summary: A tentative meeting between Rhaenyra and Alicent on the possibility of a hostage exchange. (part 1 /part 2/part 3/part 4/part 5 )
cw: the implication that reader is being sexually assaulted (she is not) as well as the implication of alicent potentially being sexually assaulted (she is not), the meeting in the sept did not happen, alicent is still in complete denial even with the proof right in front of her face...
notes: helaena: what did she say fuck ME for?
word count: 2.4k
“She isn’t coming home,” Helaena said as she entered your chambers to find your mother there again, staring blankly out the window. “Not to us.” She knew why her mother couldn’t stop coming back to your rooms. But it was not the same reason she couldn’t. Alicent was in her cups that evening and she made the path to your room as she always did, to muster up the strength to believe you’ll return soon even as the days add up. Helaena felt pity enough to spare her mother’s hope and tell her the truth.
Alicent bristled at the eerie proclamations of her daughter sounding out in the room suddenly, instantly defensive. “Do not say that,” she said through gritted teeth. “Whatever misery you feel, do not lose faith. We will bring her back. If she hears of this when she returns, that her own blood gave up and accepted her death so easily, what would she say?”
Helaena shook her head, growing frustrated suddenly. She did not like that she’d been dismissed. Did her mother think she did not miss you? It was only because she did that she was able to speak the truth to her then. “I do not know. She isn’t here. And she won’t be, not as long as we are.”
“Speak no more of this, Helaena.” Her tone was warning, filled with ill concealed anger. “I am not asking.”
The girl turned to her mother, a distressed expression on her face as she gazed at her more sternly than she ever had. “It won’t change anything even if I don’t.” She turned and left the image of the death ridden queen’s chambers behind, her skirts trailing behind. Trying to outrun the bloodiness of your room as if she did not see it begin to bleed through the halls along with her every step.
Alicent was left behind with those words, imagining what could become of you. What was being done to you, just as she stood uselessly in your chambers? You were in the grasp of the enemy. Anything could happen to you, anything that Rhaenyra would allow. Mayhaps Jaehaerys wasn’t enough and it was you she sought, to make her hurt deeply as possible. If she was only waiting for the right time to kill you in order to torture Alicent, then she had accomplished her goal, for every day was spent in constant anxiety over the uncertainty of your future.
War moved so slowly and hope was waning. An injured self-pitying king who’d never sire another heir, a violent regent who was little more than an angered boy, a council she had no voice in and a court which sunk into lethargy more each day. She needed to do something. Though there had been no demands, utter silence from The Blacks and that made her nervous to say the least. She knew of nothing which was hers to offer that Rhaenyra might want more than you. For what was a greater prize or a greater hinderance than your rival’s queen?
But perhaps she would be an equally boastful hostage, for she was also a queen and one whose influence Rhaenyra must not have known was waning. Alicent knew her children would not stick out their necks to save her, it would be a waste to do so for the Queen Dowager who now knew nothing of the proceedings of the war. It would compromise little in exchange for your return to safety. She made her mind up quickly with a desperate and reckless bid. She had to make it to Dragonstone and appear before Rhaenyra herself.
Staying at the red keep, wallowing in her own miserable thoughts and drinking wine made her feel weak, like a horrid mother to you when you’d been her strength for so long. Every day she was not in hysterics trying to claw you back haunted her deeply. The time for waiting was over, let you see her rashness, her willingness to be caught and killed as her love for you. She steeled herself with that notion, that if she were to die, it would be for your sake, as her death should be. It even comforted her a bit to think that this war would not be her end, she’d not die in a raid or an uprising of the smallfolk but thrown in front of a sword in a foolish bid for your safety. Let her be remembered as the mother who was foolish enough to face flame for her daughter even in the face of her other children’s lives. Being a martyr suited her well.
Rhaenyra was awakened in the middle of the night, led to the queen dowager standing helplessly unarmed and pleading in a bashful blue, her eyes lifting gently to her as she came closer. Rhaenyra had known that you were a prize of great value but she couldn’t have known Alicent would come on her own to try and retrieve you. And Rhaenyra knew very well that was why she came, lest she would have done so sooner. Though the silver haired woman should have had her imprisoned immediately, her lips curled into a glib smile despite herself. Would there ever be a better moment to weigh the glory of the prize she had won? “What do you come for?”
“You know,” Alicent said softly. “You have my daughter.”
“Yes, I have her,” she affirmed easily. “I have her in black velvet and silks. I have her wrapped up in my son and I.”
Alicent recoiled, hope and disgust rising in her heart. She knew not what you were being kept as but it was not a simple hostage. Mayhaps Aegon spoke truly, despite himself. “Please…what is being done to her?”
Rhaenyra shrugged, her eyes shifting around the room before settling back on Alicent. “Much of the same that was being done when we were all at the red keep, I presume. You would have to ask my son for the details.”
A brief and intense bout of hatred filled her at that but she took a deep breath. She hadn’t the luxury of dignity or anger. “I come with her return as my only pretense. I offer myself in exchange as hostage.” The words came out breathlessly, the image of your torment at the hands of Jacaerys turning her stomach. Mayhaps the same would become of her if she gave herself unto Rhaenyra’s custody, mayhaps the boy would figure the mother who looked so much like you was just the same for him to have but it was a much preferable alternative. She’d suffer all manner of things gladly just to know you were alright.
“I already have exactly what I want,” Rhaenyra crossed her arms, looking unimpressed at the offer. Why should she give you up? Alicent had to be a fool to believe she’d release the mother of her grandchildren for her of all people. “Besides that, I have taken to her and she to me.”
Alicent’s stomach dropped and a hand flew up to rest on her abdomen, calming herself with the phantom sensation of your kicks in her womb. Pretending for a brief and strange moment that you were still right within her grasp, capable of taking shelter within her even as she plead for your freedom. “She’s nothing to this war. She’s done nothing,” she whispers. “Take me in her stead.”
“If I wanted, I could have both of you as hostages but you are of far less use than she.” Rhaenyra chuckled dryly. “But you’re right, she has done nothing. Nothing but lay under my son and bear his children.”
Alicent’s eyes flew open, wide and wild with indignation. “You seek to strike back at me through her! You want it to be true, that my daughter is slattern so that you can turn my words back on me! But they are Aegon’s children and you torment a child for nothing but petty grudge.”
“A child?” Rhaenyra laughed again, this time genuinely. “She’s not a babe, Alicent. I walk by her chambers and I hear what she does with my son, I hear her sounds of pleasure as though in a pleasure house. Then she walks freely about the castle, plays with the children, eats at my table as any lady. She’s not an innocent maiden, she has appetites…such runs in the family, I suppose.”
Alicent, in the face of what she viewed to be lies crafted to provoke her, could say nothing for a moment. “She will only suffer being away from me. Does it please you that you’ve not only had my grandchild’s head but now you’ll keep my daughter prisoner until she goes mad? How much pain will satisfy?”
Rhaenyra was quiet, her lovely eyes going steely and grey in the dim light. “My daughter never drew a breath. I never thought there would be chance enough to make someone answer for that but then she fell into my hands. A daughter just as beloved. Mine to keep.”
Alicent smiled in disbelief, wiping away a few fallen tears. “You wish to punish us, then. Alright. If it is a daughter you seek, I will bring Helaena. She did so resemble you when she was young and she will cleave to you. But allow my youngest daughter freedom, allow her to return where she was born as she must yearn to do.”
But Rhaenyra was all too eager to deny her, shaking her head before Alicent had even finished. “I have what I want, Alicent,” she says softly, almost as though she wanted the queen dowager to believe her. “I need nothing of Helaena. Nothing of you. You shouldn’t have even come.”
“Please!” Alicent cried, the weight of the situation finally beginning to crush her under it. She could not return empty handed and she could not die without seeing you one last time. “Please, Rhaenyra, I offer my crown, life and limb for her! I’d give you Aemond and Aegon both if I could! Let me— let me at least speak to her!”
“She flew away from you, Alicent, why should she wish to speak to you?” Rhaenyra laughed. “You didn’t mention that. Her dragon is here. She came to me, I didn’t send for her.”
“You lie. You lie. You always—” Alicent hissed, grown irrationally bold in the face of that particular accusation.
Rhaenyra cut her off but so gently with a fond and condescending smile as she delved into memory. “I held her in my arms like a babe and took her little curls around my fingers. She took to me nicely, she embraced me. Maybe she was just tired of being underneath you. She took to the night with all her children to find me when she could have gone anywhere, she found refuge in me.”
“You lie. Gods above, Rhaenyra! Do you never stop wishing to torture me?” Angry, humiliating tears welled up in her eyes. She’d allowed herself to be provoked again, she’d come soft, chastised like beaten dog and baring herself vulnerably and yet again been stabbed. “Why will you not let the one consolation that I have remain mine? I know you have seen what she means to me and yet you speak of and use your own blood this way.” She spat the words like a curse, forgetting herself, forgetting her need to supplicate once more in the face of the queen regnant’s cruelty.
Rhaenyra suddenly lunged forward to grasp the other woman by the arm. “Shall I show you what she is? What your sweet girl has been all this time?” She asked harshly and began to drag her along without allowing her to answer. She was somewhat angered by the fact that she had the audacity to appear before her and truly expect to have you back as well as impatient with entertaining Alicent’s motherly madness over you with reason but more than that, she felt a peculiar glee at having you in her grasp to dangle over the queen dowager’s head. And she took a great thrill in this, too.
She pulled Alicent, who tried to break from her grasp as she would have followed her willingly to you if only the other woman had allowed it, along down the halls. As she approached a secluded wing on a far end of the castle, a once soft sound grew louder and louder, echoing off the stone. Alicent, shoved down the hall, stared quizzically at the chamber doors as they closed in on them.
But at once, a sharp keen sent a chill down her spine and her heart dropped. She recognized the teary voice she was hearing even through the heavy doors and she almost cried out but for Rhaenyra squeezing her arm painfully making her acutely aware of both your positions. “Those two turn the halls into a pleasure house every night, after a certain hour, you could separate them no more than you could separate animals humping in the undergrowth,” Rhaenyra murmured, her lips curling up in a small and somewhat tense smile.
Tears stung Alicent’s eyes at the sounds though not at the contradiction of your purity, but rather at the sounds of what she imagined to be your torment. How foolish she had been to imagine anything more decent should happen here when she’d been told you were given unto a prince who desired you, who had coveted you even on your wedding day. It didn’t matter what Rhaenyra wished her to believe, you were being assaulted by her beast of a son and she’d come with no one but herself. She could offer no help, she could do nothing but listen. Rhaenyra held her firmly even as she squirmed and began letting out soft sobs, biting her tongue. “You were with her on her wedding night which I imagine was far more miserable. Why should this distress you so?” Rhaenyra spoke, her rings digging into Alicent. “It is the sound of your daughter’s pleasure, the sound of what you’ve refused to acknowledge even to yourself all this time.”
Alicent was frantic in the silver haired queen’s grasp, almost fighting her in the effort to pull her arm away, muttering little pleas under her breath. “Mayhaps she’ll fall pregnant again, they’ve certainly put in the effort,” Rhaenyra murmured. “Though, it is better she doesn’t. I do hope she is cautious. In the best of times, women have died in childbed. How horrid to die from such at a time like this.” The thought of you becoming pregnant again at a time like this, in a manner such as this, with his child, made Alicent sob aloud, prompting the other woman to let out a little scoff of a disbelieving laugh and ultimately turn to drag her back the way they came before the noise caught your attention.
The way back was made on stumbling legs with her vision blurred from tears. Rhaenyra, now seeing that she could provoke nothing more from Alicent, allowed her to be sent back. Alicent had been reduced to a sobbing mess, wiping away snot and tears with her sleeve. The queen regnant was satisfied, believing she had proven her point in forcing Alicent to bear witness, that it could not be denied that her daughter was no pillar of perfect, faithful womanhood but Alicent’s mind and memory altered the scene as it played out. To her, it was not proof of your depravity, it was only her being made to listen to the sounds of your torment at the hands of the bastard prince she’d failed to protect you from. Her preoccupation with you was stronger than any proof Rhaenyra could ever put before her. Her mind kept replaying the sound, the horror she felt at the time managing to make it what she ultimately chose to see it as. To imagine her daughter’s cries of violation, of the depravity forced upon her was a torture unto itself but it was her addled mind’s first response, in order to protect your image from truth’s bitterness. She could never acknowledge anything but your utter perfection which was why in all things deviant, you were hapless to her no matter what manner of troubling things it brought upon her.
The memory of her journey back was nothing but ash when she returned, she did not bother to change from the modest blue dress she’d dressed herself in an effort to make herself look less hostile, softer and amenable. Younger, something more like she used to be, a weakness she felt should appeal to Rhaenyra. It was nearly the blue tone of your skin in each wild nightmare conjured late at night since Helaena put it in her ear, the blue of you laying presented to her in a box of rough wood, wrapped in black cloth. She went up the stairs to your room immediately and let herself crawl into your bed— which she had instructed the servants was to remain untouched — despondent and removed.
summary: as requested, i elaborate on the relationship between daemon, rhaenyra and alicent’s daughter!reader (but mostly rhaenyra and reader sorry😭) (links: part 1 /part 2/part 3 /part 4/ part 5/ notes 1)
cw: rhaenyra kinda preys on your mommy issues, manipulation, mentions of parent/child incest (but nothing actually occurs), platonic yandere, some…interesting undertones between these two sisters.
Rhaenyra was occupied with her own matters and her own miseries, too much so to truly be invested in the rearing of her youngest sister. She'd never spoken to the girl alone but she knew her eldest was fond of her. That was why she offered a betrothal in the first place, when she was shot down, she felt for her son but reconciled herself easily to the fact that having a relationship with her sister was simply never to be. Alicent guarded you like a hound and if not her, then Aemond. It was abundantly clear that her being around you would only be another point of contention in an already volatile family. After the night at Driftmark, she accepted that there were to be no mended fences and she, who had already been suffering the fallout for years, retreated back into minding her own children. The distance was final and irreparable.
