join me for some hyperfixation

Iōdēs, Vermithor! Dive, Vermithor!

Jace! Jace!

Vermithor sōvēs! Vermithor, fly!

THE RED KEEP, KING'S LANDING. YEAR 130 AC — FORENOON

The chamber stank of hot wax and old parchment. Light came slanting through the narrow window to lay pale bars across the writing table, and there Alicent Hightower pressed her signet into the cooling black of the seal. Helaena stood beside her and watched the green wax pucker and set, her fingers worrying at the edge of one sleeve. When she spoke her voice was soft, and it was certain.

"You are frightened." She did not make a question of it. She had read it already, in the tightness of her mother's jaw.

Before the Queen Dowager could answer, the door flew wide with a crack of timber upon stone. A servant spilled into the room half-doubled and gasping, his tunic gone dark with sweat at the collar. Both women startled. Alicent's hand jerked, and a smear of wax streaked across the corner of the letter.

"My Lady!" the man wheezed. One palm braced hard against the doorframe.

"What is it?" Alicent demanded. Her brows lifted in equal measure of alarm and displeasure, that she should be so rudely disturbed.

"They have taken one of the Blacks. King Aemond is with her. He has carried her to his own chambers." The words came tumbling between labored breaths, each of them a struggle to seize air enough to speak.

Helaena's gaze went to her mother, bewilderment softening her face. "Her?" she echoed.

"Into his chambers?" Alicent's brow knit. Mother and daughter traded a single wary glance, then turned back to the man crumpling in the doorway.

"The rider of Vermithor, My Lady."

Both women's eyes went wide in the same breath, understanding bloomed cold and immediate. One last look passed from one to the other, and then they were moving, brushing past the servant in such haste that the letter to Lord Ormund — bidding him halt his ride to King's Landing — lay forgotten upon the table.

By the time they came to the far corridor they found Grand Maester Orwyle drawing the chamber door shut with a slow and careful hand. He caught sight of them, inclined his head in silent deference, and went on his way without a word. The two women slipped within, and what greeted them stole the breath from Alicent's throat.

The young king sat upon the edge of the bed, his lean frame reclined at ease, one hand moving in slow and tender circles across your brow. You lay unmoving beneath his touch. Your face was slack with deep unknowing, and you showed no least intent of waking. The messenger, then, had not spun lies to earn his keep. Alicent felt the horror climb in her chest, and Helaena's hand flew to her own mouth.

"Some men of the Triarchy found her in the waters," Aemond said. His voice was pitched scarce above a whisper, that he might not wake you.

"Is she alright?" Helaena stepped toward the bedside, drawn by concern, but her mother's arm shot across her waist and pressed her still.

"A few small hurts, save the one to her left shoulder." Aemond traced the linen bandage there with a gentleness that seemed near to reverent, and you stirred, wincing faintly at the pressure. "An arrow pierced her clean through, though the maester swears it shall knit well enough in time. Orwyle has given her a generous draught of the milk of the poppy, to blunt the worst of it."

Helaena, unconvinced, sought her mother's eyes. Alicent held her daughter's gaze and gave the smallest nod, tipping her head toward the door. Helaena hesitated, her fingers curling, and then she withdrew and pulled the heavy door closed behind her with plain reluctance.

"And her dragon?" Alicent asked, once they were alone.

"I am told the beast escaped." Aemond let out his breath, his single violet eye never once leaving your face. "She has always prized every soul above her own life, that one. It matters little. I need not fly to Harrenhal now. Rhaenyra has lost one of her greatest riders and her largest dragon, and with the Hightower host soon to join us, the advantage falls to us."

"No." Alicent's voice went hard. "That is not near enough. Rhaenyra commands more dragons than we do."

"And yet we hold two of the largest beasts ever to weather a war beside our forebears," Aemond answered, in no haste at all. "Her dragons are untried and half-grown, save only our uncle Daemon's mount."

Alicent crossed her arms. Her voice thinned with disbelief. "And what makes you believe she would ever raise her arms for the Greens? Her own sister names herself heir to the Iron Throne, and there she lies, broken and unfit to lift so much as a spoon."

"She can lift a good deal more than that. Whatever frailness others read in her, she has ever carried an iron will beneath it." Aemond's mouth curved as he studied the slow rise and fall of your breathing. "She will heal. And when she wakes and heals, she shall stand beside me as my queen."

"Queen?" The word left Alicent as though it had scalded her tongue.

"I mean to wed her, mother."

"Have you lost every scrap of sense the gods gave you?" Alicent hissed, stepping nearer, her hands atremble with the fury she fought to keep behind her teeth. "Have you forgotten your crimes against her kin? The very hour she opens her eyes, she will slit your throat, or beg to have hers opened, before ever she bends the knee to a Green."

"Then we shall furnish her a reason to stand with us."

"A reason?" Alicent laughed, low and brittle. "And what reason could we hold that might bend a heart so wounded as hers?"

Aemond turned to face his mother. A slow smile spread across his sharp features, cold and certain and terrible to behold.

"They have taken Viserys as well."

