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The war’s end arrives quietly for her.
It crests the hills like a sunrise, sharp against the dawn sky, the calm before the storm. Aegon comes to her in the hazy moments before Alicent wakes, clinging to her with sweating hands as if he is a child, pleading, the burns on his skin pink and shiny in the weak light, but when she opens her eyes fully he slips away into the shadows and whatever he might have been saying goes with him. It buries itself in her mind, six feet under, in the dark cold earth and no matter how frantically she digs Alicent cannot find it-
Cannot find them. Her children, her poor children, she has outlived them all. Her hands have wrought the works that killed them in the end, her torn hands drenched in their precious blood. The sept saw her daily, saw her with tears and bleeding hands and red eyes kneeling before altars and begging. Her eldest sons were kinslayers, may the gods forgive them, but her youngest was kind. Kind and noble and gentle. Good.
She gathers Jaehaera to her in her rooms, tossing her pretty green dress and hair ribbons to the fire and putting her in grey instead. A shade pale enough to maybe be mistaken as silver, but leaves herself in green.
She remembers a wedding feast, how she cast aside the red dress she was meant to wear, cloaking herself instead in war. Aemond had been in her belly then, too small to be seen, had she condemned him that night? Cloaked them both in something accursed, something violent?
Forgive me, she wishes she could have begged him, clutching to black sleeves. Forgive me, she would have dragged him back if she could, dragged him from the murky depths of the God’s Eye with her final breath-
Forgive me, Helaena swaying in the window, hair curling in the breeze-
Forgive me, Daeron shifting uncomfortably when she grabbed his hands before he left to die on dragonback, crushed by Tessarion upon the cruel ground-
Forgive me, the Stark banners waving in the wind as Jaehaera stands on a little stool to look out the window, her body eclipsing the rising sun-
Forgive me, with bleeding fingers, Alicent sends a white flag.
. . .
The royal box empties quickly, a tidal wave of guards and council and relatives sweeping Rhaenyra away and leaving Alicent behind. A thousand murmurs pass over the crowds that fly out of the stands as she tries to find Gwayne, a harsh crush of people and horses: the babe is born? The babe is dead? The Queen is dead-
Something horrible has happened, the crowd surges, she stumbles. Trapped. Her heart begins to race as the crowd seems to compress even more, her breath growing shallow, and then suddenly there's a shift and a surge of jostling movement as a horse and rider push through and she cannot keep her footing-
She stretches out her hand in a panic, falling-
A hand seizes hers, a desperate hold, and Alicent surrenders to the pull of it as the crowd crushes in once more and suddenly she's off her feet, fingers warm on her waist and lifting-
A breeze touches her face, blissful, cooling the anxious heat of her body as she's placed atop the back of the horse, its rider climbing back on in front of her.
“Forgive me,” He says, solemn and long-faced and quiet, but she can't imagine anyone who looks more like a knight than he does then with a flush at the top of his cheekbones, “I’m not in the habit of taking such liberties, but I was worried you might fall. I’ve seen what falling in a crowd can do to a man, I did not wish to see what it would do to someone smaller.”
Stark direwolves on his cuffs, stitched with care. His mother, maybe, or a sister? A selfish, girlish part of her doesn't wish to consider a wife-
“There is nothing to forgive, Ser,” She says. It comes out breathless, brings up a flush on her cheek, “Stark?”
“Yes.” Her hands curl into the back of his doublet as he carefully pushes forward in the crowd, moving towards the edges, “Eddard. Ned.”
. . .
Every pass of Vermax’s broad wings over the Red Keep makes her shudder, brings to mind Tessarion taking flight from the Godswood in an attempt to find her rider when he sat the throne as King.
Your Blue Queen wants you, Gwayne had joked more than once, face shining, and Daeron never failed to smile back at his uncle and laugh. Had he ever laughed for her? She can't recall.
Jaehaera sits upon her lap, a doll in her little hands, and they wait upon the wooden chair at the bottom of the throne room. It's nauseating, the waiting, a cold-sweat and trembling thing, and part of her wants to bury her face in Jaehaera’s pale crown and weep to pass the time. But she cannot. There will be time for weeping but not here, not in this room, not until she knows the enemy she will face and if there is a chance that she will face an old friend on the other end of the sword. Honorable and dutiful as he always has been, she knows he will not allow Jaehaera to come to harm today in the surrender.
