#dragonshow

“Do the gods light this fire in our minds? Or does each man’s dreadful desire become his god?”

— Vergil, Aeneid IX.184-185

8.

„It’s such a long fall” Helaena says to him on the morning he turns nine and ten. „Do not fly too high.”

Aemond has been flying Vhagar for at least five years and not once have they flied low. A man like Aegon would have laughed at her while a man like Otto would have pretended to listen but let the words go.

A man like -

But he is neither. So he humours her, turning his head from the light of the window so she might see his untouched side, his right side.

„Why?”

„Gaomagon daor sōvegon tolī eglie” Helaena repeats in Valyrian, words soft and flat. No emotions. Some late autumn light escapes into the room, onto her face, cobwebbing her paleness so that she is both light and dark; a contradiction.

There is no catching her, defining her – even her gaze is fixed on a point next to his head, escaping. Sometimes, when he is flying or dreaming, Aemond imagines cradling his sister’s head in his hands very tenderly and looking into her eyes properly, so that he might see what she sees – some unbearable beyond that one couldn’t name without incoherency. A madness of the mind, an old maester once called it. Aemond wanted to cut his tongue out. He doesn’t quite remember whether he did.

„I cannot promise that” he finally says, his smile a sharp thing. „But thank you for the warning.”

That is when she steps closer and Aemond goes rigid, as one would on the training grounds or a battle. Why this fear, he thinks suddenly, almost laughing at his fright. It’s only Helaena.

Having stepped close to the window, her face is all sun, blinding. It hurts to look at her, even with one eye open.

„It is no warning” she says, and for a bare moment, she looks at him. „Happy nameday, brother.”

She doesn’t kiss his cheek. In a strange, inexplicable way, he is very grateful.

2.

If one catches a wintermoth in a jar without holes, the insect will most likely suffocate in six hours. The moth, ethereal being as it, does not protest, it accepts its fate and waits. Its suffering is at first inaudible – the same way its body would become (is becoming? has long become?) immortal, trapped in amber and the encompassing jar around it. A trap. A world.

When Helaena was fourteen, she asked her mother why humans would not endure as much.

„Humans aren’t insects, sweetest.” she said, somehow sad, not looking at her. It was striking, how tired her mother could be and not show an ounce of it to the outside. People must see us, be us, she overheard her saying it to Aemon once, even when we’re not.

Helaena cannot be what she isn’t. In the mornings, she barely knows how to be herself. She couldn’t draw her own face, even (especially) if ordered. She senses how her mother is afraid of her or for her – at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. They keep her time in court minimal, afraid some would call her simple.

„Well, she is simple” Aegon replies at the table when Otto explains why the boys have to attend the knighting ceremony and Helaena may stay in her room.

„She isn’t.” her mother says with a finality promising something brutal if poked further.

„What matters is what she seems” Otto adds, much, it seems, to Alicent’s dismay. They are sitting next to each other, her grandsire and mother. So often nowadays. So much green, Helaena thinks, green, greed, agreed. „Not what she is.”

It’s like she isn’t there. Like a grasshopper in the grass. Green on green. She snickers to herself, suddenly light.

Alicent’s mouth turns downwards before Aegon can even think of rolling his eyes.

„Eat your breakfast and get ready. Quickly.”

Aemond throws his spoon at him when Otto doesn’t look at them.

„You are the simple one, you twat” she hears him whisper angrily.

It will always be like this.

7.

He gives her an empty bee nest as a wedding gift.

„For luck.” he says coldly.

In exchange, she tears the necklace from her dress and gives him her the pieces of sapphire.

„For pride.” she answes, happily.

Next to her, Aegon, mouth open, ogles the pair of them like a fish.

Worst, in the far corner, Otto watches them like a hawk.

5.

There is no denying it: the scar is unseemly. Horrid, if one would quote her mother. Most of the time, he tries not to heed it, not to dwell on it – his anger is tangible enough, he doesn’t need to cry over that is now the past. It happened. He paid the price, a fair one. But the first time he rejoins court after a long, long time (and they sure took their fucking time, Ser Cole even took him and Aegon for a tournament in Redfort just to stall and stall)  –

Some whisper. Some turn away. Some point. He is pretty sure he can see some of the Lannister girls gagging, too. They all whisper. The eyepatch doesn’t seem to help, well, for one because the reddened lines of the rest of the scar left an imprint, a sign – and well, two: the eyepatch begets imagination. How monstrous could it look that it has to be covered?

