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eggtargaryenii · 2 months ago

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EAST OF THE SUN | PART I

You were a disgrace to House Targaryen, the product of an impulsive wedding between a lost prince and some Essosi whore. You had little social capital within the Red Keep and few prospects for marriage, but that was alright. You were perfectly happy to stay out of the game of thrones, wed some politically relevant lord of Alicent Hightower’s choosing, and die in peaceful obscurity. Unfortunately for you, Prince Aemond had other designs for your future.

5.8k words, aemond x fem!reader x jacaerys (though sadly, jace is not in this chapter). romance, childhood friends to lovers (except it's cousins), political drama. warnings for targaryen incest (between cousins), xenophobia/racism (depending on how you interpret the reader's racial coding), teenagers discussing sex, and a reference to underage sex in canon. the reader is half-valyrian and half-essosi, ethnically undefined. features are not described but she is considered conventionally attractive. dividers from @/cafekitsune.

I. THE HERMIT, REVERSED

You were a child when you learned that your mother was a whore.

Your father—a cousin to King Viserys—found your mother in one of the famed pillowhouses of Lys and brought her home as a souvenir. She was already heavy with you when they landed in Blackwater Bay, singing to you as your father cradled her belly every night. Though they had already been wedded in the Red Temple of Volantis, their union blessed by the light of R’hllor, it was your father’s wish that their love was also witnessed by the gods of Westeros. They were wedded once more in the Great Sept of Baelor, in a ceremony that was an affront to your grandsire, Prince Velarion. So wroth was he that everyone anticipated a terrible fate for your little family: the marriage annulled, your father forced into penance, and your mother killed.

But to the displeasure of Prince Velarion, one of the dragons chose you for a bond. (You were still in the womb when Wildfyre started clicking and squawking at you, and snarling at any man who came near your mother; he did not stop until you claimed him at ten-and-two, soaring upon his back through the skies of Myr.) The dragon keepers insisted that this was a sign that you were chosen by the gods of Old Valyria, so the lives of you and your mother were spared.

Still—your mother was eventually exiled, and your lord father wished to see her back to Lys. You had cried bitterly and begged to go with them, but your father said that the journey through the Stepstones would be too dangerous. He entrusted you to Viserys until his return, and then embarked on a journey that should not have taken more than one hundred days.

Ten years later, you still waited for him.

It was hard to recall when it was concluded that your father was unlikely to return; you only remembered that you did not accept it. The mornings and evenings of your early childhood were spent watching all the ships that passed through Blackwater Bay, waiting for red-and-black sails and a man you could now hardly remember. You only stopped once you flew through the skies of the Free Cities on dragonback, and not a single lost prince waved to you from among the crowds.

Your father’s disappearance left your position in jeopardy. The King could have easily taken control of his wealth and disinherited you if he so wished—as your grandsire was inclined—but His Grace instead decided that you should stay in the Red Keep and be treated like any other trueborn Targaryen. You were told as a child that this was an act of magnanimity, a gesture born out of love for his lost cousin, but you later came to realise that it was likely a self-serving move conjured up by Otto Hightower. Marriages were the easiest way to form political alliances; having an extra Targaryen lady to marry off was good leverage.

But despite your utility, you were still a stain within the Red Keep—a disgrace for the histories of the Targaryen dynasty. Nearly as great of one as Princess Saera herself, though perhaps still not quite as embarrassing as the three bastards sired by Lord Strong unto Princess Rhaenyra. Nevertheless, you were still a pariah. After all, children inherit the sins of their parents in the eyes of the Seven, meaning that your mother’s sin was also yours.

And so—when you were a child, you learned that if your mother was a foreign whore, then so too were you.

II. JUSTICE, REVERSED

Aemond was a child when he learned that people mistook you for a whore.

He learned this by listening to his queen mother, eavesdropping on a hushed conversation between her and his father. They were at a tourney, the crowd abuzz with chatter, which was perhaps why they were speaking so openly. The Queen stared at you as you sat next to Helaena, frowning at the closeness between the two of you. Being close in age, it was natural that the two of you spoke to each other frequently. You were a little older than all three of Alicent’s children and, as was common of a girl your age, you had prepared a favour: a ring of forget-me-nots interwoven with a ribbon you often wore. It was simple, but pretty, and it gave Aemond a feeling of deep distaste for some reason he couldn't identify.