Alicent’s heartbeat rings in her ears, deafening.
The doors opens, a flood of armor and boots, and she rises, pushing Jaehaera behind her, searching for him in the faces of the array of Stark banners as they file in.
Panic claws up her throat, where was he?
Jacaerys Targaryen crosses the threshold, Baela Targaryen at his right hand, a man bearing the Stark crest on his left-
Where was he?
Gritting her teeth, bowing her head, curtsying-
“The throne is yours, your Grace,” she says, it drips from her mouth like blood, like poison-
Where was he?
Vomit-taste in her mouth, burning her throat, someone moves the wooden chair and clears the way for him to climb the stairs to the throne. The room shifts, ebbing and flowing as more people enter, someone calls the man with the Stark crest Cregan and her eyes search and search and search-
The drums beat, resounding, booming in the echoing throne room-
King Jacaerys Targaryen, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm-
A cold, metal hand touches her elbow, freezing even through her sleeve, and she flinches before she catches sight of his face. He looks like Ned with his long face and solemn features and the man next to him, close enough in age that they could perhaps be twins, had a sprinkling of the same Northern features nearly hidden away by his red hair and softer face.
“Come with us, my Lady,” the second says.
Alicent cannot help but look to Cregan Stark, standing beside Jacaerys’ queen still, and finds him looking back at her. Stone-faced, more solemn than Ned had ever been, he nods.
They lead her through the cheering crowd, Jaehaera’s hand damp with fearful sweat against her own.
. . .
“Do you know what’s happened?”
His hands close around her waist again as he helps her down from the back of the horse and he shakes his head. Her feet touch the ground, somehow it feels less steady than his hold, and it makes her reckless.
“My brother was injured, would you wait for me? I’m not sure if anyone else remains who could bring me to the Keep.”
A mild lie, she thinks she might have seen one of her father’s men on their way through the crowd but she can't be sure-
She'd go to the sept and pray for forgiveness later, just to be safe.
“If you wish it,” He replies, solemn and quiet, though there's still pink on his cheeks and it makes her heart race.
Gwayne is woozy from the poppy milk when she finds him, clasping his clammy hands in her own as he waves off her concerns. The Maester tells her that they will be sending him and the other wounded up to the palace once the crowds disperse and that he should rest for now, gently dismissing her.
“Were you going to compete?” Alicent asks Ned once she's behind him on the mare again, still warm from the fact that he’d kept his word and waited for her.
He shakes his head, “My brother was, though he on the lists for much later in the day. I was bringing the horse back up from the farrier when I found you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I’m surprised your father did not bring you back to the palace with him. My father barely lets Lyanna out of his sight while we’re in the city.”
“The King needs him more.”
Ned doesn't reply to that. She's not sure if she wanted him to.
. . .
Night falls.
Jaehaera is allowed to stay with her, locked away in Alicent’s quarters and not in the black cells as she had been anticipating. Bleeding fingers feed little green dresses to the fire, little green ribbons, green shoes, and the girl watches her work without speaking, obediently wearing the silvery-white ones instead. They make her look like a ghost. In a half-awake moment she almost looks like Helaena.
A maid in Targaryen colors brings them food, wine, fresh water for the basin in the corner. There are no familiar faces nor voices, only the rhythmic march of boots down the halls and the mournful cry of a dragon alone in the world as it passes over the city.
Alicent cannot even think of sleeping, can only pace before the window, trying only to be quiet enough to not wake Jaehaera in the bed.
Bleeding fingers, she leaves smears of bed along the windowsill, scraping, stinging-
The rhythmic march in the hall-
A knock at the door-
. . .
“I hear your brother is to be married.”
They’re in the godswood, her in her mother’s dress from meeting with the King, him in his Stark leather armor. He’s been training in the yard with her brother these days, among the men considered for the Kingsguard, and sometimes she’ll go with Rhaenyra to watch and pretend she’s watching Ser Cole train on the other side of the yard instead.