She viewed Jace's obsession with you as a youthful infatuation which would fade with time as he realized the position they were all in. She was mistaken. Jace, at a tourney for your birthday, nearly killed himself trying to crown you Queen of Love and Beauty. And the boy didn't even have shame about it, he seemed proud when she confronted him. He was languishing in bed, bandaged and delirious, he could only grin when she spoke of you. She could not get through to him for the first time.
Daemon, in turn, went to Baela about the matter thinking that surely his daughter would have something to say about her betrothed's behavior. A wish to break from this betrothal in the face of such insult. Mayhaps, even, a wish for him to be thrown from his horse sometime. But what he found was not his daughter scorned but a steadfast image of her mother, her eyes betraying a certain thrill. "He has not insulted me, father. He is taken with another, but I have been taken before, mayhaps just as much." He hadn't known how to respond to such a revelation. Oh, the curse of having a daughter who was just like her mother. He'd never know how to be a father to her. He should have advised her then but all he could do was be somewhat…pleasantly surprised by the depth of his daughter's similarity. She had gained so many wants and nuances right under his nose and he'd not known until then. She’d developed a fervor toward something that she wished for.
So, they left it be and watched with a precognition of doom when you married Aegon, your mother having to hold your hand as you said your vows. She waltzed you away from the feast and Daemon noticed that you were nodding on your feet from one cup of wine but thought little of it until the queen did not return to the event to continue entertaining congratulations. Jace was sullen and Rhaenyra was in his ear, trying to cheer him, not having noticed the state you were in. Later, the two would compare what they’d seen and heard. Daemon would crassly, half jokingly suggest something between you and Alicent. Rhaenyra would propose that her son might have already had you and your mother, though remaining silent, sought irrefutable proof of your duty to Aegon so as to be certain of the cleanliness of all their reputations. Though, that never accounted for why she didn’t wed her eldest daughter to her eldest son. It was distasteful for you to be wed to him, Rhaenyra thought and it made something in her feel uneasy.
And when the first dark haired child was born, there was no surprise in it happening (mayhaps there was actually even a bit of relief) but rather how casually it was handled. Daemon and Rhaenyra surely had eyes just as well as Alicent but there seemed to be no commotion about the fact that her grandchild was surely sired by Jace. Rhaenyra didn’t have any desire to stir trouble but Daemon surely did and he made jokes whenever the family was gathered in one place. “My grandnephew bears such a resemblance to my other grandnephew, it seems my brother’s blood runs strongly,” he’d said smugly to Alicent as he came upon the three of you in the garden. He couldn’t help himself, the jokes were not toothless but he wasn’t serious about brooking any trouble. He even found you worthy of some credit given how firmly you seemed to have planted everyone’s heads up your arse.
The couple found it eerie how your mother was always hovering over you, Daemon would have liked to know how you got out from under her long enough to fuck his stepson. Rhaenyra had heard she’d even been in your chambers during your first night with Aegon. And it seemed her madness translated to the rest of the family. The image of piety all day long, your siblings always calling after you, always wrapped up in you so much so that they seemed not to even realize how their nephews and niece so resembled a certain prince outside of them. Not even your lord husband seemed to care or notice that all your children took after Jace, it was peculiar. The oddest part about it was that it felt sincere for most of them, when Alicent had told her that the children looked the way they did because of whatever nonsense she spouted, Rhaenyra truly thought she seemed as though she believed it herself. That was what frustrated and baffled her more than anything. She loved the girl so much she’d even gone blind.
In a way, it was perhaps a good thing for her cause that all Aegon’s heirs were sired by her son, although it made clear an upsetting double standard. If you’d been so endeared by her son, to some degree, you’d have no choice but to have sympathy to their cause. They could make something of that. And perhaps both of them would find out why their children were so enamored with you.
When she was finally able to separate you from Jace, she had you in her chambers, staring at you like a hawk, circling around your form. She didn’t intend to give you hell or be a nightmare of a goodmother but it was life and death, she wanted to know who you would be loyal to. If she’d have to keep you as a prisoner or a sister. You didn’t shrink under her gaze yet. You were always somewhat intrigued by your big sister. Such attention was paid her, such fuss. Her arrival in each room was like an event unto itself. Whispers carried on the wind about her. Your mother talked about her all the time. Maybe it was part of the reason you had your children the way you did, to pull some of your family’s focus back to yourself. She was your mother more than she was Rhaenyra’s enemy, after all. You envied Rhaenyra, you admired her. You were kin to her and so unlike her at the same time.
“I have always wondered how your mother had the audacity to ignore how much your children resemble mine,” She murmured, her eyes wide, pupils dilated and dark as she stared at you. She remembered also how her own children had been treated and that brought a flare of anger she was quick to quell. “They say the red keep is in a frenzy because of your absence. Do you long to return?”
Yes…and no. It was complicated. “I long to stay wherever we are safest.”
She smiled to herself, mirthlessly. “You would be safest a year in the past. Answer me this…you wear our colors, you have had my son’s children, but would you put an oath to me? Over your lord husband? Do you have that much love of my son if not of me?”
She startled you by taking your hands in her own, you hadn’t been anticipating her to touch you. You had never been so close to her, now that you thought of it. It felt like a domineering gesture, as though asserting that she could do anything to you. “I expect that I won’t have to keep you here as a hostage,” she murmured, catching your gaze. “Am I right in assuming?”
“I do love your son…” you hesitated, trying to think of some sly thing to say. You were trying to ride the fence as long as you could and she had cut through to ask you directly your position. She was full of hateful memories of the red keep when she looked at you, barely contained and her patience worn very thin. She had in her hands a potential tool and she wanted to be certain of what using it would entail. You didn’t know her well enough to be certain she wouldn’t harm you if she didn’t have the heart to hurt your children, you needed to tread lightly. “As I love the rest of my family.”
“Does your husband know his children don’t carry a drop of his blood?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” you admitted easily, it had been nothing to lie to Aegon. He was happier for it and what did it matter when it was you he loved and wanted rather than babes who need care they cannot return to him? “I’m not faithful to my husband in that way, I admit. And if this war comes to have his head, then I can only pray for him. It is his war to fight and win or to fight and lose. But I ask that you spare my mother and sister their fates, then you will have all my loyalty rather.”
Rhaenyra deliberated for a moment, letting go of your hands abruptly and stepping away from you a few paces as her eyes surveyed you closely from top to bottom. “If I have my way, they’ll not need to be harmed,” she said, finally. “There will be more bloodshed if you seek to betray me than if you do nothing. I can promise it.”
You, the very jewel that the rest of her family sought to keep away from her, in her grasp finally and looking at her as though she were about to eat you. She hadn’t known she wanted this but somewhere deep inside, now that she had you alone, she felt a certain modicum of satisfaction. You were…delicate, frightened, perhaps more willing to obey than she’d thought previously. A conquering desire overtook her caution and anger. Pull you away from your mother and your other siblings…what could she turn you into? Her own? …yes, mayhaps the endeavor of it would please her.
She hovered ever closer and reached out, twisting a lock of hair around her fingers. She’d wanted to see how you’d react to a softer touch, a more intimate, motherly gesture. She’d wanted to know how to felt to do so as well. Your breath hitched at the semblance of touch which reminded you so much of your mother. You hadn’t meant to lean into it but it was reflex and a need for a mother who was not there with you. More disconcerting was the fact that your sister smiled softly at your reaction. “Give me your word and I’ll give you mine,” she commanded but in a softer tone she reserved for her own children.
She had you in her grasp. She was beginning to understand why your mother had held so fast to you. You nodded, struck dumb by intimidation and mild admiration, “I swear I would never betray you. On their lives.”
She smiled softly and you couldn’t keep yourself from feeling a strange sort of pride at her approval. She was to you what you were to your lady in waiting at the red keep, the one who adored your every movement simply because you were the princess and she couldn’t believe she was in your presence, at King’s Landing. This was your illustrious elder sister and to be near her…was it the fact that your father favored her so much that made you feel as though her presence were greater than it was? Was it all the whispers? Either way, you had a latent desire for her smile, for her to look at you and speak to you.
“No undue harm will come to Alicent or Helaena, I will not harm them so long as they stay only as figures of this war.” Her words were careful, sly, even but even that much assurance made you sigh in relief. “You’ll stay with me, with us, until the war has reached an end.”
She liked that idea more than she should. Liked the thought of her half-sister, apple of her stepmother’s eye trailing her skirts more than she should. She enjoyed the thought of having you.
Baela entering your chambers late at night routinely, seeking out ‘your conversation’ if anyone asks but in all actuality just taking up her cousinly duties by making her pious cousin cum since she’s always too ashamed to do it herself.
summary: a trapped damsel promised to another, kidnapped by a conniving prince. wait…why does that sound so familiar?
cw: mentions of sexual assault and kidnapping (though no one has become a victim of either), r , l & r if they slayed, NSFW, incest, oral (reader receiving) and piv while the whole red keep mad af
notes: don’t let your nephew’s murder stop you from having sex with your other nephew
word count: 3.2k
Helaena walked slowly into her mother’s bedroom, sinking to the ground with Jaehaera in her arms, silent. When prompted to speak, all she could say is: “They’ve killed my boy. I went to her room…she’s left.”
The ensuing frenzy was madness. A queen and the heirs she’d given the king had been kidnapped, moreover, Jaehaerys had been killed. There were no heirs to succeed Aegon should he fall in the war. There was an urgent scatter to find whoever had stolen the queen away but all that could be found were the murderers of Jaehaerys sent on Prince Daemon’s orders. All that they knew was that there were other about the keep that night looking for the new queen consort and that she must surely be alive as she was beloved of Prince Jacaerys, coveted of him too. And that was all Aegon needed to know to understand that his wife and children had been taken by his rivals.
That was enough in and of itself to send him into a rage. “My wife was kidnapped and where were you?” He asked of Criston, turned suspicion of everyone and everything.
When Criston had no answer, Alicent stepped in. She had been awake since the previous night, biting her nail-beds bloody as she realized her daughter’s complete disappearance from the safety of her grasp. And what was she doing? She wasn’t with her, when they came for her. She should have died trying to keep her. “If they say that she is alive, we must move most carefully to avoid her being tormented. Whatever their demands—”
“My wife is being raped by the bastard prince as we speak!” He yelled at her. “And you speak of demands! There are no demands! He wishes her to be his own!”
Alicent flinched at that. She’d held fast to the thought that her daughter would not be harmed, Rhaenyra was not cruel and Jace, though a covetous boy born of lust with more of it in his own heart, showed no love of misery or violence. She could only pray that her foolishly optimistic heart was correct and no one was hurting you. But right then, the prognosis was grim considering there were no demands offered, nothing seen or heard of you. You could have been long dead and all her hope for nothing at all. The possibilities were overwhelmingly dreadful, they forced her to quiet and let Aegon have his histrionics.
Everywhere she turned, her abject fear was ignored. She needed somewhere to confess that your absence was her penance, needed something to do which would please the seven and bring you back to her. But there was no succor to be found anywhere. She had gone into your room, even, to observe the place in which Helaena had realized your absence. Her hands had gently soothed across that dip in the sheets, her fingers collected the hairs left on your pillow. She stood there as if caught in the same trance which had gripped your sister the night you left. She found herself staring at the absence of you, for what? To punish herself perhaps and perhaps simply because a childish part of her hoped your return could be as easy as wishing.
She had to go to Helaena eventually although she had not even the strength to pretend that interacting with her while they were both…the way they were, was anything but exhausting. Helaena, her eldest daughter, reminded her of the absence of her youngest. And Alicent, no doubt, reminded the mourning mother of her missing sister who abandoned her in her greatest hour of need. What had she done that this was written into her fate irrevocably? Why did she have to lose a son and a sister all at once? Had it been because always she had taken the sweet comfort you provided for granted even knowing what the future held? She’d have given whatever she had left to make you reappear.
Alicent had come to deliver the news of the funeral procession. When she was sure Helaena had accepted the inevitability of it, she found it within her to utter one comfort. “The realm will see your sister’s absence. They will win our war and bring her back to us.”
Helaena shook her head. “She abandoned me. She- she went on dragonback to—”
“Helaena.” Alicent said sharply, grown impatient with the implications. It was a tone she hadn’t used with Helaena before and the girl flinched. “How can you slander your own sister? She wouldn’t do that. She hasn’t done that. She’d not betray us willfully. She has been kidnapped. Do you understand? You are not to speak of such…lies to anyone. She would never have left us.”
Helaena went limp, sitting ungracefully on the edge of her bed. She knew the situation only for what she saw of it. And no matter what her mother told her, all she could think of was the dream she’d relied on. She knew it to be the truth.
───── ✶
On Dragonstone, you lay with your legs slung over Jace’s shoulders and his mouth sucking at your clit. All the anxiety and fear softened down to a desire to be with him. You didn’t want to deny him anymore, you didn’t have the strength. It should have driven you apart but being separated from your mother only made you more in need of his affections. Now here he was, his sweaty skin on yours, his tongue doing things that made you think of the Sept where you conceived all your children. He’d told you it’d make all of them blessed by the seven. You weren’t sure you believed that, but it’d been hard to think with him inside you.
It was hard to think now, with the vibrations of him moaning as he sucked your clit making your hips edge off the bed. Your fingers tangled in his hair and the feel of it was heaven, a glimpse of the past. A muffled moan sounded from his lips again as you tugged at his curls. You had yet to be dressed in the hours you’d been at Dragonstone, you’d had a bath drawn for you but not the opportunity to dress because Jace was not even been willing to wait for you to step out of the tub. You hadn’t even spoken to Rhaenyra. Maybe it was better this way.
Jace slid his fingers inside you quite suddenly, causing you to gasp as he continued on undeterred, latching to your clit as though the cure for all grief lay in your cunt. You writhed beneath him, squirming until his hand ran up to your hip to still you with a grip so tight it would leave a bruise. You called his name, no longer watching your volume, letting the servants out in the hall hear you clearly. This was clearly what Jace sought to do to you on a smaller scale, to have everyone know exactly the ways in which you were his. Intimately, to the remotest detail, he believed you were his. And he’d have you every which way to prove it.
Half undressed and half humping at the bed, he listened to you intently, letting your sounds guide him. He’s quick to learn about your body, which parts of you he can suck, touch, lick to make the sounds he loves so much. You can feel his calloused fingers fondling and rubbing at your clit, gathering up the much coveted wetness to rub against you with an eagerness he’d not experienced in the days following the funeral. Even after you’d cum, it seemed he’d no intent of letting up on you.