His mother seemed to find it distasteful too. “Hard to believe she prepared a favour,” she said. She used the tone with which she often spoke of Princess Rhaenyra, the one that suggested derision. Aemond listened carefully, as he tended to whenever you came up in the conversation.

“And why would that be?” his lord father asked. He sounded defensive, also similar to the way he always did when his firstborn daughter came up. And as with Rhaenyra, Alicent seemed not to care for his sentimentality toward you.

“Well, what man would think to ask for it,” she asked, not delicately, “given her parentage?”

“Whatever you may think of her mother,” the King replied, “the girl is still a trueborn Targaryen. It is natural that she may catch the attention of some lordling or knight.”

“Surely not one with any faith, nor any serious ambitions in the court,” Alicent remarked. “Because she is—”

She paused then, hesitating. When Aemond snuck a glance at his father, he saw a stiff smile on his face.

“She is?” he questioned.

“...she resembles her mother more and more with each passing day,” Alicent remarked. “And one would think that she is similar. Foreign and improper in nature. A daughter of sin.”

Aemond’s brow furrowed. His mother spoke often of sin, of those who should beg for the grace of the Seven lest they be condemned to hell. She often reminded Aegon not to commit any such transgressions lest he disgrace the family, which he seemed to often do anyway. Aemond did not think you were particularly like his older brother, who stank constantly of wine and snuck off to Flea Bottom on every possible occasion. On the contrary, you were mostly well-behaved—except when you were quarrelling with Aegon—hardly ever indulged in any vices, and you only ever snuck out of your room to make miserable, wistful faces at the waters of Blackwater Bay.

And unlike Aegon, you were also kind.

Aemond did not know why exactly you had always been so nice to him; he just knew that you were unwaveringly so. Perhaps you felt a kind of kinship with him because he was frequently as miserable as you. For as long as the two of you had known each other, you had never once teased Aemond, and you in fact defended him. Just a few moons ago, you’d shouted at Aegon after the incident with the pig in the dragonpit, comforted Aemond after the fact, and encouraged him to claim Vhagar thereafter. To show up your ass of a brother, you’d suggested. And when Lucerys slashed his face open in the aftermath, you kept Aemond company for the entire duration of the recovery—watching them remove his ruined eye despite your disgust, keeping him company at his bedside when a fever took him, glowering at the Strong bastards whenever they came near him. Only his mother cared for him more deeply.

Aemond did not know what kind of sin such a kind person could have committed—what his queen mother should be referring to. So he turned to his brother and asked, “What does Mother mean by that?”

“Mean by what?” Aegon asked, eyes on the knights before the crowd. Clearly distracted.

“She called our cousin a daughter of sin. What does she mean?”

“Oh.” His brother glanced briefly at you, eyes considering. They travelled down your silhouette in a way that Aemond misliked for some reason he couldn't identify. “She means our cousin is a whore.”

“A whore?” Aemond asked, questioning. He’d heard the word many times, of course—sometimes uttered by his brother, and once lobbed at Princess Rhaenyra—and understood it as an insult. But no one had ever explained its specific meaning to him.

Aegon gave him an incredulous look. “You don't know what a whore is?” At Aemond's blank expression, Aegon explained, “It means she spreads her legs for money and is destined to go to hell. You know, like the women on the Street of Silk.” He paused, sizing up Aemond. “I should take you there someday, give you a proper education—then you’ll know exactly what mother means when she says ‘daughter of sin’.”

“I know what sex is,” Aemond replied defensively, though he didn't entirely know the details. “I'm not stupid.” He frowned then. “She doesn't work on the Street of Silk, though.”

“No, but her mother worked in a Lysene pillow house—much the same as the Street of Silk, though I hear the establishments of Lys are nicer, and filled with the most beautiful slaves from all over Essos.” Aegon looked at you again in a way that Aemond did not like. “I wonder if she inherited any of her mother’s talents. Maybe she’ll let me fuck her someday and I'll find out.”