The breath went out of Alicent entire. She stood stricken and speechless, her lips parting around words that would not come, her fingers pressing white against the fabric of her green skirts.

"Summon the council, Mother. Our plans have shifted beneath our feet, and for once the change favors us." Aemond turned back to you, and his voice dropped once more to that private hush. "The gods have chosen their side, and it is ours."

Alicent's footsteps receded down the corridor, and when the silence had swallowed them whole, Aemond took up his slow caress across your face once more, and sank down into the old memory.

You had been older than him by no more than a handful of summers, and yet in his boyhood you had been the whole of his refuge. He remembered the days when his mother and father turned their faces toward Aegon and left him standing in the cold margins of their notice. You alone had gathered him close and made him feel as though he mattered. You who had never once laughed to see him stand dragonless among kin who sneered. You who had knelt before him after the loss of his eye, and held his hand while the maesters cleaned the ruined socket, and told him he was handsome still, that one day he would rise and astonish every soul who had ever reckoned him small. That good things came to those who waited.

You had never truly grasped how much you had meant to him, how many times you had soothed and shielded and tended him and asked nothing in return. Now, he thought, the debt would come round.

When the realm had split into Black and Green, your choice had broken something in his chest that had never mended. He had lain awake through whole nights weighing whether he ought to set aside his brother's claim and follow you instead. He had written to you throughout the war, and not once had you answered. Of course you had not. Not after what he had done to Luke. His spies had carried back word of your grief, and it had gutted him to hear it. He had never meant to wound you. He had never wanted your pain. He let his eye trace every line of your sleeping face, drinking down all the years he had been denied, filling himself with the plain fact of your presence at the last.

AEMOND'S CHAMBER, RED KEEP. A FEW NIGHTS PAST —FORENOON

Somewhere in the drowning space between the poppy's dark and the waking world, you felt something coarse and warm pressed with unhurried tenderness against your lips.

When the blackness began to thin and drift apart, the shape of a chamber rose slowly about you. Walls washed in low golden light. The smell of candles and the faint iron tang of your own healing wound.

Your eyes swam across the dim room and caught upon a figure rising hesitantly from the shadows in the far corner. Your pulse quickened, and memory came surging back in jagged pieces. Viserys taken. Jacaerys diving too near the ramparts to reach him. Vermax torn from the sky by bolts.

You pushed to sit upright, straining to put distance between yourself and the shape drawing near, when a bright lance of pain shot up from your left shoulder into the base of your skull. A hiss slid through your teeth, and you fell back against the pillows.

"You mustn't move," the figure said quickly. "The maesters warned that you must lie still."

The voice, to your flooding relief, belonged to a woman. A voice sweet and warm, and so familiar that you had not known how long you had ached to hear it.

"Helaena?" Your own voice came out cracked and trembling.

"Y/N." Your half sister moved from the shadow into the reaching sunlight, her silver-gold hair taking up the pale glow as she hurried to your side. She braced her hands beneath your good arm and eased you upright, and only when you had steadied did the two of you fold into one another, holding on with a desperate strength.

"Oh, how I have missed you," Helaena breathed into your good shoulder.

"And I you, sister." She pressed her cheek nearer, and you flinched despite yourself, the movement jarring the arrow wound.

"Sorry." She drew back at once, and you gave her a thin and weary smile.

"Do not fret over it." You let your gaze travel the strange room. "Where am I?"

"In King's Landing. Within the Red Keep."

"I remember so little of what happened."

"They say you dismounted your dragon mid air to chase after Jacaerys in the waters." Helaena's hands settled over yours.

You gripped her fingers, your eyes stinging as the memory clawed its way back to the surface.

"Is he alive?" you pressed, searching her gentle face, and the low bow of her head told you all you dreaded before her mouth ever moved.

"I do not know."

"And Vermax?"

She shook her head slowly. "I was told only that Vermithor took to the air and fled, and that you were taken. Aemond had you brought here, to his own chambers, to mend."

"Of course he did." His letters rose again in your mind, one after another, each more desperate than the last, declaring a devotion you had never been able to return. Custom held that Valyrian blood must wed Valyrian blood, and yet after your mother's death you had passed your girlhood in the keeping of Alicent and her father Otto Hightower, raised beneath the Faith and all its teachings, and somewhere across those years you had turned away from the old ways of your forebears. You could summon within yourself no longing for your half brother that answered the ferocity of his own.

Choosing to set the grim matters aside a moment, you wiped your eyes with the back of your wrist and folded Helaena's soft hands in yours once more. She had grown so much in your absence, and the knowing that you had left her behind pained every corner of your heart. You had been an elder sister to her since she was small, and you had never forgotten the sight of her weeping the day you fled the capital.

"And you? Are you well? Your children. I heard you had been blessed with children."

"Jaehaera. She thrives, thank the gods." Helaena's voice faltered. "But my son —"

"I was told. I am so terribly sorry."

"That is no fault of yours," she said quietly. "You need not carry it."

"Helaena, I —" But before you could pour out how terribly you had yearned to look on her again, the chamber door was shouldered open without so much as a knock, and an armored guard filled the frame.

