swear on dolly

Aegon decides, somewhere between the sermon and the sea wind, that funerals are for everyone except the dead. 

Laena cannot hear the droning prayers, or feel the salt spray dampening the dark cloth of everyone’s sleeves, or see the way her daughters stand hollow-eyed beside Daemon. She can’t know that half the court has come all the way to Driftmark only to stare at one another from beneath lowered lashes. 

But Aegon can. 

He can hear all of it, see all of it, feel all of it pressing in on him with the weight of his mother’s hand at the back of his neck, even though she hasn’t so much as brushed past him in well over an hour. 

Seven Hells, he can hear her voice echoing in the back of his head. 

“Stand straight, don’t slouch.”

“Do not fidget, it’s impolite.”

“Do not drink so much, you should set a better example for your cousins.”

“Do not laugh, we’re at a funeral.”

“Do not shame me.”

She hadn’t said any of it aloud but she doesn’t need to. He’s heard it all enough times to know the words by the set of her mouth or the glare in her gaze. 

So he stands where he has been told to stand, a little apart from the worst of the mourning but not far enough away to be accused of wandering. The sea crashes darkly against the rocks below, throwing up bursts of white foam that disappear almost as soon as they come. The sky above Driftmark is heavy and grey, seeming to drain the color from everything. 

Since when had the world decided that grief had to be so damned quiet? 

Aegon hates it—everything about it. 

He hates the way the collar of his overcoat scratches at his neck. Hates the cold bite of the wind against his cheeks. Hates the way every adult keeps arranging their face into some solemn, pinched expression, as though sorrow is another bit of court dress to be worn properly. 

He hates most of all that he is expected to understand it. Not death, he understands that well enough. Things die. People die all the time—mothers, wives, children, babes. 

Even dragons die. 

But this—all of this standing and staring and murmuring, all this careful sadness made public, made nice and polished for other people to witness—he does not understand. He doesn’t know what anyone wants from him, of all people, except stillness and stillness has never been something he knows how to keep for very long. 

Aemond stands beside him, still as a damn statue. Of course. 

His hands are folded behind his back, chin lifted, his mouth pressed into a thin, polite line. He looks like a boy trying very hard to appear older than he is and, what’s worse, is that he’s somehow succeeding. 

Irritating little git. 

Aegon rocks back on his heels, then forward again, blowing a deep lungful of air out from between his lips. “Fucking hell,” he curses when the wind blows his hair into his face again. 

“Stop cursing.”

“We’re not even in earshot of anyone that matters.”

“It’s impolite, it’s a funeral.” Gods, it’s as if his mouth opens yet their mother’s voice comes out. 

Aegon gives him a sidelong glance, swallowing down another mouthful of wine from the goblet clutched in his hand. “Have you been counting the words like some septa?”

“I don’t need to count to know you have the manners of a dog.”

He huffs under his breath, too quiet for anyone to overhear: “A formidable dog, at least?”

Aemond doesn’t so much as smile at that and somehow, that makes it even funnier. Aegon quickly lowers his gaze before the laugh bubbling in his chest can become something louder and earn him one more of Alicent’s cold looks. He drags the toe of his boot once through the pale grit beneath them instead, making a short, ugly line in the ground. 

Aemond watches him do it. “You’ll get dust on your boots.”

“A great tragedy.”

“Mother will scold you.”

“You say that as if she wouldn’t find a reason to anyway.”

“Well, you’re always doing something worth scolding.”

Aegon turns his head just enough to look at him fully, the bitter taste of wine on his tongue. “You’re in a foul mood.”

“We’re at a funeral.”

“Yes, and somehow you still manage to bring the mood down.”

Aemond’s mouth tightens, but his gaze moves away first, back toward the gathered mourners and the line of noble families arranged in neat clusters near the cliffside.

Aegon looks too, because there’s nothing better to do, because someone long ago decided that funerals must be unfathomably dull. Velaryons in sea-dark colors. His own family in some unsettling mix of reds and blacks and greens, as if no one can quite make up their mind. 

Everyone is where they’re meant to be, he supposes, wearing exactly the faces they’re meant to wear. 

His grandsire speaks quietly with Lord Corlys. His mother stands beside his decrepit father, her hands folded and her jaw tight. Helaena lingers near them, fussing over something small moving between the stones at her feet, doubtlessly some many-legged thing that makes his skin crawl. Their cousins are near Rhaenyra, looking decidedly strong. 

The corner of his mouth twitches at that thought and he has to try very hard not to laugh, as if it’s his fault he’s the only one with humor in this wretched family. 

Then, his eyes land on you. 

You’re not beside him now, though you had been earlier, close enough to mutter that everyone looked like they had swallowed spoiled milk. The comment had nearly made wine come up his nose as he tried not to choke on his own laugh. 

Of course, you’re too far away now to save him from boredom or from Aemond’s scolding. 

You’re standing with your family near the edge of the gathering, the little cluster of Wyldes looking slightly out of place among so much silver hair and sea-born pride. Your cloak is black, what one would expect from a funeral, though yours keeps slipping down one shoulder no matter how often your mother reaches to correct it. Your hair has been pinned back too tightly, he can tell because you keep flexing your hands as you try to resist touching it. 

Your mother leans down and whispers something in your ear, probably to straighten your shoulders or to stop frowning, perhaps something about how that’s unbecoming for a lady. 

Aegon watches your mouth press into a dutiful line for all of three seconds before you glance up, catch his eye across the distance, and roll yours. 

He bites the inside of his cheek. Aemond notices, of course he does. 

His eyes flick from Aegon to you and then back again, sharp in that annoying way of his, as if he’s constantly collecting little things about people and storing them away for later. 

Aegon takes another drink before Aemond can say something unbearable. Unfortunately, that only seems to encourage him. 

“I overheard Lord Wylde speaking with grandsire earlier.”

Aegon hums absently into the rim of his cup. “Condolences.”

Aemond ignores him. “They mean to begin seeking possible matches for her soon.”

That catches Aegon’s attention, if only because it is infinitely more interesting than listening to old men mumble about the Stranger and the sea. 

His gaze drifts back toward you automatically. You’re not listening to your mother at all. Instead, you’ve bent slightly at the waist to whisper something to one of Laena’s daughters—Baela, he thinks—who promptly snorts hard enough that she has to disguise it as a cough when Rhaenyra glances over. 

Aegon grins despite himself. 

“Wonder who the poor bastard’ll be,” he says. 

Aemond turns to look at him, pale brows furrowing slightly. “You’re close with her.”

“Mm,” he swallows another mouthful of wine, “she follows me about. That’s not the same thing.” 

It’s a lie, or at least not quite the truth. You don’t follow him about, you have a knack for simply… finding him—you always have. 

You find him when he slips away from lessons halfway through the afternoon, sprawled lazily beneath some tree with a stolen bottle in hand. You find him when he’s hiding from Alicent after spending the night in some dank corner of the city. You find him during feasts when the endless droning on becomes too much and he disappears onto balconies no one else bothers with. 

You find him when he’s angry.

Worse still, you know what to do once you have. 

