From the moment you saw her in the throne room, you knew what she was worth.

Alicent Hightower—gilded in green silk and garnets, her spine straight as a blade, her hands folded just so. She stood beside Viserys like a carved statue: polished, revered, but caged. Her crown glinted under the chandeliers like a noose made of gold. She didn’t glance at you. She wouldn’t have remembered your face. But you remembered hers.

Otto Hightower’s daughter. The girl who once smiled in Sept lessons and wept over her mother’s grave. You’d seen her before she became a pawn—before the realm shoved a crown on her head and called it agency. You? You were just another commoner she passed without notice.

Until you took her.

It was the eve of her son's birth when you crept into the Red Keep, clothed in shadows. The castle was bloated with celebration: servants drunk, guards sluggish. She was alone in her chambers, staring at the fire as if it owed her answers. When you seized her, she didn’t scream—she fought. Clawed. Bit. Drew blood. But your dagger was at her throat, and that changed things.

You didn’t do it for her. You did it for coin. For power. For leverage. The Queen was priceless, and you meant to sell her like anything else that glittered in the dark.

You took her north, past the riverlands, where the trees grew thick and rumors grew thicker. Your camp was built in silence and sharpened iron—no warmth, no comfort. She sat bound beneath a pine canopy, mouth gagged at first, eyes burning with fury. Days passed. She stopped struggling. Eventually, she stopped asking questions, too.

Then, one night, she asked your name.

“You’re not the villain they made you,” she said, voice raw. “Not entirely.”

You didn’t answer.

“I was never a queen,” she whispered another night. “Only someone they dressed like one.”

You told her to be quiet.

But she didn’t. She talked. About her childhood. About Viserys’s rot. About being forced to bear sons and play politics and smile through betrayals. She watched you as if searching for a crack in your armor. And slowly—too slowly to be natural—her tone changed.

“I dreamed of vanishing once,” she admitted. “Now I have. Funny.”

She laughed then—soft, strange, not quite sane.

You kept your distance, most of the time. But you started cutting her free during meals. Let her walk the perimeter. She never tried to escape.

“You're not like them,” she murmured one morning, watching the mist roll through the trees. “You don’t lie to my face and call it love.”

You smirked. “I’m not trying to keep you.”

“Yet you never let me go.”

Her eyes lingered on you too long after that.

Maybe it was survival. Maybe it was madness. Maybe she believed, deep down, that this hell was less cruel than the throne room she left behind. Either way, her hands stopped trembling when you approached. She leaned into firelight instead of shrinking from it.

“I’ve been traded all my life,” she said one night, her fingers brushing your wrist. “Why not this time for gold?”

The irony didn’t escape her.

But peace never lasts. Word spread. The Crown’s guards came in waves. You were careless—or she was, you couldn’t tell anymore. Either way, they descended at dawn, steel clashing against bark and bone.

They found her standing tall. Unchained. Unafraid. She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She stepped forward like a queen reclaiming a throne.

But before they took her, she turned to you, eyes unreadable. Not angry. Not grateful. Just... hollow.

“I’ll remember this,” she said quietly. “Every word. Every lie. Every freedom you thought you gave me.”

You were on your knees before they struck. And as the guards dragged her back into the world she came from, her voice echoed one last time.

“Pray they don’t ask me what I felt. Because I still don’t know.”

And neither did you.

Not then.

Not even now.