"We were ordered to bring the captive before the council."

"You will not take her." Helaena rose at once and set herself before you, planting her body between you and the intruder. "She must rest. The maesters have said as much."

"Lord Ormund Hightower has come within the hour, and the small council is summoned. They will decide the fate of the traitor. These are the King's own orders."

"She is no traitor." Helaena lifted her chin, though you marked the faint quiver running through her shoulders. "She is my sister, she is wounded, and she requires rest. I am the Queen —"

You watched her hold herself tall against her own nature, straining to be the strongest thing in the room for your sake, and it moved you so deeply that your throat closed about the sight. You slid your hand into hers, then braced your uninjured arm against the mattress and pushed yourself upright. Helaena spun at once to catch and steady you.

"Helaena. It is alright. I shall go."

"Are you certain?" she asked, the worry drawing tight across her brow.

"You have grown so well, and I am prouder of you than I have words to say. But I must go." You tucked a loose strand of silver-gold hair back from her eyes and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek, and she returned it with a mournful smile. As your fingers slipped from hers, the guard closed the iron manacles about your wrists.

"You mustn't —" she began.

"Helaena. I will be fine." You held her gaze until she gave a small, unwilling nod and let your hands go at the last, and she stood there watching, grief carved plain across her face, as the guards turned you toward the door and led you out into the corridor beyond.

THE SMALL COUNCIL, THE RED KEEP. — AFTERNOON

The guard brought you down the corridor, and the iron at your wrists sang against the stone with every dragging step, the sound doubling and going hollow against the vaults overhead. You had lost the count of days since these halls had been yours, since the smell of them— cold ash and the slow rot of tapestries hung too long untended— had meant home. The tall doors of the council chamber groaned inward, and you were delivered into a room already turned your way, every face lifted, every voice stilled, the whole assembly seated about the long table with the patience of men who had waited an age for the sight of your ruin.

Alicent saw you first. She rose to her feet, the chair legs scraping backward, and she crossed the floor to you with her skirts still settling about her ankles.

"Unchain her, this instant." The command carried a mother's authority, and it suffered no delay. Her hands came to your face, quick and gentle both, cupping your jaw, turning it to the light, hunting for hurt, for fever, for any wound she might yet soothe.

The war had made enemies of the two of you, and still the tenderness had not died out of her. She had kept you as the younger sister the gods had denied her, and after your own mother went into the ground beneath the sept, you had folded yourself into Alicent's shadow and followed her.

"My Queen, you forget yourself." The voice came from behind her shoulder, honeyed and cultured, in no haste at all. "She is our enemy, and you would do well to remember it. She stood among those who bore arms most fiercely against your son's rightful claim."

The man who spoke wore velvet the green of pine boughs, his doublet panelled with supple leather that traced a chest and shoulders. Light brown curls lay ordered against a hard, defined jaw, and he sat his chair with the ease of a man who had never once doubted his welcome, spine straight, chin lifted. At his words the Queen Dowager's hands wavered, and by slow degrees she drew them from your cheeks.

"Step aside, Alicent, and take your seat," Otto Hightower said from the head of the table. "We have matters at hand."

Alicent gave you one downcast, shamed glance and withdrew to her chair, and you were left to look upon the chamber. They sat straight to a man, composed and correct, and near the middle of the assembly, at Otto's very elbow, you found the figure you had spent months refusing to name— the hand behind every letter that had crossed enemy lines to reach you. His single eye had fixed on you the moment you crossed the threshold, and it had not let you go since. Long hair, silver gold, lay combed against the hard planes of his face, and the leather patch sat where it always did, hiding what Luke had gifted him.

Then the absence struck you, and something cold and molten turned over in your belly.

"Where is he?" You lurched a stride forward. "What have you done with Viserys and Jace?" The guards moved to seize you, and one closed his gauntlet on your wounded arm, and a sharp cry came through your teeth as the pain flared white. Aemond marked it— the wince, the buckle of your knees.

"Leave her," he said, and the guards let go at once.

"Where is Aegon? Where are my nephews?"

"Jacaerys was reported slain," Otto answered, unruffled, "at the Battle of the Gullet. Shot down by archers of the Triarchy's ships." He rose as he spoke, his chair shrieking backward across the flags, and started his slow approach.

The horror came into you whole and cold, and your legs gave beneath the weight of it, and you sank to your knees upon the stone. The tears gathered slow at first, brimming, trembling, and then they broke and ran hot down your face. Something in the grief of it turned Alicent's face away entirely, for she could not look upon what her house had made of you. You had never wanted any part of it—not the war, not the fire, none of it. You had been a mild and yielding girl, near kin in temper to her own Helaena, dreaming of nothing but the weightless drift above the clouds on a dragon's back. And Alicent's own hand had forced the choosing on you, cleaving you between the sister of your blood and the sister you had found in her.