It’s so horribly improper of her to be here with him at this time of night, she’s sure her Septa would punish her horribly for it if she found it. She wonders if the Septa would do the same if she learned about her visits with the king, or if she’d just turn a blind eye to that. Alicent’s never been rebellious, not really, there’s too much fear winding around her bones, the Seven Pointed Star’s verses on mindfulness and piety and obedience written on her very soul…
Obedience shouldn’t make her feel so tainted though, should it? Shouldn’t make wearing her mother’s dresses feel so disrespectful to her mother’s memory, right?
The godswood has never made her feel so horrible. Surely it should? After all, it’s just talking with the King and it’s just talking with Ned? Shouldn’t they be equal in grief and guilt? They should be. They aren’t. She’s never so uneasy walking to the godswood as she is walking past the guards into the royal apartments.
Alicent can beg forgiveness for these meetings, these little pockets of good in the endless night that has been stretching on and on since the night of the Queen’s funeral. It’s a price she’s willing to pay each night, washing her face with bleeding hands and cold water and begging and swearing just one more time-
It’s always one more time. It will always be one more time.
“He is.” Ned sets free a rare grin, it lights up his face in a way she’s never seen before, “Lady Catelyn is a cousin of Lord Grover Tully’s. Brandon met her on the way south.”
It’s a cruel fantasy to have, in that moment, standing on the precipice of her father’s plans, but she cannot help but have it. To think of being swept away by a knight before her father’s plans can come to fruition. A maiden in a tower, rescued and carried home by the one who risked so much for her. It’s a cruel fantasy, it’s even crueler when she gives into it.
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“Thought about what?”
She thinks about the marble Valyria, thinks of the cold of it against the sharp life of the godswood, against the warmth of a summer night’s breeze.
“Meeting someone,” She hears herself say, “Marrying them?”
. . .
They did not speak for a long time.
Alicent had thought, when the Stark banners stood outside the gates of the city, that when he stood before her she would know what to say. That it would come to her in grand lines of anger and grief and desperation like in the songs but instead there is just an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. Relief is fleeting, she knows as long as she is in this room she is safe, that as long as he knows of Jaehaera’s existence that she is safe as well. The honorable Ned Stark will not let harm come to a child, she knows that. She has to believe that war has not changed him to that extent.
“One would think after all this time, you would have grown weary of green.”
Oh but I am, she wants to say, but doesn’t, but I am my father’s daughter, whether I want to be or not. I’m in too far now to change.
“I doubt any other color would endear me to our new King.”
A pinch in his expression. A furrow of his brow. In some other lifetime, maybe it would have been a laugh.
“No, I don’t think it would,” He says, instead, “You betrayed his mother.”
You betrayed me, she hears, and it is true. The moment she did her father’s bidding, she spat upon the oath they shared. The oath of obeisance their houses had made to King Viserys’ heir.
“I feared for my son’s life.”
. . .
It’s Gwayne who finds them, whose footsteps cause them to spring apart. Guilty. Sinful.
Gwayne frowns. Alicent clutches at the pale green cuff of his doublet, pleading.
“I kissed him,” She says, again and again, “It was me, I swear it. Please. Don’t tell father-“
It’d only been for a moment-
It’d only been just once-
“Anyone could have seen you,” Gwayne hisses.
She wants to scream, wants to beat her fists against his chest until they’re both bruised from it, wants to tell him that she wishes they had, that anyone else would spread the gossip like wildfire, that anyone else would save her from a worse fate-
She doesn’t, she lets him send her away, up to her rooms, biting her tongue all the way there until all she can taste is copper.
. . .
“If you had asked, I would have taken Aegon to ward. I would have protected him as if he was my own. Aemond too, if that was what was necessary. But you did not write.”
There’s a genuine, deep anger in the lines of his face, the grey of his eyes.
“You did not write me either,” She says, pettily, as if he could have. A second son of a second son could never have written to a Queen, especially not one so young, the King would have put an end to it quickly if her father didn’t get to it first.
“I would have done it, still, even if that was the only letter I ever received.”
She wants to hate him for that, for the steadfast honor that clings to him like a second skin. She has not felt clean or honorable in so long, maybe she never was at all.
. . .
The next day, she is betrothed to the King.
She tries to find him, tries to ask him to speak with her uncle, to ask for her hand, to save her, but she can never reach him.
. . .
“If I wrote such a letter now, would you accept it?”
He does not give an answer. She stares at the embroidery on his doublet, woven by his wife, by the woman who was meant to marry Brandon but never could.
