Can I Be Yours? - Nightblooms II
Aemond returns to the pleasure house after the battle of Rook's Rest // Main Masterlist
Aemond x unnamed female character
Warnings: 18+, smut, dub-con, angst, sex work, unresolved childhood trauma, implied underage and non-con (not explicitly depicted), mentions of war, violence and death, ambiguous ending
Words: 3k
Each day she arrives at the market shortly after sunrise. She has the coin to pay for the usual cheap cuts of meat, for fats and vegetables to make into something edible, but there is nothing to buy; most of the vendors have sold the last of their wares. Summer is at an end, there are less crops coming from the Reach and the sea is still cut off with no end in sight to the blockade.
King’s Landing has never been a place where she feels at ease but as the season shifts and the war goes on, families are starving and people are getting desperate, fighting over what they can get their hands on. They’ve all been reduced to dogs, clawing at each other over scraps while carts of livestock and fresh produce trundle through the streets towards the Red Keep, guarded by men in Hightower green.
She manages to buy some crabs and vegetables she’ll have to cut the mould from. They have a store of grain in the kitchens to make flatbread, though they have to use less and less each day, anticipating when they’ll be able to find more.
She eats less of her share so the younger girls won’t have to go hungry. Besides, she hasn’t had much of an appetite for days.
She had spent hours trying to rinse herself clean of the King and his companions after they’d had their way with her– after Aemond had left her to their mercy. That night she scrubbed at her skin with salt, then a cloth, then a bristled brush. That feeling was still there, like sweat sticking to her skin, like her body was not her own. She heard their voices and their cold laughter with the rush of water past her ears. She scrubbed harder and harder until she tinted the water pink with her blood.
One morning, one of the girls returns to the pleasure house, unsuccessful in finding a cure for her babe’s fever, but startled by something else.
The Hightower army has returned from a battle, dragging the head of a dragon on a cart through the city.
“It’s monstrous,” the girl says, trying to measure the scale of the head with her arms. “It had black blood, and gods, the smell, like charred meat!”
Sylvi hovers over her shoulder. “Slain by your favourite, I wonder?”
Favourite? Clearly she was not so favoured by Prince Aemond.
Men are led by their desires. That’s why, even as the city is starving, they find the money to come here and seek their pleasure. They are fickle, easily satiated and have no loyalties but to themselves, to their own preservation.
Sylvi huffs when she does not react to her teasing. “Seven above, do try to look less miserable, girl.”
She’s been trying for days, but she can’t force a pleasant demeanour when she feels so hollow.
The returning soldiers come to the Street of Silk that night, newly paid and come to bask in their victory. Her gown is a deep shade of blue and Sylvi has given her some of her jewellery, sapphire earrings and a heavy gold necklace that feels like a collar, to cover the bruises on her neck left by the King.
She catches the eye of a soldier in the main chamber. He takes her by the waist and drags her onto his thigh.
He moves clumsily, trying to drag her core against his leg or the bulge in his breeches, she cannot tell and she does not care.
Look less miserable, it’s only a motion of the body.
Look less miserable, men want a woman who is warm, who smiles.
Look less miserable, but has he noticed her fallen face and the empty look in her eyes? Likely not.
Her body feels numb again.
“Look at me,” the man demands.
She turns her head towards him but her eyes are down, elsewhere completely. She pictures candlelight, a veil around the edges of a bed so the bodies around her are like shadows. She feels a weight on her chest and stomach, limbs intertwined with hers, long, loose hair spilling over her bare skin. A voice is just out of reach.
Look at me, look at me, look at me–
“My Prince!”
Her senses come back to her as quickly as a match takes to flame. Her head darts to where the soldier is looking, to the man standing before them, dark leathers, silver hair, an eyepatch over his face and a sword hanging from his hip.
Aemond tilts his head, his one eye intent on her.
“Apologies, Prince Regent,” the soldier says, and shoves her off his lap so he can stand.
She stumbles but holds her ground. Her eyes are on the floor but imagining his face frowning in displeasure, the sight of his scar, the lines of his muscles under his skin. She cannot bear to truly look upon him, but he’s watching her.
Why come now? Why her, when she has already proved worthless to him?
“Come,” Aemond says without reaching for her, without waiting for her to match his gaze. She follows, if only to escape the wanton soldier.
Aemond takes her to the same chamber, standing at the foot of the same bed where they used to lay together.
She stands before him with her eyes lowered.
