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The first thing that’s gone right for Alyssa all day is when she manages to make Naerys weep during her wedding feast. Alyssa’s wedding feast, that is, not her dowdy little sister’s- Naerys is fifteen but still dresses like a girl of twelve who’s yet to flower, and as modestly as a septa in training, at that. It sometimes vexes their father, to see Naerys moping about in blacks and whites and greys, perhaps a pale blue if she’s feeling lively, but not nearly as much as Alyssa’s wedding gown does tonight. It is bordering on indecent, the gown she changed into for the feast.
She was so eager to be rid of the heavier, more cumbersome, almost matronly dress that she wore in the sept that she tore a sleeve while changing, much to her maid’s dismay, and her veil was similarly done away with as soon as possible, leaving her silver gold hair to spill down her back in wild curls. Alyssa looks like the very image of her late mother Larra, something her father has never quite forgiven her for, as he was left with a mocking little replica when his wife abandoned him for her native Lys.
But no one can complain of it tonight, for all that they tut and whisper about her feasting dress, which not only bares her plump, rounded shoulders, exposing the soft, sun-spotted skin there, but exposes a considerable amount of cleavage as well. Unlike Naerys, who is as flat as a boy and shows no signs of that changing anytime soon, Alyssa thinks herself voluptuous, and her gown is designed to show it, pushing up and revealing the tops of her breasts due to the narrow waist just under her bosom. Well, not so narrow, or her stays would be bursting, and she does like to eat, but narrow enough compared to the shapeless sacks the rest of these hens are clucking about in.
Her gown is nearly sheer ivory silk trimmed in cloth of gold; arguably less ostentatious in terms of material than what she wore in the sept, which was nearly all gold, but the cut of the bodice and the extremely long train which has to minded carefully when she dances more than makes up for it. All eyes linger on her, men and women alike, whether in blatant lust, envy, or disapproval. And in Naerys’ case, furious tears. Her sister dabs at her face with a kerchief, then springs up from her seat, wobbling from lightheadedness for a moment before she runs out of the throne room, followed by several of her sour little ladies in waiting, who shoot Alyssa venomous glances over their shoulders.
Cold fingers press down hard on her wrist; Alyssa glances over contemptuously at her father, who is not glaring at her so as not to make any more of a scene, but whose lilac eyes tell another story. When Viserys is furious, they go slate grey, almost icy. But Alyssa is not a little girl anymore, to be cowed by his severe looks and harsh words; certainly not after today, her wedding day. “Tomorrow,” he murmurs coldly, “you will make a show of favoring your sister, at the wedding breakfast. You will smile and embrace her before the court and you will. Hold. Your. Tongue.”
Alyssa scoffs and wrenches her wrist away, taking a sip of her wine. “It was only a jape. It’s not my fault she decided to make a little fool of herself. She’s as fragile as an infant. If not this, she would have been bawling when the cry for the bedding went up.”
“There will be no bedding,” says another voice, and Alyssa affixes a sneering smile as she turns to regard the man on the other side of her, her younger brother.
Aemon doesn’t have their father’s composure; he looks thunderous, his indigo eyes so dark they are nearly black with anger. But he is far more handsome at seventeen than their father or even the king ever was. In Alyssa’s experience, Targaryen men tend towards lean and lithe, almost womanly, with lanky builds, and those fine high cheekbones and slender, swan-like necks. Not Aemon.
Where their father is narrow, almost hunched in his age, Aemon is broad and barrel-chested; he was a plump little boy, a stocky youth, and now that he is of age, still shows no signs of halting his growth. He is six foot now and will like as not have another two inches by this time next year. His face is square and hard, his neck thick and corded with muscle, as are his shoulders and arms. Tailors despair of him, they always have to adjust their measurements and let his tunics and breeches out, or he’d look like a giant squeezed into a child’s clothes.
And despite this, he is still handsome, not brutish or piggish looking, with a strong nose and chin and silvery hair so pale in most lights it looks snow light. Like Alyssa’s, it tends to curl, and because of this he keeps it closely cropped around his ears. If she had it her way, he’d grow it out, but Aemon thinks only of his jousting and sparring and that means all must accommodate his helm and armor and his steel. Right now, for example, he seems to be imagining running her through with his feasting knife.