The council watched while you buried your face in your palms and wept in a way that split the air of the room. Alicent tore at the tender skin beside her nails and swallowed down the tears crowding her own throat, and even Aemond turned his face aside. As Otto closed the last of the distance, your grief hardened all at once into something with an edge, and your hand shot for the dagger at his belt, and you drew it free with a swiftness that startled even you. You drove him back against the table and set the blade to the pale flesh of his throat. His hair fanned across the polished wood beneath him, and both his palms came up in surrender.

"Where is Aegon?" you demanded.

The whole council seized. Some rose halfway from their seats, caught between sitting and standing; others gained their feet; and the guards held their distance with their hands curled at their sword hilts, every man of them still, lest any motion undo you.

"Where is Aegon? He will answer for what he has done, and you will answer for conspiring against my family and my sister."

"How brazen of you to set steel to a servant of the King" Otto grated.

"Aegon is no king. He is a thief in a crown, and you are the who engineered it."

"My brother has fled." Aemond's voice cut across the chamber for the first time. "I am king now."

"King?" The word tangled in your confusion, but your grip on the dagger did not move.

"Just so. His whereabouts elude us, and his intentions with them." His tone stayed easy, near to conversation.

You turned your eyes back to Otto, his hands still lifted in supplication. "Where is Viserys?" you pressed, and the edge kissed nearer to his pulse.

"Sagon sȳzorys, hāedar." Aemond had gone over to High Valyrian, be calm, sister, the old tongue sealing his words from every unlettered ear at the table. "Zirȳ lív’ethva, se zirȳ issa ünn’hárhmëdā. Mazilībagon ilagon se egros, lo ao would gaomagon zirȳla sīr. Kostan sagon hen gaomagon naejot ao." He lives, and he is unharmed. Set down the blade, if you would keep him so. I can be of use to you.

He rose from his chair by slow degrees, and every eye in the room left you to follow him. "Give me the dagger."

You shook your head at the mention of the nephew you had lost, and the tears gathered again, blurring the chamber to smears of green and torchlight.

"Y/N, kostilus." Please. He put out his hand, palm open and empty between you. "Bisa iksis daor qilōni iksā." This is not who you are.

With a reluctance that dragged at every muscle, you laid the blade into his waiting palm, and the whole terrible weight of the morning came down on you at once. You pitched backwards, and he caught you before you struck the floor, though not before he had set the dagger deliberately upon the table, well beyond your reach. You wept against his chest, and he stroked your hair with a patience that unsettled the watching lords.

Otto drew a long breath once you had freed him, and the Grand Maester rose to his side to look him over for hurt; he waved the man off with a curt nod, took up his dagger again, and returned to his chair. Across the room, Ormund Hightower settled back to watch with something near to boredom, his eyes wandering the walls.

"The council has resolved that you be imprisoned for your crimes," Otto began, smoothing his sleeve as though the last minutes had never come to pass. "Some among us urged the block instead, for your dragon set aflame a great many of our men."

"My crimes?" You lifted your head from Aemond's shoulder. "I sought only to restore the rightful heir to her throne, precisely as my father decreed." Your eyes went about the assembly, and not a lord among them found his tongue. "Do you imagine I wished to burn those people alive? Do you imagine I wished to be sundered between my own blood and the family that reared me? I was given no choice in it. I was made to watch everyone I loved perish. I was made to stand before one of the deadliest warborn dragons yet living and beg it to take me, that I might guard my family in a war I neither began nor wanted. A war that you crafted. I never craved a moment of this, and you know it! You, Lord Otto, and you above all, Alicent! And still it is my crime we speak of?"

The tears cut fresh channels down your cheeks as you spoke. Alicent bowed her head under the weight of her shame, and even Otto Hightower found his practiced eloquence gone from him. Silence threaded through the grief that filled the chamber, and Aemond drew you back against him and held you there.

A moment on, Otto took it up again, his voice gentled to something near to human. "The king has entreated us for your mercy. He would spare your life" he paused "were you to consent to be his queen."

At the words, Alicent watched Ormund, a devout servant of the Seven, shift in his seat and roll his eyes in open revulsion, for the marriage of siblings stood condemned by the holy texts, and he loathed the practice beyond all the many trespasses of the dragonlords he named, in the privacy of his own counsel, incestuous savage foreigners.

"Be my queen, and reign at my side," Aemond murmured against your hair, "exactly as we were always meant to."

You thrust yourself out of his arms, and for the briefest instant the hurt flickered across his one eye.

"I am your sister," you said, sharp with offense. At that, Ormund turned toward you, faintly surprised.

"Mm. I fail to see the obstacle," Aemond answered, laboring to gather his composure again, though the first thread of anger had begun to fray his measured tone.

"It is an abomination before the gods to do such a thing."

Ormund's head came fully round to you now, his eyes tracing your figure on the floor and the true revulsion written across your face.

"We are Valyrians," Aemond returned. "We do not bend the knee to their gods. Aegon the Conqueror united the Seven Kingdoms with his sister-wives at his side, and we shall do no less."

"You killed Luke—"

"Which, as I have told you a hundred times over, was a grievous accident."

"I would be forsaking my sister's claim to the throne."

"A woman has no place upon that throne."

"Then neither have I any place as your wife."