Aemond felt a sense of disgust at the thought, even without fully knowing what his brother was imagining. All he knew was that he hated the thought of his brother putting his hands on you. “She wouldn't.”

“She would.”

“Would not.”

“Would too.”

“Would not! Who’d want to lay with you?”

Aegon scoffed. “Every woman from the Wall to Yi Ti, of course. Who wouldn't want to fuck a Targaryen prince?” He elbowed Aemond. “That includes you too, you know. Maybe if you pay her, she’ll let you have a turn as well. Then I wouldn't even need to take you to the Street of Silk to become a man.”

The feeling of disgust intensified. Not knowing what to do with it, Aemond kicked Aegon in the shin, making the young man yelp.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For being an ass.”

“An ass? I'm giving you advice, man to man! Guiding you toward adulthood and a glorious night with our Lysene beauty of a cousin!”

“I don't want a glorious night with her.”

“Fine, then—I alone will enjoy her.”

Aemond kicked him again, and Aegon cursed. “Little shit!” he hissed, which—as Aemond had planned—earned him a violent shush and a glare from their mother. His brother gave him a dirty look for the manipulation.

“I don't know why you're getting all sensitive about this,” Aegon said. He squinted at Aemond then, discerning. “Say—is this jealousy? Insecurity? Are you worried that you aren’t man enough to bed her?”

Aemond glowered at him, which made Aegon laugh and clap his back.

“No need to worry if she rejects you, little brother. I know a number of skilled women on the Street of Silk, any one of them as good in bed as our cousin should be. After all, one whore’s as good as another.”

Aegon scowled. “Stop calling her that. She’s a lady of House Targaryen, not a whore.”

“Who says a lady can't be a whore? Just think of our Great-aunt Saera! I guess you wouldn’t know, but she ended up in a pleasure house, first in Flea Bottom, and now somewhere in Lys. And look at our half-sister—mother to three bastards. I'm sure our dear cousin will follow in their footsteps. It's in her blood.”

“She wouldn't do that,” Aemond replied sharply. “She's nothing like those two.”

How could you be? Princess Saera had been a vile person and Rhaenyra was a self-serving liar. Both Aegon and his mother had to be wrong about you—Aemond was sure of it. His mother treated you with such judgement, but he was certain you were undeserving of it.

He was sure of it too when his brother finally took him to the Street of Silk years later, and he bedded a woman for the first time. Sylvi was her name. She was indeed very skilled, and she was kind as well—stroking his hair afterwards and praising him for doing such a good job. It reminded him somewhat of his mother’s touch upon his head after Lucerys took out his eye, and the way you held his hand as his fever set in. But that was the end of any similarity between you and Sylvi; and in that respect, you were much more like his mother than this strange woman anyway. Aemond knew then that you were neither a whore nor a sinner. He couldn’t imagine you disgracing yourself like the girls who sold themselves at the brothel, let alone selling yourself to someone like his brother.

But his mother had been right about one thing: no one asked for your favour that day during the tourney. You’d sighed at the ring of flowers, looking a little forlorn, and tossed it later onto the floor of the godswood—an offering for the old gods, you'd said to the weirwood, because the new ones were shit. Aemond watched you from behind an ancient oak, waiting for you to leave. Once he was certain you were gone, he snatched your favour from the ground. He studied it carefully, eyes tracing the ribbon woven deftly between the flowers. He remembered that you wore it when you stayed by his bedside.

He untangled it from the ring of forget-me-nots, and he decided to take it back to his room.

III. THE MAGICIAN

Alicent Hightower was eager to marry you off.

