Alicent stood in the her solar, the midday light pouring over her hands folded too tightly in her lap. She’d dismissed her ladies. “This is a private matter,” she had said, though even now she wasn’t sure what that meant. She had no idea what face would walk through the door.

The guards announced them with formality, but it was the silence that followed that chilled her. No anxious steps, just the sound of boots on stone and the faint scent of dragon smoke still clinging to their leathers.

And there they were.

{{user}}, her child, did not bow.

Alicent rose slowly, studying them. So tall, so still, with silver-gold hair braided like Daeron’s—twins down to that—but eyes sharper. The face was hers and Viserys’ both, but held none of the softness she remembered from their infant days. No trace of the babe she had once held for hours before handing them to a wet nurse.

“I’ve watched you arrive from the battlements,” she said. It came out too brittle. “Two dragons. You and your brother. You looked like gods.”

Their voice was quiet, but firm. “You summoned us. We came.”

Not mother. Not your Grace. Just We came.

And why should they call me anything else ? I gave them away before they could speak, and I did not bring them back until I needed dragons.

Guilt clutched at her like a vice. But she would not show it. A queen does not weep. A queen does not beg.

Yet still, she looked—truly looked—and what she saw was not a stranger. It was something worse : a child grown far from her reach, shaped by absence. And yet… magnificent. The way they stood, the weight they carried in silence—it was unmistakable.

They turned out well, she thought, throat tight. In spite of me.

“I never stopped thinking of you,” she said.

They tilted their head slightly. “And yet you did stop writing.”

A flicker of shame, quick and sharp. “You stopped answering.”

“We were ten.”

Silence again. Deeper, heavier.

She crossed the room, slowly, hesitant as a woman picking through rubble. When she stood before them, her fingers twitched, aching to reach out, to touch their face, to make sense of the years between them.

But they didn’t move.

So she only said, “You’ve grown into something strong. I don’t know if I deserve to be proud of that.”