It all still felt illicit to Jace, just like the thrill of stealing away to the sept to have you. He finally lifted his head, crawling up your body to slip inside you, returning back to where he had first found an intoxicating madness which he staked his life on. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth as his body slowly tensed with the unmitigated pleasure of your cunt. The familiar sting of him inside you is enough to overwhelm you to the point of tears. Clawing him closer to you is the best control that you can manage. Jace’s calloused fingers brushed away tears from your cheeks. He joined you in your noisiness, choking out variations of your name, fragments of possessive declarations. Where before he was eager yet languid, he was merciless then, the wooden frame of the bed shuddering beneath you as he pounded in and out unyieldingly.
He’d lost all patience and all sense it seemed. When the familiar sensation returned, making your back arch and your mind cloud over, you turned yourself over to him completely. You let your head fall back, your mouth fall open as you wept his name to his immense and immediate satisfaction. He pushed his hips tight against yours and before you could even manage to come down, he was spilling into you.
All of the comfort in the world was in that room, with Jace’s slack body laying against yours. Outside was where the storms brewed.
Eventually, when Jace left for his mother’s council, you returned to a warm bath. Afterward, you finally dressed in a gown brought by a servant, soft black fabric adorned with red embroidered dragons here and there. It gave you pause. It had been so long since you’d worn your house colors. It meant, at the moment, that you’d betrayed your family. You admired yourself in the mirror, as you settled again into dark thoughts of what might have befallen your family in your absence and what they’d think of you now. Which of your brothers had the men roaming the keep killed? And what did your family make of your absence? Did they see it as having a hand in his murder? Did they cry that you were a kinslayer? You were so desperate to know anything that had occurred outside of the castle.
You roamed the castle, searching for your children when you heard the echo of your half-sister’s commanding voice. Her words were only half clear but you thought you could make out “Jaehaerys” along with some other morbid words, some chatter about Helaena.
It clicked then. You thought back to the night you left, how the man who sent you fleeing had warned of more dangers. Someone sent to steal your brother’s life, whichever one of them, and the lives of anyone who would stop them. Your stomach sank and you stalled in your footsteps, stunned. Baela walked up to you, you hadn’t noticed her footfalls from the ringing in your ears.
“Cousin,” she greeted, reaching out for your arm, her eyes gazing at you warmly as though greeting a close friend again at a feast. “Are you alright?”
“I…do you know anything about Helaena? What has happened to her?”
Baela’s eyes flitted away just as you looked up. “…I know not, all that I know of Princess Helaena is that she remains at the red keep. More than that, you must be missing the babes. Let me bring you to your children.” She looped her arm around yours and whisked you away down the hall before you could respond. For some reason, you couldn’t bring yourself to question her further, the naked guilt in her avoidance frightened you. You wanted to see your children more than you wanted to know what horror befell your family this time.
The children slept soundly in their beds, still exhausted from the chaos of the night. You caressed their little faces, lingering for a moment at Viserra’s, remembering how Helaena was so fond of her since before she was even born. Helaena. You wondered how she was, what she made of your absence. If she’d ever forgive you for leaving her behind. You thought of your mother, if she was safe and well, you should have asked Baela about her but you had the sense you wouldn’t get an answer. She couldn’t be well, not when she didn’t know where you had gone and that likelihood dredged up a primordial sadness, one of having to leave her.
“You should be asleep too.” You turned to head Jace’s voice as he entered the room. “You have scarcely rested.”
You stood, coming close enough to Jace whisper without being heard by your oblivious, sleeping children. “What has happened? I heard talk of my sister and her son.”
Jace hesitated, trying to discern whether he should deceive you or tell you the truth. “Prince Daemon had asked for your brother’s head. The one who killed my brother. Faulty as a paid killer can be, the men he sent instead took the head of his son.”
You gasped, your hands over your stomach as a sudden wave of nausea hit. “And you had a part in this? You knew…”
“I only knew he sent men to the red keep for Aemond, the details remained with Daemon. I had no part in anything but your escape.” Jace reached out for you, tilting your head up so that you’d look at him as tears sprung to your eyes. His expression was resolute and sincere. “I will not apologize for wanting you at my side.”
You turned your face away from him as the tears slipped down your cheeks. “You had me abandon my sister to mourn alone. You knew this would happen.” You couldn’t keep the pathetic sadness and panic from your voice even as you tried to sound stern. You’d been astride Jace likely before Jaehaerys’ body went cold. While your sister cried for him.
“What would you have had me do? Leave you there?” He asked, incredulous. “Just how long were you intending to let Aegon believe my children were his?”
That wasn’t fair, he must have known you’d only done what you felt necessary for their safety. “It wasn’t a matter of love for him that made me act as I did. What was I to do? Leaving my mother of my own will would have been unthinkable to me and I’d still no idea of how the war would turn.” You stepped away from him, biting your nails as you looked toward the beds where your children slept. “No matter which banners raise for whoever, no matter which houses declare for whoever, all my concern was in keeping my children where they were thought on kindly, as heirs to the throne.”
“My heirs. They are thought on kindly here, unconditionally. Do you really think you can play both colors at once forever? They are only heirs in the eyes of the greens for as long as you can hide how much they look like me, don’t you realize? Everyone knows, save for Aegon. One loud allegation of bastardy from Aegon or his council and what would become of them? If your…husband was forced to open his eyes to who sired his supposed children perhaps he’d spare you somewhat but what of them? He’d want them gone. You and I know it.” His eyes were dark, full of fervent warning, turning you back toward him. “And his court is full of men who want their daughters for Queen. It would only be a matter of time before you and our children became an insult to them.”
You instantly rejected that notion mentally. Your mother would not see it happen. Aegon would never believe a rumor over you, over what he felt was your adoration of him. But still, you couldn’t deny that none of your family’s best intentions would spare you from the machinations of the men who practically ruled Aegon because they held the keys to his reign. Perhaps, in the end, you could agree logically that it was better for you to be at Dragonstone but you couldn’t get past what you’d been forced to leave behind. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not in blood.
“I’m frightened, Jace. For my mother,” You murmured, suddenly exhausted. A figurehead of this war, it was only a matter of time before something befell her like it did Helaena.
“As I am for mine,” he replied, wrapping his arms around you. “But Alicent would be no safer for you being at her side.”
Perhaps not safer but maybe more at peace. What did your mother think of you being gone? You’d taken your dragon, did she think you ran away of your own will? Maybe she believed you’d sold them out, that it was you who let in your nephew’s killers. That possibility sent a chill down your spine and you could feel bile rising in your throat at the thought of being dubbed a kinslayer. You laid your head on Jace’s chest, feeling the thump of his heart beating and taking comfort in him as you continued to dwell in thoughts of the family you left behind.
“All I wish for…is to spare you all of this,” Jace murmured into your hair.
You let his honeyed words console you. All you had to rely on was him, even as wary and distressed as you were, you could not bring yourself to mistrust him. He was…the only certain thing you had before you. Home was left behind, your family’s feelings for you in obscurity.
───── ✶
At the red keep, a hatred brewed in Aemond that could not be revoked. It had always been there, that animosity between brothers, but it had reached fever pitch when he returned to the keep to find that Jaehaerys was killed and you were stolen. Aemond felt that it was yet another curse of their birth order. Had it been you that he married, he’d have been home that night and he’d have taken off the heads of Blood and Cheese before they could harm either of you. Had it been he who was wed to you, he thought, never would Jace have had the opportunity to breathe in your direction. He was no idiot, he saw how much your children resembled the dark haired prince. But he counted it as another of Aegon’s faults for he’d been the one who allowed you to be seduced away.
He said nothing of your children's true paternity, of course, but the fact that his elder brother had wed you and had apparently neglected you so was yet another thorn in his side. He could never have broached the subject for fear of the repercussions it would bring you. Now, mourning the loss of his only son, all he could think was that if his mother had only been fair and just wed the two of you, none of it would have ever happened. All of that grief and the rage of your absence culminated in a most monstrous hate. Aegon, as he saw it, had finally robbed him of everything. You were being held at Dragonstone and subjected, no doubt, to the desires of the bastard prince. Even for knowing that Jace had fathered your children, he did not believe it was ever a wanton act on your behalf. Jace had manipulated you, who was naive and married to a whore who went to bed with you drunk and debauched. It couldn’t have been your choice to begin an affair, nor to leave your family behind. But not a single one of them could save you just yet, they’d no choice but to leave you captive for gods only knew how long. Every day of waiting for that moment brought his hatred for Aegon closer to treason.
summary: Let us embrace, even though we are doomed. From this point onward, the war becomes much more contentious among maesters. Some insist princess reader was kidnapped by prince jace, others say that it was love for the prince and loyalty to the queen which sent her to dragonstone by her own leave. The only thing anyone can agree on is that from henceforth, this is a war of queens. Whether one of black and two of green or one of black, one of green with a turn-cloak black princess in between is anyone’s guess.
cw: threats of kidnapping though no one is actually kidnapped, mentions of murder, little bit of angst, misunderstandings, jace sent someone to kidnap you but he's like really sad and stuff so its okay probably, some logistical details might be wrong because i mostly watch this show with my clit just bear with me
notes: it’s just not poor helaena’s night at all
part 1 /part 2/part 3
word count: 3.1k
Alicent entered your chambers, her hands clasped and her face somber as she wondered how to deliver the news. It wasn’t you she needed to be concerned about with your father’s death but somehow she found herself thinking of consoling you. Perhaps it was because she found it to be the more comfortable task of the unpleasantness she’d had to endure the previous night and what she’d have to endure that day. She hated the very idea of your sadness but she loved the idea of caring for you in it. She loved the thought of taking you into her arms and shushing you like a babe. That would bring her such peace, help her reconcile everything. If only she could spend an hour or so comforting you.
You looked up as she entered, without word and with an air of sullenness about her. She sat perched on the couch near the window of your chambers, the dull light streaming in and illuminating your face, her reverent and tired eyes met yours. “Your father…” She managed to speak as she gently cupped your cheek.
It only took you a second to realize everything that needed saying. “He’s…gone on, has he not?” You take a breath, having anticipated this for a long time. You wait for grief but it does not come. Nothing does. Not even relief. His presence, as horrible as it feels to think, was as impactful in death as it was in life. Alicent was slightly disappointed that you’ve handled it so well and caught on so quickly. But at the same time, she is proud of you for your resilience and grace. She only wished you had just a little less, so as to need your mother a little more on this day. “My dearest love,” she says, stroking your hair.
You give her a weak smile. “Now what?” You asked because you know very well that there is certainly more to that statement. Your father is dead but everyone around has anticipated this for years. Your mother has been least subtle of all of them in her planning.
“Now…” Alicent hesitated, looking into your eyes. “We put things together and we crown you queen.”
Even quietly as Alicent had tried to keep the decline of Viserys’ health and his impending death, Rhaenyra was not blind. She knew her father was not long for this world. And so she had left to assume her seat as Princess of Dragonstone shortly before his death, narrowly avoiding becoming hostages without leverage. Alicent had hoped this could all be done easily, if she and her children had been trapped in the red keep swarming with green allies, negotiating her surrender would come quickly and hopefully without need for bloodshed. But likely on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra would be able to freely prepare for her ascension. They were running out of time before they could no longer keep Viserys’ death secret and although Alicent had made the most of it, there was still much to do. They needed the advantage, they needed to show Rhaenyra there was no need to fight against them.
You sat, your hands trembling as you watched your children at play, wondering how this would play out. You did not want your nephew robbed of his birthright nor killed nor made a hostage but it was your mother’s hands weaving this fate. What would you be now? A daughter of Queen Alicent or the wife of Prince Jacaerys? The two things seemed in conflict, now more than before. You’d have to deny one to claim the other. The middle ground of a brewing war was simply a place for people to fall through the cracks to one side or the other anyway.
To be honest, all love and duty aside, you were a mother and thus a pragmatist by necessity. You had to choose which you believed would be the winning faction so that your children would live and be crowned. The distinction didn’t need to be made just then. It couldn’t be, anyway. You’d play the role which most befitted you. But that did not relieve the knot in your stomach at the thought that for one side to prevail, it would mean the death of your mother or the father of your children. Neither of which you could imagine giving up even with the blade above your head. You knew it would come to bloodshed, you could only hope morbidly that when it did, it was only the blood of people you could live on without. You could only hope that the blood of your children would be spared if nothing else held sacred.
After a mad scramble to cobble together everything necessary for Aegon’s coronation, including his presence, plans proceeded. Dressed in a fine, deep green gown to match your mother’s, you stood at Aegon’s side, anxious. You had not seen him all day, whatever emotion he wished to hide from you out of shame, it had mostly cleared away and left some semblance of a man who’d be able to stand on his own at your side looking not like an unworthy older brother but a husband— save for his eyes which you knew had shed tears recently. You could almost pity him if only you didn’t have much more to cry about. Your mother, who had not mustered a genuine smile during the whole farce, managed to sincerely smile as she placed a crown on your head and knelt to you. “My queen,” she murmured, taking your hand in hers and pressing a kiss to the emerald ring on your finger. That was the only brief moment wherein which you felt comfort that day. When her lips left your hand and you were made to stand only next to Aegon as his queen, you felt what you had been desperately trying to avoid since birth; alone, bare, defenseless. It was then that all the implications of what was unfolding hit you at once and a tear slipped down your cheek.
You looked back at Helaena whom you had not seen until now because you were being prepared for coronation in a lavish fashion. Her face read the same dread and fear, her eyes met yours and flashed with wariness. With warning she was desperate to hear spoken but could not. Her voice was lost, her words devalued long ago. All she had was the frenzied gaze she gave to you before a horrible rumble shook the ground.