The Small Council had spent the past several weeks discussing the prospects of your marriage. Without any parents to oversee your betrothal, the decision of your match laid entirely in the hands of King Viserys—which was to say, in the hands of Otto Hightower and his daughter. Alicent had very little love for you—no pious woman in her right mind would love a daughter of sin—but you were glad for her influence in some ways. Rhaenyra, before she left King’s Landing, relayed to you that Otto had brought up your future betrothal when you were as young as ten, but Alicent cautioned him against premature decisions. Let us not waste the opportunity given to us by her marriage, she always chided, but Rhaenyra had the sense that it had less to do with politics and more to do with wanting to spare you from the fate of a child bride.

But now you were a woman grown, and you were quickly becoming a nuisance for the Queen. She had been willing to tolerate your presence near her children when you were all young and she was charged with raising you, but she had recently begun imagining that you had corruptive influence over her sons. Aegon regularly talked of how much he'd love to bed you, which made her furious with him; and Aemond always insisted on having your company, which made her furious with you. Ever since your first blood, the Red Keep had regularly been plagued by rumours of your indiscretions with whichever knight or lord with whom you were most seen. Most recently, the most popular whisper was that Prince Aemond was your lover and you were secretly carrying his child. Why else would such an adroit and honourable young man regularly associate with the daughter of a whore?

Alicent had been apoplectic when she heard the rumours. They were, you supposed, believable. Her second son had always been strangely attached to you, nearly to the exclusion of all others. He didn't even treat his own sister with such affection—and he certainly held no such love for his brother—so a carnal relationship was a somewhat natural conclusion for an outsider. You, however, withered at the thought. Aemond may now be as comely as the Maiden herself, but you still saw him as the awkward little boy whom you grew up alongside and whom you constantly defended from his bullies.

Of course, his mother had no way of knowing any of this; she could only see the signs of a sordid affair between the two of you. That Alicent Hightower had raised you out of the goodness of her heart and you chose to return this favour by corrupting her son and engaging in the great sin of fornication was a huge upset. Not only did she chew you out in the throne room in front of King Viserys, utterly humiliating you—she also designed to send you to the Silent Sisters.

You could have easily ingratiated yourself to her with the correct penance. You could have distanced yourself from Aemond, as well as every other man in the Red Keep. You could have dedicated yourself to studying the Seven, immersing yourself in their grace. And most of all, you could have fervently denounced your mother and fervently renounced all sin. You could have made it clear that you were not a sinner, and especially not a harlot.

But you would lose respect for yourself if you did any of those things. You loved your mother too much to disavow her; you refused to practise a faith that would condemn her to hell simply for her profession; and most importantly, you did not want to distance yourself from Aemond. You had only three friends in this world, and that was only if you were allowed to include your dragon in the count. Your cousin Jacaerys got along well with you, but he'd long since left the capital, making Aemond your only companion in King’s Landing who was capable of human speech. (Wildfyre, though loyal, was not exactly a good conversationalist.)

All this to say, you simply did not want to let Aemond go.

In the end, you placated Alicent by making the somewhat extreme decision to invite her most trusted septa to inspect your maidenhead. When it was revealed that you were not, in fact, fucking Aemond, Alicent had no choice but to recant her allegations. Mollified, the Queen afterward extended an olive branch by meeting with you at least once a week. Repairing our relationship, she called it. By this she meant that she would spend an hour proselytising to you in an attempt to save your heathen Lysene soul, and then another hour discussing your marriage prospects. Better to be rid of you before her second son could actually be seduced by your sinful nature.

Right now you were both sitting in the garden, enjoying a pot of chrysanthemum tea in the sun. Alicent had just wrapped up an impromptu sermon about the Seven; now she was speaking to you about marriage. She kept talking about a Lord Stokeworth and a Lordling from House Tully. The former was nearly thirty years your senior and the younger was almost ten years your junior, but they were both willing to overlook the fact that people knew you as the daughter of a Lysene whore. It was more important to them that you were the blood of the dragon.

“Rivermen are especially difficult to make alliances with,” Alicent told you, “but they are bound by oaths and loyal to their kin. And I'm sure the lordling would treat you well. A marriage with a Tully would do well for all of us.”

“Rivermen are bound by oaths,” you said, “but they have already sworn loyalty toward us. They have never once expressed unrest during King Viserys’ reign, have they?”