“Aemon,” Viserys has pivoted from rebuking Alyssa for her ill manners to scolding Aemon for his stubbornness. “There must be a bedding ceremony. We can allow no one to question this match-,”
“Of course not,” Alyssa snorts, leaning back in her chair and forking another bite of venison into her mouth. It’s very rare, nearly still bloody, and she smiles with the meat between her teeth at her brother, who glowers back. “That is the last thing we’d want, Father, for anyone to question your esteemed wisdom, your sagacity-,”
“I will not do it,” Aemon insists, though he has enough sense to keep his voice no higher than a murmur. “Father. Enough. I have done all else you asked, let us retire in peace when the feasting is through-,”
“Let me clarify,” Viserys says, leaning around the back of Alyssa’s seat to get closer to him. She can feel his breath on the back of her neck; he smells of sour ale, though who could blame him for drinking more than usual, after this trial of a day. “I will have no one questioning why you might appear ashamed or unwilling to go to bed with your wife. I will have no one speculating about your sister’s virtue-,”
That, at least, gets a rise from Alyssa, which was likely his belated cruel jab for her treatment of his darling little dove Naerys. She stiffens in her seat, barely restraining herself from throwing her cup of wine in her father’s face as he leans back into his. Aemon is silent, aside from his grinding teeth, which she can practically hear behind his jaw. Alyssa looks pointedly away from both of them, and across the hall instead. Her virtue. Others take both of them, and their prattle of her virtue. It does not matter what she says- Aemon would believe she’d let every stableboy in the Red Keep mount and ride her, if he thought it could get him out of this marriage.
He all but said as much when her father informed them they would wed. “Father, you know she hates me, she will never be faithful- gods, all she does is flirt and flatter as it is, you know what she will do, she wants this match no more than I, she will try to shame you, and me as well- Father, listen! Do you not remember her and the smith’s apprentice-,”
The story is as such. When Alyssa was fourteen, she developed a flirtatious back and forth with a boy who was training under one of the castle’s many smiths. She can scarcely recall his name now, but he had all she liked in a boy, or did at the time- tall and swarthy, strong arms and big hands and feet, a pock-marked but chiseled face, a head of thick black curls. He would never have grown so bold had she not invited him closer and closer, constantly finding excuses to watch him or visit him in secret. He was only a year or so older and had no more sense than she. They never got any further than kissing when one of her father’s servants, who he’d paid to follow her, discovered them. She never saw the boy again, and in penance was trailed by two septas at all times, even in her own bed, for the next year, as well as forbidden from so much looking at a man.
She found ways around that, of course, since they’d already deemed her a little slut, but she can never forget Naerys’ pitying look, when she once walked in on Alyssa crying about it, or how Aemon tried to comfort her by telling her Father knew best, that he was simply protecting her reputation, that in time, she would understand and be grateful to him. Her own younger brother. Patronizing her like a babe in arms. She loathed both her siblings well before that, of course, but that simply convinced her she was right to hold them in such contempt. Filthy hypocrites, both of them. As if they haven’t fantasized about fucking each other since they could toddle about.
She used to spy on them at all hours, ready to report back to their father that finally, her perfect younger brother and sister weren’t so sweet and innocent after all, but they always managed to avoid suspicion. Aemon talks of virtue and chivalry as if he wouldn’t renounce it all in a heartbeat for the chance to spill his seed in Naerys, the shriveled little starveling. And Naerys, for all her sacred hymns and her solemn prayers and her morally righteous tirades about how Alyssa profanes the Seven- she would rip off that ridiculous wimple in an instant if she could throw herself at Aemon.
Her siblings love each other, and not as brothers and sister usually do. Alyssa has no moral opposition to it, of course. They are Targaryens. It is natural. Perhaps the most natural thing about the repressed, fidgety little freaks. It is only the gall of it all that gets at her. That her siblings think themselves so superior to her- noble Aemon and patient Naerys, not like willful, spoilt, headstrong Alyssa, oh, no. They are the obedient children her father deserved, after the horrors of his childhood and his failed marriage. She is just another punishment handed down from the gods. Would that she had been born a generation earlier. She should have been the daughter of Rhaenyra and Daemon, not Viserys and the pathetic, mewling cunt she is supposed to mourn.
Alyssa is glad she never saw her mother again, after Larra left when she was a child of four. She would not have been able to restrain herself if she did. She would have throttled the life from her pale throat and had her dumped in the Blackwater. If her father had any self respect, he would have hired a Faceless man or a Dornish assassin and had Larra murdered the moment she returned to Lys. Alyssa would have made sure it was cruel and slow. It as much as any unfeeling woman who would abandon her three young children and her loyal husband deserves.