Through the floor with a sickening crack rose Rhaenys astride Meleys, her expression solemn and unimpressed. The peasants climbed over each other for whatever exit they could find, stepping on the bodies of those killed and screaming for the terror of being faced against a kind of beast they only ever saw in flight, for being crushed under rubble or sent falling. They sought their escape and went without Rhaenys’ halt. But there was no such escape for you, who was cornered in with the rest of your family. Alicent stood in front of you, Aemond stood to the side trying to appear unafraid even then as though he’d draw his blade and strike Meleys with a sword smaller than one of her teeth, Helaena hid behind him but her expression read as almost relieved, Aegon was glued to your side, uncharacteristically brave as though his body would shield you from dragonfire; all of you, the whole wretched lot, looked up at her and waited for flame.
It did not come. Rhaenys retreated which relieved you as much as it frightened you. You saw it in her eyes, she contemplated burning you all alive but when her gaze found you, there was a certain… pity. You got the sense you were what held her back in the moment, but what was next? What could be done when you were not there, teary eyed and pitiful? Your mother brought you into her arms, trembling herself, muttering placations that you could not hear over the ringing in your ears. Your mother could not protect you and inevitably you would lapse in protecting her. You held her tightly, your mind going numb with grief for the future. This was the first time you saw it, the utter helplessness of war. It had begun before your eyes.
The red keep had taken on a dimness, even drearier than before. Shadows cast up and down the halls, no candle could brighten the heavy atmosphere, though that did not stop anyone from trying. Your mother had the servants light candles all over. The night had begun to come earlier, the daylight stark and scarce. You now resided in your mother’s old quarters and she in Rhaenyra’s. You didn’t like the change, your mother’s bedroom felt haunted for as long as you could remember, but especially now. Your sister had said something eerie about it when you’d had her in your company. “It is all awash in red,” She’d gasped upon entering with her children holding to her skirts.
The atmosphere everywhere was indeed awash in blood, if that was what your sister meant. The death of your nephew at the hands of your brother hung in the air everyday as a reminder that there was surely more blood to be shed. That war had not only begun but had begun with a bitterness, a recklessness that would reflect on them surely. Precarious grounds, bloodsoaked. This was a desperate melee wherein which you could see the white of your opponents eyes. Feel the warmth of their blood.
Therefore, it was laughable that your mother was trying so hard to comfort you. Her eyes plead with you to believe in her rather than the cover of lasting night which had blanketed all of you. But you no longer believed in her as you once did. And that was a horrible thing. There was no more safety in your mother’s arms. No place to hide. You had been exposed like a festering wound opened up to the air. All of you had been. There was no more safety in anyone in the keep. Your brother had not yet realized this. He thought himself a fully fledged king now and presumed this war would be his victory, for everything was done for his sake. More so than anything in his life before. He reveled in it, despite everything.
He should have known better. But why would he? He might have expected you to praise and uplift him as well, for he tried to appear very kingly in your eyes but you were in no mood for it. You wished to be alone with your children much of the time or with Helaena and her own; and your mother permitted it. The news of Rhaenyra’s stillbirth had reached your mother, she worried that somehow it would be retributed through you so she pleas with anyone with a modicum of influence to keep him busy. The council did indeed answer to her in this regard, they did keep his head swirling with vague responsibilities which kept him from your bed. You had already given him sons and a daughter, there was no need to chance the gods again. There was no need to risk losing you on top of everything slipping out from under her. It was vaguely suggested by Criston that it would lift your spirits to see him win their family’s safety which was the only thing that caught his attention fully. Yes, to fight this war valiantly, to bring his poor lady wife peace, to have you looking pleased with him again. He would be a hero in your eyes and there was no greater ego boost than that.
That was why you were alone in your chambers that night. Aegon was somewhere gloating in his new rise to power, languishing in the war effort and fantasizing about spilling more blood for sake of your safety. There were spies among you, no doubt. Sympathizers to your half sister or those who were simply easily bought. You had not, in your mounting fear, considered that. Not until, in the silent dark of night, a hand pressed to your mouth and your eyes flew open with a surge of fright.
“Princess,” A man’s voice whispered from just above you, his breath stinking of ale. “You’d do well to listen to me. I am here on behalf of Prince Jacaerys. He has bid me bring you and your little ones to him. I intend to do so with as little force as you will allow. Tonight, danger is afoot this keep, I am not the only one who has come on behalf of a prince. There are men who’ve come to claim your brother’s life, mayhaps any one of your lot who try to stop them. I come to spare you from seeing their heads dashed off. Do you understand me, Princess?”
You could not see his face in the dark. A little candle remained burning in the corner of the room on a table but it only illuminated his hair just slightly. His face was a void. You trembled with the effort of trying to calm yourself enough to think about what you were to do.
“Do you understand, Princess? I’m not here to harm you but I do intend to lead you safely to the prince at Dragonstone as I am command, I come to spare you from what will occur whether bound and gagged, dragged out of the keep by my own hands or without a single mark of struggle and on your dragon, can only be your choice. Me, I do prefer the second so I only bid that you nod to show me you understand.”
You nodded, still searching the darkness for anything you might recognize in his features. You saw the glint of a long blade in the dim light and shivered.
“I’ve cut down all those who might stop me but if I lift my hand and I hear you scream, you’ll make my choice for me, I’m afraid— at the risk that other ears that might be sneaking about, close enough to hear you. If you can manage to remain quiet, I'll allow you to wake your children calmly and leave at your own will. I'll spill no more blood than I already have. I will allow you to spare them being dragged barefoot down the streets.” He then lifted his hand from your mouth and you took a shuddering breath as he gradually released you from his grasp. You turned to your children, gently rousing them from their sleep and bidding them be quiet. You hadn’t the patience or mind to craft a sweet lie for them, you didn’t tell them anything, you only took advantage of their sleepy confusion as you prepared them for leave.
You, clad in a thin nightgown and clinging to your children who were still half asleep, rushed down the hall with the man right at your heels. Your guard was missing, your ladies in bed, your mother…you were alone in this. He was herding you down to the dragonpit, you thought that to be a good sign, had he any inclination to hurt you, he would not want you in sight of a dragon who would turn him to ash should you so much as scream. Maybe he truly was sent at Jace’s will, for who else but someone from his faction would call you “Princess” rather than Queen? You couldn’t fully consider it with your mind overwhelmed by fear. Fear always set your mind to an endless buzzing, no thoughts ever completed or followed to conclusion, only half suppositions of frightening ends.
When you reached the dragonpit, it was as though the man disappeared into shadow, for you could no longer hear his steps nor see him over your shoulder. Still, you were set upon a task asked of you, you would not forsake and risk everything. There is danger afoot this keep. Fear made you docile, a lamb to slaughter. You strapped Viserra, who had begun to whine for sleep and confusion, to your chest before chaining your sons in front of you on the saddle. Mother, please…you thought before taking flight. You didn’t even know what you were asking for. For your mother to appear now? In the presence of a man who would surely take her head off before you could say dracarys if he were to be interrupted? Perhaps there was still just a part of you which believed your mother could still save you. Maybe you were only begging her forgiveness for fleeing like a coward and leaving her to the yet unrealized danger the man had spoke.
It was a long flight with the man’s words echoing in your ears again and again. You were in no place to make sense of it, only to feel your chest tighten with dread, to gasp the thin air of the sky into your trembling body as you replayed the memory obsessively. As the red keep disappeared, you did not dare turn back as though danger were still at your heels. What would become of those you left behind, you could not even bring yourself to wonder. All you could bring yourself to do was pray, spending the air in your lungs to whisper prayers your mother taught again and again
Shortly after you’d taken flight, Helaena went to your room with Jaehaera in her arms, panicked and searching for you. She called out to you and when you didn’t answer, she grabbed the candle and went to your bed where all she found was the imprint of where your body once laid on the bed. She let out an anguished breath, stunned into a surprised stillness. She shouldn't be surprised, she had known this but why did it hurt so much? If she knew, why did it hurt her? “She has abandoned me, finally…” She thought and a horrible emptiness took her over. Several minutes she stood there frozen, looking at the absence of your body before going to your mother.
When you arrived at Dragonstone, as promised, Jace awaited you. You wanted to demand answers from him for what you'd faced but he...he looked as though he'd been crying, his eyes flat as devoid of light like the dark of the dragonpit. And you, in desperate need of someone's arms and comfort, went into his. He accepted you gladly, stifling a sob as he buried his face in your neck. Fool as you were, you could not ask him, not yet. You took a moment to be with the grief of it all and the horror still ahead of you. Somehow, it was easier to bear in his arms even if you feared what had been done in his name. The relief that you remained alive with your children far outpaced your outrage and confusion in that moment and so you stood in his embrace, weak and war weary, not knowing that the worst was still yet to come. Stripped down to the barest of needs, the two of you.
The blood could be retributed later. Right then, you craved the sweetness of being held.
summary: a little more insight into the relationships princess reader holds with her family (when ur circle small but all yall crazy). (links: part 1 /part 2/part 3)
cw: platonic!yan, allusions to religion, cheating, open relationships, mentions of pregnancy, crazy is running through this family like the tomb raider, baela and jace saw you from across the bar and liked your vibe
notes: everyone in this family is like save me princess reader princess reader save me
Helaena is often regarded as simple but she knows her family well. She is well aware of her mother’s preference for you but she doesn’t mind. At least it isn’t Aegon. You’re actually kind to her, she knows her words sometimes go over your head but you listen patiently with a smile. And though her children love her, it is sometimes overwhelming to care for them so you often offer to mind them for her while she has some time alone. Helaena doesn’t just enjoy being alone, she requires it and ever since she’s been wed it seems as though it is forbidden for her to simply be alone. She appreciates you for simply knowing what lines to tread lightly across, for never making her have to reject you and your touch. She’s more willing to accept your touch, it feels careful, intended for her rather than for yourself. It feels truthful to your heart.
When you were pregnant with your third child, she gave you an emerald beetle brooch and she embroidered a cap for the baby with little lady bugs. She seemed to be enamored with the child even before her birth, in a way she hadn’t been with her own children. It made her smile to rub your belly and speak to her niece. “Did you know that a beetle’s shell shines many colors under the sun? Sometimes even I cannot be certain which is true. It can only be supposed for some time, at least. It is much like our fate…to be pulled into different lights, made to show the colors others want to see,” she murmured as she felt the kicks of your daughter in your womb. Her words sent a shiver down your spine. Although Helaena was the sibling whose company you’d now enjoyed the most, it was sometimes a bit eerie to be with her when she was in such a state of preoccupation. Even so, you were glad she seemed so interested in her little niece. She was better with your children than her own, it wasn’t her fault, it was just that sometimes it was difficult to see her own children. To know that their sorrows, their little lives were hers was frightening, it was too confronting.
It was easier to look to you. Alicent had always held you as an example for her and even though she had long since given up thinking her eldest daughter would learn to behave like you, Helaena had never stopped wanting to emulate the way you navigated the world. Even though you were the little sister, you had an ease about you that never came to her. Such a thing as being a princess came easily to you, she had understood the difference between you two from day one. When anxiety rattled her system as she carried her first child, she looked to you and thought that if her little sister could be well even married to Aegon, even after giving him a son, she would too. She had been relieved that you had married first, to give her some direction, your mother was really no example in her case.
Once when you two were small, she had woken from a dream and went to your chambers but as she stood outside the door, she heard your mother’s voice and paused. She felt an indelible urge to eavesdrop though she never had before, she wanted to witness this moment, one stolen between her mother and sister. One she was not meant to be part of. She eased the door open slightly to peer in. She had not broken the moment. You two were at the vanity, Alicent behind you, brushing your hair gently, cooing such flattery. Helaena had thought to envy you but truly, she wished to be so close to you as your mother was. She wished to soothe you as your elder sister and say the right things to make you smile instead of leaning on you so heavily. That moment made her feel so ashamed of sneaking off to your bedroom to curl her body around yours for comfort from her horrid dreams. How small you were next to your mother, how young you behaved. Was she forcing you to grow up just for her sake?
You and Aemond seemed years older than her, from her point of view. She was only just coming to understand what she’d already seen before. She was just coming to understand the world and how her cryptic dreams fit into it. She had only been vaguely troubled by her dreams before, only so much so that listening to her baby sister breathe would soothe her back into sleep. She was wrong to be so calm then, even so, she felt wrong to be so overly anxious now. She didn’t know what to feel. Sometimes she was like a newborn, red all over and crying from the rush of sensation all at once. She turned to Aemond for protection, to you for guidance. You were her only template, when she felt the fear rising up in her, she need only turn to you and mimic as best she could.
In contrast, Aemond was a little guard dog for your sake. What Criston was to his mother, he’d be for you, he’d long ago decided. When your egg hatched and his didn’t, he was humiliated. Before you, he only wished to appear strong and capable and he’d even been undermined by Aegon’s egg hatching, the sibling he deemed least worthy. How were you to take him seriously? How were you to believe he could protect you from Aegon— from anyone? Part of the reason he was so desperate to claim a dragon was to show off to you. To appeal to you. Back when he thought he’d marry you, he had even thought doing so would make you think more of him as your future husband. Obviously, it hadn’t happened that way and Aemond was silently crushed. Yet another bitter reminder that the order in which Aegon and himself had been born superseded everything else.
Something strange began to happen inside his mind as soon as you were wed to Aegon, it was as though you became a lady from a song. You were out of reach, permanently, you’d become his brother’s queen. More than flesh, you were now almost mythical to him and more than that, dealt a tragic fate and needing of protection as your mother had been. A saint-like figure for him to ground himself in all his violent, envious thoughts on. Keeping his sword for you made him feel better than he was, it turned his yearning for bloodshed into something like honor. For any drop of blood spilled in your name had to be the highest will of the Warrior. Someday, the realm would tell your name in stories alongside his. He would be remembered as the knight who so loved his sister, so protected her that he became a standard of devotion and love. You were like your mother in purer form, devoid of her violence, of her envy, of her malice and sadness. He longed to protect that version of you. He longed for you to look to him as your protector. It would be something, at least. If he was always fated to covet his brother’s bride, it would do nicely for you to save a place in your heart for him.
Criston was as much of a father to you as he could be without risking too much. Indeed, he was the perfect father for you, one that would not disturb you and your mother. He could spare you kind words, a story or two, his arm when you rose from your seat tipsy on wine after a feast. In private, when you were in your mother’s chambers, he’d tolerate all sorts of silly behavior from you with infinite patience that he lacked with others. He was not just slack about caring what you did, he simply enjoyed you too much to be upset at you even when you had a bit of fun at his expense. You enjoyed unearthing his unbridled care for you by pretending to be hurt, even more so because no matter how many times you did it, he always believed you. Even when he got upset at you for pretending to fall or cut yourself on something and pouted, he was just as susceptible to falling for it again simply because if there was half the chance you were hurt, it was worth looking foolish.