He towers over her and lifts her chin to match his gaze with a gloved hand. The leather against her skin is unnatural, cold, disturbing her very being like ripples through a peaceful surface of water. The sight of him only brings her pain, as does the separation from him. Fear and admiration twist together and writhe in her gut.
He reaches to remove the necklace first, letting it fall to the floor. “An ugly thing,” he mutters, “do not wear this again, I find it distracting.” It bares her bruises. He traces his gloved fingers over the flushes of red and purple in her skin.
Next he undoes her dress, another gown designed to fall away from one clasp. She does not remove the rest to bare herself, so he tugs the gown away himself, pulling her forward by her wrists to make her step away from where it pools on the floor.
Without any further preamble he surges into her, cupping her jaw with his hands and kissing her passionately. He demands reception with his lips, tongue and teeth, but she will not give it to him. She remains as steadfast as she can.
He pauses, kissing her again, then again.
“What’s the matter?” His voice is subtle and as soft as the edge of a knife. Gently, he takes a hold of her neck. It is tender, but not quite a comfort. Her pulse beats furiously against his fingers. “You are angry with me, is that it?”
Has he thought of her these last few days? Does he blame himself for the bruises on her neck?
She says nothing.
“I’ll not fuck an unwilling whore.”
“No,” it falls from her lips like a breath.
Aemond tuts and tilts his head. “No?”
She parts her lips but she cannot speak.
His one-eyed stare darkens. He will take her silence for defiance, and that is not what he pays for.
If all he seeks is carnal desire she will grant him this. She tears away the layers of him, his gloves, the buckles on his jerkin, her fingers fumbling in her determination.
Aemond grunts as she pushes the sleeves from his shoulders, the leather landing with a heavy thud on the floor. His face is perplexed but he does not resist.
She tugs at the strings of his undershirt and pulls it over his head. When his chest is bare she puts her hands on his shoulders and pulls herself in, crashing her lips into his. Everything becomes a single feeling, a fire in her chest, hurt and rage and— she’s not naive enough to call it love, but it’s an urge that spurns her to be close to him. Their teeth clash. She loses her focus and her lips graze over his cheek. She finds him again, drawing her tongue against his, dragging her teeth over his lip–
“Fuck!” Aemond hisses, snatching himself away from her. He dabs his fingertips to his lip, checking for blood that isn’t there.
His eye is wide but gleaming, excited at the challenge.
Her heart leaps when Aemond grasps her jaw. He drags her chin up, fingertips pressing into the bone. “I find your insolence tiresome,” he snarls.
The edge of his nose brushes against hers. She feels his breath, how his chest rises and falls against her body, how his heart beats as frantically as hers.
She shakes her head. “I am yours, my Prince.”
He lays her on the bed, pushing her thighs apart and holding them down as he kneels.
He sighs at the sight of her.
Each drag of his tongue is divine, circling and pressing at the places he has come to know will please her the most. She tries to chase the friction with her hips but he holds her firmly in place.
She reaches for his hair, slipping the eyepatch from his face so she can see all of him. He looks up at her as she does, his lips glistening with her arousal while his sapphire consumes the golden light of the candles.
Between the movements of his mouth he mutters to himself, words she has heard before but does not know the meaning to. His voice is heavy and breathless and she adores it.
Her peak comes suddenly, a wave of warmth and weightlessness that lingers after Aemond has drawn his mouth away from her.
He’s just out of her reach, standing over the bed and slowly pulling on the strings of his breeches.
She brings herself to sit, only to be thrown down again and roughly turned onto her front.
“Aemond?”
His hands pull her up by her hips. His thumb glides in circles over her entrance and she stutters into compliance. There’s a ruffle of fabric before he replaces his digit with the head of his cock. He teases her as he rocks back and forth. The pleasure is sparse, a delicious kind of torture. She grips at the linens and sinks her teeth into her lip.
On one motion of his hips, Aemond slips inside of her. She sighs at the stretch of it. He stills for a moment to let her adjust, pushing himself to the hilt and slowly drawing back. She feels how his fingertips dig into her flesh, marks that will stay for days. She can picture the look in his eye, his resolve melting away.
She props herself up on her hands, turning over her shoulder. He meets her, pressing his nose against her cheek, teasing his lips over her skin.
“Do you still find me insolent?” she whispers.
Aemond hums.
He draws back, only to snap his hips harshly into her rear. It knocks the breath from her lungs and he holds his arm around her to hold her close to him, his palm pressing into her stomach as he fucks her roughly and without reprieve.
