It's a Game, Isn't It?

by Ravelledsleeve

Summary:

"You love her. Tell her you love her, Rhaenyra, I've never seen a girl so miserably keen to hear it."
"Goodbye. I'm turning invisible," she said crossly. She turned over.

This thing with Alicent; it was the elegiac softening of the flank of red meat; putting nostalgia under the whack, whack, whack of a tenderizing mallet. Rhaenyra wasn't falling in love with her kitchen utensil. Rhaenyra wasn't falling in love with her tender mallet.

Notes:

You know, I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you if you could read this one before the others in the series. I've been sitting on it for so long I've grown plot-blind and I'm sorry. alicent is 22 rhaenyra is 25, they grew up best friends from ages 4+6 through to 13+15, separated from outside circumstances, then moved in together as a matter of convenience seven months prior to the point in this one, etc. Read on if you wish, but be warned it'll probably a lot less fun if you haven't read the other two.

All of the titles for this series are out of The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit. As well as obviously the scene which is half direct quotes, and the inspiration for the styling of a lot of the dialogue in the rest, and some of the prose and so on and so forth ad inf.

Oh sorry- What was that? What are you on about 'the pygmalion AU i said i was writing'? This is the pygmalion au.

She was perfect. Rhaenyra hadn't needed her, had been finished needing anyone but him for years. But then there she was, the little seedling of her, sitting next to her on the airplane. Right out of a Best Gardens for the Working Woman ad in a 1950s Good Housekeeping. And four months later Rhaenyra was ripening her like a small summer fruit, grown on the ground. A strawberry or a low-lying gooseberry.

And she was floored by just how immaculate it had worked out; that a chance encounter could lead to such perfection of facility. The perpetual liberty to her, the ease of assertion, the vague familiarity, the lack of boundaries, the delight of educating. Categorically, the power on tap.

She rolled over, yelled into the bathroom.

“Daemoonnn.”

“Just give me a minute, Needy,” under the hiss of the shower.

She dragged the coverlet lazily over her head and burrowed, tucking her knees to her chest.

Only, Alicent was too perfect. That was one problem. She worked too well. Rhaenyra had made her too good at it, had raised her too staidly these last three months. And really, she was lab-grown for being too good: Merciless father, dead mother at nine, extremely high achiever. And even Rhaenyra had wielded a hand in rearing her with the small maturity advantage she had when they were children, even if she was naive to it at the time. It was foolhardy of her to root where the soil was too rich, senseless to discount the opportunity for the foliage to grow unmanageable.

She rubbed the knuckle of her ring finger that Alicent had been chewing the other night.

It shouldn't disgust her, just how perfect Alicent was at it. Her perfection shouldn't have given rise to this everted and corrupting revulsion that had dilated exponentially the last two weeks. Ruining perfectly wonderful playtimes. And Rhaenyra had to admit blame, something she despised doing on principle. This destructive reaction was her own folly which she was responsible for extinguishing. Alicent was not at fault for being too perfect.

She let her eyes drift close, let her mind do what it would with the claustrophobia of the dwindling oxygen under the coverlet.

Alicent in "love" with her, that was the other problem, the one that made it a real headache. Rhaenyra was coming to grips with the fact that somewhere along the road she had erred magnificently, because Alicent was exhibiting the signs of an excess of devotion; of a craving for something “real” as Daemon would say (because apparently what they had had before wasn't real.) And Rhaenyra was not a monster. As little as she cared for Alicent, as satisfying as the tinkling, shattering noise was which she would make, Rhaenyra did not want to break her.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, suddenly it was cold and bright and her cave was gone. She felt like an exposed Borrower. He wouldn't have done that before. Before, he would have burrowed under with her. Tickled her or pretended to be a couple soldiers hidden under a tarpaulin in the barracks.

But now he was thumping about the room singing Mr. Bluesky loudly, admittedly very well, getting back into his clothes

"Come on, grab the day by the balls," He said in Valyrian. "Let's do something more productive than wallowing."

"Can't," she replied in the same. "I've work to do," this in English.

"Rhaenyra, it's not even lunch time. I thought we were going to cook something."

"I've got to be back before 1:00."

He knew this. It was his fault the conditions existed, technically, living like a vampire, working the fight club which notoriously utilises hours normal people reserve for spending with loved ones. Most days: Drive to his in the morning, mess about not saying much, start having sex, stop having sex because one of them didn't like the way they were having sex, argue about the way they were having sex, have a long conversation about why they couldn't have sex like that anymore, argue about one of them thinking he knew better than the other, have hate sex (or makeup sex, or one of them conceding and letting the other remind him he was still going to come just as hard, harder, if they had sex the way she wanted), go to the office, work for three hours, come home, work for four hours, maybe give Alicent a rubber duck in the bath and tell her it needed to find the secret underwater cave where the magical treasure is hidden.

"Cook something with me." He said, again in Valyrian, appearing at her knees where she'd swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

"Your steamboat, you’ll realise you’d forgotten you had to catch it."

"Rheanyra," he said warningly.

"I've got to go. Sorry, boss."

 He nodded solemnly after a moment. She leaned down, planting a kiss to his temple, then used his shoulder to stand up, squeezing once, making for the shower.

It tried her still, after two years of his returning (especially when she was feeling particularly resentful, particularly bitten by the severity of nostalgia) not to test him. Not to see if she could stick her finger in his soft spots hard enough to make him disappear. He didn't need to be tested anymore. He'd shown her that lots and lots and lots of times. It was just that, like an addict, sometimes the high of having to physically extricate herself from the proof of his devotion was so there, and available.

“Last month…” His voice trailed into incoherence, muted by the battering of water on the tile. She saw the gauzy outline of him sat on the toilet lid, realized she must have slipped in when she wasn't looking.

“What? Speak up, I can’t hear you."

“We ought to go to that place on the coast again while it’s still hot. I liked seeing you there. All sweaty.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

"Cool."

"Cool."

Her hair was still wet when she got to work.

Heather was like a bad smell. She never left the building, always assaulted you as soon as you walked in. "Rhaenyra!”

Rhaenyra braced her grumble behind the clench of her jaw.

"You didn't tell me your flatmate was Alicent Hightower!"


"Oh. Yeah."

"She's such a character!" Heather laughed at her own descriptor in a way Rhaenyra found churlish.

"Mm," she smiled tightly.

"My little sister went to school with her! What a coincidence that you were chums growing up."

A twinge of displeasure. "How'd you know that?" She asked, slacking the lead on her irritation.

"Talya mentioned it." Heather's smile waned, "I suppose she heard it through a mutual friend."

"Hm."

"Convenient for her, I should think," she smirked.

"For both of us. Nice to have the spare change," Rhaenyra returned, making for her desk.

But why ever, in this world where pushing buttons is the only joy one can get out of this drab life rigged by a system which gives them no sociologically acceptable utility of power but to button-push, would Heather decline the opportunity to push one?

"And to have such a doting tenant, of course."

"…Meaning?" Rhaenyra had relinquished pleasantry, resorting to indifference.

"Oh, just that. Talya mentioned she's very sweet on you, you must be very close friends."

"What did you mean, 'character'?" Rather abruptly circling back, curiosity getting the better of her.

"Oh, no no, you've misunderstood! Nothing bad, of course! I only seemed to remember Talya mentioning she was simply a little high strung. Sort of a card, you know. In the best way, of course."