Alicent stopped. She regarded you carefully, her fingers twitching—nails scraping against one another. She clearly wanted to use you to assure the loyalty of the Riverlands to the Hightowers, but you were unwilling to openly commit yourself to her cause. For the past several years, you'd been careful to wear neither black nor green, and this was perhaps both her greatest reason for not loving you and for not banishing you.

“That is true,” she said, “but Lord Tully has been sick a long while now, and his hold on his bannermen has loosened. Their allegiances are unclear. It would do well for the Crown to have more influence in the Riverlands, in case of any trouble during our succession.”

“I am still confused, my Queen. I do not think the Riverlands have ever been inclined to defy either their liege or the Iron Throne. They have all bent the knee to Princess Rhaenyra.” With this, you paralyzed the Queen: the only reason they would have to protest the Iron Throne was if it were ever usurped. She had just implied treason, and you would not let it go unnoticed.

You supposed it was a bold thing to point this out, but you really did not want to marry a ten year old. Ideally you'd wed a handsome lord with reasonable political standing, as far away from the Red Keep and the new gods as possible. The Riverlands were too close, and the Faith of the Seven was too strong there. On the other hand, Dorne, Winterfell, and the Iron Islands were incredibly far, and the peoples of the latter two followed entirely different faiths. Most importantly, the men of their respective noble families were quite handsome. You would happily live up to your reputation and debase yourself for Cregan Stark if the opportunity ever arose.

“If oaths were the problem,” you said delicately. “I'm sure the North could use attention. The Ironborn have always wanted for independence, and we have relied greatly on the Starks to suppress them. Or perhaps we could consider the problem of Dorne.”

“Dorne,” she repeated, her stare hard.

“King Viserys has always wanted to bring them into the kingdom, has he not?” She breathed deeply, and you added, “These are not suggestions, of course. Merely questions. I am eager to learn the wisdom of the only woman to sit on the Small Council.”

Let it not be said that you did not know how to play to people’s emotions. Alicent’s shoulders relaxed, and she took a sip of her tea. “These are good questions,” she admitted. “The problem of Dorne is too complex to manage with a simple marriage to House Targaryen, but the Greyjoy suggestion is intriguing. I might be inclined to caution the King against it, if he were to propose it. The Ironborn are a proud people. I do not think a marriage to a Targaryen lady would be enough to placate them, and a marriage to you specifically may present… a danger to the North.”

“You would worry about giving them a dragon.”

“Yes. But Winterfell…”

The Queen paused. You tried not to smile.

“Winterfell always honours their oaths,” you said, “but given what the realm asks of them, it never hurts to reward them for their loyalty. Who knows what may happen in the future?” Who knows what may happen if Prince Aegon were to ascend the Throne? “If a struggle were ever to happen at the Wall, I am sure Lord Stark and his bannermen would remember which queen sent him a Targaryen wife and a dragon in support of their struggle.”

Alicent nodded. She looked at you as if seeing you in a new light—a better one.

“I will speak to the Hand about this matter,” she determined. “I shall get his thoughts before the tourney in a fortnight, and see which families we should introduce you to then.”

“I shall prepare myself for it.”

“Good.” She smiled at you. “See to it that you are dressed well for the occasion. I feel that green would be a lovely colour on you—don’t you?”

IV. DEATH, REVERSED

“Hello, father of my bastard child!”

Your voice rang through the dragonpit, a cheerful echo in its near pitch-black depths. By the light of the torches, Aemond could barely make out your silhouette, but he could hear the lightness of your footsteps nevertheless.

For someone who had been the subject of vile accusations for the past month, you seemed awfully happy. You weren't always so thick-skinned, Aemond mused: when you were younger, he often caught you brooding in the dragonpit, sniffling at the way women talked about you and the way men leered at you. Any other child—himself included—would have been terrified to stay here, alone in darkness and brimstone, but your only friend for a long time was your dragon, so naturally his home was where you went when you were miserable. And you were very often miserable.