You saw it in his face before he said another word, the moment his patience reached its last measure. Yet he did not loose his temper, for he never let himself such an indulgence before you. He rose to his feet with a deliberate slowness and poise, and the warmth that had earlier filled his eye drained away entirely.

"Then I shall have no recourse but to take Helaena as my queen in your stead, and the council shall determine what becomes of Viserys."

Your eyes flew wide as the full shape of the words settled into you. Here was a snare laid with exquisite care, a threat sheathed in courtesy, and you knew it, and the whole council knew it. He knew you, knew the depth of your love for Helaena, knew how fiercely you guarded the innocent, how tenderly you held your nephew, and he had turned the very gentleness he prized in you into the instrument of your undoing.

"Guards, escort her to the barracks," Aemond said, serene once more.

Alicent came near out of her chair at the words, but your voice arrested her mid-motion, striking her through with shock and guilt in equal measure. Even Ormund leaned forward, wholly taken now

"I will do it."

Aemond turned his head a fraction toward you, and you watched the anger recede from him as a small, near-imperceptible smile of triumph settled on his mouth.

"I will marry you. I will take up arms beside the Greens. But you will spare Viserys. I will trade my own life for his, provided only that you return him safe and unharmed to my sister, and that Helaena remains free."

Alicent picked at her fingers without cease, warring against the guilt and sorrow that clenched about her chest, and Ormund, seated beside her, marked every twitch of it.

"Ñuha jorrāelagon, nyke ao shifang." My love, I knew you would come to understand. Aemond crossed to you, his hand outstretched, and you took it as he drew you to your feet.

"Convey my betrothed to her chambers. She has need of a great deal of rest." With his fingertips he brushed the damp, frayed strands from your cheek, then pressed a kiss to the crown of your head. Your hands curled to tight fists at your sides, and though the gesture escaped Aemond entirely, Ormund did not miss it, and found himself unexpectedly intrigued.

As you were led from the chamber, the council settled anew, and Aemond reclaimed his seat at its head.

"I propose the marriage be held upon the morrow," he announced, and every face at the table turned to him in bewilderment, every face save Ormund's, which wore its disgust behind only the thinnest veil.

"The morrow?" Otto repeated.

"It would be most imprudent to stage wedding festivities while your people bleed upon the field, your grace," Ormund said.

"This is precisely the hour for it. Turn their gaze. Give them the sight of Black and Green joined, and the hope of peace with it."

Ormund scoffed openly.

"We cannot yet be certain she is a trustworthy ally, let alone a queen worth the crowning," the Lord of Hightower returned.

"Lord Ormund speaks sense," Alicent put in. "A wedding at this juncture would be gravely ill-timed, above all with our resources running so thin."

"Perhaps a modest feast instead," Otto added, "a celebration of our present advantage. The Blacks have lost one of their most formidable riders, and their largest dragon has once more vanished from the reckoning. Cause enough for the pouring of wine."

Aemond watched the assembly incline their heads, one after another.

"Mm," he allowed through his lips, and he pushed himself from his chair and strode from the chamber without another word.

Ormund turned a knowing smile upon Otto Hightower, and with that the council drew to its close.

AEMOND'S CHAMBER AND THE GREAT HALL, RED KEEP. — EVENING

The guards brought you to Aemond's chambers, and none who watched thought it strange, for a prince who had wanted you across the long years of the war was not a man to trust a locked door and a stretch of corridor to keep you. They left you at the door and spoke no word, and the oaken door settled into its frame with a low and final groan. When you were alone, with no lord left to defy and no eyes left to mark you, you folded yourself down upon the coverlet, drew your knees close, and wept. The weeping ran its course until it thinned to a shallow breathing, and the breathing gave way to a sleep that took you under.

You woke to hands upon you and voices hushed against your ear. Lady's maids had come while you slept, and they roused you with the carefully. There was to be a banquet, they told you, held to honor your return to the green cause, and Aemond had made it known that he wished you seated among the gathered houses.

They drew a bath scented with rose oil and hot enough to redden the skin, and after they dressed you with the reverence of women handling a thing borrowed and dear. You abhorred it.The gown was Myrish silk the deep color of a forest at dusk, threaded with pale gold at the bodice, and at your throat they hung jewels that took the candlelight and cast it back in broken green. When they led you before the looking glass a stranger looked out at you, for the war had worn you down to boiled leather and riding velvet, to boots scuffed grey with ash and gloves stiffened by rein and buckle, and the highborn lady in the glass was one you had not worn in many seasons.

The feast was no feast at all. However beautiful you sat beneath the great iron chandeliers, however grandly Otto Hightower had named your return to the faith and the cause, you gathered naught for your trouble but appraising stares and the sidelong doubt of lords who had not forgotten which banners you had ridden beneath a fortnight past.

The Great Hall stank of spilled Arbor gold and roasted boar fat, of wax guttering low and the sour press of too many bodies beneath cold stone, and the noise of it beat at you from every side, the chatter and the clatter of trenchers and a lute that struggled to be heard above them. Aemond did not once leave your side. His hand lay at the small of your back, or laced through your fingers, or lifted to press his mouth against your knuckles, and each of these you suffered stiffly, and your unease did not escape the notice of a certain Lord seated further down the board.

