The Brothel Queen Dream

Night had only just fallen when Alicent Hightower retired to her bed. Rhaenyra had apologised for the recent...disagreement between them, and they'd passed the day together in idle wandering. They had parted not long after sundown, and from there Alicent had gone straight to the Tower of the Hand, where she dined each night with her Lord Father. This evening, her thoughts had dwelled on Rhaenyra; the kiss, the...fondling, and all the feelings that had come of it. It had sapped her of her appetite, and she'd ended up suffering through a supper she found rubbery and tasteless, wanting for nothing more than leave to rise and end the dinner prematurely. The subject of the King had come up again, her father as eager as ever to 'secure the match'. Alicent had not wanted to speak of that. She did not want to think of it either, and to that end had left dinner as soon as her father would permit, and hurrying back to the comforting silence of her chambers as fast as her feet could carry her.

Things could not be as they are now, she thought, undressing herself as the conversation with her father echoed through her mind. She stepped out of her blue satin dress, laid it lazily on the back of an armchair and slipped into her smallclothes. Her breasts pushed lightly against the white shift now wore, the twin darknesses of her nipples appearing in silhouette beneath the fabric. I could not be a bride to Rhaenyra's father; he is of an age with mine own, and she would never forgive me besides... She reassured herself, lying down and pulling the blankets up and over her body. It cannot be...it cannot... She tossed and turned, slamming her head down on the pillow half a hundred times before sleep finally found her. Alas, it was a fitful one. She supposed she hadn't the luck for anything else.

Before long she was dreaming, but it was not at all pleasant. In her dream, Alicent Hightower was a whore. The first thing she became aware of was that she was gracing the halls of the Red Keep, though it was much different from how she remembered it. The castle's finery was cheapened with taudry draperies and lewd wall-hangings, and everywhere she went, people copulated. In the halls and alcoves, on stairs and against balconies, writhing in the courtyards, moaning in the solars and the bedchambers; the Keep was a brothel, she realised, with dismay, and everyone, from the servants and courtiers to the nobles and the guards, were whores and whoremongers. She felt disgust toward them, while knowing that in truth she was no better. She did not recall arriving, but she did recall the reason for her being here; somewhere in the castle, a man was waiting to deflower her. It had all been arranged in advance, the gifting of her maidenhead planned out and haggled for in conversations she'd never taken part in. She'd never even known his name, but it mattered not, she supposed; his manhood was what mattered, and most men had no cause to name their manhoods. Her wants, her worries, they made no matter. This was her duty, and she was honour bound to do it.

