Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alicent

Earlier that day

Word reached her ears in the early hours of the morning before even a single trace of the sun's light had surpassed the horizon. The message that her lady-in-waiting, Talya, brought was what all had been anticipating for quite some time, for just one look at the King told that the Stranger lurked near with hands outstretched, threatening to claim him at any moment. Alicent had thought herself prepared--she had spent years watching her husband slowly deteriorate into a corpse as he still lived and breathed, and it was clear what ailed him could not be cured, only treated to subdue it--so when the news of his death resonated within her, she herself was surprised at the emotions suddenly overwhelming her to tears for the man she had been forced to wed, the man that had fathered her children that he did not see fit to love, and had stolen her youth.

"Are you sure?" Her voice shook as it emerged from her throat, clenched tight with unexpected grief. Any hint of drowsiness fled from her being as she covered a sob passing through her lips with her hand.

"With his own eyes, Your Grace," Talya affirmed with a soft voice from the foot of her bed, in reference to the servant boy who happened upon the body.

Just a few hours prior had she visited him in his chambers where he had uttered something of great magnitude to her, a wish that turned out to be his final one. With labored breaths, her husband voiced that it was his desire for their firstborn son to be his successor, even if it meant casting aside his daughter for the sake of precedent and tradition. In his final moments, he at last saw reason.

"Uh..." Her mind was hopelessly jumbled, but she knew that duty was paramount, and as wife to the late King, it was her duty to see that his final wish be granted, and there was only one person she could go to to aid her with such a request. She had hoped to worry about matters of altering succession until at least sunrise, but it seems the gods did not wish to grant her even that. "Stay here. Tell, tell no one. Help me dress," she ordered as she rose from her bed.  A grieving widow she was now, but there was far too much to do, and all of it had to remain hush, a near impossible task within walls where rats scurried.

~•~

Her father's reaction to the news and her admittance of Viserys's sudden change of heart had been quiet with little emotion to be had as she sat across from him in his chambers in the Tower of the Hand, save for a crease in his brow and calculating eyes that had always made her feel like she was ten steps behind. She could not guess whether or not her father believed her, but both saw it fit that a small council meeting needed to be called immediately in order to discuss what had to be done.

~•~

"What is it that could not have waited an hour?" Lord Tyland inquired in jest as he took his place at the opposite end of the small council table directly across from Alicent, who sat at the head where her husband had once. "Was Dorne invaded?"

All other members turned towards her, and she could not find the strength within to mask her grief and the overwhelmingly weight she felt from the daunting duty she was tasked with. Her father stood to her right, and Ser Criston, clad in his silver and white Kingsguard armor, stood on her left.

"The King is dead," her father gravely said, a proclamation that sobered Lord Tyland of his humor in an instant, and the room became eerily still. All other faces of the men surrounding Alicent mirrored one another in their somberness without a hint of surprise, for they too had surely anticipated that this moment would soon come to pass, but what she knew they were not expecting was that the King had changed his mind, and all plans of succession for Rhaenyra to ascend the Iron Throne were soon to be thrown out the window. She did not look forward to justifying the truth to them when it could easily be seen as a lie meant to further her and her family's ambition.