Chapter Text
i.
When Princess Rhaenyra enters the birthing bed for the first time, two babes slip from her womb. A boy, soft and quiet, dutiful with his first breath. Then a girl with screaming lungs, already causing mischief as a babe.
Rhaenyra names them Jacaerys and Visenya. They never leave each other’s sides as they grow. They’re quick to smile, especially in each other’s presence, but Jace is quieter, while Visenya is angrier, more stubborn.
They possess brown, coppery hair that glints like honey in the sunshine, the first brown haired Targaryens anyone can remember seeing.
But while Jace has grey eyes, Visenya has her mother’s. A startling, piercing violet.
Many whisper about the twins born from Princess Rhaenyra’s womb. Bastards, others claim. Born of sin, living in sin. Rumours spread that Princess Rhaenyra plans to wed her son and daughter, for they never leave the other’s side.
Mayhaps she would have in another life.
In this one, all is felled with a stroke of a blade; a slash against an eye. A group of children full of anger and grief and bitterness against a boy a few years their elder who claimed the largest dragon in the world.
Visenya may not have intended to take her uncle’s eye when she followed her brothers and cousins down to Driftmark’s dragonpit. Her mother often told her temper would get her in trouble. How many times had her father said it? Ser Harwin? She’d promised Ser Harwin before he left (died) that she would keep her tongue in check, mind her anger.
She breaks her promise.
Jace tosses the dirt in their uncle’s face, his nose broken and bleeding. It is Lucerys who picks up the abandoned blade, but Aemond grabs his throat again with a roar, throwing her little brother back and she grabs the knife, blind with rage—
When her uncle crumples to the floor, screaming, blood rushing from his eye, Visenya doesn’t feel regret. Just anger.
Just satisfaction.
After a lifetime of sneering looks and whispers of Strong from both her uncles, Visenya can’t bring herself to feel sorry. Or not too sorry. When she sees Aemond’s maimed face, his red, puffed eye, her stomach clenches.
She thinks he can tell. That he can sense the coldness inside her. As the storm around them rages, they just look at each other. For a second, he almost seems to admire her.
His mother demands her eye, her mother demands Aemond be sharply questioned, and Visenya can taste war, even though she has no meaning of it.
But her grandsire, frail and withered as he is, will have none of it. The House of the Dragon cannot remain strong if it is divided, the King claims, and so he decrees that two marriages shall take place when the two daughters of House Targaryen reach ten and eight. Helaena and Visenya will be exchanged a year before their marriages; the blonde shipped to Dragonstone, the brunette to King’s Landing. Helaena will wed Jace, and she is set to marry Aegon.
Her mother and the Queen rage and rage. They all know this for what it is; a hostage situation, a trick, a means to force all their hands. Her mother yells, the Queen yells, and Visenya thinks they’ll beat their hands bloody on the wall.
For both women, the King is demanding they give up their only daughters. To pawn them off for a year and then a lifetime. To send them off to the vipers den.
Even though Rhaenyra is the one the King loves most, her pleas do not dissuade him.
And thus it is decided – with eight years, Visenya will be shipped off to King’s Landing the year before her wedding, and Princess Helaena will take her place on Dragonstone.
The night before they return to Dragonstone, Visenya finds herself outside. Jace and Luke are asleep in her bed – they’d all fallen asleep together, tangled in her sheets, comforting each other from nightmares.
She sneaks off to where they lowered her aunt into the sea, the halls quiet from the chaos of before. The anger. She keeps on thinking about the sound the blade made as it ripped through her uncle’s flesh. The sound of his screaming.
There must be something wrong inside her. There must be.
“I suppose I should demand an eye,” Aemond says.
Somehow, Visenya is not surprised he is there. Once, they had been cordial with each other. The only two without dragons to ride. Even Luke had one. But now Aemond did too, and Visenya has been left behind. A dragonless dragon. Even more reason to cause the rumours.
“If you did,” she returns, glancing over her shoulder, her long, raven hair pulled back into a long braid. “I would take your other one.”
Despite the swelling, Aemond cracks a bitter smile.
“I have a dragon now, bastard—”
“Shut up—” she takes a step towards him, but the moonlight hits his stitched, ruined eye, and she falters.
“Don’t you pity me,” Aemond hisses, reaching out and twisting her arm. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“I don’t pity you,” she whispers, so close his wounded eye is all the more horrendous. She caused the injury. She maimed him. Had she always hated Aemond? Suddenly she isn’t sure.
He scoffs. “You hate me.”
“I—” She pauses. Visenya is many things, but not a liar. Angry and stubborn, but no liar. “You hate me.”
With a sudden jerk of his arm, he pushes her away, sends her tumbling to the ground.
“In eight years, you will be my brother’s bride,” Aemond says, glaring at her. “I will spend a lifetime watching you.”
Visenya pushes herself to her feet. Her braid has come undone, her hair blowing in her face with the wind.
“That’ll be hard to do with one eye,” she taunts. Aemond’s lips part, but he doesn’t say anything. Just stares at her.
“Bastard,” he whispers.
Her heart twinges. She aches for Ser Harwin still. Jace had told her the night their mother’s former sworn shield had left for Harrenhall of what their mother said. There were no secrets between her and Jace. None.
And yet—
Aemond had been the only one to understand what it was like not to have a dragon. Even if they’d never spoken about it. Jace always told her she’d find one, but—
“You will never be worthy of a dragon.” Aemond’s words slither like a snake to her heart. She flinches. “You will never have the courage to claim one. Princess Strong.”
Visenya wishes more than anything she had another blade with her. She wants to peel it down his face, blind him, hurt him as much as all the rumours have hurt her all her life. She doesn’t know what to do with this ugly and twisted thing inside her. No one else in her life seems to have it. Not Jace. Not Luke.
She chokes on her hatred, her lungs burning, and flees. He makes her feel ugly and twisted and turned inside out.
She does not look back.
Visenya doesn’t see her cousin for many years. She doesn’t leave Dragonstone for years either. She learns Valyrian with Jace, runs around with Luke, and tries to forget that her time on the island is numbered.
Her mother holds onto her tightly.
“Oh, my dearest love,” she tells Visenya often. “We women have our battle fields, and the marriage bed is the greatest trial of all.”
“How exciting,” Visenya drawls. “And I’m certain my dear betrothed, the kind and gallant Aegon—” -Jace snickers loudly— “will help me in this battle.”
Her mother sighs as she strokes her hair. Visenya’s hair has grown down to her waist. Her brown locks have curled and shined in the intervening years, darkened to the point her skin looks like ivory.
No one tries to feed her falsehoods about Aegon’s character. They all know what he is; they grew up with him. He may be five years elder than her and Jace, but they saw enough of him to know. His cruelty. His pettiness.
But she thinks of Aemond more. His threat. His vow. She will spend a year in that castle until her mother ascends the throne with a pit of vipers. Blinded by green. Whenever she thinks of that night, she feels hollow.
She dreams of him though. She does. He taunts her, pushes her, screams.
She wonders what kind of person he’ll turn her into if she gives him the chance.
Visenya grows.
“Enya, Enya,” Jace, Luke and Joff call. She spends almost all her time with her brothers, running around with them while she still can. She’ll miss them all when she goes. Miss them like a limb.
She gets her moon’s blood when she turns four and ten.
It is also the year she claims her dragon.
Her mother yells when she finds out what she’s done. But Visenya may have brown locks and a pug nose, but she is a dragon just like her mother and grandsire and family name.
And she proves it.
Jace begs her not to, but she sneaks to Vermithor’s cage, singing songs of Old Valyria, and bit by bit she sneaks closer to the dragon and she claims him.
Her mother scolds her for a moon, but it is worth it in the end. She is the only rider to claim Vermithor after King Jaehaerys. The Bronze Fury is hers. She is no bastard. No coward. She is a princess, daughter of the heir to the throne. She is no lamb. No pawn on a chessboard.
“You’re still my little sister, you know,” Jace informs her.
Visenya smacks him on the shoulder. They’re by the bridge near the shore, watching the sunset.
“Three more years,” she comments quietly. Jace rests his head on her shoulder.
“Do you think we’ll be happy, Enya?” he asks. “With our marriages?”
Visenya exhales shakily. She thinks of a boy with a scornful brow and hateful eyes.
“I don’t know, Jace,” she whispers. “I don’t know.”
She may not be a liar, but the truth doesn't seem helpful in this instance. She knows he's aware of it anyway.
Their duty. The need for either of them to keep proving themselves more than any other prince or princess. To become fluent in multiple languages; to know how to hunt and sing and dance. To learn histories and philosophies. To be the best sailors and dragon riders known to man. If they are anything less, it is proof. Proof of what their mother so desperately tries to deny.
The day of her and Jace’s seventeeth nameday, it is a solemn affair. The King made it expressly clear this is to be a fostering. Her mother and step-father or brothers cannot join her. Same with Helaena. They are to be embraced and loved by their new family.
But her mother does not trust the Greens by the skin of her teeth. Visenya doesn’t either. None of them do.
And yet they do as the king commands.
Her mother hugs her close. “One raven,” she whispers in her ear. “And I will come on Syrax and fetch you back myself, succession be damned.”
“Vermithor will protect me,” Visenya tries to assure her. Her mother grips her shoulders tightly.
“Never forget who you are,” her mother makes her vow. “Promise me.”
Visenya does. Her goodbyes with the rest are awful and teary eyed, except for her stepfather, Daemon.
“Remember to stick them with the pointy end,” he reminds her in Valyrian, petting his sword.
He’d given her a knife for fifteenth name day. If she’s going to live with snakes, he’d told her mother, she should know how to kill them.
She already knows how to take an eye. Still recalls the gush of blood, the screams. The rage.
But Jace – that farewell is the worst. They shared the same cradle, the same womb. He rests his brow against hers. Show them who you are, he whispers to her in valyrian.
“I thought you were going to tell me to control my mouth better,” she laughs wetly.
His lips twitch. “That too.”
Visenya, however, has never been good at keeping her promises.
She arrives in King’s Landing on dragon back, more like she’s going to war then heading to the marriage bed. When she circles the dragonpit, she hears the faint call of another dragon’s roar. She senses Vhagar’s shadow before she sees it. Despite Vermithor’s great size and fury, he is still smaller than Vhagar. How odd it is that the woman she was named for her had her dragon claimed by the man who loathes her. The man she maimed.
An odd, ironic coincidence.
Vhagar lands the same time she does, because of course. She can spot the dragon’s silver haired rider from far away.
“Beloved niece,” Aemond calls, pulling off his gloves with his teeth as he stalks over. “I see you finally found a mount.”
“What an astute observation,” she retorts. “I am proud, uncle, that you managed to make it.” She shoots him a winning smile, tucking a wild curl behind her ears. Aemond tracks the movement with his eye and grunts. His face is sharper now, his cheekbones more prominent then when he was a child.
After a moment, much to her surprise, he offers her his arm. “Come, niece. My mother will surely be expecting you at the city gates.”
Two members of the Kingsguard appear behind them. Neither of them, thankfully, are Ser Criston. She takes it. Tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow, trying to ignore the discomfort in her gut. She misses home already. Misses Jace and her mother and Luke and—
“I suppose you are no longer a mouse now,” Aemond comments as he guides her to the awaiting wheelhouse. Visenya can see another one rolling towards them – no doubt the Queen and Hand coming to meet them. He lowers his voice. “That Targaryen blood finally started to show through the filth, did it not?”
She digs her nails into his arm, hoping they somehow manage to penetrate skin through his clothing. He just tilts his head at her, a small smirk playing on his lips as amusement dances in his eye. He looks at her too intently.
“You shouldn’t insult yourself, Uncle,” Visenya retorts, patting his arm before she withdraws her hand. “After all, if a mouse managed to take one eye—” -she takes a step closer to him, pulling off her own gloves with her teeth—“what would a dragon be able to take from you?”
Aemond leans down, bridging the height gap. Places his lips right by her ear, just so he can feel her shiver, no doubt. “Wouldn’t you care to know, Princess?”
She tilts her head back, but otherwise does not move. Does not look away. She claimed a wild dragon, the bronze fury, and she will not let him turn her into a monster.
Aemond’s mouth twists with distaste, as if he can read her mind.
“I would wish you luck in this viper’s den,” he continues. “But then again, since you are so strong, I suppose you don’t need any well wishes.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He flits his brows. “Can you?”
Aemond walks away before she can deign to answer.
Chapter 2
Notes:
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Chapter Text
Chapter 2
King’s Landing is not how she remembers it. The walls are staler, the memorabilia of her house having been stripped away. Signs of the Faith adorn the walls. It is a cage, not a castle, not a home. The Queen seems at a loss as to what to do with her.
Visenya cannot be treated cruelly, lest her mother catch wind of it and do the same to Helaena. The perfect hostage situation. She knows not how her grandsire prevailed with the notion, considering how often he is bedridden and the Hand sits the throne. Otto Hightower surveys her with disapproval, his eyes lingering on her dark locks, but the Queen stays his hand.
Visenya sees her betrothed rarely. Aegon is a drunk, blithering idiot at best, and so she is left to her devices, constantly supervised by guards or her ladies.
In truth, she is alone. She wonders what it means for the rest of her days.
His niece wilts in her pretty cage. Visenya haunts the halls of King’s Landing, her near-raven hair springing up like weed in a field of flowers. Aemond could spit at the insult. His half-sister’s sins are ever-the-more obvious the longer her bastard children remain in his presence, yet their father is blind to it.
Now, within the year, Aegon is to wed her and Helaena is to be sold off to Rhaenyra’s base born son. A weak bastard. His mother rages at the thought, but Aemond can almost admire his father’s plan. With each of their beloved daughter’s sold off to their enemies, each brand of the House of the Dragon has been rendered toothless. Powerless.
And yet, Aemond surveys this stranger who has been foisted on his family.
But she’s not just a stranger, is she?
He thinks of her every time he so much looks in the mirror. He is imprisoned by her memory, by her being. Visenya Targaryen is as far from her namesake as he is from a Baratheon – all dark hair and brows, small nose. Everything except for her eyes, which are vibrantly violet, almost unnatural.
She’d been a small wisp of a thing when he saw her last. When he demanded she not pity him. A coward, he’d branded her, hoping to cut just like she’d maimed him. But this girl, bastard though she may be, has managed to claim the second largest dragon in the world following his Vhagar. The Bronze Fury.
Bastard she may be, but cowardly she is not. Even Aemond can admit that.
He watches her as she lazes in the Godswood, hidden beneath the bleeding leaves. She’s reading a book – a history, he believes. Her ankles are exposed, the skirt of her dress rucked up close to her knees. Her skin is like ivory, pale and smooth even under the beating sun.
Aemond grunts from where he stands in the shadows. Even the Kingsguard that follow her everywhere seem to be glancing at the exposed skin. That makes him bristle. She is a dragonrider – what right do they have to look at her?
None, a voice inside him whispers. None.
And yet—
She is hard not to look at. He frowns. It’s not unenjoyable to look at her, that is. Were she anyone else, Aemond would not mind having her in his bed. He would want her in his bed. Aegon had acknowledged his betrothed’s beauty for only a moment before he went back to his whores and cups like the pathetic piece of a man he was.
But she is Visenya Targaryen, and Aemond is destined to hate her for the rest of his days, nevermind that she is his niece and future sister-in-law. He feels it in his bones. She owes him a blood debt. An eye for an eye. It would not do to scar his brother’s bride but—
Part of him belongs to her. She’s marked him, scarred his flesh. It’s only fair if he owns a part of her, is it not?
Visenya lowers her book, sits with her back against the tree. Her face is lovelier in the sunlight, narrowed in thought. She twists a dandelion in her fingers, plucking a petal and—
There’d been one occasion when they were children where he caught her making flower crowns, twisting the daisies’ stems in her dark hair. He’d thought her beautiful then. His stomach churns, anger flaring in his gut. She had looked like a siren with her blood on his hands all those years ago. He’s never forgotten the sight. Has dreamt of it, even.
The longer he stares, the more it dawns on him that she’s haunted him more than he has her, and that infuriates him even more. He has the blood of the dragon. He is Old Valyria personified while her blood is clouded with that of—
Her gaze flickers up to meet his, her violet eyes narrowing, but he does not look away. They glare at each other for a long while – she near the sun, him cloaked in shadow, the weight of history and the future taunt like a bowstring between them.
She hadn’t felt sorry when she’d cut him. He’d seen it in her eyes. At the time, he’d even admired it. A part of him still does. It’s pathetic to use a blade and then feel guilty for it afterwards; in that moment, despite her dark colouring, she had looked every inch a dragon.
Aemond tilts his head, pursing his lips. She is the one to look away first with the roll of her eyes, and he takes it as a victory.
(a part of him think it’s one of the very few he’ll gain over her, but he’d never let his heart know that)
In King’s Landing, Visenya is in the air more often than she is on the ground. Vermithor senses her restlessness, her boredom. Her loneliness. Her mount is more irritable with the dragonkeepers, grunting and breathing small bursts of fire whenever they get too close.
“Shh, boy,” she whispers, petting his snout as she nuzzles her face against him. “Shh.”
Vermithor almost seems to pur under her touch. “I know,” she murmurs, blinking back tears. “I know.”
They both miss Dragonstone. The freedom. The space. The familiarity. Vermithor had been on Dragonstone for years. Ridrless, maybe, but that had been his home. Now they were bonded.
The only benefit was that Vermithor’s moodiness gave her an excuse to take him riding nigh on everyday. She would fly back home every morn and return every night if she could, but she never delves far from King’s Landing. She will not be the one to strike the first blow. She wonders, not for the first time, how her family is getting on without her.
At least Jace was kind. He would be kind to Helaena too, she knew that. It is she that has received the bad end of the arrangement. Vermithor is a release from it all. Her dragon traverses the skies, the clouds, and it’s the only time in this awful cesspool she feels as though she can breathe. Think.
How easy it would be to fly away. To leave. Maybe even to Pentos. Maybe evn to Old Valyria. She wonders if Valyria calls to Vermithor like Dragonstone calls to her. A distant yet relentless echo in her heart.
Vermithor lands on a cliffside nearby the Red Keep. It’s a refuge she seeks often, tossing tiny little pebbles into the sea, watching as they soar. She’s too high up to hear it land. She rests her back against Vermithor as he rests, tucks her knees close to her chest. She misses her family so badly she wishes to weep. A solitary tear escapes, but Visenya angrily wipes it away.
Tears will not do in such a place. She is a dragon. She breathes fire, not tears. And yet what she would do for her mother or Jace to be here—
She’s cut from her musings by a sudden shadow befalling her. Vermithor stirs in an instant as she bolts to her feet, her gaze towards the sky.
Vhagar.
Her uncle and his dragon circle the cliff like a lion circling its prey, as if Aemond is two seconds away from reaching out and snapping her up in his jaw. As if he wants to devour her.
“Steady, Vermithor,” she commands in Valyrian, one hand resting on her saddle. She spots the silver haired rider. His eye is fixed upon her already. Aemond steers his stead lower, so her view of the sunset is blocked and all she can see is Vhagar’s mouth.
Visenya Velaryon does not tremble as she stands before Vhagar’s mouth. Her beast curls around her, its bronze jaw opening into an aggressive growl. She murmurs something to it in Valyrian, her hand stroking Vermithor’s snout as though he were a dog.
“You’ve been crying, niece,” he observes, letting go of Vhagar’s reigns.
“I’m surprised you know what that is, Uncle, since your heart is made of stone.”
His cackle is lost in the wind. Her violet eyes blink back at him, ever so stubborn. Vhagar lets out a small snarl as Vermithor curls tighter around his rider, ready to pounce if need be. The Bronze Fury is an impressive beast – almost as large as Vhagar, but not quite. Vhagar shares his solitary nature, but he’s seen Vermithor snipe at other dragons and steals their food.
As tempestuous as his mistress.
“I wasn’t aware you cared about my heart, Princess.”
Visenya scowls. Her plump lips are the same shade as the apple he devoured this morning. Aemond frowns.
“Why are you here, Uncle?” she demands sourly, tapping her foot on the ground. “The dragonkeepers are desperate for me to exercise Vermithor. He needs it.”
“And you need to stay put.”
She bristles, arms folding beneath her breasts. “It is not a crime for me to take my dragon out for a ride, uncle.”
“It is a crime for you to run away.” He sighs mockingly. “Whatever would your dear, dutiful mother say?”
“I’m within eyesight of the Red Keep, Aemond. I will not run away.”A flicker of warmth curls up his spine. Aemond. It is the first time she has called him by his name in a while. Vhagar tilts her nose up as if sensing his change in mood. Aemond Aemond Aemond—
“You are expected back at the Keep,” he says, glancing away from her black-clad form. “My mother wants you to sup with us.”
Visenya sighs loudly. “Very well.”
He watches as she climbs her mount, settling herself in the saddle, her thighs tightly wrapped around each side. Her black hair flowing down her back. In this light, in this moment, with her bronze beast beneath her, she is, objectively speaking, magnificent. Vermithor is the only dragon who can rival Vhagar in size, and his young, beautiful, bastard niece has managed to claim him.
She is no coward after all.
Vermithor takes to the sky, circling him and Vhagar with a swiftness that his mount does not possess. Vhagar grunts, disgruntled by the display, but he steadies her with soft murmurs, watching as Visenya’s dragon glints in the sunlight like gold coins. For a brief, horrible second, he’s captivated by the sight before him, imagines Vermithor and Vhagar flying side by side, the world at their mercy—
He dreams about her that night too. The same dream. Her riding on Vermithor, him on Vhagar, watching as she rides circles around him, her laughter stirring the clouds.
He wakes with a start, panting and sweating. His heart is hammering away like a drum.
“Fuck,” he breathes, blinking away the image.
This won’t do at all.
Despite almost a decade having passed since she saw him last, Ser Criston is still a cunt, she discovers. She had long thought his condition incurable, but Jace had had a dash of hope. It would be gratifying, really, to tell her brother how wrong he was. It’s not so much that the knight has to say anything. How he looks at her is enough.
He’s always looked at her and Jace with a punched expression, as if their very existence was an insult to him. Like they tainted the air he breathed. She didn’t know why Criston was so injured by her presence, but she’s decided during her two moons in King’s Landing that she does not care.
The Queen seems determined to have Visenya meet with Septa’s every day, determined to get her to pray and be dutiful, but Visenya has managed to dodge her Septa to flee anywhere else. The King retreats to his chambers more and more these days. Someday he asks for her, some days he does not. Or maybe the Queen or Hand simply do not inform her every time he does.
She finds herself drifting to the training grounds. She’s never been much of a warrior – her stepfather had taught her some rudimentary maneuvers following the announcement of her betrothal. No, she drifts there for another reason. Memories of a man with a kind smile, grey eyes, and dark hair. A laughter that made her feel warm and safe.
How many times had she seen him supervising Jace and Luke? Teaching them to wield a sword, to throw an axe. He’d laughed and held her close when she’d tried to join, promising to teach her one day.
But he never had.
Her heart aches as she stands in the corner, watching. Her betrothed never seems to visit the training yard. In fact, Aegon doesn’t seem to do much of anything. When they were children, he’d been an entitled ass, but at least he’d been a little bit of fun. Now, all he seemed was sour and petulant, drinking until dawn and sleeping until dusk before he repeated the cycle over and over.
Not like Aemond.
Aemond, who she watches now, darting and dodging Ser Criston’s parries with adept skill.
It’s then the Queen’s sword shield notices her watching.
“Princess, the training yard is not a fit place for a lady,” the knight grits out. “The Queen would not be pleased.”
“My mother allowed me to watch my brothers, Ser,” she replies, gritting her teeth at his tone. She ignores Aemond easily enough, ignoring the feel of his stare boring into the side of her head. She’s felt it more often of late. In shadows. When she sleeps. Even when she bathes. She always feels him there.
I will be watching you the rest of your days, niece, he’d vowed that horrible night.
Now, he’s merely proving his point, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction.
“And do you always think what your mother tells you to, Princess?” Ser Criston questions, setting his mace away. Why, the insolence of him!
“I think,” Visenya mumbles in valyrian under her breath as the Queen’s sworn shield walks past, “that you are a cunt.”
A bark of laughter escapes the silver haired prince. Visenya glances at him with shock, unease gripping her stomach. It’s mocking, yes, but there’s a hint of surprise to it too. It’s a nice sound, his laughter.
She wonders, though she squashes the thought almost instantly, what others noises he could make.
“Uncle,” she acknowledges curtly.
“Niece. Come to train?” He tilts his head, his eye narrowing at her. “I promise I’ll be gentle,” he adds in valyrian.
Visenya’s cheek do not – do not – redden.
“As if I’d trust any of your promises, Uncle,” she returns in the same language, ignoring Criston’s increasing fury at his inability to understand their conversation.
Aemond takes a step towards her, unsheathing a knife from his hip and flipping it in the air, catching it by the blade without so much as a wince.
“I’m fair when it comes to battle, Princess,” he continues, voice as soft as silk. She has only a second to be thankful for all the valyrian lessons she took on Dragonstone before he continues. “I don’t toss dirt in someone’s eye and then cut it out.”
Visenya’s hands curl into fists at her side. She remembers picking up the blade, remembers the rage in her belly when she saw him choking her little brother. She hadn’t felt sorry to have done it, to have made him stop.
I am a dragon, she thinks. I do not tremble.
“No, you simply beat girls and choke boys half your age,” she retorts. “You are as much to blame for that night as I am.”
His nostrils flare as he takes another step towards her.
“You stole my eye, niece,” he hisses. “You marked my face. Branded me. In the interest of fairness, should I not have the chance to return the favour?”
“As if you would be able to lay a finger on me,” she hisses right back. It’s an empty threat from him, she knows that. It must be. “Do it,” she whispers. “Take that blade and carve my face.”
She takes a step towards him. His blade glints before her eyes. “Do it.”
His jaw locks as he glares at her. Fire burns in her belly, permeates her veins.
“I’m right here, Uncle. Do it.”
He grips his knife so tightly it shakes, but he does not move. He just stares at her with such fury, such frustration. But he does not move. Does not strike her.
“I thought so,” she breathes, reverting to common tongue. “You don’t know what I’m capable of, Uncle.”
Aemond just keeps on staring.
Visenya walks away, but she carries his anger with her. His words. He makes her burn burn burn, like a dragon before it breathes fire.
She hopes he doesn’t make her burn out like a candle.
It is easy to find her alone. Wandering the halls. In the gardens. The library.
It is easy to pounce. To corner his prey.
Visenya squeaks as he pins her against the wall, blade raised, his arm pressing into her neck. Not enough to squash her breathing, but enough to hold her in place.
“Uncle,” she greets, panting lightly, but he can see the fear in her eyes. Good. He wants her fear, he realizes. He wants her fury, her anger, her spite. It is viciously delightful to see. “How lovely to see you this morn.”
He smiles. He should not be doing this, he knows. And yet he can’t resist.
“Princess Strong,” he greets pleasantly, chuckling at the rage on her face. “I suppose you were not ready to face the challenge you issued.” He leans close, his lips caressing the shell of her ear. “I would not challenge a dragon unless you are prepared to face its fire.”
“I agree, Uncle,” she returns, glancing down.
He looks as well. She’s holding a small, well forged blade in her hand. She hadn’t had the opportunity to raise it very high, so it’s posed right by his leg. Enough to injure, but not to kill. The skirt of her dress is raised, exposing the bare skin of her thigh, the thin strap of silk she used to hold the blade in place.
Aemond stares. And stares. Ignores the warmth in his stomach, the spark of pleasure crawling up the base of his skull, making his body hum.
“Impressive, niece,” he whispers, holding her by the jaw. “But you won’t do something like that again.” He seizes her wrist in one swift move, the blade clattering the ground. She grunts a little, but does not object.
“What do you want, Uncle?” she asks eventually, staring at him. “What do you want from me?”
He returns her gaze. With a small jolt, he realizes there are flecks of grey in her eyes. They’re not just solid pools of violet. But how could he have known before, even as children? He’d never been so close to her, so enwrapped her warmth. He sniffs. She smells like lemon and roses. Bitter and sweet all at one. He watches the bob of her throat.
He wonders if he leaned forward and nipped the pearl-white, unblemished skin with his teeth if it would taste that way too. He could. He can. She’s so close.
Too close, he realizes.
He lets her go with such abruptness she almost crumples to the floor. He stalks away, ignoring her confused gaze, his steps brisk and swift until he reaches his chambers. He’s so hard he has to take himself in hand. He does not think of dark hair and violet eyes and pale skin. He does not think of what do you want from me, uncle. He does not think of lemons and roses and flowers braided in dark hair.
When he spills into his hand, he makes himself forget what name almost passes his lips.
Notes:
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Chapter 3
Notes:
thank u all so much for feedback! apologies for any typos, this whole story is unedited.
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Chapter Text
Chapter 3
Her skin tone isn’t quite right. It’s an odd thing to be preoccupied by, given his predicament. But it lingers in his mind, taints his mouth, his pleasure, fleeting and desperate as it is as he tries to—
“Oh,” the woman beneath him moans. “My prince—”
He covers her mouth with his hand, his face right beside her ear, focused on her dark tresses. Not even that is the right shade. Aemond had not frequented a whore house since Aegon dragged him to one when he was ten and three, but here he was. It had been quick choosing. The one with the darkest hair and palest skin. He closes his eyes, grits his teeth.
What do you want from me, Uncle?
He caught a quick glance of the whore’s eyes. A vivid hazel. Pretty on any other day, but not what he wants. What he craves so incessantly.
“Close your eyes,” he commands. The woman looks at him vague confusion but complies. No doubt her other patrons have asked worse of her. It’s easier to pretend this way. To imagine. He grits his teeth as he snaps his hips harder, blood pooling at his lip. There shouldn’t be anything for him to imagine. It’s an ugly, ugly thing that has possessed him so. It plagues his dreams so much he wakes hard and aching, sick with it.
In all of his twenty years on this earth, he’s only stayed in his chambers all day on a handful of occasions. He’d done it twice this past week.
“What’s wrong, my sweet boy?” his mother had asked when she came to visit him. He’d been in bed like a child, practically frothing with anger. Aemond is no coward and yet his body seems at war with itself, wrestling with this emotion he knows not how to name. That he refuses to name.
“Nothing,” he’d snapped. “Nothing at all.”
That ever so elusive peak is near. He moves faster, clenching his eyes shut, hair sticking to his back with sweat. The memories hit him then. A peak of a pale thigh, smooth skin, the smell of lemons and roses, hair that looked so soft he wanted to wrap it around his thumb, what do you want from me, Uncle—
He comes with a sudden roar with just barely enough time to pull out, spilling all over her stomach. He pants loudly, removing his hand, and he opens his eyes in time to spot the woman doing the same. The sight of her brown orbs sickens him, makes him hollow.
This is a poison, he wishes to spit. A poison.
And he has yet to find an antidote.
Her family send her letters. The Queen looks almost mournful as she surveys the pile Visenya receives every fortnight. The ones Helaena sends are frequent enough, Visenya supposes, but in the little she’d seen of the Queen and her only daughter they had not seemed overtly close.
But the letters are a comfort. Jace tells her of Helaena, of Dragonstone, how he misses her. Luke tells her about their Grandfather taking him out sailing. Joffrey is too young to write proper letters, but he sends her the pictures he draws. Her mother writes to her, asks her of King’s Landing, of her father. Even Daemon squeezes in a letter here or there.
If spies were reading her letters, Visenya is certain the Hand would not be pleased at the vile language her stepfather uses to describe him. It is these letters that she spends most of her time on. She always carries one with her to read and re-read.
She’s lonely, truth be told. The courtiers whisper whenever she walks past, and Aegon is too busy pretending she does not exist. The Queen is still mourning the absence of her daughter, and she has no interest in having Visenya as a replacement. The King is ill.
The only one who stimulated her in any way was Aemond.
She has scarcely seen him since he cornered her in the hall and pressed his forearm to her throat. Not hard enough to bruise or choke, but not enough to hold her in place. In some queer way, after a few minutes, it had almost felt pleasant. Mayhaps he’d realised he’d gone too far, for whenever she brushed past him in the hallways he turned and walked the other way, or walked past as if she didn’t exist. Like she is not worth the air he breathes.
Strangely, she almost misses his scorn. At least it would give her something to do. It has only been three moons since she came to King’s Landing. Nine more to go until her eighteenth name day and her mother is able to return, per the King’s orders. Her grandsire is too ill to pay her attention, anyway. Jace got to stay home with their family, why was it she that had to suffer? Her family is infinitely nicer than the Hightowers.
The unfairness of it all makes her want to scream.
Her refuge is the Godswood, where no others in court venture. Sometimes she goes to the other gardens, sits in the flowers. But the Godswood is her refuge. She reads books and practices her Valyrian with the Maester and her harp and rides Vermithor, and all the while she feels like she’s wasting away inside. Her mother had told her marriage was a battle, especially the birthing bed, but she’d also told her of the comfort one could find in it. The friendship. The comfort. The pleasure.
Men often treat women just as a means to give birth, her mother had whispered to her once. But the marriage bed can be one of pleasure. Of freedom. Your desires are not to be ashamed of.
But Aegon does not inspire any sort of desire within her. He sparks nothing at all. Well, nothing except disgust and annoyance. And she would never dare entertain feelings for someone she was not married to. She’s suffered enough from such rumours already. Visenya loves her mother, truly, but she would not subject her children, if she had any, to similar to whispers.
In the Godswood, she abandons her book on the histories of Old Valyria, preferring to stretch her legs as she munches on a handful of strawberries she brought with her. After making sure no one is near, Visenya pulls up her skirt and removes her knife, gripping the blade. Her stepfather had shown her only a few moves. Enough to kill. To startle. To throw her enemy off guard. She’s no warrior, of course. But practicing the movements brings her comfort.