In court, Aemond bits the inside of his cheek till its bloody. He is very proud of the fact that he shows nothing. He only wishes he would feel the same way.

The commotion today is about some minor lords’ dispute of a hereditary issue. He couldn’t care less. His grandfather is residing at the throne today, standing instead of sitting. And though he doesn’t look their way (Aegon is talking to a said Lannister girl), Aemond knows he will ask them to retell the issue in the evening. A toll. A test.

And when the hearings are finally, finally over, he is the first to go, not quite running, but definitely leaving in haste until he reaches the first door he trusts.

„Fucking…”he says, already reaching for his eyepatch and throwing it to the far end of the room, uncaring what it hits. It is only a piece of cloth, after all. There is something in his remaining eye, but he dares not touch lest it is a tear. Foolish.

„You will feel no shame, only pride” singsongs a hoarse voice. Aemond hurls, quick and feeling foolish he didn’t care to check the corners.

It is incredible, how instinct overrides fear.

He ran into Helaena’s room.

„Gaomas ziry ōdrikagon?” she asks, not looking up from her sewing. Does it hurt?

She looks different than before, although, he thinks somehow bordering on fond, Helaena has  always been different.

„The scar?” he shakes his head, attempting a grin. „No.”

„Their faces.” she adds, and he feels his joyless smile turn to ashes and something bitter, like contempt.

He should lie. But Helaena’s feet are bare on her rich rug and she looks ethereal and soft, and when she looks up not quite seizing him up, not wanting to look him straight into his eyes, he finds he cannot.

„Yes” he says, feeling timid. He wants to hide his face.

Helaena fidgets and grasps at her neck, almost looking uncomfortable. But her voice remains solemn.

„Their faces are empty. Yours is full.”

It is sudden, the sinking of his heart. For there, there, there, on her neck, she is wearing a betrothal necklace, a heap of sapphires.

1.

There are three children by the sea. And many more yet. The clean stench of seeming and death and grief sits heavy in the air.

Helaena has been taken by a fit on the way to the isle and she hasn’t been able to shake herself of it, mumbling incessantly under the makeshift royal tent. The silver of her hair hides her crouching form.

Aemond pities her. Aemond admires her.

"I would perform my duty if mother had only betrothed us.” he says, but his words are washed out by the sea, crashed by the waves.

9.

A fortnight before the wedding of Aegon and Helaena, his grandfather asks Aemond to accompany him on a walk.

„I am an old man in need of company.” he smiles. „Help me out, will you?”

This is a farce. Otto Hightower does not need help. He is the one offering it but of course, with help comes the price, and with help comes the opportunities which overstep the thousands. He is never without a plan and he wouldn’t want to walk with him unless he means to give a lecture or a chance.

As he meets him in the rotunda of the garden, he is ready for both and hides his own intentions as well and deep as his knife on his heart and his hip.

„Aemond” his grandsire says, stepping with care and ease. „As you know, in two weeks, your siblings will gain an uppermost stature in court and in the lands around us. Their importance will be unwonted and it would do them no good if there was some strain between them.”

Lecture it is then. The fact makes him want to laugh in his face.

„Strain?” he asks, all polite, unblinking. „Not between Aegon and Helaena… that would be, of course, unthinkable.”

He can see how Otto honestly cannot tell if he is sarcastic or not. And if he cannot tell, he cannot call his bluff.

„I wish it remained so” he adds.

„So how can I be of service?” Aemond smiles and smiles and smiles. He smiles so wildly his teeth ache from it. „What can I do?”

„You must do nothing.” Otto states. „Helaena will wed Aegon and you will congratulate them. You will smile when they smile and nod when they dance and cheer when they kiss. And after we dined and we drank, you will help the other lords undress Helaena and see her off to her wedding bed without a single glare and a single sigh. Is that clear?”

