Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Lucerys felt the heat first.
It was a damp, heavy heat, settling over his lips and making him shiver even in his sleep. A burning tongue slid into his mouth with maddening slowness, as though it wanted to savor him completely, while a large hand moved along his leg with a possessive calm that made his skin bristle.
That touch was not unfamiliar to him.
Neither was that scent.
He recognized it even before waking: intense, enveloping, dangerously familiar. A smell that had been carved into the deepest part of his memory and returned to torment him on nights of heat, when loneliness became unbearable and his own body seemed to turn against him.
He could feel heavy, steady hands gliding over his chest, pausing there for only an instant before moving up to his neck, where the skin was more sensitive, more treacherous. That brush alone was enough to draw a shiver from him. He arched slightly beneath the sheets, still caught between sleep and desire, surrendering to the sensation with a weakness he hated to acknowledge.
“Mnn…”
The sound slipped from his lips in a broken sigh, soft, almost involuntary.
A low laugh vibrated near his ear.
“You’re still a whore—”
The voice, deep and laced with a quiet cruelty, tore him out of the haze at once.
Lucerys opened his eyes with a start.
For a second, everything was confused: the dimness of the room, the heavy air, the warm tangle of blankets twisted around his legs. Then he saw him.
Aemond.
He was leaning over him, far too close, with that sharp smile that never promised anything good. The scant light outlined the hard contours of his face and made his expression seem even more dangerous. He had not moved his hand from Lucerys’s leg; on the contrary, his fingers remained there, firm, as though he saw no reason at all to withdraw them.
Lucerys held his breath.
For an instant, he was unable to move, not because of fear—or not only fear—but because of the brutal shock of finding him there, turned into flesh and presence, when only a moment ago he had been nothing more than part of a dream far too intimate.
“What…?” The word died in his throat.
Aemond tilted his head ever so slightly, watching him with an unbearable calm, almost amused. There was something cruelly satisfied in his gaze, as if he enjoyed seeing him disoriented, vulnerable, still half-lost between sleep and waking.
“Well,” he murmured, “I thought it would take you longer to wake.”
Lucerys swallowed. His mouth felt dry, and his heart was pounding hard against his ribs. His traitorous body was still far too aware of the heat of that hand on his leg, of Aemond’s weight invading his space, of that scent surrounding him and muddling his thoughts.
“What are you doing here?” he finally managed, though his voice came out lower than he would have liked.
Aemond’s smile widened just slightly, never once becoming kind.
“Entering,” he answered simply, as though that were explanation enough. “And finding you like this has been… interesting.”
Lucerys felt his face burn. He did not know what enraged him more: Aemond’s insolence, how easily he had slipped into his room, or the fact that even now, some miserable part of him was still caught in the echo of that dream.
Aemond let his gaze drift downward, slow and deliberate, as though he wanted to remember every reaction he managed to draw from him.
“You seemed to be enjoying it,” he added softly.
Lucerys looked away, jaw tight.
“Get out.”
But even to him, it did not sound like a real command.
Aemond must have noticed, because he did not move. Instead, his fingers slid a few inches over the fabric, just enough to make Lucerys’s body tense at once.
“No,” he said.
Just one word. Dry. Certain. Final.
Lucerys pressed his lips together and looked away, unable to endure that closeness any longer.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice breaking. “My parents are dead. Couldn’t you wait a little longer before coming to torment me?”
He lowered his head, and for a moment the weight of his own question seemed to crush him more than Aemond’s presence did.
Aemond did not answer right away. He merely shrugged, as though other people’s pain were a minor inconvenience, something distant, unworthy of real consideration. His hand kept stroking Lucerys’s thigh with insulting calm.
“What happened to my sister and my uncle is a shame,” he said at last, with an indifference so polished it was even crueler. “But I simply wanted to see you again.”
He leaned closer until he fully invaded his space. Close enough for Lucerys to make out every detail of his face: the dark patch, the sharp hardness of his features, and that single violet eye fixed on him without blinking, as if it wanted to tear something more than a reaction from him.
Lucerys blinked, trapped beneath that stare.
Then Aemond’s fingers moved up to his hair and began stroking his dark curls with a disturbing softness, almost tender, a tenderness that only made his words more repulsive.
“And I also wanted to remind you,” he murmured, “of how you used to come looking for me. How you trembled, how you spread your legs begging me to fuck you, how your mouth opened for me… how your sweet lips never knew how to stay away from me.”
He said it brazenly, without the slightest trace of shame, as though he were describing something trivial and not one of the most humiliating memories Lucerys had tried to bury for years.