“Did no one tell you it was a sin to brandish a blade before a weirwood tree, niece?”
In her surprise, Visenya almost drops her knife. Aemond is standing a few paces away from her, hands clasped behind his back. He looks almost like a statute with how rigid his posture is, like it disgusts him to be near her.
“Uncle,” she greets, lowering the blade, her grip loose. “I was not fighting anybody.”
“Hmm. And yet knowing you, you would soon rip out another person’s eye.”
She closes her eyes tightly, exhaling through her nose. “Is there something I may help you with?” she asks. “Or do you simply delight in tormenting me?”
The muscles in his jaw jump, his gaze suddenly angry as it flits to and away from her.
“You presume a lot of yourself if you believe to preoccupy any of my thoughts.”
She scoffs. When she meets his gaze, he’s watching her closely, his eye narrowed. Despite his tunic and doublet, Visenya can see how his muscles are tense, as if he’s expecting her to pounce on him. She scoffs again, taking a step towards him. His cheeks grow pinched, his eye twitching at the motion.
“I’m not an animal, Aemond,” she grumbles. “You chose to join me here.”
“I came to observe the Old Gods.”
“Ah yes, because you are so close to the Gods.”
His brows raise. “Do you think me depraved, Visenya?”
Visenya.
He rarely ever calls her by her given name. Usually, it’s a taunt. A curse. Niece, he spits hatefully in her dreams, mockingly. Visenya. Her name sounds pleasant on his lips, yet his tone is bitter, almost like a cherry.
“I think if ever there was a godless man, Uncle, it would be you.”
He cackles. The sound makes the bird perched in a nearby tree fly away. He takes a sole step toward her, yet it is enough to make the hairs on her arm stand. He spots her abandoned book, the letter she’d pinned down beneath it.
“You know nothing of my character,” he snarls. “Nothing of my thoughts, my desires—”
“And if I did?” she challenges, moving to step in front of the book, blocking it from view. She does not want him to take her letter or burn it. She treasures all of them. “Would it somehow change my mind, Aemond?”
He smirks, and it is both cruel and entrancing all at once. He closes the distance between them in three strides, maybe less. It doesn’t matter. One moment he is there, and the next he is in front of her. Close. She tilts her chin arm, her body humming with his proximity. He has a handsome face, Aemond, despite its cruelty. Its coldness.
For a brief, unfiltered moment, she wonders what it would look like when he smiled. Not in anger or maliciousness. Not a wry smirk. But a small, genuine smile. When was the last time he had? Before he lost his eye? Before she took it? Guilt pools in her gut. And something else too. Something heavier.
He leans in close enough their noses almost brush. Her breath hitches in her throat.
“If anything, niece, it would shock you,” he whispers, warm breath tickling her lashes. “The things I want would shock you.”
Her gaze flickers all over his face. His brow, his nose, his cheeks, his lips. She blinks rapidly, fixed in place. Aemond seems equally less likely to move. His jaw looks so tight she’s surprised his teeth don’t break in half. After a few, increasingly painful moments, he lets out a low chuckle.
“Never let your enemy get too close,” he whispers, casting a meaningful glance at her hand. The knife slips from her hand, falls to the grass. “Your stepfather would be disappointed with you, no doubt. A dragon with dull instincts.”
He turns swiftly on his heel, unable to bear her presence any longer, and walks away. Visenya breathes heavily, the breath having been knocked out of her. He sucks the air out of her lungs whenever he gets so close to her. He demands it. Of her. Of everyone.
She hasn’t met anyone who does that to her before.
“Have you heard from Helaena?”
His mother is sweating away in his sister’s abandoned chambers, her expression pale, eyes tired. Alicent Hightower’s infamous beauty has started to ebb with the loss of her only daughter. Aemond knows not what to do with this display of his emotion. He knows his mother loves him and his siblings, but their family was never affectionate like that of his half-sister’s. Helaena did not like being touched by their mother – by anyone, really.
Alicent often lacked the patience to deal with his and Aegon’s squabbling and Helaena’s murmurings. She could be cross and stubborn and cutting. And yet, he loves his mother. He knows how hard she fought to keep Helaena close, to make sure she was safe.
“I have,” he confirms. His sister’s wrote half dreams, half tales, half prophecies. But that had always been her way. They are kind to me, she’d finished. Jace has secured me more spiders to study. “She seems… well.”
There is relief that appears in his mother’s eyes, but also some disappointment. It is a difficult thing, he thinks, for a mother to realize their daughter is happier or doing fine without them.
“That’s good,” she breathes. And then, almost as if to herself, “I know Rhaenyra would not hurt her.”
He grunts lightly in confirmation. His half-sister doesn’t seem to indulge in cruelty, even if she does so in lust. His mother drums her fingers against the arm of her charm.
“Visenya,” she announces, almost making Aemond choke on his spit. “We must try more with her.”
He frowns, rubbing off a speck of dust from the sleeve of his shirt. “Whatever for?”
She shoots him a look. “She is to be Aegon’s bride, mother of his babes.”
“Very well. Should you not be having this conversation with the groom to be?”
“I have tried.” She sighs. “You know how Aegon is, Aemond.”
Lawless, ungrateful, lazy, cruel—
He shrugs. His mother sighs again. “You were always kind to Helaena,” she points out, looking around the room. Helaena had taken almost all of her possessions with her. Now, it almost seems like she’d never lived in these rooms at all. “You can be kind to her. There is no point in trying to undo this marriage. Not now – too much time has passed.”
“You want me to try her as a sister,” Aemond states flatly, unimpressed. His stomach tightens. What do you want from me, Uncle? “To welcome her into the family?”
“It would be a start. I will try with the girl as well.”
“She’s a bastard.” The word feels tainted on his tongue. That horrible monster in his chest growls.
“Enough, Aemond,” Alicent snaps. “It matters not what she is. She is to be our family, your good-sister, whether you like it or not. Do not act like a child.”
He stands so abruptly his chair scrapes backwards.
“I don’t like it,” he snaps right back. His mother cannot seem to contain her surprise. Aemond has always been the one to keep his temper in check. To hold his emotions at bay. Better not to let anyone know what your next move is. “Very well,” he forces out. “I shall try.”
His mother stands as well, moves to cup his face. To her credit, she had been one of the first to stop flinching after he’d lost his eye. Everyone else would refuse to look at him or appear sick if they did. His mother had been sorrowful, angry, but she’d always managed to look him in the eye. Offer him comfort.
“Thank you,” she says, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
If she’d known what he dreams of these nights, she would surely thank him a lot less.
The heat in King’s Landing grows to be unbearable. It’s hard to think, to breathe, to even move with all the sweat. She knows not how the Kingsguard survive in their layers of armour and additional cloak. Staying in doors is not enough – like she is burning from the inside. It helps riding Vermithor, being in the clouds with the wind, but it is not always enough.
On Dragonstone, when it would get sweltering like this, her, Jace, Luke and Joff would pile into the sea while their mother watched. They’d spend hours swimming in the shallows, diving to the bottom, grabbing each other’s ankles.
When the heat gets too much, she resolves to do just that. It’s easy enough to reach the shores of the Red Keep, tucked away behind the castle and from prying eyes. Her mother had shown it to her and Jace when they were younger. She cannot stay one more minute inside with the Queen and her ladies and the incessant fanning from the servants.
She tells the guards following her to turn their backs and retreat to the shade. At least here by the water there is some breeze. Visenya casts a look over her shoulder, and once she is assured of her privacy, she strips down to just her nightshift, folding her dress neatly and removing her shoes.
When she dives into the water, it is so cold it pierces her heart, but it is delightfully refreshing. It reminds her of home. Of Jace. Of the father she lost all those years ago, he loved the sea that was in his blood. She dives up and down, picking up a handful of sand from the seabed, floating on her back. This way, she almost feels like she does on Vermithor, like she can reach out and touch the clouds. The sun is hot on her skin, and she knows she should not linger long lest her skin grow red and blistered.
Her mother will not be there this time to soothe her or rub ointments on her skin, and she is not going to give the court the satisfaction of seeing her skin peeling and rubbed raw. She dives beneath the water, holding her breath, soaking in the seawater.
When she resurfaces, however, she is not alone. She spots his silver hair first, glistening in the sunlight. Despite the heat, Aemond is dressed head to toe in black and silver, seemingly unbothered. Somehow, she is not surprised to see him. She treads towards the shore, crouching in the shallows so her body is still submerged, her hair sticking to the nape of her neck and shoulders.
“Uncle,” she says. “I am surprised you did not dive in to hold my head under.”
“I am surprised that you did not drown.”
“You forget I am a Velaryon as well as a dragon,” she reminds him. “The sea is in my blood from my father’s side.”
His lips quirk. “Precisely.”
She rolls her eyes. “How did you find me?” she asks, staring up at him.
He shrugs.
“Aren’t you communicative?” she mutters.
“Come here, niece,” he says. “If you want to say something, say it to my face.”
She grits her teeth. “I’d rather stay here, thank you.”
“Shame. My mother wishes to talk with you. Aegon’s nameday celebration is to occur soon.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“He is to be your husband.”
“I’d forgotten,” she replies flatly, dipping half her head back into the water.
“Don’t be a child.” He stands there, waiting expectantly.
“Will you not turn around?” she asks, trying to stop her cheeks from flaming. He smirks.
“Surely, niece, if you were so concerned about your virtue you would not undress so scandalously when any members from court could stumble upon you.”
Visenya glares at him. Her Kingsguard would have stopped anyone else from coming close. Anyone except those within the royal families themselves.
“Very well,” she mutters, rising from the water. Her white shift sticks to her body like second skin. Her skin grows ripe with gooseflesh as she wades her way onto the shore, the sand sticking to her bare feet. No man has seen her in such a state of undress. Aemond observes her like a hunter does its prey. The heat in his eyes – the disapproval, she is sure, is enough to keep her gaze low. She glances down, and catches sight of her nibbles pebbling through her shift for all to see.
Blushing furiously, she folds her arms in front of her chest and looks up, indignant. Aemond’s pupil is almost black, his hands twitching at his sides.
“Even though you do not look like her, you are like your mother,” he hisses lowly. “Craven.”
She unfolds her arms in her fury, takes a step towards him. His gaze remains forcibly fixed on her face. The vein in his neck is throbbing.
“I’m right here, Uncle,” she says, forcing him to look at her the closer she steps towards him. “You want my eye – take it. I’m bare—” -his nostrils flare- “and defenceless. There’s no one here to stop you. My kingsguard would not reach you in time to stop you. So do it.”
His gaze dips lower. Past her eyes, her nose, her lips. To her neck, the swell of her breasts. Heat uncoils in her stomach. She pretends its angry.
“Do what you’ve longed to do to me for so long,” she dares. “Do it.”
His hand reaches out – maybe to squeeze her throat, maybe to shake her, she knows not. It hovers before her, curling and uncurling. His fingers are trembling with the effort not to touch her. She presses her thighs together, overcome with—
Visenya finds herself staring at his lips. She wants to hear her name spill from them again. Wants to rid herself of his anger and bitterness and spite. Wants and wants and—
He looks like he wants to kill her. Like he wants to devour her, hurt her, shake her. Like he wants to own every single piece of her. To consume her heart whole. She imagines him feasting on her blood, his lips and teeth stained red, and her heart jolts. Aemond Targaryen; a monster in human clothing.
Or maybe not a monster. Maybe something else entirely. To torment her. To stoke her fury. This fire in her belly. Her lips part. Aemond, she wants to whisper. Aemond.
She practically yanks herself away, turns her back to him. Despite the sun glaring down on her, she feels cold.
“I thought so,” she grounds out, wrapping her arms around herself, rests her chin on her shoulder. “Leave me.”
She feels his glare on her back, like he can see right through. See her heart, how it pounds and races and wants—
Hours later, he is still half-hard. The memory of her, wet and soaken, haunts him like a ghost. It had not been enough to take himself in hand or soak in cold water for nigh on two hours, until his skin was soft and wrinkly. This weakness had lingered beneath his skin, incessant and feverish.
When he arrives at the whorehouse, however, he is not alone.
“Brother,” Aegon slurs. “A surprise to see you here.”
Aemond—
He’s so suddenly so furious with him. You know what Aegon is like, his mother had sighed earlier. And Aemond does. His brother never appreciates the benefits of being the first son – the power it holds, the influence. He’s too drunk, too lustful, too obsessed with his own pleasure to do anything. But it’s more than that now. Aegon is her betrothed, and he does not seem so consumed by her. He does not care. He is satisfied by his whores and drink, uncaring about his beautiful bride.
Aemond wants to skin his brother alive. In this moment, he would not regret it. The viciousness rears its ugly head the longer he stares at his brother, who is too drunk to notice.
“My prince?” the whore keeper asks, gesturing to the long line of women waiting to please him. Aegon is happy enough to disappear with two women, one blonde, the other red-head, both big chested.
He shuts hie eyes. Do it, Uncle. Do what you’ve longed to do to me for so long. Had he always longed for her like this? As children, before she cut his eye, he’d known she was pretty. They’d both been the only ones without dragons. But this. This poison—
Instead of dragging a knife over her skin, he wants to use his tongue. To taste. To caress. To explore. To pleasure.
With a frustrated huff, he stalks out of the whorehouse, walking far enough to throw a punch to the wall. His fist throbs, and it relieves him – momentarily at least – from his agony.
Aegon may be satisfied with whores, but Aemond realizes he never will be.
Notes:
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Chapter 4
Notes:
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Chapter Text
Chapter 4
The night air is cool on her skin, her legs tangled in the sheets. She’d propped her window open, but it does little to douse the fire beneath her skin, making her squirm. She closes her eyes. She’s been tossing and turning all night.
For several nights, really. The heat in her belly is restless, like a raging inferno she knows not how to douse out. She tries to breathe deeply. Tries to calm herself. All is quiet except for the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
Her thighs rub together as she squeezes them, trying to quell the ache. The breeze does not aid her. The moonlight pouring in from the window seems to add to it. Reminds her of the silver of his hair. The blue of the sea as the waves crashed against the shore. Do what you’ve longest to do to me for so long.
She clenches the sheets tightly. Surely it wouldn’t hurt. Would it? No one would know but her.
Mayhaps that’s worse, a voice inside her whispers. Her cheeks flush as she closes her eyes once more. She can pretend she’s not doing it this way. Not letting her fingers sneak up her dressing gown. Soft. Patient. When they dip into her folds, she cannot help her sigh of relief. Soon she is canting her hips, desperate, biting her lips to contain her moans, and her pleasure burns to a crescendo fast as snapshots flash behind her ears.
A hand hovering above her throat. A hot, hard body pressing her against the wall. Niece, a mocking voice breathes in her head, a taunt that does nothing to quell the pleasure blooming in her stomach. Dreaming of me?
She falls apart with muffled cries, sweat soaking her skin. When she opens her eyes at last, she is alone.
The faint ache between her thighs remains.
Aemond takes to training with renewed ferociousness. When he’s not needed at the Red Keep, he’s at the training yard. Sword fighting. Knife fighting. Archery. Hand to hand combat. He exhausts his Kingsguard, then other Captains, and recycles them over and over. His body is aching and bruised, but his strength prevails. He welcomes the hurt and the soreness. It is a welcome distraction.
He rides Vhagar often, finding refuge in the clouds. Anything to dull the insatiable thirst that has somehow snuck under his skin. His mother seems mildly, if distantly, impressed by his new regime. Truth be told, she does not seemed to have noticed a big change. His father’s health has mildly improved, but he spends that renewed energy on Visenya than on matters in his kingdom or his children. He knows it grates his mother how she will always be second in the King’s eyes.
Aemond accepted that truth the day he lost his eye.
But his mother buries herself in preparation for Aegon’s upcoming nameday celebration, and Aemond distances himself from talk of flower arrangements and meals and guest lists. At least his elder sister’s family is not allowed to attend given the betrothal arrangement. One less thing to occupy his mind instead of—
He has not spoken to her since their encounter by the beach. Aemond does not dare to overlook his balcony again lest he spot her once more diving in and out of the water. If he did—
He knew not what he would do. He loathes it. Loathes her. Loathes himself, most of all, for this loss in control. It is undignified. Preposterous. Weak.
All his life he has criticized Aegon for his weakness. His insatiable lust and whoring. His cravings for drink. And now here Aemond is, haunted by lips he has not touched, hands that he has only been maimed by, and eyes that look at him with scorn.
But had it been scorn as they stood there on the beach?
She, for once, had been the one to pull away first. He’d seen the look in her eyes. He’d seen it. And yet—
And yet here he is. Aemond has spent years training himself to be like Vhagar. A prime hunter. Someone who acts. Who inspires fear and respect. Who makes people pause. And yet here he is. Pausing.
It is a relief, at least (or so he tells himself), that his niece seems perfectly fine to ignore him as well. When he does see her, she is distant and unmoved, ignoring his presence. Good. He had seen her in a state of undress unfit for a princess, uncle or not.
He trains hard that day, smashing his sword against Criston’s until the elder knight is forced to yield.
“Something on your mind, my prince?” the knight questions. Aemond is no fool; he knows every word that passes his lips gets reported to his mother, relevant or not. He opens his mouth to form some half-cooked answer when he sees a glint of red in the corner of his eye. He turns his head. Visenya is there on the balcony, overlooking them, her hands curled over the railing. Her dress is half-black, half-red, her long dark hair pooling down her shoulders, pinned back simply.
The ache in his muscles fades. His sweat is forgotten.
He wants to ravish her.
She meets his gaze for a split second, and her plump mouth purses. For a moment he imagines biting her lower lip, letting her blood fill his mouth. His stance shifts. His body is coiled like a spring and he wants—
She turns away, and for a horrible moment, he is bereft, hollow, as he watches her walk away.
“I’m fine,” he grits out, snapping his attention back to the awaiting knight.
Ser Criston knows better than to push him for his thoughts. Anger bites at him with its hungry mouth, eating away at his insides. This is foolish. Ridiculous. Absurd. He is a dragon, and he should not be struggling so to contain himself. Or better yet, he should not be so enflamed by something so human. Matters of the flesh had always been so straightforward to him before. Why should it matter so now? For a bastard?
He shakes his head. He will overcome this. He will. A momentary delusion. A sickness.
Resolved, he sheathes his sword. The best way to build immunity to pain, he’s learned, is to expose himself to it more and more. A way to cut out the sickness.
And he will prevail.
Aemond always wins.
Visenya has taken to hiding away in the library. The Queen invites her to break their fast together, but they are silent, stilted affairs. Visenya’s mother mentioned that she and the Queen were friends once, but Visenya cannot see it. The Queen seems so much older and strained than her mother is, like the life has been sucked out of her.
Visenya is not very forthcoming herself.
After all, what can she say? Your grace, I pleasure myself to thoughts of your son every night. Not the one I’m betrothed to, of course. The one whose eye I cut out.
She has a feeling none of that would go over very well. With a sigh, she stretches her legs out, sets her ankle out on the opposite table. She hasn’t been sleeping well of late. Visenya leans down and rests her cheek against the old pages. She’d reminded of the library on Dragonstone. Studying high Valyrian with Jace into the night, helping Joffrey with his writing.
“You have given up on your training, it seems.”
Her eyes fly open. She traces the curve of the handwriting on the page.
“Uncle,” she murmurs, lazily lifting her head to survey him. He’s closed the door behind him. Beneath the table, she presses her thighs together. He’s dressed head to toe in silver and black, his training attire from earlier gone. “Now you find fault with me with me reading.”
He smirks. “Ah yes, you seem so studious.”
“I’m tired, Uncle. That is not a crime.”
He tilts his head. “Why are you tired?”
Her muscles tense. She looks at him slowly. It had been a mistake to go to the training yard earlier. He stalks her closely, like a shark smelling blood in the water. She stiffens against her chair, her posture poker-straight.
“What nightterrors can a little girl like you have?” he questions, stopping right behind her chair. She can feel his eye burning a hole in the exposed skin on her shoulder. She takes a deep breath and turns her head so she can meet his gaze.
“Horrible things,” she replies, gaze lingering on his silver hair. “Terrible.”
He leans forward, sniffing the air. She wonders if he can smell it on her. Her wetness lingering on her fingers. She’d scrubbed her hands raw, but maybe—
“What would you know of terrible things, Visenya?”
He leans in closer. Too close. Damn him.
“Why, what you’ve taught me, Aemond.”
She pushes her chair back, knocking it into his side, and slams her book shut, moving to put it back on the shelves. He moves around, leaning against the table, chuckling.
“Am I truly so amusing to you?” she questions, flicking her hair over her shoulder.
“Hmm. Perhaps. Your mother is not merely so bookish, as you very well know.”
She whirls around, furious, hand raised, but he’s there.
“You need more training, niece,” he snarls, grabbing her wrist. He whirls her around, pulls her flush against his chest. “There. You always move before your enemy. Never let them know what you are thinking.”
“And what are you thinking, Uncle?” she demands, struggling against his hold. He makes a soft cooing noise, almost as if to soothe her. The sleeves of her dress fall further down her shoulders, dipping well below her collarbone. “Let me go.”
“But I’m helping you, niece,” he murmurs. He grabs her hand tighter, slips his hand so he’s gripping her forearm instead. “If someone grabs you, you elbow them in the gut—”
“I don’t need your help—”
“Then why did you visit the training yard?” he questions, breathing down her neck. She pauses. She can feel the material of his clothing digging into her back.
“Why, I’m preparing myself for the marriage bed,” she snaps.
His other hand grips her waist, but his thumb strokes her hipbone. Her lips part, and she tilts her head back. She can smell him – spices and scent and a little bit of wine and mint.
“I won’t hurt you, niece,” he whispers. She shifts in his hold, his thumb digging deeper into her skin. She is glad – infinitely glad, that he cannot see her face. Her cheeks are flushed, and his knee—his knee is close to being wedged in between her thighs, right where she—
“I’m not wedding you,” she points out, trying to keep the breathlessness out of her voice.
He clucks his tongue, clutching her tighter, sways side to side, holding her like a lover. Her skin feels like it’s on fire. Every inch, every nerve, every breath—
He pushes her hair over her shoulder, moves it out of the way. His fingers linger in the strands like he likes it touch.
“Aemond,” she whispers, swallowing thickly. What is she doing? What is she doing? “Aemond—”
His lips graze the back of her neck, and she presses her lips together to muffle her moan. She only partly succeeds.
“Shh,” he whispers, his hand moving from hip, sneaking up to trace her ribcage. He presses her tightly against his back. “Shh.”
His lips brush against her neck again, too gentle and fleeting to be a kiss, but too significant to have been a mistake.
“Visenya,” he murmurs. “Visenya.”
His hand moves up her ribs like a spider, and then reaches her collarbone. His touch is not hard or rough, but gentle, caressing, like he—
There’s the sound of footsteps outside the door, and Visenya finally wriggles out of his grip, her eyes wide. Aemond looks like he’s seen a ghost, his jaw tight. There is beauty in his anger, even if though he’s not staring at her. The door pushes open.
“Visenya,” the Queen greets. “Aemond.”
“Your grace,” she acknowledges, turning her gaze away from her uncle. She curtsies quickly. “Were you looking for me?”
The Queen looks between her and Aemond.
“Yes,” the older woman replies slowly. “I wanted to talk to you about Aegon’s nameday celebrations. Your dress.”
“I have dresses, your grace.”
“Appropriate ones.” The Queen eyes her dress. The sleeves don’t cover her shoulders, and they’re even lower now because—
“I’m afraid green is not my colour, your grace,” Visenya replies. “I am not fortunate enough to be blessed with your colouring.”
“I suppose black and red will do,” the Queen allows. “Blue would not be appropriate.”
The colours of House Velaryon… and House Strong.
“Very well,” she grits out. She does not look at him as she follows the Queen out of the room. Shame pools in her stomach. What was she thinking? She feels sick with it. But the embers still burn like a dying fire in winter.
This is a game to him, no doubt.
And she is playing right into his hands. She thought herself smarter, wiser. And yet here she is.
She cannot write to Jace or her mother about this. She cannot.
The back of her neck tingles the whole day.
Aegon’s nameday celebrations arrive with appropriate fanfare. The Great Hall is full of dancers and musicians, each column wrapped with green ribbons and flowers. Their father even manages to drag himself out of bed to attend the nameday celebrations despite how he is progressively rotting.
But in the sea of green and courtiers, there is her. Aemond is already sitting at the headtable with the rest of his family when she enters, the last of them all to arrive. Almost as if to spite his mother, Visenya is dressed head to toe entirely in ruby red. There are streaks of black on the vest of her dress that exposes her shoulders and collarbone but covers the rest of her arm. A necklace of rubies adorns her throat, and red roses are tucked in a crown on her head.
For once, even Aegon seems to notice her. She sits across the table from him, but steadily avoids his gaze. Aemond—
He cannot help but look at her.
Anger and a queer, warm molten feel pools in his stomach.
Desire.
It poisons his mouth, flares his temple, sneaks under his skin. His eye twitches. Even the sapphire, hidden beneath his patch, throbs. He does not stop looking at her. If Visenya feels his stare, she ignores it. She drinks and converses with his father, ever the good little Princess when she needs to be.
The meals seem endless. One round after the next, and Aemond watches as she bites down on her strawberries, sucking the sweetness, hollowing her cheeks—
After that scene in the library, Aemond had waited until his mother and she left to take himself in hand right then and there. It would not fade or dull. It had burned too brightly, too fast, too hard.
He loathes himself for it.
And her.
She has bewitched him, he decides. Cutting his eye meant she claimed more parts of himself than he had ever cared to admit or acknowledge until now. All he needed was to cut out the root of the problem, like with every disease.
But the root of the problem is her.
His chest pinches at the thought. Aemond sips at his wine, thankful for the dull burning in his throat.
“Excuse me, brother,” Aegon slurs, clapping him on the shoulder. “My bride awaits.”
Aemond watches as his brother stumbles his way over to Visenya and offers her his hand. After a moment’s pause, she accepts it. As far Aemond can tell, it is the only time his brother has acknowledged her existence since she arrived in King’s Landing. His brother has always had a fondness for pretty things. And she – she is the prettiest thing in the room. In the city. More than pretty, more ethereal, face carved by the God’s themselves, even if she inherited her father’s base features.
Anything Aegon desired, his brother went and got, no matter the consequences. No matter the other person’s wishes.
Aemond watches, gazed fixed on them, as they dance. His brother’s gaze lingers on the swell of her breasts more than it does on her face. Visenya’s expression remains passive. Has she already resigned herself to her fate? Aemond wonders, drumming his fingers on the table.
Aegon would certainly appreciate a pretty bride, there is no doubt about that. But Aemond knows his brother to his rotten, sullen core. It would not matter if Visenya was ugly or baseborn; his brother’s nature would remain the same. Fickle and inconstant. His desires flit to and from with no rhyme or reason besides following his own pleasures. Certainly he would stumble back to her bed when he remembered he had a wife, but Aegon would never appreciate Visenya who she is. Care to know her character or the fire and steel beneath. The sharpness of her tongue.
The way she sounds when she muffles a moan—
Beneath the table, Aemond digs his nails into his thigh. It would not do – not here, not now. Sure enough, when the dance ends, his brother slithers to a corner, spotting some serving girl to fulfill his desires, because even he is not so stupid as to try and compromise his betrothed nigh on seven months before their wedding.
Visenya, he notices, spots where Aegon heads, but soon she is engaged by other Lords and courtiers, all vying for her hand for the next dance. If he were anyone else, or if she were anyone else, Aemond would not blame them. His mother, beautiful though she may be, has never been one for joy, teasing or dancing. She overlooked feasts and dances with a cold, even ruthlessness, even disapproval, especially if another woman danced too much or laughed too hard.
And Helaena, though Aemond loves her, has never been a summer princess. Someone to inspire delight and awe and desire. When Visenya laughs, the entire court seems to hold its breath. She lets one Lord take her for a dance, then another one, a mere boy, but she is kind and smiling all the same. She enchants them all, spinning in her red dress, casting a spell on everybody present.
No one sullies her name by calling her bastard. In fact, everyone seems perfectly content, even joyful, to feast their eyes on her flesh. To count her smiles and delude themselves into believing they are for them only. If Aemond’s sister was half as charming in the years of her early womanhood, Aemond can understand why they name her the realm’s delight.
The court seems to agree.
Aemond wishes to gouge their eyes out. If they had stumbled upon her that day by the sea –
His mouth purses at the thought of it, rage boiling in his belly. No, they did not deserve to see such a sight. No one did except—
She dances with a new man this time. A Lannister cousin who takes it upon himself to make her laugh. Aemond scowls. Have you ever made her laugh? A voice inside him whispers.
His scowl deepens. He has his wine refilled once. Twice. Three times.
Entertains himself with notions of how best to rip the Lannister boy apart. Maybe by having him drawn or quartered. He could get Vhagar to eat him bit by bit. Or maybe he’d fly around the Kingdoms with him tied to Vhagar’s tail, bashing his head into any rock or thorns he could find.
He smiles to himself. There. That’s best.
When he looks back at her, for the first time that evening, he catches her looking at him. She looks away, almost as if annoyed and—
A single rose falls from crown of flowers, and he bristles when her dance partner bends down to pick it up, clutching it in his greedy, pathetic hands. As children she used to put flowers in her hair. Daisies. He used to watch as she weaved them in her hair.
Now, he will do more than just watch.
“I believe that belongs to my niece,” Aemond declares coolly, appearing between the two. Visenya seems startled by his sudden appearance. Dancers deftly manage to avoid bumping into him given his sudden disturbance. He holds out his hand. “Give it.”
The Lord – some Tyrell or other, he thinks, stutters and pales like a green boy. Aemond thinks he will also tie him to Vhagar’s tail like with the Lannister lord.
“Keep it, my lord,” Visenya cuts in. “A rose is House Tyrell’s sigil is it not? It fell just for you.”
Aemond glares at her.
“Princess,” the Lord murmurs.
Aemond glares at him.
“My prince.” The Lord scuttles away like a dog with its tail between its legs. Good, Aemond thinks. He imagines Lord Tyrell screams as he feeds him to Vhagar.
“You are cruel, Uncle,” Visenya tells him plainly, adjusting the flowers in her hair. “We were simply dancing.”
Aemond traces the movement of her fingers with his eye. He remembers how her hand had felt in his own. Warm and smooth and soft. Everything he is not.
“Do none of your roses belong to me, Visenya?” he asks, the dancers bustling around them.
She glares at him. He stiffens as she leans forward, her body so close to his he can feel its warmth. “Nothing of me belongs to you, Uncle,” she hisses. Her venom is delicious and beautiful and—
He extends his hand out to her. “A dance, niece?”
She eyes his hand disdainfully. “I am tired.”
“You have danced with every other man in this room.”
“None of them were as vile as you, Uncle.”
He seizes her hand. “Do I terrify you?” He leans in close. ‘You are the reason I am so terrifying, niece. You should take credit for your creation.”
Her violet eyes darken as she gazes up at him, tilting her chin up stubbornly.
“Are you so cowardly as to blame me for everything?”
“Are you so cowardly as to not dance with me?”
“Fine,” she snarls, digging her nails into his hand.
The previous dance comes to a close, and Aemond guides them to their starting position, reluctantly letting go of her hand so he may take his place across from her. He can feel people staring. He dances only rarely at these events, and only ever with Helaena. During his younger years, he knew her frightened the ladies with his scarred face.
Visenya shows no such fear.
They are meant to curtsy and bow respectively before the dance, but they both remain stubbornly still, almost petulant. Glaring at each other. And then the music begins. They weave around each other like they’re at war, every step a provocation, a declaration. Taking her hand is like unsheathing his sword. Spinning her around is like shoving that sword in her heart. Except she fights back. Her skirts flutter around her as twirls in a circle around him, her eyes fixed on his face. Heated.
He pulls her flush against his chest, his hand on her waist as he guides her around the floor. They glide together so smoothly, like Vhagar’s wings on the wind. She pulls away when required, her hands posed to the beat of the drum, clapping as she steps backwards, calling him to follow.
He does.
Even if the dance did not require him to, he would.
He follows her like a moth to a flame, like a bee to hive, and when the steps require him to put his hands on her waist and lift, he does. He raises her high in the air for all to see. If she was his, he would claim her. Mark her. No one would ever dare touch or look or be so familiar with her again. He wants to bear his teeth to the crowd. He wants to suck on her flesh so she dare not forget it either. To remember him even when he is not around.
He sets her down on the floor. Her breasts rise and fall with her chest as she pants, gazing up at him.
The music stops.
“Uncle,” she breathes. “You can let go of me now.”
Startled, he looks down to find his hands still resting on her waist, clutching her hips possessively, his thumbs tracing circles on her dress. He lets her go, and aches with the loss. Stiffly, she offers him a polite nod and disappears into the crowds, making her way back to the head table, to his mother.
Well, at least she would be happy. She had asked him to treat her like a sister after all.
Aemond scoffs. He has no mood for politicking now. Aegon has disappeared already, the ungrateful cunt.
Aemond storms out of the hall, furious with himself and the world and for having the misfortune having been born a second son.
Visenya does not linger long. She pleads illness to her grandsire and the Queen, and manages to slip out of the hall unmolested. Given her flushed and feverish state, she had not had to plead for long.
She can still feel it. Him. The tingle on the back of her neck. The imprint of his hands on her hips. She wants air, craves it, but—
The place between her thighs throbs painfully. Wetness seeps through her hose, creating an unpleasant and sticky sensation she knows but one way to get rid of. When she turns the corner to head to her chambers, where she has to go to reach her chambers, he is there, leaning against a pillar.