Sometimes you make him laugh, other times you sit beside him in silence until whatever foul mood he’s in finally passes. Once, after Alicent had slapped him hard enough to split the inside of his lip for making some smartassed remark about his father, you’d snuck to his door with a wedge of lemon cake wrapped in cloth and announced, quite seriously, that he looked so miserable he may die from it. 

Aegon had laughed then, despite the way it made the cut on his lip sting. 

Aemond, ever determined to ruin perfectly good moments, says, “You write to her when she returns to the Stormlands.” 

He scoffs. “Because she writes first.”

Another half-lie. 

The truth is that your letters arrive first because you’re far more patient than he is. Aegon rarely lasts more than a fortnight before boredom overtakes him and he sends one anyway, usually written carelessly and blotched with wine stains because he can never be bothered to wait until he’s sober. 

Sometimes they contain nothing of importance at all. 

Helaena has acquired another horrid insect, she tried to get me to hold it. 

Mother has threatened to skin me alive this morning and we’ve only just broken fast. 

The cook made those little honeycakes you like again.

Once, he’d received a reply informing him that he was perhaps the most dramatic person in all of the kingdoms. He still has that letter somewhere. 

Aemond watches him, his expression narrowing just slightly. “You could marry her.”

Aegon lets out a startled bark of laughter loud enough that a few nearby heads turn before he quickly lowers it into a cough. “Her?” he repeats incredulously. “Gods, no.”

Aemond’s face remains a mask of perfect seriousness, causing Aegon to roll his eyes as if the reason why he objects so is terribly obvious. 

“I’ve known her since we were small,” he explains, pausing to down another sip of wine. “It would be like marrying you.”

“That sounds dreadful for the both of us.”

“There, you see? You understand.”

Aemond doesn’t rise to it. “She doesn’t look at anyone else the way she looks at you. I’d have thought you’d noticed.”

Aegon snorts, brows furrowing before he schools his face back to placid boredom. “You sound like some old woman gossiping over a needlepoint.”

“And you sound oblivious.”

“Well, one of us must remain charming.”

That finally earns him the faintest twitch at the corner of Aemond’s mouth, gone almost as soon as it appears. His brother remains quiet for a moment, staring off in your direction while Aegon nurses the drink in his hand, halfway wondering where that servant with the tray of goblets has gone off to. 

Then Aemond says, quieter this time, “You will likely be made to wed Helaena anyway, I suppose.”

Ah, there it is. The shadow hanging over every facet of his being like a stormcloud. 

Aegon groans dramatically and tips his head back at the grey sky overhead. “Then the matter is settled,” he breathes, heaving out a sigh. “Helaena is strange, Wylde is impossible, and I am doomed either way.”

“She’s not impossible.”

“She absolutely is,” Aegon gestures vaguely toward you with his cup. “Last moon she threatened to stab a guard in the hand with a dinner knife because he called her sweet.” 

Aemond considers this. “Did he deserve it?”

“Yes,” Aegon says immediately. “But that is hardly the point.”

The years march on regardless of what he wants. 

That is perhaps the cruelest thing about time, Aegon thinks later—that it moves on whether you’re happy or sad or adored or ignored and it doesn’t care either way. 

Driftmark fades into memory. Aemond loses an eye. Rhaenyra leaves King’s Landing. Alicent grows sharper where Viserys grows softer, the rot in his body worsening with every turn of the moon. Helaena grows somehow stranger, murmuring things beneath her breath that make the maids glance at one another uneasily. 

And Aegon grows older. 

Unfortunately. 

And drinks. 

Fortunately. For him, at any rate. 

There are new expectations that come with age. More lectures from Otto, more cold looks from Alicent, more muttered conversations that stop the moment he enters a room. He stays in his cups more, sleeps less, and learns very quickly that people forgive a prince for nearly anything so long as he smiles when doing it. 

None of it makes him particularly happy. 

Tonight least of all. 

The Great Hall of the Red Keep glows gold with candlelight and roaring hearths, music swelling through the air loud enough to rattle against Aegon’s skull. Lords and ladies crowd feast tables in jewel tones and velvets, wine spilling freely while servants weave carefully between bodies carrying platters with roasted meats and sugared fruits. 

Somewhere near the center of it all sits Aegon himself, polished and dressed and displayed like a prized fucking pony. 

His betrothal feast. 

Gods. 

He takes another drink. 

Beside him, Helaena carefully nudges a little beetle across the table with one slender finger, entirely uninterested in the musicians or the noble guests watching them with poorly concealed fascination. 

“It doesn’t like the heat,” she murmurs softly, mostly to herself. “Its legs curl when it’s frightened.”

Aegon glances down at the tiny thing crawling near her untouched supper and hums distractedly. “Mm.”

She peers at it with genuine concern. “I think it misses the garden.”

“You should let it inherit my place at the table. It would likely enjoy itself more.”

That earns him the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. Despite her weirdness, Aegon thinks she’s always had a better sense of humor than Aemond. Not that that’s a difficult competition to win. 

Across from them, Otto looks deeply pleased with himself. He hates that more than the feast. 

His grandsire sits straight-backed and composed as ever, hands folded neatly before him while lord after lord offers congratulations as if this entire miserable affair had been his cleverest political victory yet. 

Like it hadn’t been expected for damn years by now. 

Alicent watches him from further down the table with the same expression she’s worn all evening: wary, tense, waiting for humiliation the way other mothers would perhaps wait for music to begin. 

Every time he lifts his cup, her eyes sharpen. 

Each time he laughs too loudly, her jaw tightens. 

Aegon considers getting properly drunk simply out of spite. 

Viserys, meanwhile, looks almost sentimental about the whole thing. Sickly and half-decayed though he is, there’s something horribly hopeful in his face tonight, like he truly believes this feast means something good, something whole. 

A family united, a son settled, a future secured. 

Aegon nearly laughs into his wine. As if binding two miserable people together before half the realm could somehow make either of them less miserable. 

He glances sidelong at Helaena again. She’s still watching the beetle. Not unhappy, exactly. Not frightened. Just… elsewhere, as she so often is. 

For some reason, that thought makes his chest tighten. 

Neither of them got much of a say in this, did they? 

The musicians swell into another song and somewhere nearby, a lord already deep in his cups bellows loud enough to startle half the servants carrying trays through the hall. Aegon automatically reaches for another goblet of wine before realizing his is still-half full. 

He drinks it down before grabbing a new one anyway. 

Pathetic. 

And then—

A flash of dark teal silk near the entrance catches his attention. At first, he doesn’t think much of it—just another noble family arriving late, and no doubt bringing with them another round of tedious congratulations and bows. 

Then the figure turns slightly beneath the candlelight and he stills. 

It’s you. 

For a moment, he can only stare.

He knows the shape of your laugh before it leaves your mouth, knows exactly how your brows pull together when annoyed, knows the particular look you get in your eyes whenever you’re about to say something that’ll either make him laugh or get the both of you scolded. He knows you, which is perhaps why the sight of you now unsettles him so badly. 

You pause near the entrance while one of the guards announces House Wylde far louder than necessary, your father already stepping forward to greet some old lord from the Reach while your mother smooths an unnecessary hand over the skirts of her gown. 