Criston was easy to fluster, it was cute of him. Fun was in short supply in your life and you appreciated him allowing you to make a fool of him every now and again. He understood what you meant to Alicent and that in and of itself required him to care for you more but he himself harbored a certain care for you as well which was separate from her. He was overprotective of you, in a way that could come across as condescending were it not from his lips; “Princess, I beg you not run, you must walk carefully and be careful not to hurt yourself.” When you were pregnant with Aemon, it was; “Princess, I beg you not exert yourself, I wish that you would call on me when I am needed,” when all you were doing was walking down the stairs, “Princess, it is unwise to eat as little as you do,” when all you had done was say you weren’t hungry after spoiling your dinner with sweets. When you were little it was him scolding Aemond for taking you by the arm and tugging you about the keep to go play. “My prince,” he’d said sternly, stepping in front of the two of you. “The princess is but small, I do not believe my prince wishes to see her harmed. You must not handle her so roughly.” Most recently, it was; “My princess, I beg you not to move with so much vigor while with child, you must preserve your health as best you can.” Gods bless his heart.
For Jace, his love for you seemed primordial, the touchstone of his life. His memory of you went back further than his memory of realizing he was different. He gravitated toward you even as the years went by, unable to simply forget what it was like to just be children together. If ever there were anything to make him feel as though he wanted to stay in the keep, it was you. Before your eyes, he’d show no insecurity, admit no uncertainty as to his place. In doing so, he feared he would lose you. As long as he held himself as a prince, perhaps he would be worthy to wed his aunt, the princess. Your affirmation of him was something that held him together even in the face of the most egregious mistreatment. Even as whispers caught on the wind, he kept his mind trained on you, on the first time you ever admitted — alone in the dragonpit, that you wished to wed him and be his queen. He would have you for his queen, he decided long ago. He had not forgotten. And he had oft thought of what would become of whichever man your mother tried to foist you off on.
All men endeavor to find their gods on earth, Jace was no different— except that instead of finding them in service to greater purpose, he found divinity through serving you. He dreamt of having the strength to reach out and truly take in hand what he had wanted all along. You were dreamy, in love with the songs of brave knights, ever anxious, ever seeking a perfect love and protection that none of your potential suitors would ever give to you. He was born to be that gallant knight for your sake, to take up his sword and anoint himself to you. You were as the living embodiment of a fertility goddess to him, a goddess of abundance and pleasure. Some divine will, he thought, brought him to your feet. He would not be convinced that his place was not at your side. Even if you demanded sacrifice as all goddesses do. Let blood be spilled for your sake, if it was the price of a man to seduce a deity. To him, the war between houses would be a holy war, a war of faith. If he could vanquish all the hands that sought to separate you, hurt you, hurt him and his mother; only then he would be worthy. Only then would the pain be turned to virtue.
You once asked him why he was so trusting of you, why he was so willing to give you his complete devotion. He hadn’t known how to answer at the time in a way which would not reveal his madness to you. He had been born with a sword hanging over his head, born with a cross to bear with him from the moment he was conscious of himself but when he was in your presence, a divine fervor came over him. A ritual madness bloomed in his heart that felt to him as he thought kneeling to pray in the sept should. It was only when he saw you that he was reminded that the gods bless even the morbid in their own strange ways. You were the reason he understood why some devout of the faith were called to self flagellate. There was a divinity in pain, too. He found it in his yearning for you.
He participated in a tourney for your name day once, it had left him with a broken rib but he’d fought hard to be able to name you queen of love and beauty. Truthfully, he had not even noticed the near black bruising of his skin until he was out of your sight. And even then, he’d delayed sending for a maester because you’d followed him back to his chambers to look after him. That was where it begun, the crux of your divine affair. The carnal part of it, anyway. In his lap, his armor spattered with blood and a sharp pain singing through his body, you took his face into your forgiving hands and kissed him timidly. His eyes were reverent as they looked up at you. His breath had sped up, desperate, near hyperventilating as you pulled away. He was aching but he was in ecstasy as well. Trying to savor the moment between you two despite his disbelief, his agony and his hunger for more and ever more. That was the way in which he became a man, in his pain, his restraint and his immense pleasure.
Aegon visited brothels and had countless romps with random women even after your marriage but he never saw it as being untrue, at least he tried not to. He only sought whores who reminded him of you. He only sought whores in the first place because he knew well you were a chaste sort of woman, the kind that your mother had expected you to be and to lust after him was not in your nature no matter your love for him which he believed ran deep. Besides that, he was also somewhat aware of the burden of his needs for affection in general. Your mother already scolded him for how he had stolen much of your time away from your children so that you might comfort and reassure him in his weakness. When he stumbled into your chambers drunk and covered in vomit, you peeled off his clothes and bathed him, washing his body so tenderly that it made him hard. Such a touch, such an affection. He did his best not to push his luck and pressure you into bed but how could he resist not stealing your time as he did? How could he resist trying to make his needs greater than that of your children? Still, he at least tried not to do anything to lose your affection completely like treating you as a whore. You were his sister-wife, the things whores that did, exerting themselves trying to keep up with his desires, he understood that it was not the work of a princess. It was not for you to give more of yourself than you already had (though he’d gladly have all of you were it not for his mother’s voice stuck in his head) nor to debase yourself like a peasant girl might for a few coins. So he vented his sexual desires onto ‘lesser women’ who should have no qualms about lowering themselves to his desires. Your mother would surely have had something to say about it if he did keep you in bed as often as he sought to, anyway.
Baela, having seen her betrothed name another woman Queen of Love and Beauty, should have been devastated or otherwise furious. If she were a conventional lady with a conventional lord husband, she surely would be. But she and Jace shared an understanding that was beyond the comprehension of the traditional gentry of Westeros. She had no cause to be possessive of Jace, she had no desire for him to do the same for her. Jace had wanted to be betrothed to you first and Baela was not unaware of this but that was not to say he resented her for what could not be nor that he cared to punish her for not being you. After becoming siblings sharing the burden of their losses, the two shared a love and connection different than that of most betrothed couples, a love hewn in sorrow and in growth— they never restricted each other, never suspected or accused because they had grown parallel to each other in all the years of tragedy after tragedy. They each knew what the other was, what they saw of the world and what they wanted from it. They would not bar each other from pleasure nor from love, not from each other and not from potential others either just so long as the two of them remembered each other as future man and wife. They were the only ones who understood the profound loneliness that had been born inside both of them, the restlessness and the helplessness. They could not deny each other, not when they were each other’s grounding forces in a world that changed so dramatically each moment in tragedy. It had been that way since the day they first joined hands before Daemon and Rhaenyra.
Baela had been seen as a scandalous lady who’d loved many girls and many boys and been free to do so by her father’s leave. Perhaps to the lords of the realm it didn’t make sense that such could be the case while she also loved Jace with all of her heart but the fact remained. Thus, she had been the first to recognize Jace’s feelings for you, he had not hid them from her as she had never hid anything from her. She knew he loved the green princess. She didn’t take that personally, nor was she jealous not even when she grew into a young lady and began to understand what it entailed. After all, she had perhaps a keener eye for women than even he. Perhaps if she’d been close enough to you, she’d have had you around her fingers like she’d been with ladies in the past. She knew from experience that the demure kind such as you were the most delightful on the tongue. The only thing which concerned her was the inherent political risk you carried as Alicent’s precious daughter who went almost nowhere without her— which she made clear to Jace. “If you’re going to fuck her, make sure you’re certain she has loyalty to you— to us,” she’d told him and she was pleased that he’d listened. It wouldn’t do for the Queen to have more reason to insist violence on him. When you gave birth to brown haired children which were obviously Jace’s, it served as proof of how tightly wound everyone was around your little finger, for no one said a word about bastardy. You kept your reputation squeaky clean somehow and that eased Baela’s fears somewhat but still there was the urgency to have you at their side for the certainty of her betrothed’s children, the need to have more certainty of your loyalty that didn’t come from being utterly enamored with Jace’s cock…and even still there was the underlying need to experience you herself. Many a night, Jace had slipped into her chambers and regaled her, as she demanded, with the details of how you tasted and felt to him as his cock pressed up against her clothed cunt in a slow rhythm of strokes and a desperation for the delicious friction that made her clit throb under her small clothes.
It was a delicate balance of caution and desire. She hadn’t minded you having Jace’s children on a personal level, (she cared little for the thought of going to her birthing bed so quickly and likely her children with Jace would be wed to yours) so much as a practical one as it presented an obvious dilemma even with the acceptance of everyone in the keep. The fact that these children were considered Aegon’s posed a great obstacle. She might have faulted Jace for who he chose to fall for but she knew better, life had denied them much comfort, exploration and pleasure. Jace had not denied her curiosities, her tests of pleasures and plays for the love of foolish boys and girls. But she also knew just as well as Jace did that tensions were being built around them all the time and had been since they were but small. She had faith that the opportunity to solve the problem would present itself. Aegon would die, soon or late but probably soon. And then, you’d be taken to wife along with Baela like the conquerers. If they were lucky, his and the rest of the greens’ hubris would do them in without interference, if not…she and Jace were both no stranger to the heft of a sword.
summary: Most curiously, princess reader’s children seem to bear a striking resemblance to a certain prince who is not her husband…
cw: codependent mother-daughter relationship yk the drill, pregnancy, childbirth, religion, gaslighting, incest, masturbation, blasphemy, unprotected sex (i feel like that might be redundant because is there any other way to fuck in medieval times?), jace and reader being westerosi romeo and juliet
notes: honestly, the ages in hotd are so confusing that most of the charts/breakdowns i’ve seen make very little sense so for the purpose of this fic, i’ve just decided to age everyone up a lil so jace is intended to be around 19-20 years old as is reader. also for jace x reader purposes, rhaenyra never left for dragonstone, though her and daemon still married and had their children.
part 1 | part 2
word count: 4.1k
Each time you were pregnant, Alicent found herself so filled with worry that she went to the sept daily to pray. She spent much of her time at your side, sharply commanding the servants to care for you in a way which would meet her meticulous qualifications. She wore her hair braided up simply, her clothing free of embellishment save for her golden seven pointed star; appealing to the Mother in humility, not to take her daughter away from her.
You were with child again, your third. Your marriage to Aegon had indeed been fruitful, for you were blessed with two sons, Aemon and Baelon. Both born healthy and squalling with...dark brown hair. But though Alicent had been briefly taken aback by how your sons looked, she quickly regained her composure. She would not dare suspect you of being anything but loyal to Aegon. She rationalized any unsavory possibilities away, for there was no reality she could fathom in which you would be unfaithful to Aegon, no reality in which you would stray from your mother's guidance so much. She had even watched you complete your duty with resignation and obedience, how could she ever see her sweet daughter as being a whore?
Alicent had been at your side throughout your labors, too anxious to be anywhere else. When she had seen you hold your firstborn son in your arms, teary eyed and thanking the Mother, she knew could never think so poorly of you. Your face, she was certain, was the very image of the Mother.
Rhaenyra, however, was not convinced. The way her eldest son looked at you, seemingly gripped in a trance when you were near, the way his hands twitched slightly whenever you were within grasp coupled with your children being born looking exactly as her three brown haired boys did...it was quite funny to her, honestly. So much grief over her sons and now with you having what were obviously her grandchildren, not a single word. She liked you well enough and obviously she had no intentions of putting her own grandsons in danger but she simply wasn't going to let the situation rest without pointing out the hypocrisy.
At the end of a small council meeting, the lords filed out of the room but Rhaenyra stayed behind, her gaze fixed on Alicent. As the room emptied, Alicent begrudgingly stayed behind as well, having a vague sense of what would come next.
"I wished to congratulate you on becoming a grandmother once more," Rhaenyra started. "Though I do wonder if this will be the time my sweet sister bears a child who resembles her husband."
Alicent drew a sharp breath, steeling herself. Immediate anger would only draw further insult. "What you insinuate is filth."
Rhaenyra could only laugh at how deeply Alicent's delusion went. "Come now, Alicent. Even a lackwit could answer the question of your grandsons' parentage. I seem to remember your mind being sharp enough to make suppositions on the father of my sons. Have you not opened yourself up to this?"
"My daughter is a good wife. She is not so slattern to find herself in bed with your...son while being married to mine." Alicent restrained herself from saying what she truly wished. She would not stoop so low and open herself and her daughter to attack.
"Really, Alicent, how long do you think you can keep this up? Who do you believe you're fooling?"
"Their grandsire's hair was dark brown in his youth, my daughter's hair is an auburn, a reddish brown just as mine is," Alicent stated indignantly and all Rhaenyra could do was stare blankly back at her. This couldn't possibly be the woman so fixated on the truth of her sons’ paternity, couldn't possibly be the great devout of the seven, the woman devoted to the virtues of duty and honor and sacrifice. She wasn't sure why it surprised her so much, it wasn't as if she didn't know those spiteful fanatics were all hypocrites. But somehow, given the way Alicent was with her children, she believed that she'd at least have shame enough to try and cover it up, have the children fostered away from King's Landing, stripped of their names, forgotten. Instead, Alicent was standing more firmly on her daughter's virtue and the parentage of her grandchildren than even Rhaenyra had for her boys. Even Rhaenyra did not fool herself as Alicent did.
She had originally planned to offer a marriage again, thinking that Alicent would be tempted to concede this time but seeing that look in her eyes made her second guess. Alicent was truly too madly in love with her youngest daughter to acknowledge what was right before her. She would never agree to annul the marriage between her and Aegon, she'd never sacrifice her daughter's virtue in the eyes of others even if it would spare all of them the grief of perpetually silencing the tongues that would wag at the sight of Aegon's brown haired sons. She believed in her daughter’s absolute perfection and she’d hear nothing that contradicted it, even if it was meant to help her. Rhaenyra left the room, there was clearly nothing more to say if this was how Alicent insisted on handling things.