His eyes fly open at the sound of footsteps. In the dark, his violet eye is a beacon if also a curse.
Visenya has tried not to be a coward her whole life; this time, she does not bother. She turns on her heel and flees.
She dares not go back to the feast or the courtiers, but she knows not where to go. Her indecision costs her. In no time, he catches her, seizing her by the wrist and pulling her back around the corner, mere doors away from her chambers. She walks back into the wall, and he pins there, arm on either side of her head, caging her in like an animal.
“You liar,” he whispers, bending his neck down so his lips hover right above the exposed skin on her shoulder. “I do terrify you.”
“You vex me.”
He presses in closer. Delightfully, deliciously close. She closes her eyes.
“Is that all I do to you, niece?” he whispers. His lips skim their way up the curve of her neck, her jaw, her nose, and back down her other shoulder. “Tell me, Visenya. Tell me.”
She opens her mouth to curse him, maybe even to scream, but then he slides against her even more purposefully, all the hardness of him, and she forgets how to think. He slots right where she aches the most, as if he can sense it. Feel it. Like her heart sings to him of her desires.
“I don’t have to tell you, do I?” he continues on, more to himself than to her. “My body speaks for itself does it not?”
She tries to hold herself still, to resists, to remember why this is such a horrible, horrible idea but—
He wants her too. That moment of pure victory is enough to make her forget.
Aemond presses his lips right on her pulse point, forcing her to tilt her head up against the wall, a breathy moan escaping her lips.
“Tell me what you want, Visenya,” he whispers against her skin, his tongue brushing against it as if to taste her. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He rocks against her, a soft hiss escaping his pursed mouth, and she bites down on her bottom lip and tastes iron. Can feel the blood pooling. Aemond reaches out with his thumb to swipe at it. He tsks, shaking his head, chastising her.
“I won’t make you bleed, Princess,” he taunts. “Not yet. Even though you’ve made me bleed.”
“Aemond—”
He captures her bottom lip between his teeth, gently tugging, sucking at the blood. Visenya’s eyelids flutter as she struggles to breathe. She wants to scream. She wants to whine. She wants to shove his hand in between her skirts and make him pleasure her until she tells him to stop.
If she tells him to stop.
He lets go of her lip, his own stained with her blood. His eye is full of spark, enlightened, intrigued.
“You,” he breathes, grasping her chin. “Taste delicious.”
He wedges a knee in between her legs, making a small noise of protest spill from her lips. He chuckles darkly, leans forward to kiss her brow like she’s a child.
“Shh,” he comforts. “I will not leave you in such a state, niece. I am not so cruel.”
“Aemond—”
“Shh,” he continues, pinning her one hand to the wall. He dives down to bury his face in her neck, inhaling her scent loudly as he lightly nips at her shoulder. He presses his knee into her cunt harder. Hard enough to offer her some measure of relief. “Take your pleasure niece. Take it.”
She tries to cling to reason, to find the strength to tell him to step away. He lifts his gaze to hers and—
He bites her lip again, sending sparks shooting up her back, makes her forget her own name.
“Take your pleasure, niece,” he soothes. “It is here and waiting for you.”
He presses his knee more into her, right by her bundle of nerves, right where she makes herself peak thinking of his fingers and tongue, and Visenya—
She surrenders. For the first time in her life, she abandons herself. She rocks against him, tentatively at first, but when he moans against her cheek, bracing himself above her, she rocks harder, keening into his ear.
“That’s it,” he encourages, his voice a soft melody in her ear. “That’s it, Visenya. Yes.”
He lifts her one leg so it brackets his hips, and this time the sound that leaves her lips is a moan. The pleasure it too great, like she is flying on Vermithor even though she is planted firmly on the ground. Her free hand latches itself in his hair, twisting and curling, and he hisses.
Aemond has been more preoccupied urging her on with filthy words and exploring her collarbone with his tongue than he has been in kissing her, but this makes him hover right by her lips, his own mere inches away from her own. But he does not press them into her own. Not truly.
Her lips throb for his own, ache for it, plead for it, but his lips merely graze hers, almost as if he is afraid to do it.
“There, you vixen,” he murmurs, as her movements grow more frantic. “That’s it. Oh, you look beautiful like this. Yes—”
Aemond seems entranced as he watches her use him for her own pleasure. Like the sight of it enthrals him and feeds and hungers him at the same time. Her blood is on fire, the pleasure unimaginable and yet—
Here she is, feeling it.
He bites down on her pulsepoint again, and she is lost, stars bursting behind her eyes as her body sings to his touch. His other arm is still braced against the wall, so tense she fears it might snap.
Aemond presses gentle kisses to her brow, her cheek, her nose, his other hand pressing into her ribcage, his fingers skimming under her breast.
If anyone were to stumble upon them now, they would stumble upon the very image of sin.
Perhaps it is this very reminder that makes her shove him off. Perhaps it is the whisper of the word bastard in her mind.
Either way, she shoves him off, and for the second time in her life, she gives into cowardice.
She flees and barricades herself in her chambers.
Visenya half expects him to pound on her door, but he does not come.
He does not come.
Notes:
thank u guys for the response to this story! means so much.
kudos and comments are everything! <3!
come chat with me on Tumblr @fkevin073
Chapter 5
Notes:
ah thank u guys so much for your response to the story! I'm still mapping out each chapter beat really, but I think I'm narrowing down an endgame. now games, games, and even more games. this family needs therapy. let me know what you guys think!
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 5
Visenya waits.
She’s never been good at waiting. Her whole life, she’s grabbed at things with impatient hands – food, attention, sweets. Controlling her tongue and her temper has been her greatest life battle, one her mother has helped her with a kind and steady hand.
But her mother is not here now.
Visenya is alone.
She paces her chambers as first light pours through her open shutters. She dives back under the covers when sounds of life echo from below. She waits. For the first time in her life, she is good at it. She waits for guards to come and drag her out of bed, to bring her to the Queen. She waits for them to brand her a whore and a disgrace, to convict her of treason for betraying her betrothed.
She tries to breathe, tries to calm herself, but she can think of little else. Shame settles on her skin. She lost. Her mother, her brothers – she let them down. Disappointed them. Gave in her to basest, most depraved desires for—
For what? Her mind hisses furiously. For him?
She shuts her eyes tightly, her fingers digging into the sheets. It would do her no good to remember. But how can she not? His lips and his body and his warmth and oh, you look so beautiful like this. He’d said it like he meant it, too. Like she was the loveliest thing he had ever beheld.
A lie, she reminds herself. This is all a game to him. A horrible, horrible game. And she played right into his hands. He’s called her mother a whore her whole life, and now he’s determined to ruin her too.
Shame lingers in her gut. She feels sick and drained, like she has gone without sunshine for days. And yet—
The pleasure she had felt lingers inside her. A tattoo on her soul. It had felt good, she cannot deny that. Not even when she is alone. So horribly, impossibly, painstakingly good. She hugs her knees close to her chest, tugs the sheets over her head like a child having a nightmare.
When the servants come and poor her her morning bath, it does not help.
His touch still lingers.
“When I told you to welcome her,” his mother starts as they wait for their breakfast. “I did not mean taunt her before the court.”
Aemond, she had whispered in his ear, lashes fluttering, keening, face flushed so beautifully. Aemond.
“I did no such thing,” he protests, drumming his fingers against the table. “I danced with her, that is all.”
His mother pins him with a look. Disapproving, but not suspicious. Not scandalized. She does not know. Assumes it to be a childish grudge, a hatred spurred by Visenya taking his eye.
She sighs.
“I’ve been wondering,” she murmurs ruefully, resting her chin on her hands as she props her elbows against the table. “Do you think they treat Helaena as we treat her?” Her lips twitch into a mournful expression. “Somehow, I think they are kinder.”
She had not wanted his kindness last night, had she? Desire had poisoned them, burned them, clouded their judgement. Her blood in his mouth as he nipped and tugged at her lip had not been a kindness. But—
After, when she’d peaked, sighing with relief, something softer had crept its way in his heart. He’d kissed her face, her chin, her cheeks. Soft, gentle kisses.
And in return, she’d shoved him away like an animal and fled. He’d let her use his body for his pleasure, and he would do it again. Even though she loathed him. He had tasted it once and—
He never wanted to taste anything else.
And yet she had pushed him away.
“Where is the food?” he questions.
“I told the servants to wait,” his mother replies.
“For what?”
“For—”
The doors push open, and she walks in. Her dress is black, lined with red at the seams, the top half of her hair pulled back simply so her face is clear. She fiddles with the ring on her finger as she curtsies towards his mother.
“Your grace.”
Aemond, she had whispered, her fingers twisting and pulling at his hair. Aemond.
Her eyes land on him.
“Uncle,” she greets stiffly if courteously, sitting at the chair his mother points her towards, directly across from him.
“Visenya.”
If the use of her given name surprises her, she does not show it. At once, the servants start serving the dishes. Eggs and bacon, tarts, fruits. He watches as she bites into another strawberry. She had not tasted like them last night, but then again, he had not kissed her properly. Had not devoured her mouth and claimed it. But her blood had tasted like metal and fire, and nothing in his life could taste sweeter.
He pops a strawberry in his mouth, sucking at the juices, and she meets his gaze. He wants to know every thought that passes behind her violet eyes. Wants to know every inch of her.
And yet she had pushed him away.
She had surrendered in his arms, and now she eyed him only with coldness, like the embers between them had not burned so brightly, so strongly so as to burn the whole city down. The whole of Westeros. Only Vhagar’s fire could rival it.
“How did you sleep, Princess?” his mother questions.
“Well, your grace,” she responds.
“Tired?”
Visenya meets his gaze again, the muscles in her jaw jumping. “I was exhausted by last night’s attention. More dancing than I am used to. Though I thank you for your concern, Uncle.”
Aemond, she had whispered. Aemond.
He had never liked the sound of his name more.
“I apologize for Prince Aegon’s absence,” his mother cuts in. “I believe he is feeling ill this morn.”
“Yes,” Visenya mutters. “He did seem preoccupied.”
His mother’s mouth purses, but there’s no excuse she can give, exactly. Aegon is a spoiled, lustful cunt. And yet she is not looking at him. She is not looking at him.
“And you weren’t?” Aemond does not mean to bait her, but—
Well, in fact he does.
Even his mother is glaring at him now.
“You seemed happy to dance with the Tyrell and Lannister lords.”
“I am a Princess, Uncle,” she shoots back. “It is my duty to interact with the people of the realm.”
“Ah yes, your mother also enjoyed interacting with knights of the realm as well.”
“Aemond,” his mother snaps, glaring at him. “I apologize for my son’s loose tongue, Princess. He seems to have lost his senses this morn.”
She took them, Aemond wants to snap, petulant like a child. She took my senses away, and now she refuses to take responsibility for it.
Visenya grips onto her fork so tightly Aemond is certain she is mere seconds away from throwing it into the eye she did not maim. Good, he thinks. He wants something from her. He cannot tolerate, cannot stand nothing. Her sitting there cold as stone like—
“I am no longer hungry, your grace,” she mutters, rising. “I would like your leave to excuse myself.”
“Of course,” his mother murmurs. “Mayhaps you would like go to flying.”
When Visenya leaves the room, it is as though she takes the colour with her.
His mother lightly kicks his foot. “Aemond,” she reprimands. “You have proved my point.”
“Helaena didn’t take someone’s eye.”
His mother’s face turns pinched, like she’s smelt something sour.
“You were children, Aemond.”
“You wanted her eye in return.”
“I thought you were the more reasonable of my children,” she mutters. “The sins of the past are that; in the past. Your father demanded we make peace. Let us make peace.”
She tells him to leave, and grudgingly, Aemond does.
He is on the hunt, anyway.
It does not take him long to find her.
Truthfully, Visenya had been hoping for at least a day before she found herself alone with her Uncle yet again. Some time to try and regain her dignity. The Queen inviting her to break her fast had thrown a wrench in that plan. Visenya did not return to the library or her chambers. She did not even go to the dragonpit. Truth be told, she felt too lightheaded, too unsteady to try and climb Vermithor now.
She needed to try and regain her bearings on the ground first before she took the skies again. She hates him for it. For robbing her of her security. For sneaking under her skin.
She hides herself in the chambers her family used to live in when they resided in King’s Landing. Lets the childhood memories surround her. Back when things were simpler. When she had Jace and Luke and her mother and father and Ser Harwin—
“A poor hiding place,” her uncle says as he steps into the room. She does not miss how he bars the door behind them.
Visenya does not stir from where she lays on the abandoned bed, staring at the canopy.
“And yet you went out of your way to find it.”
She hears his footfalls grow closer. She still does not look at him, content to rest her gaze on a cobweb the servants have not yet managed to clean. She feels him stare at her. She can feel the annoyance and impatience radiating off him. He sighs loudly, tapping his foot against the floor.
“Something on your mind, Uncle?” she questions. “You were the one who came to me.”
The reminder makes him scoff. He waits but a second before he reaches out and grabs her ankles, tugging her to the end of the bed. Visenya yelps.
“What are you doing?” she cries. Her hair is ruffled and uneven, she can feel it.
He fixes her with a stare. “I do not appreciate being ignored, niece.”
She ignores how her heart pounds. He lets go of her ankles, letting her sit up with more ease than before. “You are the one who came.”
He smirks. “If I recall correctly, you were the one doing that.”
She scowls, cheeks flushing. You look so beautiful like this, he’d told her, kissing at her neck. Her throat bobs. He traces the movement with his eye as if scoring yet another victory, committing the movement to memory.
“Very well,” she says shortly. “Have you come here to gloat?”
Aemond frowns. “Gloat?”
She glares at him, fiddles with the ring on her finger. “You won, Uncle. We played a game and you won.”
He blinks at her, lips parting. She rolls her eyes. Visenya pushes herself off the bed, smooths out her skirts.
“You got what you wanted,” she continues. “You evened our debt. I took your eye and you—”
She struggles to get the words out. “You compromised my virtue. You won. Now, if you will let me—”
Of course, he doesn’t. He grips her arm when she tries to move past him, forces her to hold still. With one finger, he reaches out to trace her cheek, tilts her chin up.
“Must everything I do be a game to you?” he snarls, despite his gentle touch. “Must you always think my heart black?”
She laughs incredulously, ignoring how his stare darkens. If she looked hard enough, she may have been able to see the whispers of hurt in his violet orb. But she did not look.
“You have shown me no different,” she spits back. “You torment me, jest me, besmirch my name and my mother’s, and call me a whore. Why would I believe this to be anything other than a game?”
His grip on her arm grows tighter.
“Do not pretend that you did not enjoy yourself,” he whispers, reaching out to tuck a lock behind her ear. “I did not even have to touch you. You wanted your pleasure and you took it.” He leans in closer, his mouth brushing against her lashes. “Wanton little thing.”
But Aemond did not take as many precautions this time. She uses her free hand to backhand him, his patch fluttering to the ground, cheek reddening. When he lifts his head to meet her gaze, her breath catches. A blue sapphire is there, taking his lost eye’s place. Rage breathes fire in her belly, but something else too.
It should make him look monstrous, but—
It makes him look beautiful, too.
“Disgusted by what you created?” he questions sharply. She takes a step back, her spine hitting the bedpost. “You are a coward, niece. Refusing to look upon what you did. To face it.”
“You are as much to blame for what happened that night as I,” she hisses, trying to hold onto her venom. “You became cruel. To Baela. To Rhaena. You grabbed Luke by his throat, Aemond. You were going to bash Jace’s head in with a rock.”
“And you do not feel badly for grabbing the blade,” he sneers. “For creating my black heart.”
“Do not blame me for what you became. I did what I had to do that night, and if I had to, I would do it again,” she breathes. “I claimed the second largest dragon in the world, Aemond, and I did not become cruel.”
He clucks his tongue. “That, niece, is debatable.”
Her cheeks blaze red.
Aemond leans in closer, unimpressed by her words, scanning her face for any signs of weakness. She remembers his touch. His kisses. His gaze lingers on her neck, as if he stares enough the evidence will magically appear.
“You are a bastard,” he whispers. “A bastard who bewitches and runs—”
“I do not bewitch—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” he says, capturing her face in his hands. “But I think you do, niece. The court. Your maids. Me.”
“I have done nothing to you,” she hisses. “Nothing.”
“You used me to take your pleasure,” he counters. “I wouldn’t chalk that up to nothing.” His hands settle on her waist, move them up to graze her breasts. “Do you miss my hands, niece? My mouth?”
“To my recollection, you used neither, Uncle. What would there be to miss?”
He chuckles against her ear, smirks against her cheek.
“Can you truly tell me you’ve ever felt as good as you did that night?” he whispers. “With me? If you want to ask for more, niece, to beg for it, I would not judge you. I would understand.”
She bites down on the inner part of her cheek, blood filling her mouth.
“And you?” she questions. “I suppose you are so immune, Aemond. So detached. You would never beg for anything.”
“Dragons do not beg, niece.”
Aemond stumbles back when she shoves him. She is stunning like this. Flushed red with fury, shaking with it. A dragon cloaked in beauty. But to his surprise, she does not try and strike him again. She does not cry or yell or flee. Instead, she moves back onto the bed and hikes up her skirts, exposing her legs and thighs and—
And her cunt.
“What are you doing?” he asks, unable to contain his panic.
“Being wanton,” she replies, pushing herself up on her elbow and leaning her head back. “You say dragons never beg for anything.”
He makes a small noise, watching as her fingers snake their way down, pushing her skirts even more out of the way so he can see everything. His cock throbs in his pants, his throat going dry.
“Is this meant to convince me of your virtue, niece?” he asks, fighting against the weakness in his voice. Her thumb massages the bundle of nerves at the mound of her count, a small whine escaping her red lips.
She shrugs, the swell of her breasts even more obvious with the motion.
“You may leave, Uncle,” she says, flicking her hair over her shoulder with her free, unoccupied, hand. Another heady sound escapes her lips. “I never asked you to come here.”
He grips the bedpost, the wood creaking under his hold. “I will,” he states unconvincingly, watching as she rolls her hips into her palm, her violet eyes fluttering shut. He aches at the sight. He wants to see her pleasure unfold. To watch her pupils turn black as she reaches her peak. He had never seen such a sight before. He craves to see it again.
“Very well.” Her other hand moves to cup her breast, and his muscles grow taunt. Her eyes flutter open. “Did you not say – ah – that you were going to leave?”
He nods, gritting his teeth, and turns, movements stiff and stone line. He’s taken a single step when he hears her let out a moan and—
Aemond turns to find that she’s snuck a finger inside her. Her nub looks so swollen, so neglected. He wants to taste her. Wants to suck on her lips and explore her cunt and every curve of her body. Everything that makes her scream.
He sits on the edge of the bed, watching. Aemond is good at watching. He will not succumb to this game she is playing. He will not.
“You need another,” he advises, watching as she squirms against the mattress. “Another finger, sweet.”
His hand curls around her ankle. He hates the stockings for cutting off her skin from his touch. Angrily, he rips them off her legs, tossing the tatters behind him. His gaze is fixed on her lovely red face, watching as she helplessly chases her pleasure.
She follows his advice, groaning at the back of her throat, her hips rising off the bed.
“What are you thinking of?” he demands, stroking his thumb soothingly in his circles by her heel. “Tell me, Visenya. Tell me.”
Her head tilts back, her arm giving out so she falls against the bed. He smiles.
“Anything,” she whispers. “Everything.”
He squeezes his cock to try and ease the ache, but it does not help.
“Your nub,” he says. “You need to rub it. Let me show you—”
Her free foot moves to hold him back, pressing into his stomach. Her violet eyes, through the haze of pleasure, dance with amusement. He grits his teeth. Damn her.
“I never said you could touch, Uncle,” she tells him. “Sit down.”
They glare at each other, her fingers still working. He can hear it. He forces himself back down, his thumb digging into her skin. She smiles, satisfied, and leans back, closing her eyes against as she rubs even more desperately against her cunt, her pleasure so close yet so far.
He can see her wetness. See her coat her thighs and wrist, her fingers glistening as they move, her cunt throbbing and fluttering. He can see it. He wants to taste her. Wants to taste her so badly he aches with it all over.
“Let me touch you, sweet,” he says. He moves closer, pushing her sweat soaked hair out of her face. A small mm leaves her lips, her mouth graving his hand. His cock jerks in his pants. “Let me pleasure you, lovely. You’re so close.”
“I can’t—” she hisses, twisting. “It’s so close, Aemond. I’m so close.”
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, but still, it is not enough.
“I know,” he coos, his hand creeping up her thigh. He bends down and presses a fleeting kiss to her ankle, and she starts shaking her head. “Let me touch you, sweet.”
She adds another finger, rocking, desperate and pleading and—
“Please,” he whispers, unable to take it. “Please, Visenya.”
Her violet eyes fly open, bloodshot and black, and she nods.
Aemond descends on her like a beggar would a feast, tossing her legs over his shoulder as he slithers in between her thighs. He’s dreamt of taking his time with her. Spending hours lavishing kisses on all her body. Her thighs, her ankles, her hips, her back. Holding her off the edge until she’s begging and red and weeping with want.
Now, he does not care.
He plunges his tongue inside her, lavishing her cunt, and he moans at her taste. Bitter and tart but so lovely. Her hips rock into his face, desperate, her fingers scrambling into his hair, tugging violently.
“More,” she pants. “More.”
He gives it to her, rocking against the sheets himself to try and ease the ache in his sock. He sucks on her nub like he would honey on a spoon, her thighs shaking by his ear as he nudges his nose into her bundle of nerves, his thumb tracing her entrances, gathering her slick.
He looks up. Her face is red, but her expression dripping with ecstasy. Her eyes remain closed. Aemond frowns, displeased.
“Open your eyes,” he commands Valyrian, sliding a finger inside her. She does, startled and desperate with want. He wonders what kind of sight he makes to her; her legs dragged over his shoulders, her fingers tangled in his hair, his nose, lips and chin shining with her wetness. Sapphire eye gleaming. Does she think him a rogue or a monster?
He thrusts another finger inside her, moving them in sync, and her moan breaks, her hips becoming so uncontrollable he has to pin her down.
“Tsk tsk,” he murmurs. “Desperate little thing. Your fingers weren’t enough, were they? You needed this.” He licks up and down her folds, delighted with her mewls. “Needed me.”
He sucks on her nub fleetingly and breaks away, ignoring how his heart twists at the discontented whine that escapes her throat. She’d closed her eyes again.
“Look at me,” he commands in valyrian. “Look at me.”
She does. The pleasure it gives him is insurmountable. He closes his mouth around her swollen pink lips and sucks and—
Her heels dig into his back as she peaks, her back arching off the bed in a bed curve, her breasts straining against her dress. He has never seen anything lovelier. He rolls onto his back beside her, barely managing to undo his laces before he pulls at his cock once, twice, three times before he spills into his hand, a soft groan escaping his throat.
When he comes to, Visenya is on her side, gazing at him, cheeks flushed a delicious pink. She has never seen a cock before, no doubt. He wants to grab her hand and teach her how to use it, imagines her small fist enclosed around him—
But more than that, he craves her lips.
Aemond inches closer, his gaze fixed on her swollen mouth, red from all her biting and desire, and creeps down. A mere feather width away, he’s stopped by a hand on his chest.
“I thought you said dragons do not beg, Uncle,” he hears her say. His eye flies open. “What does that make you?”
She rolls away before he can reach her, smooths out her clothing, studiously avoids staring at his bare cock. Now she wants to act virtuous, he thinks, shaking his head. He can admire her tenaciousness. Her willingness to play the game. He’s still smiling. The most delicious sort of pain is that which is self-inflicted, after all.
“Next time you call me wanton, I’d like you to think on this moment again,” she says, staring down at him for once. “Begging for your brother’s betrothed.”
He hears move to the door.
“And I’d like you, niece, to think about me in between your legs next time you pleasure yourself,” he retorts. “Think about how your fingers weren’t enough.”
She laughs. Sweet and cruel and lovely.
“I’m a good actor, my prince.”
And then she leaves.
Aemond is getting sick and tired of her doing that.
Notes:
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Chapter 6
Notes:
thank u guys sm for your response to this story! means the world. let me know what you think!
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 6
Visenya spends the next week waiting for him to strike. In all her life, she has never felt so on edge. Her skin whispers for a touch that is not even close. There are of course other concerns – what if he told someone, what if someone heard—
Her moaning, tugging at his hair and his soft groan as he took himself in hand and—
But most of all, through the mix of guilt and shame, she feels victorious. Satisfied. She had made him beg. Had made him forget himself so completely he surrendered. Evening the playfield felt better than she thought it would.
But what continues to trouble her is the impulsiveness of her action. No, not the impulsiveness – the surety. The confidence. If someone had told Visenya before she left Dragonstone that she would bare herself before her Uncle and pleasure herself until he begged to intervene she would have called them mad and been tempted to feed them to Vermithor.
Instead, here she is.
She’s had trouble controlling her tongue her whole life, yes, but this is something else entirely. The look in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, the way he looked as he feasted between her legs – it made her feel power, not shame. She felt shame for her desire, to be sure, but not that it felt good.
This was a game she intends to in, even if she’s not quite sure what winning is. What the reward entails.
But Aemond leaves her alone. No doubt to lick his wounds and nurse his ego. She does see him in the intervening days. At supper with the Queen. Walking the halls. She even goes so far as to visit the training yard, where he glances at her once, jaw working, before his gaze flits away.
Visenya has never been a particularly gracious winner.
The Queen has taken to summoning her more often, however. The time they spend together is stilted and awkward, spent staring into their embroidery or books than genuinely enjoying each other’s company. One day, Visenya brings a book with her to the Queen’s solar.
“Your mother and I read that together, you know,” the Queen tells her after a long period of heavy silence.
Visenya pauses. “I did not, your grace.” When she looks up, Alicent Hightower looks slightly younger, less strained by the years. A small smile plays on the older woman’s lips, her eyes glazed over with memories past.
Alicent pulls open one of her drawers, rummages around, and pulls out a single sheet of paper, offering it to her. “Your mother ripped it out, Septa be damned. She wanted to help me study.”
“That sounds like something she would do,” Visenya murmurs, throat catching. She misses her mother with a fierceness that takes her breath away. For a second, staring into the Queen’s eyes, she believes the older woman feels the same. Visenya can’t help but wonder who the Queen used to be as a young girl. Was her mother like the sister the Queen never had? The age difference between her mother and her half-siblings was too great for them to be close, the animosity too strong.
The Queen clears her throat, fiddles with the seven-pointed star necklace draped around her neck. “Yes, your mother always did have a penchant for breaking the rules.”
“Sometimes rules are made to be broken, your grace.”
The Queen looks at her sharply, a myriad of emotions flickering in her hazel-green orbs. “I know your mother raised you to think so.”
And later, when Visenya is alone, she cannot say the Queen is wrong. She is certain beyond anything that Helaena has not engaged in any of the behaviour she has since her arrival in King’s Landing. She also knows Jace isn’t like him.
Maybe there’s something wrong with her, then. Something colder than what’s inside her brothers.
At night, though, she doesn’t feel cold.
What Aemond said about her fingers being lacking after their encounter is not true, after all.
The memories of him between her legs are enough to pluck her pleasure like a harp.
Aemond does not like being beaten.
A simple truth, maybe, but one he clings to. As a child he was sullen and uncommunicative when he lost or was criticized by his mother.
But now—
He takes to riding Vhagar more and more often. The clouds give him comfort, the cold air nipping at his skin as he guides Vhagar through the clear skies. It helps him keep his mind off—
Whenever he sees her in the halls, she stares at him plainly, lips twitching, like there’s something funny only to her. Something only she knows. Other times she just brushed past him like he’s not there.
It makes him feel small. Vulnerable. Like he’s something disposable to her. Meaningless. Aemond has been training more and more these past few days. When he’s not sleeping, he’s pacing. When he’s not pacing, he’s training. When he’s not training, he’s with Vhagar.
The whole situation would be a lot easier to handle if he didn’t want to do it again.
It’s not wise, not particularly smart, either, but he craves it. Craves her cunt and her fingers and her pleasure. Wants to kiss her and feel her lips and drown in her touch. With all that has transpired between them, her kiss continues to elude him.
The problem for him, is what he will do once he has it. If merely walking by her in the hallway threatens to consume him, to make him want to drag her to his chambers and never let her go, if he had her kiss—
She is to be Aegon’s bride, not his. Yet another thing his brother will claim merely because he was born first. Not because he earned it. Earned her. Deserved her. But because Aegon had the good luck of exiting their mother’s cunt first.
Vhagar stirs a little, a murmur leaving her mouth as she senses her rider’s turmoil. But her alarm grows more alert as they spot another shadow in the sky. Visenya. She dives through the clouds on Vermithor, her glee infectious like a child as her laughter fills the air.
Aemond watches her. He can’t help but watch her.
The more he watches her, the angrier he seems to feel. It is not fair that he suffers so. All his life he has committed to being a dragon. A fearsome being. Targaryens are closer to God’s then men, but he feels like he is bleeding. His desire for her is common, base, a feeling that a thousand men have had before.
Or so he tells himself.
But they are not common men, slaves to their own desires. They are dragons.
And he is above this.
He edges Vhagar on, and soon they are swooping by Vermithor, circling around the bronze beast, and Aemond aches. He aches and he rages and he wants to claim her smiles and her laughter and pleasure. Wants to hold it tight in his fists and never let her go. Wants to make her scream until she aches for him as much as he does for her.
Vhagar gets close. Dangerously close. But he swerves at the last second, ignoring Vermithor’s growl.
“Are you mad, Uncle?” Visenya calls out after him, her dark hair whipping behind her. Vhagar exhales a small ball of fire, her wings glazing through the smoke.
Aemond does not answer.
Only as mad as you made me, he wishes to say. He cackles instead, glancing over his shoulder. Visenya looks beautiful even when she is red-nosed and furious. Vermithor may be smaller than Vhagar, but he is faster. He catches up to his ride in no time, snapping his jaw as Aemond guides Vhagar through the clouds.
The bronze beast is as temperamental as its mistress, but Vhagar is a seasoned battle rider, older than Vermithor despite his great size and history. Aemond merely guides her away, whispering sweet nothings to his dragon, calling for her to calm.
Visenya is focused on the race – quick to anger and impulsivity. Aemond inhales sharply. He can worth that. He can.
To what end, he is not yet sure.
When Visenya descends Vermithor, it is not dragonkeeper hands that aid her down.
No, it is him.
Visenya can almost admire his audacity to make such an approach by her beast given his earlier outlandishness, but her thoughts are cut off by him pressing her into Vermithor’s side, hidden from view. His hands cup her waist, his warmth seeps through her clothing to her flesh.
Please, he had whispered. Please.
“I dream of your cunt,” he whispers in her ear.
Her eyes flicker up to him. She wishes to rip off his patch, to see his sapphire once more. To cup his face in her hands and drag him between her legs.
Wants his kiss, even.
Despite all they had done, all the filthiness and the lust, he still has not given her a kiss.
Her breath hitches, her legs parting ever so slightly and he presses her even more firmly into Vermithor’s side, his lips skimming down her earlobe, the slope of her neck, reaching her pulsepoint—
And then he wrenches himself away without a word.
Visenya sways, bewildered, almost wondering if she had dreamt it. His anger earlier had been palpable. She could see the scorn in his eyes, the rage twisted in his lips. But now—
Now, his touch had been gentle. Visenya exhales sharply.
It seems her dear uncle would be ignoring her no longer.
He doesn’t stop.
He corners her when she leaves the library, presses her into the door, his hand sneaking up her dress. “Your cunt had been so pretty, niece,” he whispers, his thumb skimming at her folds. “Would you show it to me again?”
“Never,” she hisses, but he only smiles and steps away, whistling as he walks down the halls.
He finds her in the gardens. Sneaks an arm around her waist and pulls her flush against his chest, a hand against her mouth to prevent her from screaming until she realizes who it is.
“You are mad, Uncle,” she whispers, unable to look around to see if anyone is near. “If people see—”
“You are scared of the masses?” he murmurs, amusement in his voice. He nips lightly at her neck, moving her hair out of the way. Her eyes flutter shut. “Not very dignified for a princess.”
“It wasn’t very dignified when you begged.”
He presses her more firmly against his chest, inhales sharply. “Your scent,” he whispers, his other hand dipping to the cut of her dress, skimming the swell of her breasts. She inhales. “So improper.”
“I am the improper one?” she questions, trying to maintain her cool.
He lowers his lips down, presses them to her ear. “You are the one who showed me your cunt, Visenya. Who let me pleasure you.”
“You begged—”
“You provoked me,” he points out. “You wanted it, you know it’s true. You wanted to prove a point.”
Visenya stiffens. The truth was, as she very well knows, that he is right. She had wanted to even the field. He could not shame her for her weakness if he suffered from the very same affliction. And yet here they both are; the best way to get rid of an illness is to cut it out. To let it wither and die.
And yet here they are.
Here they are.
“I think you wanted me in between your legs,” he murmurs, his hand moving down her breasts, her stomach, her hipbone, down to cup her cunt through her legs.
“Aemond,” she snaps, a weak reprimand if ever she heard one.
“I think you want me.”
The sound of a bird cawing draws her back to her senses. She pushes herself out of his arms, but she’s not fast enough to escape him completely, his hand latched around her wrist.
“You don’t know what I want,” she hisses.
His expression darkens. “You’re a coward, Visenya.”
“If this,” she sputters, “Were to be discovered, I would be the one to lose everything. Your sin would be forgiven, as men always are. Women cannot afford to make mistakes.”