But he barely notices any of them. 

Instead, his attention catches on strange little things all at once. The familiar curve of your mouth, the same eyes that used to roll whenever he complained about something stupid, the stubborn tilt of your chin that always appeared whenever someone attempted to tell you what to do. 

Then, he notices… other things, too. Unfamiliar things. 

Your hair has been pinned carefully away from your face, woven with delicate gold that catches in the candlelight whenever you move. Your gown fits differently than the dresses you wore as a girl, dark teal silk clinging softly at the waist before spilling toward the floor in heavy folds. A necklace rests against the bare skin of your throat and Aegon finds his eyes lingering there for a beat too long before jerking away. 

Seven Hells, since when had you started looking like that?

No—that isn’t right. You’d always looked like that, perhaps. 

And perhaps, he’d simply been too much of an idiot to notice. 

Aegon takes a long swallow of wine that does absolutely nothing to help. 

You move further into the hall alongside your parents, smiling politely whenever someone stops to speak with you. Not your real smile, he notices immediately. No, simply those careful little court smiles that everyone must learn eventually. 

Pleasant. Measured. Appropriate. 

Some lordling—Celtigar maybe, or one of the Lannisters, he truly doesn’t care enough to determine which—leans too close while speaking to you. 

Much too close. 

His fingers tighten hard around the stem of his goblet before he even realizes they’ve moved and then, the lord says something that makes you laugh politely and his lips pull into a tight frown as anger floods through him so quickly, he can feel his cheeks flush with it. 

Ridiculous. 

It’s only because he knows the sort of men that flock around ladies during feasts like this—smug little pricks drunk on their own importance and whatever inheritance awaits them. He’s seen enough of them to know that they’re all uniquely tiresome. 

Besides, you’re his friend. 

That’s all. 

Which is precisely why he’s always hated foolish men around you, of course. 

The lord moves closer, leaning in to whisper something directly in your ear and before he even realizes he’s raising his cup, he’s downed half of it in one go. 

Then, as if somehow sensing him, your eyes find him across the hall and you smile. Not that strained, practiced one, not the carefully demure one you use at court meant for lords and ladies and strangers.

No, this one is easy and immediate—wholly yours. It’s the exact same smile you’d give him when you were children sneaking out of lessons together or passing gossipy notes beneath the table during feasts or mocking half of the court from secluded balconies high above the city. 

Somehow, that makes it worse. Something unpleasant twists low in Aegon’s stomach. 

Before he has time to make any sense of it, you’re already excusing yourself from the conversation and weaving through the crowded hall toward him. The musicians swell louder around you, candlelight flickering gold across your face as guests part instinctively to let you pass. 

He straightens unconsciously. 

“Prince Aegon,” you greet as you finally stop beside him, your lips curving with unmistakable amusement. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

He snorts into his cup before he can help it. “Are they?”

“That is usually what one says at a betrothal feast, yes.”

“Mm, then you may direct them toward my grandsire,” he mumbles, gesturing vaguely further down the table where Otto is still carrying on some conversation that is doubtlessly boring enough to make a Septon beg for mercy. “He seems the happiest of anyone present.”

Your laugh comes soft beneath the music and Gods, he knows that sound—has known it for years. 

You glance briefly toward Helaena, who had apparently gotten up without his noticing and had gone to sit by Alicent. “She looks lovely tonight.”

Aegon follows your gaze automatically, watching as his sister—his bride, Seven Hells—absentmindedly twirls a lock of hair through her fingers, entirely detached from the festivities unfolding around her. 

“She looks trapped,” he says before he can stop himself. 

Apparently, the words land heavier than he intended as your eyes immediately flick back to his. For once, there’s no trace of mischief in you, only understanding—and somehow that’s worse. 

You’ve always been able to look at him too directly when he lets something a bit too honest slip loose. 

“And you?” you ask quietly after a moment, your voice nearly drowned beneath the music. “How do you suppose you look tonight?”

He huffs softly through his nose, dragging the rim of his cup against his lower lip. “Drunk, I imagine.”

One of your brows lifts. “You look unhappy.”

You don’t say it accusingly, not like anyone else would, not like Alicent or Otto or Aemond. There’s no irritation in it, no judgment, or disappointment—not even pity. 

Just recognition, just enough to make his stomach twist into knots. 

Aegon suddenly becomes painfully aware of the noise around him again—the music, the laughter, the scrape of goblets against tables, a hundred conversations unfolding at once while crowds of people weave through one another. 

Too many eyes. 

And yet, somehow, being with you again makes him feel strangely separated from it all, like you’re tucked into some quiet little corner of the world no matter how crowded the hall becomes. 

He takes another drink, mostly to give himself something to do with his hands. 

“Well,” he drawls after a moment, forcing some crooked bit of humor back into his voice, “it would be terribly rude of me to appear joyful at my own wake.”

That earns him a soft snort. He swallows thickly at the way his heart flutters.

“There you are,” you murmur. 

“Was I gone?”

“Briefly,” your gaze flicks meaningfully toward the wine in his hand. “Drowning, perhaps.”

“I prefer floating,” he quips too quickly for his own good. “Sounds much less tragic.”

Your fingers brush against the sleeve of his doublet as you shift closer so a passing servant can squeeze by you with a tray of steaming dishes. The touch lasts no more than a second, but he feels as if he’s been branded by it. 

Gods, he’s no better than a fucking blushing maiden. 

He’s touched you a thousand times before over the years. Hands tugging at sleeves, shoving shoulders, fingers hooked around wrists while dragging each other through corridors or down hidden staircases tucked away in the Keep. 

But this—

This feels different somehow. 

Perhaps he feels different. 

Your hair smells faintly of something floral when you lean nearer to be heard over the musicians, just sweet enough that it catches annoyingly in his head. Your posture is straighter than it used to be too, the restless roughness of girlhood sanded softer by time and court expectations. 

And yet not entirely. 

There’s still something sharp in you beneath all the silk and gold. Something that had once threatened guards with dinner knives and climbed castle walls in embroidered slippers simply because Aegon said you couldn’t. 

Shit. 

He suddenly, fiercely, does not want you to leave his side. The realization unsettles him enough that he drains the rest of his wine again before quickly motioning for a nearby attendant to fill his cup once more. 

You notice, of course. 

“You’ll make yourself ill.”

“I’m making myself tolerable.”

“You’ve never managed that a day in your life.”

“There she is,” Aegon says quietly.

Your expression softens at that in a way that makes something twist beneath his ribs, something warm and dangerous. 

The conversation lulls briefly as another cluster of nobles approaches the dais to offer their congratulations to Viserys, though he hardly hears a word of it. 

You glance toward your parents across the hall, watching your father deep in conversation with Lord Fossoway and another older man Aegon vaguely recognizes from the Stormlands. 

Then you sigh, barely noticeable to anyone except him. 

“What?” 

Your lips purse slightly and you shake your head. “Nothing.”

“Liar.”

You huff a quiet laugh at that, gaze dropping briefly to your hands before lifting back to his. “I managed to fend him off for some time but,” another sigh, “my father has become terribly interested in marriage prospects lately.”