Your mother believed you to be immaculate. Your siblings followed suit. If Aegon himself had any doubts as to your loyalty, he did not feel them worth speaking. You got the feeling all that mattered to him was keeping your affection. When he entered your chambers for the first time since you had gone into labor, as you held Aemon, rocking him gently to sleep; Aegon envied the child who, after taking over your body for so many moons, was taking his place in your arms until you commented on how like him the babe was. You had been thinking of him as you looked down at your son, it occurred to Aegon that you’d always think of him when you saw your son. Although the head of dark brown hair sent a wave of confusion through him, he believed in your love of him more than he believed his eyes. How could you be untrue to him? You spent most of your time outside of him in the sept or with your mother or sister, helping mind her children. Aemon and Baelon were his sons, two little creatures who served as symbols of your lasting love of him. How could they not be his with the affection you gave to them? With how lovingly you stroked their heads and dubbed them “as willful as their father”?
To everyone, you were the image of an exemplary wife, daughter and princess. You went to the sept at night before you went to bed, to pray to the mother, to thank her for the health of your children. You cared for your children until the late hours of the night. Unlike your parents and siblings, you slept in the same chambers as your sullen, drunkard husband most of the time and brought him cheer as well as incentive to behave himself at least somewhat. You obeyed your mother, brought comfort to your sister and served the realm with a stiff upper lip.
But while there was truth to your reputation, there was also truth to Rhaenyra’s interpretation of you. Your mother may have thought you to be “not so slattern as Rhaenyra,” but the truth was that you were exactly as slattern as her. When you visited the sept at night, with your ladies waiting outside the door, as you “wished to feel the presence of the Mother unfettered,” you were actually meeting Jace who compelled you there each night.
That night, Jace parted himself from the shadows of the sept as he watched you trail in. “How lovely you look, you almost seem pure in the light of the sept,” he grinned. “Don’t tease, my prince,” you huff. Jace watched you cross the room to meet him, his eyes fixed on you steadfastly. He’d said it in jest, but it was true, you looked the very image of innocence, it was not a wonder you were able to have his children without consequence. His hands went to your small bump as you closed the distance between the two of you. Another of his children.
A surge of jealousy went through him each time he remembered his children were being called sons of Aegon. It filled him with the urge to stake a claim to you. He would have you for his wife someday, he would have his children at hand, his heirs. But not tonight. Tonight, all that he could have was your body and in reparation, he fully intended to take his fill.
He brought you to your knees before the altar, lighting a candle before hiking up your dress behind you. “You must have told your mother you’ve come here to pray. We mustn’t disappoint her,” he murmured as his hand reached into your smallclothes. “I shall lead you in your prayers, aunt. We both have much to repent for.”
He was unsurprised to find you wet but it still brought about a low groan of satisfaction. Evidence between his fingers of his hold on you. You could feel him stiff against your back. “Start with the Mother, she’s blessed you most, hasn’t she?” His voice, slightly breathy with ill concealed arousal, sent a thrill straight down to your cunt which squeezed around nothing as Jace continued to gently stroke your clit. “Gentle mother…comfort of all our ills…” you began, taking a shuddering breath as you tried to concentrate on humoring Jace.
He tsked. “You’ve become so slack in your orisons, what would your mother say?” his touch becoming slightly firmer, only just barely quicker, more desperate. “Gentle mother, comfort of all our ills, thank you for our children. Protect them in your arms, despite our hubris and forgive us our lusts. Grant us your mercy.”
You swallowed a desperate cry and continued. “Father above, may you…” your thighs quivered, you were fighting the urge to simply lean back into Jace. “May you judge us justly, give our family the strength to find justice for those who would harm us.”
Jace kissed your temple, a soft gesture that felt almost befitting of such a place. “That is a lovely wish, it becomes you, aunt. Now what shall you beg of the Warrior?” His hips had started to brush against your back gently in rhythm, seeking to quell his already drooling cock straining against the confines of his breeches.
“Brave Warrior, should ever our realm come to war again, may our men be loyal and brave enough to protect us…” you slurred out quickly, the entirety of your focus narrowed down to Jace’s fingers which pulled back every time you pushed your hips forward seeking relief. The worst part was that he was so tightly pressed to you that any movement you made drew a pleasured sound from him, even as you struggled for more of his touch. “Bring our realm to victory…Jace, please.”
He laughed behind you, seeming to have genuine fun teasing you. “We’re not done.” He slid two fingers inside easily, taking a painfully long time to work up to a speed that made you squirm. An unintended moan broke free and Jace paused his ministrations, tugging your hair gently so that you'd turn to meet his gaze. "If you cannot even be quiet in a place of worship, I'll stop." There was a flicker of humor in his eyes but his face was a mask of seriousness.
You nodded obediently, silently cursing him for not being too horny to keep up this strict septon act. You leaned forward for a kiss but Jace evaded you, cupping your cheek in his free hand. "You have more prayers to recite, sweet aunt."
You groaned softly. "I pray for the protection of the maid, should my child be a princess...I pray that you would protect her innocence, keep her safe. I beg forgiveness for my own sins against your domain...for....for I have allowed myself to be seduced."
"And the Crone?" Jace intoned, softly amused at the state he was working you into.
"From the Crone...I beg for guidance, I plead her wisdom to help me overcome temptation." That one made Jace grin, you could hear it in his voice.
"You may beg for her wisdom but I believe you've already made up your mind." This time he let you roll your hips forward into his hand, matching the pace of his fingers as you sought attention for your neglected clit. He even brought your face back to his for a long kiss.
Suddenly, he pulled your small clothes off entirely, shredding them to rags. You braced yourself on the altar, your fingers sticking in the warm, dripping wax of the melting candles. Jace spread your legs with his knees. When he saw the way you were wet down to the inside of your thighs, he could only moan. "Gods," he murmured, it was a shame he didn't have the time to eat your cunt out properly and fuck you. His cock jolted slightly in his pants as he spread you out to admire you fully.
"Don't...." you whimpered, hurting for his cock inside you at last.
"Don't what? Don't admire what a mess you've made, aunt? Don't tell you that your cunt is begging me to use it again?" Jace laughed.
You screwed your eyes shut, bowing your head as you knelt, waiting for him, utterly defeated. In a place where the gods paid thrice as much attention, you were to bear witness to your own moral turpitude. Jace always loved that moment, when your frantic desire and guilt for the values your mother instilled converged; when your heart ached at the depravity of your own actions but you still knew that desire would win, as it always did and always would. You would almost try to hide from your own wanting, surely your mother had also taught you it was unseemly for a woman to have such hungers but that, obviously, did not draw them back from whence they came. In your heart of hearts, you knew you were born hungry and wanting, Jace was the only one who would allow you all that you could devour.
Such a beautiful sight. It was only then that he slid his cock inside, a surprised cry leaving your pretty mouth when he was only half inside. He paused just as you clapped a hand over your mouth, head still bowed in silent prayer that he should not decide to stop. Mercifully, he didn't. Couldn't, rather. He was sure it would have killed him to stop. He began to push deep into you, meeting slight resistance from the tight space despite how many times you'd taken it. A pleasant sting came about as he stretched you out slowly. As he entered you fully, it came to mind to rub your clit as it throbbed for attention but you simply couldn't. You were stalled, miring in the overwhelming sensitivity of that moment.
Every detail, every curve, vein and divot of his cock was gliding right over the tender spot inside that made you want to weep. You were too sensitive and pent up for so long, it happened every time, you got too close to the edge too quickly. Your breaths came quick and shallow, your brain going to madness. It took so few strokes for you to come undone that Jace himself was not even at the edge yet. You muffled your cries in your hand, your cunt all but fluttering around Jace's cock. A few stray tears ran down your face as Jace gently forced your head up again so that he could admire your expression. "Too fucking easy," he said but so softly it did not even sound mean.
You tentatively removed your trembling hand from your mouth, putting more faith in your voice than you ought have. "Please, more," you begged, your voice a cracked whisper. You were no longer pretending, here of all places with him of all people, there was no longer any need to be the vision of purity in flesh.
"Utterly consumed and still begging for me...that is how I like you, aunt." Jace's hands found your hips, his own snapping forward to thrust into you deeper, quicker. Thankfully, the silk of your gown prevented your skin from rubbing raw on the stone altar but you'd had to abandon your grip on the slick stone, instead relying on the floor to hold you up. Jace let out quiet, restrained moans at the feel of you. He would surely not be able to keep his pace and last much longer, but it did not seem to matter for your body was so alight with stimulation that you were a hair's breadth from cumming anyway. When you'd tried to touch your own clit again, even your own gentle touch, you'd flinched and trembled from overstimulation.
Jace kept a brutal pace, panting like a beast in heat. You came, a painful orgasm racking your body. The warm, wet squeeze of your pleasure, of your cunt trying to draw him deeper was eliciting the most deliciously ill concealed moans from him. He pumped in and out of your hole, his breaths stuttering. Your hand was still over your mouth to contain the whorish moans that would serenade the entire sept if allowed. Just as you thought you'd collaspe in a heap onto the ground, Jace finally came, pumping cum deeply into you in slow pulses. You could feel his body twitch where your bare skin met. Cum continued to flow for several more seconds, your dazed mind was both exhausted and impressed.
When he finally finished, he lingered for a moment inside you. He wished to have you for the whole night, to have you for every night. To steal you away from standing at the side of green cloth and sullen faces; to put you in the true colors of your house as his queen. He knew, like Rhaenyra knew that your mother would never agree to an annulment and it was her who ruled you. It was only when Aegon was sent to the seven hells that he could steal you away and wed you. It was only then he could speak the truth of his children without fear.
That wasn't tonight. Perhaps it would not even be after the birth of your third child but Jace was something your brothers and your mother were not. Patient. He would play the game, he would bide his time, he would plot and plot and plot. He could be as his mother and pretend.
When you parted from him, you returned to your chambers, finding a drunken and weepy Aegon. You had so wanted to have a bath and a nice sleep but it seemed you'd have to soothe your elder brother instead. You sat on the bed, not bothering to even ask what was wrong with him this time, it was always something or another and none of it really mattered by morning. You brought his head into your lap, though you smelled distinctly of sex, your brother must have believed it came from him for he accepted your comfort without question. You stroked his hair and let him drone about Aemond’s jabs as Jace’s cum seeped out of you, wetting the inner lining of your dress.
You and Aegon had only slept together a handful of times, not that he knew as much. After the first couple of times, you came to know how to prepare yourself for the gods only knew that he wouldn’t. Aegon’s desire for you was sporadic in your first years of marriage, you didn’t know when he’d appear in your chambers seeking your body. So, you’d lay back in your bed, touching yourself to the thought of your pretty nephew. Making yourself wet, relaxed and ready so that things would go along without irritation should he appear. Would that your mother had wed you to Jacaerys, you would have done your duty with gladness and ease but you knew how your mother was and what she expected. You couldn’t fault her so much for it, her intentions were only to keep you with her and within her protection. Thankfully, though as Aegon grew, he became more and more of a drunkard, only occasionally being able to even make it to your chambers at night and being satiated into sleep with only a bit of appeasement. He was never the wiser about whether he had or had not bedded you.
It hardly mattered. He only wished for reassurance that you still loved him and thought best of him and in your arms, he believed he’d found it. His limp, weepy affection was suffocating but you couldn’t bring yourself to leave your brother without comfort when he was upset, unfortunately. In the morning, you were glad to untangle yourself from his sweaty body to bathe and dress for the day. Your maids eyed the light bruises at your hips sympathetically, believing they came from your husband, still snoring in bed. You paid them no mind, though it made you feel a bit guilty, it was all the better for everyone to see you as a suffering and dutiful bride. Better for them to think Aegon bedded you, demanded much of you even as you were with child. A princess quietly suffering was as saint-like as a woman could be in the eyes of lords. Let it be told that you did your duty. Such was the only way you’d ever have anyone fight for you and your children.
Months later — months of secret meetings and muttered prayers later, you went to your birthing bed with your mother at your side. She was trying to soothe you but the sheer terror in her eyes didn’t match her calm words. Still, you were glad to have her. Even if you told Jace you belonged to him and even though the lords of the realm said you belonged to Aegon, you truly belonged to your mother who cared for you in all things. Whose love of you would drive her to madness should you perish in childbirth. It was a comfort that preceded your capacity for romantic love, it was something formed in the womb, when hers was the only voice in the world.
This birth was your longest yet, stretching from starless morning sky to the middle of the next day when the sun hung high in the sky. Alicent’s fervent prayers as she held your hand were only broken by the birth of your child, who was smaller than your others but dubbed a healthy girl by the maesters. It didn’t seem as though Alicent truly cared much about that, she was simply relieved you had survived the undertaking. The instant the maester took the babe to examine for any imperfections, she leaned down at your bedside and held you tightly. “Oh, my sweet girl. You’ve done so well.”
When the maester handed the softly fussing child back to you, you noticed a thick tuft of silver hair in her head of otherwise dark hairs. You noticed it captured Alicent’s eyes too. She smiled, silently pleased, believing that this would end all allusions to bastardy. If there had been any doubt in her heart that she was able to acknowledge, it was all soothed at the sight of her hair. The babe cooed softly, lying at your breast, stealing your heart away completely. You loved your boys but with a mother like yours, how could you be anything but enamored with a daughter of your own?
“What will you name her?” Alicent asked, watching you hold her granddaughter proudly, pushing your sweaty hair out of your face.
“I shall name her Viserra, I think.”
“That’s lovely.” Alicent smiled, coasting on the sheer relief of your survival. You could have told her you wish to name the child Lickspittle and she would only nod blissfully. “You’ve done so very well.” She seemed near tears.
“Oh, mother, don’t cry.”
She wiped at the tears steadily falling from her big brown eyes. “I cannot help it. I wish to protect you from all things and bearing your child is solely in the hands of the gods but my girl is so strong. I am truly proud, truly grateful.” She knew what it was to marry and to stand alone even in marriage. You wore it well, better than even she had. She never cursed Viserys for it only made him harder to live with if she did but in your birth and his neglect of you, she bore a resentment deep as the sea and long as the red waste. If he was to favor one of his daughters, should it not be you who was never once a thorn in his side? Who honored him even as he slowly forgot your name? If a daughter could be a worthy heir in her eyes, it was you who should have been chosen. That thought became another bitter seed of resentment piled onto the many she’d already buried. She could only hold you.