“And yet,” he says, looking right into her eyes. “You still want it. You still want more.”
He bends down and kisses her neck again. She wonders if he can feel her heartbeat. How it pounds whenever he’s near. Her mother never told her desire could feel like this. She said she could feel it, should feel it in her marriage bed, but her mother never told her it would make her feel this raw. This powerless.
Visenya had felt nothing but power when she’d tugged up her skirts and baited him, and now she feels the opposite. But it’s an exquisite sort of powerlessness. Knowing that she could fall and it would feel good. He would make her feel good.
And then he could discard her.
His thumb presses into the hollow of her throat.
“I think I have some idea,” he tells her. “If you would only be honest with yourself.”
And then he lets her go.
Visenya wants to scream at him. What do you want from me, Uncle? She’d asked him once.
She still has no answer.
Aemond finds them in his mother’s solar.
By them, he means Aegon and Visenya.
His brother seems close to sleep as he leans back in his chair, Visenya sitting stiffly beside him, a letter in her hand. His mother sits further off, concerned with her embroidery.
“Brother,” Aegon beams, flying out of his chair in his relief. It is quite possibly the happiest Aegon has ever greeted him. “Rescue me,” Aegon pleads beneath his breath.
Aemond ignores him. Visenya sits at the table, ever so pretty, her earrings shining in the sunlight that pours in through the window. She meets his gaze fleetingly. Her dress is lined with white at her sleeves and hem, the rest a blood red that brings the colour in her cheeks. Resentment stirs in his gut. Aegon wishes to flee her?
He rolls his eyes.
“Mother,” he greets. Her face softens as she notices him.
Visenya keeps staring at him. After their encounter in the garden, he has touched her only once. A fleeting graze in the hall. But the look of impatience on her faith had been worth it.
“Did the Hand send you?” she asks.
Aemond nods.
His mother brandishes a list from her sleeve, hands it to him. Visenya watches the transaction from the corner of her eye, he can tell.
“A list of brides, brother,” Aegon drawls, looking at the list over his shoulder.
“It will be good for you to have a good-sister, Visenya,” his mother chimes in. “Your family will not always be here and you cannot visit them all the time after you are wed.”
Aemond looks at the list of the names.
“You do not have to choose this instant,” his mother says, shooting him a smile. “But soon. After the wedding.”
“That’s still over half a year away, Mother,” Aemond says, handing her back the list. “Let us see Aegon and Helaena wed, no?”
Aegon chuckles. “Smart dodging, brother. Truly.”
Aemond glares at him.
The moment passed, his mother does not protest as Aegon leads him outside.
“Will I see you at the whorehouse then, brother?” Aegon jests. “Sowing your wild oats before they also imprison you to the marriage bed?” Aegon cackles. ‘Not that I will be, of course.”
Aemond grunts.
“Come now,” Aegon leers. “Don’t pretend to be better than me, you were at the whorehouse not weeks past—”
The door to their mother’s solar slams shut.
Visenya is there, smile stiff, hands clasped.
“My lords,” she greets, violet eyes cold as any winter storm. “If you will excuse me.”
Aegon at least has the decency to laugh after she’s turned the corner.
“She is to be your wife, Aegon,” Aemond snaps. “You could try to treat her with honour.”
“She’s a bastard—”
Aemond looks at his brother. “And you are such a prize.”
He leaves his brother behind and stalks after her. Her strides are quick, her posture straight. He catches her anyway. The Old Queen’s abandoned chambers are not far.
He drags her to them and bars the door.
“I thought you had whores to amuse, Uncle,” she snipes.
“I did not think you cared what I did.”
“I do not.”
“And yet you are upset.”
Her smile is cutting. “I merely feel sorry for your future bride, having to deal with such a man.”
Aemond grabs her, his eyes flitting to the mirror behind her. He spins her around, presses her back flush against his chest.
“Let me go, Uncle,” she says, twisting against his touch. “Let me go.”
He sniffs her hair, his hand on her waist. He tilts her chin up to meet the mirror, his back resting again the door. She’s stubborn, gaze low, cheeks flushed. He has never seen anything lovelier. “Never,” he breathes.
A small sound stirs in the back of her throat, but she refuses to look him in the mirror.
“Look at me, Visenya,” he says. “Look at me.”
She does not.
He lets go of her, but she does not move. She does not move.
“You are afraid,” he says. “Of your desire. A dragon scared of her own fire.”
“I am not afraid,” she snaps, violet eyes blazing. He snorts.
He gently grasps her chin and tilts it up so their gazes meet in the mirror. “I am not ashamed of my desire for you,” he breathes. “I am not. I do not fear it.”
How could he have ever called this feeling base? No, he is wrong. Was wrong. Men have felt desire, but this is not just desire. He looks at her and his blood feels golden. His desire may be something every man has felt before since the beginning of time, but touching her makes her feel like he is touching the heavens.
“What do you see?” he asks. “What do you see?”
Visenya rolls her eyes.
“I see myself, Uncle—”
“No games, Visenya,” he cuts in. “No games. Look.”
He removes his hand from her chin when she complies. His eye is fixed upon her reflection, his chin resting on her shoulder. Slowly, her breathing settles. Her heartbeat is lulled into a calm the longer she gazes into the mirror. Her violet eyes are narrowed, still dark from earlier. A whore. She had known it of Aegon, but of Aemond?
It had grated her.
And it should not.
It should not.
And yet—
She likes the sight in the mirror. His arm sneaking back around her waist. His other hand sneaking up to undo her braid.
“Aemond—”
“Shh,” he whispers into the curve of her neck. “I wish to see you bare, niece.”
Her eyelids flutter at his gentle touch. He pulls at her hair. “Eyes open,” he commands. “I will not have you hide from me.”
She forces her eyes open. “Aemond—”
His lips kiss the back of her neck, and her head falls back. “I know,” he murmurs, thumb stroking her waist. “I know.”
He reaches for the laces on her dress, his eye meeting her gaze in the mirror as his nimble fingers pause. She says nothing. The smile that forms on his lips is wry and satisfied but lovely. Even pleased. She watches in the mirror as he drags her sleeves past her shoulders, exposing her breasts but no more. Her nipples pebble in the air.
He cups one breast in hand, kneads it, kissing at her neck. A low moan escapes her lips.
“What do you see?” he presses, hand sneaking down her dress. “What do you see?”
His other hand cups her cunt, and pleasure makes her head spin, stars bursting in her stomach.
“Us,” she chokes out, struggling to keep her eyes open. Her reflection – she is something she does not recognize. Wanton and desperate. Eyes black, skin blotched red, hair mused. Her silver-haired lover glued to her side, clad in black. A creature of the night. “I see us.”
He smirks into her skin, buries his face in it. “Good.”
Aemond moves to stroke her folds, but—
“Wait,” she has, leaning against him even more. He stops, meets her gaze in the mirror as she reaches back with her hands to take off his eye patch.
“Visenya—”
“I will see you bare too, Uncle,” she says firmly. His lips purse, but he nods. Visenya can’t help but smile. She drops his patch to the floor, and the sapphire seems even more blue in the mirror.
“Do you like it, niece?” he asks, nipping at her skin. Hard enough to feel good, but not hard enough to mark. “Do you like seeing the damage you caused me?”
He sneaks a finger inside her, hissing with satisfaction at the wetness he finds. His other hand moves from her breast to her chin, forcing it up, not allowing her to look away. But she likes it. She likes seeing herself with her skirts bunched up to her waist, her breasts exposed, hair mused, his fingers buried inside her. His sapphire glistening in the mirror. She likes it.
She nods, choking back moans with every passing breath. She grips onto his neck, rocking against his hand.
He tsks. “Wanton little thing.” Aemond adds another finger and she flushes. Gods, she can hear it. Him moving inside her. Can feel his cock hardening against her back. Pleasure blooms and blooms like a flower in spring, like a summer’s fire spreading across a forest and—
“Do not close your eyes,” he hisses. “I will not let you run away. Not this time.”
“Aemond,” she pleads, though whether it is for more or for mercy she does not know.
“I have half the mind to leave you like this,” he mutters, his thumb rubbing against her clit. “I do, truly.”
Panic helps her keep her eyes open. He notices.
“Do you not like that, sweet?” he questions, laughter in his voice. “Will you beg?”
She bites down on her lip so hard she bleeds. He pries her mouth open with his other hand, tilts her head so he can nudge his nose against hers. This gentleness does not last. He tilts her head back in direction of the mirror.
“I want to see you come,” he breathes into her ear, fingers moving faster. “I want you to tell me who is making you finish. So you can remember, sweet.” He presses a kiss behind her neck. “Can you do that for me?”
Gritting her teeth, she nods.
“Good, Princess,” he murmurs. “Good. Who is making you come?”
“I’m not coming yet,” she swipes.
His fingers dig into her deliciously and she moans, bucking her hips, her breasts swaying with the movement and—
“Who?’ he hisses, slowing his pace down.
She makes herself keep her eyes open. “You.”
And then he adds another finger, cock jerking against her bottom, and she’s gone. She sags against him, moaning, and he presses wet, open mouthed kisses to her neck, small comforts in the aftershocks.
There’s the sound of him undoing his laces. Can feel him undo his pants, wrap his hand around his cock. His gaze is fixed on her in the mirror. Her breasts, her relieved, satisfied form. She can barely keep herself upright. She is bare and satisfied and—
She wants him as undone as she is.
Tentatively, she reaches back and grabs his hand. Aemond freezes in the mirror, then hisses in between his teeth as she slowly wraps her hand around him. The angle is awkward, the feeling even more so. Her cheeks flush. Despite all, she is a maiden, though he makes her forget her inexperience. Makes her want to keep falling.
He grabs her hand, but instead of forcing it away he sticks it between her thighs, gathering wetness, before he returns it to his length, his hand dwarfing hers. She lets him guide her. It is a wonder to see him in the mirror. The twitch of his lips, of his cheek. How his eye falls shut the faster his movements get, his lips falling open. His sapphire glints in the light.
If he felt a fraction as good watching her fall apart as she does him—
That is dangerous.
But she does not let herself think of it. He thrusts against her, hips moving off their own accord, and then he’s groaning faintly. His cock gives out a queer jerk, but she keeps her hand there until it feels over.
The sound of their panting fills the room. It is quiet. No contest. No satisfaction. Just satiated pleasure.
Her eyes flicker to the abandoned bed. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it, to drag him there and have him bed her properly.
And yet he fucked a whore.
Her eyes close. He always makes her forget her senses. Always.
Visenya eyes only open when he presses another kiss to her shoulder. Gentle. Reverent. Almost thankful. It should not belong to someone with such a black heart. Who loathes her. But when she meets his gaze in the mirror, it is not loathing she finds. It is almost something tender, if hesitant. If suspicious. His beauty may be cruel, but his expression is not.
Visenya lets herself admit then that she would prefer him as a husband to Aegon, not that she would ever tell him.
Wordlessly, Aemond redoes her laces. Helps her ready herself. For all that this is his victory, he is surprisingly subdued. Thoughtful. He tidies himself up as well, finally taking a step away from the door to let her pass.
She does not move.
Their gazes meet. His sapphire eye is still exposed. She bends down and picks it up gingerly, keenly aware of him watching her.
“Visenya,” he states simply.
She takes a step towards him, patch in hand and reaches out to put it back on herself. She had not felt sorry when she gave him that scar. When she took his eye. What she said before she meant; if she had to do it again, she would. Her family comes first.
But she does not look at his scar with triumph or apathy now.
Instead, something almost mournful sings its quiet song in her chest. She wishes, for one brief, horrible, pointless moment, that none of this happened. That it were not necessary for her to have done what she did. That he was kinder and the world was sweeter, and that children did not feel compelled to be cruel with their words or withdraw knives over insults.
She presses a soft kiss to his cheek, an expression of her sudden grief, and he tilts his head and—
Somehow, their lips slide together. It’s a gentle brush at first. Despite all they have done, she still has not kissed anyone. She learnt how to pleasure herself with her fingers long ago, but a kiss—
A kiss she has not shared.
Fire may burn between them, but their kiss is gentle as the waves lapping on the shore. Her hands move to his cheeks, cupping them and—
The kiss changes.
He walks her back into the wall, clutching at her hair, and now he is devouring her, consuming her and—
For a moment, Visenya is content to let him.
They part for air, their brows resting against each other despite their great height difference.
A great deal has passed between them. Most of which would have her thrown in jail for treason if it were discovered, her name sullied beyond repair. And yet—
This kiss feels like the most dangerous thing of all. An acknowledgment that things have drastically, inalterably shifted.
“Go,” he tells her. It is perhaps the first mercy he has ever shown her. “Go.”
She gulps. “Aemond—”
“Go.”
She wants to stay, to prove his claims of cowardice wrong, but she can sense the danger in the air, on her tongue. The shift. But she does not move. She cannot make herself move. His nostrils flare, annoyance fast to flash on his face. “Very well,” he mutters.
He unbars the door and ushers her out, leaving her no room for argument.
Finally, she goes.
She thinks it is a mercy for them both.
Notes:
not entirely happy with the end of this chapter, but I digress!
kudos and comments mean the world! <3!
Chapter 7
Notes:
lol I actually hate this chapter sm but it had to be done! hope y'all like it. thanks sm for the response to this story!
Until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 7
He dreams of her.
It’s not necessarily an unusual occurrence these past few moons. Usually his mind is flooded with memories of her moaning around him, gasping his name, sighing. The taste of her pleasure on his tongue.
But this dream—
It is softer. Sweeter. Like biting until the first apple of spring. Seeing the sun rise after a harsh winter storm. She laughs in his ear, stars glinting in her eyes as she beams. Aemond, she whispers, hands cupping his face. Aemond.
And then she gives him her kiss.
He wakes hard and aching, sweating through his sheets, lips haunted by the loss. But his heart – it twinges strangely. Faintly echoing. Hurting like it did when he was a child and ran around the castle, panting and out of breath. He closes his eyes.
The memory still lingers.
“It is a bad habit,” the Queen tells her, eyeing her critically, “to play with your lips so.”
Visenya drops her hands. She’s been picking her lips raw recently. Biting at them. Smacking them together. She doesn’t know what to do with them.
“My apologies, your grace,” she mutters.
“It is no matter. Helaena – well, she has some peculiar habits also.”
Visenya smiles slightly. Her brother has been writing to her more of his betrothed. “Jace says she likes to collect Beatles.”
The Queen’s expression brightens. “She does. Other girls want dresses and jewels for their nameday celebrations, but Helaena only wanted a rare scorpion from Dorne.”
“My brother will try and get her some too.”
“Yes, he seems like the kind of boy who would,” Alicent Hightower concedes. She looks mildly uncomfortable for a second, as if remembering how her own first born has failed in such ways. “Aemond used to speak with Helaena about her little pets. He was kinder, as a boy.”
Visenya had never herself experienced Aemond’s kindness as a girl. He’d always been cold with her. Maybe there had been some shared experience with their lack of dragons, but they’d never been close.
And now—
Well, she’s hardly going to tell the Queen of how her son kissed her cunt filthily.
But there’d been that other kiss, hadn’t there?
A softer kiss. Gentle. Like something from a song.
Gentle and Aemond were never words she thought she could fit into the same sentence, and yet here they are.
The Queen clears her throat when Visenya doesn’t reply.
“Come,” the older woman says. “Let us go down to Fleabottom, no? It is time we do charity in the name of the seven.”
Visenya has not gone down to Fleabottom very often. Her mother took her on occasion when they resided in King’s Landing, but she cannot say she has missed it. There are colours and spices, but there’s also dirt and shit and blood.
But these are their people. Visenya can’t help but ache for them, especially the children. She doesn’t see how her grandfather could just ignore this. Them. And she can’t see why a man like Aegon delights in these streets so much. Would soak in the suffering instead of trying to fix it.
When they enter the orphanage, the Queen is distant if kind to the children, handing them some food and coin. Visenya spots a little boy at the corner, excluded from the other kids, and she goes to him.
“Hello,” she greets. “What is your name?”
When the boy lifts his little head, she is taken aback by the scar on his face, the black hole where his eye should be.
“Lukys,” he says.
For a moment, Visenya is transported back in time. She is a girl not yet ten with a knife in her hands, screaming as she slashes her uncle’s face.
“Well, Lukys,” she greets, bending down so they’re eye to eye. “Would you like some bread?”
He nods shyly, clutches the bread she hands him like it is the most precious thing he has ever possessed. Her heart aches as he munches on it. He’s so small. He’s younger than Aemond was when she…
“You are very pretty,” he tells her. “I did not know such pretty things could exist near me.”
“Oh, Lukys,” she breathes. Without quite thinking, she leans over and presses a kiss to his brow, smooths back his curls. She can feel the Queen startle at the affectionate display. “You are beautiful.”
Lukys beams at her, soft and lovely, and Visenya—
When she turns, Aemond is somehow there in the doorway, hand on his sword, watching her and Lukys with a closed off expression.
“Come, Mother,” he says. His eye darts to her. “Princess.”
When she walks out the door, after arranging with the orphanage keeper to have bread delivered there every week, Aemond offers his arm to help her back into the wheelhouse.
Her fingers curl around his wrist, the warmth seeping into her skin.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, glancing at his eye. She thinks of little Lukys and her heart—
His thumb strokes her palm before he lets go. She’d like to think it intentional, but she never knows with him. That is the truth. Despite how much she has seen, how much they have exposed to each other, she knows not his heart. She knows Jace and Luke and Joff like the back of her own hand. Knows what makes them tick, what they fear, what they crave. The curve of their smile when they laugh. The memories are imprinted in her mind.
But Aemond—
His heart is unknowable to her, even if his kiss is not. Even if that haunts her.
How can she care for someone she does not truly know? Or understand?
It eats at her. And it shouldn’t. Her mother taught her to be smarter, wiser. To not let people take advantage of her. And now—
She does not know. She does not know.
And that eats at her.
She is much better at playing a game, at winning, than she is at whatever this is. Is it a game still, or is it real—
But it cannot be that. It cannot.
Restless she is. She cannot sleep properly, cannot eat. Not without—
But she most stop. She must. She cannot lust after a man whose eye she ripped out. A man who would see the end of her family if not for the fact that his sister was in their care. And her loyalty to them, to Jace, to her mother, comes first.
It does. It will.
Despite what this is.
And yet she notices him.
In the halls, in the Queen’s solar when they are both there. The way the flames dance on his face as he sits before the fire, gripping the chair. His face carved in stone. He barely looks at her. Go, he had told her, both a command and a plea all at once. Go.
And she had fled.
She can’t help but wonder what would have occurred if she had stayed. Would one kiss have turned to two? To three? Would she have managed to strip him bare, too? His doublet, his tunic. Would she have tugged him to bed and let him slip inside her—
She glances away when he meets her gaze.
Visenya likes to think she wouldn’t have. She really does.
Otto Hightower joins them for supper that night. Aegon is there too, dragged out of whatever brothel they found him in before. The King is still abed. Otto Hightower generally likes to pretend she doesn’t exist, which she prefers usually. He was not the Hand when she was a girl, but her mother has warned her about him. He’s a slimy, sleazy old man.
And yet he is dangerous. She must not forget.
Her stomach tightens into knots. It’s never far from her mind, the possibility that this could all be a trick. A lie. A scheme to sully her name and her reputation. If her lack of chastity was proven and exposed to the court, her mother’s reputation would be tarnished beyond repair too. The ghost of Harwin Strong lingers.
And the Greens would win.
Visenya looks down at her empty goblet. Yet there had been many opportunities for them to be caught or exposed. Once would have been enough. For it to happen so many times…
Otto Hightower had been nowhere to be found.
Go, Aemond had told her. Go.
She had not felt threatened in his arms. Just alive. Bold. He had desired her, and she had thrived on it. The power. The knowledge that she affected him so. She made the mighty rider of Vhagar beg.
Visenya presses her thighs together at the memory just as Aemond takes his seat beside her. He meets her gaze as he tucks his chair in. She wishes to look upon his sapphire again. To strip him bare once more, for now she realizes that was the most naked she could ever see him. He is the one to look away first, this time.
They’re so close to each other. Their knees almost brush beneath the table.
“Princess,” the Hand begins. “How do you find King’s Landing?”
Visenya searches his gaze for any mocking quality. Any suspicion. She finds none. Just the same disapproval of her existence.
“Well, my lord Hand,” she replies. “King’s Landing was my first home.”
“And it will be your last once you wed Aegon,’ he sends. “His place – your place will be in King’s Landing.”
“If that is what the King and future Queen wish,” she allows. “I know my mother has always liked to have her children close.”
Aegon snorts inelegantly.
“As you will when you give Prince Aegon sons,” Otto Hightower replies. “Mayhaps you will give him twins, too.”
From the corner of her eye, she can see Aemond take a long sip from his cup.
“Perhaps,” she mutters, taking a bite of her freshly served steak.
“Well, it will be fun to try,” Aegon drawls.
Visenya sets down her fork as his mother scolds him. Even Otto looks disgusted. Beneath the table, a hand settles on her thigh. Aemond. She tries her best not to tense. But he doesn’t try anything. His hand is just there. A warm, comforting weight.
“You fly on your dragon a lot,” Otto continues. “Visit the dragonpit.”
“I do,” Visenya says. “Vermithor needs to be ridden a lot.”
Aemond’s nails dig into her skin. Visenya has to reserve the urge to glare at him. She grabs his hand instead, interlaces their fingers so he can’t try and move his fingers to where she wants him most.
“Indeed,” Otto agrees. “A massive beast. Comparable to Vhagar.”
Aemond merely grunts.
Conversation tapers out after that, Aegon too busy scowling into his meal to try and converse with her more.
“Are you not hungry?” the Queen asks Aemond, noting him picking at his food. Visenya’s grip on his hand tightens inadvertently.
The movement seems to stir something inside him. He removes his hand quickly, not even looking at her.
Coward, she wishes to snap. Coward coward coward.
After all the trouble and pain he’d given her for running, and now he does this?
She has to bite down her scoff.
When everyone is done eating, she is the first to excuse herself.
Aemond finds her in the gardens.
He does not mean to. Does not suspect she will be there, even. But he needed the air. Needed to breathe. Vhagar is too far, and he is too tired, and she is there anyway, sitting beneath her favourite tree.
She is his ghost and his phantom, and he is glad to see her regardless.
“It is dangerous for a Princess to be out so late,” he says, unable to help himself.
“With men like you prowling about, Uncle, I agree,” she snaps, forcing herself to her feet. Visenya dusts off her skirts, not even glancing in his direction as she tries to walk past him. He grabs her arm anyway. Why why why does he do so?
“Running?”
She scoffs. “You’re one to talk.”
He tugs her behind the tree so they are further hidden from view, ignoring her whispered protests.
“Are you mad?” she hisses. “If someone were to discover us—”
“It didn’t bother you before,” he points out.
She falters, if only for a moment. “That was different,” she states. “Is your grandsire lingering in the shadows, Uncle?”
Now he is the one to be startled. “Pardon?”
“Is he?”
His lips part. “Do you truly think so lowly of me, niece?”
She cackles. “This is all a game to you, Uncle. A game. Hot and cold and push and pull. You don’t know what you want—”
“I know exactly what I want—”
“And what is that?” she challenges, folding her arms in front of her chest.
For a moment, she is so beautiful she robs him of breath.
You, part of him wishes to say, to scream, to declare, to claim. I want your pleasure and your cunt. I want you to scream my name and pierce my heart and clutch it in your violent, hungry hands. Take all that I am if you wish.
He smirks instead, trying to hide the twisted, hateful desperation in his heart. “To see you bare again, niece. It was quite the splendid sight.”
Visenya merely tilts her head as she gazes at him.
“It was enjoyable seeing you bare too, Uncle,” she replies.
Aemond stills. He can feel her hands on his cheek, a calm, soothing caress. She had looked at him like she thought him beautiful, too. He recalls how she was with the orphaned boy. The one who had no sapphire, no patch. The one whose ugliness was plain for all to see. And she had kissed the boy anyway. Had done so with no disgust or hesitation.
Why was he so worthy of her scorn then, he could not help but wonder. Why?
It should not grate him, but it did. He would like to see her softness, too. She took his eye, claimed it, cut it, and yet he still craved her. Still wished for her in his bed each night. He crowds her against the tree, hands planted on either side of her head. She is unafraid, eyes wide.
But he had seen some of her softness, hadn’t he? He’d tasted her kiss.
He glances down at her lips. It would be so easy to do so again. To slip down in between her legs and taste her pleasure again.
“The consequences of the game we have been playing are far graver for me than for you,” she breathes. “You must be satisfied, Uncle, to have such power in your hands.”
He scowls. “I am not in league with my grandsire, niece.” He leans in close, sniffs at the hemline of her gown, then her neck, his one hand moving to cup her cunt through her dress. Visenya stiffens, breath quickening, but her eyes remain open. “This game is just for us. I do not wish to share your pleasure with anyone.”
She does not mention the fact that it in six moons she will marry Aegon. She doesn’t say anything, just watches him. His face. Like she’s trying to decipher him.
“You do not believe me,” he states.
“I do not know how to trust you. Can you blame me?”
He frowns.
“Do you trust me, Aemond?” she continues, leaning back as far as their position will allow.
“I was not aware desire required trust.”
Her lips twitch. “I suppose that is fair, but there is much more at stake than desire.”
Her words ring true; he knows this down to his bones. They could keep going as they are and naught would change. Reckless and lustful and on fire with desire, but in the end she would still be set to wed Aegon. Aemond tastes bitterness on his tongue. If only he had been born the firstborn. If only.
He holds her face in his hands, and he knows she can sense both the reverence and anger brewing within. This is the face of the person who slashed his eye. A bastard, a sign of her mother’s sin. Aemond has spent his entire life mastering control and discipline, trying to be the prince that Aegon was not, and she has ruined it. She has torn it all away, and now he is forever bleeding inwardly, consumed by this feeling he knows not how to be rid of.
He crushes his lips to hers, and he feels her breath hitch. But she does not shove him away. She pulls him closer by the collar of his shirt, her one hand gripping his neck, sure to scratch. It is a lavish, filthy kiss, all feeling and no thought. Just to get closer. Aemond almost wants to sneak his way down to her heart and curl up there. He would be content, he thinks. Content to soak in her warmth and fire and smell and—
They both have dragons, yes, dragons they conquered and command, and he would be pleased to be another thing for her to conquer, even though he shouldn’t be—
His fingers slip up her skirts, drawing out of her wetness and pleasure, and soon his movements match that of their lips. They are luscious, devastating kisses, and more dangerous than anything else.
She pulls for air, gasping his name, her head hitting the back of the tree as she squirms, chasing her pleasure.
“Gods,” she hisses in between her swollen lips.
Aemond nudges his nose against hers before he lavishes her neck, her collarbone, adding another finger to the fray. She’s so tight, so lovely, and he wants to be inside her, wants to claim her, wants to—
She tugs him down for another kiss, and it seems like she wants to devour him. To consume him.
He makes her come with a flick of his thumb against her nub, and she presses a soft, lingering kiss to his lips before she lets him go, allowing him to step back so she can redress herself. The night air is cold, thick with their secrets and their pleasure, the gardens a witness to their sin.
And yet none is resolved.
To speak more of it—
They cannot.
And yet—
“I am not in league with my grandsire,” he repeats. The sole truth he can offer her.
“And yet you hate me still.”
He scoffs. “Do you not hate me?”
She does not reply. “This must be the last time, Uncle,” she says. “It must be.”
Aemond smirks. “As you say, niece.”
He tries to ignore the hurt within as she stalks away.
It is not the last time.
Which, to be honest, Visenya could have predicted. They are like moths drawn to the flame and—
“You seem to be enjoying yourself too much niece, for someone who wished for this to end,” Aemond remarks after a licking a strip up her folds. She’s dizzy enough she almost forgets how she got here. A look in the library, walking away, coming to the Queen’s old chambers for refuge.
She had not told Aemond to come, but she had not barred the door either. And then one thing led to—
“Aemond,” she pleads, kicking her heels uselessly at his shoulders. He keeps drawing her to her peak only to pull away, content to play with her like a cat does with a mouse. He smirks, ever-so-satisfied.
The skirts of her dress are wrinkled and piled about her waist, moved out of the way so she can see him. Aemond is unmoved by her plea. He moves instead so he’s propped above her, leaning on one arm, his other hand stroking the space between her hipbone and her cunt, so close to where she wants him but not quite.
“Ohh shh,” he coos mockingly. “I suppose duty was boring, was it not?”
She grits her teeth, cheeks flushing.
“I think I deserve an answer, niece,” he remarks, leaning down to bite her collarbone, just hard enough for the mark to fade within seconds.
“I did not ask for you to come here,” she insists.
“And yet you did not push me away. Mere four days you lasted, pretty princess.” He clucks his tongue, presses kisses to her cheekbones, her chin, her eyelids, soothing her as his hand cups her. She twists her hips frantically, stubborn, furious tears leaking from her eyes.
“If you want your pleasure niece, chase it,” he says. “Desperate little thing.”
Visenya squeezes her eyes shut.
“I do not know how to stop,” she whispers, heart burning with shame. The truth sets her skin alight. “I do not know to stop, Uncle.”
Perhaps if her eyes were open, she would have seen the startled look on his face. The softness, the confusion. The loss. The desire.
She pulls him in for a kiss instead, and that combines with his fingers accidentally brushing against her nub is enough to set her free. He kisses her throughout it, the fire dousing as she comes down from her peak. They turn gentler, exploring, even. She does not stop kissing him even as he brings himself to his own peak, even as he falls against the mattress.
He wipes his hand against the bed as he holds her close, gripping her chin, the other arm around her waist. They kiss like lovers who must part by daybreak. Eager and soft and almost affectionate, if not for the fact that she knew he loathed her still. And she—
Part of her did loathe him still. It was just caught up in everything else now.
When they part, they are both on their sides. They just stare at each other. Sunshine pours in from the windows, casting them in golden light. The castle is still alive, and people will soon notice their absence.
I don’t know how to stop, she’d told him. It had perhaps been too truthful, she realizes. Too exposing. What good was it to confess to a weakness she did not know how to conquer? To realize there was a weakness to begin with?
But his gaze is not triumphant as he gazes at her. She cannot read what is in his eye.
When they finally collect themselves to leave, Aemond listens at the door. She moves to push it open when he halts her. She hears the servants a beat too late. They move on, oblivious, their voices disappearing, but she is frozen. They had been seconds away from being caught.
And he had stopped it.
He had stopped it.
This time, Aemond is the one to leave first.
I do not know how to stop, she had whispered, shame in her voice. He had said nothing, as if the very own truth did not permeate in his veins.
The next day, he rides down to the dragonpit, eager to seek the freedom only the sky can give. His grandfather has been speaking to him of marriage more. Aemond knows it is expected of him. He will wed a daughter of some great lord, bring honour to his house, and then have babes. Power and alliance and loyalty.
Desire had no room in it.
Helaena had sent him a letter this morn that he still had not yet read.
He is still atop his horse, thinking of the sealed paper, when he spots Visenya climbing into her wheelhouse. The Kingsguard are there, helping her in. Crowds always form when they see a princess of the realm leave the dragonpit.
She meets his gaze for a mere moment before the horse pulling the wheelhouse neighs and rises, thrashing about, suddenly disturbed.
And Aemond watches as Visenya is thrown backwards, the Wheelhouse crashing in her direction, seeking to crush her beneath.
He remembers little in the following. Recalls the roars and cries of Vermithor from the pit, sensing his mistresses’ distress. The faint calls of Vhagar in response. He remembers killing the man in charge of pulling the wheelhouse despite how he cried and plead ignorance.
Most of all, he remembers the blood that stained her hair, the paleness of her cheeks. The way she would not wake when he called her name. She groans as he lifts her into his arms, the Kingsguard helping him back on his horse as they gather their own together to follow them back, swords at the ready.
He remembers arriving back at the Red Keep. His father is too sick to be truly aware of what is happening, but his mother is quick to action. The maesters carry Visenya away to her chambers. They must.
Her blood still stains his fingers.
Otto is there, as his mother as they wait. Aegon is missing.
If Aemond saw his brother now, he is certain he would kill him. It would be the least he deserves for being absent. For not even caring, no doubt, that his betrothed was injured thus. Aemond’s heart pounds and bleeds in his chest. He sits by the fire in his mother’s solars, and wonders if extending his hand into the fire would hurt less than this.
Outside, he is stiff. Cold.
Inwardly, he is a frantic, tormented, pathetic little thing.
I do not know how to stop.
He closes his eye when the maesters return.
“It has only been an hour,” his mother claims. Aemond does not move. It has felt like an eternity to him. Otto stands as well. Aemond merely watches the fire. “Is she well? The Princess?”
“She is,” the maesters confirm, and Aemond—
He rests his chin in his hand, feigning casualty, to stop the relieved sound from escaping his lips. He is no dragon – no Targaryen. He is just a man now. Merely flesh and blood. And she is the weakness. She is what makes him so human.
“A sprained ankle and a bruised head,” they continue. “She must remain abed for a fortnight, to be safe.”
His mother exhales with relief. “Good. The Gods are just.”
The maesters concur, and it is not until Ser Criston enters the room that they speak.
“How did this happen?” his mother grieves. “She goes to the dragonpit often with no complaint.”
“It was a horrid accident, your grace,” Ser Criston assures her. Aemond has no doubt his mother’s sworn shield believes it. He would not do such a thing without her command.
“Indeed.”
He lifts his gaze only to look at his grandsire. “A startled horse, Alicent,” Otto Hightower continues. “It happens every day.”
His mother is not comforted. “If she had died—”
“Her mother would burn us all to ash,” Aemond interrupts. They all look at him. “She would suspect us of murder.”
