution must take that into account." 

"Dorne," Aegon says suddenly. Rhaenyra furrows her brow and wonders for a moment if he is drunk. "We call ourselves the Seven Kingdoms," he says, and it is the most animated she has seen him yet. "But we have only six. No Dorne. Yet the Conqueror was able to coexist in peace with the Martells." Even after what befell his queen is what goes unsaid. If the first Aegon could make common cause with Sunspear, could even maintain a cordiality and politesse with them after losing the beloved mother of his first son in so violent a fashion and burning all the peninsula for years afterwardes in his rage, perhaps they too can manage it. Even in spite of Luke and Jaehaerys. 

"Two kingdoms?" Aegon stares at her. For all that he resembles Alicent, he does not have her eyes. He has their father's eyes. Rhaenyra's eyes. 

"In a sort of fashion, mayhaps," he says. "As you said, some have declared for one, others for the other. If they were simply allowed to continue with their proclaimed loyalties..." 

"It would need to be temporary," Rhaenyra continues. She can feel the plan forming here, on this table, small and nebulous between them but strong. She wonders if this is how the Conqueror felt, staring across the carved and painted landscape of Westeros he had commissioned, envisioning his future, mapping it out with his words as much as with wooden figures. "If we broke Westeros in two with permanence, no lord would follow it. Not after so many years since the Conquest." She waits for his objection, the outcry against her words. 

"We have children," Aegon says instead, slowly. He is looking at her still, as if he waits for her answer, for her expertise. Rhaenyra is reminded, for a stark moment, of his youth. 

"At the end of this, we must pledge a betrothal," she tells him. "Your daughter to one of my unpromised sons, or your Maelor to any girl who might be born to me or mine." Rhaenyra dares to lean forward, feels a thrum of something akin to excitement at how he does not move away. "Thus we offer a breach and a way to heal it in time." When Aegon looks to his mother, Rhaenyra's eyes follow. Alicent's gaze flicks between them. 

"It may work," she says softly, turning to her son. "There is much more to discuss, but this, you could truly say, was concocted by the pair of you. It offers both yourselves and your sworn swords a path to peace without shame."

"Nor would it shame the legacy of our House," Rhaenyra murmurs. 

Aegon nods, though Rhaenyra doubts he truly understands the importance of that, when he is so young and so focused on the more immediate concerns. Perhaps if this had been undertaken when she were at that age, she might be thinking the same way. "My lords and I would need assurances, of course," he says suddenly, fixing his eyes on her again. 

"Assurances?" 

"That we are not surrendering," he explains. "That I am not weak." Men. 

"This peace would be crafted so that neither side is left with that view," she tells him. 

"But it must not be even hinted at for me and mine," Aegon insists. It is he who leans forward in his intensity now. "In that strength comes safety, sorely needed. I will not allow any attempts at peace without that." 

"You believe your safety hinges upon a mere perception of power?" Rhaenyra cannot help but be incredulous, and Aegon's eyes narrow. 

"I do," he snaps. "Criston Cole said, the day of my coronation," Rhaenyra bristles, "That to accept the crown was the only way to keep my children safe. That their existence threatened the succession of your sons, and thus you were a threat to us in turn. I knew he was telling the truth." A lie, a vicious lie, and one he throws in her face now as if it might cow her into submission to her own younger brother, her attempted usurper. 

"I would not —" she begins, but Aegon's hand comes down hard upon the table, and Rhaenyra nearly jumps. He has an odd, manic look in his eyes. 

"Aemond grew ill." It is so incongruous a statement that Rhaenyra cannot help the way her eyes jump to the boy in question. His face has gone slightly pale. "After Driftmark. He took a fever, a bad one. A poisoning of the blood, I heard the maesters whispering. They were saying that the cut on his face was healing badly, or not healing at all, the way our father's so often never did. Fitting then, that it was he who was the first one to contemplate bringing in the High Septon, to perform the final rites." 

"Brother —" 

"He could have died." Aegon's words are a snarl, cutting off Aemond's attempted interruption. "While Lucerys hopped merrily to and fro on Dragonstone without a care, no punishment, no restitution, not even a smidge of pity from you as you told the entire court that the true crime here was that we saw your sons for what they are rather than the attempt at murder. Tell me, sister, after that, could I have really trusted you and your ascendancy with the safety of myself and my brothers? Of my boys?" 