There was truth to the notion that she feared for all of her children but truly, it was mainly you she feared for. The only loss she could not recover from. She could never have tolerated your marriage to one of Rhaenyra’s bastard boys, the anxiety alone would send her to her death. Still, there were other dangers that awaited young girls in the keep, even princesses…even queens. She wished to shield you from all of them but to that end, she would need to continue building allegiance. Never again should she be delicate, never again supplicating to the wrong person. Her daughter would be queen with hundreds at her side, in service of her honor when the time came, even if it came to bloodshed.
notes: the pairing for this chapter is mainly aegon x reader but that’s more a matter of plot setup. while there are jace x reader crumbs, we’ll get plenty of those two freaks (affectionate) later.
part 1
word count: 3.3k
Alicent’s decision to betroth her youngest to Aegon rather than Helaena was not one that came easily. It was also not one that came without resentment from her second son.
Logically, you should have been betrothed to Aemond or a lord from whichever house was suitable since it was Helaena who was born first and Aegon would have to wait years for you to be marriage age. But Alicent always knew she’d never marry you outside of your house, she needed you close at hand. A girl needs her mother, desperately, she knew that very well. She had suffered without her own mother, for it should have been her who guided her in matters of marriage, in holding her head high as a young girl living in such a tumultuous place as the red keep. But it would be different for you, she resolved. You would not suffer from being without your mother, you’d not enter marriage to a man you hardly knew. You’d have her as your eternal advocate. There were kinder men than your brothers who would have your hand, she could concede that much but Viserys had been kind and still she had been lost, had been isolated, she had still been wounded irreparably. No, what you needed most was to stay with your mother.
She thought of wedding you to Aemond, who followed you about like a little guard dog; but truly, she felt it wrong to marry Helaena to Aegon. She was a delicate girl, even more so than herself when she’d become queen. Aegon rejected even simply speaking directly to her when they were in the same room. Helaena was a strange sort of girl and though she loved her all the same, Alicent knew very well she couldn’t saddle the poor girl with the duties of a queen in addition to standing alongside a boy so unruly as Aegon. Aemond would be dutiful toward her, whether he wanted her for a bride or not. You, however, were the only one who would quell Aegon even temporarily. Your scoldings were the only ones that got any real reaction from him. He hovered near you and acted like a fool simply to hear your laughter.
She remembered that when you were small, you played with a newborn kitten you found in gardens. You’d insisted on taking him and his mother inside and caring for them as your pets. Aegon, who seemed to trail after you wherever you went then, had handled the poor thing too roughly and it had died. You had been so furious and bereaved that you refused to speak to him for weeks. In those weeks, Alicent witnessed her slovenly, shameless and apathetic son rush to and fro with gifts, trying to make you forgive him. To him, it had only been a game, a bit of fun, really. They were only little, what did their lives really matter? He had done the same with Helaena, crushing butterflies and moths in his hands in front of her. But even if he didn’t understand the fuss, even if he didn’t regret the act in and of itself, he truly felt remorse for hurting your feelings and even more so for making you so cross with him. He had stood outside your door drunkenly pleading every night before he went to bed. You were no fool. You could tell from his vague platitudes that he didn’t truly feel sorry for what he’d done, only for upsetting you. Which was why you continued ignoring him until he surprised you one night with the soft mewing of kittens outside your door.
You had rushed out to find a basket of orange kittens with Aegon standing nearby with a proud smile on his face. “Do you like them?” He had asked. You knelt to play with the wriggly kittens, they were mewing loudly, climbing over each other in the basket and they nibbled on your fingers when you pet them. You giggled. “Where did you find them? I hope you haven’t separated them from their mother.”
“Be at peace, sweet sister, I found them while I was about the streets. No mother in sight. You’re their mother now.” He clasped his hands behind his back tightly, hoping this offering would make you love him again. In reality, he’d been about the brothels, whining about the situation in the arms of a whore until she, a bit fed up with his weepiness, told him to simply buy you another kitten. King’s Landing was lush with cats coming and going from their owner’s homes, constantly getting pregnant and having squalling little babies that most would gladly sell if they could. Aegon had then lept up, tossed her some coin and set about his plan for redemption.
Alicent had never seen anything like it. Aegon bumbling about like a fool trying to impress you, to stay in your good graces when he wouldn’t do so much as be decent to stay in hers. She thought you’d make him a fine queen. It was your head that the crown would rest most easily on. Helaena would not be able to pull him this way and that as you did; and he would not be so kind to her as he was to you. So, she betrothed you to him and Helaena to Aemond. Aemond had his complaints but he knew his mother would only hear so many of them until she tuned him out. In his own eyes, he was the superior heir to the throne, dutiful and sedate but still it belonged to his worthless elder brother, he had come to terms with that much. He was only a second son, it was bitter and unfortunate but it was a matter of birth that was not to be mourned over forever. But to know that he had been denied his younger sister’s hand was enough to awaken that resentment again. Aegon was the firstborn son, he got to be unworthy and still have a bride above himself. Aemond was dutiful, he listened to their mother’s commands and what had he gotten for the trouble? His elder sister who should have been his brother’s bride.
What did Aegon know of love and duty toward you? It had been Aemond protecting you whenever Aegon was trying to lead you into some foolish plot outside the keep. It wasn’t fair. Why was he constantly being rewarded for his shamelessness? Why did duty not just go unrewarded but get penalized? It made his blood boil with indignation but there was nothing he could do except marry Helaena. Continue to do his duty as his mother insisted. He knew how to covet in silence.
Aegon once coveted his mother’s love, lamented that she did not love him even in his depravity as he felt a mother should. She had loved you since you were born but she could not even meet his eyes anymore. It gave him all the more reason to mope and stew in self pity, to brew an undue hatred toward you but as you grew, you were able to reach him with your smile. A giggle when he teased Aemond or when he made a fool of himself. You trusted him, loved him even. You, with the face of your mother, looked upon him with pleasure. He would have done anything to keep that. It was too late for Alicent’s love, he knew that much. But it would be easier to keep in your good graces, you didn’t really know him yet.
On the morning of your wedding day, Alicent helped you get ready. She sent away your maids as she often did. When you were just a child, she’d hover over them disapprovingly as they brushed your hair and admonish them for minor infractions until she simply snatched the brush from their hands with a sigh and took over. She hated for you to be touched by others, especially your lowborn maids. They didn’t understand how gentle you were, that you required an especially gentle hand. She was also the only one who truly knew what hairstyles you best suited. She knew how to put pins in your hair without hurting you even once, she knew how to braid your hair tight enough to hold but not tight enough to give you a headache. She loved your hair, she could not bear to see anyone mistreat it.
Today, you were to wear your house colors. Helaena sat on the floor, fiddling in your jewelry box, handing Alicent a golden necklace with rubies to drape across your neck. The cool metal made you flinch as it touched your skin. You were trembling, frightened of a day where all eyes were to be on you. “You look lovely,” Helaena said quietly. “I’ve never seen you in red before, it makes you look like a little ladybug.” You smiled at her, not wanting to ignore her kindness even despite your anxiety. “Thank you.”
Alicent stepped back to look at you. “You do look lovely,” she said, sadly. Her eyes were misted over with tears seeing you dressed befitting a Targaryen bride. You were but small to her. Here you were, looking as she did when she was wed to Viserys. It made her realize just how young and frightened she must have looked then. “Enough to bring the seven kingdoms to their knees.” She mustered a smile. Your fate was not hers, she assured herself, all you needed was your mother’s care and unlike her, you would always have it.
“I'm frightened…” You unraveled at your mother’s praises, giving away your façade to confess your anxieties to your mother who had always soothed them. Alicent pulled you into her arms delicately, so as not to smoosh your intricately done hair. “Oh, sweetling,” she murmured, tearing up. “It is alright.”
“The eyes of the whole court on me...” Your voice carried such a heartbreaking note of fear. You were near trembling in her arms, Alicent almost wished to put off the wedding entirely. She did not seek to wed you to Aegon for her own folly, but because you had to be wed as a princess and if not within the family, to someone outside who would steal you from her arms and perhaps harm you. And were she to send you to become a septa, you’d also have to part from her. You'd be alone and without her guidance. She knew why she was doing what she was doing and that it was the only thing to do, even so, it nearly broke her. But she was no longer a frightened child, she was the one whose job it was to be strong.
After holding you in her arms for some time, she soothed you and finally resolved to walk you down the altar. It was unusual for a mother to walk her daughter down the altar and tongues would certainly wag for her coddling you but she didn't care. If you could not go alone, she would always offer you her hand. She took your trembling hand in her warm, certain one and led you down to Aegon. When you reached him, she continued to hold your hand, standing to the side of you, mouthing the vows you'd near forgotten in your nervousness. Her eyes flitted about the sept, making sure everyone was behaving properly, she wouldn't have anyone embarrassing you with whispers of gossip. They could do that when they left the keep, when they were far enough away that she could keep their insults from reaching your ears.
Luckily, though it seemed there was a bit of talk, many found your timid disposition to be endearing or at least unsurprising due to your elder sister’s shared reticence. When you got to the feast, many already tipsy lords and ladies came up to you, speaking sweet words to wish you congratulations on the wedding. Still, it did little to lessen the anxiety you felt growing toward your next task as a wife. Aemond had given a toast in which he very pointed asserted that his sword would always be at your service and that if you should need a dutiful man to rely on, he would be at your side in a moment’s notice. Helaena had expressed her wish that all of your time would not be stolen away by Aegon. Rhaenyra and her lot were there, to her chagrin, her eldest son's dark eyes lingered on you, lusting for what was not his, as usual. She wanted more than anything to have him sent from the feast for leering at her daughter but she knew that would not do, she was at least glad that it escaped your notice. Rhaenyra had once offered a marriage bid between you and Jacaerys; seeing how well the two of you played as children but Alicent had, of course, refused. Aemond had been tasked from then on with keeping you away from all of her bastard boys, the Driftmark incident had only further strengthened her resolve. Had she let one of those boys lay hands on you, the gods only know how much you'd pay for it.
Alicent remembered her own wedding night, the pain and the odd need for her to stifle her tears. She remembered thinking of how strange it was that this man was now her husband, now with her in the most intimate way and even so, she had to keep up a certain countenance. She should not share her pain and displeasure with him. He was not just a man, nor her king or her husband, he was a job. Her heart was aching every moment just looking at you and remembering.
She had always resolved to help you through. She wouldn't dare let you suffer. She handed you a goblet of wine which you took without hesitation, drinking it down in hopes that inebriation would help you tolerate the night ahead. But Alicent had thought ahead and had your goblet filled with poppy wine to make you sleepy, pliant and unable to feel such fear and pain as she had. By the time you and Aegon bid your guests goodnight, you were in the clouds. But her job was not done.
When you and Aegon reached your chambers, Alicent followed, helping you onto the bed. Aegon gave her a look. "Really, mother...Don't tell me you need to see me bed her to believe I can." He was insulted by her feeling the need to hover over even his wedding night. How could she believe he'd do something untoward to the only sibling he truly loved? Aegon's mind swirled with undue indignation at his mother's presence.
"I won't have you damage her, Aegon." Alicent said, warily without any bite to her words but with a resolve that would not be argued against.
Meanwhile, as Aegon whined back to her, you laid on the bed which somehow felt softer than anything you'd ever slept on before, your mind gone away and into the sky with the dragons. You heard the murmuring voice of your mother and it made you feel warm inside, it made you miss her hand which had held yours before. "Mother..." you mumbled. Alicent was at your side in an instant, whispering soothing words as she carefully took off your wedding dress, “I'm right here, sweetling, it's alright." She draped it over the back of a chair and turned to Aegon, "I'll be looking over you, as often as need be. You've skirted your duties for too long now, I won't have you hurt her in another of your grasps for pleasure. She is your wife, not a whore.” Then, she perched in a chair near the bed, eyeing him mistrustfully
Aegon frowned and took off his clothes with a huff before her, climbing onto the bed, hovering over you. He was frustrated from his mother’s insult and his breaths came harshly as he struggled to proceed with the night with any dignity. He had trouble even getting it up, feeling his mother’s prying eyes on him, waiting to scold him. Your hand came up suddenly to cup his cheek, your bleary eyes meeting his and a soft smile tugging at your lips. That moment of tenderness was all that he needed. It fell into place nicely for him then. You were his lady wife, you loved him and finally, he could have you as any man wishes to have a woman. His mother’s uncertain gaze mattered nothing in that moment. All that mattered was you beneath him; soft, forgiving.
He was…made capable by just your hand on his cheek and his own hand went to his cock, stroking it to full hardness as he spit in the other to rub into you. He began trying clumsily to loosen you up. He had only ever been with whores and the stray serving girl now and again, he was unused to pleasuring a woman. He wasn’t sure carnal pleasure was something women like his mother and sisters felt, perhaps it was truly only a service that only baseborn women were willing to lower themselves to. Even so, he wished for you to cry out like they did, to writhe in pleasure under his ministrations. To prove himself to you and to your mother somehow.
Alicent sat quietly, already nauseous at the display. She wanted to cover your eyes, to take you back into her arms and have you only for herself forevermore. Yet, as a queen and a mother, she had to accept that it was his and your duty. She watched on with a stoic look. Her audience was necessary, Aegon hadn’t convinced her otherwise even with his whining, but it didn’t mean that it was pleasant for her. It was her duty to her daughter to make sure that you weren’t going to be hurt, no matter how unseemly it all felt. Mercifully, you were peaceful, sighing softly at Aegon’s machinations, as though you’d soon fall asleep. Your head lolled to the side, gazing at your mother who hurriedly put a small smile on her face. You smiled back, clearly still in the clouds, even as Aegon grew impatient and finally decided you were wet enough.
“Gentle,” Alicent hissed, a ball of anxiety in the corner of the room. Aegon did not acknowledge her save for a soft scoff but was a bit more careful in his actions…a bit.