She drifted across the bare floor rather than walking, yellow and gold leaves scraping and rustling under her soles. For clothing, she wore a silk dress in Hightower green, adorned with decorative patterns in cloth-of-gold and long, flowing sleeves. Her neck and chest were partially bared by a tastefully restrained slit that merely hinted at her cleavage. Two other slits ran from hips to hem, baring a sliver of the flesh beneath. About her neck, there lay a necklace of gold roundels, the metal heavy and clinking softly as she walked, and finally atop her head, Alicent wore a flimsy paper crown. Under the dress, she wore no underthings at all, a truth that anyone who looked too closely at the side-slits would be all too aware of. It was embarrassing, but the way her bare legs rubbed against the silk as she walked was wonderfully soft, and it gave her a shameful, illicit thrill, despite everything. The air that passed over them and ran between them made her breath quicken, and caused her to continuously glance around self-consciously. They will find out, she kept fretting. Someone will see, or else they will know by the way my heart pounds, and the way my legs keep trembling.
She made her way through the Keep That Was A Brothel with a purposefulness that surprised even her, shrinking away from pools of glistening liquid and groups of licking, groping, coupling patrons as she went. At one point, she passed through a covered hallway, and saw the Godswood through the stone arches. The Weirwood's branches were groaning and bowing where wanton women danced naked atop them, and below them a crowd of masked men reached up, grasping for legs and hips and thighs and breasts wherever they could find them. Alicent made a small, disgusted noise. It was not the resting place of her Gods, but there were those to whom it was sacred, and it struck her as a great evil for it to be treated so. She shook her head, said a prayer, and moved swiftly on.
Her body had a notion of where she was going, even if her mind did not. Her shoes clacked against the tiled stone floors, and despite her lack of undergarments she tried to carry herself with the poise of a Lady regardless. The trouble started when she turned a corner and saw the corridor ahead was filled with people, all bunched and knotted together in a drunken, disorderly crowd. She considered turning back, but deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew there was no other way to reach her destination but through here. Let them think you a decent Lady of virtue and distinction, and they shall part like the clouds before the radiant sun. She did not believe it even as she thought it, but she had to try. She held her head high, moving forward into the crowd. The stragglers as its edge turned at the sound of her approach, bowing and doffing their caps as big, wide grins broke out on their faces. "It's her," she heard them whisper.
"The Queen?"
"Who else but the Queen, fool?"
"She's comely, isn't she?"
"All queens are comely."
"And what a lovely dress."
"A lovely dress, indeed."
"For a lovely maiden."
Alicent looked straight ahead, her expression a mask of practiced indifference, ut inside she was most unsettled. Being seen had never been to her liking, but being seen in a state of such vulnerability. The crowd parted before her, though slowly and clumsily. She glided slowly through them, her skin crawling under the inumerable eyes that were trained on her. Instinctively, and unwisely, she put her hands down by the side-slits of the dress and tried to hold them together with her fingers; she thought it would make her safer, and better protect her modesty, but it only served to draw attention to the area she had wanted so dearly to go unnoticed. "Whatever's the matter with her grace?" someone murmured.
"Cuts like dagger marks, there, on her dress!" exclaimed a second voice.
"By the Old Gods and the new, you're right!" concurred a third.
"You can see her legs, and such comely legs they are!"
Alicent held her breath, not daring to even look at the mob surrounding her. They called her a Queen, but looked at and spoke of her as if she were just another whore. It made her uneasy, and the unease only grew as the seconds ticked by and she ventured further down the hall. She was more than halway through, she could see, the foot of a stone staircase seeming to beckon her over the tops of the peoples' heads. Alicent swallowed thickly, and for a foolish instant thoughy herself safe. She relaxed her shoulders, her grip on the sides of the dress slackening slightly in her relief, and it was then that the crowd saw their collective opportunity and pounced. Hands from within it found the slits, and Alicent's stomach turned at their touch. "N-no," she protested. They called me their Queen, didn't they? They wouldn't dare, they wouldn't! But the hands were strong and determined, and she felt their grips grow tighter. "By the Mother's mercy," she pleaded, "d-don't touch them, don't l-lift—" she was interrupted by a satisfied round of laughter from the crowd. "Imagine! The Brothel Queen herself, playing the shrinking violet!" roared a faceless voice she couldn't identify or locate, as, the many, many hands lifted the two lengths of fabric by their hems.