“Princess?” It is Ser Lucas, the Red Keep’s master of arms, who has always been like an uncle to her father and his brother the King. Not that His Grace is anywhere to be seen now; he made it through the sept service, than complained of a migraine and was whisked back to his royal apartments, leaving behind his wife and children to play the hosts.
“Would you do me the honor?” Ser Lucas is tall, lean man with greying brown hair and a lined, honest face. The grandson of a lowly hedge knight, he rose high under the old Hand, Manderly, and was eventually appointed master-at-arms. Two years ago, his luck increased all the more when the Stokeworths pawned a ruined daughter off on him. To make up for the burden, her father convinced His Grace to grant Lothston Harrenhal, a mighty prize. Now, despite his low birth, he is sullenly tolerated by the highest of lords, for his lands triple most of theirs.
“Of course, Ser,” Alyssa plasters on a beaming smile and rises from her seat, placing her hand in his. She is not blind; she knows he approached out of duty to her father, to break up the tension and get her away from her brother-husband before they come to blows at the feast and humiliate Viserys even more. Still, she is not complaining- she loves to dance, and while Lothston is far beneath her, and getting on in years, he is not unappealing to look at.
She entertains a wild fantasy, as they link hands on the floor, his strong, freckled fingers wrapping around hers, of enticing him out of the hall and down some dark corridor. He’d take her up against the wall like a common whore, and she’d wail and moan and claw furrows into his shoulders, sinking her teeth into the tough skin of his sunbrowned neck. Aemon would find them like that, his bride despoiled by such a lowborn knight, and would gape, speechless, as Alyssa hissed, ‘For all your suspicions, brother, I was a maid until this very day. But no more, you see?’
That would be truly glorious. But it is just a fancy, so instead she smiles and giggles in response to Ser Lucas’ faint compliments on her grace and beauty today, and resists the urge to sneer and roll her eyes when he mentions how fortunate she is to wed a man like Aemon- the finest young knight he has seen in many a generation. Their uncle the King knighted Aemon a month ago, though truthfully he could have been anointed at fourteen, such was his skill- Alyssa can admit that much. But Father thought it would not suit to do so too early- he has always feared Aemon getting himself killed in some tourney, his precious only son. Mother flew away before she could give him a second son, the whore. Alyssa wishes she had. Perhaps that would be fitting. A brother for her, just as Aemon has always been for Naerys. In her dreams, this brother is sometimes her perfect mirror, the same exact eyes and hair and mocking, cutting grins. He dances her around the queen’s mirrored ballroom until their reflections blend into one, and he takes her on the marble floor, rutting a future king into her.
When she was younger, she sometimes thought she would wed her cousin Daeron, the King’s eldest son, though he is eight years her junior. Of course she has no desire to bed him at the moment- he’s a skinny boy of nine, currently tormenting his younger brother Baelor by using his spoon to catapult peas at him. All the same, he will be king someday, or should some accident befall him, it will pass to Baelor. But should they both die… then the throne would be Aemon’s. He scarcely deserves it, but they will never permit a woman to rule. Even one as talented and charming as her. The realization has always stung, but such is her lot in life, and she is not one to sit around and bemoan every streak of bad luck, unlike her whining, cringing little sister.
Too soon, the dance has ended, and she is deposited back in her seat of honor besides Aemon. She’s surprised he didn’t use her momentary absence to creep off after Naerys, but perhaps even he isn’t so stupid as to try it when their father is already in a foul mood. As it stands, they exchange a cold look as she adjusts her skirts, just in time for the first cries for the bedding to go up. Despite her show of bravado, Alyssa feels a momentary jolt- not of fear, of course, but displeasure, dismay. Is it already so late? The feast seems to have passed in the blink of an eye, though she entered nearly an hour late due to her wardrobe change. Her family was mortified, which was just to her liking.
She looks to the queen, who is the only one who might delay it, but Daenaera is busy wrangling her youngest, Elaena, back into the arms of a nurse, and Father raises his cup with the rest as the shorts and stomps grow louder. Beside her, Aemon exhales, then straightens his shoulders as if he’s preparing for battle. Alyssa sniffs haughtily at him, then pushes herself up from the table. If this is going to happen, it might as well be on her terms.
“What are you waiting for?” she cries to the musicians tuning their instruments. “Play us out, gentlemen!”