Silence. The hush of the Weirwood tree’s leaves are the only sound in the night-face of the garden imitating the rush of blood in the empty caverns in his heart. Now it is empty, now it is full. Seems he’s been careless.

„Was it the sapphire?” he asks with a curious smile. The gem has long been in his eye, since he received it, sitting snug-smug in its place. A gift is also proof. He should have known.

„Is that clear?” Otto repeats, evading his questions.

„Of course” he breathes and thinks of his sister’s moth, sitting in the jar, helpless. „Always.”

Before he leaves him, his grandfather stops at the entrance, his figure as dark, as heavy as the bloodtree behind them. Remember: People must see us, be us –

„It was your giving of a gift.”

4.

„Why don’t you set it free?” asks her father when Helaena goes to his room of dreams with her cabinet of wonders. They rarely understand each other but when they do, it is on painless, sunny days, when the boys are far and the queen is away. And when they do, they do so absolutely.

She looks up to the king’s weakening finger aimed at her moth amber. His eyes must be closed yet again.

„It is already dead.” It was dead the moment I touched its wings, she thinks. Dead and she didn’t need to will it.

„Why did you trap it in a jar?” his voice is not unkind.

„It is safer inside.”

He laughs, coughs, laughs. Must be the incense.

„Whatever you mean?

„It might have died before its time. It would have vanished from the face of the earth. In the jar, it could die in peace, in its bound time. No rush.”

„What if it lived to be old?”

Helaena shakes her head, enjoying how the smoke flutters at the movement. All smoke, all fog. She feels like Dreamfyre.

„The maesters told me that no moth lives to be old.”

„There are exceptions, no?”

She looks at the curtains, the light, the carpet. Her eyes wonder on the tapestry with figures whirling into each other from all different directions, merging into one. She wishes to run her finger all throughout it. And she wishes, no, she wants -

„Growing old is not the problem” she says at last. There is a woman in the middle whose mouth is open. She seems to be in something more than pain, something bordering on divine. She is more than her body. Out of her body. No glass would hold her in her place. „Not being immortal is.”

6.

At first, he surpasses their mother. Then Ser Cole. Then Aegon. Aemond grows tall and lean and sinewy. His face sharpens, his voice deepens and stranger still, in Helaena’s mind-eye, his brother grows teeth everywhere. His one eye is ever-open, even when the other is ever-closed; his shoulders and smile both tense-taut, and animal ready to strike, waiting for an excuse to tear anything, everything.

She finds his moods mercurial and that his face changes with it, but the face he wears on the grounds and in the court and within the hall is not his, not really. It is a face on a face, a carefully crafted mask just for the others. He doesn’t let anyone in. He rarely lets her in. This saddens her deeply.

On a morning like this, she looks up at her jar of living and dead, and wonders. Wonders. Then moves.

„Princess, where do you think you are going?” Daella asks. Helaena knows for a fact she is her grandfather’s spy but she herself isn’t sure what she wishes to, but she cannot stand to stay in her room today, she must go, she must. Something great is about to happen.

„Training grounds” she says nonchalantly, standing, trying not to heed her vertigo, trying not to be dragged into the nigh-future, the neverwere. Leaving her hair half-done and covering her robes with a fur, she runs. Even with several layers, she feels nonexistent, like air to be breathed.

I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere.  

She giggles. Daella shouts - it’s but a background buzz.

At least she has shoes on. They are a bit large.

Outside, it is cold and hard, like the men in the mud before the spectators. When she appears, most of them bow (she has really been on her best behaviour these past few years). More surprising, some remain bowed. She finds that a bit stupid.

„Go on, go on” she says with a wave of her hand. „There is a fight down there.”

It is a magnificent sight. She knows (no, she feels) what is about to happen before it happens.

A dragon is about to devour a man.

Her brother is about to best Ser Cole for the first time.

He turns and twists, careful so as to avoid having the knight in his blind spot – Cole is stronger, but it seems to her that Aemond is much quicker, a knife rather than a man, and when the blade hits Cole’s shield, the weapon sings. She needn’t cover her ears. It is a beautiful sound.

