Work Text:
Aemond knows the moment he dismounts from his stallion inside the gates of the Red Keep. He knows it's begun. The guards have a nervous look to them and the Grand Maester stands there on the steps wringing his hands with Daeron beside him, the brooch of the Hand of the King polished to a shine on his brother's chest.
“Where is the queen?” Aemond asks.
Daeron’s throat bobs. “Ah, um. Upstairs. The—the midwives are attending.”
Of course they are. “Good.” And it is good. For weeks now, the queen has looked like an over-ripe fruit, rounder with this babe than with the first two by far. Luke took to walking about with a hand perched always on his stomach, grimacing delicately until even Aemond had begun to get snappish with the scent of his discomfort.
Aemond does not wait for anyone to catch up to him but lengthens his stride up the stairs. He attended the first two births, surveyed Luke’s labors and blood and screams from across the room, hands folded behind his back, keeping his single eye on the maesters in attendance for he could not risk something so precious to their careless hands. He took each babe from the midwives hands and cut the cord with his own dagger and cared nothing for the blood as he raised his children for inspection.
Son or daughter, it no longer matters. He has both. His heir, Baelon, was born not a year into his reign, with hair as dark as a crow’s wing. As dark as his mother’s.
The memory ought be a good one. It is not. It’s stained, interposed with the sight of Luke on his knees before Aemond not hours after the birthing, begging Aemond not to disown the child for the color of his hair.
I would not have wed Harwin’s get if I was not prepared for my children to come out looking like Strongs.
That had been his answer. Luke had made no reply, and said nothing else on that matter—nor any other—for many weeks. And then he’d swelled again with child and sweet Visenya was born, beautiful and perfect. Her mother’s nose, her father’s hair.
The third time, Luke had not even bothered mentioning the pregnancy to him. He’d left it to the maesters to inform Aemond. Three babes in five years; a fertile queen, a dynasty that had some years previous been on the verge of destruction, secured.
Aemond enters the queen’s chambers without announcing his presence. Yet the happy scene freezes at his entrance. For that moment, it is a painting of joy. The screaming and blood are done; Luke is seated up in bed with sweat matting his lovely curls, sticking them to his face and curling down loose around his shoulders. His cheeks are red and glowing, a smile there as he stares down at the bundle in his arms.
No. No, bundles. There are two heads of white hair peeking up out of his arms.
Aemond’s breath stills in his chest. And then time starts again, and the joy goes from the room in a single gust as his presence is noted. Luke’s smile falls. The attendants sink to whatever corner will best hide them.
“Your Highness,” Luke mutters, and bows his head. A shame, really. His eyes are one of his best features.
Aemond comes to the bed. The babes have been cleaned but not properly swaddled yet. Another boy, he notes, and another girl. His chest expands beyond its bounds at the sight. Perfect. They are both utterly perfect. Clouds of white curls freshly washed sit atop both their heads. The boy has his mother’s cheeks, the girl his pout of a mouth. Aemond reaches out a hand to touch one and then the other. It never seems quite real.
Perhaps it would feel more real if he were the one pushing them out. Luke looks utterly spent. “You did not tell me there were two,” Aemond comments.
“I did not know, My King.”
“Orwyle!” Aemond snaps.
The Grand Maester comes slinking from the door. “Your Highness?”
“Are the maesters of the Citadel so ignorant now that they cannot tell the weight and heartbeat of one babe from two?” Aemond moves a possessive hand to Luke’s hair. Luke flinches under the touch but endures it. “Your ignorance might have cost the queen’s life.”
“Your Highness—”
But it is Luke who says, “You would find another queen easily enough.”
Aemond turns to stare at him. Luke’s scent sharpens and sours and with the anticipation of Aemond’s cruelty—but when has Aemond been cruel? Truly? He even allowed his bitch sister and her other bastards to live for the small price of a crown and his nephew’s cunt. He murmurs softly, “I forgive you your rudeness. I am sure you are exhausted from your efforts.”
Luke looks at him from under Aemond’s hand, from under his mess of hair, a shred of his old defiance there. Always there. Five years and two, now four children between them, and the flame of his hatred is not dead.
Aemond leans in close. “Do not take my kindness for granted.” He drops his hand to squeeze a thumb over the mark on Luke’s neck. Luke bows his head. Aemond stands back and claps his hands. “A time for celebration,” he says to the room, voice low. “Ring the bells. If the queen has a desire, grant it.”
He goes.
A great feast is held in the days after. Two full days for two children born, though neither they nor their mother attend. Luke is tired and delicate and far better to let him rest—feasts and fêtes rarely make him happy.
Truly, nothing does but his children, and the hour every ten-day that he spends on his dragon.
“To the King!” Daeron toasts that evening. “Long may he reign!”
Long will he. Aemond pretends to his disinterest while they feast. In ones and twos they come to offer their congratulations, their loyalty renewed. His father could not produce sons of his first wife, but now Aemond has two. It fills him with an odd warmness, a heat that has nothing to do with the wine he barely sips as he watches the next round of well-wishers come to the high table. Two of Baratheon’s daughters, Floris and… he searches for a name but none comes.
Floris bows low, showing the demure cut of her dress. Her sister asks, “Will the children not attend?”
“They are with their mother.”
“Oh.” Floris puts a hand over her painted mouth. “I hope the queen did not suffer overmuch. We do worry so for dear Luke.”
Luke is not their name to give him. That title is one reserved for family, only, as Luke had informed him early into their marriage after throwing a cup of wine at him from across the table—an impressive throw. Aemond had smiled and reminded him that they were family, and so he was free to use it. Luke had not spoken to him for several days after that, but no words were needed for what Aemond wanted from him then.
“He is in perfect health. You worry for nothing.”
“It’s been… so long since he was seen in court.” She looks to her sister and then to Aemond with a studied look on her eyes, one he hasn’t the knowing to interpret. “We wondered if he was… Oh I shan’t say.”
“No? You will not say?” He no longer needs Baratheon’s good will, nor to pretend he will take any of his daughters to wife. “Tell me. What is said?”
Her well-curated face goes an unflattering shade of white. “Well, it is only, his unhappiness is known."
Unhappiness.
He repeats the word to himself that next eve when Luke joins him for the first time since the birth for dinner. Which means that perhaps he wants to be there—or does he think he must be there? It’s true, he must, but Aemond would like it if he also wished to be there. This is their shared life: Luke at the far, far end of the table, barely visible over the several stands of candles and the elaborate centerpiece of fruits at flowers.
“The twins,” Aemond asks. “How do they fare?”