With nods and smiles, they burst into The Queen Kicked Off Her Sandals, the King Took Off His Crown, and Alyssa alights from the dais, cocking her head just so, one hand on her hip as men swarm around her. She won’t pretend there isn’t a vague sense of alarm, her confident demeanor aside, but she’s used to being leered at and fawned over, and if she convinces herself they fear her as much as they love her, she can brush off the gropes and pinches, the hand that swats at her bottom, the meaty fist that paws at her bodice, before someone shoulders their way through the crowd.
“Unhand her,” Aemon demands, and Alyssa’s triumphant look melts off her face like wax. The male courtiers are vocally dismayed, even angry, but no one is going to defy a prince in this manner, and they reluctantly release her. Alyssa almost jerks away, but then Aemon sweeps her up into his arms and carries her out of the hall, who cheer and applaud as they leave, praising her public show of devotion.
Alyssa is incensed, but with the jeering, laughing crowds of lords and ladies following them to the bedding chamber, she cannot be seen berating or slapping him, so she has to hold her tongue and hope the look on her face is mistaken for maidenly shyness, rather than genuine displeasure. The instant their bedchamber doors shut behind them, he sets her down, not ungently, on the floor, and Alyssa waits a beat, before trying to strike him across the face. Unfortunately, while she is not a small woman, he is a head taller, and he easily grabs both her wrists in one fist.
“Stop it, Lyssa,” he says, reverting in his annoyance to a childhood nickname he abandoned when she was six and he was five, and she decided she truly despised everything about him.
“Don’t call me that- unhand me, you animal,” she snaps, and is almost more infuriated when he does so readily, as if even touching her disgusts him.
“What was that?” she spits, taking a step away from him. “You arrogant, hard-headed beast, what were you playing at-,”
“I thought to preserve your modesty, though I don’t know why I bothered, since you are as uncaring as ever-,”
“My modesty?” she barks in disbelief. He won’t meet her eyes. “You liar. It was your bloody pride, you bastard, not my modesty- you couldn’t stand the sight of any man adoring me, worshipping me-,”
“Adoring you?” he retorts. “Is that what you call it? One practically had his hand down your bodice, and you call it adoring you-,”
She reddens, but luckily she’s already flushed from the wine, and it’s dimly lit in here. “Admit it,” she hisses. “You can’t stand to see me treated as I ought to be- as you never will, you are so unworthy of me that I had rather wed a fucking wildling!”
He stares at her incredulously for a moment, then runs a hand though his hair. “Alyssa,” he says, in a slightly calmer voice. “Do you truly expect me to believe you honestly wish I- that I felt for you in that manner? You don’t even like me. You loathe me-”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she sneers.
“You should rather I hate you and lust after you, both?”
She knows he hates her, has always know it, but he’s never admitted it aloud before, and she can’t help but recoil slightly, though she’s said, far, far worse to him over the years.
He hesitates, and she sees guilt flash across his face, to her disgust. “I should not have said that.” He turns away from her entirely. “I did not mean it, Alyssa. I was only angry. You are my sister. I could never hate you.” But he crosses to the bedside table to pour himself a drink of water, so he does not have to look at her while he lies.
She will not stand here staring after him like an imbecile. Alyssa stalks over to the changing screen- she is already spilling out of the top of her gown, her stays undone, and makes short work of it. When she steps back out, he is sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands as if he’d just committed a grievous crime.
“Aemon,” she growls, and he looks up at her, then blanches.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” she snipes, approaching him, putting a vengeful sway in her step.
He stands up as if confronted with a snarling lioness- if there was a sword or shield at hand, he’d reach for it. “Stop it,” he says curtly. “Go to bed. I- we will both feel better in the morning. I know today had not been easy for you either.”
More empty platitudes. Alyssa gets within reach of him, and grabs at his hand. To her shock, he lets her take it- but when she brings it to her chest he wrenches away before his fingers can so much as graze her breasts. “Enough,” he says, and actually steps forward, so she has to step back or collide with him. “No. I will not do this. You want it no more than I do-,”
“What do you know of what I want?” she says coolly. “You’re just a stupid boy. You’re afraid. Ser Aemon, the craven.” Her voice goes high and mocking. “Can’t even bring himself to see his wife in the flesh-,”
“You are not my wife-,”
“Oh, so you did not mean those vows you spoke in the sept today?” she jeers, and is rewarded by the genuinely stricken look on his face. “They were all lies? You broke word with the gods-,”
“I did no such thing,” he utters. “But I never vowed to-,”
“To fuck me?” she sweeps her curls over her shoulders, and crosses her arms under her breasts. “I thought that was part of the loving and honoring bit.”