His mother closes her eyes. “Rhaenyra must know I would never do such a thing to her child,” she whispers. “Never.” For a moment, Ser Criston looks pained.
“You asked for her daughter’s eye,” Aemond says. He is not in the mood for mercy and sympathy.
“Aemond,” his mother gasps, insulted.
“Mayhaps we might question those in charge of the wheelhouse,” Ser Criston intervenes.
“I killed the horsemaster.”
They all stare at him.
“His incompetence was not to be borne,” Aemond states simply.
Otto sighs and pinches his nose. “This is a hiccup, nothing more. I will go to inform his grace.”
Aemond watches his mother’s expression as her father leaves. The anxiety, the stress. The fear. Soon, he is out of his seat, following his grandsire through the halls.
“You protected the princess well,” Otto says when Aemond catches up to him. “You saved us from great strife.”
Aemond merely glares at him. Otto also disapproved of the marriage pacts, he knows this. He would rather Helaena have married Aegon. Strengthen their house and bloodline. No leverage the blacks could have used against them. They would all be in King’s Landing. It would have been perfect.
If Rhaenyra has no daughters, Otto would be free to wed Aegon to another lady from a great house. To have more alliances. If he needed to, he would sacrifice Helaena. They stop in the hall near the King’s chambers. It is nightfall now. The castle quiet.
The perfect time to plot.
“I wish to leave King’s Landing,” Aemond says.
For once, Otto seems surprised.
“I will go,” he continues. “Travel the Kingdom’s with Vhagar and find myself a bride.”
He knows now, this is what he must do. He must. I do not know how to stop. This is how, he decides. If they are not close, they cannot partake, and this weakness, this feeling, it cannot grow. Absence will make it die.
“That seems wise,” Otto remarks, clasping his hands. “Your match will no doubt be more appropriate than Aegon’s.”
Aemond—
He shoves his grandsire against the wall, clenches his hand around his throat. Otto Hightower has never looked more than what he is; spineless and cowardly. His pin holds no power now, strips away his dignity.
“If anything so much as happens to her,” he snarls, tightening his grip. “If so much as a hair is moved on her head, I will kill you.”
His grandsire strains to speak, but Aemond merely shoves him harder against the wall.
“I care not if you gather a thousand Maesters to swear she died from natural causes – her family could come to King’s Landing and swear the same. Say she died from an illness or a fall. I care not. I will rip you apart, limb from limb, and expose your insides to the world so everyone can see what a sad, pathetic little man you are. And then I will feed you Vhagar.”
He removes his grip. Otto Hightower topples to the floor, gasping and wheezing, face red. Aemond steps on his hand, forcing him to stay in place.
“You will not do anything to jeopardise my sister,” he adds. “Do you understand?”
He steps away.
With time, his grandfather seems to regain his breath, rubbing at his throat. “You care for her,” Otto accuses. “You care for Visenya.”
Aemond—
He forces himself to snort. “You are delusional, Grandsire,” he spits. “I care not for the bastard, only for my sister. My family. I suggest you do the same. The King has forced all of our hands in these marriage plots.”
“Plots can be undone,” Otto persists, leaning back against the wall. Bruises have already started to form on his throat. “Oaths can be forgotten. Marriages annulled.”
Aemond merely looks at him. Moons ago, he would have leapt at the opportunity. His loyalty is to his family, yes. But his brother will be King. Spineless, lustful heap of bones that he is. Helaena will be better off married to Jace. Aemond has enough foresight and care for his sister to see that.
But now—
“I think Vhagar would like how you taste,” he says, right before he walks away.
VIsenya is sleeping still when he goes to see her. She is soft in sleep. Her hair slightly mused, face bruised from impact. But she’s still beautiful. Still the figure that haunts him. He reaches out and gently clasps her thumb. It’s so small in his hand. Her skin like silk. He doesn’t want to let her go.
He doesn’t want to let her go.
This is the very hand that marked his life forever, changing it irrevocably. All the darkness and bitterness that had lingered inside him as a boy was set free. He used like a weapon, like motivation. Poison at his lips and hunger in his blood and he pushed and pushed until he was a conqueror.
But her lips…
Those marked his life forever, too.
He swallows hard, bends down to press a gentle kiss on her hand.
“Aemond,” she mumbles. He looks up, but she is still sleeping, her brow furrowed. “Don’t go.”
“Shh, sweet,” he hushes. He presses a quick kiss to the crown of her head. “Shh.”
He thinks he could sit here forever. He could sit here and watch her grow and watch her grow old, and she would never not be lovely to him. And that—
That cannot be.
Aemond is not a creature meant to love. He’s a dragon. He takes and he burns and he destroys. And he could do the same to her. He could. He could hold her in his arms and watch the world burn.
But he won’t.
He can’t.
Aemond wrenches himself away.
He does not look back.
His mother corners him as he walks to Vhagar. He knows not how she knew where he was. Finds he does not care. He has a sack with clothes and food. He is a Prince of the realm – Lords will flock to host him and parade their daughters.
And he will do so.
He will do it.
Vhagar waits patiently as he readies himself.
“Aemond, it is late,” his mother pleads. “On the morrow you may leave after the princess has awakened—”
“I think not,” he says. “The Princess will survive, the doctors said so. We heard them. A few bruises and a sprained ankle. Nothing too strenuous.”
“You know her family will not think it so—”
“Otto won’t hurt her.”
His mother sighs. “You don’t know that,” she admits quietly.
Aemond glances at her. “I do.”
His mother processes that information with lidded eyes, picking at her fingers.
“What did you do, Aemond?”
“Ensured the safety of our house, of my sister. You should be grateful.”
“When my son is leaving?” his mother tries to grab his hand but she shakes him off.
“I am off to find myself a bride,” he remarks. “To become a man and husband. Have my own babes. Is that not what you and grandsire desired?”
“I wish for you to be happy, Aemond,” she claims. “Content, even.”
“We are Targaryens, we know not how to do anything other than burn.”
When she reaches for his hand again, she catches it.
“Aemond,” she says, that same tired look in her eyes. She has never been happy his whole life. Always tiring after his father, a man more bones than flesh. A man who never truly loved her. His mind flashes with thoughts of Visenya.
No, he tells himself. No.
If he stays, if he claims her—
No good will come of it. Otto will win, and their families will be in strife.
Or so he tells himself.
“I will be well,” he says through gritted teeth. “And careful. I will pick a fine bride.”
She squeezes his hand. “You must be back before the wedding, Aemond. You must.”
“A lot may happen in five moons, Mother—”
“Promise me,” his mother says. “You must.”
Aemond exhales. “I will return.”
His mother kisses him on the cheek, her solemn farewell. Aemond climbs onto Vhagar, sack on his back, cold night air nipping his cheeks. He need not say anything for Vhagar to take flight.
Within minutes, King’s Landing is nothing but a memory.
Notes:
kudos and comments mean the world!
all of these people need therapy I swear.
come find me on Tumblr @fkevin073
Chapter Text
Chapter 8
When Visenya wakes, the Queen is by her side, queerly enough. There’s a ghost in the air, a weight on her hand, a kiss on her cheek. Shh, sweet. But Aemond is nowhere to be found.
“Water?” Alicent Hightower asks, cup in his hand.
Head throbbing, Visenya nods.
The elder woman is gentle as she brings the cup to her lips. Visenya exhales with relief when it’s empty, some of the hurt ebbing. In soft tones, the Queen explains to her what happened. Visenya’s mind whirls. Could she truly believe it to be an accident?
She shies away when the Queen scoots her chair closer to the bed. As if she can sense her apprehension, the Queen sighs. “You are safe here,” she tells Visenya. “I swear it.”
But unloved.
Visenya glances away.
“I read to the Old King Jaehaerys,” the Queen says. “When he was abed. I can do the same for you now, if you wish. The doctors said you must remain on bedrest for the next fortnight.”
If she could scream, she would.
“May I write to my mother?”
“Of course,” the Queen says. “Whatever you wish.”
She tries to move her ankle, but the pain is great enough for her stop at once. A sprained ankle and bruised head. A poor assassination attempt, if it was one. Ironically enough, she knows she will not be safe until she is wed to Aegon and has a babe in her belly. Then, she will at least be useful. But even after that – if the child she has is a son, she will be expendable.
The Queen did ask for her eye as a child, after all. There is reason for her to want her dead. Her son would be free to wed a daughter from another Lord and a bring a great house over the Greens.
Visenya bites down on her lip, struggles not to cry. She wants her mother. Wants Jace. She wants to go home. But deep down, along with that, she wants—
The doors push open, and the King hobbles in.
Visenya has scarcely seen him out of bed since she arrived in King’s Landing. Regardless, he makes his way to her bed, rotting as he is.
“My girl,” he greets. The Queen aids him into the chair she dwelled in. Visenya tries to sit upright, but he waves away her attempt, urging her to remain comfortable. “A terrible accident. It is well and good that Aemond was there.”
Visenya’s heart pounds. She remembers being carried. Gentle yet frantic hands pulling her up, holding her in place.
“Yes,” she says, struggling to breathe. “I owe him my thanks, but I have not seen him since I awoke.”
Viserys groans as he settles in the chair, but his eyes are more aware than they have been in a great while. So long as she lives, Visenya knows she is safe. Her mother, her family. Everything. If he survives until the marriage, then…
“Aemond has left King’s Landing,” Viserys informs her.
She can pinpoint the precise moment her heart plummets to her stomach.
“Left?” she hears herself say. “I thought – I thought it was an accident—”
“He left for unrelated reasons,” the Queen interrupts, not unkindly. “In fact Aemond slew the horsemaster in charge of the wheelhouse.”
“A harsh punishment,” Viserys says, trying to shoot her a comforting smile. All it does is amplify the growing holes in his flesh. Her stomach turns. “But it was a trying circumstance. If anything had happened to you, my dear…”
Her lips twitch into a dutiful smile, but Visenya is focused on trying to even her breathing.
“In fact,” the Queen says, resting her hand on the King’s shoulder. “We may have another betrothal to celebrate.”
Oh.
She slides her hand underneath the thigh to stop it from trembling.
“What welcome news,” Visenya says, blinking away the burning sensation in her eyes. “I would welcome a good-sister in King’s Landing. Marriage would suit Prince Aemond.”
“Make him smile more,” Viserys chimes in.
He tires soon after, pressing a wet kiss to her brow. Visenya tries her best not to cringe at the smell of his breath. He is her grandsire, and she loves him, but—
All she wants to do is scream. Scream and fall and hide. Hopefully her shame will burn that way. The hurt. It disgusts her that she feels this way. Small. Betrayed.
But how can she feel betrayed? They were not betrothed. They were not friends, not lovers. They were nothing. They are nothing.
Or so she tells herself.
“If you wish, I may tell Prince Aemond in my letters that you send your thanks,” the Queen says. “Or mayhaps you would wish to tell him yourself when he comes back for the weddings.”
“Mayhaps he will bring a bride back,” Visenya hears herself reply. “Or he will also join the ceremony.”
“I believe two weddings in one day is sufficient,” Alicent Hightower tells her. “Three might be a bit crowded in the Sept.”
“Yes,” Visenya mutters. “Crowded indeed.”
She does not look at the Queen moves around her chambers and retrieves something from the desk. When she looks, it is a quill and a sheet of paper. Visenya wants to throw something at her.
Most of all, she just wants to be alone. She wants to shake and ache with her rage – at the world, at her herself, for being so stupid.
“I will write later,” she says shortly. “I am tired.”
“Of course,” Alicent says. “You must rest.”
When the Queen leaves, Visenya does not weep. Part of her wants to howl and scream at the moon. To disappear. Don’t run away, he had told her. He had put her before that mirror and forced her to confess her desire. He had claimed it, revelled in it. And then he had left.
Aemond had told her he was not conspiring with Otto Hightower. Truth was, he was only conspiring with himself. He wanted an eye for an eye and settled for making her a fool. For making her—
She closes her eyes, but it’s not soon enough.
A single, lone tear makes its treacherous descent down her cheek.
It says more than she ever could.
A moon passes before he lands on Dragonstone.
He has spent weeks in Oldtown with its humidity. Vhagar did not like the ancient city and its cobblestones that are thousands of years old. Perhaps because that is where the Gods of the Seven are strongest, and Vhagar is a beast of Old Valyria. A sign of their Gods. Regardless, he soon leaves. His youngest brother Daeron is a stranger to him, sent to Oldtown when he was barely a year old.
He stops by Storms End before he makes the flight to Dragonstone, spends a week with Lord Barartheon and his numerous daughters. He cannot remember their faces. Just what they lack. Their hair is not the same shade. Their eyes are not violet. Their lips are not the same shape.
He dreams of her. Horrid nightterrors. The wheelhouse crushes her. He sees her plummeting from Vermithor’s back, and he is not fast enough to catch her. She is swallowed by the water below, and he never sees her again.
If Lord Borros can tell his distraction, he does not mention it.
In her letters, his mother makes rare mentions of her. But they are details he covets. She has recovered. She is riding on Vermithor. And that is it.
You left, he reminds himself. You left.
On the list his mother gave him, the Baratheon daughters were high on it. He does not think he makes a good impression. If he showed them his sapphire eye, they would tremble and fear it. They would not demand he take it off to please them. I wish to see you bare too, Uncle.
They are pale, muted imitations, the only allure being their dark hair.
It is not enough.
Aemond does not plan to visit Dragonstone, but the knowledge that Helaena is a mere short flight away is enough to tempt him. When Vhagar arrives on the island, there are Kingsguard to meet him.
Kingsguard, and his elder half-sister.
“You violate our father’s decree,” she announces simply, watching him with suspicion. “We are not to visit each other during the marriage.”
“I believe he said that the parents and people betrothed could not visit,” Aemond responds, calming Vhagar with a touch of his hand. “He never said anything about siblings.”
Rhaenyra scoffs. “My daughter is alone in King’s Landing—’
“I only wish to speak with Helaena for a moment,” he says. “I just wish to see my sister, that is all.”
Rhaenyra looks unmoved. “You killed the horsemaster, my father tells me. You got my daughter to safety.”
Aemond does not want her to know what else she did to his daughter. “I do not wish for strife between us. You have my sister in your care.”
“And she has been well cared for.” With a grunt, his father’s first born signals for her guards to be at ease. “One hour, and no more.”
Aemond is not certain why he wishes to see Helaena so. His sister speaks in dreams and tongues that are barely intelligible, her head in the clouds. He does not even like Dragonstone. It is a cold, miserable land frequented by fog. The castle seems miserable.
And yet, when Aemond sees his sister for the first time in half a year, she is smiling. He has been escorted to the beach behind the castle, where Helaena is sitting by the rocks watching Luke and Jace spar. She has a jar in her hands.
She does not seem surprised to see him, even if her betrothed his.
Aemond ignores his two nephews in favour of his sister.
“Aemond,” she states simply, putting down her jar. “You made it safely.”
“You knew I would come?” he murmurs.
She lifts one shoulder. “I had a dream.”
If only his dreams were so calm. Rhaenyra hangs back, calling for her sons to follow as Helaena puts her hand on his elbow.
“My sister,” Jace says, brow creased with worry. He glances at Helaena, and Aemond wonders briefly how much Helaena has seen in her dreams. How much she knows. “Is she well?”
Aemond’s words catch in his throat with memories of when he saw her last. Don’t go, she had whispered, calling his name even in sleep. Did she do so still?
“Princess Visenya is well, last I saw,” he replies. It is the first time he has said her name in a moon. His heartbeat thunders in his ears.
“My brother will not be here long,” Helaena murmurs. “He has ghosts to flee.”
Jace seems mildly bemused, but he does not scorn Helaena’s declaration. He merely murmurs his farewell, his eyes trained on his betrothed, and joins his mother and brother inside the castle.
The Kingsguard that followed him do not do the same.
“I am not here to steal you,” Aemond complains. “Me being here enough is—”
“A mistake,” Helaena supplies idly, burrowing closer as the wind beats down on them. The smell of the sea is strong in the air, almost overwhelming. The waves crash against the shore, lightly spraying his coat with water. Helaena was never much of a swimmer back in King’s Landing, but she does not seem disturbed by the ocean threatening to swallow them whole. In fact, she opens her mouth so she may catch some of the sea water next time a wave rolls in.
It is an act of carelessness such that their mother would never have allowed in King’s Landing.
“I wished to see a familiar face,” he mutters in Valyrian. “Is that so wrong of me?”
Helaena merely glances at him. Her violet eyes seem almost blue in this light, the same colour as her betrothed’s Velaryon house. “Are there no familiar faces in King Landing for you?”
He steps away, posture straight, hands clasped behind his back.
“I could not stay,” he grits out. “I would not.”
“Dragons weave destruction,” Helaena murmurs. “The same cycle over and over. War and fire. Fire and war.”
“The marriages stop that,” he points out.
Clarity returns to her. “I know,” she replies. “But war also comes from within. Marriages upon marriages. Blood upon blood. When has a Targaryen truly been happy?”
“Are you not happy?”
She considers this. “I am happier than I would have been married to Aegon.”
He cannot help it; he winces.
“Happiness is what we make of it, Aemond.”
“Life is what is handed to us.” All his life he has felt closer to a God than to men, but now he feels battered and bruised even though his body his whole. “Dragons make history. They are not subject to them.”
Helaena surprises him by cupping his cheek. His sister never liked to touch people. Not even their mother. But Helaena has always read people’s mood better than most.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Aemond,” she whispers. “You mourn what you cannot forget.”
He’s almost snarling as he rips himself away. Mad at the world, at himself, and at a girl hundreds of miles away in a city he left her in.
“Aemond,” she calls, as he stalks down the beach. “Aemond!”
He does not listen.
Within the hour, he is atop Vhagar already.
Rhaenys arrives in King’s Landing. They all know what it is for, despite her claims. To make sure she’s alive and well. The Hand watches her closely, Visenya can tell, but he says nothing to her grandmother.
The bruises Visenya spotted on his neck, poorly hidden by his clothing, have finally faded. He’d claimed it to be a rash when asked by the King, but it had been bad enough his voice was affected.
Now that he has recovered, even that mild amusement is gone.
Visenya has spent the past two moons feeling her life slip away bit by bit. Stone by stone. Vermithor is the only one to bring her comfort. The Queen tries, but she seems confused most of the time, caught between her wayward son and a future daughter in law she never wanted.
Rhaenys is a familiar face. Fair, impartial.
“You seem healthy,” her grandmother tells her.
Visenya and her brothers had never been close to their father’s mother. She’d always preferred Rhaena and Baela. As she grew older, she began to understand why.
“I am well enough,” she replies.
They walk in the gardens per Rhaenys’ insistence.
Visenya – Visenya has had enough of the gardens. And the library. And the sea.
She sees a glint of silver in the corner of her eye often, and her heart never fails to quicken. Visenya cannot help but scowl.
“Very dutiful, the Queen tells me,” Rhaenys continues. “Riding your dragon, giving money to the poor, not causing trouble.”
“My betrothed is too busy for me to cause any trouble,” she snaps.
Rhaenyrs merely lifts her brows, unimpressed.
“Prince Aegon certainly leaves a lot to be desired.”
Visenya says nothing.
“I can speak with your mother,” Rhaenys suggests with a rare gentleness. “She can speak with the King—”
“Women have been forced to marry those they do not leave for ages,” Visenya interrupts. “And in my case, it is quite different than the usual circumstance. Ser Otto will no doubt try to wed Aegon to some other Lady to win them to their cause.”
“But your mother will still have Helaena.”
“My mother would never hurt a child,” Visenya says.
“In defence of her own, any mother would do anything.”
Visenya closes her eyes.
“If I don’t wed Aegon, the Greens win,” she says.
“You seem defeated,” Rhaenys comments. “You were always a fiery child.”
Visenys grunts lightly. She has felt tired of late. Tired and drained. The pleasure between her legs sickens her now. I do not know how to stop, she had whispered.
And he had decided for them both.
Left her like she was nothing.
Left with the knowledge that he could walk away, unharmed, but she could not even commit to her word.
“I am alone,” she replies.
“Soon, your mother and brothers shall be here. Shall be close. Light will reinter your life.”
“Ah yes, married to Aegon. What joy it shall bring.” She knows she sounds as petulant as she feels. Like a child, really.
To her credit, Rhaenys does not fault her for her moodiness. Instead, she changes topics, speaking of Baela and Rhaena and their reports from Dragonstone. Little details they leave out in her letters.
“Aemond went to Dragonstone,” Rhaenys reveals. “He was gone within the hour—”
“Why did he go there?” Visenya asks, unable to contain her surprise. “He is meant to be searching for a bride.”
“Apparently he needed a break from his arduous ventures.”
Visenya scoffs to herself. “Not all of us have the luxury of absconding on our dragons.”
“No,” Rhaenys agrees. “No, we do not.”
Visenya stalks off without a word.
He flies North. West. Even South.
Dorne is not welcoming, and Vhagar hates it, so he lingers less.
The Lannisters welcome him. The Arryns. The Greyjoys. The Tyrells.
He finds joy in none of it. The wine is dull, the food tasteless. Vhagar senses his foul mood and reciprocates, demanding more food from the castles they visit, biting at those who come near. Aemond lingers somewhere for at most a fortnight, listening to pretty ladies ramble on in their eagerness to impress before he moves along.
I do not know how to stop.
He’d left to stop it. He’d left. Left to free himself of this hold on his soul. She took his eye, and now he wanted to give her more. It could not be born.
And yet she lingered.
When he slept, she was the last thought in his mind. When he woke, she was the first. Visenya is as stubborn in memory as she is in life. He travels the Kingdoms and looks for her face in every woman he meets.
A little less than two moons before the wedding, he arrives in the Riverlands. At Harrenhall. Where her father, her true father, burned. Aemond’s memories of Harwin Strong are blurred, but the legendary knight lives on in his children’s faces.
It is there he meets Alys Rivers, a Strong bastard. Her hair is long and dark and familiar. But her eyes are green. Green, not violet. He lets her into his chambers anyway. The cruel and twisted irony is not lost on him.
But when he kisses her, he cannot do it. He cannot drown himself in another woman’s flesh without thinking of her.
He rolls onto his back, panting. Alys is still clothed.
“I am a Seer,” she whispers. “What troubles you so, my Prince?”
“I do not believe in your gods, witch.”
“I never claimed to follow the seven.”
Aemond looks at her with his eye. She stares back unflinchingly.
“There is a woman you love,” she tells him.
Aemond frowns.
“A woman close to you. Too close.”
“That is enough,” he murmurs, pinching at his brow. A dull throb forms behind his eyes.
“Love is never forgotten. It lingers. You carry it with you.”
“I never said I was in love.”
She shrugs. “In lust, then.”
Aemond rolls onto his back once more. I do not know how to stop. I do not know how to stop.
He is starting to believe he does not, either. Maybe time and space is not enough—
Maybe he is cursed this way, forever.
Maybe he will feel this forever. This desire. This need for her pleasure. Her hold on him will remain.
There are worse fates.
He realizes that now. He could travel to Pentos and Volantis, could travel to all the isles across the Narrow Sea, and he would still want to return to her. Would still feel her lips and her fire. I wish to see you bare too, Uncle, she had said. She had torn his eye out, but she was unafraid of what she’d made him. She wanted to see it.
Aemond lets the knowledge settle in his bones. He misses her. That hurt lodged in his ribs, throbbing every time he moves or breathes. That’s what it is. Loss. Sadness.
(And maybe, just maybe,
deep down, it is also love, or as close to it as he knows how to feel)
The Queen has taken to speaking with her of late. They often have dinner just the two of them. The date of her marriage draws near. Dress fittings have already begun. Arrangements and silver and musicians. Too many things to count.
One night, Alicent Hightower is plainer. Truthful.
“You may not love Aegon,” she tells her. “But you will love his children. On that – well, no mother has any choice.”
Visenya purses her mouth. She knows, distantly, that the Queen is trying to help her. She is certain that Alicent Hightower has repeated that same advice to herself over and over through the years. Duty. Family. Honour. A Tully in everything but name and blood. The Queen would never stop a foot out of line or be like her mother. Would never dare to choose her fate.
Visenya knows not what she is now. Before, she thought she had some control. The world had colour, and she had power. Influence, even. Desire. Now, she feels hollow. Like her heart has been carved out.
And now she will be made to lay in bed and have heirs for a man she does not love. A man whose brother she—
No.
She has refused to let herself think of him. Has denied the urge. He left. He left. When she sees him again, ifshe sees him again, she will be his brother’s bride, nothing more.
I do not know how to stop.
She shall learn. She must.
“I suppose so, your grace,” Visenya allows.
The Queen offers her a stilted smile. “Your mother shall be here soon to comfort you. To prepare you for the marriage bed.”
“My mother has,” Visenya says. “She did not want me to be afraid.”
“Yes, your mother was always the fearless one.”
Visenya does not feel so fearless. She feels dull. Empty, almost. She’s seen the maids that leave Aegon’s company. Some cry. Others are red. All of them just accept it. It is unjust that it happens. Unjust that a man like that is considered the more worthy heir compared to her mother simply because he has a cock.
She yearns for Dragonstone. For her siblings.
A little over a moon to go until she gets to see Jace again.
Until she gets to see—
She closes her eyes. He haunts her still. She visits the orphanage, little Lukyrs, and she cannot even look him in the face. Blurs of silver at the corner of her eye. The ghost of his hands on her waist. He left he left he left—
She cannot mourn something which she never had.
When she opens her eyes, a glint of silver haunts her. She blinks. Once. Twice.
But it doesn’t go away.
“Aemond,” the Queen says, standing. “You— you’re back.”
Visenya looks. Pinches herself under the table. But he is there. There like he never left at all. His hair is windswept, breaches dirty, doublet slightly crinkled. But he is there.
Aemond is there, and he has eyes only for her.
“I am,” he confirms, accepting his mother’s hug.
Visenya wants to throw her wine at him. She stands on trembling legs, gripping the chair for support.
“You are back a moon early, Uncle,” she informs him, cold as she can manage. After four moons of nothing, she feels something again. It comes back. She hates it. She hates him.
“I felt I was needed back home,” he replies, taking a step toward her when his mother moves aside. Visenya bristles. “Best to consult with my mother, I thought, before I became betrothed.”
She forces a smile to her lips, bitter and mocking. “How thoughtful.”
For a moment, it looks like he wants to draw her into his arms. His eye falls to her lips and—
Damn him.
“I am tired,” she declares, glancing at the Queen. “And you both have so much to discuss, after all. I will leave you.”
She stalks out of the room before either can complain.
His mother is glad to see him, to be sure. They have not spoken in moons. But it is easy for him to also plead tiredness. The hour is late, and he is tired and aching from being atop Vhagar for hours on end on his journey home.
But mostly, he wants to see her.
She has grown more beautiful in their time apart. He has never seen such a welcome sight even thought she was glaring at him, anger and poison evident radiating from her body. He follows her. She is angry, but he is desperate. He has surrendered.
He catches her by the arm, spinning her around—
But she is ready.
The slap she gives him is enough to make him stumble backwards, to rip the eye patch off.
“Never presume to touch me again,” she hisses.
“Visenya—”
“Never.”
She stays for a moment, chest heaving, eyes black, before she whirls around and walks away. When Aemond raises a hand to his lip, blood smears on his fingertips.
Still, he cannot help but smile.
He is home.
Notes:
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Chapter 9
Notes:
as always, thank you so much for your response to this story! i appreciate it so so much. hope you guys like this chapter! things will start picking up next chapter
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 9
The nerve of him, she can’t help but think over and over again. The nerve. She dreams of not merely slapping Aemond into oblivion but kicking him. Punching him. Scratching at him.
Whenever she sees him, she glowers with her rage. How dare he approach her as if nothing happened? As if he didn’t leave?
Visenya does her best to ignore him. She has a wedding to plan, after all. A wedding to his brother. But Aemond does not seem to care about her feelings. He breaks his fast with her and his mother every morn. If Visenya remains in her chambers, he somehow appears whenever she ventures outside. In the halls, the gardens, the Dragonpit.
Like he can somehow sense where she is.
Visenya takes to spending all her free time with the Queen, fleeing when Aemond is otherwise distracted so he does not try and corner her. For the most part, she is successful. She joins the Queen in the wedding planning and tries to distract herself from her gnawing anger. What business did he have trying to corner her? Trying to chase after her like they were lovers.
Visenya grinds her teeth whenever she thinks about it. They were nothing, she reminds herself. They are nothing. But after months of feeling numb, empty, drained, it is off-putting to suddenly feel so much. Too much, really. Like her insides are melting and bones are shaking.
She’s troubled to the point that she can almost ignore her impending marriage. Almost. The growing list of congratulations and well-wished is enough to grate her. The only possible balm is the knowledge that she will get to see Jace and her mother and siblings again. She has missed them so much.
But what will they say when they see her now? Will they know? That prospect frightens her more than anything. That her twin will merely be able to look at her and know that her heart has darkened. That she played a game and lost.
For that is what she did, is it not?
She lost.
She began to care when he did not. He compromised her as he wished, and then he left. He left like it was nothing at all. The weeks she spent in bedrest, healing her body but not her mind, were a torture like no other.
That – that is what grates her more than anything. This sickness whenever she so much as thinks of him, the weight in her stomach, the pain in her chest, it still plagues her despite how she has tried to cut it out.
At night, when she lays there and feels her cunt throb, she closes her eyes to no avail. He is there. His smirk, his tongue, his words.
And she loses again, but that is what he wants.
So she avoids him. She will not give into him again.
The Queen decides it prudent for Aegon and her to spend more time together, for she realizes they have spent close to no time together. Aegon squints in the sunlight as if the sight hurts him, which it no doubt does, as they take a turn about the gardens under the Queen’s watchful gaze, lest any impropriety comes about.
There are multiple quips she could make about the Queen being worried about the wrong son, but Visenya bites her tongue. It will not help her predicament. The Queen may be repressed and anxious, new lines forming around her eyes on a daily basis, but she has tried to make her feel comfortable here.
If only she’d done more to connect with her first-born son.
That is the greatest lament of all, that Aegon turned out as he did. Petulant and immature, keen to enjoy all the benefits of their privilege but wary to assume the responsibility that comes with it.
Visenya thinks of the servants she’s seen fleeing from his company, and her stomach turns.
She holds his arm stiffly, careful to keep a distance between them as she resists the urge to bolt as fast as she can. Her mother was made to marry Ser Laenor, Visenya knows that. But the man whose name she carries was good and decent and kind. The King is blind not only to her mother’s choices, but his son’s faults, content for everyone to be happy simply because he wishes it to be so.
“The wedding is soon,” Aegon comments.
“Indeed.”
He meets her gaze. His eyes are bloodshot, hair short and greasy in the sun. For a moment, she almost pities him.
“I will not hurt you,” he offers, as if it is some grand favour. “You are kin.”
And if I wasn’t?
The question remains there on the tip of her tongue, lingering in her mind. Aegon is more harmful than his brother in many ways, she realizes. Aemond cares too much, but Aegon does not care at all. Aemond is an inferno, passionate and demanding and dangerous, but there’s a spark there when she is – was, she reminds herself – with him. With Aegon, there is nothing but dread.
If she were to tell her mother, Visenya knows she would come for her on dragonback without a care. The only thing that holds this alliance together is the assurance that because they are kin, because the power her family yields, Aegon cannot harm her.
But if he harms other women, if he cares not for anything – how much better is that?
Disgust settles in her gut.
The only thing they have remotely in common is that they are both dragon riders. Sunfyre is a spectacular beast, that Visenya will concede. The only sign of life on her betrothed’s face is when he talks about his mount. He laughs freely as they walk together, and Visenya—
She looks up to find Aemond watching them from afar, his jaw clenched.
The nerve of him. Visenya almost laughs. Aegon disgusts her too greatly for her to try and feed into any romantic notion, but for a split second it is almost tempting. Aemond has no right or reason to be upset, and he is so stoic and taciturn.
Visenya excuses herself from Aegon’s company when he fetches for a cup of wine. She needs to be free, to take to the clouds.
And so she does.
Vermithor is grateful for the attention – after her injury he was not ridden for weeks and acted like a child about it. She rides him for what feels like hours, circling the Red Keep and clinging to the lingering feelings of freedom.
Vermithor roars, shifting beneath her, sensing her distress.
“I know, boy,” she whispers, bending down to lay her front on his back. “I know.”
He finds her leaving Vermithor in the Dragonpit.
The caves there are always dark, the dragonkeepers keen to avoid the larger mounts when they are not required to feed them.
Aemond stands on the higher step, blocking her way so she can’t try and brush past him. There is no escape.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he murmurs. Distantly, Vermithor lets out a grunt. Visenya ignores her.
“Have I?” she drawls. Visenya stops two steps away from him, glares up at him with fire in her eyes. “How astute of you.”
“Visenya—”
“Uncle.”
“I did not mean to leave you—”
She tilts her head. “You did not mean to fly atop Vhagar and travel the Kingdoms for close to four moons? My, I suggest we get Grand Maester Orwyle to inspect you, for that lack of awareness is concerning.”
“I did not mean to hurt you,” he insists. “When you were injured, I—”
“Enough,” she grounds out. “Enough. You have made your point. You have won.”
Aemond shakes his head, moves so she’s forced to take a step backwards. He reaches out to steady her in the darkness. There is only one torch nearby, so they are mostly cast in shadows, concealed in privacy.
Visenya shakes him off. “What do you want, Aemond?” she demands.
She has asked him this before, and he had no answer.
But he does now.
“You,” he replies.
She lets out an incredulous laugh. “You are cruel and full of shit—”
He rushes forward to cup her face in his hands, presses her back into the stone.
