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summeringminor · 4 months ago

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𝖓𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖈𝖆𝖑𝖑

alimond, past!rhaenicent | E

Alicent asks Aemond to stay in her chambers over night.

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It is the hour of the wolf when Alicent finally slips into bed, her servants dismissed, her candle snuffed out. The dark holds her. Yet even in her exhaustion her heartbeat does not slow and instead thrashes against her ribs like a dying bird.

Heat gathers at her throat, her armpits, the backs of her knees. A rising panic spreads in her chest to her stomach. Her nails find her cuticles, she scratches and the pain brings her back to the moment, back to a body she understands.

Viserys is getting worse.

A shuddering breath. By the Seven, he is getting worse. But he has lived for so long, survived for so long. Surely another few years—

You are lying to yourself, daughter, she hears her father’s dignified voice and his ever present scrutiny does not evade her. She knows it’s true. And when he dies…will Rhaenyra return from Dragonstone? Will she claim the throne she so firmly believes to be her right? No matter that Rhaenyra has spat in the face of propriety, that she has so openly disgraced and sullied herself with her bastard children. And yet Viserys does not spurn her, where he would have done what to Alicent had she born him a dark haired babe?

Bile rises in her stomach. She rips the skin from her cuticle, but she does not feel the sting, not when her children’s lives will be at the mercy of Rhaenyra, her brood and Daemon. She lied to you, her father’s voice echoes in her skull again. She told you Daemon never touched her, and fool that you are: you believed her.

Tears well at her lids at the thought of it, she clasps the sheets in her fists, wants to—wishes—that violence would find Rhaenyra, that she’d even for a brief moment know sacrifice, and Daemon and his queer and vile self be cast into the sea to drown—

She grits her teeth before she stills completely. She is above this. Must be above this. She inhales a slow breath. Goosebumps ripple her skin as her cheeks heat with blood. She must not allow such ponderings. She is queen.

But has she acted as such? Is she not as depraved as them? Perhaps worse. She cannot bring herself to remember the night in which Aemond had knelt before her and pushed up her skirts. Her own son. A cold shiver runs her through like a knife’s edge. Unnatural. Though perhaps not to him, who has grown up Targaryen, not Hightower.

Many hours she has spent in the sept begging for repentance, but can such a sin be forgiven? But how could the seven-faced god condone Aegon’s and Helaena’s marriage, their children? She knows there has always been dispute among the Faithful, going back to the Conqueror’s time, but she cannot bring herself to doubt the virtuousness of their betrothal, a match that allowed her to keep her girl close—

Alicent buries her face into her pillow, breathes in the soft scent of perfumed silk. It does not soothe. She has done all she can to protect her children. Soon, she must do more.

Slowly, she sits. On bare feet she walks to the pitcher of wine and fills a goblet. She drinks it in long swallows. Refills it twice before she lays down once more. The ceiling tilts above her, the wine warms her from inside and the slow sands of dream open beneath her. She sinks.

A rapt knock on the door jolts her awake.

For a moment, she does not know where she is, thinks she must be in her childhood chambers and it is Rhaenyra slipping into her bedroom with a grin and stolen sweets.

The chamber doors open.

She sits, heart pounding.

“What is happening?” She calls, ignites a candle.

Who would the guards let inside so easily? Who would—

She knows who. But what does it mean?

Her lungs constrict and she feels the blood drain from her face.

By the Seven, is Viserys dead?

The tall silhouette of Aemond cuts from the antechamber into her bedroom. He should be asleep, instead he wears his high-collared black leathers, as though ready to depart for war at any moment, given the order.

“What is it?” she asks. She cannot keep the fear from her voice. She rises to her feet and for the first time in the month since Aemond knelt for her, she dares look at him, reaches for his arm—

“Is he dead?” Her heart stutters in her chest. She must reign herself in.

“He’s alive,” Aemond says, “for now.” His one-eyed gaze finds her in the candle-lit twilight. He towers above her, grown so tall and slender, muscles lean beneath his garments.

“Speak plainly, Aemond,” she snaps, feels tears well up in her eyes and blinks them away.

“He’s fallen down as he tried to use the washroom, the maesters say.”

“Is he badly hurt?”

Suddenly she feels like she cannot breathe.