"Of course." Rhaenyra said dully, "Well, Heather, lovely chatting, but I've got four billion of these to finish, I'm afraid."

Rhaenyra wasn't worried about what Alicent had told these mutual friends. She was far too good for the first, far too chaste for the second, and far too insular for the third. And besides, what possible negative repercussions could arise from the nature of their relationship foddering office gossip? What worried Rhaenyra was that 'doting'.

On Friday last, the seventh day of the seventh month of living with her, the third of romping, Alicent had performed such a delicious display of innocence and sweetness; of docility and dependency. They’d played The Enchanted Castle (perhaps that in itself was a misstep, Rhaenyra realized afterwards, using something from the past which typified the history between them. Only, Alicent had suggested it, and it was seldom that Rhaenyra refused her.) Alicent, maybe five or six, although perhaps older as in truth she had been sort of young for her age, had decided to be Gerald, and Rhaenyra was Jimmy, and Stuffed Badger Syrax was Kathleen. Alicent had just picked up the thimble with the thread tied to the post of the bed in her room, and wound it round her finger to lead them to the sleeping princess, whom Rhaenyra would also be playing.

“It’s the enchanted Princess,” Rhaenyra told Syrax. “I told you so.”

"It’s the Sleeping Beauty," said Syrax in a high-pitched squeak behind Rhaenyra’s hand. "It is, look how old-fashioned her clothes are. She has slept for a hundred years. Oh, Gerald, you're the eldest; you must be the Prince, and we never knew it. You’ve got to do it.”

“Do what?” Alicent asked in an answer-knowing way which was so childlike that Rhaenyra had to bite back a laugh of delight.

“Why, kiss her awake of course.”

Alicent O’ed. If she remembered that it wasn’t Gerald who kissed the princess in the book but Jimmy then she made a bang up act of covering it up.

“I’d do it like a shot, only I don’t think it’d make any difference me kissing her,” squeaked Syrax.

Alicent giggled.

Rhaenyra had laid up on the bed diagonally and splayed out her hair over the pillow and draped an arm over the edge and closed her eyes. And Alicent dropped down to her knees and shuffled over, and leaned down, and her sweet little breaths puffed over Rhaenyra’s face and she felt her little fingers on her shoulder.

“You waiting for something?” Rhaenyra asked, eyes still closed.

“Permission.”

“Permission?! Baby, when have you ever needed permission?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled “I didn’t know if it was the bit in the book yet, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s the bit.”

And Alicent connected them so softly, and held her lips still just the way Rhaenyra liked. And Rhaenyra pulled them in where they belonged between hers, barely licking her tongue over them. And still Alicent was unmoving and quiet and lovely. Rhaenyra tilted her head back and stretched and yawned with a hand over her mouth.

"Then the hundred years are over?” she asked in a very princessy voice. “How the yew hedges have grown! Which of you is my Prince that aroused me from my deep sleep of so many long years?"

“I did!” Alicent smiled.

“My noble preserver!”

Alicent giggled.

"How did you get past the dragons?" Rhaenyra asked, wide-eyed.

Alicent stared at her, chewing on her lip.

"Now you say 'do you believe in magic?'," Rheanyra prompted.

"Do you believe in magic?"

"I ought to," she answered blithely, "Look, here's the place where I pricked my finger with the spindle," And she rolled up her sleeve to point at the jagged scar running down her wrist.

Alicent's mouth fell closed, visibly swallowing.

It was an ill-considered act. It was just so true to the book, she couldn't resist. The housekeeper's niece pretending to be the princess really did have a scar on her wrist, and so did Rhaenyra. Perhaps the cause was a little grislier. All the same, it wasn't as though Alicent hadn't seen it before. She'd caught her staring. Besides, her cuticles had seen much, much better days, she really wasn't one to judge. She dropped her sleeve.

"Now you say,” she prodded impatiently, “'then this really is an enchanted castle?'"

"Oh. Er- Then this really is an enchanted castle?" Alicent looked back up.

"Of course it is! How silly you are!" Rhaenyra stood up. "Let's go back to the castle and I'll show you all my lovely jewels and things. Wouldn't you like that?"

Alicent nodded, and then remembered, "Oh, but-" she picked up Syrax and pat her on the head, "We're awfully hungry."

"Why, you've had nothing to eat for hours and hours and hours, but think of me! I haven't had anything to eat for a hundred years! Come along." And she took Alicent's hand.

"Oh, but the mice will have eaten everything," Alicent said very sadly.

Too sadly. Too sweetly. Too like the way she had spoken at 6. Rhaenyra suddenly became so disgusted with her that she dropped Alicent's hand and had to step out into the bathroom.

Her mind had been so revolted it had sprung a leak and spilled out her eyes.

She stopped for groceries on the way home. When she pushed through the door she found Alicent on her laptop at the kitchen island. It might've been the light from the screen, but she looked a bit peaky.

"Hey," she greeted.

"Hi." Rhaenyra dropped her bags by the fridge.

"Sorry, I'll move," Alicent made to leave.

"You're alright."

So she stayed.

Rhaenyra found herself thinking about Alicent vacuuming as she put things away, because vacuuming with unnecessary frequence was something she liked to do now. There was a sort of supressed furore to it that she hadn’t had cause to turn over until today. Was she 'a card', like Heather had said? As a child, yes, of course, she was incendiary, the only countermeasure the mention of her father; fear as a bucket of water. But now, imagining this Alicent, this tractable bit of polyfill, as 'high-strung'?

Well, she recalled, there was the display at the dining table two weeks ago. In general she'd noticed that Alicent often let her obsequiousness magnify the regret of gestures she considered unbecoming of her part. Rhaenyra simply supposed the dining table fuss an outgrowth of this, and had left her to cool off, predicting correctly what she'd do once she'd run dry.

But 'a card' implied irrationality. Alicent was not all that irrational. At least, not around Rhaenyra. Unless one considered vacuuming three times a week 'card' behaviour.

Once she'd emptied the bags, she looked at Alicent again. She was peaky. Decidedly pallid.

"Hullo."

"...hi."

"You feeling alright?"

"Yeah, good."

"You look like something I just pulled out the back of the fridge."


"Do I?"

"Have you eaten anything today?" This was a very personal question, one Rhaenyra ordinarily wouldn't ask. But that ‘card’ had inexplicably sent her for a loop. She wanted to shuffle it.

"Uhm...yeah. Yeah, I've eaten."

"Hm. You're not on your period?"

"No..."

"You don't feel faint? At all?"

Alicent shook her head, clearly offput by the interrogation. "Surely I don't look that bad, do I?"

"You're dreadfully pale." She pressed the gas pedal. "Do you still talk to your dad?" She'd assumed that Alicent still had some sort of umbilical cord to him, hadn't imagined a world where she'd been able to sever it. But it pertained. With the card thing.

"What?"

"Your dad. Are you still in touch?"

"That's..."

"None of my business? No, you’re right, I get it."

"No, that's not- Not what I meant. I'm not in touch with him. As it happens."

"Oh. Since when?"

"Since he disowned me two years ago."

"Crikey. That's still gonna be fresh, hm?" This was really tugging the thread, Rhaenyra knew. But Alicent didn't seem insulted. Just a bit scared.

"I um...I was lying about my program."

"You what?" Rhaenyra laughed in disbelief.

"I was supposed to be getting a business degree. It was easy to pretend, it wasn't as though he was very invested. I mean, he was, but…"

"So...I know you've told me, but remind me what you really studied again?"