They do not often talk. When they do, it is Aemond who starts and finishes it. Luke has warmed somewhat. He does not throw glasses at Aemond anymore. He’s flipped only a single plate in the last year, a heavy platter piled with rich delicacies, sweetbreads and roast pigeon hearts and the sliced liver of a stag Aemond claimed on hunt explicitly for the purpose. Foods he was told were best for a pregnant omega, and perhaps he’d felt some small measure of hurt that Luke had not informed him of the pregnancy himself.
He won the fight, in the end. But like all fights with Luke, the victory cost nearly as much as a defeat—in both good will and in stained carpets.
Luke glances at him, a flash of green in the candlelight. “The children are well, Your Highness.”
Aemond takes a bite and chews and swallows and repeats in a voice he hopes conveys patience, “Well?”
“Yes. Well.” He can hear Luke’s fork stab at his plate across the table even if he cannot see it. In a lower voice, Luke adds, “His Highness could see them if he wished to know.”
Aemond ignores the cattiness. “You tend them fine.”
And Aemond has seen them. He chose their names, Aerys and Alerie, right there in the Great Sept during their first blessing. The weight of each babe against his hands was a wonder, but they were still so small he almost feared to break them. Far better they be kept to Luke’s care and gentle ways. Whatever else Luke hates of his life and of Aemond, he cannot hate their children.
Luke sets his silverware down and draws a breath. “My King…” And oh, how Aemond revels in the weight of his title on Luke’s tongue as it precedes a request. He makes them so rarely.
“Ask,” Aemond says, his kindness running hot through him. He’s refused only two of Luke’s requests in the time they’ve been wed. The first, begged on the night of their wedding, in the quiet of their bed, as the whole of the kingdom waited outside the door to see the deed done. Please, don’t mark me. Please, Aemond. But of course, Aemond had.
The second came on the eve his first pregnancy came to light, and Luke with tears on his cheeks had said with naivety, surely Aemond had no reason to bed him if he was already with child.
But of course, Aemond had.
“I wish to go to Dragonstone,” Luke says. “To pick their cradle eggs.”
“No,” Aemond tells him. “I will go.” Perhaps in the morning, if it means so much to Luke.
Luke mutters something to his plate in answer.
“What was that?” Aemond asks.
“How can you pick their cradle eggs if you have seen the babies only twice?” Luke snaps, louder than Aemond was prepared for, as loud as a slap.
“Excuse me?” Aemond stands to see him better over the pile of frippery on the table and Luke rises as well.
“Nothing, My King. I am tired. Please, excuse me.”
“Luke,” Aemond snaps. “Stop.”
And he stops, which is what Aemond wanted, but whatever Aemond meant to say to him dies in his throat.
Luke shakes his head, knowing, smiling in his meanest manner. “I did not think you would be a good husband, but I at least thought you would be a fair father. I see now how wrong I was.” He goes to the door and the guards open it for him with eyes wide, as if this at last is a shock after all they have seen done in this room.
They are right. Aemond returns to his seat, to a meal he cannot stomach and orders, “Out!” to all who remain. They go and leave him in the silence.
He does not see Luke that night. It’s still too soon after his labors to take him and what else would they do? Sit and have tea together by the fire? Luke would spend the entirety of it staring at him like he is an unsheathed sword mislaid in a nursery—which is exactly what he is, exactly why he spends so little time in that space. When they are older, when they may speak and learn and listen to his wisdom, then he will be with them. And he still sees them, sometimes.
To prove it to himself he leaves the morning’s responsibilities to his council and seeks Luke out in his quarters. Yet when the door is opened for him, there is no one within.
Aemond stares at the empty space for longer than he should before he sees the maid tending to the bed sheets. “Where is the queen?” he barks at her.
“In—in the Godswood, Your Highness.” She curtsies once, and then again. “With the princes and princesses.”
He growls his frustration as he walks out and slams the door behind him. In the Godswood. So this is Luke’s little defiance. How is Aemond to spend time with his children if they are not there? He stalks his way out and down, not caring if his guard can keep up, until he is at the entrance to the Godswood.
There he pauses. Luke is there, yes. He is spread on his back in the sun, not in his usual heavy dress but a light linen tunic the color of the sky. Its laces are undone almost to his waist. Visenya is tucked against his side, fast asleep with her head on his stomach and her thumb in her mouth. The two newborns are set on their backs on a thick blanket in the dappled sun below the Weirwood. Baelon is before them, fashioning what looks to be a knife out of a bone-white stick.
A perfect family. That is what they seem. His family, in truth, and so it makes no sense it should strike him otherwise. Luke might have at least mentioned that this is where they planned to spend their day.
It is his eldest son that sights him first, and the look on his little face is one of—not joy. Aemond cannot interpret it. Bealon goes to his mother, shaking Luke’s shoulder until Luke startles awake.
“What?” Luke asks, and then sees where his son is looking. “Oh,” he says in rather a different voice. Oh, it’s you. “My King,” he says as he scratches through his hair and blinks awake. He does not rise. Aemond stares. His tunic is open the rest of the way now, the bare skin dotted with beauty marks which he’s taken his fill of many times now and will many times more. The desire is banked now, somehow, smothered beneath the other thing heating the pit of his stomach.
“How long have you been out here?” he asks.
“Um.” Luke frowns. “Some hours. Are we needed elsewhere?”
Yes, he wants to answer. They are needed by him, whenever he wishes, and he wishes at this moment to have them more than he has wished for anything in a long, long time. “How often do you come here?”
“Whenever the weather permits. I—I read to them. It is not wasted time. Please, Aemond, it was not disallowed. I thought so long as we kept to the Keep—”
Aemond waves a hand. “It is fine,” he says, perhaps harder than he means to. “You read to them? Read what?”
“Tales, mostly. I thought, while they are still young, I might. Please let me have this with him.” His eyes are so wide and luminous in the sunlight Aemond can hardly make sense of his words.
Aemond comes closer to them, a few steps. Baelon’s gaze is wide as well, perhaps because he so rarely sees his parents together—sees Aemond at all, really. Luke was right, in his fashion. They have tutors and nannies and Luke. When they are grown, Aemond will have his time with them, to teach them what it is to be Targaryen princes and princesses.
Or, that was his reasoning. It seems thin now. Baelon has grown, he realizes. He is tall for his four years and dresses in proper clothes now, his long black hair braided into a long tail. Visenya, too, is no longer a grub but a child properly. Even the little bitty babies… He comes closer to peer down at them. Can it be possible they have grown, in less than a moon?
“Aemond, please,” Luke begs.
Aemond does not look at him. “Spend a season here for all I care. But will the little ones not be too warm?”
“They are in the shade.”
“But—” Aemond looks up. The branches of the weirwood look ominous, like any manner of vile creature might descend out of them. He tries to judge what size of creature it would have to be to steal a babe. Not so big.
