Chapter Text
Alicent had never planned on making a habit of visiting the Dragonpit. It was, in fact, a place that she much preferred to avoid.
But she was also reluctant to leave her granddaughter alone for very long, and Jaehaera enjoyed spending time with her dragon Morghul. It brought the troubled young girl some comfort, or so Alicent hoped, although she found nothing comforting in the hissing skeletal hatchling who spat fire at the slightest provocation. He seemed a moody beast, if dragons had moods.
Jaehaera, however, adored him, and so, when Alicent had been unable to locate her after inquiring with the maidservants, she had set off to the home of raw Targaryen power. It had recently become more crowded with the return of the blacks' dragons, including those who Rhaenyra had found bastard riders for during the war. Their addition to her numbers had rather decisively secured her victory. Aemond's defeat at Harrenhal above the God's Eye, procured at the cost of the life and the dragon of one of the lowborn recruits, had simply sealed matters.
Alicent grieved Aemond. She grieved Aegon, too, although she clung to the hope that he had escaped with his life. But for now, she occupied herself with looking after Helaena and her daughter. Rhaenyra had shown them mercy, although the departure that she had hoped for them to make from King's Landing had been delayed by Aegon's disappearance. Many of Rhaenyra's advisors were inclined to blame Alicent. To placate them–or so Rhaenyra said, although it could well have been the queen's own suspicions that motivated her–Alicent and Helaena were to remain in the Red Keep for the time being under guard. Fragile Helaena was largely permitted to go freely, but Alicent was put in golden chains. It was an uneasy peace.
"Ser Addam," she said, spying the dark-haired knight standing beside the bronze-and-iron doors. He was another one of Rhaenyra's bastard dragonlords–dragonseeds, they called them–and she could not help but distrust him for it . . . but he conducted himself with all of the courtly manners of his highborn brethren who formed Rhaenyra's Queensguard, and so she at least sought to treat him with decency. He even paid her the respect of not staring at the gilt chains that wove around her wrists and ankle. They frequently crossed paths here as she escorted Jaehaera to the Dragonpit, ever since Rhaenyra had taken to permanently stationing a rider here in the case of an attack on the city. It had been a wise move for the duration of the war; now it struck her as rather redundant, but Rhaenyra had not solicited Alicent's opinion on that matter.
"My queen," he returned with a small bow of his head. Alicent assumed that Rhaenyra had directed her men to address her as such; she doubted they would do so otherwise, for though she had once been queen, now she was simply the mother of the usurper. "Where is the young princess?"
"I was hoping you may know. She has not passed by?"
"No, my queen. That is, I have not seen here. But I have only taken up this watch from Lady Baela an hour ago."
"Then I will seek her inside," Alicent resolved.
"Allow me to accompany you, my queen," Addam offered as he pulled open the heavy metal door to permit her entry.
"Do not abandon your post on my account. I will only be a moment. Thank you, Ser." The knight looked reluctant, but he let her walk by.
One of the ancient dragonkeepers, a wizened man with olive skin and ashy gray hair, passed her a torch as she stepped inside. She offered him a word of gratitude for it–one that she was not entirely sure whether he understood, as she had only ever seen this ilk speak in High Valyrian–then descended down through the tunnels to the lairs where the dragons ate and idled. She moved at a slow, tremulous pace, ever cautious of her chains. She was grateful that she recalled exactly where to find Morghul; she did not look forward to a chance encounter with Caraxes.
She turned a corner into the gloomy space where the young dragons dwelled. The sulfuric reek of the beasts crawled over her and made the hairs in her arm stand in end. Swinging the torch to and fro, she could not see Jaehaera. She caught sight of Morghul, his long, bony body sprawled out along one wall–dark on dark. He raised his head, his chains rattling, then dropped it back down when he spotted her, uninterested–apparently, she had good fortune to encounter him in one of his less savage tempers. His eyes, however, remained slitted open. The prickle of his gaze made her shiver.
"Jaehaera?" she called. There was no answer save for the muted echo of her faltering voice. She could not see her around her dragon, but to ensure that she was thorough in her search–and decisively obviate the need for her to return to this place–she stepped further inside, until the flame showed the wall opposite her, before she accepted that the child was not here.
Then there was a sharp shriek from elsewhere in the darkness, a slithering sound of scales moving over sand, and Alicent had to stumble to the side, very nearly tripping over the chain that linked her legs in the process, to avoid a concentrated spray of dazzling violet fire. A dragon who was still young but larger than Morghul–the one belonging to Joffrey, Rhaenyra's third son–flashed into view before the purple sparks died and concealed all details but the most general from the reach of her torch. She managed to discern the chains that held the dragon–they were suspended in the air, strained to their limits. But this was not much of a consolation to her alarm; probably he could break free of them if he chose to.