Rhaenyra wonders how much of this is Alicent, as her erstwhile friend looks at her, dark eyes revealing nothing. How much of these fears were Alicent's own that she fed to her son the way a wet nurse gives a babe milk from her breast? How much of it was Aegon himself taking the vial and downing it all with a single swig? She suspects the answer does not matter. She had known, even in Driftmark's Great Hall, that irrevocable lines were being drawn, the inevitable conclusion ever since her father first had his seed take flower in her own childhood companion. Rhaenyra had made a judgment then, on the merit of peace when compared to the safety and sanctity of her family.

She still does not know if she would choose differently, if given the opportunity. 

"Would my word not have been enough?" she asks softly. 

Aegon shakes his head. "No." 

But Rhaenyra knows that she never wanted any innocents dead. 

"For whatever it may be worth, now," she says. "I swear to you, I never would have laid a hand on your children. And had you bent the knee, I would have treated you all gently, as my brothers and sister." Her eyes flick to Alicent, to the way she is watching her, dark gaze unreadable. "As their mother." As someone I loved. "Regardless of all that has passed." 

Aegon huffs a small laugh. "And I would have done the same for you," he tells her. Rhaenyra does not doubt him in that. If she had followed that one flickering instinct, before Lucerys was slain, she has no doubt that Aegon would have allowed her to live unmolested, perhaps even reside on Dragonstone for the remainder of her life. If not out of any love for her, than out of an obligation to the woman who would urge him to do so, the woman who gave him his life and her crown. 

If Rhaenyra were made of weaker stock, she might have even accepted Alicent's peace that very day. 

"I do have an additional offer," she says. "To sweeten your pot." Because Rhaenyra has always known that she is made of sterner stuff, because she is the blood of the dragon; Alicent's peace will not be how the story ends for either of them. Nor will it be any man's thirst for blood and violence. 

"And that would be?" 

"Daemon." The room goes utterly silent as Aegon falls still. It is as if he has been frozen in place, as if all of them have. Aemond has seized up, from his place by the window, and even Alicent seems as if she is hardly breathing. 

"Daemon," Aegon repeats. His voice is shaking. 

"I have him in my custody, on Dragonstone," Rhaenyra tells him. 

Aegon is not looking at her anymore, his eyes falling down to the swirls in the wood of the table. "So you have been harboring him, keeping him safe and well, at your island fortress where none may be able to reach him —"

"Aegon," Rhaenyra says, more sharply than she intended, but she needs him to hear her in this, if nothing else. When he looks back up at her, his eyes are glassy. "Daemon has been in my custody, under guard, so that he may not flee from justice. When this accord between us has been reached, and we are able to present a plan for peace before the realm and renounce war, I will remand Daemon into your care, for you to do with as you see fit." 

Aegon is silent for a moment. "You would give me Daemon," he whispers. "For justice?" 

Rhaenyra nods. "Whatever that may be," she tells him. "As recompense for what was done to your family." 

She cannot entirely read the expression on his face. It feels almost similar to what she saw in Alicent's eyes, on Driftmark, some kind of desperate begging that reaches deeper than even the sharpest Valyrian steel blade. His breath shudders in his throat as he inhales, before his face crumples and his exhalations become gasping sobs.

And Rhaenyra cannot remember the last time she ever saw Aegon cry. Most likely when he was still a babe, still young enough that it was the only way he truly knew how to express himself. Never beyond that time, certainly not with the worsening relationship between her and Alicent. But looking at his tear wet face, all Rhaenyra sees is that he is close to an age with her Jace, that he is young, that he looks so much like his mother, that he is suffering in a way she knows all too well. 

It feels like nothing at all, for Rhaenyra to reach over and put her hand on Aegon's, to let him hold it, to stroke her thumb along the skin, the way she would sometimes do to comfort Lucerys when he was little. She never thought she would ever do it again. But in another life, if she had been the boy her father so desperately wanted, Alicent might have been her own lady wife. Aegon would have been her own son, and Jaehaerys her grandson in turn. Their hurts would be her's; they would share in this grief, almost in the way she had shared her tears with Jace, unable and unwilling to hear any comforts, wanting only someone to touch and understand. 

So she knows to say nothing, and simply holds Aegon's hand as he weeps for his son.