“I’m not,” he whispers, shaking his head, urging her to see. He has surrendered. He is her’s, if she’ll have him. “You said you did not know how to stop. And neither do I.”
For a moment, she seems too stunned to say anything. He takes his chance, running on the panic and desperation running in his veins. “Neither do I,” he repeats, nudging his nose against hers. “I tried. I ran around the kingdoms trying to forget you. Your mouth, your taste, your cunt, and I couldn’t.”
“You hate me,” she says, gaze narrowed.
Aemond shakes his head. “I missed you,” he corrects, brushing his mouth to her collarbone. Visenya stands there like a statue, cold and unmoved. “Nothing did ease the ache of you.”
There is silence, and then she cackles, low and furious.
“Did you bed other women?” she hisses. “Nothing did ease the ache – what is nothing, per say?”
Aemond lifts his head. “I did not,” he says, swallowing hard.
“Really?”
He closes his eyes. There is a woman you love. Close to you.
“There was one I—”
She shoves him. Aemond almost falls backwards in the face of her fury, struggling to right himself.
“You weak, weak man,” she spits. “You leave, bed other women—”
“I didn’t bed—”
“I care not,” Visenya snaps. “You come here and you say sweet words, but you do not mean them. You do not know what you want.”
“I want you,” he says. He will accept her anger and rage and disgust. He will accept any part of her she is willing to give. His heart throbs in his chest.
“You want me to hate you.”
“You can feel as you wish about me,” he says. “Hate me, smite me, despise me. So long as I am near you, that I can see you…”
A broken chuckle emanates between them. “Then you are selfish as well as cruel,” she says.
“Visenya—”
“Enough,” she hisses. “Enough.”
“I meant it,” he calls after her. “Visenya, I—”
The door closes on his words, and he is left alone.
She stays abed the next few days. She imagines Aemond with nameless, faceless women, devouring them with his kisses and touch. Her insides scorch themselves with the anger that burns with every waking moment. How dare he? How dare he?
She feels angry enough to burn down the whole castle. If she were a man, she could do the same as him. Bed and fuck whoever she wanted. The game she played with Aemond was risky enough. And her mother—
Visenya has perhaps never sympathized with her mother more than she does now. Vilified and scorned for doing something men have indulged themselves in for ages with no cost or harm to their name. And her mother had not only been motivated from desire, but necessity, Visenya is certain of it, even if they never breath word of Harwin Strong. Visenya is old enough now to understand her father’s proclivities. Children in such a scenario would not be possible.
The possibility of silver babes exiting her womb is enough to torment her. Whether they be Aegon’s or—
She scowls. No one has come to bother her in her self-imposed isolation, and she is glad of it. If she saw Aemond currently nothing would prevent her from either spitting at his face or scratching out his one remaining eye.
It is demeaning and beneath her to think of his lovers. She knew he frequented whore houses, Aegon mentioned it as such. And yet she is a dragon; a slave to her own temper and impulses, and she indulges herself by imagining herself stringing Aemond up as penance for his sins. Mayhaps her and his other lovers could laugh together in relief for being relieved of his presence.
“A raven from Dragonstone, Princess,” a maid says, stammering at the door.
Visenya’s ill temper has gotten the best of her these past few days.
“Thank you,” she offers, accepting the thick envelope the servant hands her before she leaves. Visenya wastes no time in ripping it open. It’s from Jace. She’s told him of her struggles in King’s Landing. He knows, really. Brothers and sisters can be close, she knows this, but having a twin is like having another heart somewhere far away. You feel things distantly.
I found this in Daemon’s things, his scrawl reads. Do not tell Mother, I took it. You know how his temper can get.
Visenya unfolds the slip of paper hidden behind the pages of his letter. It’s a large sheet of paper, withered and almost unreadable. It takes her a second to realize what it is.
A map.
A little late, Jace adds in his letter. But I think it will be of some amusement to you. I am sorry that I am not there. Soon, Enya. Soon.
It’s a map of the Red Keep – not just the Red Keep, but what appear to be tunnels inside. Maegor’s secret tunnels. Her stepfather must have found them and mapped out the ones he knew.
Visenya is unphased by such a discovery. Her senses dulled, her temper peaked. But the realization of the power this brings hits her like a lightning bolt. If she wished to move about the castle, if she wished to flee, she could.
Visenya tucks the sheet of paper up her sleeve. Better to keep such a valuable item close to her at all times.
She uses her fire light to inspect the map as she lies there at night. The air has grown cooler these past few moons. Sitting in a chair, clad in a white nightgown and thin red robe is not enough. Still, she endures.
I mean it, he had said. So cool.
She wants him to hurt as she does. To make him plead and dance to any tune she sings.
And she also wants to scorch him from the face of the earth.
Visenya shakes those thoughts from her mind. Her old chambers used to belong to her mother when she was a girl. Visenya can trace the path on Daemon’s makeshift map. It is not hard to open the door, even if it is somewhat unnerving to know it existed there all these moons.
Visenya takes a candle with her in the darkness, holds out the map, and walks. The air is stale, the tunnels covered in cobwebs. If she looks hard enough, she may even see rat droppings. She cannot help but shudder.
Using the map, she manages to find entrances to the library and other chambers. They all connect to royal chambers used in the castle. Daemon had kept his map relatively up to date.
She reaches an arch, sees a glint of light from the cracks in the hidden door, and kneels. Her breath catches in her throat. She sees the glint of his silver through the slit. He’s sitting by the table, seemingly lost in thought. Visenya wants to strangle him.
She wonders if he can feel her gaze. She notes how he frowns and peers about the room, before he leaves. Visenya waits a few moments before she pushes open the door, ducking into his room. They are surprisingly neat.
His sword has been left out, shining by his bed, as if he were of need of it in sleep. He has books and papers on his desk, ever the studious prince. Visenya wants to laugh. Wants to rip his throat out with her teeth.
She walks to the bed, rests her hand on the sheets. She can almost imagine sharing it with him. The things they have already done. More.
I do not know how to stop.
She grabs his sword. It would be so easy to plunge it into his chest. To claim his life as she did his eye. She still has the blade her stepfather gave her strapped to her thigh. So easy it would be, to claim his kiss and rip the blade through his heart as he did her.
For that is what she feels, she realizes. Heartsick.
And she hates him for it.
Visenya is distracted from her musings by the sound of footsteps approaching. She has not the time to return to the passage – she ducks behind the curtains, trembling as the door swings open, preying to the Gods the sword does not topple over from where she had hastily left it in a poor replication of its original position.
She can see Aemond move about the room from the corner of her eye and munch on apple. He settles by the fire, before he stands, pacing and restless. It is an exact imitation of how she has been these past few days – few moons, even. Something eating away at her like a leech; bit by bit. Sucking out of her blood.
Aemond moves to his bed, reaching to untie his doublet when he pauses, his back to her. Visenya presses a hand to her mouth to catch her gasp as he bends down to right the sword. She huddles closer to the wall. She is in his chambers. She came to his chambers.
Her gaze drifts to his bed.
How many whores had he bedded in his travels? How many ladies, highborn or not, had he pleasured with in his pursuit of a bride?
Visenya grips her blade tightly. She wants to take out his eye. She is sick of waiting in the shadows, frightened and powerless. She is a dragon. She will be a dragon.
Aemond hears the attacker approach him when he grabs his sword, but he is not fast enough. Something sharp digs into his spine.
Aemond glances over his shoulder.
“Tsk, tsk,” Visenya chides, violet eyes narrowed with fury. “Dear uncle, how you have let your guard down.”
He cannot help the flare of surprise. “How did you—”
“No matter,” she interrupts.
Despite their position, Aemond feels relatively calm. His heart pounds, but that is more due to her proximity. The brilliant flush of her cheeks, the gleam in her eye, the ferocity of her expression. She is the Stranger personified, and he has never desired her more.
“Why have you come?” he asks instead, turning so her blade digs into his chest instead. Right above his heart. He lets his sword topple to the floor.
Visenya glares at him. “For punishment. For justice.”
He tilts his head. “For what crime? You have already taken my eye, dear niece.”
Her nostrils flare as she looks at him. But she is unafraid. Unashamed, even. “And what if I want your other one?” she asks.
She drags the blade up his neck, nicking the skin, up to his mouth. She taps it against his cheek. Aemond stiffens, posture poker-straight, but says nothing.
“I think I have found a solution to our little problem, Uncle,” she says. “One of us must die.”
“Seems drastic.”
“Seems appropriate,” she corrects. “Our house words are fire and blood, after all.”
He shifts towards her, but she stops him by pushing the metal to his mouth. He stops.
“Visenya,” he whispers, her name a prayer on his lips. He wants her to let him prove his devotion. To lavish her. “I am sorry.”
She is the one to take a step closer to him. Blood trickles down his neck from the earlier wound she inflicted. “You forced me to accept my desire,” she hisses. “To stop running, and then you did precisely the same thing.”
He shakes his head. His lips graze the cold metal of the blade as he speaks. “I saw you fall,” he confesses, each word a crack against his armour. “And my world shifted. I felt human.”
“Liar—”
“I was afraid,” he persists, refusing to back down. “I was afraid. You took my eye, and still I wanted you. Craved you like I had never felt before. I swore to loathe you and instead all I want is your pleasure and your smile and your time.”
“You left,” she persists.
“And I came back. I came back for you. I will do whatever you wish.”
“And what if I wish for you to die?”
He grabs the blade, ignoring her murmur of protest, and drags the tip right above his heart.
“Then do it,” Aemond says, staring right into her eyes. “Kill me, but I will haunt you in death as you haunt me in life. My soul is yours.”
Visenya presses the blade into his skin. Moons ago, she had challenged him to take her eye as revenge and be done with it. She had stood there, wet and bare and dripping from the sea, and he had not been able to. Visenya pushes the blade so hard she can feel the tip pierce him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, like the creature she has transformed him into. “I want only you.”
She breaks away, swearing, and Aemond sways, startled by the loss of her. But she does not distress for long.
“Prove it,” she challenges.
Aemond blinks at her.
With the fire illuminating her from behind, she is a siren of the night. The very image of power and beauty. Visenya waves the blade as she continues. “Take off your clothes.”
Aemond hesitates for only a moment before he complies. He thinks he sees a vague look of surprise on her face at his easy agreement, but soon he is unlacing his doublet, yanking his tunic over his head, exposing his bare chest to the night air. His clothing falls to a pool on the floor by his feet.
Visenya says nothing as his fingers move to his pants. He yanks them and his smallclothes off, revealing his manhood. The shadows from the flames dance on his naked body. Like a lion, Visenya begins to circle him. He stands there, hands curling and uncurling at his side, attune to her every movement.
“Don’t move,” she instructs. “Don’t speak.”
He nods.
“That,” she hisses, raking her nails down his back. “Was moving.”
Aemond bows his head, focuses on his breathing. His cock is already half-hard. Her hand lingers at the small of his back, right above his bottom, caressesing the skin. He can feel the scratches on his shoulders, the slight sting. She reaches out and kisses the angry marks, her tongue wetting the injuries she finds.
Aemond’s eye flutters shut. Visenya takes off his patch, throws it somewhere farther away. Her hands continue their gentle exploration. They travel up his sculpted back, traversing his shoulder blades, tracing the small birthmark by his left shoulder. A shiver crawls up the base of his spine as the cold metal drags across his skin as well.
She circles to the front, one hand on him all the while. His passion inflames at the sight of her face, but he heeds her words. Visenya’s gaze flits to meet his, and the sight of his sapphire seems to undo something in her. Provoke something. Before he can blink, Visenya sinks her teeth into the bleeding mark she left on his neck and sucks.
Aemond cannot help it; he moans. Every nerve in his body is on fire as she sucks his blood into her mouth, licking and sucking and soothing. She moves away from that spot and continues making her claim on his skin. Biting right above his nipple. Licking her way over his heart. She rests her ear over his heart.
“You sound nervous, Uncle,” she murmurs, leaning back to face him. “Do I terrify you?”
Every inch of his body screams at him to touch her. To claim her. He trembles with the effort not to.
“You bewitch me,” he replies, eye fixed on her lips.
She smirks.
“Kneel.”
She whirls the handle of the blade in her hand as she surveys him. She is cold, impenetrable, eyes dark as she feasts on his skin and hardening cock. “Kneel,” she repeats, more demanding this time.
He does.
His knees scrape the carpet, the only relief from the stone digging into his skin. He gazes at her. Visenya reaches out and grasps his chin tightly.
“Let me please you,” he whispers, moving in her grip so he can capture her thumb with his mouth. “Let me prove myself penitent.”
Visenya’s eyes narrow. “I will decide the manner of your penance, Aemond.”
She whirls away, stalks over to his chair by the fire, leaving him naked and kneeling. She moves the chair so she’s facing him, the flames making her skin even rosier.
“Come,” she beckons, parting her legs. “Better yet – crawl. Do not stand.”
He is the sheep and she the dragon. Aemond grits his teeth and bares it, ignoring the slight shock and increasing triumph in her stare. He reaches her quickly, body growing increasingly warm.
She reaches out to trace one of the marks she left.
“You will bed no other woman,” she hisses. “Do you understand? Not until I say you can.”
He nods. He can almost weep at the blissful agony of it all. He bends down and grasps her ankle, presses a loving kiss to her skin. “Visenya,” he pleads. “I merely kissed her.”
She laughs; cold and cruel. “I suppose that lessens some of your punishment.” She pushes him away, parting her legs and bunching up her skirts, exposing her pink, swollen cunt to him.
“Visenya—”
“I thought you learnt your lesson before,” she states. “But no matter – I can teach it to you again.”
He watches with dry lips as she shoves three fingers into her cunt. A small cry of discomfort leaves her lips, and he wants to comfort her, soothe her with his lips and tongue, ease her into it. But Visenya likes the roughness, he realizes. Her lips part, her eyes are almost black as she tilts her head back, exposing the perfect arch of her throat. He wants to sink his teeth into it.
“Oh,” she gasps, rolling her hips. Her skirts keep falling, hiding the sight from him. He resists the urge to growl each time. She smacks her head back on the chair. ‘Oh, oh, oh.”
“Visenya,” he whispers, pressing his thighs together, trying to control his increasing pleasure. It hurts. “Visenya.”
She makes herself come with a perfect twist of her fingers, removes them to lick them all clean with her mouth, her gaze fixed on his face.
“You seem distressed,” she mocks. “Tell me, Aemond, do you wish to prove how sorry you are?”
He jerks his head; speech left him long ago.
“Good. Now begin your penance.”
She parts her legs even further, the perfect cradle, and Aemond swoops forward before she can change her mind, plunging his tongue inside her. She sings so prettily like this, tastes so sweet, and she bucks her hips into his face violently, pressing his nose against her nub, yanking at his hair, using him for her pleasure.
Aemond does not care. He nuzzles his face into her cunt, eager to pleasure, to see her fly amongst the stars in his arms, and he devotes himself to his penance like the most guilty of sinners.
“Fingers,” she demands, sounding entirely more present of mind than he expected given the circumstances. “Give me your fingers.”
He obeys, presses a long, lingering kiss to her cunt as she guides his fingers inside with a wet pop. Visenya glares down at him, chest heaving, face flushed, but still angry. She shoves her thumb inside his mouth for him to latch on, and he does, tongue swirling around the digit like it was mere moments ago inside her.
“Did you miss me?’ she hisses. It’s a taunt more than anything else.
“I did,” he whispers, her thumb falling out of his mouth. He reaches as close as he dares and presses a kiss to her collarbone. She puts a hand on his chest, restraining him, her other latching onto his hair and tugging, forcing his chin up. “I want you, Visenya. Take what you will of me.”
She comes on his fingers with a muffled cry, back arching, face alight with pleasure. Aemond falls back when she pushes him to give her space. He watches with baited breath as she tugs at the sleeve of her dress hastily, reaching for her laces.
“Visenya—”
“I don’t need your help,” she says.
After several long minutes of watching her struggle, she manages to remove her dress and small clothes. She abandons the knife as she straddles him, making Aemond fall to his back with a huff.
They stare at each other for a moment, his cock pressing into her rump, her wetness dripping onto his chest, smearing his stomach. He grins, feral and pleased, and her nostrils flare. He groans his pleasure as she sets her knees on either side of his face and lowers herself to his awaiting mouth.
His hands slide to grab her at her back and bottom, clutching at the flesh to steady her.
“Like that,” he whispers as she starts to tentatively roll her hips. “Like that.”
He plunges his tongue inside her, careful to hold her close. If she wants this of him, he will give it to her completely, with utter devotion he did not know he possession. He is a sinner, and she is the salvation. He is poisoned, and she is the cure.
“Aemond,” she gasps, leaning forward, her hand braced above his head as she cowls over. “Aemond—”
Her hips grow faster, more desperate, jerking against his face, and he soothes her with his tongue and soft whispers. “Darling,” he whispers in Valyrian. “Lovely.”
She comes with a high pitched moan, her legs trembling, and he lifts his knees so she can rest against them.
Visenya feels the world blur around her. When she’d come to Aemond’s room, she had not imagined this. Or maybe she had. This was the manner in which they spoke best; the manner in which they waged battle. Words were not sufficient. She wanted power over him; craved it, demanded it, and she got it.
Her bones feel like they’ve melted in her skeleton, and she swears she still sees stars in the corner of her eyes.
When she’s collected herself enough, cunt sore and sensitive, she looks down to find Aemond gazing up at her. The vein in his neck bulges as he bites down on his lip. She surveys the damage she inflicted, enjoys the warm pool of satisfaction in her stomach. She feels his cock, hard and throbbing, press into her backside, and she trails her hand down his chest, enjoys how his muscles jump beneath her fingers.
She nudges his knees back down so she supports herself, and looks down again. Visenya cannot help but be captivated by his gaze. The glow of his sapphire is darker in the firelight. But the eagerness, the gentleness, even, remains.
“Do not ever run from me again,” she commands in Valyrian. He had crawled to her, naked and bare. Had let her do as she wished. The power was thrilling as it was unexpected. It still is. He nods, lips parting to close around her thumb once more. He sucks ever so obediently, and her eyes flutter shut.
She knows the impossibility of their position. She wants him inside, craves him, and she can do it.
She shifts, naked as the day she was born, and her cunt grazes his cock, making him hiss and tilt his hips up, almost causing her to topple over.
“Visenya,” he pleads, hands gripping her hips. “Visenya, please.”
She ignores him in favour of doing it again, grinding her hips down on his cock. So close to entering her, but not quite. It feels good. She moves her hips, delighting how he groans, his one hand palming her breast, squeezing.
Visenya’s lips part, her head tilting back, hair wild and undone as she rolls her hips back and forth on his cock. He jerks his hips, and she loses her balance again.
“Up,” she commands, tugging him to sit upright. He clutches her close to his chest, her breasts pressed flush against his skin. His one hand grabs her hair, the other arm wraps around her waist. He rolls his hips up, kissing at her breasts, making her grind even harder against his cock.
“Visenya,” he says, eyes fluttering, cheeks flushed red, panting. “Visenya, please.”
Her hands latch themselves in his hair. “You are lucky I feel benevolent,” she whispers. She sinks her teeth into his flesh, and Aemond comes with a groan, clutching her to him, their sweat sticking on each other’s bodies. His come smears in between her thighs.
Sparks still fly in her stomach, her cunt sensitive and aching, and she rolls beside him, face turned towards the fire. When her fingers go down to fiddle with her folds, Aemond turns towards her, his back curled around her, his knee wedged in between her thighs.
“One more,” he pleads, pleasure bursting behind her eyelids. He rocks his knee against her nub, his hands sneaking over to cup her breasts.
Within seconds, Visenya finishes again, arching, reaching back to grab at his hair.
She smiles to herself when the pleasure dissipates. For the first time in her life, she is entirely satisfied and spent. She does not feel like she can move. Does not want to move from his arms.
But soon she will have to, won’t she?
She will have to wed Aegon.
I will do whatever you wish.
She closes her eyes.
Aemond nudges his nose against the back of her ear, rests their intertwined hands on the small of her stomach. Visenya is still panting softly, curled towards the fireplace. Aemond takes her lack of stiffness in his arms as a victory.
He presses a quick kiss to her neck and settles there, brow resting against her neck. He wishes to stay like this forever. Legs tangled, lips swollen, close. Intimate.
“I would keep you like this forever,” he whispers in valyrian. “If you’d let me.”
Visenya keeps her gaze fixed on the kindling flames of the fire. “To what end, Uncle?” she returns in Valyrian. “We wed, we run, and chaos will follow. I will not undermine my mother. The damage it would cause…”
She shakes her head, her dark curls clinging to her sweaty skin. “Besides,” she adds, returning to the common tongue. “I have not yet fully forgiven you.”
Aemond muffles his smile into her skin. It dies soon. As much as wants her, wants this, the possibilities for them are not ideal. They both know it. It seeps into their skin, casting them in shadow.
“I will do as you wish,” he murmurs to her in Valyrian.
Visenya shifts in his arms, moving so that she now faces him. Her fingers curl under his chin, and he bends down to press a kiss to her fingertips.
“Whatever you wish to do,” he continues. “I will do it. I meant what I said.”
“Shh,” she whispers, stopping his rush of words with a press of her lips to his. “Shh.”
He kisses her back; softly, sweetly. He is a horrible, cruel man. All rough and hard edges. But for her, he is something new. He is vulnerable but alive. Empassioned but attentive. The dichotomy of emotions she arouses in him is too much and just enough all at once. He does not want to let her go.
She brings his head down to rest by her breasts, and he nuzzles into her warmth like a cat, her hands running through his long curls. He falls asleep like that, curled against her, clinging to her like a lifeline.
He wakes in the morning to a kiss on his cheek. From the window, he can see that there’s no light outside yet. Visenya kneels above him, hair down, dress crinkled.
“Go back to sleep,” she tells him.
Aemond is more relieved that she woke him to begin with before she left. No more running. No more ignoring each other. A new state of calm has arisen between them. He grabs her hand, squeezes it lightly.
“Aemond—”
He leans up to kiss her once more, his free hand tangling in her hair. It’s a hard kiss, but kind. Within a few moments, she pulls away.
“Go back to sleep,” she advises, standing so she’s out of reach. Her expression is unreadable as she glances back at him before she returns to the secret door – which he is still alarmed he had no knowledge of – and makes her leave.
Aemond sinks back to the floor. The coldness of the stone seeps through the carpet into his back, but he cares not. He is a dragon, of the blood of Old Valyria. He takes and takes and burns while doing so.
But now, he waits.
He waits for her.
And that will be enough.
Notes:
I posted a new aemond x oc story if you guys want to check it out called I kept you like an oath
kudos and comments mean the world! <3!
come chat with me on Tumblr @fkevin073
Chapter 10
Notes:
sorry this took so long to get up! I've been busy with my other aemond x oc story, I kept you like an oath. so close to the end! two more chapters plus the epilogue! thanks so much for your response to this story, it means the world! ❤️
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 10
The sun shines the day her family arrives in King’s Landing.
She can scarcely believe it’s been so long, now that she sees her mother banner approaching the front steps of the Red Keep. There have been letters exchanged – countless of them—but it does not compare.
When her mother steps out from the wheelhouse, her belly swollen with child, Visenya flies into her arms, decorum forgotten. She senses the Queen and the Hand staring at them, but she does not care. King Viserys was too ill to join them in the outer courtyard this morn. No doubt he is saving his energy for the upcoming wedding festivities. A week of jousts, tourneys, dances and feasts before her and Jace turn eighteen and wed their betrotheds.
Aegon is there too, eyes red but jaw cleanshaven. His mother must have forced him to put in the effort.
He is there too. She can feel his gaze sinking into her back.
They have barely spoken since she last him. I will do whatever you wish, he had vowed, sealing his promise with a kiss. Visenya has learnt that physical affection is how Aemond expresses himself best. How she expresses herself best. She is not so stubborn now, as to admit that she feels nothing for him.
Now that she has acknowledged, it is figuring out what to do with it that’s the problem.
“My sweet girl,” her mothes coos, holding her close. “How I have missed your face.”
There’s a flutter of movement behind them – the rest of her family disembarking, no doubt. They all stink of dragon. But Visenya does not care.
“Helaena,” she hears the Queen say, and then there are footfalls as the mother rushes to her daughter. Visenya finally pulls away from her own mother’s arms.
“You have grown,” her mother comments, caressing her cheek. “More beautiful. More—” her mother’s brow furrows as she presses a hand to her stomach.
“Mother?” Visenya asks, concern evident in her voice.
Her mother waves her away. “No matter, sweet. This babe shall be my last, I’d wager, so it makes sense for it to be the hardest.” Daemon appears, helps support her mother, and offers her a nod of acknowledgement. He has never been one for affection.
“You look healthy,” Queen Alicent is telling her daughter, unable to stop fussing over her. Helaena, to her credit, does, especially compared to when Visenya saw her last. Jace hovers by his betrothed’s side, watching as if to ensure Helaena feels comfortable with her mother’s attentions.
She cannot help her smile. At least her brother has had more success with his betrothed than she has had with hers. She glances at Aemond, finds him already staring at her. She looks away just as Jace turns to greet her.
“Enya,” he breathes, crushing her into his arms.
Visenya laughs, delighted, and squeezes him right back. Of all her siblings, though she loves them dearly, she has missed Jace the most. He is one of half of her, after all. They shared a womb, a cradle. That bond runs deeper than everything.
He meets her gaze as he pulls back, and his brow furrows.
“Enya—”
“Later,” she whispers, sending a meaningful glance towards thew Queen and Ser Otto. “Later.”
Jace seems reluctant but agrees. Visenya is quickly swarmed by her other brothers and their hugs and teasing, but through it all she watches as the Queen approaches her mother. The greeting is awkward, but not without some warmth.
“Thank you,” she hears the Queen say. “For taking care of Helaena.”
Jace has already returned to his betrothed’s side, like a bee to honey. She does not think he even realizes it. They’re whispering something to each other, her brother looking confused.
“Come,” the Queen tells her mother. “The King awaits you.”
The family is gathered in a large dining room, hidden from the courtiers hungry gazes. Tomorrow, the festivities begin. The King is propped up in his chair, smiling vaguely as her mother introduces him to Aegon and Viserys. Her mother spends most of her time in a chair too. Visenya has no doubt her mother has hidden how difficult this pregnancy has been on her, no doubt not to worry her.
But Visenya cannot be cross with her for keeping secrets.
She looks over at Aemond, who is standing across the room, looking out the window. Heleana is next to him, her brows knitted together. Jace, Luke and Joff are feasting on the food laid out on the grand oak table, no doubt starved from the trip. Aegon is drinking his wine.
Her heart pounds in her chest.
Visenya has been restless with indecision. Aemond placed the decision – the power -- in her hands. She knows he is at a loss for what to do as she. She bites down on her lip, her gaze lingering on his back. She has to fight hard to ignore the desire pooling in her belly. It has no place here – but desire has no rhyme or reason. She has spent the better part of the last two weeks fighting the urge to strangle him or drag him right back in between her legs.
Her gaze flits to Jace. Her brother, sensing her anxiety, lifts his head.
Later, she had told him.
“Jace,” she murmurs, approaching him quietly. “Care for a walk in the gardens?”
Her brother eyes her a moment before he nods, offering her his arm. Their family lets them go without question.
“Your soul seems less torn, brother,” Helaena murmurs. The wind from the outdoors caresses his face.
Aemond grunts softly, looks down below at the gardens. Below, he can see Visenya and Jace walk arm-in-arm amongst the hedges, dipping in and out of view.
“I’ve realized what I want,” he replies evenly, gripping the window sill so tight it pierces his skin. Helaena grabs his hand with surprising force and pries it off.
“Your heart line,” she whispers, tracing the long mark in the centre of his palm. “It seems to have grown longer.”
Aemond shrugs. Two weeks it has been since he swore his vow to her. Since she snuck into his chambers and made him fall apart over and over. In the days that followed, it had felt less like a dream and more like a promise. Now, the daunting reality that that they may have been the last time – that it will become a distant memory in many years, plagues him. Eats at his insides.
He glares at Otto when he catches his grandsire staring at him. Helaena follows his gaze, sighing contemplatively.
“What you want, Aemond,” Helaena whispers. “Could tear us apart.”
He looks at her sharply. “You have seen it?”
Helaena shakes her head. “The future is unclear, but I see empty beds.”
“Empty beds?”
Helaena gnaws on her lower lip. “Someone will be missing.”
Alarm grips him. “Who, Helaena?”
She grimaces. His sister has grown more aware of her surroundings, nowadays. More present in day-to-day life. She no longer looks like she could merely disappear simply by a strong gust of wind. She holds herself taller, her posture straighter, and she does not wilt when Aegon deigns to join them by the window, halting any chance he had of grilling his sister for more information.
“Tell me,” Aegon starts, “Is Dragonstone as miserable as the books make it out to be?”
Helaena shies away, lowering her gaze. “No,” she responds eventually, sounding very much like she’s thinking of something else. “I like the quiet.”
Aegon shrugs, careless, and turns to him. Aemond can smell the drink on his breath. In another life, perhaps, Aegon would be tormented by the loss of his birthright. Dragonstone, according to tradition, should be his, not their elder half-sister’s. But with time, it will pass to Jace, and then to his children after them. Aegon does not seem to care.
“What’s the matter with you?” Aegon questions, taking a long gulp from his cup. “I have reason to be miserable, but you do not. You had a choice on who you’re obligated to dip your cock into—” Aemond imagines shoving his brother out the window with vicious glee—“But I have no such freedom. No one asked if Iwanted this.”
“And what do you want, Aegon,” Aemond demands, “if not V—Princess Visenya?”
Aegon shrugs. He does not seem to have noticed Aemond’s near-slip.
“To drink wine,” he replies. “And eat and fuck myself to an early grave.”
There are times when Aemond pities his brother. He is the first ever first-born son to not be the heir to the throne. He has nothing to inherit. Dragonstone will go to Jace, Driftmark to Luke, and other high positions at court will go to Rhaenyra’s sons. If Aegon is not bound to something, he is not responsible for it. Aegon does not see the need to prove himself like Aemond; to honour the legacy of their ancestors.
Aegon is content to drown himself in his cups and accept the life of aimlessness that has been granted to him.
For a brief moment, Aemond imagines himself killing his brother. It would be easy. Aemond has long since bested his brother with a sword. It could be at night or by day. He can do it right now, even. A mere push of his hands and all the problems would be solved. He would be free to wed Visenya.
However much his brother is a cunt, that is not a stain he wants on his hands. Not just for his sake, but for his mother’s.
Aegon, oblivious to his musings, peers out the window.
“Now what,” he starts, looking at Aemond with a wide grin as he gestures down below, “do you think they are talking about?”
Aemond looks down to find Jace and Visenya in the garden. They are too high up to hear what they’re saying, but he can see how tense they both are even from a distance.
“I have no idea,” he hears himself reply.
Jace, as expected, does not take her revelations well.
“Are you mad?” he hisses, glancing furiously around them to make sure no one is listening. She takes his hand and tugs him behind a tall hedge. “Visenya, you took his eye.”
“And now his heart, it would seem,” she retorts. “Listen, the past doesn’t matter—”
“Doesn’t matter?” Jace cries. She shushes him, and he looks two seconds away from leaping at her like they did when they were children. “Visenya, it all matters. How could you love or want someone who—”
“I do,” she insists. “It happened. I did not mean for it to, but it did.”
Jace paces back and forth. He sighs and pinches his nose. “And what do you propose, Enya?” he asks. “Will you wed Aegon but bed his brother? Will you let your children be swarmed by rumours of their parentage like we are?”
Visenya falters, stung. She knows her brother is right, and yet—
Jace moves to cup her face in his hands. “I am sorry,” he says. “I just – you mentioned nothing in your letters.”
“I was afraid someone would read them,” she whispers.
He presses a quick kiss to her brow and steps away. She gulps and fiddles with her hands.
“Do you love him?” Jace asks. “Does he love you?”
Visenya shifts in her steps.
“Has he not told you?” he presses on. “Enya—”
“People show love in different ways, Jace, other than words,” she says.
“Do you even know him enough to love him?” He pinches his brow. “If we are doing to do something about this, Enya, I want you to be certain.”
“You’d help me—” She trails off. She’s not even sure what she’d need help with.
“Of course I would,” Jace breathes. “I will. But you haven’t answered my question.”
Visenya looks up ahead. She catches Aemond watching her from the window. I will do whatever you wish, he’d told her. No, she may not know every detail of his life or his mind, but he had claimed something inside her. Latching onto her heart like a leech, and she knew not how to get rid of him.
“He’s part of me,” she replies. “And I am part of him. I know this. I know it, Jace.”
Her brother’s eyes soften.
“Well,” he says, taking a deep breath, “what do you wish to do?”
There’s a myriad of responses on the tip of her lips, but none fall.
“Jace,” their mother calls from the window. “Visenya. The King wishes to see you both once more.”
Visenya exchanges a look with Jace before they retreat indoors. It goes without saying that she does not wish to burden her mother further in her condition. Her and Jace are quiet as they return. She knows her brother will not betray her trust. Jace is a man of honour, but he is a man of family first. The blood of the dragon runs thick, and her brother loves her dearly.
Aemond is dresses in a fresh doublet lined with dark grey and green at the first feast that will kickstart all the celebrations. He sits next to Aegon. The King is at the centre, even as he rots, with his mother on one side and Rhaenyra at the other. Next to Rhaenyra is her husband, then Jace and Helaena, whose seats along with Visenya’s and Aegon’s are wrapped in vines and flowers. Visenya sits closest to his mother, then Aegon, then him, and his grandsire sits at the end of the table, watching.