Luke, when Aemond looks up, is staring at him. His face is very red. He says like he is speaking a foreign language, “Do you wish to stay here with us?”
“I have much to do.”
One of the babes comes awake then, with a pitchy cry and a scream. Aemond startles in place. The sound is forlorn, one of pain. But before he can reach for it, Luke is there. “Ah, my love,” Luke’s voice comes, soothing. Gently he takes it up and rocks it in his arms. “Are you hungry? Yes?” He pulls the babe then to his chest and only at that moment seems to remember his audience with a glance to Aemond and away again as he opens his shirt—as if to defy anything Aemond would say on this. It is a low act, this, when they have wet nurses aplenty. But it cannot be low if a queen does it, surely.
No, he finds. It is not low at all. Aemond feels an intruder in this scene, in this place.
And yet, if he does not belong here in his own keep, with his own wife and mate, with his own children—where?
Aemond sits there, in dirt and root, beside the other baby. It is awake, he finds. “Which is it?” he asks Luke.
“It,” Luke repeats softly, scoffing. “That is your son, Aerys.”
“His eyes,” Aemond says but cannot form an end to the sentence. Luke does not reply. The baby blinks at him with eyes as green as his mother’s and Aemond’s breath catches in his chest. He reaches a finger out to touch the tiny curl of the baby’s fist, and then he is the one being held, gripped hard by a tiny hand. “He’s strong,” Aemond murmurs. “Is it normal he should stare so?”
Again, Luke does not answer. He sees then, he is being stared at not only by his second son but by the first, who clings still to Luke. Those eyes are not Luke’s but Aemond’s. Luke pulls the baby from his breast and pats her back in a heavy set of slaps, until she burps. He comes then to set her back down beside her brother. His shirt hangs open still, but his breast is not large.
Aemond was thought to be mad for taking the boy for a wife. Not a proper omega, not the beauty of one, too tall and too boyish and with the coloring of a bastard. Aemond had not seen it then; he does not now. If Luke is not considered fair, then what is fair? Whatever else he thought of Luke, this has always been true.
Luke’s touch ghosts over their daughter, over their son. He is grabbed in kind and so for a moment their son has each of them in hand. Luke smiles like Aemond is not there.
He laughs then. “He is strong,” he says to himself, and then notes Aemond’s staring. “My King?”
You called me Aemond once, he thinks. You called me uncle.
He rises and leaves them.
The cradle eggs take him three full days to choose, for he cannot decide. Jacaerys is not happy to play host to him for that time, but like all his family he can say little given that Aemond keeps their beloved brother and nieces and nephews in his keeping. Aemond spared Jacaerys only for the queen’s sake, though the histories say otherwise. They say he took a hostage as the first salvo of the war and that he will keep his Lucerys Velaryon until it no longer suits him or the childbed claims him.
Aemond returns on the third day, late enough that he misses the dinner he would regularly have shared with Luke and so must go to the queen’s quarters to present the eggs. Luke keeps the children there, a request he made begging with tears on his face in the first weeks after Baelon was born and his care had keeping relegated to wetnurses and nannies. He’d not wanted to strain Luke so soon after the birth by letting him see the boy and be reminded of his struggles.
The request was an easy one to grant. It made no difference to Aemond. It does not now.
He enters without announcing himself, eggs tucked into the crook of his arm. Luke stands at his entrance. He has Visenya and Baelon with him, and a book in one hand. Toys are scattered around the carpet; Aemond nearly trips over a castle made of blocks.
“My King?” His eyes fall on the eggs and a ghost of a thing that may have once been a smile crosses his mouth. He leads Aemond to the nursery, a place he’s been only twice since he gave Luke free rein to do what he would with the space. It still looks sparse, the bare minimum of comfort. Tapestries and thick rugs, a fire going strong in the hearth. Soft blankets of blue grace both cribs, one embroidered with waves, the other with suns and moons.
Aemond still cannot tell them apart—but he can when their eyes open. Alerie’s eyes are a purple so bright it’s near to pink; her brothers the soft green of spring. Their hair has grown into halos of thick white, their cheeks are fat and given to smiles. The scent in the room is one of joy and contentment. He finds himself smiling.
“Which is to go with which?” Luke asks.
Aemond almost tells him, but stops himself. His smile curls his mouth as he says to Luke, “You can decide.”
Luke exhales his surprise as his cheeks color. He does not question the offer but looks between the two of them—one pearlescent blue like the moon on waves, one red as blood—and then gingerly takes and sets each one. Blue to their daughter, red to their son.
“Do you approve?” Aemond asks him, trying to bank his delight, for he would have chosen the same and had when he paced back and forth before the rows of eggs the Dragonkeepers presented to him.
“Do I approve?” Luke asks. “Of what?”
“The eggs.”
He laughs in his mean way. “Is it within my power to disapprove?” he asks, and answers his own question with a sigh. “They are good. You chose well.”
“Then I will pray they hatch.” None of them have yet. Not Baelon’s black, nor Visenya’s pale gold.
“You to your gods and me to mine,” Luke agrees.
“We share those,” Aemond reminds him.
“Do we?”
Aemond turns to him. “Yes.”
“But you had us wed in the Sept.”
For the second time in the span of a fortnight, Aemond’s breath catches in his chest. “Would you have had us wed in the old tradition?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
It matters much, Aemond finds. He stares at Luke from close in the firelight. He is a beautiful creature and he has only grown more so since they wed. “I would not have been displeased.”
“Oh.”
“You will attend me tonight,” Aemond adds.
The light goes out of Luke’s eyes. “Yes, My King.”
Aemond tries for gentleness when he takes Luke that night, but it isn't in him, for it never is. It is at least slower than it was during the war, when Aemond would come to his chambers still in armor and smelling of blood and sweat and smoke and dragon, fresh from battle. Battles which Luke’s mother was perpetually in the act of losing. With her son in Aemond’s keeping, she could not strike King’s Landing.
The proper end to the war came when Aemond first presented Luke to her, heavy with child.
He was always threatening to end his life in those days. But once the babe was in him, he would not. They thought Aemond cruel for this, they thought him ruthless. Luke did, to be sure.
But it won him a throne, and peace. A queen. A son. So no one will call him foolish for it now, even if at times it felt he was. How many times had his council reminded him that he need not go through with it? A bit of poisoned wine, a length of rope, a fall on the steps—or better, a dagger and do it yourself so it’s done right.
Aemond drove his dagger through the hand of the first man who suggested it. It was not suggested again.
He was right, he thinks when his knot lodges deep in Luke’s cunt and Luke shudders and sniffs and grips the sheets as if he does not smell of desire. He was right to keep this.
“It will not take,” Luke tells him when Aemond’s knot goes down enough to pull free and Aemond moves a hand by old habit to rub the place where Luke’s womb will swell. “Not so soon.”