Powerless to stop the crowd from exposing her lower half, front and back, all Alicent Hightower could do was let out the most girlish squeal. "No, Gods, no!" she gasped, but try as she might, she found she could not move to pull the dress back down where it had lifted; her arms simply wouldn't obey. I...I am a whore, she thought, miserably, "this is merely a whore's punishment. Agonising moments passed, one rolling ponderously into the next, while all the whores and whoremongers before her saw the pristinely shaven smoothness of her flower, and those behind her giggled and japed at the plump, milky richness of her bare buttocks. The shame of it all turned her face the colour of a Weirwood's crimson leaves, and eventually it grew so great she managed to regain a semblance of control over her limbs. In a flood of panic she pressed her palms flush against her mound, and threaded the fingers down through the gap between her legs to hide the delicate flower there before she pushed through the rest of the crowd and scurried up the staircase, the sound of the fabric tearing on both sides making her wince. Another burst of laughter and mirth followed her, and it occurred to Alicent far too late that her bottom was both fully exposed and too plump to leave unsupported; now the running was setting her pillowy cheeks fiercely jiggling, to the delight of the crowd below, and to Alicent's unending embarrassment. All in a fluster, Alicent reached the top of the stairs and turned around to conceal her rear-end from the crowd below, much to their chagrin. "Be fair, your grace! At least let one or two or ten among us touch it!" shouted a man with a head as bald as Alicent's womanhood. She flushed, but did not make a reply. I have to find the one who is to take my...my maidenhead, I must not be late, or he will surely punish me, she thought, backing away from the top step...and bumping bottom-first into something cold and hard and metallic. She turned, and found herself looking up at the grey-whiskered face of the Kingsguard's Lord Commander. "Ser Redwyne?" she said, scarcely daring to believe it. "Ryam Redwyne? H-how pleased I am to see—"
"Silence, wench." She had been pleased to see him, but the moment she addressed him, his features had contorted into a contemptuous sneer. Now, Ser Redwyne's face was all hard stone and gathering clouds, and his voice was rolling thunder. "You'll address me as Lord Commander, though it would do you better not to address me at all!" Alicent shrank away from him, confused. "S-ser? L-lord Commander? It is I, Alicent Hightower. Lord Otto's dau—"
"You defy my commands, wench? Truly you are an honourless whore!" The last word was like cannonfire, it dazed her and set her ears ringing. H-he...he knows...he knows the truth of me, too!
"Ser! Lord Commander! Please, I meant no offence!" She wrung her hands nervously, her eyes huge with fear. "It was taken all the same," he growled, drawing his sword. He means to kill me? He means to kill me! Alicent went to flee back down the stairs, but remembered then the awful, baying crowd still waiting for her at the bottom. She looked over her shoulder at the sound of Redwyne's foosteps, and saw that he was angling the flat of the blade toward her. "L-lord Com-m-m-mander," she stammered, but the rest of what she had been about to say was lost with the sharp flash of pain the Lord Commander brought forth upon those milky buttocks of hers, as he whapped them sharply with the flat. Alicent cried out, her hands flying out from between her legs to protect them. Another cheer went up, and she realised then that might have been the worst mistake of all. Alicent looked down at herself, and it hit her that, from where she stood at the top of the stairs, the crowd could see right up between her legs, right through to the bareness of her flower, and the spot where her otherwise tightly pressed-together slit widened to suggest the faintest hint of a little pink 'tongue'.
Her jaw dropped in shock and shame; she felt as if she'd just been struck by dragonfire, her whole body tingling and sweating. "O-oh...oh...Mother's mercy..." she squeaked. "Mother's mercy..." All over she quailed and quivered, and at the foot of the stairs individuals shouted up at her with lewd suggestions and sinful observations. "What a winsome cunny you have, your grace!" burbled a skinny man with dark circles under his eyes and a rat's nest of raven hair. "Aye," agreed a gent in mummer's garb and an extravagant scarf tied about his head. "You've a most pretty pair of lips indeed, might I go down on one knee and kiss them?"
"Let us not forget her grace's arse!" hiccupped a woman who was completely naked, save for a pair of greaves on her feet, and crudely-drawn sigils from all the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms adorning her abdomen, painted on with what looked to be the sum total of the sticky secretions from the members of just as many men. "As fine an arse as that, I have never seen! 'Tis big enough to take the moon's place all the way up in the night sky, I reckon!" Alicent's blush deepened with each jibe, her face growing hotter, hotter and hotter still under the intense scrutiny. In the end, it took her a full minute to regain her senses, and the first thing she did once she had was spin on her heel and flee past Ryam Redwyne, suppressing the urge to further yelp and squeal where the Lord Commander whapped her again and again on the buttocks. She ran away in haste, down the landing and through an open doorway, the jeers and taunts of the crowd still ringing in her ears as she fled.

[Author's Note: I always enjoy and appreciate feedback in terms of what's working and what isn't, so please feel free to like and/or leave comments!]