"HSPS."

"Political Science? You lied to Otto Hightower about a degree in Political Science?"

"Well, sociology, but- He didn't want me to go into politics."

"But you did?"

"No, I- I just wanted to study sociology. I just didn't want to study business."

"Fascinating." Alicent was not looking any better. If anything she was looking worse.

"We digress." Rhaenyra moved to switch on the kettle. "I think you need to drink some tea and lie down, you look horrible."

"I really feel fine, Rhaenyra."

"Right. Okay," she shrugged. "As you say." And she switched the kettle off again.

Alicent nodded, turned her back to her to resume whatever she was doing on her laptop.

Rhaenyra watched her back for a while, feeling sedulous, perhaps partially megalomaniacal at no pursuit, then rectified this, stepping in close and turning Alicent back around by the hips, placing a palm on her forehead and two fingers to the pulse point on her neck.

"No. You feel so poorly, baby. Let's get you into something warmer, hm? Can I make you something? You want a hot bath?"

Alicent made a noise in her throat and tilted her head back.

"No." she said.

"What's that?" Rhaenyra moved both hands to her jaw, thumbs along the bone, fingers along the nape of her neck, tilting it back down to look at her.

"I don't want any of that," Alicent replied.

"Why not?"

"I feel fine, Rhaenyra," she muttered weakly.

"But you don't look it, or sound it. Come on, let's go, let's get you into bed."

"No, Rhaenyra. I don't want to," more clearly this time.

Rhaenyra stepped back, eyebrows raised, arms risen, ameliorating. Alicent wasn't playing coy. She was refusing, like at the dining table only more recalcitrant.

"Look," she spoke slowly, "I won't make you do anything you don't want to. Only, you look like you're about to keel over and I haven't the energy to pick you up off the floor and carry you to the couch today. Will you please sit down for me, sweetpea?"

Alicent wound her arms around her waist defensively. She shook her head, looking down at the floor.

"Alicent, please."  Rhaenyra hunched and leaned forward a bit, got in her personal space, trying and succeeding to gain eye contact.

"Just trying to make you feel better, yeah?"

Alicent shook her head again.

"Right. Well."

So Rhaenyra left the kitchen.

Eschewing work which pleaded completion, she fell deeply into a nap. When she woke a few hours later she felt that vile feeling, even though, like always, nothing graspable had occurred to prompt it. And now it was snagged on the cloying nostalgia from the seven years she’d been alone. Not a nostalgia for them, but the nostalgia that had sutured everything closed during them. Every waking moment spent trying to rekindle that breathless and floundering feeling for him, that drowning in something sweet and warm and prickly.

It was always the close of summer evening, lying limbs matched up over his heaving chest on the badminton court after playing one hundred thousand sets and losing every time, sun wringing out the last of its juices in a devastated puddle on the horizon. Half a glass of milk on the countertop hours past her bedtime, bleary-eyed, playing a game of cards in which he had to tell her what to put down every time it was her turn. The first time he’d touched her backside when she was eleven, speaking so few words but to tell her she could have whatever she ever wanted. The terrific bumps in the road that made her heart vault her throat standing up in the front seat of his convertible, double the speed limit, hood down, as he clutched onto her waist with his free hand like he was worried the wind would simply pluck her up and carry her off. Playing the game where if stuff came out of it before he could count to a hundred he would take her and Alicent to whatever concert they liked. The first time he’d put it inside when she was thirteen, after Alicent had gone home following one of her tantrums that made Rhaenyra feel sour and bereft. And he’d murmured such nice things in her ear, things he never said out loud. Made her feel like nobody in the world was as lucky as she was. When mum died, and he was there. And then when Alicent left, and he was there even more. And for her sixteenth birthday he took her to the amusement park and all she could do was cry and hold him, and then they'd gone home early and spent the afternoon doing beautiful things. And then he was gone too, with that kiss goodbye, for what she thought was forever. No nice words, no explanation. The desperate spell she cast every night after; if she whispered it ten times before she fell asleep, he would come back and say sorry. Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon, Daemon.

She phoned him just wanting to hear his voice. Hear I love you. It rang through to voicemail, which was unusual, but not worrying. He always picked up unless he was actively fighting, which was seldom. She could make do.

She found her in the laundry room. She still looked sickly, but apparently had enough energy to unload the machine. Rhaenyra stood there for a long time, watching her remove every sock, every shirt, every washcloth, until she stood up with the basket under one arm

"Excuse me." She said politely.

She moved to the side and Alicent shuffled past, but Rhaenyra caught the back of her shirt before she'd even made it out to the hall.

“Let me take it.”

Alicent handed it over after a space of reluctance and Rhaenyra promptly set it on the ground. She took a shoulder in each hand, and gently pushed Alicent back against the wall.

“Baby,” with her best I know better than you inflection.

Alicent simply looked at her, a bit glassy.

“Baby, I want you to listen to me. Because I know you're sick and you won't let me help.”

More silent looking.

“I know it’s hard, but I want you to tell me where you feel icky.”

More silent looking. Tough cookie today.

“Is it in your tummy?” Rhaenyra removed a hand from her shoulder and smoothed it over Alicent’s midsection. Her breath picked up a little, nothing big.

“No,” she mumbled.

“Okay. What about your chest. Does your chest feel funny? Do you feel like it’s hard to breathe?” She placed a hand just left of her heart.

“No.”

 “Okay.” Rheanyra traced up her collarbone to her throat, where she wrapped her hand. “What about here? Is there a scratchy feeling here when you swallow?”

Alicent’s breath really did stutter then. “No.” She said.

Rhaenyra rubbed a thumb over the little ribs of her larynx, then reached up and cupped the sides of her head with both hands.

“The walnut, then. You have a headache, little one?” She combed her fingers through her hair, pulling it from her face, gently scratching her scalp.

“No.” Alicent whispered.

Rhaenyra tilted her head.

“Where do you feel poorly, flower?”

“Nowhere.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Alicent flinched, looking hurt.

“I know you’re lying to me, baby," Rhaenyra coaxed. "What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I kiss it better?”

Alicent made a funny noise, lips closed.

“Where should I kiss it better?”

“Nowhere,” she answered shakily.

“Let me try, sweetheart.” Rhaenyra pressed her lips to her temple. Alicent whimpered.

“Trying, baby, I’m trying. You’ll feel better soon, I promise.”

Rhaenyra kissed the side of her head, down her neck and her chest, down to her stomach where she drew up Alicent’s top and kissed all over. She felt, fleeting, gone as soon as it was there, Alicent's touch at the back of her head. Rhaenyra looked up at her. She was crying. It bothered her, queasy. She couldn’t help pulling herself up. She kissed the tears from her cheeks, licking her lips and hoping for more.

“Oh, my sweetpea. You are poorly. I told you to tell me you weren’t feeling well. Why weren’t you telling me the truth, little one?”

“I don't...“

“What don't you?” Rhaenyra kissed another tear from her cheekbone, licking her lips again.

“I feel so dirty,” Alicent said wetly.

“I know baby, being sick makes you feel dirty sometimes.”

“No, I- I feel bad, I feel- I try so hard to be good, but I must be...“ There was a kind of shrillness in her voice that set Rhaenyra’s teeth on edge.

“You’re so good for me. You’re the best little girl in the whole world. My good girl.” She kissed her forehead.