"You have changed," you murmured, leaning toward him where the two of you sat at the high table above the murmuring houses.

"I am a man grown now," Aemond said, and lifted your hand again to graze his lips across your fingers, "and one whose heart belongs to you and to no other." You would not give him your eyes.

"You will see Viserys returned to my sister. She has lost two sons and a sister both. She will not survive the loss of a third."

"Of course, my love. You have my word upon it." He bent nearer, his single violet eye dropping to the bare nape of your neck, and set his mouth against the skin there, and you drew back before he could taste it. Your gaze lifted instead and struck upon the Lord of the Hightower himself, who had been watching the pair of you, and chiefly you, with something bright and unhurried and faintly amused behind his face. You dropped your eyes to the rushes on the floor. Aemond felt the small retreat of you and went still, then straightened and took up his composed seat once more, and said naught.

You let your gaze wander the length of the hall and found Helaena among the throng.

"Aemond."

He turned at the sound of his name.

"Might I have your leave to go to Helaena?"

His eye followed the line of yours to his sister, who stood near a tapestried column not far off. He nodded and did not speak, nursing yet the small mortification of your rebuff. As you rose he caught you by the arm and set his lips close against your ear.

"Do not be long."

You pressed a swift kiss to his cheek, and he hummed low in his throat and let you go, though his eye tracked you across the floor even as the lords beside him bent to claim his ear.

He did not mark that Ormund, a goblet of Dornish red cradled in his hand, had also watched you the whole of the evening. Nor did he mark the Lord rising from his place and slipping, unhurried, from the table.

"Helaena." You came to her quickly, and when she saw you her face opened into a smile of such plain warmth that the tightness in your chest loosened for the first time in days.

"I trust you are well, sister," she asked, her voice soft, and you nodded.

The two of you fell into the easy rhythm of women mending stolen years between them, and it was the first true pleasure you had let yourself since your arrival within these walls.

"He has a tenderness for you, you know," Helaena said, her eyes drifting toward her brother across the crowded floor. "He treats no other living soul the way he treats you. Not even Mother. I have never once seen him care for anyone so fiercely."

You looked down. "I find it hard to forgive him what he has done."

"He meant to fly to you. When your grief was deepest he wished to go. Grandsire named it reckless folly and forbade him."

"And yet he did what he did all the same. And more," you said, turning from the wound of it. "He sits upon my sister's throne. Rhaenyra has the truer claim."

"Mayhaps," Helaena offered gently, "you might yet change his mind."

"My Queen. My Princess." A voice unfurled into the space between you, and you both turned to its owner. "I hope I do not intrude upon your evening."

You looked to Helaena, uncertain who the man might be, though you had marked him once, seated at Alicent's side in the council chamber.

"Lord Ormund Hightower," Helaena said, and dipped into a courteous bow, and you did the same.

He was a tall man, broad through the shoulders in a way his fitted doublet of deep green velvet and leather did nothing to hide, and perhaps seven-and-twenty years of age. His eyes were fawn colored, and they held a steadiness that unsettled more than any glare. He wore the fading brown of a man long under an Oldtown sun, and there was an unhurried economy in the way he moved. He turned the whole of those eyes upon you.

"Would you grant me a dance, Princess?" He put out his palm a charming smile in place.

Only then did you hear that the music in the hall had turned, the lute now joined by a soft-throated fiddle to carry a slow measure. You looked to Helaena, and she gave you a small nod, and so you laid your hand into his, larger than yours, and warmer.

"My lord, I fear I cannot give you a proper dance," you confessed as he led you toward the floor. "I was wounded during the—"

"I was told," he broke in smoothly, the smile never leaving his mouth. "It shall not trouble me at all."

You nodded. The injury made an awkward negotiation of your limbs. Both his hands came to rest at your waist, one of yours upon the breadth of his shoulder, and the injured arm settled against his forearm as he swayed you, slow, through the measure. You stole a glance toward Aemond and saw both hands close hard about the arm of his chair, the knuckles gone bone-white beneath the skin, though his face held a perfect stillness. You swallowed, the motion plain at your throat, before a well-pleased Ormund drew back your eyes.

"You are unlike the others," he said.

"My lord?"

"The Targaryens."

"Ah." A rueful smile touched your lips. "When my mother passed, Lord Otto and Qeen Dowager Alicent took me into their keeping. I spent the greater part of my girlhood at her side, kneeling with her at the sept, reciting the Seven-Pointed Star until I knew the verses in my sleep." You lowered your eyes, warmth climbing your cheeks, and the old memories rose sweet and unbidden, and a soft nostalgia settled over your face that Ormund did not miss.

"At one time I dreamed of taking vows as a septa," you said, and lightly laughed at the absurdity.

You looked for him to laugh with you, but when you raised your head he watched you still with that same smile, though something behind his eyes had turned into a shape you could not name. You let the silence take command of the talk. Under the weight of his eyes the heat rose again to your face, and you fought to master it, though he gave you no gesture to ease it. He let several long turns of the measure pass before he spoke again.