“Gods, I have to go see him.” She makes to rush past Aemond, but he holds her back by the arm.

“The maesters are with him. He needs rest.”

“He cannot die, Aemond. He cannot—”

Aemond squeezes her arm gently. Her other hand finds his elbow, his other hand her arm, too. They stand as they have a hundred times, intertwined. She looks up at him and he gazes down, his sharp cheekbones, his aquiline nose, the scar.

The eye-patch.

“He won’t,” Aemond says and his voice is soft and quiet. “I am merely here to inform you, mother. The maesters thought it best not to spread news of his frailty.”

Alicent inhales slowly.

“They were right to.” Alicent lets go of him and turns. Already their subjects have not seen the king in months, and though his ailment is no secret with Alicent on the throne, it would be dangerous to allude to Viserys’ worsened state. Many an uprising has followed such an invitation. And with Rhaenyra so near across Blackwater Bay…

The world swirls around Alicent and for a moment she sways.

Aemond is by her side in an instant, guiding her back to the bed. She sits. The wine races through her veins and she feels faint knowing that Viserys is wounded. How much of it is the drink and how much these ill tidings? She bites her lip. It is one more thing that Alicent has to carry while Rhaenyra dallies on Dragonstone. Alicent and Aemond have to carry.

She reaches for his hands and holds them in her own. Words choke her of air.

“Forgive me,” she says at last.

He is unmoving where he stands. She hears his stuttered breath. His eye is wide and for a moment he seems her little boy again. A wave of love rushes over her so momentous it almost drowns her. She clasps his hands.

“None of this should fall on you,” she says.

He kneels, gazing up at her.

She strokes his cheek and he leans into the touch, slow and with something so frightful in his marred face. She will never forgive herself for his eye. Nor will she forgive Rhaenyra.

“Sleep, mother.”

Fatigue weighs down her bones like lead, but the thought to be alone now is unbearable. She swallows.

“Will you stay a while?” She strokes a strand of hair from his temple.

“However long you need me,” he murmurs, gazing at her, his mouth an aching line. Why does her son look like he is falling into an abyss? What darkness swallows him? Has it flown from her veins into his when she held him in her belly?

Aemond pulls over one of the armchairs, settles into it, his boot brushes the edge of the bed. She herself sits at the headboard, not quite ready to sleep, heart too quick in her chest. He is close enough for her hand to find his knee. He sits so quietly, but something changes at her touch, he leans forward, if only a little. When has her boy grown so tall? How has he left childhood behind so quickly? Her lungs constrict. He’s a man now. Trained to be a warrior, to serve the kingdom, lay down his life, he who will inherit nothing even if Rhaenyra were not between Aegon and the throne. Will Aemond be put to use? Sent into battle on Vhagar? Will she have to use him thus? And yet his might is indisputable with the dragon he paid for so dearly. Is her wish to keep him near foolish? Perhaps. But Daeron is far off in Oldtown, Helaena endures her, and Aegon…she cannot even think of how he squanders his life, and takes pleasure in bringing shame to this family despite Alicent’s efforts to correct his ways. Of her children she only has Aemond. Aemond who is dutiful if not kind, Aemond who stands by her side in a way no other ever has. Except one, when she was a lady in waiting… But even so, that is long in the past and charred by betrayal. Criston perhaps, but such devotion might easily tip into shame. No, she only has Aemond.

“It is late.”

“Yes.” Aemond’s voice is soft, quiet, as though he were afraid to leave her side.

“I’m keeping you...” Guilt makes her waver.

“Keep me.”

A cold gust of wind wakes Alicent. She cannot remember falling asleep. A horned moon curves in the night sky, fever-yellow and sharp like a sickle. Its scant light limnes Aemond’s silhouette where he sleeps in the chair, straight in posture, only his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. He will be sore tomorrow. She does not wish it. On her bedside table the candle has burned out. She moves closer to him, sits and gently grasps his shoulders. He wakes with a start, eye flying open, muscles tensing all at once. She hushes him, feels herself soften as only her children soften her.

“Come,” she whispers and pulls.

His eye widens, mouth parting. A small noise escapes him, not quite a gasp. She is tired but she smiles.