Alicent groaned in frustration.

“Do I not tell you enough?” Rhaenyra continued. “Have I ever told you you’ve been a bad girl, or upset me?”

“Not…no, but I- When you leave, I feel bad. It feels bad.” Her voice was still small and light, not the way she spoke about the dishes, however the little snags in her cadence were clearly real.

“When I leave? What do you mean, angel?”

Alicent dragged a hand over her face.

“When you leave me. When we’re doing nice things, and then you walk away and you leave me alone. And- in- when we’re not playing-“ She broke off.

“Sweetpea, I can't be there for you all the time. I have busy things to do. I can’t always be there.”

“Rhaenyra, stop for a minute-” It broke low and husky and angry and wounded. “Please, I don't know what's real anymore.”

Rhaenyra went quiet and ceased rubbing her fingers on her scalp.

“Please, I need you to say something real.”

“What? Say what?” she asked, in turn to the adult.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, I just feel so dirty all the time and when you leave it’s like when daddy left me, when daddy was angry and he hated me but wouldn't say why, and when you leave me and you ignore me- and it’s gotten so much worse lately, you seem so displeased when we finish. I didn’t know, before, why it made me feel so awful, but I just need you to tell me it isn’t because you hate me. I can’t be loved and unloved anymore, it makes me feel so rotten.”

"I don't hate you Alicent. But if you feel as though I've slighted you somehow then I think maybe we should stop. Altogether, I mean.”

Alicent opened her mouth, wobbling, hindered from speech for a moment, then let out a fast heavy exhale.

"No, no, I don't want to stop. I don't want this to stop, I lo- like being with you...like this. I just, I feel so-" she grabbed her throat and closed her eyes tightly, taking a deep breath. "Do you feel for me at all, or am I just a toy?"

Rhaenyra let go of her and stepped back. "A toy? Are you a toy? Well, fuck," she shook her head, "I was under the impression that our friendship was a little more meaningful than to accuse me of using you like an object."

"So, I am your friend?"

"Alicent! Yes! Yes, you are a dear friend." Well. A bending of the term, perhaps, but pacification was desired; she truly looked as though she were about to pass into the mists. "My oldest."

Alicent began absently pinching the skin of her neck. "Then why do you leave? Why don't you want me otherwise?"

It had felt good, Rhaenyra conceded to herself, to hear this girl, this ‘card’, hunger for her so wretchedly to be moved to such a mess. Arousing, perhaps? Yes, a little. And the knowledge that she seemed to have forgotten admitting her deep affection during sex was also edifying. But, as previously stated, Rhaenyra was not a monster, and she reminded herself that she had contracted only that morning to treat Alicent accordingly.

The truth was no great mystery, really. She would be doing her adolescence a grave disservice, flannelling the particularity of her personal misfortune. At least until Alicent was not flaking away like a bit of pastry, she couldn't very well confess 'It is a great fracture, the paper over which you peel away at when your fingers are especially little and guileless.' And besides, it was an intensely formidable feeling, having left someone wanting more.

"I don't know," she said, if not strictly true, in a roundabout way earnest. "I don't know why I do that. I would tell you if I did, but I don't. I suppose it's habit."

Alicent frowned.

"It doesn't mean anything, it's not for want of feeling. I don't know," she finished with a shrug.

"And the rest?"

"Well, I do want you. That's what this is. It's a game constructed of want. Just or 'otherwise' are vague, I don't know quite what you mean by that, but-"

"No, no, that's fine, I didn't...that's fine."

Alicent's eye was dissecting. She had stopped crying, seemed simply to be trying to making something of it all.

"Was that all you needed to hear?" Rhaneyra asked.

"I suppose so," she replied, unsatisfied but weary. Sniffing.

"Then will you let me take you to bed and tuck you in with a hot water bottle?" Rhaenyra asked, chin tilted down.

"Alright," but she wasn't smiling.

She succeeded without much talk. A kiss on her forehead, just call out if you need anything. And it almost wasn't for play. It really sort of was as friends. Dear friends, or whatever she’d said.

It had been a plaster on a burn wound. Alicent's desire for something more would only worsen, as time and proximate attachment so often compound, there wasn't much to be done but carry on.

She did play with it the next day, nevertheless. It helped a little with the revulsion, not because it ameliorated, because it didn't, but because it stimulated in a way which was nearly reparatory. She’d been desired of course, but never to such a stimulating degree by anyone but her uncle.

“Shall we eat outside? I made enough for two.”

“Oh. Yes.”

Alicent sat on her lap again, after some calculated persuasion, back to front. Rhaenyra didn’t try to feed her a second time, had learned well enough her own lesson. They ate in silence mostly, interrupted only by someone coming through to take out the bins.

"Ah, you must be the people who put these down here," They said, chuckling lightly, gesturing to the table and chair.

The two of them had simply nodded, smiled. Rhaenyra was surprised Alicent hadn't choked on her food.

"Sorry to interrupt. Have a nice evening."

"You as well," Rhaenyra answered.

"Did that scare you, baby?" Rhaenyra asked, quietly jocular.

Alicent shook her head. She was looking much recovered since the day before. Not altogether bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but better.

Once Rhaenyra'd finished, she pushed her plate away. Alicent made to do the same but there was still food on it.

"Was that good? Are you full enough, sweetpea, do you want any more?"

"No, thank you."

"You've still got some here, look."

"I'm full."

"It's just those two bits, little one. I want you growing big and strong."

Alicent managed the last two bites.

"Good girl."

She let her push her plate away then, waiting until she'd swallowed and pulling her close, idly brushing her fingers over her hip.

The sun was refracting a little off one of the windows, throwing a bit of the sunset onto the wall ahead. A poor pink projection; the exiguity of what the world rationed the alleyway.

"I want to take you somewhere lovely. Do you want to go somewhere nice with me, baby? A little trip just the two of us?"

"Yes, please."

"Shall we go to the beach? Build ourselves a big castle with lots of turrets and moats and drawbridges?"

"And a dungeon for all the horrid people."

Rhaenyra laughed. "Who shall we put in our dungeon?"

Alicent was quiet for a moment. Rhaenyra rubbed her nose in the soft cotton of her dress just aside her neck, inhaling the sweet polyphony of raspberry, pink pepper and sweat.

"Oh, I don't know. The horrid people."

"Alright. We'll find as many horrid people as we can, throw them all in."

"We need a knight. And treasure."

"And a dragon to guard the princess."

"Who is the princess?" So innocent, so absolutely knowing.

"Baby, who else?"

"You?"

"You, sweetpea. You are the loveliest princess who has ever lived. Scores and scores have vied their calibre against the merciless flames of our dragon to win your hand, little knowing that you already belong to me.” It was a theme Rhaenyra had played before for Alicent, and one she had heard so many times from Daemon it had nearly lost its meaning. The fallacy of intent was negligible now, what mattered was how good it felt to say. “Even if they did not suffer an agonizing peril of billowing fire, they would never have you."

"And who are you?" Alicent twisted a bit to look at her. Even from the awkward angle, she shone with that breathless sort of delicacy, eyelashes of enormous eyes blinking flutters in Rhaenyra's insides.

"I am the Sorceress," she said lowly, sweeping the curls from Alicent’s neck to get the full picture.

Rhaenyra had not had enough to eat. Maugre the infirmity of being sick to her stomach, she needed to devour.

“And every night at sundown I go into your chambers and I cast a spell on you.”