The words hit him strangely and his grip tightens around his goblet again. “Oh?”

“He seems to think that if we put it off any longer, I’ll be some old hag—no longer suitable for a decent match. I believe he’s narrowing things down, one way or another.”

Narrowing things down. Something coils low in Aegon’s stomach at those words before he fully understands why. 

Still, he forces a crooked grin onto his face anyway. “Anyone I would know?”

“Mm, a few.”

He means it as a joke when he says, “Well, then, Gods help you.”

But you laugh softly and begin counting them off on your fingers anyway. “There’s a Blackwood heir somewhere. A Baratheon cousin, I think. Someone from House Rowan that my mother seems particularly determined about—”

“Don’t,” the words leave him too quickly, pouring out like cider from an overturned carafe. “Don’t marry any of them.”

Your lips press closed and for the first time since approaching him, you go utterly still. 

Aegon realizes, distantly, that he’s set his cup down hard enough for wine to slosh over the rim and onto the tablecloth. 

You blink at him once before a laugh escapes you, soft and disbelieving. “And why not?”

“Because,” he says fast—far too fast, “they’re all cunts.”

You stare at him for a beat longer this time, amusement slowly fading into something more careful, more searching. “Aegon,” you begin slowly. 

“Ah! There you are!” The interruption cuts cleanly through whatever you might’ve said next. 

He turns sharply toward the approaching voice, annoyance flashing hot and immediate through him at the sight of some aging lord already smiling too broadly as he approaches the dais. 

You step back slightly at once, court manners settling over you like armor being hastily fastened. It feels wrong. 

Aegon presses his hate for it down somewhere deep as the moment slips away before either of you can catch hold of it again. You offer him one last look—strange and thoughtful and far too perceptive—before dipping into a graceful curtsey. 

“Enjoy the rest of the feast, Your Grace.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

He blinks, watching as you disappear back into the crowd of lords and ladies, dark teal silk vanishing slowly between music notes and the flicker of candles. It’s only once you’re gone that he realizes something quietly horrifying:

For the last several minutes, he hasn’t thought once about Helaena. 

Or duty. 

Or his mother. 

Or the countless expectations that weigh so heavily on his shoulders. 

Only you. 

Only the curve of your lips and your hand against his sleeve and the thought of some Blackwood or Rowan or Baratheon lord touching what he has somehow always believed belonged beside him. 

Only now does he seem to realize that he’d spent half his life searching for you in every room. 

Several nights later, Aegon still cannot fucking sleep. 

This is, admittedly, not terribly unusual. He’s never slept particularly well sober and only somewhat better drunk, but lately even wine has stopped dulling the endless noise in his head. Thoughts keep circling one another like vultures, sharp and restless and impossible to escape. 

You. Always you. 

He sprawls across the mess of blankets tangled at the foot of his bed, staring up at the dark canopy overhead while a half-empty bottle of Arbor red hangs loose from his fingers. Firelight from the hearth skitters low across his chambers, throwing long shadows against stone walls littered with abandoned jackets and books he’s never even bothered to open. 

He doesn’t even like this wine, but he drinks anyway. 

Because the alternative is thinking too clearly and Seven Hells, he’s had enough of that these past few days to last him a lifetime. 

He thinks about your letters, which is probably the most humiliating part of all this. 

Not your mouth or your lovely neck or the way your hand had felt against his sleeve, not even the low cut of your gown, though those thoughts plague him too. No, what truly ruins him are the bloody letters—little scraps of you scattered across moons and years. 

He remembers one arriving after he’d fallen and nearly broken his wrist after Sunfyre’s saddle had gotten tangled around his boot. You’d written nearly an entire page mocking him for nearly being defeated by a cord of leather and his own pride. 

Another had included an awful little sketch of Otto that looked more goat than man. He remembers laughing so hard at it that he’d had tears rolling down his cheeks. 

Gods. 

Aegon drags a hand down his face as more memories surface whether he wants them to or not. 

You stealing figs from the kitchens and stuffing them into his pockets because he’d refused to go to supper after arguing with Alicent. 

You sitting cross-legged beside him on some balcony overlooking Blackwater Bay while he complained endlessly about lessons and duty and being a prince. 

You asleep against his shoulder in a carriage years ago, mouth parted slightly, your hair in complete disarray while rain hammered against the windows outside. 

And then the feast. 

The look on your face when he’d told you not to marry any of those damned lords. 

The silence that lingered afterwards. 

The way you’d said his name. 

Aegon groans softly and tips his head back harder against the mattress. 

“Fuck.”

Because there’s another thought beneath all the others too, ugly and unavoidable. 

Helaena. 

His betrothal. 

The fact that in a matter of weeks he is expected to stand before the realm and vow himself to his sister while all he can think about is the possibility of some Baratheon prick putting his hands on you. 

It all feels rotten somehow. Cruel. Not only to him, but the both of you. 

Aegon drains the last of the wine from the bottle and sits up abruptly before he can think himself into another spiral. The room tilts faintly as he rises to his feet. 

Good, he thinks. Maybe I can calm myself down properly after all.

He snatches another bottle from the table near the hearth, shrugs a loose coat over his shoulders without bothering to fasten it properly, and slips from his chambers into the quiet halls of the Red Keep. 

Most of the castle is asleep at this hour and the corridors are dark save for scattered torchlight burning low in iron brackets along the walls. Somewhere distant, he hears the muffled sound of guards changing posts and the soft crash of waves far below the cliffs. 

He walks without much direction at first, or at least he tells himself that as he stumbles down twisting corridors, across narrow staircases, and past silent courtyards silvered by moonlight until he finds himself outside in the sprawling gardens. 

The night air is cooler outside, damp with the scent of grass and blooming flowers. Pale light from the moon spills across winding stone paths and marble fountains, turning the gardens soft and dreamlike beneath the dark sky overhead. 

Aegon takes another long drink straight from the bottle as he wanders deeper among the hedges. 

He should go back upstairs, or perhaps go into the city and get properly drunk or fall into the arms of some Silk Street whore. 

He should stop thinking about you long enough to survive one miserable night in peace. 

Instead, he rounds the corner of a flowering hedge and stops dead. 

You’re there. Alone. 

For one stupid, stuttering heartbeat, Aegon can only stare. 

You sit perched along the edge of a fountain, one hand trailing lazily through the water while the other gathers the skirts of your nightrobe closer against the chill. Your hair is no longer pinned into those careful court arrangements he’s become accustomed to seeing these past weeks. It hangs loose down your back instead, slightly tangled from sleep or wind or both. 

It’s… intimate, somehow. Too intimate. 

His breath catches.

He’s seen you muddy and furious after falling from horses. Laughing so hard you snorted wine on your fourteenth nameday. Windswept atop castle walls. Tearful after your grandmother died. Half-asleep during lessons with ink smudged across your cheek. 

He’s seen you a hundred different ways and somehow never like this. A painful knot tightens in his chest. 

As if sensing him, your head lifts. Your eyes find him instantly, standing half-hidden beneath an ivy-covered archway. 

For a beat, neither of you speaks or so much as moves. 

Then your mouth curves slightly, into another of those easy, genuine grins. “You’re awake.”