"Do you believe them to keep their word?"

You lifted your gaze to his.

"Yes. Aemond has sworn to release Viserys."

"So readily as that?" His brows arched a fraction. "The very folk who spent long years plotting the ruin of your house?"

"What is it you reach toward, My lord?"

"Mayhaps I can assisst you."

You looked at him in confusion, and he held that assured, proprietary smile.

"If you would see your nephew truly kept safe," he went on, "will you take what I offer?"

"And why should a Hightower trouble himself to help me? Am I not the one this whole banquet was set to question?"

"Because I see promise in you. You have your flaws yet, under the proper guidance—" He lifted one hand from your waist and, with two fingers beneath your chin, tilted your face up toward his own. Your heart struck hard against your ribs, and he seemed to feel the very tremor of it, for the smile widened a fraction and he leaned nearer. Your knees gave beneath you, and he caught you before you fell, one strong arm sweeping around your back to draw you flush against the warmth of his chest.

"M-my lor—"

"Lord Ormund." The voice that cut the moment was calm and cold. You turned and found Aemond standing near, his single eye fixed upon the man who held you yet against him. There was violence promised in the look, and Ormund appeared not the least bit cowed by it.

"Your Grace," Ormund said, and laughed, and let you go by degrees, his eyes lingering only long enough to see you had found your feet. Aemond put out a hand toward you, his eye never once leaving the Hightower. You took it swiftly, for the years at his side had taught you every register of him, and you knew the particular quiet that meant he stood one breath from breaking, however smooth the surface.

At the last, with a slow roll of his eye, Aemond turned to you and pressed his lips to the back of your hand. "It has been a long evening. Shall we withdraw to our chambers, beloved?"

"Yes, Your Grace." You nodded, and he drew you back into the shelter of his arm.

" Lord Ormund, If you will excuse me and my betrothed, we mean to retire," Aemond said, and turned to lead you off. But Ormund's voice halted him.

"If I am not mistaken, Your Grace, the two of you have yet to wed."

"I fail to see the purpose of your words."

"It is a sin before the gods to share a chamber before the marriage is made."

"I do not think it falls within any lord's province to concern himself with what his King and his future Queen do behind their own doors." The annoyance ran sharp beneath your half-brother's measured tone.

"Of course. Forgive my presumption." Ormund's voice never changed, light and genial to the last.

Aemond led you away across the hall, and as you went you cast one final glance back toward the Lord of the Hightower, who dipped his head toward you in a slow and deliberate courtesy, that smile fixed flawless upon his mouth, his irises following you the whole of the way to the door.

AEMOND'S CHAMBERS, RED KEEP. — EVENING

The moment the two of you passed beneath the lintel, the distance between you widened without a word spoken, each of you drawing off toward opposite corners to shed the heavy trappings of the feast.

Your fingers worried at the laces along your ribs. You had turned your spine deliberately toward him, yet you felt the weight of his one eye upon the bared line of your shoulders all the same, marking the descent of the cloth, the curve of your back, the pooling of silk at your feet.

Upon the coverlet lay a nightshift of Lyseni silk, a translucent veil of pale fabric in the candlelight. You drew it over your head, and the stuff clung close, offering no modesty, only a shimmering suggestion of the body beneath, too insubstantial for your comfort. It was then that his warmth came up at your back, unbidden and unhurried.

When you turned to face him, Aemond caged your waist within his arms and drew you flush against him, his scarred face bending down until his breath moved against your cheek.

"We are not yet wed, Aemond. This is not right."

"No," he allowed, and there was no repentance in it, the word coming rasp and stripped of his customary poise. "Yet I struggle to restrain myself when you stand within my reach." He tightened his hold until the crest of your breasts pressed to the hard muscle of his chest, and the heat of him bled through the thin silk.

He reached up and unfastened the leather patch and let it fall to the floorboards. The sight of the scar beneath drew your hand upward before you had thought to lift it, and you traced its contours with the lightest touch of your fingers. His eyelid sank shut. He held still under your hand, drinking in the sensation.

"You once loved sapphires," he murmured, low and rough. "You always claimed the stone brought me back to your mind."

"Does it still hurt?" you asked, your voice scarce more than a breath. He shook his head, slow, and you let your hand fall away, and his eye opened once more and fixed upon you.

"I wrote to you," he confessed. He leaned closer, until his brow rested against your own, his fingers drawing idle circles at the small of your back until gooseflesh rose beneath them.

"You stood with the usurpers."

"I stood with my brother."

"You killed Luke."

"I am sorry." The word broke somewhere in his throat. "I am truly and wholly sorry. I never meant it, never wished to wound you. I would have given anything for a different end."

"Aemond." The truth in it undid something you had guarded long, and the whole weight of the years came down upon you at once— the war, the dead, the seasons apart— and he heard the fracture in your voice, the small tremor that betrayed you.

"Shhh." He raised your chin upon the crook of a finger. "You told me once, sister, that all good things come to those who wait." His finger traveled down the curve of your jaw, his gaze following after until it settled upon the parting of your lips. "And I have waited for you a long while."