“It’s alright,” she soothes. He follows her pull. He lies down beside her and she nudges him onto his side so his back lies against her front, and she wraps her arms around him. She hesitates. Gently she presses her lips to his head, his soft hair smells of soap and of him. He is stiff in her arms as he ever was after Lucerys had taken his eye. Any tenderness might deface him, derange him. It is different for men, she thinks. She herself is already defaced.

“Mother…” he breathes.

“Sleep,” she murmurs.

Warm breath on her neck. She cards a hand through soft hair, pulls the warm body closer, warm skin beneath her hand where she slips it into a leather collar as she used to in her youth. How often had they slept in each other’s beds? Rhaenyra had stolen into her chamber countless times and they had slumbered, two bodies moulded perfectly together. She kisses a temple, presses her breasts against the warm body, feels a tingle go through her that she has not felt in years. Her mind swims in the remnants of wine. She frames a sharp-lined face with her hand and kisses it like a secret. The lips beneath hers part with a broken sound, like an animal’s last breath as it bleeds out. How strange. Something hard stirs against her thigh. She opens her eyes.

Freezes.

She moves her leg away from it.

Her breath heavies. But her body is alight.

“Mother…” Aemond’s voice is desperate, small and so open.

“Don’t speak,” she pleads. The wine still sways her gently in the dark. Sways her a moment longer in which heat fills her from the inside out.

She feels for his wrist and clasps it. What does it matter? It’s happened before. And who else might guard a secret for her? Sharp inhale.

She pushes his hand between her thighs.

A gasp against her neck. Would that it were…She bites her lip. All thoughts leave her as the hand rubs between her legs. Only the thin cloth of her nightgown separates them. Two fingers press over her, slowly rubbing, making her moan. Yes. That’s what they used to…

“Oh god,” she breathes as a thumb pushes down on that part of her that makes heat shoot all through her body, that slickens her so vulgarly. She moves against the touch. She holds the hand and guides it in the rhythm she likes until it finds it without her. Another moan flees her throat. She wraps her arms around the neck, pushes her hands into hair, so familiar, long and soft and silvered in the moonlight.

“Pull up my dress,” she whispers, barely recognising her own voice.

The hand trembles and obeys. Thin cloth slips from her skin. The hand returns, slow, slightly shaking. The feeling of blunt fingertips on her bare flesh makes her keen. She shifts, pulling one leg up, spreading the other, and the hand glides into her wetness.

A choked noise falls into the dark. Is it really Aemond’s voice? It might be another’s. Would she be thus affected? They had never touched without cloth between them. Tears bead at her lashes. Want is an ugly heart she cannot allay. Want is her greatest shame.

Fingers move through her slickness, breath so shallow at her neck it might be terror or worship. She pulls the hair. She wants to feel.

“Put them inside me,” she whispers.

A word stutters into her skin. Mother. It’s almost enough to end it. Then two fingers push inside her, reprehensibly easy. She groans, tightens around the fingers, thicker than her own. If only they were more slender and graceful, not so much like Viserys’... She banishes the thought. The fingers halt in their motion so she grabs his wrist again, pulls the fingers out and forces them back inside. Stretching around them feels so good. Sweat collects at her throat where he breathes, at her chest, and there a rousing sharpness beneath her ribs when she thinks of the imperious glance, strong lean shoulders, the muscle in her arms, how even in their youth she had easily pushed Alicent down, the scent of her not sweet but sharp like dragonpit, like smoke. Like fire. Aemond smells like that, too, but colder. She kisses his neck, imagines hers, bites his earlobe as she had never dared bite hers. She cannot think—

“Another,” she whispers, and, “Faster.”

