#which will probably be like 5k words shorter than this behemoth

[winterstellars]

sins of the son | aemond targaryen

15,179w | aemond x fem!reader (can also be read as nameless oc) | 12.7.22 | part 2 here

Aemond does not know how long she has been in King’s Landing. She could have been living in the capitol for years without him knowing. One day she practically does not exist, and the next, she does. Almost as if she has materialized out of nothingness.

He notices her at prayers first. She sits next to one of his mother’s ladies-in-waiting. While the other girl sits with closed eyes and a bowed head, her eyes are wide open. She stares at the candles that surround the altar, so still that he swears she could be made of marble until her eyelids waver just slightly. He has not prayed since the Gods rejected his pleas for them to restore his eye, so he watches her. Out of boredom. Out of intrigue. They seem to be the only ones present in the sept; everyone else is wrapped up in the Gods. When she catches him staring, she stares right back.

Aegon knows nothing about her—his attentions lie elsewhere, they have never taken an interest in the same woman—but Helaena does.

“Her family sent her here to be legitimized,” she tells him. “She helps me with the babies. Jaehaera loves her.”

He fills in the pieces that his sister is too sweet to say: that a highborn parent with a guilty conscience likely sent her to the capitol to be kept out of sight. It would explain her lack of standing, her relegation to the ends of lines and edges of gatherings. Common, but not really. Noble, but not quite.

When the ladies of the court convene in the gardens for an embroidery session, he catches a glimpse of her. He does not mean to linger, having intended to go down to the rocky shore at the foot of the Red Keep where Vhagar often rests, but he studies her from a distance. The flowers and greenery bob in the wind, obscuring her profile. He can just make out a fern taking shape on her fabric.

Her hand jolts and his heart squeezes in his chest. It feels as though his spying is the cause, even if it is only a needle prick. She brings her finger to her mouth and sucks the blood away. He has to force himself to continue walking.

Flying tends to clear his head. Today is an exception. As Vhagar swoops above King’s Landing, he finds himself thinking about his blood. He has tasted it many times during sparring accidents. He remembers the warmth of it when his nephew slashed his eye out. There was so much of it that it ran down his face and gathered on his lips. He wonders what her blood would taste like. If it would be different from his.

It is evening, weeks later, when they cross paths in one of the lower corridors in the Red Keep. She stands aside for him but does not hide her face as others do. He knows he ought to keep walking. This. . . curiosity is not wise. He stops anyway. One conversation will not harm him.

“My lady.”

“Prince Aemond.” She holds a small bunch of flowers, little pink blooms with petals that seem to open in perfect geometric patterns.

“A gift from a suitor?” He gestures to the little bouquet.

“Oh, yes. I’m positively besieged by them.”

A grin plays at the corners of her mouth. People do not speak to him this way. Servants try to address him in as few words as possible and his family has their set habits: his mother’s clipped sentences that seem to end just short of what she wants to say, Helaena and her little riddles, his grandfather and his careful candor. Wry humor is not their way, and he can remember all too well the years when he functioned as the target of his brother’s and nephews’ jokes. Criston Cole may be a decent sparring partner in the training yard, but he is not much for sparring with words.

“What is it that the Gods advise?” He may not be as religious as his mother, but he has always had a gift for memorizing bits of text. “Let no maiden be tempted by wanton attentions, lest her thoughts become sinful and her flesh tainted.”

“Well, who am I to argue with the Gods? Consider me warned.” She offers a brief, practiced curtsy. “Good evening to you, my prince.”

She has not taken two steps when he calls after her. “I will escort you.”

“That is kind of you, but there is no need.” She points to a door at the end of the hallway, presumably her chambers. “Though I hear the city is lawless, I truly doubt I will be attacked between here and there.”

“As you wish.” He turns as she does, though he pauses and looks over his shoulder until she reaches her destination.

Disappointment settles in his stomach, which he immediately reprimands himself for. At most, he could have insisted on accompanying her and bought himself a few extra moments in her presence. Enough to ask about the flowers or her embroidery. It is trivial, he tells himself. Naturalized though she may be, she is a bastard girl and he is a prince and a dragonrider. The more she sees of him, the sooner he will frighten her away.

When he is trying to fall asleep, he sees her eyes piercing into him from across the sept. His entire body crawls at the sensation of it. She is undoing him, opening him, turning him inside out. He sleeps without dreams and wakes up wanting more.

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