Alicent’s look sobered a little, moistening her lips.

“What kind of spell?”

“The kind that makes you never want to leave me. Makes you feel so special and wonderful and happy. One you’d never feel again if you left.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

Rhaenyra danced her fingers over Alicent’s side. “Shall I cast the nightly spell on you, princess? Is it of the hour?”

Alicent nodded.

Rhaenyra fucked her. She spread her over the bed like something fragile and ornamental, and told her to lie still and not move or the spell wouldn’t work. She put her fingers inside, and her thumb over her clit, and she garnered four orgasms, coaxing them out with 'that's my beautiful baby girl,' 'come, sweetheart, you're doing so well, 'just one more,' 'you'll never leave me, ever, ever ever'. She didn’t think Alicent had ever even come more than once at a time. For every contraction she would move to pull Rhaenyra's hands away desperately, and Rhaenyra would remind her gently to be a good princess, that she was tampering with the spell, dragging her hand back to the bed.

Alicent was weeping messily by the fourth, begging forbearance in a sweet, broken little melody. The flush in her cheeks, the glowing sweat on her eyelids and brow, her ringlets spread over the pillow. It ought to have been illustrated in etching and watercolour. And Rhaenyra couldn’t stop, because it was tantamount to beating her, eliciting a pain she herself would not feel. She began again, very slowly. Alicent gave a ravishing shudder.

“No, Rhaenyra. Won’t- I can’t anymore.”

“Yes you can.”

“I really can’t, I don’t want to.”

This would not do. Where was the lovesick maiden of yesterday? “Don’t you love me, princess? Don’t you want to stay with me forever? You don’t want some knight to murder our precious dragon and seize you from me, surely?” She pressed her thumb hard into Alicent’s clit, and Alicent sobbed.

“No. No, I don’t want to leave you, I love you, I love you.” There she was. “I’ll never leave you, Rhaenyra, I love you.” God, this girl was lost.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise, I promise, I promise.” Lost for good.

“My loyal little sapling. My lovely little rosebush. Just once more and you’ll be safe.” She fell into murmurs as she crawled up and laid against her side. Alicent relented, dropping her hand to the sheets, biting her lip, eyes shut tight, still so well behaved, only twitching and convulsing from her position when she couldn’t help it.

 Rhaenyra finished her off by clit only, in concession, one last gasping whine issuing from the devastated mess.

"I will kiss you to sleep now, princess."

Alicent hummed feebly.

Rhaenyra spun it out, kissing her mildly, and longer than she had yet. Over and over. Alicent responded every so often with small noises, seemingly originating from somewhere deep inside.

She left her sleeping, or looking as though she were asleep. Was this a conscious effort, she wondered, concluding the affair with deliberation? Or had the ceremony of the finale more been self-congratulatory of her own perseverance? Stupid questions. It was all a game, what did it matter?




It was unusually difficult to find parking in his neighbourhood the next morning. When she finally fell in twenty minutes past when she said she would be, he said nothing of it.

“You called me last night.”

“Yeah.”

“Anything important? Should I feel guilty for just seeing it?”

“No. No, I just dreamt about you is all.”

He pulled her in by the waist and kissed her.

“‘vn’t got my things off yet,” she mumbled against his cheek.

“Anything good?”

“Yes. That’s why I called,” she pulled away, toeing off her shoes. “Badminton.”

“Ah. Badminton.”

She talked shop for several hours. Rhaenyra often bounced stuff off him when she felt particularly proud of a case. His consultation was always sound of perspective. Often a little on the remorseless side, but generally thoughtful and concise. There was a reason he had been so big before he quit.

He let her fall to infancy when it progressed to being fucked on the dining table, make little noises instead of words, finally kneading her flesh her the way he used to. The vindication was always the best, when he came with such a guttural wail she wondered if he was dying. He went down on her after, and he held her hands the way she liked. But her mind was come-addled, the feeling of flying still sticky, and she slipped to Alicent at 12. Just after a growth spurt; her breasts were coming in, and she was finally big enough to wear Rhaenyra's clothes. She'd slowly begun to pick up sarcasm and the ability to say no to things without sounding as though she thought it would detonate her. And her temper, like a flavour she had just learned to cook with. Rhaenyra had liked her this way because all of a sudden Alicent's adoration didn't feel so mindlessly adulatory. She was quieter about affection, and when Rhaenyra won it was so much more enchanting. She remembered that feeling so vividly, the magical tingle of when Alicent held her hand compared with the heady, consumptive elevation drop of when Daemon did.

She gripped his hands tighter. There he was. Here with her. She wasn't alone, he had come back for her.

She came hard.

“I love you.” she gasped.

He pulled himself up, kissed her.

She held onto his belt at the door. “I have to go into the office the rest of the week mornings, so you’ll have to do without."

“And this weekend? Still on?"

"Oh. Well, I rather th-."

"You’re not axing it.”

She rolled her eyes. “No- no, the contrary. I was wondering if we could bring someone.”

Daemon looked at her like she’d told him she was entertaining becoming a banana. Perhaps she was. It had so suddenly come on her, the idea to ask, a bit senselessly.

“On our holiday?”

“Not just some stranger. Alicent. ”

“The little red creature? From when you were ten?”

“Yes. My flatmate, I told you.” Not everything. Which- might do well to erelong.

“Right. Forgot you lived with her, you never talk about her.”

“She’s having a bad go of it lately, I want to do something nice for her.”

"Which is...bringing her on our sexy holiday."

"You can say no, Daemon," she grumbled, despite the fairness of his bemusement.

"Well, if you'd like her to come she can come, I s'pose." The same way, following a strong explanation as to motive, he would support her choice to become a banana.

"Thank you."

"Whatever you'd like."

"Thanks."

She let go of his belt with a final stumble backwards.

“Bye-bye,” she said, feeling sort of sentimental.

“Tara,” he grunted.

 

She knocked softly on her door a few minutes after she got home that evening.

“Plans this weekend?”

“Nothing’s far as I know.”

Rhaenyra leant on the doorframe. “Do you remember my uncle?”

“Corlys?”

“Daemon.”

“Oh. Uhm, yeah.”

“We’re driving down south. I was wondering if you wanted to come. We have a place Friday and Saturday night. Beach,” She smiled.

“You and him? And me? I wouldn’t be a dead weight?”

“No. It'd be like old times.”

“Uhm…”

She looked as though she were about to say no.

“Come on. Sand castles,” she prodded. Alicent blushed prettily.

“Okay.”

“Yes! Lovely.”

 

It was five hours to where they were booked, and they broke down just two in; Daemon's vintage convertible stalling on an unsealed off-road.

“Four hours. They're seeing to another breakdown.” He relayed from the service number.

“Surely there’s someone else you can phone,” Rhaenyra groaned.

“They’re closest. And they owe me a favour.”

“But I’m starving,” she whined. She caught Alicent smirking where she was sat by the dyke on a log.

“What’s sniggering in aid of?” she poked, not unkindly.

“Nothing. Just, you sound exactly like you did when you were nine.”

“Mm.” she pursed her lips.

The ride had been quiet. Not a word had been spoken once the ignition’d been lit, until thirty minutes later Alicent piped up to confess she felt she'd be sick. She’d swapped with Rhaenyra for the front and claimed feeling better, though the relief in her expression now she was out of the vehicle was rather telling.