Lucerys’s face burned at once.
“What are you saying?” he shot back, drawing slightly away against the mattress. “That was a mistake. I was in heat… and you were going to kill me.”
The words came out with more force than he expected, but even so, they could not erase the memory.
They could not.
He remembered everything with bitter clarity.
It had happened two years earlier, during the confrontation over his supposed bastard blood. Until then, Lucerys had been considered a late-presenting beta, an uncomfortable anomaly that fed the rumors about his blood even more. But that day, without warning, he had presented as an omega.
And with that, he lost everything.
He lost his inheritance.
He lost his betrothed.
He lost something else.
At least the appearance of his scent had silenced some of the doubts. The mix of sea salt and lemon in his pheromones had been enough to confirm beyond dispute that he was Laenor’s son. By contrast, Jace, who had presented as an alpha at twelve, had carried the scent of fire and steel, distinctly Targaryen, far too ambiguous to prove anything. Lucerys, the supposed beta who could prove nothing, had ended up being the only one whose blood could be pointed to with certainty. Then Joffrey finished confirming it by presenting as an omega as well and carrying the scent of both parents. None of them smelled like forest like a Strong, so even the queen had had to bite back her venomous tongue.
What irony.
The very day his nature came to light, his fate was sealed as well.
As the rules dictated, he was locked away and confined to his chambers until his heat passed. Vulnerable. Isolated. Humiliated.
And that very night, Aemond had come through the door intending to take one of his eyes.
He had not known Lucerys had presented as an omega that night, which was why he had not gone to dinner.
He had not known what he was going to find.
Or perhaps, Lucerys thought bitterly, that only made it all worse.
Because in the end, there had been no blood.
Not at first.
There had been surprise. Tension. Ragged breathing in the dark. There had been rage mixed with something murkier, more shameful, more difficult to name. And there had been kisses, clumsy at first, desperate afterward, as though both of them wanted to destroy and devour each other at the same time. Nothing happened that night because of Rhaenyra’s arrival, which forced Aemond to flee before he could be seen.
Then came the secret door.
It was Lucerys who crossed it, though he never wanted to admit that even to himself. Night after night, driven by blind desire and the madness of his heat, he left his chambers to slip into Aemond’s room. For an entire week they shared every one of their first times there, wrapped in a feverish secret that Lucerys mistook for need, for comfort… even for love.
And that was why the last night still hurt more than anything else.
Because after holding him in his arms, after hearing him confess, broken and trembling, that he loved him… Aemond offered him no tenderness, no promise, no mercy.
He merely pulled back enough to look at him.
And smiled.
A cruel smile. Beautiful. Empty.
“You’re just a whore,” he had said, with a low, scornful laugh, as if Lucerys had been nothing more than a pathetic amusement. “An omega in heat crawling to the first man who spreads your legs. Did you really think you meant anything to me?”
Those words shattered him.
Not all at once, but with the precision of a blade sinking in slowly.
Lucerys had felt the shame burning in his throat, his chest, his entire skin. He had dressed with trembling hands, swallowing back his tears so as not to give Aemond the satisfaction of seeing them. The next morning he returned to Dragonstone with a single certainty beating inside his chest:
he would never see him again.
Or at least, that was what he promised himself.
---
After his mother’s death while giving birth to her last child, Visenya, and Daemon’s only two days later, consumed by the pain of losing Rhaenyra, Jacaerys had taken them to King’s Landing to attend the funerals.
Viserys I was far too broken to manage anything. His few moments of lucidity were agonizing, so most of the time he remained sunk in the heavy sleep brought on by milk of the poppy. No one knew how much longer he had left. But they had to be there in case the inevitable happened. Jace was now his mother’s heir, and the king’s death could change everything from one moment to the next.
“Did you come to humiliate me even more?” Lucerys snapped.
He slapped Aemond’s poisonous hand away and tried to cover himself with the blanket, though he barely managed it.
At that moment, a small cry broke the tension between them.
Lucerys startled and turned at once toward the cradle beside his bed. There slept his younger brothers: Viserys, barely one year and three months old, and Aegon, three years old, curled up together in the small improvised bed made for them.
Aemond frowned when he saw them.
“What are your brothers doing here?” he asked, a note of displeasure in his voice. “Shouldn’t they be with a wet nurse?”
Lucerys already had Viserys in his arms, rocking him carefully while the child kept whimpering, still caught between sleep and discomfort.
