"Second." Rhaenys seemed not to notice the queen's collapse at all. Her tone remained even as she continued to press her terms.
"I hope the younger generation can learn to live together, to understand what family, responsibility, and honor truly mean."
Her gaze fixed on that indifferent figure standing among the Greens.
"I also ask that Prince Aegon be allowed to remain on Driftmark, at my husband Lord Corlys's side, to serve as a squire for a term of two years."
"Aegon will grow alongside Jace and Luke, so that they may come to understand one another and learn to respect each other."
"In this way, there will be no more harsh words in the future, and no more bloodshed…"
Aegon, who had been hiding at the back of the crowd and secretly rejoicing that the storm seemed, for the moment, to have passed him by, went deathly pale at these words, the color draining instantly from his face.
All that had erupted in the hall tonight—accusations, arguments, blood, oaths, and marriage alliances.
No matter how slow-witted Aegon might be, he understood the danger within it all.
Between the Blacks and the Greens, matters had already reached a point where swords were drawn. Should anything happen in the future, and he himself be taken as a hostage—
"No! I don't want to! Father! Mother! Grandfather!"
Aegon screamed like a cat with its tail stepped on, completely losing the bearing of an eldest son.
"They will kill me!"
"They will surely take the chance to murder me!"
"I won't go! Not even if it means my death!"
"Enough! Aegon! Do not speak such nonsense," Viserys barked in fury, though his brows were drawn tight as well.
This demand was plainly excessive.
"No! Viserys! How can you be so partial, so cruel!" Alicent cried out as if crushed by the final straw, her voice shrill with anguish. "I have already lost a daughter!"
"And now you would take my eldest son from my side as well, and send him into their hands?"
"Are you even a father?!"
The extremity of grief and rage stripped the queen of all reason.
Without warning, she shoved aside the maid supporting her, arms outstretched, and lunged toward Rhaenyra like a moth rushing into flame!
She meant to strangle this woman!
This woman who had threatened her second son's eye, who had taken her daughter from her, who now sought to take her eldest son as well—this woman who still dared to look upon her with a show of bestowed pity!
"Alicent!!" Viserys sprang to his feet, shock and fury mingling in his cry.
Everyone was stunned by the queen's sudden, utterly unseemly act of madness.
Rhaenyra reacted at once. As Alicent rushed before her, hands about to close on her throat, she raised her arms and seized Alicent's wrists in a vice-like grip!
The two women—once close companions, now mortal enemies—were at arm's length, breath mingling, eyes brimming with venom.
"Have you lost your mind, Alicent?" Rhaenyra ground out through clenched teeth, tightening her hold on the trembling wrists.
"Me?! Am I the one who has gone too far?!" Alicent cried, tears and fury mingling on her face as she spoke in heartbreak.
"All my life, I have lived to meet every expectation you all placed upon me!"
"I played the part of the gentle, obedient daughter! I played the part of the virtuous, proper queen!"
"I have always upheld your so-called stability of the realm, harmony of the family, and those damned traditions of law!"
She leaned in close, almost pressing her nose against Rhaenyra's, her eyes filled with bone-deep hatred. "And you, Rhaenyra Targaryen!"
"You have always done whatever you pleased, acting with utter recklessness!"
"You ignore tradition! You trample the laws of the realm!"
"You make all of Westeros pay the price for your willfulness!"
"And yet you forever wear the face of the wronged, the face of one owed!"
"Release her, Alicent!" Viserys staggered down from the Iron Throne.
But Alicent's words were like a flood breaking through a dam, no longer able to be stopped.
"Responsibility?! Sacrifice?! Family?!"
"These fine words you preach to others—have you ever lived by them yourself?!"
"All your responsibility and sacrifice amount to nothing more than serving your own desires!"
"You hide behind your father's protection, enjoying every privilege, yet never bearing the price that should come with it!"
"And now you have taken my Helaena, and you still want to take my Aegon!"
"And even so, you stand there wearing that look of false pity, as though you were bestowing mercy upon me!"
"Rhaenyra… is your heart made of iron?!"
Rhaenyra gripped Alicent's wrists tightly, facing these accusations—mingled as they were with fragments of truth and layers of prejudice.
At last, a trace of naked discomposure and pain flickered across her pale face.
It was the sharp agony of having one's disguise torn open, of having what lay beneath laid bare.
She looked at the beautiful face before her—once so close to her own, once a confidante who had shared countless girlish secrets, now utterly twisted by hatred and tears.
A surge of resentment, mixed with something she herself refused to acknowledge, rose within her.
She shoved hard, sending Alicent stumbling back a step.
"Spare me your false performance, Alicent Hightower!"
She shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes. "You are exhausted too, aren't you?"
"Hiding beneath that mask of so-called justice and concern for the greater good?"
"All this time—always—you have looked at me with that judging gaze of a mother!"
"But I have only ever had one mother, and that was Emma Arryn…"
"You all accuse me—why I would not live according to tradition, along the path laid out for a 'good woman' and a 'good princess'!"
"And the Hightowers behind you have been quietly fanning those bastardy rumors all along…"
"Do you think I do not know?!"
She drew in a sharp breath, her chest heaving. "After all that has brought us to this day, whose hands are truly clean—you or mine?"
"And who, then, is more noble than the other?"
The maids hurried forward, supporting Alicent, who was barely able to stand, yet still trembling with rage and grief.
"Alicent…" Viserys steadied his wife by her thin shoulders.
He wanted to say something—to comfort her, or to explain himself—but found that all words, at this moment, were pale and powerless.
Alicent lifted her head. With eyes brimming with tears, she looked at him and slowly shook her head.
Her voice was very soft, yet it pierced Viserys's heart more deeply than any roar.
"I hate you, Viserys…"
"I hate how partial you are."
"I hate how… weak you are."
Viserys felt as though he had been struck by lightning, his body swaying unsteadily.
Perhaps… perhaps from the very beginning, marrying Alicent had been a mistake.
He had coveted her youth, her beauty, the gentle solace she offered—yet in doing so, he had turned his daughter's dearest friend into his wife, and turned those two sisters into enemies locked in a struggle without end…
"Take the queen…" He turned his head away, unable to bear the despair in his wife's eyes, and waved his hand weakly. "Take her away to rest. See that she is well looked after."
The maids lifted Alicent—no longer resisting, as if her soul had already been drained—and quietly left the hall.
Viserys stood there in dejection, staring in the direction where his wife had disappeared, a powerful surge of self-loathing rising within him.
He loathed his own indecision, loathed his own inability to quell the strife, loathed this king who was pushed and forced by others into making decisions.
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