“It might. It did the second time.”
Visenya was born less than a year after her brother. The third pregnancy took longer, only because Aemond was away for the better part of those two years, securing the kingdom he won himself from interlopers in the south and east. Luke took ill in his absence, he was told, keeping almost always to his rooms until at last Aemond had written and given permission for Jacaerys to attend him.
Jests were made in private afterward that his next child was sure to be born black of hair. Another dagger, and a throat that time instead of a hand. Luke will never enjoy Aemond’s presence, but nor is he so stupid as to risk a betrayal.
Luke bows his head against the sheets as Aemond continues his ministrations. “I have given you four. When will you be content?”
When you are, he thinks. “If you do not wish for more children, then send for moon tea.”
Luke stares at him. “You would allow that? But, I thought…”
“When have I said otherwise?”
“When—when we were first wed. You would not allow it!”
“I needed an heir. You provided one.”
Luke sits up now to deepen his stare. There is sweat on his cheeks from their mating. The mark on his neck is raw from Aemond’s mouth. “But why, then?”
“Why what?”
Luke looks like he might go for the pillow and slap Aemond with it. “Then why do you still come to my bed?” He turns red, which is an odd look for someone already naked and dripping with seed. “Why come here?”
“You are not stupid. Do not act it.” Aemond presses his mouth to the inside of Luke’s thigh, and then follows it with his teeth until Luke’s eyes slip closed at the pain. He covers Luke with the blanket as he rises. Luke says nothing else to him.
Before he goes, he looks in on the nursery and nods to himself to find each thing in its right place. Four children, four eggs, safe and asleep. Aemond touches the cheek of each babe before he goes and then goes to Visenya and rests a hand on her long pale hair, but he pauses when he reaches Baelon’s bed. The boy is still awake and staring at Aemond like he’s a stranger.
“What is it boy? Why do you look at me so?”
Baelon does not answer but nor does he stop staring.
“Answer me,” Aemond orders.
“I don’t like you,” Baelon says in the rounded syllables of a child. The words are clear, though. “You make Muña cry,” he adds, hiding deeper into the sheets as he does, as if every inch of space between them matters.
It is the most complete sentence he has heard from any of his children—the first time his son has willingly spoken to him. “What?” Aemond asks.
“I hate you,” Baelon confides. In his childish way, it does not sound like he’s mad at Aemond but that he’s confessing a secret and that saying it might make Aemond leave.
Much to his credit, it does.
Much to his annoyance, he cannot see to his family the following day nor the day after, for he is called to settle some petty trade dispute in the west. The Lannister twins and the Greyjoy upstart, vying for the same scrap of coast—which is explained to him over many tedious meetings which he spends most of which imagining one or the other lord’s heads popping off. Dark curls and green eyes haunt his nights. When will you be content?
When Lannister attempts to bribe him on the fourth day, Aemond sets both lords the same price. When he returns to King’s Landing at last, he sets the package before Luke during their customary dinner.
Luke stares at the black silk wrapping for an inordinate amount of time and then unwraps it gingerly, like he expects whatever is waiting inside to come crawling out with teeth gnashing. Or perhaps he expects a finger, or a hand. Aemond did threaten to give him such as a gift in the early days of their marriage, when he was still at his most disobedient.
Jewels spill from within. Pearls of palest white and opalescent purple. Dalton perhaps had the upper hand with his offering. It is a collar of them, which spills into ropes that cowl the neck and shoulders. They slide through Luke’s fingers like drops of moonlight.
“What is this?” he breathes.
“It is jewelry. One wears it, or so I’m told.” Aemond wears his sapphire and wedding ring every day, and how odd that between them, he is the only one who does.
“For what occasion?”
“For the occasion that you are queen. What other?”
The pearls make an almost imperceptible sound as they slip from Luke’s hands back to the midnight silk. “I do not think it suits me.”
“Of course it does. Why would it not?” He was once the Lord of Tides expectant though it seems unwise to remind him of this, or of what moniker they gave him.
“You did not marry me for my beauty, surely.”
“No?” Aemond asks. Luke reddens without replying. Aemond sits back and eyes him over the damned centerpiece. “My son says I make his mother cry. Is it true?”
The temperature in the room seems to drop, as the blood does from Luke’s face. “You spoke with him?”
“He told me. Unbidden.”
“He—he’s young. He understands little of what he sees. Forgive him, please, My King.”
Forgive him. The simpering is not suitable for Luke, nor for any queen—and to think that Aemond would be so undone at the words of a child. “Do I make you cry?”
“No,” Luke says with vehemence. “So long as you care for our children, I have no complaints. And no need for gifts as fine as this.”
“I did not ask if you had complaints. I asked if I make you cry.”
And he sees the change in Luke then, the gritting of his teeth. Pleading is not in his nature; the fight is. “If you would like someone who does not cry, I am sure you can find someone. I doubt your whores will cry after you have them.”
Aemond rears back so far the chair scraps a little against the floor. “Whores?” he repeats. “Whores?”
“Yes!” Luke says, biting. “I do not fault you for it.” But it sounds rather like he does. “I hope they bring you more pleasure than I clearly do!”
“Whores,” Aemond repeats again, stuck on the word, a bone in his throat. “I have never—”
“Oh, please. You will not pretend you came to our wedding a virgin.” A slap, that is, but he can make no reply; Luke, once started, is a thing impossible to stop. “And there is Floris! Do not worry yourself, Your Highness. I do not fault you for it. It comforts me to know that when my use has run its course, my children will still have a mother—unless you intend to be rid of them as well.”
“The Baratheon bitch? You think I would put you over for a Baratheon?” It’s like hearing he might prefer the pig to Vhagar. Whatever else Luke is, he has the beauty, wit, and breeding of a Targaryen prince. And he is the mother of Aemond’s children. Whatever else he is, he is all of that, and so precious beyond measure.
“Will you pretend Floris has not been auditioning for the part of second wife since the day you wed me? I do not… I do not complain. But please do me the grace of not lying to me. I never know when you are coming or going—”
“I have no whores.”
“Then where were you? The day the twins were born. You were there for the first two. When you arrived you smelled like…” He looks away, unable to say the rest and Aemond is grateful for it, grateful even as the room wheels around him, the foundations of the Keep suddenly unmoored. Luke is crying. Luke is crying over him. Only, it isn’t in the way he thought.
On the day the twins were born, he had flown back from Oldtown after a tiresome week of his mother and Aegon and Helaena. And he thought he’d told Luke, or that someone would have, but who if not him? “I was treating in Oldtown.”
“At a whore house?” Luke snaps even through his tears.
“No, with my whoring brother! Who no doubt smells of every cunt from here to Lannisport. Luke—I would not.”