“They’re too young to be left alone,” he replied without looking at him. “If not for the queen’s demands, the babies would have remained at Dragonstone. Viserys can’t sleep unless he’s with me, and Aegon can’t fall asleep without him.”
He did not know why he was explaining it to him. Perhaps he was still dazed from the dream. Perhaps exhaustion had made him less careful than usual.
He pulled the child a little closer against his chest.
“Go, please. If you don’t, I’ll call the guards.”
He rose from the bed while Viserys sobbed softly in his arms.
Aemond watched the scene with a look of obvious annoyance, as if the mere presence of those children were a personal irritation to him.
“I was already leaving,” he said at last, with an infuriating calm. “I had hoped our reunion would end better. But we have time. We can always… enjoy ourselves another day.”
The double meaning in his voice was so shameless that Lucerys, already exhausted by his provocations, glared at him.
“Out.”
This time there was no hesitation in his tone.
Aemond shrugged, as though none of it really mattered to him. Without adding another word, he walked toward the secret entrance, pulled the lever, and disappeared into the passage beyond.
The baby kept crying for a few moments more.
Lucerys remained still, his gaze fixed on the wall, holding his breath as if he expected Aemond to return at any moment with another of those unbearable smiles, with another wound ready to be opened. But the passage stayed silent.
Only then did he allow himself to exhale.
He lowered his gaze to Viserys, whose crying had grown more insistent, and his expression softened immediately.
“There, there…” he murmured gently.
Carefully, he pulled aside the fabric of his nightclothes. Luckily, Aemond had not noticed the dampness beginning to spread over them. Lucerys pressed the child to his chest, and Viserys latched on at once, hungry, slowly calming as he was fed and held safely in his arms.
Lucerys held him in silence, cradling him while the room gradually returned to stillness.
When the little one had finished, he patted his back softly until he let out a faint burp. Then he laid him carefully back in the cradle beside Aegon, who barely stirred before wrapping himself around him in his sleep with the ease of someone who knew no other way to rest.
The sight tightened Lucerys’s chest.
He reached out and stroked Viserys’s chubby cheek with infinite tenderness.
“I knew it was a bad idea to bring you here,” he whispered.
Then he went to the secret entrance and made sure to block it properly this time. He had no intention of allowing Aemond to slip into his room again as though he had any right to.
Only when he was certain the mechanism had jammed into place did he return to bed.
He lay down again, exhausted, his body still tense from the unwelcome visit and his heart too weary to keep resisting sleep.
And in the end, it was exhaustion that dragged him back into the darkness once more.
—
Aemond walked for a long while through the secret passageways, leaving one door after another behind until he reached one in particular.
One he knew all too well.
He entered without bothering to announce himself and curved his mouth into a faint smile when he found his elder brother thoroughly drunk. At that hour of the night, Aegon normally would have been lost between the legs of some omega prostitute, but even the brothels had shut their doors out of respect for the death of the heir princess.
This time there was no laughter, no music, no moans beneath the usual scandal.
Only silence.
And alcohol.
Aegon looked like a man who had had something vital torn out of him. The shadows beneath his eyes were deep, almost violet, and his gaze was so empty it did not seem to settle on anything. When Aemond entered, he barely turned his head to look at him. Then he went back to his cup as if Aemond were no one. As if he were not even worth acknowledging.
“I see you’ve already spoken with Mother,” Aemond remarked, amusement flickering in his voice.
Aegon barely nodded, the movement clumsy and listless.
“I’m going to run away,” he murmured, slurring his words a little. “I’m leaving. I don’t want to be king. I don’t want to marry Helaena. I just want to live free… disappear… never come back.”
His voice was thick with wine, but broken by something deeper than drunkenness.
Aemond watched him in silence for a moment, then let the words fall with the same careless cruelty with which other people brushed dust from their clothes.
“You’re a useless drunk. You have no money, you have nothing in your own name, and if you renounce your title as prince, you’ll be nothing.”
Aegon went still.
“You’re a pathetic alpha,” Aemond continued, stepping a little closer. “Short, soft, fat, squandered. Even your pheromones are weak. You barely smell like anything. I’ve heard some alphas have particularly degrading tastes… disgusting fantasies involving other pathetic alphas. Maybe you’d be good for that. Maybe you’d finally find some use.”
Aegon did not answer right away.
His eyes filled with tears with humiliating speed, but he turned his face aside so Aemond would not see. Even so, the gesture did little good. The shame was evident in the tension of his jaw, in the way he swallowed, in how his hands dropped instinctively to his stomach, as if he wanted to check for himself what had just been said to him. His abdomen was soft, yes, but not enough to deserve such cruelty.