This is the Prince she has only ever seen glimpses of. She’s heard the workings of his mind and his regrets, but she’s never seen him unleash himself, a dragonrider, a warrior, now a demanding lover.
Each kiss of his cock at her sweet spot aches and drives her towards bliss. She grasps at his hand, leaning her head into his. His sweat drips onto her brow. His moans fall upon the shell of her ear.
She feels another peak edging closer when Aemond pushes her torso down against the bed. He keeps his hands on her shoulders. Her own moans are muffled against the mattress and she cannot move. She can only take what she is given, fast fucking and brutal precision.
He comes with a unrestrained groan, spilling himself deep within her cunt. His weight falls against her back and he nestles his face into her neck, whispering some appraisal in an ancient language, gently fucking his seed deeper.
She whines as she catches her breath, letting herself settle with him on top of her. They stay like this for a time. Before he finally moves, Aemond presses a delicate kiss to her brow.
They lay amongst linen and silk, his head on her chest, his arms wrapped around her ribs, moving with her as she breathes.
He tells her of Rook’s Rest, of his plan to attack during the daylight and bait their enemy into sending a dragon, then he would lead Vhagar into an ambush. He had not expected Aegon to join the battle, and when the smoke cleared, only Aemond and Vhagar remained unscathed.
“Perhaps I should have been more forgiving, but he got in my way.”
What did you do? She wonders, but cannot bring herself to give a voice to her question.
That soldier had named Aemond as Regent. Not the title he wants, but it is a brutal reminder that only one life stands between him and the throne he pursues.
“And even when he is… incapacitated, my victory is named as his. It was meant to be mine.”
The dragon head was his doing after all.
Tears run freely down her cheeks, not that he will see.
He takes a breath and waits. She’s done this enough times by now to know he’s waiting for her to say something. He needs her to say something.
What loyalty has your brother ever shown you? He knows you were better suited to war, at least now he will not overestimate himself.
She does not wish to think of Aegon.
“You left me,” she utters.
Aemond tilts his head towards her. She meets his eye. When he sees the tears on her face his own expression softens.
“You left me to entertain those men. You didn’t even look back.”
Aemond swallows thickly, making a soft clicking sound with his tongue. “I had to.”
“Had to?”
“You would not understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You are a Prince. To you, I am nothing but a body to be used.”
“I’ve never said that.”
“You do not need to say it. It is the nature of the world we live in.”
He shifts himself to lay beside her, face-to-face. His thumb strokes over her cheek and at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve only ever admired you,” he says. “You came to me when I felt alone.”
Back when they were children, when she was innocent enough to think the gods favoured those who were kind, merciful, good.
“You looked lost. I was the same the first time…” the first time Sylvi brought her into a room with a strange man. When she sees girls of the same age, she wants to take them into her arms and shield them from strangers, from the people who promise to care for them and do not. “I knew how it felt to be used and then discarded, like none of it mattered. But it did. It mattered to me.”
Aemond’s eye shimmers like glass.
“I needed you, do you understand that? I needed your protection,” she says.
He blinks and a tear falls from his eye.
“You taunt me with this,” she says, wiping it away with her thumb.
He holds her hand against his jaw. “I’m not trying to taunt you,” he pleads. “You are the only one, the only one I can speak my mind to.”
She has seen his pride, his remorse, his shame, but she has never seen fear in Aemond. She does now. He clasps onto her hand like she’ll fade away.
“I try. I know my place in my family. I know what they need of me. I try, but I am not always strong enough.”
Jaehaerys, the little Prince who lost his head. He has a sister and a mother grieving his loss, what of them?
What of Aegon?
“I’ll protect you,” he says, kissing the heel of her palm, the inside of her wrist.
How will he do that? Before morning he will leave a purse of gold in her hand and return to his Keep. While he plots his war and demands taxes and tithes from the people of the Crownlands, she will endure in a city that is slowly starving to death.
And when the war of dragons comes to the skies over King’s Landing? Will he pick her out from the masses atop Vhagar? Will he find a way to spare her from the fire and the bloodshed?
It does not bear thinking about. She holds him and tries to forget anything other than this feeling, his weight and warmth, his hair between her fingertips, the points in his bones, his legs intertwined with hers. Everything about him that is cold and cruel. Everything about him that is quietly beautiful.
I've kinda given up on taglists <3
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