The raven haired woman leads her to a suite of rooms elsewhere in the keep when night falls. Their negotiations are nowhere near at an end; Aegon is determined that his family stay in King's Landing, in spite of Rhaenyra's protestations that he no longer let himself sit the Iron Throne for the duration of his own reign, to say nothing of everything else they must discuss so that they each depart back to their seats with a ready plan for their lords. It has seemed promising, though arduous, and Rhaenyra takes it as a good sign that they have not tried to humiliate her in some small, petty fashion by consigning her to unfit quarters for the night. It would have been too long a day for yet another quarrel. 

She is exhausted, and she knows she should sleep. Doubtless there will be more arguments over matters great and small tomorrow, and even in the days after that. Aegon has his family here; she will need her fortitude to make sure she is not overruled at key moments. And yet sleep eludes her. All she can do is stand and pace in her room, amongst all the ghosts of House Hoare and House Strong and all in between. She keeps seeing the tattered remains of Arrax's body. Luke's funeral pyre. Little Jaehaerys's face. Aegon's eyes, wet with misery. The bruises upon Alicent's skin. 

Perhaps that woman has a some sort of sleep tonic, she thinks as she slips on a robe and ventures out into the great black halls, still stained with the remnants of soot from Balerion's wrath and darkened by the night. They remind her of the ancient labyrinths from old Valyrian fables, the ones that housed strange monsters, half man and half beast, that prowled in the silence and ate children sent as sacrifices. Rhaenyra half expects to find some great and terrible maw waiting for her as she rounds a corner towards a flickering light, feels an almost childish sense of relief to see it is only a door left ajar with torches still lit. 

What she hopes is a workshop behind the door, however, turns out to be a bedchamber. For a moment, she cannot tell who it is that sleeps within, illuminated only by a faint candle and bundled in blankets, before Alicent comes into view, smooths a hand over what looks to be the head and presses a tender kiss to it. She catches Rhaenyra's eye in the doorway, and holds her finger to her lips before moving out into the hallway, a ways away from what is clearly her son's room, shutting the door behind her and leaving them both in guttering torchlight and long shadow. 

"Aegon has had difficulty sleeping," Alicent says, glancing back at the door she just closed. "Since..." Her voice trails away. "So, if you were hoping to speak with him —" 

"No, no," Rhaenyra says quickly. "No, I was merely looking for the woman who brought me here. To see if she might have something to help me rest." 

Alicent nods. "I have a sleeping draught in my room," she says suddenly. "I find it quite effective. If you would like." Rhaenyra can do naught but nod, and follow Alicent the short distance to her chambers. It feels so much like when she was a girl, when they were both girls, making secret agreements with Ser Harrold to let her sneak into Alicent's rooms in the Tower of the Hand after dark, so that they might eat purloined fruit tarts and whisper to each other of whatever bit of court gossip they found most amusing, laying under the canopy of Alicent's bed. It brings an odd sort of melancholy to her, to be in Alicent's space at Harrenhal, to watch as she moves a pot out of the way to find a vial to press into Rhaenyra's hand. 

"And that?" Rhaenyra cannot help but ask. 

Alicent looks at the vessel in her hand. "A salve given to me by Grand Maester Orwyle," she says. She is wearing a robe of blue velvet over her nightdress, delicately embroidered at the neck and cuffs, long enough to hide the marks Rhaenyra knows paint her skin. 

"You must apply it daily?" When Alicent nods, Rhaenyra gives in to her urges and holds out her hand. "Let me, then." 

"I am more than capable of looking after myself, Rhaenyra," Alicent says. 

"I know. But please?" It feels like a sort of penance, in a way. Rhaenyra thinks that Alicent might approve of that, give her devotion to the Faith of the Seven, and perhaps that is why she gives a cautious nod, sits at the edge of her bed and leaves room for Rhaenyra to sit beside her and take the pot from her hands. 

It is more grim up close than it was at a distance, even in the low light as Alicent rolls up her sleeves. There's the smattering of finger-bruises, no doubt from the assailants, and the still red remnants of the ropes that must have been used; Rhaenyra can still see the half healed scrapes from the harshness of the hemp, from where it cut into Alicent's flesh and drew blood. Rhaenyra can almost taste the bile in the back of her throat at the sight. 

"I'm so sorry," she murmurs, almost in spite of herself. Alicent starts slightly, but does not pull away. 

"It was not your doing, you've said as such," she replies. 