He presses his lips together. He does have nice, plump lips, almost as nice as her own. Not like Naerys, the thin-lipped snake that she is. “I will do my best to honor you. I will treat you with respect. But I will never lie with you.”
“Father won’t be pleased to hear of that.”
“Father has no say here,” he snaps.
Alyssa scowls at him, then says, “And what of me? What of my say?”
He moves further away from her, towards the hearth, which is just embers. He picks up a stick to stoke it again. “Alyssa, you and I both know you want me no more than I do you. Stop this. It is not worth it.” He pauses, then adds, meaningfully, “If it’s angering Father you want, nothing will infuriate him more than knowing the marriage has gone unconsummated.”
Alyssa huffs, and for a moment is almost swayed, but then she remembers Viserys’ words. “And how will it look for me, if it does?” she asks archly. “It is as he said. They will say I must not have been a maid, and that is why you have rejected me.”
Aemon pokes the fire again, harder. “Then I will deal with them.”
Alyssa examines the strong lines of his back. He truly is beautiful. A shame he has not the personality to match. If she could only forget- but then she says, “But you believe as much as they do, don’t you? That I am not a maid. That I have not been one for years now.”
Aemon’s silence is punctuated by the crackles from the hearth.
“Tell me,” Alyssa says, “who do you think I fell into bed with, Aemon? The smith’s boy? One of your little squire friends? Perhaps a merchant’s son I met while riding out in the city. Or one of the cooks. A gardener. Mayhaps Ser Lucas, who taught you everything you know of swords- perhaps he could have given you lessons with your other sword, too!”
That gets him. He turns back around, thunderous again.
“Be quiet,” Aemon says, warningly. “We’re not children anymore. You’ll not goad me-,”
“I am only curious,” Alyssa mocks. “I know you must have your theories, you and our dear sister. I know you must have speculated, wondered. The smith’s boy was the only the first, of course. There was Lord Stokeworth’s nephew, when I was sixteen, and only a few months ago, the Velaryon brothers-,”
“Enough!” he almost shouts. “Enough, Alyssa, I will not hear any more of this-,” but his hands are shaking with anger, outrage, all the same. Does he truly feel such a claim to her, purely because she is his sister, or it just the moral question of it all. That a princess, she who is supposed to be most chaste, most gentle, most sweet, could demean herself so. For all the monstrous things she has said and done, Alyssa thinks she is perhaps a far greater beast than she could ever dream of becoming in his head.
“I shall tell you the truth,” Alyssa says, now that she has his full attention, his gaze locked on her. She uncrosses her arms. “It was Morgil Hastwyck.” Aemon loathes Morgil, a dark-haired knight of the Reach who came to court to serve as a page years ago. Now he is a fine-featured man of twenty, and one of the few capable of standing against Aemon in the training yard. That is not why Aemon hates him, of course. He loathes Morgil because Morgil is cruel and salacious and far too fond of women, and far too familiar, as well, even of the highest born of ladies. Alyssa thinks he has even made a pass at Naerys, just to rile her up, and to incense Aemon.
Truthfully, Alyssa has no fondness for Morgil herself, and while she will flirt and smirk in kind, has never let him any further than kissing the back of her hand during tourneys. But now she thinks, seeing the rage and betrayal on Aemon’s face, that his sister might cozy up to his rival- “He had me less than a fortnight ago,” she says. “In every way you can imagine. I confess I was hesitant at first but gods… he knew just what I liked, before I even told him.”
She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Don’t worry for my happiness in this marriage, brother, or for your virtue. You shan’t have to lift a finger. Morgil will keep me very, very happy. And if our babe is dark-haired, what of it?” She shrugs carelessly, and spins away on her heel. “It was no hindrance to Rhaenyra.”
His hand closes around her arm like a gauntlet, almost yanking her off her feet. Alyssa gasps in genuine shock as he thrusts her around to face him. His eyes are like black chips in his pale block of a head, and his grip is bruising. For a split second, her triumph and amusement vanish, replaced with cold fear. “Listen to me,” he says. He speaks it into the top of her head, which his chin juts painfully into. “I will not bed you. I will keep my vows. I swore them before the gods. I will love you, and honor you, and protect you. And you will keep yours, or-,”
“Or what?” she manages, scrabbling at his chest with her long nails, trying in vain to break free. She has begun to tremble- her arm hurts very badly, and he is so much bigger than her, he could pick her up like a rag doll and throw her into the fire behind them, if he pleased.
