𝘼𝙉𝘼𝙀𝙇𝙔𝙎 𝙏𝘼𝙍𝙂𝘼𝙍𝙔𝙀𝙉 tore her mother apart from the inside out. She had gotten stuck halfway from the womb, slowly eroding the bones and muscles within the young woman. Her father had been granted a choice, and in that moment the chance...
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IV. 𝗧𝗼 𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸 115ᴀᴄ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ALICENT HAD BELIEVED RHAENYRA WITHOUT A DOUBT. She had forsaken whatever loyalty remained to her father for Rhaenyra's unreliable word. She was all alone in a den of dragons and vipers ready to tear her flesh from her bones, all because of Rhaenyra's lies.
But what stung the most was perhaps how her own husband treated the indiscretion. Alicent saw only unfairness in his blasé attitude towards the girl's impurity, how all he did was gift her a powerful betrothal to shield her from the rumours.
And what rumours they were. They were not so far reaching as to have alerted the common folk, not yet, at least, but every single person in the Red Keep knew where Rhaenyra had been with her dastardly uncle. But it was not Daemon she had lain with, no, she was partially honest about that with Alicent. Instead, Ser Criston Cole had confessed to the act of taking the girl's maidenhead.
Rhaenyra, in the eyes of the Queen, was a dishonest, traitorous girl. Alicent would have fought for her, protected her, if only she had been honest. She would have had her father on her side at court, but she would also have her friend by her side every other waking moment, just like when they were young girls. Whatever relationship they had crumbled beneath the weight of pride and dishonesty, from both sides (though Alicent would never admit such faults in herself).
The moment that Viserys and Rhaenyra had boarded a ship to Driftmark to grovel at Lord Corlys and Princess Rhaenys's feet for their many offences against House Velaryon, Alicent had begun preparing to leave for Dragonstone. Anaelys was excited as any child would be, glowing at the thought of the dragons that resided there. Nearing five years of age, she was desperately curious to see larger dragons up close as her brother's hatchling was growing fairly boring as the novelty of a baby dragon wore off. She had never seen a dragon up close, not in her memory at least, as she had attended her mother's funeral, wherein Syrax burned the pyre, but she, predictably, could not remember such things.