Aemond watches him closely, but Otto Hightower is like a snake. He cannot be happy that these marriages are unfolding, though in truth Aemond shares the same sentiment. He cannot help it.
Visenya has said no word to him. He’s caught Jace staring at him searchingly once or twice, a hard look in his eyes, but he has otherwise said nothing. The entire castle has descended into chaos. The servants are tripping over themselves, struggling to maintain the high demands placed upon them. The celebrations are like nothing Aemond has ever seen. Splendid and robust. Even the halls are decorated in finery, showcasing House Targaryen’s strong and proud heritage. The music has never been livelier; the wine never sweeter.
And still, he aches.
He aches for her.
Visenya is a vision, as always. Her dress is low cut, a stunningly dark black, like the midnight sky, except for the ends of her skirt and her sleeves, which are blood-red coloured. Rubies shine on her neck and her ears, and her dark curls are pinned by a dragon broach. He wants to devour her whole. Wants to take her back to his chambers and make her come on his tongue over and over until she cannot think or walk or remember her own name.
More importantly, though, he wants her to want him back. Wants her to desire him enough to surrender herself to him fully, as he is prepared to do for her. He crawled for her, knelt in supplication, and he would do it again and again.
The court is alight with festivities, watching the royal family with hungry eyes. Despite her current condition, Rhaenyra is the one designated to deliver the welcome speech as heir to the throne. Aemond watches as their father’s eyes well up as he gazes at his eldest daughter. Once, that kind of pride would wound him, as his father never showed him that kind of devotion, but now his attention is reserved for Visenya.
He watches her instead, the red painted on her lips, the rouge on her cheeks, and he wants to kiss her so badly his insides turn molten. She catches his gaze for a moment, and her violet eyes are almost black before she looks away.
“This is a new era for House Targaryen,” Rhaenyra says, cupping her stomach. “A time to build and move forward as we bind our house in love and devotion.”
She glances at Aegon, and Aemond knows his half-sister is well aware of Aegon’s continuing reputation. Kinslaying is perhaps the worst crime in Westeros, but for a mother protecting her child—
Mayhaps she was relying on the knowledge that after the wedding, Visenya would be allowed to leave the Red Keep and return to Dragonstone if she so wished. These imposed conditions only lasted the year before the wedding – Visenya can very well return home the instant they put Aegon’s cloak on her shoulders. The King is too ill to truly notice.
To Aegon’s credit, he is not that much of an idiot. One whiff of him harming Visenya and their sister would have had his head.
And so would Aemond.
The mere thought of Aegon touching Visenya is enough to set his whole body aflame. In the distance, he imagines he hears Vhagar roar in agreement.
The courts raise their cups when Rhaenyra finishes her speech, and then the two betrothed couples are urged to stand and greet the crowds. The applause they receive is close to divine rapture, the court easing with the knowledge that at least some of the tension between the Greens and the Blacks will ebb after this. The risk they pose to the other has been neutralized, at least somewhat.
Otto, Aemond notices, drums his fingers on the table all the while, surveying the courtiers with a distant, if disapproving expression.
Music plays, and Aemond watches with bated breath as Jace, Helaena, Aegon and Visenya take to the floor. They are all beautiful and handsome, but the difference between the two couples is evident. Jace’s smile is encouraging as he stares at his sister, and hers in return is shy, but familiar. Helaena seems happy with him.
Aegon and Visenya look at each other like they are strangers. Their hold is unfamiliar, their bodies stiff. Aemond remembers how she had looked, naked and bare in his arms as she rode his face, arching her back as she moaned—
She meets his heated gaze as she presses her hands against Aegon’s as they circle each other, and Aemond’s heartbeat picks up. It is near torture, watching her with his brother. If she says she will proceed with the marriage, Aemond will bear it. If she wants his love and cock and lust only for the shadows and dead of night, he refrain himself to those stolen moments.
But he knows it will kill him. To deny his love, his want, to have her but not fully, it will torment him until the end of his days.
But it will be enough. Better to have some of her than nothing at all.
The music ends with a flourish, and soon Aegon retreats to fetch himself a cup of wine. Jace offers his sister his hand, and Luke is the one to go and dance with Helaena next. Aemond’s sister seems slightly more unsure in the younger Velaryon’s arms, but she is smiling soon, eyes shining.
Within a few turns, other courtiers join them. Visenya and Jace are whispering to each other as they dance, he can tell. He has not stopped looking at her. They glance over at him, whispering again, but she says something to make her brother blush and stare at Helaena.
Soon, Luke is the next to take Visenya’s hand, and Aemond—
He goes to Helaena.
“May I take my sister for a dance, Jace?” he asks.
Jace eyes him closely. “Of course.”
He does not look away even as he retreats to the table.
“You worry him,” Helaena says. “He worries your heart is not true.”
Aemond scowls as she puts her hand in his.
“My heart is none of his concern,” he grumbles.
Helaena arches a brow. “Even if it concerns his sister?” she poses in High Valyrian.
“Dragonstone has not been a good influence on you.”
Helaena laughs lightly. “I think the past year has been good for both of us, brother. You seem less tormented now.”
As he spins Helaena under his arm, his gaze flits back. Visenya is dancing with little Joff now, her head tilted back as she laughs. She meets his stare and smiles, just for him.
“I suppose you are right,” he admits grudgingly.
Helaena’s expression is serious when she looks at him. “What will you do, Aemond?”
He does not hesitate in his reply. “Whatever she desires of me.”
When the tune changes to a slower tune, a change from the lively, country music from before, Aemond appears behind Joff.
“A dance, Princess?” he asks.
Visenya sends Joff a soft smile, urging him back to their mother. She glances at the table. Her mother is patting her stomach as she talks to the Queen, looking slightly tired already. She knows the pregnancy drains her a little. Daemon is talking quietly to the King, who looks half-asleep himself. She does not see where Otto is. Jace and Helaena are dancing once more, but they are deep in conversation, half-dancing, half-caught up in each other.
“Of course, my prince,” she replies, offering him her hand. He squeezes it, and Visenya—
She wants him bare before her once again. Once to bite and tease him and love him. She wonders if the bite marks and scratches she left on his skin remains. This dance is slower, more intimate, so he can put his hand on her waist and hold her close as they weave in and around the other couples.
She can feel his breathing on her neck, his warmth, smell him and—
Suddenly the answer that has been eluding her is so clear. It’s so fucking clear she almost wants to laugh.
Visenya swallows. Her heartbeat feels shivery, her entire body buzzing with her newfound realization right down to her marrow. She knows what she wants. Of course, she knows.
She stops in the midst of the steps, and Aemond at once follows suit.
“Uncle,” she breathes in High Valyrian. “I know what I desire.”
Aemond lifts his brows, but his eye is earnest. She wants to touch him. Wants to kiss him. Wants the whole court to see how they belong to each other.
“And?” he returns. He’s nervous. She can tell by the slight quiver of his shoulders, almost unnoticeable to the eye.
“Take me away and make me your wife,” she tells him.
Aemond freezes. His hand jerks up, as if he is supposed to seize her arm and pull her to him. He presses his lips together, though whether it is to muffle a smile or a groan, she is not certain. She does not dare put her hand in his. If she did—
Well, she’s afraid of what she might do. Kissing him senseless before the court would not do. Aemond restarts their dancing, his hand on her waist, holding her close. She squeezes it fleetingly, and a small sound escapes his throat.
“Meet me,” he tells her. “Tonight.”
She nods, almost laughing as he spins her under his arm as the dance requires. When she meets his gaze, she wants to cry and kiss him and hold him close all at once. They finish the steps in the daze, and Visenya—
He interlinks their fingers and squeezes.
I know, Aemond tells her wordlessly. I know.
Hours after the dance had finished, Aemond is alone in his chambers, sitting by the fire with his door barred when the secret passage to his room pushed open. Visenya has discarded her long and flowing dress in favour of a simple gown to protect her from the cold of the passages.
Aemond moves to greet her at once. His heart pounds. His blood sings. There will never be a sight more beautiful to him than her. He wants to kiss her, but he is suddenly afraid and uneasy, as if she is no longer real. He gazes down at her. He feels something flutter in his chest, like those moths and butterflies Helaena likes to collect have slithered down his throat and made a home in his ribs.
“Are you certain?” he asks her, trying to make his voice steady. It does not work. He can feel his adam’s apple tremble. “What you said before – what you proposed – are you certain?”
She steps forward, smile on her lips, and nods. “I am certain, Aemond. I wish to be your wife.”
For a moment, they just gaze at each other, and then—
They both start to laugh, like the sun is shining from their eyes. Laughter bubbles inside his throat, and Aemond feels as though he is soaring amongst the clouds. He reaches for her and pulls her into his arms, lifting her off the floor and spins. Visenya muffles her glee into his neck, embracing him tightly.
“I will be your husband,” he whispers to her in High Valyrian.
He slows his spinning and sets her on the ground, pulling her into a hard, ferocious kiss. She nips at his lower lip lovingly, and he moans into her mouth, clutching her waist and pressing her against him. He swallows the lovely little sound she makes.
“But first,” she whispers, pulling away as she rests her brow against his, “we must deal with Aegon. We can run away and wed, and I am certain my mother will pardon us when she becomes Queen, but Otto might use our fleeing as an excuse to separate Jace and Helaena.”
Aemond opens his mouth to concur when—
“What in the seven hells?” Visenya cries, turning towards the secret door she had left open. Aemond grabs his sword at once, sweeping her behind him as the glowing torch grows closer.
“Jace?” she demands incredulously.
Aemond’s brows fly up when Helaena appears Visenya’s twin. “Helaena, what on earth are you doing—”
“There’s no time for this,” Jace interrupts. “Otto Hightower sent a maid to your chambers, Visenya. They found the door barred. They knocked it down and found it empty—”
Visenya swears under her breath—
“The whole castle is waking by the minute,” Jace continues.
“He means to sully my reputation,” Visenya says. “To make it so I will be convicted of treason along with Aemond.”
Aemond feels his lips curl. “My grandsire knows I am not a pawn for him to control. With Aegon, it would be easy.”
Helaena, from where she stands behind Jace, meets his gaze. “Aegon is not in the castle, brother. If we leave now and find him—”
“We may have a chance,” Aemond concludes. Visenya reaches for his hand and squeezes.
Aemond sheathes his sword and grabs a cloak for himself and for Visenya. Helaena and Jace are—somehow—already appropriately dressed. Helaena must have gone to Jace for help first, whether she dreamt of it or not. Aemond ensures that his door is barred before he joins them.
“Now,” Visenya starts as the plunge into the tunnels. “Where could we possibly find Aegon?”
Notes:
I have a busy schedule over the next few weeks so can't predict when the next update will be!! hopefully soon 🤞
kudos and comments mean the world <3!
come chat with me on Tumblr @fkevin073
Chapter 11
Notes:
sorry for the delay getting this up!! it's a very busy time rn, so updates are going to be slow. thanks so much for all your comments and support guys!!
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 11
“A whorehouse,” Aemond replies automatically in response to Visenya’s question. He spots the scowl Jace shoots him.
“Now is not the time for jests—”
“He’s not,” Helaena interrupts, frowning deeply. Aemond can barely make his sister’s features out in the darkness. Only the light from the torch Jace is holding aids them. Jace quietens at once. Pathetic, he thinks, scowling at him.
Visenya grabs his hand, and Aemond’s temper cools. Helaena unfolds a sheet of paper, frowning and—
“You copied the map?” Visenya asks Jace.
“It was my idea,” Helaena replies absently. “There are spiders and other bugs in here, you know.”
At Visenya’s perplexed look, Jace shrugs.
“Besides,” his nephew points out, “it’s not like you’ve been using these tunnels for exploring.”
Aemond smirks as Visenya reaches out to swat Jace.
The moment of levity does not last.
“Do we even know he’s not in the castle?” Aemond asks. “He could be in his chambers with a servant and Otto would already have him—”
“He’s not,” Jace says. “We heard the guards mutter about it through the walls.”
“There are dozens of whorehouses Aegon could be at,” Visenya points out. They all huddle together, looking over the map. “The silk road is known to be his haven.”
Aemond pinches the bridge of his nose.
“There are some in particular he adores,” Aemond mutters. “Along with other activities. We should try the whorehouses first.”
“But the guards—”
He captures Visenya’s face in his hands. “They won’t catch us,” he assures her. “We’ll find Aegon, and then we will wed. I swear this to you.”
She nods, and Aemond has to resist the urge to kiss her. Now is not the time for sentimentality. He grabs her hand, and jerks his head.
“Lead the way,” he tells Jace and Helaena.
They listen.
The four of them wind around various corners and sharp turns until they reach a small flight of stairs, the view hidden from the city below due to the slant of rocks. Jace abandons the torch wordlessly, and Aemond watches as he helps Helaena down the stairs so she doesn’t trip on her dress.
He does the same with Visenya, still holding her hand tightly.
“This way,” he tells them, tugging up his hood. The rest of them follow his example.
“Do you frequent the whorehouses often?” Jace questions, a bite to his voice.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Visenya reach out and pinch her brother’s ear. Due to their lack of Targaryen colouring, Jace and Visenya are less conspicuous in the streets of King’s Landing. It would be hard for the guards to spot them. It is him and Helaena that have to keep their hoods up.
“No,” Aemond replies. “If you count twice often, nephew.”
Jace grunts.
Aemond lets go of Visenya’s hand as he leads the way, weaving them through the streets, his hand drifting to the pommel of his sword every so often. The streets are bustling, busy, and he keeps his gaze low, uneager for them to see his pouch and recognize him.
To his surprise, Jace falls into step with him.
“If you hurt my sister,” he starts lowly, “if you so much as dishonour her—”
“If you thought I would, why are you helping us?” Aemond snaps. As a child, though he’s wroth to admit it, he’d envied his brunette nephew. He was a first son; had a dragon in the cradle, his mother’s love, his grandfather’s adoration. Jace, after many years of Aemond consistently scorning him, had learnt to return the favour. They all had.
“I don’t understand it,” Jace admits, their footfalls quiet as they walk together. Visenya and Helaena trail a few steps behind them, whispering to each other. “But I don’t have to.”
Aemond looks at him. He does not think he is successful in containing his surprise.
“Enya is certain of you,” Jace says. “And I trust my sister. That is enough.”
“I love her.”
It is perhaps odd, really, to say that for the first time to Jacaerys and not Visenya herself, but the words spill out regardless. Jace pauses in his steps to look at him. Aemond is not certain what his eldest nephews sees painted on his features, but it is enough for him to nod simply, even if he continues to look mildly disdainful.
The first few whorehouses they frequent have no luck. Helaena, bless her, had been wise enough to bring some gold with her, almost as if she had foreseen it.
Visenya finds it almost unnerving, but the usefulness of it all is not lost on her.
“How did you know to find Jace?” Visenya asks her.
Aemond and Jace walk up ahead. They’ve seen numerous guards and ducked into crowds and behind alleyways. With every passing moment, her heartbeat skips. She does not know how long it has been. The moon is still high in the sky, and the streets are still alive with people. If she were not so stressed, she can almost understand why Aegon loves the streets so much. The anonymity, the people, the smells, the colours. They are free in a way the court is not. It is refreshing, even if the streets are filthy and the smell of shit and piss is even more potent.
It's not until they reach a darker, quieter part of town that they spot two members of the Kingsguard darting out of the building. Visenya can hear the crying and cheers from inside. Almost like people are chanting.
“Fighting pits,” Aemond explains, catching her look. They’re ducked behind a few barrels, watching from the cracks as the two knights converse with each other.
“Mayhaps Mothes does not know yet what Otto has done,” Jace mutters.
“I thought you said the whole castle was awake,” Visenya points out.
“Grandfather is tricky like a spider,” Helaena whispers. “Your mother’s pregnancy has been difficult.”
It grates Visenya, even now, to know how much her mother left out in her letters, but now is not the time. It’s certainly not Helaena’s fault either.
It’s the Cargyll twins, both of whom are known to watch Aegon more than most. They listen to the twins bickering with each other. They don’t know where Aegon is either. They don’t know what Otto is up to, only that it is no good.
Understatement of the century, Visenya thinks.
“Where could he be?” Ser Arryk ponders, visibly frustrated. “He’s not in any of his favourite whorehouses, he’s not here, betting on children scratching their eyes out—”
Visenya barely manages to swallow her horror. Aemond holds her hand tightly, his face narrowed with distaste.
“We should let him stay gone,” Ser Erryk suggests. Aemond stiffens beside her. “You know what he is. They all do, except his mother, bless her. He’d be better off in Essos drinking himself to death—”
“He’s the prince—”
“He’s irresponsible,” Ser Erryk insists. “And unworthy of the duty we all know the Hand hopes him to assume. Why do you think he had Princess Visenya’s door knocked down? To weaken Princess Rhaenyra’s claim—”
“He did not make the Princess leave her chamber,” Ser Arryk points out. “If she has a lover, then she is a whore—”
Aemond has withdrawn his blade in a moment. Before Visenya can call him back, he whacks the knight over the head with the pommel of his sword until he falls to the ground, bloody but moaning.
And thankfully, unconscious.
Ser Erryk raises his hands in surrender when Jace joins Aemond. Slowly, Helaena and her follow them.
“I will not kill you where you stand,” Aemond says. “If you tell me where you have searched for my brother. Exactly.”
After a moment, Ser Erryk tells them. Visenya huddles next to Aemond’s side, watching the knight.
“Ser,” she says, after he’s finished listing a few places, some of which they’ve already been to. “Is there anywhere else Aegon may have gone?” She thinks of the last time she saw him. He’d never wanted this betrothal. He’d drunk himself into oblivion, surely, but maybe he found companionship elsewhere.
Ser Erryk shrugs. “The only thing the Prince loves more than ale and women is Sunfyre, Princess.”
Visenya inhales sharply. If Aegon was at the Dragonpit, if there was a chance, however small that he was already there, they could get the rest of their dragons and flee—
“Don’t speak of this,” Jace says. “To Otto.”
“I will not,” Ser Erryk replies. “I am loyal to the King and the true heir, Princess Rhaenyra. No more.”
Visenya and Jace smile at him in gratitude.
“When you return to the castle,” she says. “Find my mother. Tell her—”
She looks at the other three. “Tell her to trust us. We’ll be back soon.”
Ser Erryk knows better than to ask any questions.
The four of them turn on their heels and move hurriedly through the crowds, fighting their way to the Dragonpit. It takes what it feels like hours to reach it. Torches burn at the front, casting the large building in an even more haunting glow.
“If he’s not there,” Jace starts, “what shall we do?”
Aemond reaches for her hand once more, intertwines their fingers.
“We will leave,” she replies. “I will go and wed Aemond.”
Jace pauses. Him and Helaena exchange a look. The silver haired princess looks mildly dazed as they breach the gates of the dragonpit. It’s quiet. The dragon keepers must be sleeping, more souls. Dragons never like to be bothered at night – they prefer sleeping then.
“We will come with you,” Jace says after a moment. “If only the two of you leave, Mother will be convinced it was a kidnapping and draw blood.”
“Would the Queen not think the same?”
Jace shrugs. “Everyone would have cause to be angry.” Helaena hums, almost as if in agreement. The lower they creep down the tunnels, the louder the dragons’ snoring gets. When they pass by Vermithor’s cavern, her heart jolts. He stirs out of his sleep and roars softly, a soft call for his mother.
“Later,” she whispers. “Later.”
They’d been smart and kept the gate open, at the least. No one was dumb enough to try and sneak into the dragonpit. The dragons would eat them alive.
When they reach near Sunfyre’s cavern, Visenya wrinkles her nose at the sound of skin smacking. There are low, heady groans. Aemond juts his torch forth to reveal Aemond and some woman coupling against the wall. At the sign of light, Aegon grunts and squints.
“What in the bloody seven hells?” Aegon gapes at them, dumbstruck.
Aemond wastes no time in yanking his brother by the collar of his surcoat and yanking him off the woman. She’s pretty enough, he supposes, no doubt a whore judging by the state of her dress.
“Leave,” Visenya commands, and the woman flees without a word.
By that point, Aegon has tucked himself back into his breeches. Aemond can smell the drink on him.
“Your proclivities have grown more peculiar, Aegon,” Visenya comments. “Tell me, does the smell of dragon dung arouse you so?”
“Now,” his brother drawls, “is that any way to speak to your future husband?”
Aemond’s jaw flexes. “I think you’ll find, brother, that that position no longer belongs to you.”
Aegon blinks at him in the dull light. He glances at him, then Visenya, then Jace and Helaena, who hover a few feet behind them, no doubt keeping watch in case someone comes running.
Aegon cackles, the sound filling the air like a whip. Aemond has always known his brother to be a broken, lecher of a man. It should not surprise him to hear this, but it still does. But he ceased feeling pity for Aegon long ago. “So you mean to kill me?” his elder brother asks. “To become a kinslayer to marry the Strong bastard—”
“Watch your tongue,” Aemond hisses.
Visenya makes him stop by touching his cheek.
“We do not wish to kill you,” she says. “At this moment, Otto Hightower is looking for us all. He knows, I believe, of Aemond and myself. Our feelings for each other” Aegon’s left eye begins to twitch as his expression grows more and more incredulous. “He’ll break our betrothal, and use it as an excuse to wed you to some other highborn lady.”
“And this is troubling, because?”
“We all know Otto wishes for you to be King,” Visenya states.
Aegon pales, shifting uncomfortably as he runs a hand through his soiled, greasy silver locks.
“He’ll watch over you even more closely,” she continues. “Hells, he may even wed you to Helaena to try and keep your bloodline purer. I do not know. But I do not think you want that.”
“And what do either of you know about what I want?” Aegon demands. He swopps down and picks up his wineskin, drink dribbling down his chin as he takes a long gulp.
“You have no taste for duty,” Aemond murmurs, trying to placate his brother.
Aegon sneers. “You have a taste for bastard cunt, it would seem—”
Aemond shoves his brother into the wall, his hand latched at his throat, and Visenya tugs it off.
“Focus, Aemond,” she whispers. “Focus.”
He reluctantly lets his brother go.
“By the gods,” Aegon wheezes, watching as she rubs Aemond’s shoulder blades. “You do love each other. We are all blind, the lot of us.”
“You’re just drunk,” she mutters.
Aegon laughs. “In another life, I almost think we could have been happy together.”
Visenya remains quiet. Aegon sighs once more. “What is it you propose?”
“You leave,” she says, after taking a deep breath. Aemond looks at her. “You go to Pentos, with Sunfyre, and relinquish your claim to the throne. Never wed. Never marry. Flit across all the Free Cities, making your gold with Sunfyre at your back. He’s known to be the most beautiful dragon in the world. You leave and never return.”
Saying it out loud hardly feels real. Almost implausible, really.
“Otto could summon me back,” Aegon points out.
“Perhaps,” she says. “But it would take time to find you. And it would be hard. Otto has few friends in Essos, if any. And you would have Sunfyre. You’d be free to spend the rest of your days drinking and doing whatever it is you want. No prying eyes. Nothing.”
Aemond squeezes her hand.
“The King is ill,” she continues. She does not like to say it, but it is the truth. “He is ill. By the time you leave, and if they find you and somehow bring you back…. My mother will be crowned by then.” And no one will want to follow someone who fled his country.
They all know what she means.
Aegon paces a little.
“Brother,” Aemond murmurs. “You do not wish to be King.”
“I do not,” Aegon admits freely, rubbing his chin. “Mother…”
Visenya’s stomach tightens. Truth be told, she’s not certain the King would be well enough to notice the absence of his son or truly comprehend it. But the Queen would. Aegon may not be her favourite, but he is still her first born.
But he’s not dead, Visenya thinks. If she wishes to see him, she’d be able to.
“We all have dragons,” Aemond says. “We can cross the Narrow Sea easily.”
“Mother hates flying.”
Aegon pinches his nose and exhales, just as they hear noises echo from upstairs. Visenya pales.
“Soldiers,” Jace whispers, withdrawing his own dagger.
“No time for that,” she tells him. She turns to Aemond. “Our dragons. We all fly to Dragonstone.”
He pulls her in for a crushing, desperate, fleeting kiss. She can feel Aegon watch them. Dreamfyre and Vermax were kept in opposing caverns, so it is no surprise when Jace and Helaena flee for them.
“It’s your choice,” she tells Aegon. “We have no time to force you.”
She squeezes Aemond’s hand once more, and then they separate, rushing to their own dragon’s.
It is easy to undo the metal collar around Vermithor’s neck. She scales up the rope leading to his saddle faster than ever before, her hands aching with it, and ignores the rushing in her ears, the fire in her blood. She hears the guards scream, the walls shake as Vhagar and the other dragons take flight. Stones rumble and fall, but the damage is not aching severe as Visenya commands her dragon to fly.
The guards yell once more, and she struggles to dodge them as Vermithor squishes himself through the open doors before his wings outstretch. Vhagar, Vermax and Dreamfyre await her in the clouds.
Sunfyre isn’t there.
Visenya gulps and glances down. The guards have had the good idea to start closing the Dragonpit doors. She can see it even in the darkness. She shivers against the cold, ignoring the lump in her chest, when fresh screams arise from below.
Visenya turns her head just in time to catch the doors of the Dragonpit almost ripping off their hinges as Sunfyre bursts through the darkness with a roar, desperate to join them.
Tears pierce her eyes.
“I am still spectacularly drunk,” Aegon informs Aemond when he joins them amongst the clouds. “If I fall from my saddle and plunge into the sea, I will haunt you for the rest of your days and make your wedded bliss miserable, do you hear me?”
Aemond merely grunts, but in the darkness, she catches the smile he sends her.
Dragonstone has no changed one bit since he saw it last.
The only difference is that it seems a bit emptier. More deserted. At the sight of five dragons on the horizon, the Maester of the castle comes out to greet them. They land in the back, right by the beach.
“It’s fucking cold,” Aegon complains, shivering.
Aemond is tempted to hit him, but the urge ends when he remembers what Aegon has done for them. It’s odd, feeling any sort of gratitude to a man Aemond knows to be a moral wretch, but it lingers somewhat regardless.
Even if Aegon has become a horrid man now, he is still his brother.
“My prince,” the Maester greets, hurrying up to Jacaerys. “Princesses. What are you doing here?”
Jace shoots them all a look.
“We are here to be married, Maester,” Jace informs the old man.
Aemond finds it amusing to watch the blood drain from the Maester’s face.
“Uh—marriage, my prince? Here?” Maester Orwyle’s gaze flits between all of them. The clouds have only just begun to part. The sun is scarcely visible. Their dragons hover above them, flying in circles, calling to each other. They all no doubt look a mess. Their hair, their wrinkled clothing.
“Yes,” Jace replies steadily. “Here. Just like you did for my mother and stepfather all those years ago.”
“But—”
“But?” This time, it is Visenya who asks. His stomach tightens as he watches her. Fuck, she is so beautiful. And now he will make her his wife. “You will wed us in the name of the Gods of Old Valyria.”
“Now,” he adds.
“But would you not wish to bathe or eat or—”
“No,” Aemond says. “No, we do not. We will wed now.”
He looks to Helaena. His sister, after a moment, gives him a nod.
“I will be the future King, Maester,” Jace adds. “Helaena is to be my Queen. You are not doing an act of dishonour. You are wedding us in our home.”
It does not take much longer for the Maester to agree. When you have four members of royalty staring you down with their dragons hovering above, there is not much desire for argument. The older man disappears to retrieve the items for the ceremony, and he takes the moment to smooth back Visenya’s hair. Her eyes beam up at him.
He holds her close, tucking her face in his chest, and she breathes in deeply, inhaling his scent.
Helaena and Jace are whispering to each other. Not as physically affectionate as him and Visenya. Nowhere close. But Aemond knows Jace cares for her. He knows.
“Must I stay for this?” Aegon asks, pouting.
“We need a witness.”
His brother groans but agrees.
This is not the wedding of a little girl’s dreams. They are all tired and aching. Their clothes and hair windswept. But Aemond, as he cuts his palm open and lets his blood drip into the cup, watching as Visenya does the same, has never felt more at peace in all his days.
Helaena and Jace are behind him, doing the same, as Aegon watches it all, the waves crashing against the shore behind him. Above, their dragons roar and circle each other. The words in Valyrian are familiar. They sing to his soul. He does not lift his gaze from Visenya. Not once.
She shoots him a delighted smile as she marks his forehead with her blood.
We bleed the same, she whispers in Valyrian.
For each other, he returns.
They seal their vow with a kiss. He wants to devour her. He wants to love her until he’s old and grey.
And now he can.
After the ceremony is over, they all retreat inside the castle, the tiredness finally catching up with them. Soon, they will have to return to King’s Landing, but for now Visenya is content to remain here.
Aegon disappears into a chamber, falling flat onto the bed with a loud snore. Jace escorts Helaena to her chambers. Her and Aemond watch them go. Later, when there’s time, she will speak to her brother more of his relationship to Helaena, but now—
“Come, husband,” she whispers, tugging at his hand. “Let me lead you to our marriage bed.”
Aemond follows obediently behind her.
It does not take long to reach it.
The door to her childhood bedchambers closes softly behind them. Visenya inhales sharply, her heart pounding. Nothing has changed since she was last here. Being back, seeing her room – she had not let herself realize how much she’d missed Dragonstone. Many think it a cold and imperious, but year after year Visenya had come to love it.
Her chambers are simply emptier, is all.
She takes a step forward, her finger trailing over the desk, catching on the dust particles as she swirls them. She’s strangely nervous now. Her heartbeat quivers against her ribcage. Never before has she felt so bare.
She’s married.
Aemond sneaks an arm around her waist, pulls her flush to his chest. He nuzzles the crook of her neck, trails butterfly kisses up to her chin, her collarbone.
“My wife,” he whispers, caress, a claim. “My wife.”
Warmth pools in her belly.
“Husband,” she returns, and she cannot contain her smile. He growls playfully into her skin, his fingers digging into her hipbone through her dress. Despite how tired she is, how much of a whirlwind the past few hours of been, the ache in her bones, she is happy. Everything else that isn’t him fades away. All she feels, all she cares for, is the hardness of his body, the scrape of stubble on his chin as he burrows into her, like he wants to crawl under her skin and made a home there.
And she’d let him.
Of she would. She will. They exist in this place just for them, safe in the knowledge that they would do anything the other asked. She leans back into him, sighting, her hand circling his wrist and—
He abruptly whirls her around, his hands moving to grip her face. Her skull feels so breakable in his grip, but she’s precious all the same. He looks at her like she is the only thing to have ever mattered.
“Mine,” he murmurs, eyes flitting over her features, as if he cannot believe she is real. That this is real. There is still much more to undergo – her mother, his mother, the King, Otto – but for now, it does not matter. She banishes those thoughts away.
She simply wants to be with him.
With her husband.
She reaches out to remove his eye patch, his gaze lowering slightly as she throws it somewhere on the floor. She traces the scar she inflicted on his skin so long ago.
“Mine,” she returns. Before, she might have been indignant at the notion that she belongs to someone. She is her own person then, and she is now. A dragon bows to none. But the claim on each of them has on the other is undeniable. They built it, unknowingly perhaps, but with every kiss, touch and caress, they imprinted themselves on each other. Visenya knows no one else will do.
Her body has been carved to fit his and no other.
Aemond nods, his tongue darting out as her other thumb grazes his lips. He captures the digit in his mouth, sucking, swirling at it with his tongue. Visenya gulps, her eyes fluttering shut as she ways with desire. Her cunt throbs for him already. It’s been too long, and she intends to rectify that.
She yanks her thumb out of his mouth, ignoring his snarl in protest, and captures his lips with hers. Despite their growing desperation, it begins softly, tenderly but then their hands to begin to explore – hers latch onto his long, silver locks, and he grabs a hold of her waist, crushing her against him.
“Aemond,” she whispers when she pulls away for breath. “Aemond.”
They stumble backwards, her hands reaching for his surcoat, tugging at the ties, trying to get it off this instant. Her back smacks against the bedpost, and she tilts her head back, a groan spilling from her lips. Aemond’s teeth sink into her neck, like he is a creature sucking her blood dry, and pleasure bursts behind her eyelids as she grinds helplessly, trying to find purchase on his leg.
In response, he tucks her skirts up scandalously by her waist, ripping away her small clothes so her bare cunt is exposed to the cool air. His knee tucks between her legs, pinning her to the bedpost as Aemond angrily tries to undo her dress. Visenya ruts against his thigh, moaning in his ear, desperate and wanton, but she does not care.
“That’s it,” he hushes. “Seek your pleasure, my love. I can feel how wet you are.”
He captures her lips in a furious kiss, and all tenderness slips away. They are primal, filthy animals, grunting and moaning and nipping at each other as she seeks her peek against his clothed leg. Aemond finally succeeds in undoing the top half of her laces, and the dress loosens around her shoulders. He tugs down the sleeves despite the uncomfortable stretch constraining her movements, and he bites at the swell of her breast, the other hand pinching her nipple.
Visenya comes with a high-pitched moan, panting and red faced, but Aemond does not wait for her to calm. He whirls her around, his face still buried in her neck even though her back is to him, and undoes the rest of her laces. He yanks the dress off her with such force she’s surprised it does not rip, but she does not care. Let him rip all her dresses. She just wants him inside her. Wants and wants and wants—
And now she can have. She is delirious with it, consumed by it. She can have him now.
He moves to lay her on the bed, but Visenya refuses, tugging at his sleeves.
“You too,” she insists, and a tender smile appears on Aemond’s face, even though his eye is so dark it is almost black. They waste no time in stripping him of his clothing, even though she cannot stop kissing or touching him. He lifts her in his arms, her legs automatically bracketing his hips, and he lays her on the bed, hovering above her.