On one side of the road was a hedge, beyond which, according to the fleeting view every hundred feet or so through a cattle guard, rolled a few hill’s-worth of fields quilted with trees. On the other was a glen which sloped down for about half a mile before it reached a very large Tudor house flanked by several dozen enormous evergreens before the property turned to woodland.

“Alicent,” Rhaenyra whispered. Alicent came round the side of the car.

“Castle,” she clarified.

They stood staring while Daemon inspected uselessly under the hood.

“Do you think they’d feed us?” She murmured. Alicent chuckled. “Not now. Not in this era. Thirty years ago, maybe.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Anyway, here.” Alicent leant in through the open window to grab something from her bag, then handed Rhaenyra a block of protein-something in fancy matte plastic.

“What’s this?”

“Eat it.”

It was disgusting. She finished it. It was nice of Alicent, a nice gesture. Made her feel nice inside. And besides, she was hungry.

Rhaenyra could tell Alicent was nervous. She hadn’t made much of an effort to alleviate this and felt a little guilty about it. Alicent had never been at ease with Daemon as a child either; she took his sense of humour too seriously, disliked his gruff silence. Rhaenyra had not explained why Daemon lived in the same town nor why Alicent had heard nothing about till then. It would come up if it came up, and if she wanted to freak out then she could freak out.

It was only ten minutes later the servicemen called again and said they couldn’t come till the following morning.

“But we’re miles from anything."

"Let's camp out here," Daemon suggested, considerably less vexed at the situation. "The weather's good."

“I’m ordering a lift to town, this is nonsense."

“Not very romantic of you, Needy.”

"I'm hungry, not pioneering."

"Come on, it's public land, look." he indicated the dotted line on a zoomed-in map on his phone.

"And sleep on what?"

"God's green earth."

"God's black mud," she returned. “And what if it rains?”

“It won’t. What d'ya say, Chuck?" He looked to Alicent. First thing he'd said to her since Hey that morning.

"Oh! er..." reacting as though her opinion had never been worth consideration. "Well, it is rather a nice day.”

Rhaenyra shook her head.

“But I am also concerned about a physical sleeping location,” she amended slowly. Rhaenyra nodded.

“Well, how about I go and seek out dry land, and you two can stay here, and if someone comes along to give us a ride into town then you give me a call and I’ll come running with my tail between my legs, but if I come back before then, then we can make an adventure of it.”

Rhaenyra hmphed.

“They’re good odds,” Daemon added.

“Fine. Go. On to your errand, boy,” she shooed him with a flapping gesture.

“There will be a carriage as soon as he disappears over that hillock, just watch.”

There was no carriage. Nor a car, for that matter. They sat quietly for some time. The sun was just beginning to set and the gnats were out, bats plucking up their meals, dropping and ascending again like the end of a lion tamer’s whip. Rhaenyra lost herself in her phone and Alicent stared down the hill at the castle, barely moving. A lark began its dinner song somewhere nearby.

After about fifteen minutes, Alicent suggested Rhaenyra save her battery in case she wanted a car later, as it would probably take several hours to get there.

"Oh, bother my battery," she huffed. "Sorry. The hunger," putting it away.

They hadn’t seen much of each other since the last episode. There wasn’t time for it. Stipulation disputes had everyone on the case in vexatious mood, and she was forced to work through the evenings in order to ensure she got enough done in time for the weekend. And it was unpleasant, refusing herself. Moreover refusing Alicent's silent doe-eyed plea. Despite the risk of over-interaction, Rhaenyra had been craving her more than usual.

"Seen anyone come out?” she asked.

Alicent shook her head.

“Do you suppose its empty?"

"I don't know. They haven't a car in the drive, I suspect they're out."

"Mm."

There was another long pause where they watched at the horizon and Rhaenyra scuffed up the grass with her trainers.

"I never apologized.” Alicent’s voice was meek and very far off.

“What?”

“For leaving you. After your mum died.” she turned, more intent.

“What do you mean?"

Alicent blinked, squinting a little in the sun. "What I said. I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your choice."

"I know."

"So, then how are you sorry?"

She frowned. "I don't know. I've just always felt a bit guilty, that's all."

Rhaenyra gave her a puzzled look and shrugged. “Not a big deal.” But her stomach was churning.

“Horrible, the suddenness," Alicent continued. Rhaenyra wished she wouldn't.

"Yeah."

"I didn't know how to write you about it. I wanted to badly. I've thought about it since, but I never seemed to manage it. I just wanted to tell you I was sorry for you."

"You did," Rhaenyra said dully, wishing she would change the subject. “At the time.”

"Yes, but..."

"It's fine, Alicent." It wasn't. It wasn't. I needed you, bubbled up in her throat.

"Yes, well...Yes. I'm sorry," she fumbled. Rhaenyra shoved a toe in the dirt with extra gusto

There had been a cusp, a few weeks ago, for asking of Alicent’s being away. They’d been in bed, Rhaenyra had just been fabricating some dream about a man in an old house to demystify kissing. She had been unable to choose one, a question, so of a sudden overcome by keenness for knowing Alicent's absent years. Did you miss me? Have you ever felt as horrible as I have? When you hurt yourself, when you eat yourself like that, does it satiate? Did you speak of me to anyone after you left? What did you tell them about me? Did you ever suspect that my uncle was carrying on with me? Have you known love since you left? Have you ever known anything like the love we had as children? Is your being in love with me now anything like the love of our childhood?

She shook her head, realizing she had been staring at her, realizing also that most of those questions had not even occurred to her that night and that she had been thinking them up here, now, with a return of that same keenness to ask.

Owl sounds, a hooting very un-birdlike, drifted up from the glen then.

"What was that?" Alicent asked.

“I imagine it was Daemon trying to be humorous.”

She spotted him. He must have crossed the road quite far ahead, because the little form of him was peeking out from a copse at the base of the valley, a little ways off from the castle. His hands were on his hips, expectant.

“Ought we to go down? Is he alone?” murmured Alicent.

“I’m not sure.”

Rhaenyra began to stumble down the hill, and Alicent followed shortly after.

 

He’d discovered a glasshouse on the property. The panes were dirty and clouded with age, a large number broken, and the plants which had usurped the beds and floor -honeysuckle, long arms of fruitless wild blackberry, a very tall clump of Japanese knotweed- were unlikely to be the ones intended to nurse there. It was small, too, would barely fit the three of them lain in the middle. But it was dry. And, Rhaenyra admitted, rather romantic.

“No one lives in the house," said Daemon. "I checked the windows, it's empty."

"Are there cameras?" Alicent asked, glancing around at the tree cover.

"Not for this old thing." He gestured limply to the conservatory.

"It's too perfect," Rhaenyra muttered. "I don't trust it, there's got to be security somehow," a little louder. "Why don't we sleep in the car if you're so- what am I saying? I'm ordering a lift, and we'll stay in the next town over."

"This is unlike you, Needy, very unimaginative." Daemon frowned. "Law has corrupted you." He wasn't wrong, but she couldn't figure out why. Antagonism simply felt the only comfortable comportment.

"I've said, I'm starving, Daemon."

"We can forage. Let's bring our things down from the car and then you and I can look for food, and, Alicent, clever girl that she is, can get a fire started. And when the Visigoths make it 'round, we can show them videos and shock them into surrender-"

Rhaenyra interrupted him with a guttural scoff before he could continue. "Fine! Fine," and trudged off to execute this.