Aemond jumps behind him and before Cole can retract or elbow him, it is over. The sword at his chin glints with a feral light, all even, all straight. Time seems to slow and for some reason, she desires nothing more than to walk down, take the blade from his larger than life hands, and peel his mask so that he and she could talk eye to eye, heart to heart, limb to limb, body on body.

„Princess” a squire shouts next to the people gathered outside, downside. She is dragged back in. Some kneel, not fearing the dirt of the mud. Then all kneel or bow – nevertheless, all hide their faces as if she was a constellation to behold, except for Aemond.

He looks straight at her.

Into her.

No warning.

10.

Hands will be joined soon, she knows.

There will be too many people, she knows.

There will be too much food eaten and too much wine drunk, she knows.

She knows all of this as they braid her hair and paint her lips and put her into a ridiculous dress full of gold and green and some black, but black is mostly forbidden, so she dares only imagining it. Keeps the thought of it close, like fire.

She thinks of her moth in the jar, silent and suffering. Barely surviving.

„Dearest” this is her mother, as she floats in and out of her vision, her clean smell overpowering the incense in her room they fashioned as a preparatory of some sort. So many candles. So small of a space. She feels as if she is in one of the smaller chambers in the grand sept. She feels like she is going to suffocate. I won’t burn if there is no air. More than knowledge. How do you call it?

Instinct.

„This need is an instinct.” she says to no one particular, aloud. Several servant girls exchange looks.

„Dearest” her mother touches the hem of her elaborate cuffs, tentative and almost sorry. „You must be brave. Can you do that for me?”

Can you do that for us?

She doesn’t quite trust herself to speak so she nods, just a little.

„You know how Aegon can be – just this evening, just this once, let it be. It will be over quickly.” she touches her chin. „I promise.”

„I promise” she repeats.

„Wait here.” her mother orders. „Say your prayers. I will send Ser Cole to fetch you when we are ready.”

This is a blur. Wait. Pray.

She turns and she is alone in her room which is not hers anymore. It is no ones. Everyones.

The window is slightly open, the sky is rose-colored, purple and orange – as if celebrating the day. The irony. The tragedy. She doesn’t want this. It’s inaudible.

She wants to fly higher than ever before.

Fly and fall.

There is a knock.

„Who is it?” she asks, touching an ornament in her hair as if she could defend herself with it. It might have a sting. Like a bee.

„It is I.”

It is done, she knows that too now. Her heart sinks.

„Aemond” she hums as he steps in, straight like an arrow but somehow strange. Wrong. He walks as if he was wounded. „Gaomas ziry ōdrikagon?”

Does it hurt?

He barks rather than laughs, a sharp, irate thing.

„Where does it hurt?” she asks again, gathering the length of her robe onto her hands and tiptoeing closer to him. So clumsy. So human.

„Mirre” he says and places his hands on his heart. His breath is warm and sweet – she can practically taste the wine on it. Or is it something stronger? He doesn’t look drunk; not when his eyes are so alert, not when his eyes are so –

„You will wish we were the ones dancing.” she says, suddenly.

And because Aemond never fails to humour her, he asks back.

„How do you know?”

„I saw” she says, all sincere, looking at his chest. „I see.”

There is a touch at her neck then, first soft, then commanding – the touch of Aemond forcing her to look up in his face which is so close that she can practically taste the heat in the dark apple of his eyes.

„Helaena” he sounds as if he is choking on his words out of all that want. It pulsates through his hands onto her neck. Breath to breath. Blood to blood. „How long of a fall?”

The grip on her neck is like a rope and she can feel the outline of his body, all feverish and hard around her chest and her lap.

„It will happen” she hums, touching his face on both sides. Aemond hisses when her thumb brushes the tail of his scar. „It is already happening.”

„Whose fall?” his hands wander then, almost reverent and she instantly knows he won’t tear this time. He will only push.

She reaches for the eyepatch, aware she is the only one who can do so carelessly. Could. Will be able to. Time is a shroud on her mind so she decided to focus on her body, this solid mess.

They sink onto the ground and when Aemond covers her body with his, she can feel his heart storming in its cage. A glassjar for her to see. Amber forever freezing time. Here. Here. Here. There is a rustling of clothes, then his hair falls like a curtain around them. This close, she can count the myriad of smaller scars on his face, see the knife-glint in between his teeth and see both his eyes as if he was whole.