But you were now well-adjusted in your adulthood, apparently impervious to most insults and whispers about you. (What are they going to do? you often said dryly. Call me a tart? A temptress? That I belong in Flea Bottom? They’ve been saying that for years!) You had just taken the past month of scandal in stride, and now you seemed irreverent of it. It made Aemond tense: although he did not terribly mind that people mistook you for his lover, he still had appearances to manage. And he disliked it when people spoke ill of you. Ever since he had built a reputation as a respected prince, he made it clear that no one was to speak poorly of you before him. The only exception was his idiot brother, with whom he was meant to maintain the appearance of unity. The other day, he caught him monologuing about the ways in which he imagined Aemond was debasing you (“I hardly knew my brother had it in him! It surely had to be my cousin’s work—seducing the fierce Aemond One-Eye!”), and Aemond could scarcely hold himself back from maiming him. Still, his sword stayed within its sheath, his knuckles white and tense around its hilt.

He could not solve the issue of his brother with intimidation. Aemond could only caution you against fueling him: “If you keep talking like that, the whole of the Red Keep will start whispering about you again.”

You laughed. “Who’s going to overhear us? Will Vhagar be gossiping with Dreamfyre about our scandalous relationship?” You craned your neck, looking behind him. “Where is your old lady, anyhow? Can I give her a treat today?”

“Vhagar awaits us outside. You are always welcome to feed her, but the dragon keepers said there is a scarcity of lamb at the moment.”

“Ah, well. Let’s go find Wildfyre, then—I called for him earlier, but he didn't come. I bet he’s napping somewhere.” The two of you began walking, cutting a path through ash and crumbling bone. Aemond guided you around what looked like the fresh remains of cattle, and you thanked him, wrinkling your nose at the familiar stench of charcoal and rotting flesh.

“What you said about the lamb,” you started, “concerns me. Are the smallfolk short of livestock?”

“I have heard from the Hand that there is a sickness among the animals of the Reach, so the yield has been worse this year than most others.”

“How sad! I hope they’ll be alright.”

“The dragons are well-fed—the Hand has assured it.”

You gave Aemond a curious look. “I was speaking of the smallfolk, not the dragons.”

Aemond paused. “Of course,” he said, “the Hand will also ensure their well-being. I did not even think to question that.”

Truthfully, Aemond had not thought of the smallfolk at all, but he should have. Whenever he or Aegon spoke of the issues of the Realm, they were always your first concern—the farmers and the craftsmen and even the whores of Flea Bottom. Aegon said it was evidence of your commoner blood, but Aemond thought it was discerning of you. Were you born his eldest sister and not his eldest cousin, it would be evidence of your good judgement as a future ruler.

Though of course, if you had been his eldest sister, then you would have been wedded to Aegon—a thought that Aemond found exceptionally distasteful. In fact, the thought of any man touching you made his knuckles tighten around his sword, yet it was a reality that his mother had told him to make peace with many times.

Aemond, she told him the other day, looking at his tightly controlled expression, I know you have a great… fondness of your cousin. But the two of you are no longer children. It is improper for you to spend so much time around her. You would not want to compromise any future prospects for yourself, nor disgrace yourself in the eyes of the Seven. And god forbid you ruin her prospects. Your grandfather and I have been working hard to secure a good match for her—a difficult feat, given her parentage.

Unfortunately for Alicent, Aemond felt that the Seven could fuck themselves. And his prospects had always been lacking as the second son, but he would eventually overcome the circumstance of his birth. Aemond considered himself a loyal son, but he would not succumb to whatever mediocre designs his mother had for his future.

He would make sure that you would not, either.

“You seem happy,” he observed. “I take it your afternoon with Alicent went well?”

“Very well. I avoided a marriage to that Tully boy, and I think I may have even charmed your mother.” You flashed him a smile—one he'd been seeing since childhood, but of which he never tired. “She is now considering potential matches in the North for me. I'll likely be meeting potential suitors in the upcoming banquet—I do hope they’ll be handsome. And wealthy.”

Aemond did not bother trying to smile. “The North is very far.” He slipped into Valyrian: “You belong in the South, near skies filled with dragons and the waters of the old Freehold. You are a Targaryen, are you not?”