“So are you,” Aegon answers automatically. 

“Brilliantly observed, Your Grace.” 

There it is, he thinks. That easy rhythm between you, old as childhood and just as instinctive as it slips back into place so naturally that, for a moment, something inside him unclenches. 

He steps fully out from beneath the archway at last, boots crunching softly against the gravel path as the bottle in his grasp hangs loose from his fingers, catching your attention immediately. 

“Ah,” you murmur, “and here I thought you’d lost your touch.”

He huffs a quiet laugh through his nose despite himself. “You wound me.”

“Do I?” You tilt your head slightly. “You’ve been rather difficult to find these past few days.”

You have a way of wringing the truth from him like no one else can. Gods, you see through him like he’s made of glass. 

Ever since the feast, he’s been doing something deeply pathetic, even for him: seeking you out in every room while simultaneously avoiding being alone with you long enough to think too hard about why. He skipped suppers, vanished into the city, drank himself stupid more than once, and spent an entire evening hiding from his own family in the Dragonpit like a sulking child. 

Anything to avoid this—to avoid you. 

Aegon lifts the bottle to his lips mostly for something to do before realizing he’s already more than half-drunk and any more will only make him sloppier. And—godsdammit—he finds himself suddenly caring quite a bit about not being sloppy around you. 

“I’ve been terribly busy being celebrated,” he says instead, once again concealing anything genuine with dry humor. 

You stare at him for a long few seconds before snorting softly. “Aegon,” Seven Hells, the way you say his name nearly undoes him all over again. “You have never once allowed ceremony to keep you from being a nuisance.”

That manages to draw a wry smile from him. “Fair enough.”

Silence settles after that. He’d be uncomfortable were it anyone else, but with you it’s just easy silence. The fountain trickles softly behind you while the Sept tolls the late hour in the distance. Moonlight catches silver against the water trailing from your fingertips and Aegon becomes abruptly, painfully aware that he’s staring. 

Of course, you notice too, stilling your hand against the water’s surface. “What is it?”

He opens his mouth, silently pleading with his mind to come up with something—anything—sensible. But nothing comes. 

“I—I don’t know,” he admits finally, voice rougher than intended. His throat bobs as he swallows thickly, suddenly looking anywhere but at you. 

Your expression shifts slightly, amusement fading into something more cautious and quiet. “You’ve been strange ever since the feast, you know.”

“Well, that’s nothing new, is it?”

“Aegon.”

Shit. 

He scrubs a hand through his hair and starts pacing before he can think better of it, boots carrying him along the curve of the fountain. The wine bottle knocks lightly against his thigh with every step. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he finally mutters, earning a startled blink from you before your expression softens into a slight smile. 

“That sounds dangerous.”

He laughs once under his breath, chest tightening. “About you,” the words fall between you both like a stone dropped into still water. 

Your smile disappears and Aegon immediately regrets having a mouth at all. 

“Not,” he says quickly, “not in some strange way. Or perhaps it is strange. I don’t know. That—that’s why it’s fucked, isn’t it?”

You stare at him now, as still as one of the stone statues stationed among the flowers. The night suddenly feels too warm, the hedges too close. 

“Aegon,” you say slowly, carefully, “what are you trying to say?”

He wishes very badly for a bottle of something stronger than wine. Or perhaps for death. Either would suffice. 

Instead, he exhales sharply through his nose and drags a hand over his jaw, buying himself another useless second. “I thought—I thought I understood what you were to me.”

“And what was that?”

The answer comes more easily than he expects, falling from his lips as easy as any curse or crude joke ever has: “Safety.” He hears the way your breath catches in your throat and your lips part, but he keeps going, forcing himself to before he loses his nerve entirely. “You were the only person I never had to perform for,” his voice lowers slightly. “I didn’t have to be a prince with you, or a son, or—or a disappointment.”

“Aeg—”

“And now,” he says, looking at you fully for perhaps the first time in his entire miserable life, “now I look at you and I cannot fucking breathe.”

Silence. 

The fountain trickles endlessly between you and you stare at him like he’s cracked the world wide open with his bare hands. 

He laughs once then, low and self-pitying. “See? Strange, as I said.”

“No,” you say softly, voice so quiet he wonders for a second if it was merely the wind. 

“No?”

“No,” your fingers tighten slightly in the folds of your robe gathered in your lap. “Just late.”

Those words hit like a blow, stopping him in his tracks. His mouth parts slightly, though no words come out. He feels gutted—carved open from the inside and splayed out uselessly. 

Suddenly, horribly, he understands. Despite everything, despite every single small thing he’s ever been through, every moment he made himself look like an utter fool, he’s never felt more hopelessly moronic than he does now. 

All those looks everyone but him noticed. 

All those letters. 

All the times you found him without needing to ask where he’d gone. 

All those years. 

In one quick instant, you’ve somehow managed to make him feel both like a god and like little more than a flea all at once. 

“Do you know how long I waited for you to notice?” you ask softly, head tilted just slightly. 

Shame burns hot beneath his skin. His cheeks sting as blood rushes to his head. 

“Why—why did you never say something?”

You let out a short, disbelieving laugh and your next words come out as little more than a sigh: “You called me your brother once.”

Oh, shit. Aegon physically winces, jaw clenching. 

“That was,” he says weakly, licking his lips as he slowly shakes his head, “incredibly unfortunate wording on my part.”

“Yes.”

“I was—fuck, I was an idiot.”

“Yes.”

“Cruel?”

That softens you slightly, just enough to pull a quiet laugh from you. 

“No, you’re not that bad,” you murmur after a moment. “Just blind.”

He steps closer before he can stop himself, dizzy at the thought that you’re not angry, not truly, though he feels you should be. He wouldn’t blame you if you were, if you were vengeful enough to make him bleed for it the way he suddenly feels he deserves. 

Moonlight spills across your face as you look up at him from the fountain’s edge, your hair loose around your shoulders, lips parted ever so slightly. 

Gods. 

“You have always been mine in the only way that mattered,” he says quietly, the words scraping painfully from somewhere deep in his chest. “Now I want more,” he whispers, heart skipping at the way your breath catches, “even though I have no right to it.”

For a second, neither of you say anything. Then you slide slowly from the fountain’s edge to stand before him—close, far too close. He can smell the faint sweet scent of you again, can feel the warmth radiating from your skin despite the cool night air while you look at him for a long, unbearable moment. 

“I tried very hard not to want you,” you whisper, each word warm on his lips. 

“That’s not an answer.”

A tiny, sad smile pulls briefly at your mouth, shoulder shrugging. “It’s the only one I have.”

And then you kiss him.

Your hand rises to his cheek as your lips meet his and—fuck—may the Mother save him. Aegon’s been kissed before, plenty of times. He’s been touched and wanted and indulged since he was far too young to understand any of it properly, and yet—

None of it had prepared him for this—for the ruin of your hand against his face, for the way your mouth softens against his like something precious being handled too roughly. 

He makes a quiet sound low in his throat before he can stop it and suddenly, he’s kissing you back hard enough to make you stumble a half-step into him. The wine bottle slips forgotten from his hand, thunking into the grass below as his fingers find your waist instinctively, pulling you closer while your hands slide up into his hair. 