“Jaehaera,” Alicent continues, lets the begging seep into her voice because she is truly desperate and her pride will die with her but her granddaughter must not, “She’s just a girl, Ned. An innocent child who has suffered too much already. I beg you, take her away from this place. She shouldn’t die for my mistakes.”
His frown deepens.
“I will have to speak with the King.”
She wants to weep.
When she returns to her room, she finds she cannot. There is nothing left to give.
. . .
When she sits at her wedding feast, she searches for him in the crowd. She finds Brandon, instead.
It’s Brandon who scoops her up during the bedding, sprinting ahead of the crowd with her over his shoulder, laughing loudly enough that her ears ring. It’s Brandon who sets her down at the door she has faced far too many times before and gently, kindly, squeezes her hand in comfort before he leaves her.
It’s Brandon who touches her last.
It’s not Brandon she thinks of. It’s not Brandon she prays for that night before she manages to fall asleep, mouthing the name silently, though even silently it still feels too loud in that room.
. . .
The second and third day since the surrender stretch on, the path of the sun carrying across her quarters.
Alicent spends time in prayer, clinging to what little faith she can find that the Father and the Mother will soften Jacaerys Targaryen’s heart enough to spare Jaehaera, that they will strengthen his belief in the Starks to the point that he’ll let her go north with them.
Jaehaera plays by the window, singing to herself, staring out at the Stark banners that surround the army camp.
. . .
Lyanna is missing.
Brandon is dead.
Ned is married.
Alicent is pregnant.
Every part of that is a nightmare she cannot escape.
. . .
It’s Jon, Lyanna’s boy, who brings her the good news, who finally gives her the ability to break down in tears.
Jaehaera will be safe.
Jaehaera will be safe.
“You’ll be happy there,” Alicent tells her again and again once Jon has left, even as tears stream down her face, “Lord Stark is a good man.”
Jaehaera squirms against her hold, restless, irritable, and Alicent lets her go back to her dolls with a kiss on the crown of her head.
. . .
She’s pregnant with Aegon when the news comes from the North.
Ned Stark has a son. His hair is red. His name is Robb.
Aegon is born looking just as Targaryen as the rest of them, not a single red hair in sight, not a shred of her in him and she wants to scream-
. . .
It’s Ned who tells her how she will meet her end.
“Will you do it?” Alicent cannot stop herself from asking, her voice on the edge of pleading.
She’s seen botched executions before, beheadings gone badly in a way that made her want to vomit. The thought of that happening is more terrifying than death itself.
“The King has made the decision to be the one to swing the sword, as he will be the one to sentence you to it.”
Ned pauses. His voice is softer then. He must see it on her face.
“I will speak to him, before,” He says, almost gently, “It would look badly, for a King to be unsuccessful on the first strike, I think.”
It’s the kindest thing she’s heard in a long time. The very thought is depressing.
. . .
She almost writes when she hears he’s had a daughter.
Almost.
When Aemond loses his eye, she almost writes again.
Almost.
When Viserys dies, she writes the first word and tosses it into the fire.
The inkwell follows it there for good measure.
. . .
“You must be good, do you understand?”
She tries not to cry, Jaehaera is surely scared enough without her grandmother making a scene. The girl nods, solemn, and Alicent cannot help the thought that she’ll fit in just fine. If not for her hair, her solemn, kind face could surely be attributed to Ned’s blood.
Robb takes the girl by the hand, so very tall next to her, and when the door closes behind them Alicent collapses into the chair by the window. She clutches to the windowsill, to the smear of blood from four nights previous, presses her forehead to the cool stone of it.
Jaehaera is safe, that is all that matters now.
They come for Alicent in the evening, putting shackles over the green cuffs of her dress, walking her down the hallways in silence. A crowd waits in the yard, jeering and sharp, but their taunts do not reach her ears. Her children are gone, she will join them soon, and Jaehaera is safe.
Her eyes meet Ned’s, searching, pleading, and he nods.
Sharp relief floods through her, a beacon of light amidst the darkness in her veins.
Thank you, she wants to say, wants to apologize, wants to tell him everything, but there’s no time for that.
She kneels before the block and just as Ned had promised her, Rhaenyra’s son strikes true.