„What do you see, Helaena?” he whispers and before she can answer, he is already filling her, and he gasps (or is it her sometimes she cannot tell) and her spine bends and their body merges and he is already moving, moving, moving, and she grabs his hair to pull and he swears and the heat is unbearable for both of them, they are like a flame, ablaze and finally he closes both his eyes and his mask breaks. She shifts her legs and hips to be wider and then she says;

„Both of us – falling down.”

„Please” Aemond pleads and she clasps her legs around his hips and he comes.

After the coronation, he finds Helaena in her old childhood room, by the window, looking out. Even from the door he stands at, he can see there is a strange strain in her neck, a curve that warns of a headache, her longtime companion since her early days. She had a habit shutting herself off completely when the pain became intolerable, gotten so good at it, in fact, that she mastered being mostly void to the happenings around her. It is a rarity, Aemond thinks, to be so consciously unaware in an environment where most people played chess with themselves and each other, ready to strive and strike at any given moment – ever aware what to do and what to pay to bring the other down. It is a trait he admires in Helaena. It is one of many.

„Aegon told me about your fight” she says suddenly, quietly, into the heart of the room, the silence. Aemond startles despite himself – he thought her in a trance. „Did he really spit on you?”

Helaena turns, her clothes rustling so softly, her body swaying so gently in the dim gold of the dusk. From any other, he would think an insult, but from his sister, this is a simple query. In the stern surrounding of the today and the now she is still someone soft, someone whose softness softens him as well, whenever he is near her.

This room is impossible in this city, in this castle; the air thick with unmitigated tenderness.

Prudently, he looks around, and up and down the corridor before he steps inside, uninvited, but then again, they need not invitation into each other’s lives, they neved did. They simply dwelled there, in each other. They have been, ever since he was born. He likes to think he knows her the most, the best of all. As much as one can truly know Helaena.

Her gaze is still fixed on him when he closes the space between them, slowly, surely – but before he can lift a finger to touch her (and burn, and burn, and burn), she evades him, stepping aside. In the middle of the room, and in between them lies a narrow refectory, dark and modest, where she used to keep all sorts of haberdashery: old coins, torn papers, drawings, buttons, butterfly wing collection from Braavos, sweets and a book on tales of old, worn and faded and so beloved.

It is empty now – stretching between the two of them, her on one side and him on the other – and when he steps to one side, she mirrors him, only it’s all inversed, the opposite.

Helaena’s eyes are always slightly more focused when there is only the two of them, alone. Now they are a shade darker too, dangerous, as if she was angry at him (as if she could be). Still, he stops dead in his track. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Waits. Prepares.

„He hid, didn’t he?” her voice is low as if she was telling a secret not preparing to accuse him. „He hid to flee and fled to hide – would have, could have.”

There is a pause. Length of a heartbeat. Aemond doesn’t deem to break it yet.

„The Stranger is in the house. It is wearing the crown.” she sniffs in the air. „It stinks of power. We will all reek of it soon.”

In the one, faithful moment the crown touched Aegon’s head, Helaena turned away, from it and to him, as if she could taste the sour outlines of bitter disappointment coming in waves off him. As if she could soothe the ache. As if she could see beyond what was happening. That is when she started to whisper, tilting her head towards his, her mouth hovering near the slope of his shoulders – like a willow to wind, like roots to water. It seems her monologue at the coronation didn’t reach its end with the ceremony.

Aemond takes a tentative step again but Helaena is alert, she is moving too.

„Hel” he says, not unkindly. He wishes there wasn’t an edge coloring his voice. „You think it didn’t cross my mind?”

„Cross?” she shakes her head, a waterfall of silvergold. „No, dance. Dancing till we gorge on it. Till it ends, and –”

She is hugging herself now, the night of her mind winning.

In the not so distant past, there were many times her head got so bad she writhed on the floor or heaved helplessly above her basin, temple feverish and body taut. No milk of the poppy would make the voices go away – and so often, ever since he knew himself, Helaena would pour out some half-said, all-meant, never-understood sea of words that didn’t quite fit, didn’t quite comfort – their depth both exceptional and haunting. More frightening still, was the moment of the after when a chronic sort of catatonia would possess her, and she fell into a silence one could only experience in the pinpoint seconds before Vhagar stood up and spread her wings.  