It feels like drowning and dying and being saved all at once—like finally getting a proper lungful of air after years spent choking. 

The kiss deepens almost despite him, desperate in that terrible way starved things often are. Aegon tastes honey and wine and you, and he thinks vaguely that he could become addicted to this frighteningly fast and just as he brushes the tip of his tongue along your bottom lip…

Your hand presses lightly to his chest and reality returns all at once, ugly and unwelcome as you pull back just enough to breathe, your forehead pressing briefly against his. 

“Aegon,” you whisper shakily, fingers grabbing at his coat. 

He’s still dizzy enough to chase after you before stopping himself at the last second, blinking like he’s waking from a dream. 

“You’re promised to Helaena,” you continue, the words cutting into him like a knife—that same damned blade at the center of everything. 

He closes his eyes, nodding, though his hands tighten at your waist. “I—I know.”

“Then what are we doing?”

A careless laugh spills from his lips then, rough and breathy. “Something horribly foolish.”

He hates the way your expression twists as he stops to look at you—properly look at you, standing there beneath the moon with swollen lips and tangled hair and hope flickering dangerously in your eyes—and suddenly, the answer he’s been hopelessly seeking for days now becomes frighteningly clear. 

“No, I—I don’t think this is foolish at all, really,” he says quietly, stronger this time as his gaze sharpens and he pulls you closer. “This is the most honest thing I’ve done in a long fucking time.”

He sees the question in your gaze but doesn’t move to answer it—not yet. For the first time in what feels like forever, he doesn’t simply want to endure what comes next. 

Not this time.

Not if there is even the slightest chance of keeping you. 

Dawn creeps slowly through the Red Keep, yellowed and pale beneath a sky still bruised by the last remnants of night. 

Aegon still hasn’t slept. He’d tried, briefly, returning to his chambers with your taste still lingering maddeningly on his tongue and stared at the ceiling until the darkness began to feel suffocating. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw you standing beneath the moonlight with your hands tangled in his hair and hope glinting across your face so fragilely it frightened him. 

Something honest. 

The words had lodged themselves somewhere deep in his chest and refused to leave, so he’d done the impossible instead—he’d stopped drinking. 

Well—not entirely. He’d still had enough wine to keep the shaking at bay, but hours had passed since the gardens and the fog in his head had thinned enough now that he could no longer pretend this was some drunken impulse destined to sour by morning. 

If anything, sobriety has only made it worse. 

Which is how he finds himself standing outside his mother’s chambers just before sunrise looking deeply haunted while two exhausted Kingsguard stare at him with, frankly, understandable suspicion. 

He ignores them, this is nothing new. 

One of the guards pushes open the door after a moment’s hesitation and warmth spills out immediately, heavy with incense and the faint scent of lavender oil. 

Alicent’s chambers are quiet at this hour with no court ladies bustling about, no maids rushing to prepare gowns or fetch correspondence—just the low crackle of the hearth and soft morning light filtering through the windows overlooking the city below. 

His mother sits near the fire with embroidery gathered loosely in her lap, though from the way her needle has stilled halfway through a stitch, she’d clearly lost focus long before he entered. 

She looks tired, he notices. No longer the sharp, composed mask of placidity she wears before court, emotions hidden away beneath rigid posture and jewels and carefully arranged hair. 

For a brief instant, guilt twists unpleasantly in his stomach and he nearly leaves. But before he can, she looks up, blinking and brows furrowing at the sight of him. 

“Aegon?” There’s immediate surprise in her voice. Wariness too—maybe because of the odd hour or because he’s sober enough to stand straight. Or perhaps because sons like him rarely come seeking their mothers at all unless something has gone terribly wrong. 

He steps closer before he can lose the meager amount of confidence he’d been able to build in himself. “I need to speak with you.”

One of her brows raises and she glances to the window before looking back at him. “At this hour?”

“Yes.”

The doors finally shut behind him and for a few breaths, neither of them speaks. Alicent studies him carefully and he can practically see it when she realizes he isn’t drunk—isn’t slurring his words or swaying or mumbling some crude nonsensical remark. Certainly not drunk enough to explain away whatever this is. 

That seems to unsettle her more than anything else he’s done. 

Slowly, she sets the embroidery aside and smooths the skirt of her nightgown out before looking at him again. “What’s happened this ti—”

“It’s about Helaena.”

Everything in the room stills. Alicent goes rigid instantly, shoulders tightening beneath her chemise while something guarded and exhausted settles over her face. 

Suddenly, Aegon feels twelve years old again. 

“I cannot marry her,” his voice comes out shakier than he wishes and the words land hard and ugly between them. 

His mother’s expression hardens immediately. “You will.”

There it is—something familiar. Duty. Finality. The thing that has always existed between them more comfortably than affection ever has. 

“Mother—”

“You will not humiliate your sister because you have grown bored of loyalty before it has even begun.” 

The sharpness of it cuts deeper than he expects, perhaps because some part of him had hoped—stupidly, pathetically—that she might somehow already understand. 

He flinches before he can help it, face twitching to the side as if he’d been slapped. 

She notices that too.

Ordinarily, this might be the point where he would laugh cruelly or make some cutting remark before storming off to drown himself in wine and whores for the remainder of the day. Instead, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, he stays. 

“I’m—I’m not trying to humiliate her,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t.”

“Then what is it you’re trying to do?”

“Spare her,” he whispers, swallowing thickly. 

Alicent blinks once. The anger doesn’t disappear from her face but something beneath it flickers faintly—confusion maybe, or surprise. 

“She’s done nothing wrong,” she says carefully. 

“No,” he agrees immediately, the answer coming too fast to be anything but sincere, “she hasn’t.”

“So why punish her?”

“That is what I’m trying not to do.”

She stares at him then like she no longer recognizes the shape of him—like he’s sprouted a second head or vowed to become a maester. 

Aegon laughs once under his breath, low and uneven. “You know what I am,” he mutters, beginning to pace because suddenly standing still feels impossible. “I drink too much, I disappear for days, I—I make a spectacle of myself whenever anyone expects otherwise. I know that.”

“Aegon—”

“No, let me finish,” he drags a hand through his hair sharply enough to tug at the roots. “Helaena deserves someone gentler than me. Someone who will not resent her for being tied to him. Someone who will not turn duty into—fuck—into cruelty simply because he was miserable first.”

His mother watches him carefully now, not with anger anymore but something worse—attentiveness. 

“She’s your sister,” she says softly after a moment. 

“I know.”

“You care for her.”

“I do,” his voice cracks unexpectedly on the last word and he hates himself for the way the backs of his eyes sting, the way his throat tightens. “That is the fucking problem.”

The fire snaps softly between them, logs settling as smoke trails up the flue. Alicent’s gaze narrows slightly then, something thoughtful moving behind her eyes. 

“There’s someone else,” she says—not a question. Aegon goes still, not having expected her to figure it out, and when he doesn’t answer quickly enough, that alone tells her everything. She closes her eyes briefly and then nods to herself. “Lord Wylde’s daughter.”

Again, not a question. 

All he can do is look away toward the window, jaw clenching tight enough to ache. 