“Of course you would. Why wouldn't you? I am barely a proper queen. Look at me. Anyone with sense would have had me done away with years ago. I can only imagine you are not yet bored of humiliating me. Fuck. Forgive me. I didn't, I didn't mean to say this. Any of this. Your Highness. My King.” He turns to go. To Aemond’s shame, he lets him.
The storm that has been threatening to unleash hell on King’s Landing for the past days comes that night. It lashes the windows of the dark throne room as Aemond sits there, alone. He fingers one of the blades melted into the steps. It has never cut him; it does not now.
“Seven Hells,” Daeron curses, clutching his chest. “Aemond?”
Aemond sighs at him for no response is needed. Daeron comes closer. “Have you been drinking?”
“No.” He had considered it, and discarded it. “And watch your tone.”
“Sorry, Your Highness.”
Aemond has no time for sorrys. Not here. “My queen believes I am keeping whores in the city, and that I wish to have him killed and wed Baratheon in his place.”
“Oh,” Daeron replies, not sounding surprised at all. “You—don’t then?”
“No!” Aemond snaps.
Daeron’s eyes are wide in the dark. “My apologies. It is thought that you do.”
“How? We have been wed five years and he has given me four healthy children. He is Targaryen.”
“Well, you were rather insistent that he was a bastard, if I recall.”
“Not on that side. He is obviously Targaryen. He is—” Aemond waves his hand to the empty audience, “—a prince. Now queen. What can it matter?”
Daeron does not reply, which is, in its way, a reply.
“And whores? Am I known for that as well? For spending my nights on Silk Street? Do I not dine with him every night that I am in the city?” He decreed it to be so. Decreed it, even when Luke would not eat for the first moon so long as Aemond was present.
Yet Daeron’s gaze grows more critical. Aemond stands; Daeron jumps in place. He is too young for this, for his station, but he was the last man in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms Aemond trusted to be both loyal to him and clever—a difficult mix. “Is this truly what is thought of me?”
“You are not like Aegon. Everyone knows that.”
“Luke does not. You, you are of an age with him.”
“A year older,” Daeron reminds him.
“Fuck,” Aemond mutters to himself. Young. Luke is young. He was young when they were wed, still growing into himself, new freckles taking shape as summer rose, his body thinning from youth. He is now… twenty and three, perhaps. But they have not celebrated his nameday. Aemond does not celebrate his own, so.
“I want the Baratheon sisters gone from the court. And the Lannister cousin. Use whatever reason you must.” Aemond nods his Hand to the door. “Now. Tonight. See it done. I will not see them again here.” Nor will Luke.
He sends for his clothes to be laundered for good measure, everything that might have some thread stained with the scent of some other omega. Once done, it is nearly morning, and he sends for the tailor and keeps him busy well into midday as he explains his requests. Luke is absent after their exchange. He does not come to dinner that night, nor the next, and on the third he arrives as he always does: quiet and lovely.
The way he has about him is like an animal keeping itself in check. He is not unlike a dragon, and if he had a tail, Aemond knows it would be lashing.
He’s dressed himself as he always does, in a simple shift of un-simple cloth which one could mistake either for tunic or dress. Aemond cares little for his clothing now—only for taking it off later—but this seems a grand oversight now.
“I wish the children to eat with us,” Aemond tells him only after Luke has eaten a good amount.
As predicted, Luke sets his fork down. He keeps the knife. “Is that an order, Your Highness?”
“Do not make me make it one.”
“As His Highness wishes,” Luke mutters, returning to his meal.
But Aemond is not finished. He claps his hands then, watching as Luke jumps at the sound. The door opens and servants enter, with heavy wood boxes between them.
Luke watches their entrance with his mouth open, fork still poised halfway there. “What is this?”
“A gift.”
It is much the same as the last one Aemond made him, but this time Luke appears embarrassed rather than terrified as the first box is opened for him and he lifts the cloth from inside. It is lace and gauze, yet demure. Befitting of a queen.
“You cannot think this will fit me,” he starts.
“It will.”
“But me? I’m—”
“Queen. And a queen needs dresses.”
“I have dresses.”
Yes, he does. Dark, dowdy velvet hand-me-downs from Alicent. Green brocade that clashes with the shade of his eyes terribly, and blacks that wash out his skin. None of it is cut to flatter his elegant frame.
“You will wear it.” This is an order. Luke will know it for one. “At the next feast day. And the children will attend.”
“Not the babes.”
“No.”
Luke looks back into the box frantically, and then to the half dozen others that have also been presented and opened. “But that’s one night. What are the rest of these for?”
“For you, obviously. Save what you like of your old wardrobe. The rest will be burned.”
“Burned!”
“Unless you would like to do it yourself.” No doubt he would, and his dragon with him. It was a terrible fight after his capture to get him to wear anything but what his mother dressed him in.
“What’s come over you?” Luke asks then.
“It’s time you took your place at my side, properly.”
“If I have failed you in some way, I am sorry, My King.”
“You will not, if you attend me properly.”
“I do not know how.” His face is pinched with anger now, perhaps at the implication that he would ever do anything by Aemond’s will. Goosebumps rise along Aemond’s arms and at the back of his neck.
“You are a born prince. You have never had an issue being a stuck up brat about it before. See if you can do it again. And Luke?”
He waits for Luke’s eyes to fall on him, green embers in the dark.
“Wear the pearls.”
For all his posturing, he does not expect Luke to listen. More likely he will poke holes in the new dresses, burn them, and he and Aemond’s children will dance a merry jig around the bonfire he’s made in the middle of his rooms. When Aemond stopped at Luke’s door that evening to escort him, he was greeted with silence and a closed door.
Once, he would have had the doors thrown open and cajoled, threatened, or stuffed Luke into the dress himself. But that would mean weeks of his silence and another century of his hate and Aemond cannot contend with so much again so soon.
Is it not enough to hold a kingdom together? To do what no one else would?
The court, at least, is used to Aemond’s solitude. No one questions now that a feast being held in honor of the birth of his children would include neither child nor mother. Before Baelon was born, he was always trotting Luke about, but it seemed gauche afterward to force a mother and child in front of the wolves of the court.
Aemond had not wanted so many eyes on them. They were his to watch and he did, often, delighting in those moments when he could walk by the door to the queen’s rooms and hear laughter and a child’s babbling from within.
He is thinking of this, and of what might have happened had he opened the door even once, when the door to the Great Hall opens and Queen Lucerys Velaryon is announced before the feast.
The dress is right. It’s the one Aemond hoped he would wear. It is a waterfall of soft blue that drapes his tall, thin frame, clinging where the remnants of his pregnancy still sit around his hips and belly. It is not whoreish as it would be on another. He looks like what he is: a prince raised in luxury, raised now to the only station higher, a young omega in his prime. The pearls are delicate around his thin neck.
