The Winter Queen

Chapter 20

Within days of the alliance being sealed, ravens began to depart from Keeps all over the North which were followed soon after by ravens departing from various Keeps throughout the Vale, to the Major and Minor Houses of the rest of the Realm.

It had already been suspected by a good number of Houses that Queen Alicent might not be as “pure" as she claimed she was when she first wed the King. Now, through her decision to attempt to ravish Lord Cregan, her step-daughter's new husband, those same houses were convinced that Queen Alicent was a whore and her father was her pimp.

The most mindboggling thing for the various Lords and Ladies wasn’t so much the gross overreach of the Lord Hand and Queen, but the King’s lack of action. Even the Lannister's who were close allies with Lord Otto and the Queen, could not believe that the King could allow his wife to show such blatant disrespect to his daughter and heir, but also to two major Houses and at his daughter’s wedding no less by refusing to make his wife wear something actually appropriate and of his, Queen Alicent’s married, House.

Adding injury to insult was the lackey of the same two who was apprehended by Lord Cregan. Stealing from and attempting to undermine and bring to war the North and the Vale along with murdering the Warden of the North’s Grandson was tantamount to suicide for anyone else and to any other monarch. Yet their King, King Viserys, still refused to do anything and as such, Lord Rickon Stark, Warden of the North, had to take matters into his own hands and both convict and execute the bastard himself.

Though it wasn’t near as mindboggling, most of the nobility, and even the small folk, agreed that sooner or later the Gods' would seek retribution upon the Queen and Hand for violating Guest Rights and insinuating that an overly sheltered girl of three and ten was a whore, which is why it was tantamount that her marriage bed consummated under the watchful eyes of many. That way the blood on the sheets could not be faked.

Needless to say, the next couple months were a tense time even as the Queen’s belly grew and the North and Vale went silent.

A month before her due date, Queen Alicent’s labors began. For three harrowing days, she suffered before, at last it was almost time for her to push. However, when the Maester checked to view the head, what he saw both shocked and scared him so much that he immediately summoned the highest ranking Septon and Septa in the Red Keep to come assist. Once they had arrived, both were also shocked and immediately began to say prayers, baffling the Queen who was just exhausted and wanted to see her son.

However, the delivery did not go as usual as the child had horns upon its head which gored its mother on its way out of her, causing her significant pain, which, at the time, she just attributed to it being a difficult birrh. As the babe emerged, everyone also noticed that the baby’s skin was covered in scales, just like a dragon and the tiny, pitiful creature also had miniature wings, again, like a dragon, on its back. The child also did not cry after being born as instead it bleated, like a lamb.

“Give me my son!" the exhausted Queen cried out even while a servant went to fetch the King and the Maester began sewing the Queen’s damaged nethers back together.

The King then arrived in a very jolly mood as he had just received word that he was to be a grandsire in about six moon’s time! Then to discover his wife had finally delivered his child, well, his day could not have turned out any better.

When he entered his wife’s chamber and before he could view his new child, the Septon stopped him.

“She’s cursed! She bore a beast! The child is an abomination!”

That was when a maid passed him the naked newborn with deformed female genetalia, dragonscales for skin, tiny, dragon-like wings and horns on its head. He couldn't help but agree with the Septon as the bleeting babe was more monster than human.