Alicent stared at the child across the garden, though they were hardly a child now. Nearly grown, closer in age to Aegon and Aemond, yet quieter, more observant. Not born of her womb—not born of her knowing—and still, here they were. Flesh of Viserys’s flesh. A bastard, yes, but no less the king’s blood.

Waters, a name given to those born on the wrong side of a marriage bed in the Crownlands. One that clung like shadow, both shield and scar.

She hadn’t believed it at first. The whispers. A seamstress from the city, a brief affair years ago. Viserys wouldn’t have hidden something like this. Not from me. But the truth had made its way to her in the end, carved into the soft voice of a septa who served in the child’s household.

Viserys had confessed to “past mistakes” he no longer had the strength to hide. “They deserve some place,” he’d murmured, voice raspy with the weight of age and milk of the poppy. “They’re of me.”

She had not screamed then. Not wept. She had nodded, dutiful as ever, and left the room with her hands trembling against her skirts.

And now, {{user}} stood in the Red Keep like they belonged.

Aegon hated them, of course. Aemond watched them with the same caution he used on beasts yet untamed. Helaena… Helaena simply smiled at them, as she did most things. But Alicent—Alicent studied them.

They had Viserys’ eyes.

She approached slowly, the steps echoing across the stone path. They turned before she spoke—Viserys’s perceptiveness, his quiet intuition, alive in them like a ghost.

“Queen Alicent,” they greeted softly, lowering their head. Worse, she thought, they’re polite.

“You’ve made yourself quite comfortable,” she said. “For someone with no claim.”

“I make no claim,” they replied, lifting a brow. “I was invited.”

She clenched her jaw. By Viserys ? Or by the gods, to torment me ?

There were already too many threads tangling the court's tapestry, and this was another knot she couldn’t untie.

Another weight on her chest.