And then, a surprise. Two small bodies are hiding behind his legs. Aemond stands too fast and comes too fast and takes his hand and marks it with a kiss. Luke’s scent is humid about him, his cheeks ruddy with color.
“I am being stared at,” he mutters.
“Of course you are.”
Aemond leads him to the high banquet table, setting him at the seat of honor beside Aemond—a seat that his always empty. Daeron is exactly clever enough to know what to do next, and raises a toast to the queen, to their nephew, triumphant after his labors.
“To the king! To the queen!” the Hall echoes, and they might almost mean it. Easy enough to be in support of a rising star, and Aemond’s always is. Aemond keeps half his attention on them and the other, better half on Luke as he finds his seat.
He is being stared at still. Eyes of envy, eyes of lust, eyes of approval. Other eyes. Ones that try to hide their anger. Aemond notes each one and lays a hand over Luke’s on the table, feeling it twitch beneath his as Luke fights the urge to pull away.
A jewel, he is. A pearl, here, among lesser creatures. Aemond saw him for his graces before any other and claimed him for it. How right he was to. “You will sit here,” Aemond says as he picks Visenya up and sets her on his knee. “And you, there, boy,” he says, gesturing to the empty seat between himself and Daeron. It means not sitting next to his mother, and so he looks to Luke before he moves to his seat as ordered.
Daeron engages him in low conversation, much as he is able to, and gets more out of him than Aemond could have. How strange it is to hear his son’s voice as he speaks. It is almost normal. Aemond cuts a bite of meat that seems about the right size and offers it to his daughter who has not stopped staring at him—or rather, at his sapphire eye with a sort of wonder.
“She cannot chew that much,” Luke says. Aemond has no notion what he means, but Luke takes his hand and the fork from it and cuts the piece in half before he hands it back.
It is the first time Aemond has fed any of his children. This once seemed an act beneath him, but now he watches as she takes the bite clumsily. She takes turns staring between Aemond and her mother, her violet eyes curious.
So the evening passes. Eventually, Aemond is able to wheedle a few words from Luke, and then a few more. Daeron makes Baelon laugh once. Once, his daughter taps his arm to ask for a sweet.
All is good and right in the world then. It is at last the fitting of something into the place it always ought have been.
They leave as the feast is still in high swing and return to their quarters as a family. When Luke departs from him at the door to his rooms, it is with Baelon hanging off one arm and Visenya asleep in the crook of the other. He stops in the open door and looks back at Aemond without speaking.
“Muna?” Baelon asks.
Luke nods him into the door, and yet remains still, staring once he’s gone.
His stare is unnerving. “Speak,” Aemond orders.
“I still cannot figure out what your game is in this.”
“Must I have a game?”
“You? Yes.” He hefts Visenya higher in his arms. “Baelon will warm to you. If you try. He is very much like you. If you offer to let him watch you play at swords, he will warm faster. He watches you sometimes from the windows.”
Aemond nods.
“And thank you,” Luke adds, before he slips in the door and closes it behind him. It is the first time in their marriage he has said the words. It is the first time Aemond has felt like he deserved them.
In his own rooms, he readies for bed and then lays back on top of the cold sheets, too queasy to sleep. It must be that something was wrong with the food because his stomach keeps jumping to his throat, full and fluttering. It does not rise to sickness. He rests his fingertips on his mouth and thinks of what he would like there more.
A day, he dreams of. No. A night when Luke might come to his door of his own accord. Might sigh beneath him and touch as he is touched.
Not everything between them is a horror. Luke often finds his pleasure in their bed, whether he wishes to or not. There are marks from his nails on Aemond’s back and once he left a bite on Aemond’s shoulder that he flattered himself at the time was almost a mark in return for the one Luke wears.Often he finds his release. Often he wraps himself about Aemond and shakes and will not let him go—
Until he remembers who it is he's holding.
But, Aemond thinks, as he pinches his lip between his fingers, one day they might linger in bed together as some mates do. It is not his nature, but it may be Luke’s. And Aemond would indulge him in this if he wished.
It is then he hears it over the pop and crackle of the fire: a clattering. Hurried steps outside his door, a low yell, one he knows to be Ser Arryk’s. Aemond is at the door in a moment, sword in hand, not bothering to tie his hair or to tug on a shirt.
Outside, there is a rush of guards down the hall and hurrying servants. “Your Highness.” Arryk does not waste time with a bow. “Ser Gyles was found dead.” He adds with evident difficulty, “In the queen’s quarters. There is no sign of the queen. Nor of the children.”
For a moment, Aemond is certain he’s misheard. But his body moves before his mind, his sword already unsheathed as he rushes down the hall.
The possibilities are only two. One: that Luke has betrayed him at last, inevitably, and ran. The second: he was taken, and the children with him.
Both will require a ready blade.
“Why are you standing?” Aemond snaps at him. “Search the fucking Keep. And send a rider to the Dragonkeepers.” In case. In case. He finds he does not know which option is worse: than Luke left him willingly or unwillingly.
He is unprepared for what he finds in Luke’s rooms. The dress from that night is set aside, neatly folded over a chair. It is one of the only items left untouched. His quarters are always a mess, but they are messier now, with all the minutiae of his life turned over like someone had a fight in the room, or packed in a hurry.
Perhaps both. Ser Gyles is slumped on the floor. A knife sticks from his throat. The secret door set beside the fireplace is open, the door Aemond knew Luke knew of but never thought he would dare to use.
“Lucerys,” he snarls to the silence, but then a slither of gold catches his eye from the floor. A small gold pendant, an open scallop shell with two pearls within, one small and one large. It was Lord Corlys’s gift to Luke on the occasion of Visenya’s birth, before his death. The chain is snapped in two.
Aemond steps over Gyles’s body and into the dank air of the hidden passage. Blood, he notes there on the floor, long splattering drips of it that disappear into the dark. He follows, fast. He can scent it now, Luke’s fear in the night air. It might mean anything. Fear of being caught. Fear of being killed. Nowhere does Aemond scent his children.
He is almost down to where the path reaches the water ways below the Keep when he at last hears people ahead.
“Fucking bitch,” a man curses. “He didn’t pay us enough for this.”
“No, he damn did not,” says another. “We’ll ask for more when it’s done. Come, pretty. Bit farther and we can be done with this.”
“Fuck you,” comes Luke’s ragged, sweet voice, and then a high scream that isn’t his and the sounds of a struggle.
When Aemond comes down the steps, Luke is on the ground. His hair leaves streaks of blood on the stone, and this is all of him that Aemond can see. There is a body on top of his, hands on him. The other man is doubled over on himself, against the wall.