“I’m not fat!” he burst out suddenly, indignation trembling in his voice.
He hurled the cup aside, and wine spilled across the dark floor.
He was breathing hard. Hurt. Younger than he wanted to seem.
“I don’t want to be king,” he repeated, hugging himself as though trying to hold together something that was breaking inside him. “Why can’t it be you? Or Jace? Why does it have to be me?”
His voice cracked at the end.
And then, as though all the anger had gone out of him at once, only pain remained.
“Sister…” he whispered, almost breathless. “Why did you die? You were supposed to be queen.”
The room fell silent.
Even Aemond did not answer at once. He simply poured himself a cup in silence while a crooked smile slowly spread across his lips.
“If you don’t want it, give me the crown.”
He approached Aegon calmly, looking at him with that icy contempt that always seemed glued to his skin.
Aegon lifted his gaze to him, exhausted, sadness still clouding his eyes.
“How?” he asked bitterly. “I’d love to give it to you, but as you yourself said, I’m nothing but a pauper. Without the crown, I’m nothing. And if I renounce it, Mother won’t give me a single coin for the rest of my life.”
Aemond held his gaze for another moment before answering, almost savoring the words.
“Become an omega.”
Aegon blinked, confused.
“What the hell are you talking about?” He frowned. “Are you mocking me?”
“Not at all.”
With complete calm, Aemond slipped a hand into the folds of his clothing and pulled out a small dark glass vial.
“A witch I met in Harrenhal gave this to me. Larys introduced me to her. I made a deal with her: if she gave me this, I would hand Harrenhal over to her when I became king.”
Aegon stared at the vial as though he expected it to explode at any moment.
“You only have to drink it for ten days,” Aemond continued. “The change will be gradual. Slow. Almost imperceptible at first. But in the end, you’ll present as an omega.”
He paused, and one corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“Though of course, it only works on half-alphas like you.”
Aegon ignored the insult, too bewildered to bother answering it.
“And why would I want to become an omega?” he asked. “I don’t want to give birth. And I’m not delicate or modest.”
“Neither is Lucerys,” Aemond replied with poisonous softness. “And look at him.”
Aegon fell silent for a second, caught by the memory.
Then he let out a rough sigh.
“Suppose I agree. Then what? As punishment, Mother might marry me off to Larys Strong, or to any other deformed old man she wants to reward. Besides, I still don’t understand what you gain from this. Jace is still in the way. Father will name him heir without even thinking twice.”
He reached for the jug to pour himself more wine, but Aemond knocked it away with a sharp blow. The earthenware shattered against the floor.
Aegon jumped.
“Hey! I was drinking that.”
“And you’ve had enough,” Aemond said coldly. “Alcohol doesn’t just make you bloated and soft. It rots your brain too. Try thinking for once.”
“I’m not fat!” Aegon exploded, his face burning with humiliation.
Aemond let out a low laugh, without a trace of compassion.
“The only redeeming thing about you is that you’re pretty. But aside from that, you’d be far more useful as an omega. You’re short, soft, unmanly, and rather stupid. You were practically born for it.”
That was enough.
Aegon hurled the cup at him with force. Aemond barely tilted his head, and the metal flew past him, crashing into the wall.
Aegon was breathing hard.
“If you keep insulting me, I’m not going to listen to another word you say,” he growled. “Just talk.”
Aemond’s expression changed then. It did not grow kinder, but it did become more serious. More calculating.
“Help me remove Jacaerys from the board.”
Aegon looked at him as if he had just gone mad.
“No!” he blurted out immediately. “I’m not going to murder Jace. If anything happens to him, I’ll tell Rhaenys you wanted him dead. I’m not helping you do that.”
“Who said anything about murdering him?” Aemond asked, sounding almost offended by his brother’s stupidity.
He took another step toward him, and when he spoke again, his voice dropped until it was nearly confidential.
“You want freedom. You want to disappear from King’s Landing. To live far away from Mother and Grandfather. Well then, the life of an omega can give you exactly that… if you play your cards right.”
Aegon watched him distrustfully.
Aemond lifted the vial between two fingers.
“I don’t need to kill Jacaerys. I only need to ruin him.”
He let the silence settle before continuing.
“If you present as an omega, vulnerable and newly transformed, all it will take is a single lapse in judgment, one compromising moment, to force him to answer for it. Jace lives obsessed with honor, with duty, with always doing the right thing. Men like that are the easiest to lead into a trap.”
Aegon swallowed.