“I may be a Targaryen, but I am unwanted here,” you dismissed. Even after all these years, you spoke Valyrian with a Lysene accent, and—as often happened in private speech—you reverted to a vocabulary that was closer to the Low Valyrian of your mother rather than the High Valyrian taught by the maesters. Still, you were the only person in the whole of the capital more fluent in the language than Aemond; he only spoke as well as he did because he’d grown up practising with you. “The further I get away from the Red Keep, the less hated I will be.”

“But you will be alone.”

“I will have Wildfyre, my lord husband, and an entire castle of people to make friends with.”

“Or enemies of.”

“If I can charm Alicent Hightower, I do believe I can also charm anyone else in the Realm.” You grinned at him—though Aemond did not miss the careful look you gave him. “But if you're worried about being lonely, I can always fly back on Wildfyre and visit you.”

“You need not be concerned. I have many allies within the Red Keep.”

You stopped then, openly studying him. “It is—difficult,” you replied in the Common Tongue, “for me not to worry about you.”

His brow arched. Aemond could not help but stare, puzzled: you watched him enough on the training grounds to know that not only could he easily kill most men, but also that most men feared him for it.

“There are few people in this world who would worry about me,” he said neatly, and your look grew embarrassed.

“Yes, I know it’s silly of me. Why would I worry about the famed Aemond One-Eye, Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, Rider of Vhagar, and winner of countless tourneys?”

“Two. I've won two tourneys.”

“Well, that’s more tourneys than most will win in their lifetime. And I’m sure you'll win the one in the fortnight as well.”

Aemond did not see the point in denying it. “Perhaps. What of it?”

You breathed deeply, and Aemond could see on your face how much you were trying to be diplomatic. “What I mean to say is—you are a respected warrior with many allies. But an ally is not the same thing as a friend, and a sword cannot offer its wielder any reprieve. Sometimes I fear whom you will rely on if I leave.”

“You think I have no friends,” he said plainly, and you gave him a sheepish look. He did not smile.

“I’m just worried you don't have anyone you can actually trust here,” you explained.

Aemond would spurn the words coming from anyone else. He might even be inclined to intimidate them, simply to remind them of his position. A prince should not be so patronised.

But looking at you, with your worried eyes and furrowed brow, he thought of the two weeks you spent by his bedside as healed, and all those times you checked on him after chasing away Aegon, and how you took him dragon riding until he was as comfortable at it as you. You likely still saw the weak child he once was—a habit he could not fault you for, but which aggrieved him nevertheless.

He did not let his irritation show on his face.

“You need not worry, cousin. I do not need trust from anyone—only respect.” And respect was something he had in spades.

You gave him a dubious look, but relented. “Alright. Just know that you can always write to me, no matter how far away I am.”

Aemond hummed. He'd nearly forgotten your initial concern: the looming distance from him, the gap and loneliness that your marriage would supposedly create.

His mouth curled.

“I appreciate it, but I have the sense that you’ll end up closer to home than you think.”

“Oh? What do you mean?” Your brow knotted. “Has your mother said something to you?”

“Nothing concrete,” he replied smoothly. “But nevermind—let us fetch Wildfyre. We should fly out before the day grows any older.”

The thought of flying distracted you from all others. “Yes, it would be troublesome if we stayed out too long.”

“Where would you like to go?”

You grinned. “I'll race you to Spicetown? We can go to the market and be back by midnight.”

“Midnight?” Aemond sounded—was—amused. What a free-spirited thing you were, to be careless enough to return to the Red Keep with him after curfew. “This is why those rumours started in the first place, you know.”

“It was worth the trouble, don’t you think? Or are you going to deny me now?”

He could not. Aemond was a disciplined man—his goals could not allow for much error in his life—but he also found it impossible not to humour any request from you. He did not have many joys in his childhood, and he had never outgrown his habit of wishing for the joy you brought with your happiness. It was hard for him not to indulge you.

In fact, this wish you had for your future—to marry some trifling lord beneath you and move far away from King’s Landing, the place in which you belonged—would be the first thing he would ever deny you.

END PART I

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