Aemond does not announce himself. Luke sees him all the same. His green eyes widen at Aemond’s approach, and Aemond knows the expression there: fear. He sees Aemond and sees no rescue there.
Anyone with sense would have had me done away with.
A roar drowns out all other sound, one he thinks is the rush of blood in his ears before he realizes it is his own rough cry. The man on Luke sees what is coming for him only when it is too late to do anything. Aemond rips him off by the back of his shirt and grabs for the dagger the man had jammed into Luke’s neck, uncaring as it slices through leather and into flesh and then he slams the man against the wall as hard as he might. A crack, and another, the sound of his head against the stone repeated over and over until something splits and blood squelches around Aemond’s hand. He turns to Luke, lit only by the wavering light of the lantern the other man is holding as he tries to slide his way down the wall and away.
Aemond grabs him, the same roar still in his ears.
“Stop!” Luke cries. “Stop. Aemond, if you did not send them, we must know who did.”
The haze clears. He hears steps behind him on the stairs, his Kingsguard coming down—useless as they are. Aemond shoves the man toward them. “Take him,” he orders. To Luke he asks, “The children. Where are the children?”
“They are safe. I hid them when I—when I realized.”
Aemond helps Luke up and keeps him awkwardly in his grip as they return up the stairs. In Luke’s rooms, he goes immediately to the biggest of the clothing chests Aemond had set and opens it.
Inside, Baelon and Visenya are tucked against one side, each of them holding a babe. They are treasures there among the silk and gauze. Aemond could weep at the sight of him. He gathers them into his arms, as much as he can hold, and keeps them there. He can scent Luke close, can feel him.
“Aemond. You are bleeding,” Luke says quietly.
He looks down at himself. The cut on his hand is pouring blood. Alerie’s wrappings are covered in it. “Kepa?” Visenya asks.
Luke sets a hand on her head. “Shh, shh. I will make sure Kepa is well.”
“No.” Aemond stands. “Stay with them.”
“Aemod, wait,” Luke starts, but there is blood on Aemond’s hands and blood on Luke’s, too. Blood in his heart now.
“Send them to my quarters,” Aemond orders to Ser Arryk. “Triple the guard. I will have heads for this, and you have but moments to prove to me yours should not be among them.”
They wrap his hand as he interrogates the remaining would-be assassin, for that was the plan. A lesser lord who thought his loyalty would be rewarded with more than peace and the knowledge he had aided in putting the right man on the throne, and no friend of Rhaenyra’s, nor of her children.
When the questioning is done, what little can be made of man whose guts seem to be trying to escape his stomach—a parting gift of Luke’s, he comes to learn—he tries to return upstairs. Maester Orwyle stops him.
The cut on his hand is very deep. “Milk of the poppy, Your Highness. It will help.” He refuses until he remembers Luke staring at him from the floor in the shadow of another man, looking at Aemond and seeing only his doom. What had he thought? That Aemond had come to gloat as he let two strangers kill his inconvenient queen for him?
The queen he fought council and blood to wed, to keep. The mother of his four perfect children. The keeper of all his peace.
“Give it to me.”
It is very late when he returns.
Luke waits there, inside his quarters. Two babes rest in his lap, and Baelon to one side, with Visenya’s head pillowed on his shoulder. He feels at last he can breathe again. The milk of the poppy makes him slow but it dulls the throb in his hand.
“My King,” Luke says as he rises.
“You are not hurt?” Aemond asks.
“No.”
“And the children? You are sure?”
“No. Only shaken a bit. I’ll put them to bed.”
Aemond stops him. “They will stay here. As you will.”
Luke looks to the bed behind him. It is big, but not quite that big.
Aemond orders the guard to have the cradles brought from Luke’s room. They make beds of one wide chair and one settee for Visenya and Baelon to rest on. Aemond has them positioned so they are all within sight of the bed when the door is open to the wider chamber. Luke joins him there, without complaint, taking the shirt Aemond offers him in lieu of his bloodied nightgown.
Together they slip into bed as they never have. Aemond comes behind him, closes him in the fold of his arms and tangles their legs beneath the sheets. Luke is too tired to protest; Aemond too high with fear and milk of the poppy to second guess himself.
He breathes deep of Luke’s hair and says, “You stabbed one.”
“Yes. I would not have let them take me from my children. Not without a fight.”
Aemond presses his nose to the crown of Luke’s head, drawing a deep breath of his scent. “I thought,” Luke starts. “I…”
“I know what you thought.”
“Did you find out who sent them, then?”
“Yes. The man spilled his guts, even more than you spilled for him.”
“I would do it again.”
“I know.” Aemond tucks him closer. “There were many protests when I wed you. Most from my own court.”
“The rest from me,” Luke mutters. “Why did you then?”
“It made sense. You would have made too potent a match for your mother to make new allies.” She might have wed him to a lord of the Free Cities. Might have made allies in the Triarchy, or to the south, or penned them in by wedding him to Greyjoy.
“But… Forgive me, but why not simply do away with me then? I always wondered.” Luke asks this to the quiet and he sounds young when he does.
“And make myself a kinslayer? No.” Aemond yawns. A strand of Luke’s curls gets caught against his mouth as he does. He wipes his face against Luke’s hair. He scents of the sea. He scents of their children, and of blood. “No,” Aemond repeats. “What a decrepit life that would be.”
“Why not wed me to a loyal lord then?”
“And give some underbred ass barely removed from the gutter a chance to sire Velaryons and Targaryens? No.”
Luke pulls back and turns within the circle of his arms. His eyes trace Aemond’s. The sapphire is hidden against the pillow. “It occurred to you to wed me before it occurred to you to have me done away with in an accident?”
“A waste,” he says, mouth clumsy now with sleep. “I thought it would be a waste. And I was right. Look at the children you’ve given me.”
“Any would have.”
“And loved them so well? No. Why would I take an empty-headed third daughter when I might have had Targaryen prince, the Velaryon heir.”
“But I’m not. Not really.”
“You are Velaryon. And if you are not,” Aemond yawns, “then your birthright is Harrenhall. You are a prince at least.”
“Queen, actually.”
“The queen,” Aemond agrees, eye drooping.
“They gave you milk of the poppy,” Luke tells him.
Ah, they did. Yes, they did. When he opens his eye, Luke is close and his eyes—two of them!—are lovely and wide. “Then tell me. Tell me why you wed me, truly.”
What a stupid question. “Because I wished to.”
“And you did not send the assassins.”
“No. In the morning you will—you will join me for the executions.”
“And our children? You care for them, truly? Your face when you asked after them…”
Aemond is tired and he is hurt and Luke is softer than the bedsheets so it makes no sense he is so far away. He pulls Luke back to him and tucks a thigh between his legs and touches his cheek, his arm, his back, the sweet round of his ass. Luke jumps in place but allows it.