He’s so warm – so blissfully, deliciously warm. The muscles in his shoulders ripple beneath her touch as her hands claw at his back, urging him closer, closer. She wants him to stay inside her forever. She can feel her wetness trickle out of her cunt, feels it brush against his hard cock as she whines and twists her hips, eager for his affection.
Aemond huffs out a laugh into her breast, sweet and tender and loving, and Visenya tugs his face up so she can meet his gaze. His sapphire eye twinkles at her. She reaches out to caress it, before placing a single, lingering kiss on it. His hold on her tightens.
“I love you,” she tells him. “Aemond, I—”
He kisses her. His tongue fights against hers, his teeth nibbling at her lips as desire consumes her. He pushes her legs further apart and oddly enough reaches for her pillow, hauling her up so he can place it beneath her hips, aligning the angle.
“You have bewitched me,” he whispers, trailing kisses all over her body. Her collarbone, her nose, her brow, her nipples, her ribs. Placing them like stars in the sky, mapping constellatings on her body. He nips and then sucks at her skin, soothing the wound. “All of me belongs to you.” The sound of his High Valyrian makes jolts of warmth shoot up her body, makes her toes curl.
His eye darkens, noticing her reaction. “You have my heart. Now and forever.”
Aemond has reached the apex of her thigh, and she mewls, bucking her hips, and he licks the open slit from top to bottom in one stroke, like he is polishing off a spoon.
“Peace, beloved,” he soothes, nuzzling his nose against her bundle of her nerves. “Peace.”
He shoots her a look, waiting for her to calm, and Visenya squeezes her eyes shut to try and control herself. After a moment, she nods, and there is but a second before he plunges his tongue into her cunt. Of course, her newly found composure crumbles away like butter over a fire, and she melts in his mouth, her one hand buried in his hair, tugging at the roots, the other desperately fisting the sheets.
Tears pool in her eyes, but she does not want to close them. The sight before her is too mesmerizing – too intoxicating. Her blood feels like it is on fire. Aemond’s eye is shut as he happily slurps at her cunt. His thumb circles her clit, his other hand draping her one leg over his back, rubbing soothing circles on her inner thigh.
“More,” she demands. “More.”
Aemond’s eye pries open. For a horrible second, she thinks he will deny her, will draw this out, but—
She can see the desire dripping on his face. The way his hips are pressed into the mattress. The marks she left on his chest – bruises and scratches. The redness on his cheeks. He wants this as must she does.
“So pretty,” he coos, and then he crooks two fingers inside her. She hisses, but there is barely even a sting. She can hear her cunt squelch as he pumps his fingers in and out, that delicious heat pooling in her stomach. “I’ll give you whatever you desire,” he vows. “Anything.”
“Just love me,” she breathes, wriggling and breathless. “Just love me.”
Aemond meets her gaze, a half-smirk, half-smile on his lips, and he seals the promise by kissing her cunt like he would her mouth. That is enough. She is coming, falling into the endless abyss, screams and mewls escaping her mouth as she rolls her hips into his face. Her body sings to his touch, and wetness drips from her cunt, and he sucks every last drop, even as she slumps onto the mattress, spent. She’s sensitive, overstimulated, but he nudges against her clit, giving her slit nice little kitten licks.
“Aemond,” she whines, hands moving to his shoulders. “Aemond, I want you—”
“Shh, lovely,” he hushes, pinning her hands onto the mattress. “Shh.”
“But I want—”
“And I’ll give it to you,” he vows, even as tears trickle down her cheeks from her overstimulation. “You’ll have my cock in a minute, love. But now I have to make you ready—”
“But I can’t—”
“You can,” he tells her, licking her cunt so lovingly her heart can’t help but swell with tenderness. She finishes again with a sob, her vision blurring as she pants. When she comes to, he is hovering above her, pressing kisses on her cheek, the slope of her shoulder, waiting for her to calm, to return to him.
When she looks up at him, she smiles, dazed, and he returns it. He grabs her hand, presses kisses to her fingertips, soft like a pet. Laughter bubbles in her throat, spills out of her, and soon he is laughing too, happy like a child. He cups her cheeks in his hand, and presses small, soft relentless kisses against her mouth.
“I love you,” he tells her, nudging his nose against hers. “I love you.”
“Husband,” she beams. “Husband.”
He sinks against her, and she whines when his cock brushes between her thighs, hot and aching. Drool pools in her mouth. Soon, he will be inside her. She wants him there. Wants to hold him there, claim him, keep his seed.
Aemond’s eye darkens, as if he read her mind.
“Are you certain?” he asks. This is a line they have yet to cross, but he will not do so until she tells him so.
Visenya shakes her head. What a silly, ridiculous man, to think she had any doubts now. She kisses him instead. “Are you?’ she asks.
Aemond smiles at her. His hand sneaks between them, trailing down her stomach, the warmth seeping into her skin. She smooths his hair back from his face, licks the line of sweat off his neck. He hisses, right as his fingers reach her folds. He circles the wet, swollen flesh, kissing her cheeks, tasting her tears.
He brings his lips to hers, capturing them, soothing the swollenness, and then his cock breaches her entrance, the weeping head right there.
“Trust me,” he tells her, sensing her tense. “Trust me.”
She nods, clinging to him. He kisses her fleetingly, and then—
“Oh,” she gasps, her nails digging into his shoulders as he creeps in inch by inch. He is gentle but steady, lips brushing against her face. His mouth slackens, breathing heavy in her ear.
“You’re so tight,” he whines, and he sounds tortured, pained, but his face is dripping in ecstasy. Visenya—
She doesn’t know what to feel. She breathes in deeply. The stretch is odd, harsh, heavy. An odd pinch between her thighs as they become one. She’s so full.
“Aemond,” she whispers, clawing at his shoulder blades. She thinks she might draw blood. “Aemond—”
He seals his mouth over hers as he drives himself in to the hilt. She whimpers, clunt fluttering around him, heartbeat pounding in her ears. He sags against her, mouth dropping open. He holds himself there, his one arm braced by her head, propping himself above her. His other hand caresses her breast.
She can feel him in her throat. It’s an odd sensation, but not unpleasant.
“Visenya,” Aemond pleads, sweat dripping from his brow. He is so beautiful. She wants to remember him just like this for the rest of her days. “Visenya, can I—”
“Yes,” she begs, tilting her hips up. “Yes.”
He starts slow. It’s a soft, slow grind, like a mortar to a pestle. She winces, and he kisses her, lowering himself so his chest is draped right above hers, brushing against her breasts with every thrusts. Her one hand latches in his hair, tugs at the roots, and he bites at her wrist. Visenya wines, sinking into the mattress, the pillow he’d shoved beneath her earlier improving the angle, making it so much easier for her to clamp her legs around his waist, her ankles digging into his butt.
He's so close. She can smell him, taste him, feel him. Every inch. His presence is overwhelming. Conquering every inch of her skin, every part of her soul. It all belongs to him. To them. He is impossible to resist. She moans softly in her throat, keening, exposing her throat. He takes it for the invitation it is. He sinks his teeth into her skin again, and sparks fly beneath her skin, right down to her toes.
She once thought him a monster. Cold, imperious. Angry. But he is human like this, vulnerable beneath her touch as he buries his face in her neck and pants, almost whimpering at the pleasure that runs through his body. He starts to pump his hips harder, and the uncomfortable pinch vanishes. There is only pleasure. There is only him.
And this—
She knows not how she survived without it. Every person she considered fools for prioritising their cunt or cock over everything – she understands now. It’s good. It’s excellent. It is divine. Now, more than ever, she feels more like a God than a man, but only in his arms.
Only ever in his arms.
“It’s never been so good,” he confessed to her in High Valyrian. He throbs inside her, and she clenches, squeezes him like a vice. She grips onto his tight muscle, scratching him, and it’s with a jolt she realizes she’s been begging.
More more more more more—
He tilts one of her legs higher around his waist, his face stern with concentration, and he fucks her so hard the headboard scrapes against the wall.
“Oh-oh-oh-oh—” the pleas spill from her lips, and Aemond groans. The sensation is too new, too vivid, too consuming for her to do anything except take it and give back when sense returns to her in small bursts. Nipping at his skin and ear lobe, rolling her hips, tightening her cunt.
“You’re so tight,” he says, and the last word comes out like a wine as he bites his lower lip. His eye flutters open, and he gazes down at her. Visenya knows what she looks like; hair a mess, nipples peaked, lips raw and swollen, love bites scattered over her neck and chest, her eyes shot block, violent forgotten as she takes her pleasure. As he gives her pleasure.
He whispers sweet nothings in her ears, endearments that make her heart sing and her cunt flutter, and all the while he’s thrusting into her, kissing and touching and it feels so good, too good and—
Her peak falls over her like a wave, a shout escaping her throat, raw and aching, and Aemond—
He fucks her through it, desperate and whining, his cock still so hard until she swoops up blindly, still coming, and bites right above his heart. She feels him jerk inside her, and she almost giggles at the sensation, running a hand through his hair. His whole body weight is on her, but she doesn’t mind. It feels nice, having him so close like this. She squeezes her hold around his hips, and they groan together, sensitive and fresh and—
“Stay,” she commands when he tries to slip out.
“Visenya—”
“Stay.”
He does. He tucks his face into the crook of her neck and kisses her lightly, panting. She holds him.
“I want to stay here,” he murmurs, “like this, forever.”
“Me too,” she whispers back. “And we will.”
She holds him close, his cock still inside her, and she smiles when she feels his seed drip out of her, mixed in with her wetness.
This is where they belong, and she will let no one take it from them.
Notes:
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Chapter 12
Notes:
I'm back!!!
Sorry this took so long to get up. I've been so busy with exams and stress and now the holiday season, and tbh I've suffered from writer's block for this story :( It's my least complicated plot wise, so I'm focusing all my energy on my other aemond x oc one because it's so much longer and complicated. I digress! thank you guys so much for your response to this story. the love you have shown these horny idiots means so so much.
I am forever grateful.
now, only the epilogue to go!
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 12
When Visenya wakes, she is warm and deliciously sore in between her thighs. She’s pressed tightly against someone, and her eyes flutter open to reveal a sleeping Aemond. Her husband. She smiles, bashful and happy, cheeks flushing a rosy colour, and is unable to stop herself from leaning forward and pressing soft, gentle kisses to his brow, his cheeks, his chin, his lips.
Aemond lets out a small, grumpy sound, and she lets her kisses go lower, down his neck, to his collarbone, her head sneaking down to—
“Ahh,” he gasps, nudging his nose against hers. “My wife is a menace.”
“Your wife is need of you, my lord,” she replies, unable to hide her triumphant smile when his cock jerks awake in her grasp. Aemond muffles his laugh into the hollow of her throat and nips at the skin, making her wine as his other hand wraps around her black tresses.
“In need, hmm?” he poses, turning her onto her other side with a whelp, forcing her hand to relieve its grip on his length. He kisses the back of her neck, the tip of her spine, the curve of her shoulder. Visenya’s heart trembles in anticipation. This is hers. It still does not feel real – not one bit.
He slides inside her, her thighs still coated with her wetness, and he rolls his hips slowly, face buried in her neck, arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close against him. Her leg is slung backwards on his hip, creating a delicious stretch, and they both moan.
“Visenya,” he murmurs, a plea and a beckon and a caress. “Visenya.”
She links their hands together, brings it to her mouth and presses kisses to his knuckles, a high-pitched moan escaping her lips as she arches, pleasure bursting behind her eyelids and—
There’s a knock on the door.
“We’re busy,” Aemond calls, scowling. He does not stop the roll of his hips.
“We need to return to King’s Landing,” Jace calls, banging on the door. “Hurry.”
Aemond mutters some swear words in Valyrian, making her laugh. He pulls her back down roughly on his length, making her whine—
“Amusing, is it?” he mutters darkly, straining her neck at the angle he makes to pull her into a vicious, lush kiss.
He massages her clit, and she is soaring once more, and he follows shortly afterward.
She presses her thumb to her lips.
“It is,” she whispers, and kisses him again for good measure.
Aemond finds himself walking the beach of Dragonstone with Helaena and Aegon, watching as their dragons circle each other in the distance. Helaena is quiet, silver locks flowing down her back, two small licks twisted into a braid at the back of her head. It’s more than likely that Jace may have done it, seeing as majority of the servants are at the Red Keep.
He does not want to think about Jace bedding Helaena in any way shape or form, so he inspects his sister silently. She seems happy enough. Less gaunt. Not traumatized. Fiddling with one of the rings on her finger, her shoulders shifting every so often. So much has happened – no doubt she feels overwhelmed.
Aemond does, to some degree. He glances over his shoulder, apathetic if he lacks any subtlety, and finds Visenya and Jace walking in the opposite direction to the other far end, heads bowed together, arm in arm.
“Well,” Aegon declares, stretching his arms out. “This is it.”
Aemond stares at him. Aegon seems nervous for the first time in years, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. A stranger in his own body.
“This is not the end,” Helaena murmurs, hugging herself. “Merely a new beginning.”
“Must you always speak in riddles?”
“Must you never listen?’ Helaena poses, silver brows flickering up.
Her and Aegon look at each other. In another world, in another life, they would have been made to wed. Aemond knows they would have been miserable for it. Their tempers are not suited. There would be nothing inside them to call to the other, like him with Visenya.
Now, sober, there is a mere glimmer of the man Aegon could have been if only he’d made the effort to stay sober. If only the world had been kinder to him, their family warmer. If he’d chosen duty overindulgence, honour over depravity, heart over cock—
Maybe things would be different.
In a rare moment of affection, Aegon reaches out and awkwardly pats Helaena on the shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” he offers, “your Strong boy seems to make you happy.”
Helaena looks mildly uncomfortable at the contact, but her lips twitch nonetheless. “Thank you, Aegon. I am certain your travels in Essos will make you happy—happier than anything in Westeros ever could. Any crown.”
There it is. The quiet admission of what they all know Otto desired to give Aegon one day. To usurp the throne.
Aegon grimaces. “I tend to agree,” he admits quietly, a rare moment of truth spilling from his lips. “A cup of wine suits me far better than a crown.”
Helaena returns his soft pat on the shoulder, and then she steps aside.
Aegon eyes him closely. “I still think you a fool,” he admits freely.
Aemond almost laughs. “And I still think you a drunk.”
His brother’s gaze drifts over his shoulder, no doubt towards the two brown haired siblings on the far side of the beach. There’s almost something like regret in his violet-blue orbs. Yearning.
“Thank you,” Aemond decides to say.
Aegon blinks at him with surprise. “Whatever for?”
Aemond knows not how to express himself. Him and Aegon have never been close. Not as children, not as adults. They loved different things and loved differently in turn. Duty was in Aemond’s marrow, and extravagance in Aegon’s. They are different creatures of the same flesh and blood, and they cannot be more different.
“For this,” Aemond murmurs. “For leaving.”
Aegon chuckles maniacally. “Thank you for not challenging me for her hand – I much prefer my head staying on my shoulders.”
Aemond flinches. “I wouldn’t have—” he falters. Had he thought of it as a possibility? Mayhaps. In those dreadful days after he’d given his soul and body to Visenya, told her to do as she wished and he would do as she commanded, he’d feared her telling him to do just that.
But he’d never genuinely thought she would. Visenya is not a murderer.
But if she had, Aemond knows, deep down, he would not have been able to do it, despite how much Aegon enrages him sometimes. Despite how different they are, how much he disapproves of how Aegon lives his life, that’s his brother.
His blood.
It means something.
“I know,” Aegon offers, though Aemond is unsure if he truly means it. “I know.”
They stand there, the three of them, the salt of the sea lingering beneath their noses. The sun is crawling its way up the sky. There is a lot more they can all say. A lot more for them all to discover. This could mean war. A family divided.
Or it could bring them all closer than ever.
Without Aegon.
A sacrifice, but a necessary one. One he makes willingly.
“Give this,” Aegon says, pulling out a letter from his waistcoat, “to Mother.”
Aemond does not move.
“Tell her—” Aegon hesitates, biting down on his lip. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Aemond’s stomach rolls into knots. His mother will be bereft. Her and Aegon have never been close, but he knows her love runs deep for all of them. She would lay her life, soul and heart down for her children. If called to it, she would no doubt run into the mouth of a dragon.
And yet this is for the best. For everyone. For the realm.
“You will see her again,” Aemond says, throat tightening. “All of us.”
Helaena nods in assent. “Our children will know you also.”
Aegon lets out a laugh. “I suppose when our sister becomes Queen….”
The future. So near.
Aegon shakes the letter in his face. “Take it,” he repeats. “It is for Mother’s eyes alone.”
Aemond nods and accepts it, clutching it tightly.
Aegon whistles, a sharp, piercing sound, and Sunfyre at once flies to settle on the rocks behind them, jumping a little like a dog.
“Just a moment!” Aegon calls over his shoulder.
The trouble with his brother, Aemond thinks, is that these moments of agreeability never last. The tragedy of Aegon is that the few glimpses of him truly sober (with no hangover in sight) make one almost forget the calamity he normally is. But then he dissolves in his cups again, and his worst qualities come out again and again.
Maybe he’ll be happier now, without the fear of a crown being violently thrust upon his head. No shadows or expectations to haunt him.
Aegon will achieve what he has always wanted: freedom.
His brother shoots him and Helaena a small, funny smile. It is nevertheless genuine.
“Goodbye for now,” Aegon tells them, and then there is laughter in his voice as he jogs over to Sunyfyre, as if he fears dragons will suddenly descent upon them and lock them in a cell. There is no hesitation in his movements as he commands Sunfyre to fly.
For a moment, him and Helaena merely stand there.
All the dragons are quiet, before they roar in farewell.
Despite it, Aemond can still hear Aegon’s chuckles of glee ringing in his ears.
Visenya and Jace watch Sunfyre until they can no longer spot in him in the sky. Soon, they will have to take flight also.
King’s Landing awaits them all.
Jace pushes back his hair, a familiar movement she knows well.
“Thank you,” she tells her twin. “For what you did—and Helaena. None of this would have been possible if not for the two of you.”
Jace shoots her a grin. “I suppose we did save you, did we not?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be too presumptuous. We still have to return for the King’s judgement, and youmarried who you were supposed to. Technically, I have committed treason.”
“He forgave Mother for marrying Daemon.”
A small sound escapes her throat. “Otto may have better luck incriminating us.”
“I doubt it,” Jace replies. “Mother would never let him. She’d sooner go to war then send any of her children into exile or see one of us die.”
“But I don’t want there to be a war,” she states, knowing how silly it sounds. She presses her lips together. “If only Aemond had been first born…” She stops. “Then I suppose he would not be the man I love, would he?”
Jace shrugs, turning back to look at the sea. Behind him, she can see Aemond and Helaena conversing quietly.
“I’m not certain,’ he replies. “I suppose it does not matter. You love him as he is now, despite what happened between you.”
Aemond’s eye. The games they played. The hatred. The ill words and curses.
And yet they’d ended up here.
Jace glances over his shoulder, his gaze fixed on Helaena. “Sometimes I do wonder,” he admits after a moment, “what would have happened if she were wed to another. To Aegon.”
“She certainly would not be happier than she is now,” Visenya says instantly, reassuring her brother. “I may not know Aegon particularly well, but I saw enough.” Helaena would become like those spiders she loves so much; covered in cobwebs as she wilts with neglect.
“I suppose this is the best thing Viserys could have done,” Jace says. “After all those years of hatred and division, and now both branches are united—”
“And Otto has lost a pawn.”
Jace looks at her. “Do you think Aemond ever wished to be King?”
The question surprises her. But she knows what the answer is, even if it might displease Jace.
She knows her husband well.
“I’m certain he did,” she says. “I know he must have thought himself more worthy of it, especially compared to Aegon.” Jace merely looks at her, waiting for her to finish. He’s always been the more patient of them two. “But he won’t,” she concludes.
“Because of you?”
“In part,” she says. She does not need to inform Jace of the vow Aemond made. To do as she wished. To live for her. “Mostly, I think he realized it was not to be.”
Jace nods.
“You and Helaena will make a fine King and Queen one day.”
Her brother looks down, fiddling with his fingers. She is not certain if he and Helaena were as productive or successful in their consummation as her and Aemond were.
“Do you love her?” she asks, reaching for his hand. Jace intertwines their fingers. They are twins. Closer in a way none of their other siblings can understand, even if they love each other equally. They shared a womb, a cradle. She knows her brother’s heart as well as her own, and yet this is a question only he can answer.
Jace is quiet for a long time.
“It is a different kind of love,” he says. “Different than you and Aemond or Mother and Daemon. But it is there, I believe. Or it can be, in the future.”
He fixes her with a look. “I know I am a better man to have her by my side than without.”
Visenya nods. She understands it. Jace and Helaena are dragons in a different way than her and Aemond. Her and her husband thrived upon touch and lust. Through exploring Aemond’s body, she got to know his heart and how it made hers sing. But Helaena does not thrive on touch. Jace is not impulsive like her and Daemon. Impatient. He is a different man.
In many ways, he is better than all of them.
“Come,” she says, pulling at her brother. “It is time for us to return to King’s Landing.”
They arrive in the midst of the day. Aemond knows there was a tourney scheduled to celebrate the wedding festivities.
They must have cancelled it when they found all of the intended brides and brides grooms out of their beds. All is quiet when they land right by the Dragonpit. Already, there are a series of guards surrounding them. Aemond’s skin prickles.
Would Otto try and send for them first? Drag them to a dungeon?
Aemond cannot see Ser Erryk anywhere. Did Rhaenyra believe him? Despite her pregnancy, is she searching the skies with Syrax at this very moment? His mother does not ride a dragon, but Aemond does not believe her to be any less capable at intimidating others.
He reaches for his sword, holding Visenya close to him.
“Beloved nephew,” Daemon calls, the crowd of guards parting. Vhagar, from where she stands behind him, lets out a small roar.
Jace sends him a worried look, no doubt urging him to prevent his mount from slaughtering all the guards and fellow city folk prevented.
“There will be no need to withdraw your blade,” Daemon finishes, sending them a sly smirk. He cannot read the look behind his elder sister’s husband’s eyes. He is a snake. “Come. There is a wheelhouse to escort you all back to the castle.”
Daemon clambers onto his own horse, and they let their dragons be escorted into the dragon. Aemond can hear his heartbeat in his ears.
All the way to the Red Keep, he does not let go of Visenya’s hand.
The castle is near empty as Daemon leads them through. The courtiers must have been kept or confined to their chambers, forbidden to leave until the matter is resolved.
Or maybe they are all in the throne room to bear witness to their exile or banishment. How lovely.
But when the door to the throne room is pushed open, that is empty also. Except for the King on the throne and—
“Aemond!” his mother exclaims. It is unbecoming for a Queen to be dishevelled, she has always said, and yet that does not stop her from running towards him and Helaena and hugging them flush against her chest.
There’s movement around them – Rhaenyra standing by the throne, cupping her swelling stomach. Otto lingering by Ser Criston, his mouth set into a grim line. The rest of his sibling’s spawn are nowhere to be found.
This is to be a very strict family affair then.
“You left,” his mother cries. “You left with no words at all, all three of you—”
She pulls away, glances between them, and pales. “Where is—where is Aegon?”
Wordlessly, Aemond hands her the letter. His mother, visibly stricken, accepts it with shaking hands.
“I believe,” Viserys rasps, somehow still coherent as he sits, rotting on that throne, “that you four have some explaining to do. Quickly.”
Otto moves closer, leering at them all, quietly seething.
Jace moves to step forward, but Visenya stops them.
“Grandfather,” she says. “Your grace, do not blame Helaena and Jace. They were merely aiding us.”
“Aiding you in what?” Rhaenyra questions, head tilted. There is concern evident on her face, but she is oddly calm. It is his mother overcome with worry and panic.
Rhaenyra must have gotten Ser Erryk’s missive after all.
“Aemond and I,” Visenya answers, after a moment.
Without prompt, her links their fingers together, standing close to her. She is his wife. His bride. His future.
His home.
He will not rest until he is guaranteed the rest of his life to tell her so every day.
“We are wed,” he announces. His mother sucks in a deep breath. For once, Rhaenyra’s careful calm fractures. From where he stands beside her, Daemon lets out a small chuckle, shaking his head ruefully. His wife sends him a death glare.
Viserys coughs, and Aemond waits until his father is calm before he tries to speak, but Visenya beats him to it.
“I do not belong with Aegon,” she announces simply. “I belong with Aemond. The Gods of Old Valyria made our hearts sing for each other. It would be a lie – a falsehood, to swear vows to your eldest son, your grace.”
Viserys is quiet. “And you, Aemond?” he questions, struggling to hold onto his sanity. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Aemond is quiet right up until he cannot help the chuckle that escapes his lips.
“Father, you concocted these betrothals after I lost my eye. You knew the family was fractured and divided, and you sought to bring us together. You may not have meant it to happen this way, and I certainly never expected it to, but it did. You were not able to restore my eye, but by bringing Visenya here, you managed to restore my peace.”
Silence follows.
“We exchanged vows in honour of our ancestors,” Aemond continues. “Visenya and I, and Jace and Helaena. Do not punish them for trying to protect us.”
Visenya leans closer to him, and Aemond cannot resist pressing a quick kiss to her brow.
Rhaenyra takes a step forward, visibly troubled.
“You love him?” she asks her daughter. “I have seen Jace and Helaena this past year. I have seen them become friends. But you—“
Her composure cracks, guilt and love and everything in between. “I did not realize my own daughter was in love.”
Visenya leaves his side to take her mother’s hands.
“I did not tell you,” she says. “In truth, I did not realize what it was until now. I thought I could do my duty and forget him, but I could not. I could not, Mother.”
Rhaenyra pulls her daughter close, kissing her brow.
“Your grace,” Otto protests, standing before the throne. “Nevermind the fact that this wedding is treason, they still have not explained the Prince Aegon’s absence.”
At that, his mother lets out a choked sob.
Aemond looks to find his mother standing there, letter unfolded, tears streaming down her face.
“Alicent?” Viserys poses. He is too weak to move and join her, but Aemond senses that he wants to.
“Aegon has forsaken his claim to the throne,” she says, shoulders curving. “He does not mean to return to Westeros, my king.”
Helaena, for once, is comfortable enough with their mother to hold her close and pat her hand.
“They cannot do this,” Otto protests. “Your grace, that is your son—”
“Aegon made it,” his mother says, still clutching that letter. “He made his choice, and he chose his freedom.”
To the ends of his days, Aemond will never know what Aegon wrote in that letter. His mother and his brother will never tell him.
(the day his mother dies, many years in the future, Aemond will find it tucked up her sleeve, but there’s no way to know that yet)
All he knows is that what Aegon wrote is enough. It is enough.
Viserys sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Very well,” he says. “You may remained wed.”
“But your grace—”
“I cannot undo what has been done, Otto,” Viserys rasps. “Nor do I wish to break apart my family even further.”
Visenya pulls away from her mother and moves into his arms. Aemond holds her close, burying his face in her neck.
“Young love,” Viserys sighs. “Now you know the stress you caused me, my dear.”
Rhaenyra flinches, cheeks warming ever so slightly. Otto stands there, outraged, vein bulging on his forehead, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. A door pushes open on the side, and the rest of Visenya and Jace’s siblings pour in, relentless with their questioning.
“The festivities will commence,” Viserys says, his strength finally sapping. “And by the end of the week, you four will marry in front of the courtiers.”
It grates at Aemond, how little Viserys seems to care at the loss of Aegon, but mostly he is too relieved to fixate on it. Rhaenyra goes to Alicent and hugs her instead, the two friends finally reunited, and it is enough.
The door behind them pushes open one final time, and they all turn to find Daeron standing there, face dusty from travel, freshly arrived in King’s Landing.
“What have I missed?” he asks, staring at the lot of them.
They all can’t help but laugh in response.
Notes:
is this corny AF? you betcha. But you can pry this HEA out of my cold, dead hands thank you very much. LOL.
come chat with me on Tumblr @fkevin073
find me on twitter @fkevin073
I made a playlist for this story! check it out
check out my other aemond x oc story: I kept you like an oath
Chapter 13
Notes:
ahh! it's done.
thank you all so much for your support on this story. it means the world. I hope you like this small little glimpse into the future.
until next time,
fkevin073
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Epilogue
From where she’s curled lazily in Aemond’s lap, Visenya can still hear the clear sound of their daughter’s laughter. It’s mingled with another short, youthful giggle, childhood innocence bleeding through the excessive heat.
Their Aemma had taken to Jace’s and Helaena’s son like a bear to honey.
She pries her eye open to find Jace and Helaena sitting close together, Helaena’s feet in his lap. Her good-sister is studying a shell in her hands – no doubt it contains some sea creature still too wary of revealing itself. Visenya snuggles closer to her husband, almost purring when he runs a hand through her hair, untangling the knots just how she likes. She has no doubt Helaena will be able to coax it out – she always does.
It's been five years since their respective weddings. Five years of unworking the tensions between their families, the resentments that still lingered. Within the year, Viserys had died, and Rhaenyra had ascended the throne, sending Otto Hightower back to Oldtown within the hour.
Alicent did not return with her father.
It had been a difficult time. Visenya and Aemond had instantly returned from their travels to attend to the new Queen, who was still mourning the loss of the babe. Visenya’s sister had died six months in the cradle. Her mother had been luckier than most women who took to the birthing bed; it was only her seventh babe that had suffered any affliction. Visenya and the rest of her brothers remained healthy.
But with the turn of the moons and the weight of the crown, and the restoration of her friendship with the Dowager Queen, Visenya’s mother persevered.
Her and Aemond had spent time travelling the world. Neither of them were heirs to anything, and so they had freedom to explore. To learn. They went to Pentos, Volantis, Braavos. Even settled near the Dothraki Sea. They explored Westeros. The cultures were exemplary, the knowledge vast, but the freedom Visenya coveted most was that found in her marriage bed.
The pleasure she found should not have been possible, but her and Aemond made it so. Soon, the servants learned never to enter a room without knocking, for they found her and Aemond everywhere. Even a few of her siblings had been so unlucky as to barge into a room without knocking.
Five years of marriage, and the passion between them had not cooled. After she had turned twenty and one, they returned to the Red Keep. They had returned to Westeros for a few moons after her mother’s coronation, then again to attend to Helaena and Jace during the birth of their first babe.
But now, there was a sense of it being permanent. Visenya had gone to Lannisport and seen their finely spun gold. Gone to the Eyrie and seen those sheep her stepfather claimed men liked to fuck, though she saw no evidence of such a practice. Gone to the North and seen the Wall.
Now, her and Aemond wished to settle.
“You are my home,” he’d told her once in Pentos, when she’d asked if he missed Westeros. “Wherever you are is where I desire to be.”
They’d seen Aegon in their travels, of course. Alicent had even been convinced to fly on Dreamfyre’s back to go and visit her son with Helaena. Aegon had not suffered in his exile, though Rhaenyra had made clear he could return if he wished.
Aegon never did or expressed any desire to. His silver head was still a worthy enough pawn for Otto Hightower to wield, though its power lessened with the arrival of Helaena and Jace’s silver haired babe, carefully named Aerion. He was the perfect combination of his parents; Helaena’s locks but Jace’s nose and jaw. His eyes were a dark violet, almost black or a dark brown in certain lights. A chameleon.
Aemma was born with her look entirely. There were traces of Aemond in her eyes and the curve of the mouth, but that was where the resemblance ended, not that her husband seemed to mind.
Or Aerion.
Despite there being close to three years age difference, Aemma and Aerion had grown to be fast friends. Now, Helaena is with child yet again, her belly swollen.
Her and Aemond came to visit from the Red Keep. Her mother liked having her near and, on her council, and she’d created a new position solely for Aemond; master of dragons. Visenya knew her husband; he could never relax or sit by for the rest of his life. He required purpose, a mission, a guide on how to spend his days. No one matched his passions for the dragons, and Aemond had taken to his task with dedicated fervour.
Jace and Helaena remained on Dragonstone. One day, they know their mother plans to make Jace Hand of the Queen, but for now the Sea Snake will suffice until he wishes to retire.
“Have your family,” their mother had told her and Jace. “Enjoy it. You will not be able to savour it as you always have.”
And to an extent, that is true. The family they had made on Dragonstone, her, Jace, and the rest of her brothers, Daemon and Mother and Baela and Rhaena, had been fractured. The love remained, but they had all grown in their own directions.
Luke and Rhaena had wed and settled on Driftmark. Their grandfather often went to guide Luke, to teach him of the sea. From his letters, it sounded like he had settled splendidly. Joff was sent to foster at the North, and Alicent decided to send Daeron with him.
Her brother had found a fast friend in Alicent Hightower’s youngest son, and whenever Visenya did get to see him, they were scarcely ever apart. Viserys and little Egg were still at the Red Keep, but even they had grown.
They were all happy, and that is enough.
Aemond holds her close, presses his lips to her brow.
“We should betroth them,” he suggests quietly, his eye on their daughter. “They have a clear affinity for each other.”
Visenya hums and follows his gaze. Aemma is splashing water at her cousin, who reaches out to tassel her hair, reaching out to hold her steady. It was true, they did like each other, as most children are wont to do when there is no one else their age around them.
Jace seems to consider the idea, still massaging Helaena’s feet. His wife remains quiet. But so much could change, could it not? Visenya knows this better than anyone. They all do. Betrothals made and unmade in the blink of an eye.
“Oh Aemond,” she sighs fondly, a twinkle in her eye as she brushes her lips against her husband’s, ignoring Jace’s squawk of disgust, “I think we of all people know the dangers of arranged betrothals, do we not?”
End.
Notes:
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