Such was the silence between them now. Heavy and foreign, like a new language. In this room, this light lit by the fire, her eyes are bright, her eyes are dark - an Essos-jewel. Even after their family dinner - where the king unmasked himself for all of them to see, and then he unmasked the others to make sure the ugliness would not stay hidden – he found her more pliable, able to speak their common tongue, not necessarily Valyrian, but the language only they could speak to one another, together.

„Mijegindita lēkia” she says kindly. His breath hitches – she isn’t angry. Poor brother. Helaena pities him. „Doesn’t know what he wants.”

An absolute truth should exist, but Helaena sees only a reflection, halved and hollowed as his eyes. There is a shadow clouding her mind and his now, hers from fright and his from jealousy.

"That is not true" he bites down on the bile coming up his throat. Rabid dog, that's what Aegon calls him of late, wanting it to hurt. But Aemond doesn’t care what Aegon thinks. The same isn’t true when it comes to Helaena.

„What we cannot have, we always crave” she says quietly.

"I said, it is not true."

"Isn't it?" she shots back, surprisingly quick. "What do you wish for?"

Wish... such a gentle word. No, Aemond doesn't wish for anything, nor does he want. It's not a simple craving, it is more like a need, a beast of its own.

„Is it not the throne you want then?” she tilts her head, examines her as if he was one of her beloved bugs, a species of its own. „The power, the adoration, the respect…”

Only the flames echo some whisper in the pause that follows. She is now waiting to land the killing blow, he knows this.

„The love?”

Her eyes are sad and worse, they are far, they look beyond again, through him, as if he was air and not here, as if she didn’t –

It is foolish to step sideways again, so Aemond decides to leap and jump over the refectory, right where she is. She is quick to recoil, like a spring-snake, but he catches her - he has always been there to catch her. On rare occasions, when they are away from court, far from King's Landing on some remote cliff, in a simple garden where everything smells like childhood and home - when the fury dries up in him, he imagines they are plain people with uncomplicated lives. One where he has both his eyes and she is not bound to another. But where is that life?

Helaena has the heart to laugh, but it is desperate and mocking, as he grabs her by the waist, and there is one hand on his neck and in his hair already, pulling, pulling, pulling.

That life is not here. It never was.

"Umbagon, mandia!" he snarls, commanding her to stay still, something feral entering his heart. A queen, the queen of the seven kingdoms, under him with eyes that outshine all, shine only for him. He was the first to be made to kneel when they placed the crown on her head and placed her above all. Little did their mother and their grandfather and even that idiot Aegon know that Aemond has long knelt before her, in the closed spaces of her room or his; in the places where they spoke only through moans and sighs, the telltale beatings of their hearts. The places where only bodies may speak.

Helaena is pulling his hair back now, her hand small and sure, and she makes a movement where it is unclear whether she wants to pull him in or push him out. The sensation of her fingers and the thought of this makes his tongue curl back in his mouth, his blood suddenly hot and heavy. Her face is so very close. Focused in its fight.

He manages to catch her other hand, the one that was crawling on his neck, stretches her palm, and with one, long lap, licks the slope of it.

She whimpers, returning to here and now. The need, the hunger. He can see it in the blackest pitch of her eyes, the sudden slacking slope of her brows.

"Hel" he murmurs gently now, looking down. She has tipped his head back with her hand, so he can see a slanted side of her, a mirage. He can see her eyes, darkened by desire; and her palm, wet from his spit. If he could, he would eat her up. "I need more. You know this. I need it."

There are mere inches between their faces. Up this close, he believes Helaena also wants, Helaena also needs -

"Aemond" she always says his name so uniquely, like a blooming secret. Shuddering, he realizes she knew him by his name before it was given to him. "Brother, how pale you are." She rubs her wet palm on his cheek, slowly, like she wants to memorize. "You look like nobody on this earth."

At last, a permission. And the kiss he gives her is searing, the kind that leaves a mark, that will hurt in the morning.