It didn’t hurt much, there was just a slight sting with each snap of his hips. Otherwise, it didn’t feel like much of anything, either due to the wine or Aegon himself. But as you were lost between dreams and reality, you sighed softly at the gentle rocking of the bed. Aegon took this as your pleasure and he was further spurred on. He sped up, his own sounds of pleasure ringing out in the quiet room. Your dreamy expression was entirely due to the poppy wine but Aegon would never know that. All he could feel was the rush of pleasing his sister, of his own pleasure, of proving his mother wrong. He was overzealous, coasting on the desperate little burst of scarce pride it all brought him.
Meanwhile, Alicent’s body shuddered in revulsion and horror. She bit down hard on her lip, trying to suppress a strangled sound of distress. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. To watch her most treasured daughter…she did not have the stomach for it. It was her duty, one she’d taken on willfully but she had not been thinking of herself then. She had not been thinking of how much it would remind her of Viserys. She had nearly cried out herself when Aegon had first entered you. When the two of you were done—well, when Aegon was done, he slumped over to the side of the bed, apparently exhausted with his arm still around you. She sat for a while in silence, staring blankly into space and considering everything. You, however, were still just barely awake. “Mother…” you murmured just as she was trying to gather sense again.
Alicent snapped back into reality. “Yes, sweetling?” she breathed, overwhelmed by the display she had just seen but still wanting to attend you. She quickly grabbed a nightgown from your wardrobe to cover you.
“Stay with me, please,” you said as she pushed Aegon aside and carefully slid on your nightgown.
Alicent’s heart melted at the words. She sat at the side of your bed and wrapped her arms about you, pressing your head to her chest. Her voice wavered. “I would not dream of leaving you.”
summary: Alicent has always loved her youngest daughter most. Too much, perhaps. — This is intended to focus on the relationship between Alicent and daughter!reader but will eventually dive into some Jace x reader (maybe some Baela x reader too idk yet) and platonic!yan green family in the following parts.
cw: codependent mother-daughter relationship, mentions of childbirth, pregnancy, alicent is on some weird shit about her favorite child, platonic!yan!alicent
notes: reader is said to resemble alicent, as in her hair and eye color.
word count: 2.7k
When Queen Alicent ended her labors, exhausted, delirious and filled with an anticipatory dread she’d come to know was unavoidable; she heard the maester say, “a healthy princess, my queen.” She had grimaced then as the child’s cries filled the air but the babe was pushed into her limp arms which almost refused her. There, laid upon her breast, was her daughter…with features so like hers. It felt unreal, she had been prepared to bear another princeling with a smattering of fuzzy silver hair to form his crown. To remind her of whom their sire was. But as you laid against her, cooing irritably at the noise in the room and squinting at her with those eyes she knew so well, she fell in love. Weakly, in her milk of the poppy haze, she thought on the moments of her pregnancy where she’d felt so uncomfortable, so ready for the babe to leave and return her body to her. It could be said that in that moment it was the rush of hormones and the dregs of milk of the poppy still ravaging her system but suddenly, regretted those feelings sorely. No, she should have cherished the time when you were safely tucked away for herself. When you were more hers than you’d ever be again.
She held onto that for years. The ache of separateness she’d never felt for any one of her children before. The love for her other children had always come so late in comparison. With you, it was so easy.
Until it wasn’t so. You hadn’t yet flowered but you’d grown so fast. The ache intensified, the stirring need to have you back where you belonged, closer to her heart — very nearly killed her every time she saw you. Even so, she would still rather be with you than your siblings. She couldn’t be with you as much as she had when you were but a babe and she could take you anywhere in her arms without scrutiny. She was preoccupied with the needs and antics of your elder siblings who always seemed to be in need of something they could not or otherwise would not give themselves. It was exhausting. The ache was a reprieve in itself from the monumental exhaustion of dealing with your, though beloved to be sure, very high maintenance siblings. It was pleasant. Everything about being a mother was as tender as a wound, it could never be wholly pleasant. But there was something so addictive in it when it was you. She never felt so close to the Mother as when she held you.
In your chambers just after you’ve bathed and dressed in your nightgown, she arrived at the side of your bed to kiss your forehead gently, a gesture reserved for you. “Tell me what you’ve learned from your Septa today,” she softly instructed, stroking your hair. It has gotten so long, so soft and so lovely to twirl about her fingers. It’s a habit she developed. “Did you practice your letters?”
You nodded, looking up at her. “Yes, she says I’ve gotten much better.”
“Good job,” she praised, a soft smile on her lips. “Perhaps I don't have to read to you nearly as much now.” A lie. She'd read to you until the end of the world, even if you no longer needed her to, so long as she can be near you. Her eyes slipped shut momentarily, a quiet sigh escaping her lips as her hands continued to stroke your hair in a lulling rhythm.
You pouted slightly, in a way she might've reprimanded you for, had you been your elder sister. "But I like you reading to me."
You feel her arms wrap around you, folding you into her embrace, unable to resist. “Would you like me to read now?” she murmurs, kissing the top of your head, breathing in the scent of your freshly washed, still slightly dampened hair.
"Yes, please." So pleasing and charming you were when you said it. Oh, she could hardly get your siblings to simply mutter the words meaninglessly!
"Very well," she said softly, but the warmth in her voice made it more than a simple 'yes', her other children would never know she could offer anything but a resigned, "here" that came with an exasperated sigh. She settled in next to you.
"What shall it be tonight?" She asked, her thumb stroking your cheek, her voice holding a level of patience that could only come from the love she has for you. "The Seven Pointed Star?" You hummed your assent.
She opened the tome, her eyes scanning the words for a moment before she begins.
"The Seven Who Are One…" Your mother's voice sung out in a soft lilt, the words soft, the pace measured and gentle. As she speaks you feel yourself relaxing, and falling deeper into her embrace. You could lose yourself with her. Your eyes closed as she read on. Her words fell into a rhythm and her voice carries a soothing tune. You feel drawn inward. The world is just you and your mother.
Alas, she’d had to leave you after you fell asleep, to check on her other, more tumultuous children. It was a mournful fact that because you were her youngest and regardless of being her most beloved, she was still forced to give less of her time to you. But she returned before you woke and when you opened your eyes, your mother was there sitting beside you in your bed. “Good morning, sweetling.” she said, and she snuggled you in her arms, just holding you. She gazed at you, studying your face. “You slept for a while, it is already late morning, I wasn’t sure if you would wake.”
“Good morning.” You rubbed at your tired eyes. “I slept deeply, I suppose…” you muttered.
Alicent knew this. Of course she did, she was watching you for a while. “You've always slept heavily. Even as a babe, you would fall sound asleep with just a bit of rocking.” A small smile curled at her lips, her voice soft and motherly. “I used to worry that you’d never awaken, when you were a babe. I could never tell the difference between your sleeping and your death.”
That earned her a small, dreamy smile from your lips. “You were fussing over me even then?”
Her ensuing laughter was rich, and her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Oh, my sweetling, of course I was.” Her tone grew more serious then, and she pressed a kiss to your forehead. “I worried for you every single day.”
“You worry now.”
“I know. And I know you think me foolish, but I do.” Her voice held the weight of her heart, the weight of years of anxiety. She strokes your hair, her hands gentle as they run through your locks. “I know you're nearly a woman grown, but I cannot help it. You are my daughter, my youngest. My little one.”
“I would not wish to leave your side,” you tried to assure her.
She sighed. “I would be wroth to see you ever leave my side. I cannot stomach it.” She kisses the top of your head. “I don’t know how I will do it if you are wed outside of our house. I feel my heart break just thinking of it.”
“Mine as well.” It was true, you truly could not imagine being away from your mother’s side. You did not particularly desire either of your silly elder brothers but the idea of marrying them held a certain comfort as it meant you’d get to stay with your mother. You were certain to die if you had to leave her behind.
“They tell me not to dote upon you, and to prepare you for life. But I can only see you as my child. I suppose I will forever.” She looked at you with a somewhat haunted expression, and her hand moved to cup your cheek.
“I enjoy you doting on me. Your company is a comfort.”
"I am glad," she smiled, her fingers threading through your hair. "When I'm not around, I worry that the world will be harsh to you, that it will swallow you whole and break you. I did not have…my mother with me when I left my home for good. But you have me. You are mine, and I wish to keep you safe."
She bit her lip before continuing. “I would have kept you in my womb until we turned to dust, would that I could. I know it is foolish but I miss it terribly. There we had nothing to fear. I protected you from the outside. You lived in a realm of safety, of comfort. No one could ever touch you there. No one could ever hurt you."
The concept intrigued you. The life you led, of scrutiny and pending obligation, could leave you feeling so exposed, a wound open to the air. “The world is much too loud now that I’m in it. I do miss being so close to you.” You obviously couldn't remember, not like she did, but you could imagine. You could imagine yourself curled into her, held by her, never needing anything but that...and the thought was an enticing one.
“I miss it more,” Alicent whispers. Tears welled in her eyes. “I know it is foolish of me, but when I see a woman with a child in her belly, I cannot help but be reminded of you, I cannot help but envy her.” Her voice was sullen, her gazed fixed on you. “I miss those kicks against my womb, and I miss the way you would curl into yourself. I wish I could bring us back.” Revising history is something the queen has gotten quite good at doing, she cannot recall— or at least won’t admit to, those same feelings of helplessness, lethargy and slight dissociation that had returned with each pregnancy. All of it has been replaced, memories tinged in the feeling of yearning she carries now.
“It would be just us two,” you whispered, your chest tightening slightly with an unfortunate longing to return to her.
"Forever. That would have been a very good life, my sweetling. A peaceful one." A tear trickled down her cheek, this time, though, she did not even try to wipe it away. You reached out to wipe her tear away, delicately with your thumb and the gesture was so soft, she thinks. Softer than any touch she had ever felt. It overwhelmed her to the point of trembling.
“Thank you.” Her voice was slightly raspy. You are truly beautiful to her in the candlelight, and even though you are a girl almost grown, she still sees you as the babe you were when you were first pushed into her arms, so many nights ago. “You have a very soft touch."
“Of course, I learned from you,” you said easily and Alicent had to look closely at your expression to be certain you aren’t just being jovial at her expense. But she was relieved and vaguely ashamed to find that you are entirely sincere without a hint of irony in all of your being.
She was speechless for a moment. Alicent was no longer gentle, she didn’t think she had that in her anymore. Her whole being felt sharp, ready to bleed. Even with her own children, she was seldom the mother she’d have imagined herself to be before she was married, especially with Aegon who she so struggled to even want to be gentle with. She’d forgotten that all the gentleness she possessed was not lost but had simply been redirected into you. It shamed her, it relieved her.
She decided that it was true, even if later she’d be deep her self loathing and rebuke the notion. For now, your softness was owed to the kind of mother she’d been to you. “That is true.” She laughed softly, feeling the high of your praise overwhelm her wariness. Her hands returned to playing in your hair, wafting the scent of soap and the warm musk of your skin toward her. Oh, that scent…When she come to visit your chambers just after you left them, she’d smell your pillows, your sheets, unable to help herself. It always unlocked some beastly sort of satisfaction inside her. She had even saved a little gown of yours from when you were a babe, unwilling to part with the scent of your skin. Back then, she’d attributed it to you being so young, to the bodily mysteries of a mother still fresh from labor but it had lingered. “You have such a sweet smell, my girl. I have always loved your scent.”
“I know. My handmaid told me you used to smell me a lot when I was a babe.”
So her strangeness had not gone unnoticed. “That I did. The smell of your sweet skin…” You could tell she got lost in a memory for a bit, and her face grew nostalgic. “I loved your scent so much. There was nothing like it.”
“Every day, I would smell your skin. I would kiss your cheeks and your little fingers…” Her words trailed off as she smiled, remembering. “You still have the same scent now. I would know it anywhere.”
“You were enamored with me,” you said, grinning as you stretched out in bed like a lazy cat.
She laughed softly. “I really was. You were a beautiful babe, so perfect and delicate in my eyes. I never wanted to let you out of my sight.” She remembered her father admonishing her for refusing to leave you with the maids, her near in tears trying to make him understand that this was different and him simply not willing to understand how the love of a fourth child, a girl, could have driven his daughter so utterly mad.
“I know. Grandsire says you took me everywhere with you.”
“That I did,” she confirmed, sighing softly. “I did not want anyone else to hold you.”
“Why not?” You had yet to truly address the severity of your mother’s preoccupation with you. To you, it was only love. You could not understand its implications or its logic.
“Because I did not trust anyone else with you.” She whispered. “I could not bear the thought of even leaving you with a maid, not for long anyway. You are my child, and I did not want anyone but me to care for you or see to your needs.”
“Oh, but it must have been such work!”
“All children are work, a lot of it,” she insisted. “But you were— you are a good kind of work. You gave me something to focus on besides all my other obligations. You were my little princess, always with me, and always wanting my attention. It was tiring, but I would not have had it any other way.” You made her feel the kind of love her first chance at motherhood should have brought her. You made her feel like a mother in the way the gods intended.
“That is very sweet.” It was more than sweet. It warmed your heart to hear from your mother that the work she has put into raising you, into keeping you — she saw it all as worth the trouble.
“It’s the truth. I have never loved anything more than you.”
“I’m glad for it. Glad to be deserving of it.”
Oh, your sweet little heart! Her hand cupped your face, and her fingers stroked your soft, delicate cheek, her eyes meeting yours. “You are far greater than deserving. You were perfect when you arrived, and you only became more beautiful as you grew older.”
You looked down, slightly bashful. “You’re beautiful too, mother.”
Your words bring on the fiercest of longing. Tears of joy and perhaps bitterness trickled from her eyes. "You are the sweetest daughter a mother could ask for. I love you so very much."
She is near breaking into a fit of sobs, breathing deeply to calm herself, blinking away her tears before she speaks again. "Sometimes I wish I could turn back time, and have those days again. The days where we could be wrapped up in each other, and the world was just us two."
And as your eyes light at the words, she cannot resist anymore. She brings you into her arms, your head resting against her breasts and her leaning down to kiss your head, breathing in your smell yet again. In a few years at latest, she’d wed you to one of your brothers and keep you safe within her watch. Then everything would be alright, you’d be safe only when there was promise you could stay with her forever.
“No matter,” she murmured against your hair, trying to soothe herself back into dignity. “Mother will protect you even now.”
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