She felt ludicrous 'foraging'. Neither of them knew a wit about the edibility of plants or what to look for. Daemon suggested a rabbit chase, and she shot him down with another wet scoff. They reached an overgrown area at the back of the property, fringing a brook, and she waded carefully through brambles to reach the edge of the water. The season negated much more than a dull trickle.

"No fish," she noted in Valyrian.

"This time of year we waited long enough there would be otters."

"I'm not eating otter."

"You would if I cooked it."

She would. She looked at him. He was searching her.

"What kind of sharp object have you got up your arsehole this evening?" He asked, moving nearer, pulling a particularly thorny bramble off her jeans. "Really, Rhaenyra, you're being very antiseptic," in English.

"I'll not say it again."

"I've never known you to be such a grump about peckishness. Anything I can do? Put a little morsel in that hungry tummy?" He stepped up close, butting up his hips to hers, already hardening. She reached down and felt him through his trousers and a low noise issued from his throat. She knelt. A thorn stuck through her jeans and sunk into her skin. She flinched, but did nothing about it, unzipping, unbuttoning him, pulling it out. Began sucking on it like a straw.

He went quiet, like usual, and like usual she loathed him for it. Longed to induce some sort of noise out of him.

She grabbed his hand and held on to it tight, working her tongue at the tip as if trying to enter his urethra. He held the back of her head with his free hand and pushed in further to stop her, but said nothing. She introduced teeth, and still there was silence from him.

Suddenly very frustrated and feeling a bit sick, she pulled away completely with a grunt, began using her hand instead, a little too hard.

"I'm fucking her," she confessed lowly. "The way you used to fuck me. Only I do it much better. I treat her the way you wanted to be treated when you were little. I give her all the love you were withheld, all the love you withheld from me."

He grunted, looking down at her, knitting his eyebrows.

"You should be envious," she said, smiling a little.

But he laughed, and it dropped away.

"Jealous," She corrected.

"Funny."

"No it isn't," she growled, pumping harder. He groaned.

"She's my little darling. My sweet little pet. She's such a good girl," she dropped into Valyrian again, "hardly needs discipline- better than you ever were as a child, nasty boy. My father would dote on her now, what I’ve done to her, how perfectly I’ve raised her. He'd pick her over you a billion times over. You would seem the dirt under his shoe next to her, filthy child.”

"The fuck, Rhaenyra? Stupid- what kind of-" He wrenched away, very angry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pouting, looking up at him through her lashes; a garish display he abhorred.

“What’s wrong with you?!” he hissed.

“Nothing. I’m perfectly fettle, if completely empty. Now, feed me. Please, sir. Please, uncle, I’m perishing of starvation.”

He stuck it back in her mouth, grabbing her skull with both hands and thrusting so hard he stabbed the back of her throat and she gagged obscenely. It only took a few more plunges for him to come. But it was such a physical invasion she was unable to preserve his fluids, and fell and wretched dryly onto the bank.

"So much for morsels," she wheezed once she had caught her breath.

"No, look. Nettles." Daemon muttered, pointing into the thicket.

 

They returned to the glasshouse red handed. Because of the nettles. Alicent had, after a fashion, built a fire and gotten it lit. It was hardly bigger than a dinner plate, nevertheless Rhaenyra was impressed.

She looked up from her work, smile fading quickly on observing Rhaenyra's face, red-eyed, likely. From the gagging.

"Everything alright?"

"Yes, fine. Why?"

"Nothing. You- Nothing." Alicent returned to stoking.

"This is the extent of it, I’m afraid." Rhaenyra dropped the bundle of nettles.

"Oh," Alicent reached forward and poked at them with a stick. "I think you have to boil these. Have we got anything to boil in?" She glanced between the two of them.

“I’ll look,” Daemon said, heading up the hill.

Rhaenyra began to walk around, absently gathering twigs.

“What did you do while you were away?” She asked “You never said.”

“Oh, nothing really,” Alicent shrugged. “School.” Rhaenyra handed her a stick. Alicent had been dining on her own flesh again, a streak of red where blood had been wiped wrapped the knuckle of her ring finger.

“Your brother? How is he?” She wandered further under the tree cover.

“I’m not sure. We haven’t spoken much.”

“Did you make a lot of friends at school?”

“Uhm…some. More at Uni.”

“Well, tell me about them.”

“Oh. Okay, well, there’s Qarl, he’s a social worker. And Mysaria, who was my TA at uni, she’s a lot older than I am. She’s too cool for me,” she laughed a bit nervously. “And, uhm. There was a boy, Criston, he- we worked on a research- anyways, but we’re not close. And Mysaria’s friend Talya, though I don’t like her much, she’s very judgemental.”

“You used to be judgemental.”

Alicent turned around, frowning at her “No I didn’t.”

“Uhmm, yes, actually, you were.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were the most judgemental person I knew. Even at ten, I could hardly mention anyone in our year without you pulling some sort of glower.”

Alicent was blushing. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

Rhaenyra stood for a moment, looked at her. She had a smudge of soot on her chin. She approached, dropped the sticks and crouched down close.

“What about this boy? Crispin?” She licked her thumb and rubbed at Alicent’s chin.

“Criston.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What about him?”

It was stubborn, the smudge. She licked her thumb again.

“Were you an item?”

“We sort of…Uhm- but it never went anywhere. How’d you know?”

“You’re awfully easy to read.”

Alicent was really blushing now. The spot was gone, but Rhaenyra couldn’t stop running her thumb over her jaw. Such a pretty picture. This card, Alicent. All rosy, shameful. Thralled like a scared animal.

“You make me so sick sometimes,” Rhaenyra whispered in Valyrian.

Alicent’s mouth fell open a little, eyes searching rather desperately. “What?”

“Nothing. Talking to myself.” She stood.

Daemon returned from the car a few minutes later with a large tin thermos. They found enough bits of stick and wood to build up the heat, and managed to soak the nettles in warm water from the drive’s meagre supply until they had lost their sting, which also unfortunately wilted them to a slimy sort of overcooked spinach. It was a useless culinary exploit. There was not much of it to eat, and the flavour was bitter and earthy, and did little to curb any appetite.

By half seven they stomped out Alicent’s poor little bonfire. They rolled up clothes for pillows. Daemon spread out the car cover over the floor inside the glasshouse and they lay bodkin with Rhaenyra in the middle.

He turned his head so his breath tickled her neck. “Imagine if this got back to your firm,” he japed quietly.

“It would have to be carried by the spiders or beetles; we’ll not be alive come morning,” she returned, bending her leg to scratch at the sore on her knee.

“Give us a ghost story, Needy,” he commanded.

“No.”

It became quite cold over the next hour or so. No one spoke. Rhaenyra drained her battery by nine.

“Phone’s died,” she announced to an uncaring silence.

“Let’s stay here,” Daemon started in Valyrian. “All weekend. I can still cancel the reservation for Saturday.

“Not on your life.”

“But we're so at home already. I wonder how much they're selling the place for. I'll buy it. And we can sleep out here in the summer."

He was pinching her, she knew, despite this the idea was a nice one.

Alicent let out a very quiet sigh next to her.

"Sorry. Daemon, speak in English."

"I said let’s all pretend we’re the last people on earth and see how long we can go before the cannibalism sets in.

“You horrible creature. That’s not what he said, darling.” The sobriquet slipped out without her thinking. Alicent stiffened slightly. They fell into another fraught silence.