„Where is he?” he asks, meaning Aegon, meaning Otto, but he cannot quite care, not when he is already lowering her down, body spread, hair spilled – near the fire which they both like to dwell. His breath is laboured, he feels as if he is fighting for his life. Perhaps, in some way, he is.

Helaena, on the other hand, is calmness personified. Absentmindedly, she touches his hair, brings strands of it to her mouth and kisses them.

„They will never come back the same way” she answers between the brushes. „Would you care if Aegon saw us?”

„Please, don’t say his name here.”

She stops.

„Would you care?” her eyes are so clear now, so sharp. He can almost see himself in them.

Aemond has been half-erect since he stepped in her room, and his state has only gotten worse since she got her hands on him. It is such a surprise, he thinks as he lowers onto her body, into its soft form, its heat - kissing Helaena feels like the most natural thing in his life, and yet even after years of melting into her heat is not enough, never enough.

„Hm” he cups her left breast through her sapphire dress, while working his other arm through the layers of her skirt. He prepares to answer her something clever and coherent, just to make her laugh, but his breath hitches when he his fingers finally find her core.

She is soaking wet.

„Gods” he says, but maybe it is her, or he is just thinking it, because he is already inside, three of his fingers sliding so easily his mouth waters. Helaena’s spine goes rigid, as if she was in her trance, as if she was taken, her breath hitching.

„You haven’t answered me” she says in between two sighs, reaching for his breeches, an instict.

„What?” his mind feels empty, his body light. He wouldn’t care if their mother turned up from behind the fireplace with the high septon at her heels.

He’s so hard it aches.

„Would you care?”

She has taken him into her hands and his vision falters a bit at the sensation – he thinks she hears her giggle, a heavenly sound.

„Gods” he hisses again, closing his one remaining eye. She is working him already, and he is impatient, always been, but that doesn’t mean –

„Aemond” her voice is everywhere. He likes to imagine her as some sort of winged animal, her body folding like ten-thousand wings around him. „Answer me.” He hums, but cannot speak, his body numb. Far off, as if from another world, he feels her hand driving into his hair, and his own hips bucking against her palm, powerless.

"Stop” he groans. Forces his eye to open and tears his eyepatch with the other, sapphire on sapphire. From the sheer force of his grip, her dress has twisted up in what seem like smaller knots. „Not like this.”

„Do you need something else?”

And her mouth actually twitches, (oh, she might be about to smirk now, he thinks, equally proud and shocked at her bravado) but there is no time or room to answer, not for real. He turns her around, pushing her down hard against the wooden floor as he sinks inside of her. She is moaning, smile gone, and her muscles flutter around him, and he is moaning too as a reply, burying his face into her silver hair and her golden smell.

She gasps as he settles all of himself, mewling softly.

"I should have done this at the coronation" he says, drawing himself out slowly. It’s a miracle he is sentient enough to talk, but suddenly the words spill out – a confession. "While they burnt father and Aegon kneeled. I wanted to take you then and there, right after the dragon breathed at us and we could see fate so close. Did that cross your mind, my love?”

She whimpers when he speeds his pace. Helaena feels feverish wrapped against him, inside and out, and she is so tight that he grits his teeth to keep from coming before he finishes talking.

But instead, she talks, voice low, voice hoarse.

"You always cross my mind. You are always inside.”

As a reward, his hips slam hard against hers, and she weeps, pain mixed with pleasure.

She turns to speak again but he winds his hand in her hair, mirroring her actions before, pulling it back as he fucks her. Their movements are messy now, uncoordinated as they near release. He wants to say her name, but thinks it only – before leaning down completely and biting her shoulder hard – and she whines, and she tightens and she clenches; and he is gone. He comes with a shout on his lips and his hands on her plum hips.

In the aftermath of coupling, it’s always so vulnerable, so clear. Aemond even lets his eye close in these moments, and he knows Helaena will sleep soon, her mind at peace when his head rests on her chest. Between them, there is no childhood room to hide your face or cover the strange, unsavory part of the truth.

No absolute truth exists.  

Some separate, unknown ones live on though, hidden in the cavities of such moments, rearing their hollow, hushed heads.

A truth: who Helaena lies with at night.