“You want me to be with Jace?” he asked, incredulous. “And you think he’d simply agree to that? Our nephew is far too good to do something so low.”
“Exactly because of that,” Aemond replied. “Jacaerys is a knight. A sanctimonious fool. An unbearable idealist who believes in justice, virtue, and all those stupid things people love pretending matter. Why do you think everyone loves him?”
His smile returned, slow and cutting.
“I’d wager he’s never even touched a whore.”
Aegon frowned, still confused.
And Aemond, seeing that he finally had his full attention, finished calmly:
“If Jacaerys becomes compromised with you, it’s over. They’ll remove him. They’ll cast him out of the line of succession; his only way out will be inheriting House Velaryon. And you… you’ll be free in a way you could never be as crown prince. You’ll be the consort lord of Driftmark.”
Aegon lowered his gaze to the vial.
For the first time since Aemond had entered the room, Aegon no longer seemed drunk.
He seemed tempted.
His fingers tightened hard around the edge of the table. His thoughts, dulled until moments ago by wine and tears, suddenly began to arrange themselves around that small dark bottle.
“I…”
Aemond did not let him continue.
“Don’t worry,” he said, with an almost insulting calm. “Leave everything in my hands.”
Aegon swallowed, still staring at the vial warily.
“Ten days is too long,” he murmured. “By then Jace will already have returned to Dragonstone.”
Aemond smiled.
It was not a broad smile, not even a particularly visible one, but there was something deeply unpleasant in it, a dark satisfaction that made Aegon’s stomach tighten.
“Have you really not noticed?”
The question fell into the room with a strange stillness.
Aegon looked up, confused.
Then Aemond stopped smiling.
His face turned serious, almost solemn, and that sudden absence of mockery was far more unsettling than any insult.
“Have you really not realized,” he asked slowly, “that you’ve been taking it for at least twelve days?”
For an instant, Aegon did not understand.
The words reached him, but they did not seem to make sense right away. He only felt a cold emptiness in his chest, an icy sensation running down his spine and tightening his skin.
Then understanding hit him all at once.
And with it came rage.
A living, burning fury that began to twist in his stomach like a flame suddenly fed with oil.
“Your body has already started to change,” Aemond continued, relentless. “Very slowly. Just enough that no one has noticed yet, and you are so profoundly unobservant that you didn’t notice either. Though, of course… that is also because hardly anyone bothers to look at you closely.”
Aegon stood so abruptly that pain shot through his back.
“You fucking son of a bitch!” he burst out, his voice breaking with rage and humiliation. “What if I had said no? What if I didn’t want this?”
Aemond did not even blink.
He watched him with that unbearable calm of his, as though Aegon’s outburst were nothing more than a predictable tantrum.
“Aegon,” he said softly, “we are brothers. I know you well enough to know that you were going to accept, even if first you cried, protested, or needed to pretend you still had a choice.”
That hurt more than it should have.
Because deep down, in the most shameful part of himself, Aegon knew there was some truth in those words.
He looked at Aemond with hatred.
Then Aemond lifted the vial he still held between his fingers and extended it to him with an almost ceremonial coldness.
“This is the last dose,” he murmured. “You’re too old, so the process has been slower than expected. But if you drink this… there will be no turning back.”
Aegon did not take it.
His eyes were fixed on the dark glass as if it held poison inside.
“What is it you really want?” he asked at last, more quietly. “Would you do all this just for a crown?”
Aemond shook his head slowly.
And for the first time in the entire conversation, something in his expression changed.
It did not become kinder. Nor more human.
But it did become more truthful.
There was something feverish in his gaze, an intensity held back for far too long, as though for an instant he had allowed the wound feeding all his ambition to show.
“Two years ago,” he said, “I began to desire something I cannot have.”
His voice was low, firm, strangely empty.
“Something that belongs to me, yet was denied to me… and that since then has done nothing but haunt me.”
Aegon frowned, not fully understanding.
Aemond looked at him directly, his single eye shining in a way that was almost disturbing in the dim light.
“Being king is not the end.”
The room fell silent.
Aegon felt a shiver crawl up his arms.
He did not know what was more unsettling: the confession itself, or the sick devotion with which Aemond spoke it.
Aemond took a step toward him and held out the vial again.
“Don’t think anymore,” he murmured. “I will take care of everything. Jacaerys. Mother. The council. Every obstacle in the way.”
His voice dropped until it was almost a whisper.
“You only have to drink… and leave everything to me.”
Aegon lowered his gaze to the vial and took it.
To be continued…