"But it was done in my name." Even if the realm accepted the truth, that she had not ordered assassins to steal into the Red Keep and slaughter children, all will know it was done for her. Rhaenyra will never entirely be able to rid herself of the stain, to entirely wash off the blood drawn from innocents that night, or the tears shed during and afterwards. It almost feels as if it finally sinks in here, seeing the proof marring the skin of someone she once loved so deeply. "You were hurt, for me." No one will ever truly forgive her for that. 

"And yet," Alicent says quietly, glancing down at the bedding between them. "I do not blame you, I think. No longer, at any rate." Rhaenyra knows she cannot quite hide the surprise on her face. "You came to King's Landing to see me, you have come here to treat with my son. You have shown a degree of contrition I could never have expected from Daemon, a conciliation that, I confess, I had not considered you capable of in my more uncharitable moments. It speaks to a..." Alicent flounders for a moment, before her eyes flick up to meet Rhaenyra's. "I am not entirely sure, but I do not lay blame for what happened that night at your feet. Not with all you have done since." 

Rhaenyra's throat feels almost too tight to speak. "Your graciousness is..." Now it is she who fumbles for her words. "Thank you, Alicent." 

"I also," and Alicent looks shocked that she has further to say. "I meant, what I wrote to you. Meager though it may be, you have my sorrows, for Lucerys." Rhaenyra closes her eyes against the sudden hot, damp press of tears against them. When she opens them, she sees Alicent has done her the kindness of looking away, studying the coverlet. 

"Please." Alicent looks her in the face and then nods, offering up her wrists. Rhaenyra smears the ointment on her fingertips, applies it as gently as she can to Alicent's raw skin. She can feel the softness of it, the fineness of Alicent's delicate bones under her palm as she holds her arm steady with her free hand. She can feel the heat of Alicent's eyes upon her, and her stillness, that she does not flinch at the pressure of hands upon her wounds.  

"Whatever may come," Rhaenyra says after a long bout of silence. "I am grateful to you. For listening to me in the sept, and convincing your son to do the same, and bringing him here. No matter the outcome, that will not change." 

"As am I," Alicent whispers. She is slow, almost reluctant, as she pulls her hand away, shifts a bit further back on the bed, and nods to where Rhaenyra set down the sleep tonic that she had come to this room to retrieve. "We should both get some sleep, I think." And Rhaenyra knows Alicent is right, that tomorrow will be just as long as today, and they will all need their wits about them to make sure that they continue peaceably talking terms and coming to a mutual understanding, rather than devolving into petty fights and grievances that might tear this plan asunder and reignite the lust for war. 

But looking at Alicent now, her hair falling softly around her face, all Rhaenyra can think of is that she can barely remember a life where Alicent Hightower was not in it.

And there will never be a true accord between her and her father's younger children. She has never known Daeron, not truly; Aemond is forever linked to her sweet Luke's death; Aegon and Helaena will hold her responsible for the worst calamity that has ever befallen them and their family until the end of their days. There may be peace, but that is all it will ever be. But Alicent...

Rhaenyra remembers that one moment, that one golden moment, after Helaena was born, when she was still a maid, the day Daemon had returned from the Stepstones, when she and Alicent had sat side by side in the godswood as they had so many times before in their youth. When Rhaenyra had fitted Alicent's hand in her's and felt the warmth of her skin, had basked in her smile and smiled in return as if it were the easiest thing imaginable. When they both still had some semblance of their girlhood with them. When it felt, even despite Alicent's marriage to her father and Aegon's birth and Daemon's return and the impending need for Rhaenyra to be wed in turn, that everything would be all right, that the love was not entirely gone, and perhaps they could return to what had been thought to be lost. 

She feels that same way now. 

"Unless you must attend to your son," Rhaenyra says carefully. Perhaps there is still a glimmer of a chance, with Alicent. "I should like to stay, for a moment longer." With you. 

Once, she imagines Alicent might have dismissed her without a thought. Days ago, Alicent likely would have, still aggrieved over the violence done to her, the horrors that befell her two eldest children, the bloody murder of her grandson. Now, Alicent nods, and Rhaenyra sees something soft in her eyes. "I would like that," she murmurs.

And for what feels like the first time since Luke died, since her father died, perhaps since she left Alicent in the Red Keep that night, when it seemed that all might be well after all, Rhaenyra truly smiles.