She shuffled back, catching her breath. Her stomach had plunged at the stifling assault of heat and light–the last thing that Rhaenyra's many traitors had seen and felt as they met their ends, her lord father among them. That was her signal to leave. Indeed, it had been an audacious error to come at all. By the Seven, what had she been thinking in setting foot here alone? She backed up out of range of Joffrey's dragon and then further, across the length of the room, unwilling to look away from it. Only when she thought she felt a draft behind her did she at last turned to start back down the tunnel. But before she had made it a single stride, she stopped in her tracks when she realized that there was a third dragon occupying the space between her and the exit.
This dragon, which she had first seen as a spindly little wyrm in the cradle of Prince Jaehaerys, was now about the size of a hound. Its scales were the color of patinated copper, increasingly greenish around its body and reddish around its wings. Its jaw was slightly unhinged, and a virid glow leaked from within. And it was coming in her direction, stalking toward her in the odd, dragging gait of a creature whose limbs were designed for flight. Its eyes gleamed like a cat's struck by a candle in the night.
Terror pulsed through her, and she took a halting step back. But she did not turn her back and flee. She feared that the dragon's flames would quickly outpace her, especially given her bonds, but that was not the true reason for her hesitancy. Rather, it was something that glittered in the depths of those brilliant emerald eyes that anchored her where she stood.
The dragon continued its approach. As it moved, its shackles clattered noisily, and she realized that they were set in such a manner as to cut into the dragon's skin in some places. Blood drooled black, some fresh and some dry, from the wounds. But they were not so restrictive as to hold the dragon at bay–there was more than enough slack for it to reach her. Her heart thrashed in the cage of her ribs; her breath shook. The fiery glow in the dragon's maw intensified, and Alicent braced herself for the agony that was sure to follow.
But then the green light dimmed, and the dragon slowly stretched out its neck until its snout was within reach. It tilted its head to keep those lucid eyes on her.
Alicent had never liked dragons. Never. She had watched with admiration but firmly declined to partake as Rhaenyra had traversed the skies on Syrax in her youth, and then with resigned anxiety as the same golden she-dragon, joined by Caraxes, sailed over King's Landing to mark Rhaenyra's conquest. On the eve of war, she had looked into the burning eyes of the awesome Red Queen and known her own powerlessness. As queen to a Targaryen king, she had done her duty and allowed the placement of eggs in her babes' cradles–for all the good that it did, for each but one failed to hatch. She had suffered her children's efforts to claim adolescents and adults, risking their lives and Alicent's sanity with every attempt.
And then they had succeeded, and the cost had been great. Her second-youngest son had lost an eye claiming a monstrosity who had ended hundreds and then commanded her to end hundreds more until she failed to recognize the tender and soft-spoken boy that she had so loved. Her oldest had flown to battle on his gleaming mount only to be cast down in ruins, blind with pain and crippled for life. Her daughter rode a relic that had known the Conqueror's reign, and it was only Helaena's gentleness that had stood in the way of the destruction that it was capable of inflicting. Dragons were creatures of killing and she could not cease to see them as such.
And yet she could not look away from this one. At this proximity, the light of Alicent's torch brought out the glossy sheen of its metallic scales. How strange were these jewel-toned beasts. The dull gray and brown of the common lizard allowed him to hide against stone and soil, but dragons had no need of hiding and did not pretend to. They declared their invincibility in rainbow splendor.
A curring sound rose from the dragon's throat. A slick membrane flickered over its eyes and then away. Alicent tracked its every motion, and it tracked hers. She wondered whether it could sense her fear, as some said a horse could.
Moved by a force that she could not name, Alicent slowly lowered the torch to the ground and set it down. Then she raised a trembling hand to the underside of the dragon's jaw. The contact startled her–she had expected to find the scales as unyielding as iron, but as least at this juncture, they were instead supple like a tanned hide. And they were warm.
Slowly, Alicent seated herself on the sandy soil that covered the floor of the Dragonpit. Her gaze was now level with the dragon's. Shrykos. The dragon's name was Shrykos, and she was a she-dragon, and she had belonged to her grandson. But now he was gone, and Shrykos would never take to the air with him astride her. He would never know the exhilaration that had lit up the smiles of Rhaenyra and Helaena and Aegon as they had returned with clear reluctance to the earthly world of man.
She wondered if dragons grieved.
Shrykos lowered her head, leaning into Alicent's touch. She scratched the scales lightly; the dragon rumbled in response. And then, in a fluid motion, the hatchling pulled herself on top of Alicent's folded legs. Her presence was light and heavy all at once, but it was shock, and not the weight, that made Alicent's lower half go numb in response to the scrabbling of sharp talons over her dress. Shyrkos turned and formed a sort of coil, her wings crumpled against her sides, and nestled her snout against the crook of Alicent's elbow.
Alicent stared at Shrykos, frozen with awe. She was no dragonrider. She had not dared even a glancing tap of her fingertips against Rhaenyra's dragon, and now one rested on top of her. Unable to believe what was happening, she slowly took to stroking the dragon's neck. Shrykos's eyes flitted closed, and a hot gust of air left her body in a huff.
Alicent did not move. She did not move for a long time.