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RHAENYRA

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text — un: LITTLEPRINCE (following alicent's death)

[hymen]

hi.

you don't know me. i'm embry. alicent's friend.
i know you as her princess.

i died a few months ago, right before the werewolf games started. and when i did, alicent made sure the person i loved the most wasn't alone in his grief. i could count on one hand the number of people who even knew what he meant to me. she was one of the few people here i trusted.

what she did meant everything to me. i want to repay the favor. i don't know if the number of people she trusted is even less than mine, but i know what it's like to stand beside someone and still have an ocean separating you. i know. it should be you with her right now. i'm sorry that it can't be. i'm sorry that no one else can know.

i can't compare to her in any life, but if you want to go somewhere, if you want to talk, if you just want me to stand at the door while you yell at me to feel better, i'm here.

i'm here for whatever you need.

[perzo]

[ it is a long time, of reading the message again and again, sometimes with tears silently streaming down her face before she remembers to wipe them away, sometimes sitting completely still without a mote of emotion in her expression.

days later, she finally musters up a response. ]

It seems you know much already.

Do you also know the path to my room?

[ it's as much an invitation as anything else, without her actively extending it. ]

[hymen]

[ he doesn't make her wait. ]

i can find you. i'm assuming you're alone right now.

[ the last thing he wants is to run into anyone else related to either woman. and he thought having one reptilian stepsister was bad.

the days following alicent's death feel empty in a new way, as if with every passing hour he believes less and less that she's coming back despite what everyone says. it's a terrible, shitty thing to say aloud. alicent's dead. you're fucking delusional. he doesn't say it to anyone except himself. after all, he's alive after danny johnson took a knife to his throat, so isn't his beating heart all the proof he needs? (isn't it the proof he needs that he shouldn't be alive, and so alicent shouldn't come back anyway?)

he knocks on rhaenyra's door, thinking about all the times it was alicent's door instead, to coax her out to do absolutely nothing in the maze or the gardens or the library where he'd read hamlet aloud in a dozen different voices. he puts on a face that doesn't look as morbid as he feels. he's here to be comforting, and he can do that as embry moore the politician even if he can't as embry moore the person. ]

[perzo]

[ Rhaenyra doesn't solely wait until Daemon is occupied elsewhere to extend a direct invitation, but it will likely be better for all involved if her husband is not present when someone who purports to be a friend of Alicent's, who has knowledge of her deeper affections, finally calls on her.

It may have become more evident, at least in recent weeks, that Rhaenyra has already been a scarcer presence around the manor — her death and resurrection, paired with the deception that had followed, had left her disinclined to emerge from her rooms, and once Daemon had brought her word of Alicent's passing, what reason had she to even show her face at breakfast, much less for any other purpose?

There are no maids to greet Embry, none who show him into Rhaenyra's room save Rhaenyra herself, who opens the door quietly, surveying him with a wordless, flickering glance before retreating from the entryway and further into the interior of the space so that he's afforded a proper berth to come in. ]

Shut the door behind you, please. [ Even now, she attempts to hold a note of authority in her voice as she seats herself in one of the room's high-backed chairs, then gestures for him to take the other. ]

The room is ours, for the moment. My husband has not yet returned from sparring.

[ An unspoken challenge there, in her words, for Embry to give voice to whatever he came here to deliver, while there are no other ears but hers to hear it. ]

[hymen]

[ he's had his share of uncomfortable meetings with ambassadors and diplomats, so many they blur together, but facing rhaenyra feels like walking into a room without any semblance of preparation or armor. will she cry? will she be angry? will she despise embry for knowing a truth he has no real business knowing? ash had been grateful for alicent's compassion because he's ash, and he's good, and he's sincere. embry is starkly aware he knows less than nothing about rhaenyra, except that she's alicent's princess who's just suffered a devastating loss.

he can start there. she looks like the goddamn queen of england, staring at him from her imperious perch. no, that's insulting to her. ]

I'm trying to put myself in your shoes. If this had happened to me, back home. [ he pulls out a chair, sitting across from her with several feet between them. ] There's someone here... well, he's like what you'd consider a king. He's my king. And I'm what you'd consider his hand. President and vice president, back home, and we work together to lead our country. But he's not just that. He's more. He's everything to me. But no one can know, because we're both men. Like how no one can know about you and Alicent, for all kinds of reasons.

So if he died... [ his eyes prickle unwittingly, thinking of ash having to see him in the chapel. embry would never be strong enough to bear it. ] If he died, I would have to take his place. Lead in his stead. I'd have to stand in front of everyone, and make speeches, and sign shit, and people would look at me for answers. And I'd have to do it, because I swore an oath. It's my duty. It's my job.

But the only thing I'm thinking about now is that I wouldn't be able to tell anyone that it wasn't just the president that died. I wouldn't be able to tell anyone that he was everything to me. That I loved him. That I wanted to marry him even though I couldn't, that I wanted to grow old with him, that I wanted to have kids with him, that I wanted to stand in front of the world and hold his hand and tell everyone that I was his. That would kill me, having to stay silent and watch everything unfold and pretend that it wasn't my heart being buried in the ground with him.

[ he stops, his heart beating in rapid, aching pulses, the truth scraped raw, down to stark white bone. they could go back, and ash could die, and it would be real. it's always been a possibility, though he's never lost sleep over it until now, here, in this place where he's grown intimately familiar with the concept of murder. ]

I don't want you to have to stay silent about her. [ he's looking at rhaenyra now with his frosty blue eyes full of grief, his chest feeling cracked open. why can he never say these things to ash's face? ] I know what it's like to have to hide. To have to think about every move, every word, every choice. But Alicent deserves to be talked about. And you deserve to be the one to do it, because you're the one who knows her heart, not the assholes who put on that freak funeral and talked about queens and mothers and shit but nothing about her.

So tell me. [ he leans forward, settling his elbows on his knees, his voice quiet. ] I know I'm not an impressive audience, but it's what I can give you. You can say whatever you need to, right here, right now. Anything you've been holding in. I promise it won't leave this room. It won't leave my lips.