Autumn Kiss 💋🍁 || Criston Cole

013 • QUEEN IN CHAINS || part one

Ser Criston left the Queen's chambers and stood outside the door on watch. While Alicent slept, tossing back and forth, her body was unsettled as nightmares crowded her ambiance, humming and tossing, the Crone led her spirit to see the future, and like shifting sand through a screen, the Hightower sank into a dream of fire and blood, and saw the horror.

Rhaenyra won The Dance of The Dragons. Her sons Aegon, died with Rhaenys at Rook's Rest, Aemond and Daemon died at the Gods Eye, leaving she and Heleana at the mercy of a woman whom has slowly been consumed by grief, for losing two children and a husband has made her vengeful.

Alicent saw herself and Helaena are sent to a brothel, to live as whores for the rest of their long lives. The chains around the Dowager Queen's arms and legs cut deep, a special request from her bitch of a daughter-in-law.

The rain pattered against the cell's window bars, a few scattering on the straw bedding provided for both of them that stenched of piss and manure. She even begrudged them fresh straw, Alicent snarled to herself whilst she attempted to lay her head down: the manacles prevented her weight from ever fully resting on the ground below, perpetually straining unless she forced herself into the smallest ball at the cove.

In a moment of ingenuity, she propped her legs up against the grating stone and had her arms tug above her rather than behind, letting her arched back touch the floor without fear of any more pain.

A sigh of relief escaped the prisoner's lips, for she had tried and failed so many times to find peace in the chamber- once it had been the ghosts of her dead sons, who bothered her, but when sleep became so scarce she cherished what little could be achieved their voices were distant. It was only the screams of the one opposite her that made her eyes prick now.

Alicent saw how she cocked her head to look at the mop of silver hair covering her daughter's face: the grease and tears made it cling to Helaena's plump face, all but obscuring her beautiful targaryen features.

Aegon had described Helaena as plain looking, but a mother knew the truth: Helaena was as beautiful as any other with the blood of Old Valyria, especially now that her time in the cell made her figure that bit more tight. If the Dowager Queen was going to pay that bitch any thanks, it was for accentuating the queen's beauty.

Alicent hoped Rhaenyra might spare Aegon's wife, for she had done no wrong but be loyal to the true king of the Seven kingdoms and her lawfully bonded husband, and marry her off to someone far away enough that her claim to the throne would be lost to time.

A lord in the vale perhaps, where Rhaenyra's traitorous family could make sure Dreamfyre would never ride to King's Landing and burn the bastard line of the fake queen into ash- that was a thought the leader of the Greens very much enjoyed, even if it left so much to be desired.

A flash of lightning and the low shriek coming from the Dragonpit in response brought Alicent out from the fantasy and back into the damp tower which Helaena had cried herself to sleep in for the past month: when Lucerys died, any hope of a fresh start for the Greens died with him.

Tears pricked in her mother's eyes, but she closed them to the world and fell asleep, hoping that the dreams tonight would be of Aegon when he was young, a babe in her arms, and not what lay at Rook's Rest.

Tossing back and forth the Green Queen sank deeper in the dream.

Alicent lay in her husband's bed, blood seeping through the green linens as she nursed a new born babe in her arms. The babe suckled so hard it bit out her teat and drank of her blood, the red life force dripping down his chin.