“You would endanger a royal match for a girl you played with as a child?” Alicent exhales slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“No,” his answer comes automatically, making his mother look up in surprise. The movement draws his gaze back toward her and there’s something worryingly raw in his face now, stripped bare in a way she hasn’t ever seen from him before. “I would end it,” he says quietly, carefully picking each word, “for the woman who knows me better than anyone in this world.”

His mother’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly, her anger faltering around the edges as if she no longer quite knows where to place it. Then she blinks and seems to come back to herself a bit and suddenly, the ever-present hardness he’s used to is back in her gaze. 

“You are young enough to mistake… lust for love.”

He nearly laughs at that, though there’s nothing humorous in the sound that escapes him—something between a scoff and a wheeze. “If this were only lust, life would be considerably easier.”

“Aegon—”

“She has never been some—some passing fancy,” he cuts in roughly, pacing again now because merely standing under the weight of Alicent’s gaze feels suffocating. “Gods, she’s—”

He stops abruptly, chest heaving as he presses a hand hard against his mouth before dragging it down over his jaw. His brows are furrowed, eyes boring holes into some random corner of the room as he wracks his brain for the right words. 

How in the world is he meant to explain you to someone else? How does he explain that you’ve become so woven through the fabric of his life—of his very being—that he no longer knows where you end and he begins?

“She has never been an escape,” he says finally, speaking through a sigh. His throat tightens painfully and his vision swims with sudden tears, though he doesn’t bother to hide them. “She is where I go when I cannot bear escaping anymore.”

His words aren’t polished, they come out ragged and uneven and frightfully earnest in a way he usually avoids at all costs. 

But he means them entirely. 

For the first time in a very long time, perhaps since that horrible night Aemond lost an eye, Alicent looks genuinely shaken. The room falls silent for a long moment, their only company the crackling of the fire and the distant sounds of the Keep finally waking around them. 

“Does she… does she return your feelings?” she finally asks, her voice softer than Aegon has heard in a long time. 

Blinking hard, he looks down at his hands briefly before answering. “I—I think,” he says carefully, “she loved me long before I deserved it.”

His mother stares at him for a very long time after that and slowly, impossibly, some of the fight begins slowly draining from her, like someone lowering a sword they’re no longer entirely certain they should be holding. 

The silence stretches long enough that he starts to feel raw beneath it, skinned open and bleeding. He shifts uncomfortably where he stands, fingers twitching once at his side before curling tight against his palm. 

“Love,” she says finally, sighing as she leans back in her seat and stares off at some point in the distance, “does not make a marriage simple.”

“No,” he agrees, laughing once under his breath. His eyes drift briefly toward the dying fire before lifting back to her. “But maybe it makes it less cruel.”

Something flits over her face then—not anger or disappointment, but something softer, sadder. For a moment, she looks terribly young to him. No longer like a queen draped in green silk and finery, not the rigid, sharp-tongued mother forever waiting for disaster from her eldest son. 

Just Alicent. 

Just a woman who had been married off to a grieving king while scarcely older than the girl sitting beside the fountains with moonlight tangled in her hair. 

The realization settles uneasily in his chest, forcing him to look away once more. 

“You’ve never asked me to be happy,” the words slip from his lips before he can stop them, leaving guilt to settle quietly in his chest. 

“That’s not fair,” she snaps, recoiling as if struck.

“No, I suppose it’s not,” he says quietly, “but it is true.”

Her jaw tightens hard enough that he sees the muscle feather beneath her skin. For a heartbeat, he thinks she may lash out again, may sharpen herself back into something colder and safer. 

But she only looks tired—terribly tired. 

He swallows thickly, suddenly ashamed of the bitterness lingering at the edges of his voice. He scratches at the back of his neck, shifts his weight from foot to foot, and finally exhales—long and low. 

“I—I know why,” he mutters after a moment. “M’not stupid. I know what’s expected of us, I know what we are.” His gaze flicks toward the window where dawn continues bleeding pale gold across the city. “I know sons like me aren’t given the luxury of… wanting things.”

“My love—”

“But I am asking now,” he murmurs, finally looking back at her—looking properly—and whatever she sees in his face seems to still her completely. “Please,” he says quietly.

Seven Hells. 

He’s never been like this toward his mother, not since he was very young. Earnest and pleading and… small, almost. He can’t remember the last time they had a conversation that didn’t end in mocking or snapped demands or drunken babble. 

“And if I say no?” Alicent finally asks, her voice low enough that he has to strain to hear the words. 

For an instant, something foul twists through him, pricking at his insides like the thorny rose bushes in the gardens below. The old instinct to laugh, to shrug, to pretend this had all been some meaningless whim before she could reject it outright rears its ugly head, but he forces himself to still beneath her gaze. 

“Then I will obey you,” he says carefully, the words seeming to hollow out the room. 

They both know what obedience from him would truly mean. 

Not peace—never that. 

It would mean rot settling slowly into the cracks already splitting through him. More wine. More disappearing acts. More bitterness curdling inside him while Helaena spent the rest of her life shackled beside a man who resented the cage around both of them. 

It would leave him like his father—like her—a fact neither of them dares to admit aloud. 

And you—

You would marry elsewhere and smile politely beside some lordling while Aegon drank himself to death pretending not to think about it. 

All for the sake of propriety. 

He watches what little fight remains in his mother leave in slow increments, in small, fragile degrees, leaving only recognition behind—or grief. 

Alicent rises suddenly then, crossing toward the window with measured steps while pale dawn light spills across the floor around her. She folds her arms tightly across herself as she stares out over King’s Landing below, quiet for so long that Aegon’s pulse begins hammering painfully against his ribs. 

Please, he thinks silently, hoping the Gods somehow let her hear it, I have never wanted anything else.

When she does finally speak again, her voice has gone practical, careful in the way she uses when speaking to Viserys or Otto about political matters. 

“If this were to happen,” she says lowly, “your grandsire would be furious.”

He blinks once as a tiny, dangerous spark of hope flickers alive somewhere in his chest. He doesn’t quite know what to do with himself—he hadn’t really thought he’d get this far.

“Your father already approved the match between you and Helaena,” his mother continues before he can speak. “Undoing it would create gossip throughout the realm,” her jaw tightens again, only for a second, “and Lord Wylde would need convincing, of course.”

She hasn’t said no. He hardly dares to breathe. 

“Helaena’s future would need reconsideration,” she murmurs, mostly to herself now. “The court would talk. Father would call it weakness—recklessness,” a bitter scoff escapes her as she shakes her head, auburn waves flowing about her shoulders, “and he would likely blame me somehow.”

“That does sound like him,” Aegon mutters, the corner of his lips twitching faintly.

She shoots him a look over her shoulder, though it lacks her usual sharpness. The silence that follows feels oddly delicate, like one wrong move may shatter it entirely. 

“But,” he says finally, his voice small, “you will try?”

She turns from the window at last, the first true rays of morning light catching against her face, illuminating the exhaustion there, the uncertainty, the grief of a woman who has spent most of her life sacrificing pieces of herself for duty and is now being asked to spare her son from doing the same. 