“Or I will challenge Morgil to single combat and see him dead before you,” Aemon says, “and when I am through, I will go to Father and the King and tell him all of this, and you will see yourself in a motherhouse before the moon’s turn.”
“No,” says Alyssa, trying to regain control of the narrative, though now she wonders why she even started this at all. He believes her. Too much. She has never seen him this enraged, never- “Aemon, no-,”
“You think you will deceive him again?” her brother growls. “He knows what you are. As do I. We all see you. You think yourself Rhaenyra come again. You think yourself the flower of the court. You are anything but, Alyssa. You are a vindictive, cruel, bullying little girl who thinks all others are but your toys. Not me. You will not toy with me. Not like this. Not ever.”
He releases her; Alyssa stumbles back, her legs gone soft as pudding. She waits for the guilt to come raging in, as it did before when he admitted he hated her. But his face is set like stone; there is no regret, not hesitation. It as if she were a foe on the battlefield. He will never forget this, she thinks. Even if you try to pass it off as a jape. You have only confirmed what he already suspected. This suits him perfectly. Now that you claim to be a whore and an unfaithful wife, he is too pleased to believe it. He does not have to pretend at kindness anymore.
Her arm aches and aches; she massages at the fingerprints left behind. Only as she backs away, rubbing at it, trying to regain her composure, does he say. “I’ve injured you. I apologize. That was unchivalrous of me. I will find a maester to help you in the morning.” His voice is completely emotionless. It unnerves her.
Alyssa backs up into the bed, still holding her arm. Her lower lip is trembling.
“You should rest,” he says. “We’ll have to wake early for our breakfast tomorrow.”
She gets into bed and pulls the covers up around herself tightly. There is a shift for her in the wardrobe but she is ashamed to admit she is too afraid to get up again and get it, to expose herself to him. He crosses to the wardrobe, pulls it out, and brings it over to her. Alyssa holds it to her chest, the lace scratching at her breasts, and a wave of hatred takes her over. For an instant she regains her nerve, and opens her mouth to hiss and spit at him, but as he stands, looms, over her, it fades, and the wariness returns.
He returns to his side of the bed while she hastily puts it on, then climbs back under the covers. He lays atop them, so they is absolutely no chance of them touching, even accidentally. Alyssa lies rigid, staring at the ceiling, and flinches when he begins to pray under his breath, the simple prayer to the Seven before bed that they learned as children. She closes her eyes, then opens them again and chances a glance at him.
He finishes his prayer, makes the Sign of the Seven, and says, “I assume you pray in your head.”
“No,” says Alyssa.
He smiles slightly at her. There is no warmth or even pity there. “You should make a habit of it. I think you have much to repent for.”
A thousand retorts dance on the tip of her tongue, but she will save them for the morning, for the light of day, when they are not alone in bed together, when she is not so vulnerable, when he is not so angry. It will pass, she tells herself. His anger will pass. He is not like you, he cannot hold a grudge, he is too thin-skinned and pathetic for that. As easily as he angers, he will forgive. You will convince him it was all a cruel jape, and he will be angry still, but soon enough he will forgive it. And then it will be as it always has been. You the elder, he the younger. And he will go in fear of you, and your moods, and your will, not the other way around. You will show him what it means to wake the dragon-
He is already asleep beside her. She would think he were faking it, but his breathing is entirely even.
Alyssa props herself up on her elbow and studies his slack face for a moment, wonders what it would look like with a pillow pressed over it. But he would easily buck her off, and this time, he might break her arm. She lies back down, and turns her back to him, to face the window instead. The sky is a burnt orange from all the fires across the city, as the people celebrate this marriage. There are no stars at all. She closes her eyes.
She dreams of her mother. Mother is there, draped in white, overseeing her trial. She is speaking Valyrian; Alyssa was a poor student and can only understand every other word. Daughter. Forgive. So is Father, only he is in his customary widower’s blacks. Aemon is holding Morgil’s head aloft, but gold coins are pattering out of his shredded neck instead of blood.
Naerys is on her knobby knees on the floor, picking them up carefully, to distribute to the poor, no doubt. And Alyssa is chained to a pillar, the fire they have built licking at her feet. First it burns, then tickles, and she begins to scream and shriek, with laughter, not pain, even as her flesh crackles and blackens and curls off.