Rhaenyra turned on her side after a space, facing Daemon, admiring his profile, the elegance of his brow. So like her own.

“I’d like that,” she said. “Buy it for me.”

He chuckled.

Another interminable stretch of nothing but the breath of the three of them, and that of the wind in the trees outside.

“There were three of them,” she murmured. Alicent stirred, her shoulder brushing against Rhaenyra’s back. “And they had been misled from their path by a series of roads which did not exist on the maps. Their false passage lead them to a place which looked very like anywhere else, only no one was alive. The air was very still, and cold, and damp, and bore the smell of an earth which had not felt human tread for a century or more. And once the sun had gone, they had to stop for the night, because the darkness was so thick they could hardly make out their surroundings. So they found shelter in the ruins of a fortress, and they lay down to rest, and they waited for morning.

“But there was something outside. A very long ways off, nevertheless they felt it. No one spoke, because each hoped the other did not feel it too, so that it wouldn’t be real. Oh, but it was, it was real. It went on forever into the blackness, and it was made of dread. It was something whose suffocating anticipation grew worse and worse with each second that passed, until it was so oppressive that they knew exactly when it was about to happen, though they did not know what it was.

“It was a scream. Not the breaking, scratching scream of natural fear, but a loud, clear, infinite cry. An unearthly tone which was so frighteningly human in voice, but so terribly wrong in tone. And the worst thing…was that it did not stop. Long after it should have run out of breath, it sustained, always the same pitch, always the same volume, never breaking.

“And the three found that they could not move, or speak, the sound seemed to have stolen the oxygen from the air, so that all which reached them came in thin, hollow inhales.”

“And it went on. Forever. And they are still held prisoners of it, breathless and paralyzed without end and without relief.”

“That was dreadful,” Alicent whispered.

“Thank you.”

The silence resumed. A long one.

At length “You’re in love with her,” Daemon said loudly, though it was not something she would understand.

"Be quiet, are you mad?" She poked a finger in his side sharply.

"You're in love with her," he said more quietly.

"The fuck am I supposed to say to that?"

He twisted to face her. "Don't play rabbity with me."

"I'm not playing rabbity."

He smiled softly and reached up to brush a mosquito from her forehead.

"She's your ewe lamb, you said so yourself."

"I said nothing of the sort. You're my ewe lamb, you're just trying to make me feel better for acting a fool earlier and it's not working, and I hate you. She's nothing to me."

"That funny walnut of yours,” he tapped between her eyes.

"You messed with my settings as a child, what did you expect?"

"I saw you earlier, hovering over her 'you make me so sick sometimes'. Looking at her like you look at me. It's why you've been such a pain all day, don't deny it. You've always been level headed if something was beyond your control, but she's something you think you can stop- though,” he grunted, shifting on the hard, uneven floor“ for the life of me I don't see why you want to."

Because she abandoned me. Because I don't need her. because I have enough of you to last me a lifetime. Because she'd abandon me again. She'd abandon me like you did.
 
"You love her. Tell her you love her, Rhaenyra, I've never seen a girl so miserably keen to hear it."

"Don't you dare speak to me like that, you presumptuous ass, I wish you would mind your own."

"You are my own, Needy."

"Shut up," swapping for English.

"The scream, I can hear it. Quick, while you still have breath in you-"

"Goodbye. I'm turning invisible," she said crossly. She turned over.

This thing with Alicent; it was the elegiac softening of the flank of red meat; putting nostalgia under the whack, whack, whack of a tenderizing mallet. Rhaenyra wasn't falling in love with her kitchen utensil. Rhaenyra wasn't falling in love with her tender mallet.

She fell asleep.

She woke sometime later, God knows when. The moon was just overhead, and shining down very brightly, split into quadrants by the panes. Daemon was snoring behind her. At some point he'd moved down, and his backside was in the crook of her knees.

On the obverse Alicent was shivering. Rhaenyra could tell she was trying to suppress it by the way her back tensed, then relaxed, then tensed again. She had worn less than the others. Brought less, Rhaneyra supposed, only a cardigan over her tank top. Her knees were drawn up tightly to her chest with her arms.

Rhaenyra propped herself up on her elbow, peering down at her in the moonlight. Her eyes were open and staring at the darkness under the bed along the wall.

"Can't you sleep, angel?" She whispered.

Alicent craned her neck around, blinking.

"Is the ground too hard?"

She didn't answer.

"You're shaking like an aspen, darling, are you cold?"

"A bit," she said at last, barely a breath.

"Oh, my little quiver, you should have said something."

She lay back down and wrapped one arm around her legs, placing her hand over her kneecap protectively. The back of her neck was there to nuzzle, her curls there for Rhaenyra to stick her face into, so she nuzzled it, and blew warm air into it, and took a deep inhale. "You smell so good, baby. Such a good girl, keeping so clean and tidy and lovely for me." She blew more warm air into her neck.

"Rhaenyra," Alicent whispered.

"Yes, sweetpea?"

"Is he asleep?"

"He's a very heavy sleeper," she reassured, though it wasn't particularly true. "He’d sleep through an air raid."

For extra measure she drew her knees up and under her backside, swaddling herself around the little tidbit of her close as she could.

"My ice cube," she murmured.

Alicent took Rhaenyra's hand in her own, pulling her arm about her ribcage and tucking her fist under her chin. She was still shivering. Rhaenyra continued to blow into her hair.

"You know," she said between exhales, "I don't actually pay half price for the flat."

"What?" Alicent shifted.

"You're paying about eleven percent."

"What?" Alicent began to turn around to face her.

"No, baby, don't move, I've got you."

A pause.

"Rhaenyra."

"Yes, little one?"

"Why did you say that just then?"

"Because it's true." she unfurled her thumb from her fist and began to caress Alicent's knuckles with it.

"Why?"

"Because I wanted you to live with me, baby. I wanted to take you home and put you in my rooms, and feed your belly, and tell you stories, and teach you how to feel wonderful things, and I wanted to come home every day to your sweet face smiling at me."

The whim of contaminating the fantasy with this acknowledgment was forming a sort of fleecy feeling. She had adopted her baby Alicent, who vacuumed and studied sociology, and did not want to do airplane. Her cherub who had referred to the inset toothbrush holder as a positive biopolitical instrument, who had not let go of her hand until she turned eight, had cried and cursed her for the first time when Rhaenyra told her she was going to wear a thong to Laena's pool party when she was twelve. Her dolly who tied herself up in knots.

There was something wet on Rhaenyra's hand.

She propped herself on her elbow again. There was something wet on Alicent's nose as well. Glimmering a little in the moonlight.

"Hey, hey. What are these here?” She brushed them away.

“I said it, didn’t I?” Alicent said brokenly.

“Said what?”

“That I love you. That I love you, that I’m in love with you. I said it. Old Alicent. A few weeks ago. You’ve known.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“You make me so delirious, I don't know.”

Alicent put her hand over her face.

“Well-“

“Don’t- with that just now. Please.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

"It's okay," she took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks, blowing it out slowly. "I just wanted to know. If you knew."

Rhaenyra lay back down. She held her tight. Alicent had gone in the morning.

Notes:

Rhaenyra: what’s wrong
alicent: *1961 shirley maclaine voice* OH, I FEEL SO DAMN SICK AND DIRTY I CAN’T STAND IT ANYMORE.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of eyes, stem, sweet, knot, pretty