For a long moment, she simply looks at him. Her gaze is softer now, sweeter than he can remember her ever looking at him. 

“I will try,” she says, a small, tired smile pulling at the corners of her lips. 

Aegon can only stare at her for an instant, violet eyes going wide. He had come here expecting anger and shouting, to add another disappointment to the growing mountain of them already piled between them.

He had not expected this—not expected mercy. 

The hope blooming painfully inside his chest feels almost unbearable and knocks the wind from his lungs. 

“Why?” he asks, unable to keep himself from doing so. 

She ducks her head from him at that, sighing as she clasps her hands behind her back and purses her lips, staring at the stone floor as though it may provide an answer. 

“Because,” she finally murmurs, “for once, I believe you.”

Something tight and aching lodges suddenly at his throat and before he can think better of it, before pride or embarrassment can stop him, Aegon crosses the room in a few quick strides and pulls his mother into an embrace. 

He feels her stiffen against him for a heartbeat before she wraps her arms around him, squeezing him almost tentatively, as though neither of them quite remembers how to do this. 

Maybe they never did. 

Even so, he rests his forehead on her shoulder, gladly letting her hair tickle at his nose. 

“Do not make me regret this,” she says quietly. 

He swallows hard against the thickness at the back of his throat and closes his eyes tightly, letting a tear slip free from the corner of one. “I won’t,” he whispers, voice wavering. 

She leans back just enough to look at him properly then and despite everything, despite the softness finally creeping into her face, there’s still some knowing glimmer in her gaze. 

“Do not swear things you cannot understand,” she says, though her expression gentles, “but try.”

He leaves Alicent’s chambers before she can change her mind or before he can wake from this strange, fragile dream and find himself once again trapped inside the same miserable life he’d resigned himself to years ago. 

The corridors of the Keep blur around him as he walks. Servants bow as he passes. Guards step aside. Somewhere in the distance, the bells of the Sept toll to announce the beginning of morning prayers, but Aegon hardly hears any of it over the thunder of his own pulse. 

She said she would try. Even now, the words feel impossible. 

By the time he reaches your chambers, the morning light has grown to a vibrant orange, spilling through the narrow castle windows and softening the stone walls into something warm.

He barely waits after knocking before swinging the door open. 

You’re already up, hastily rising from a seat by the window. You’re not dressed yet, still in that same robe from hours before. Your hair still hangs loose around your shoulders, still sleep-touseled, and there are dark crescents under your eyes like you hadn’t managed to sleep much either. 

Neither of you speaks for a moment as you simply stare at him—wide-eyed and worried and searching, hopeful in that careful way people become when they’re afraid to want too much. 

And Aegon—

Fuck, he can only look at you. 

Because now he’s here and now that this is real, he suddenly understands with awful clarity just how badly this could’ve gone—how easily he could’ve lost you before ever truly having you at all. 

“Well?” you finally ask, brows pulling together faintly beneath the weight of his silence. 

His throat tightens unexpectedly and he feels nearly lightheaded as he steps more fully into your chambers, glancing over his shoulder to ensure the door is closed. 

“I—she,” he starts, the words sticking in his throat before he barks out a breathy laugh, “mother says she’ll try.”

All at once, your shoulders sag with relief so sharp it looks nearly painful, your knees buckling in a way that has him striding closer before you right yourself. 

You’d been scared, he realizes, heart squeezing painfully in his chest. 

“It—it isn’t done,” he says quickly—almost apologetically—as he steps closer once more, instinct carrying him. “She only said she would speak to Viserys and try to sway him.”

“I understand,” you whisper, still smiling faintly despite the tears threatening to leak from the corners of your eyes. 

“Otto may have me killed.”

“That does seem likely, yes,” you breathe through a quiet laugh, startled by his words. 

There you are, he thinks, chest loosening at the sound of it—that familiar rhythm settling between you again as naturally as breathing. Gods, he thinks he could survive almost anything so long as you continue looking at him like that. 

You move closer then, until hardly any space remains between you at all. 

Aegon looks at you for a long moment before laughing under his breath, the sound of it almost disbelieving. “I truly thought she might throw something at my head,” he murmurs. 

“She still might.”

“Mm,” he hums, a wry smile on his lips, “perhaps later.”

Another quiet laugh escapes you again, gentler this time, before silence settles. He brings a hand up and cups your cheek, gliding a calloused thumb over your skin. 

“But I asked,” he says, the whispered words seeming to fill the room as a small part of himself marvels at the awe of that alone. Not whether Alicent said yes or no. Not Otto or Viserys or court gossip or political alliances—but at the fact that he asked at all.

He’s spent most of his life laughing before anyone else could laugh at him first and yielding before disappointment could ever truly settle. He drank and whored and joked his way around every genuine thing ever placed before him and even still—

He asked for you. He chose something for himself. 

You understand it immediately, of course you do—he sees it land across your face all at once as your expression softens so much that it nearly undoes him, nearly makes him weak in the knees like a naive fucking princess from one of those fairytale books girls all seem to fawn over. 

Slowly, you raise a hand and rest it on his chest, feeling his heartbeat through the linen of his shirt. Your touch is so gentle that it makes him ache. 

“I’m so proud of you,” you whisper, nearly beaming. 

His breath catches enough to hurt and his hair stands on end as a shiver shoots down his spine like a lightning bolt, nearly striking him dumb. His mind reels—he cannot remember if anyone has ever said that to him, at least not honestly, not without expectation buried beneath it, not as surprise or out of pure obligation. 

For one upending instant, he thinks he may fall to pieces and cry like some pathetic fool right here in your arms. So, naturally, he does the only thing he knows how to do when emotions become too large to carry properly—he grins crookedly.

“Careful,” he murmurs, voice thick despite his best efforts, “I may become unbearable after hearing things like that.”

“You already are,” you say without missing a beat, brushing a thumb beneath one of his eyes to catch the dampness there before it can fall. 

He laughs—quiet and helpless and more relieved than he thinks he’s ever been in his life before pulling you tightly against him and pressing his lips to yours at last.

This kiss is different than the one from earlier. That one had been desperate and frantic, starved and full of worry. This one feels almost reverent. Slow and lingering and warm with the joyous understanding that everything has shifted now, that you’ve both stepped into something neither of you can pull back from, not that you’d ever wish to. 

Your arms slide around his neck while his hands settle carefully at your waist, drawing you flush against him, and for once, Aegon doesn’t feel trapped by the future stretching out before him. 

When he finally pulls back, your forehead rests against his and he closes his eyes, breathing you in like you’re something sacred, something to be savored. 

Ever since he can remember, he had mistaken emptiness for protection. He’d thought that if he kept enough distance between himself and everyone else, kept enough of himself walled away—buried beneath wine and cruelty and laughter sharp enough to slice through flesh—then nothing could ever truly reach him. 

He’d gladly let his heart become shielded, armored like a knight—something hard enough to survive. 

You’d split straight through it without ever meaning to. 

A smile across crowded halls. A hand against his sleeve. Letters and years. A girl who kept finding him no matter how often he disappeared. 

And, Gods fucking help him, standing here with you in his arms, Aegon can’t help but be glad for the wound.