“I care for them as much as I do you.” This much should be obvious.
“Oh,” Luke says, and, “Oh. Well. Good night.”
But Aemond is already asleep.
Aemond wakes with a mouthful of Luke’s curls and Luke’s wet breath against his neck. He is hard, his length tucked up tight against Luke’s soft body. All the fear is gone, and the haze of the poppy milk, and in its wake comes the need to feel.
Luke whines when Aemond slides his cock against the warm part of Luke’s cunt. “No, no. Aemond. The children.”
When he sticks his head up, only Baelon is awake and watching the bed through the doors like he has been dropped in an enemy camp and told to make himself at home. Aemond settles for pulling Luke closer and simply enjoying the foreign experience of having a warm body close to his in daylight. “You will attend me here from now on,” he decides.
“Attend you here?”
“Yes. Your things will be moved here. Do not argue.”
“Attend you?” Luke repeats. “Every night?”
And every morning but Aemond will let him discover this in his own time.
“But the children. You said I could keep them with me.”
Aemond rolls and rises and groans when the pain in his hand makes itself known again. It didn’t feel so deep in the night. “I don’t care. Refit the place as needed. But do not move my books.”
“Boring anyway,” Luke mutters almost under his breath.
“What?”
“Thank you for your generosity, King Aemond.”
Little shit. “Dress,” Aemond orders. “We have business to attend to.” He flexes his hand and feels the burn beneath the stretches. “And have Baelon dress to join us.” Baelon watches him still through the door.
He expects this to be a great fight, but Luke nods his agreement and says nothing more.
They hold no trial. The lord who ordered the deed has made himself scarce; he will be hunted, he will be punished. Today they hang the man whose guts he had sewn back in the night before, they hang the body of the man Aemond killed, they hang the sister who let them into the Keep and the two Goldcloaks who were paid off. The rest will be found. Hanging is a comparative kindness, but Aemond ensures there are no snapped necks. They will suffer here for what they did. They will not spike any heads or leave bodies to rot on any walls; he will let the rumor of what was done spread instead. He will let it be known that Luke did his part.
Baelon gasps his fear when the first rope goes. Aemond sets a hand on his head as he has seen Luke do and says, “They tried to hurt your mother, and you.”
Luke nods his agreement. His hand finds Aemond’s when the last door is opened and the last body begins to twitch. There is no flinch in him at the sight.
A sword might have been kinder. But he is not kind. They watch together the sight of four bodies twitching on ropes with his son beneath one hand and his mate’s hand in the other, until all movements stops. It is the best morning he’s had in some years.
Afterward, Luke pauses with him in the shadows of the gallows. He presses a fast kiss against Aemond’s mouth. “You will not scare me again,” he says.
Aemond is not sure what he’s referring to until Luke takes his injured hand in both of his own and says, “Last night. You did not even use your sword. Aemond, if something were to happen to you… I cannot protect them alone. They have no one but us. You must take care.”
“Is that your wish?”
“Yes.”
Aemond quite liked the touch of his mouth. He eyes Luke’s lips and decides that yes, he will have them again, and he does. This kiss is proper and deep and long. Luke returns it with a slip of his tongue against Aemond’s until their mouths part entirely. It is a strange dance that ends with Aemond’s arms tight about him and Luke’s hands fisted against his jerkin, and yes. This is right. This is proper. This will do.
It is three moons later and he is in the middle of one of the longest, most tedious council sessions of his recent life when there is a knock on the door of the chamber and Queen Lucerys is admitted by the Kingsguard.
Luke hovers there by the door. He is dressed boyishly. Aemond can see his riding boots over his breaches, beneath a long coat he is pretending is a dress. He’s been out riding on Arrax. He takes more time each week, but he returns happier each time, and so Aemond allows it. He allows most things of Luke these days.
“My King?” he asks as he looks around at the other councilors, all of which have stood at his entrance. “May we have words?”
Aemond nods, trying to seem measured and not excited to be free of the council. His joy is banked somewhat. He expected this. Their rapport is better now, Luke and his, and Luke is not stupid. Of course, he would test the bounds of it, see how much Aemond is willing to give for his happiness.
“Alone,” he adds when Aemond is outside the door. Aemond nods to his guards. The hall is emptied in a breath.
“Go on then,” Aemond says. “Ask.”
“How presumptuous,” Luke says with a grin, rocking onto the balls of his feet and down again, like he’s very excited—or very nervous. “You think I want something from you.“
“Do you not?”
“If I did, would you give it to me?”
Aemond studies him. His curls which are pulled to one side in a thick mess of a braid. His eyes which are clear and green. His freckled cheeks, the mole that sits below his ear—one Aemond is particularly fond of. “You test me.”
“As you test me. Fine. I want to see my mother. Would you grant me that? She is somewhere in the west; I know you keep watch on her.”
Aemond grits his teeth. “That is delicate.”
“That is not a no.”
“I can make it one.”
Luke grins. “But you won’t. Or you already would have.” He grins wider at Aemond’s stunned stare. “Say you will grant me this.”
“I may. But we will discuss the terms of it in depth.”
“You will let me see her.” Luke traces his face. “Good. Thank you. But that’s not why I came.”
He picks up Aemond’s hand then and presses it to his stomach which is an odd thing to do until he follows it with a sigh and says, “I am with child again. Maester Orwyle says so. I promised I would tell you straight away. They did not believe me, not after last time.”
After last time. Last time, which was five fucking moons into his pregnancy. “How far is it?” Aemond presses his hand between the folds of the jacket but feels nothing, only a little softness there.
Luke wilts a bit. “It will be born before the year’s end.”
Aemond stares at him, feeling stupid. That means it is four moons along, at least. “But what of the tea? You were taking tea, I thought.”
“You said it was my choice.”
“You said you wanted no more children!”
“Did I? I did not. Are you mad? Don’t tell me you’re actually disappointed I’m having more of your—”
Aemond tugs him in, hard, until his face is against Aemond’s shoulder and whispers in his ear dangerously, “I would not fuck you if I did not want you fat with my children.”
“You are so very fucking rude,” Luke murmurs, but his breath is fast in his chest and he stays there, letting Aemond play with his hair and his mark absently. “I’m taking the children to the garden today. If your council is finished, you might join us.”
“If the queen orders it. But I am not wanted there.”
“I want you there. They will warm to you.”
In truth, they already have. “As you did?” Aemond asks.
“No.” Luke pulls from him but takes his hand, the one with the scar, and pulls him along. “I was always fond of you. It’s not my fault you were too blind to see it.”
It is at least half his fault, but Aemond does not say this as he lets himself be tugged along.