A third finger pushes into her. She could take four. Want deafens her to the world, she aches to be so full she can only be. A low moan tumbles from her mouth into soft silver hair. Her brows crease, she bites her lip, and the fingers start moving in and out, rubbing at her insides. The stretch makes her slicker. Wet lewd squelching echoes in the dark and shame is hot on her skin and hotter yet the friction. Her hips begin to meet the thrusts so the fingers push deep inside. A thumb presses over that upper part of her, shooting sparks through her body. She moans too loudly, she pulls his hair, and with her other hand takes his free hand and places it on her breast. She can feel him swallow against her. Carefully, he squeezes, palm against her nipple. She bucks against him. His face presses at her neck, cheeks wet, his mouth open. They are only bodies. She arches her back, and before she can stop herself, she unlaces the front of her gown. The cool night air does not reach between their skin. Slowly she nudges his head down. A wrecked noise muffles against her. Lips drag over her skin, hot, eager, his mouth closes around her nipple. A heartbeat later a wet tongue presses there. And then he sucks. Pleasure sparks through her, from her chest to her stomach, between her legs. She moans, clenching hard around the fingers, grinding on them. Heat builds inside her, all about her, god she wants her, she hates her. The thumb presses down, desperate, and he sucks her nipple again and again and she gasps, tensing, roughly pulls the fingers deeper, faster. Would that she could hear her low aristocratic voice, smell her fire-scent skin, feel her inside— Does she moan her name? She cannot say. Bliss rips through her white hot and blinding. She sees her face and smile and how she had gleamed in the dark above her so many a night, how life had been open and sweet and precious once.

The fingers keep moving inside her. It’s too much.

She twists away. They slip out of her. She is empty, slick to the thighs from her son’s fingers. His breath is like poison when he leaves off her breast, warm and wrong to have him in such a way.

“Aemond,” she says, grabbing his shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut.

He does not answer, but she can feel him tremble. The air is thick with the scent of her arousal, and within it twines his own. By the Seven, she can smell him. The salt and musk and sweet sweat. To know he must be—

Suddenly the night seems colder. She draws the covers up and laces her nightgown with shaking fingers. The cloth sticks to her spit-wet skin. The urge to bathe makes her feel sick. She cannot stay like this.

“Please go,” she says without thinking. The rush of blood in her ears is too loud to catch his mumble. “I should have never,” she gasps as the deed becomes more real in her flesh’s cooling. Face in her hands, she cannot believe what she’s done. What he has. How has she failed him so miserably that such desire could have seeded within him? Is it the Targaryen blood? Has its malformation made him into this? Or did she?

She recoils from his hand on her arm.

“Mother,” Aemond says, like a prayer broken in half.

“Forgive me.”

The mattress dips. Weights shift. Aemond stands, his back to her, ramrod-straight, hands clasped by his side.

“Do not worry, mother,” he says, cold and quiet, her own cadence echoing in his. “I will not trouble you again.”

Something heavy pulls on her ribs. A space that should be empty. His black silhouette fills it now. The urge to get up and hold him shudders through her, as she should hold him, like a mother. To tell him all will be alright. To know him as her son again.

“Good night,” she says.

He does not turn. He walks.

Somewhere a bell tolls. The hour of the wolf ends, the hour of the nightingale begins.

The horizon silvers and blues. A bird calls in the distance. The world will waken soon and night will no longer shroud them. Alicent moves before she can think. She’s at his side in a second, hand at his elbow, and he draws towards her, hair falling into his face. For a heartbeat she feels the distance between them, his height keeps him from her, his strength too. Perhaps she can no longer protect him. But she must try. It’s her duty.

“My love,” she says and he bends his head. “It can not happen again.”

Hair obscures his eye.

“I know there is custom…and history. Look at me.”

He does. She cradles his cheek, thumb at his jaw, stroking over the light stubble that’s grown overnight though it feels wrong to touch him With a shock of coldness she realises it repels her. He leans into her as he always has. Words fail her, and even though it feels like she should scrub both of their skins clean, she stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. A vulnerable sound escapes him as though her kiss is a knife in his side.

“Do you understand?”

He hums.

“Aemond, do you understand?”

He looks at her, a sheen over his eye and a tremble to his lip.

“Yes, mother.”

She strokes a strand of hair from his forehead. She wants to tell him he’s a good boy and a good son and that she is proud of him and that she loves him. That she can never use him like this again. And her face flares in the brightening twilight and bile rises in Alicent’s throat. Her nails press into the skin above her cuticles. Sharp pain. Blood. Just a drop.

How can they come back from this?

“It’ll be dawn soon,” she says.

He bows his head. She grabs his hand and for a moment she holds it. Then he slaps it away.

“Good night, mother,” he says. And leaves.

#alimond #rhaenicent #aemond x alicent #alicent x rhaenyra #alicent x aemond #rhaenyra x alicent #house of the dragon #hotd fanfic #hotd fic #hotd art

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