He closed the space and set his mouth to yours. Your body yielded, whether from weariness, or the hollow grief that had scoured you empty, or the plain truth that surrender asked less of you than defiance while you stood so wholly unmade, stripped of your nephews and held within the walls of your enemies. He hummed against your mouth, well pleased.

Then one hand loosed its hold and dragged down the length of your arm, and both palms coasted low to settle upon the flare of your hips and hold them fast. His warmth came through the thin silk, and he worked his mouth against yours with mounting insistence, until you felt him gone rigid against your belly, and you shoved him back.

"This is wrong, Aemond. I cannot—"

"Shhh, let go, my love." He gentled the words with a maddening tenderness. "Let me care for you. Let me love you." He bent again to take your mouth, harsher now, forcing past the seam of your lips, and when you tried to voice your protest only a thin whimper came free. He groaned at the sound, low and pleased. Your eyes clenched shut, and your hands, useless at your sides, seized the forearms that pinned your hips.

The chamber door swung inward with neither knock nor warning. You tore yourself from Aemond's grasp and met the startled stare of Alicent, who cast her eyes swiftly to the floor as an old shame gathered upon her face.

"Aemond, I must speak with you."

"Speak, then, Mother," he answered, his hands finding your waist again and pulling you back against him, his eye lingering upon you without shame and full of hunger.

"In private."

"I have no wish to lose further hours from my betrothed." He tipped his head toward you.

"Go, Aemond. I will wait.."

You leaned toward him in reluctance and pressed your lips to his, and he returned it at once with a fervor beyond your own, while Alicent, unable to bear the strain plain upon your face, kept her gaze fixed upon the dark windows. When at last he drew back, a contented curve shaped his mouth.

"Mmm. I shall not be long, my love," he murmured.

You gave a small nod. He loosed his hold by slow degrees and went out at his mother's side, granting you one last glance across his shoulder as the door swung shut behind him.

The instant the latch settled, you crossed the room on silent feet and set your ear to the grain of the wood, straining after the fading tread of their steps. You waited through several heartbeats, then began a frantic search of the chamber for a cloak, though nothing of the sort presented itself among the furnishings.

Beyond another door the conversation unfolded. "Why have you summoned me?" Aemond demanded, an edge of vexation in it. "Lord Ormund has put a proposition before me."

Within the chamber, you abandoned your fruitless search the moment you grasped that this was your one chance to seek out Viserys. You slipped through the door and out into the passage, and regret took you almost at once as the cold knifed through the thin silk that clung to you, yet you would not permit yourself to turn back. The thought of your young nephew left alone in some forgotten cell drove you onward against every protest of your shivering flesh.

"What further concession does the man require?" The very name curdled his temper. "He does not trust the presence of a black behind our walls." "She has declared her allegiance before the council and before the assembled houses of the realm," Aemond returned, his eye rolling toward the vaulted ceiling. "Her elder sister is Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Daemon is her uncle besides. The moment they learn she yet lives, they will come down upon King's Landing astride thier new dragons, and we will have no answer to give them." "Vermithor has not been sighted." "And when the beast comes back to its rider, will she hold true to us? We butchered her nephews. We drove her to open war. We cast her people from the walls of their own keep. Do you imagine she will take up our cause with a glad heart? She is soft of temper and mild of manner, aye, but the girl is no fool."

Your eyes swept the corridor in every direction, sharpened by fear to catch the least movement, until the tread of paired footfalls, the chime of armor, and the low rumble of men's voices rang against the stones ahead, a single torch flickering into view at the far end of the hall.

A vexed breath escaped Aemond. "There is word as well that Rhaena was seen in the company of Sheepstealer. Tessarion and Vhagar alone cannot hope to stand against the whole strength of Rhaenyra's dragons, and Lord Ormund has no stomach for a war his own allies will not fully commit to. He requires assurance." "And how does he mean to secure it?"

Panic sent you down an unfamiliar passage, your bare feet slapping against frigid flagstones slick with the damp of the deep foundations. You ran headlong until you struck something firm— not hard enough to bruise, yet solid enough to knock the breath from you and set you down upon your backside. The figure lifted the small lantern he carried, and the wavering flame drew the green-dyed leather and dark velvet of his doublet out of the gloom.

"He wishes to guide her, as he guided my brother Gwayne, who grew to be a knight of great honor and fought without wavering for the Greens. As he shaped Daeron, who would lay down his own life for us without a moment's pause, young as he is." "He wishes to take my betrothed from me." "Only for a season. Let her go with him. He has given his word to make of her a lady worthy of the Greens— dependable, above all suspicion.

An eye considered you from above, arrogant and heavy-lidded, bright with amusement.

"And where might the lady be fleeing at so unseemly an hour, dressed in such" his gaze traveled slow down your figure as he crouched low before you "ungodly coverings."

Lord Ormund swung the lantern idle between two fingers and extended a gloved hand down toward your trembling form.

"He has promised to fashion her into a fit and proper wife."

"Lord Ormund." you whisper.

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