🪻i’d choose you, even without the dragon

The familiar bustle of the city begins to take over as soon as you reach its outskirts: merchants pull their wagons aside at the first sight of Hightower banners cresting the hills, mothers gather their children away from the roadside, and men bow their heads in polite deference as mounted knights pass in orderly columns, white towers embroidered upon deep green snapping lazily in the wind. 

No one moves to flee or cry out in warning—the smallfolk have quickly adjusted to the growing tensions of war, have learned to recognize an army as it arrives, even without haste or celebration. 

You ride near the front beside Daeron, where a prince ought to be seen—something he’ll grow used to with time, though he has changed considerably from the little boy you’d escorted from King’s Landing all those years ago. The softness of childhood has grown into long limbs and broadening shoulders, his face still unmistakably Alicent’s. 

Oldtown has polished him in quiet ways, you’d made that much certain. He sits his horse as easily as his dragon now and speaks only when he has something worth saying, carrying himself with the effortless courtesy that seems bred into the stones of the great beacon of Oldtown itself. 

He’s no longer a child. 

That realization still catches you off guard, even after all the time you’ve spent beside him. 

Somewhere overhead comes the distant cry of Tessarion, shrill and sharp. You cannot see her yet through the scattered clouds, but every so often sunlight catches the sweep of cobalt wings overhead before she disappears again, circling lazily above the marching host. 

Daeron follows your gaze for only a moment, smiling to himself before looking to the road again. 

“She’s growing impatient.”

“She has good reason to after so much time spent traveling,” you answer, adjusting your grip on the leather reins in your hand. “I imagine her rider shares the sentiment.”

His laugh is quiet, but it’s answer enough. 

There’s always been some comfort in how easily conversation comes with him—before leaving court, you’d almost forgotten that a royal child could laugh without looking over their shoulder first. 

For a while, the only sounds are hooves striking packed earth, the steady creak of wagons somewhere farther back within Ormund’s column, and the distant calls of outriders moving between ranks. Ahead, the city proper begins to rise from the haze as buildings press more closely together, knitting into winding streets and crowded alleyways. 

Beyond them, the towers of the Red Keep climb above the landscape like fingers reaching toward the sky. 

Home, you think automatically, even as your heart aches at the unfamiliarity of it all. 

The note that Alicent’s raven had brought a few days earlier rests tucked safely inside your saddlebag, though by now you’ve memorized every line. 

Aegon is gone, Larys Strong with him. Aemond rules now in his brother’s stead. 

You had read it once in disbelief the moment it had arrived when you’d stopped to make camp, then again by lamplight after supper, again the following morning, and once more before departing. Perhaps a part of you believed that the repetition alone might coax some different meaning from the ink, but it never had. 

Days spent riding have done little to quiet your imagination. If anything, the silence and the endless beating of hooves have fed it. 

You find yourself remembering Aemond as the little boy who had once preferred the palace libraries to the training yards whenever he thought no one was watching, who insisted on sitting impossibly straight even while reading—as though slouching might somehow diminish him. He had always been solemn and studious, serious beyond his years, forever trying to convince the world that he needed nothing from anyone. 

After the harrowing events at Driftmark, you remember how he’d reached for you the first time the maester had come to change his bandages, how you’d smoothed his hair back from his brow. He had gone strangely still beneath the touch and had watched you all the while with his remaining eye. You remember, too, finding him alone a few days later, not quite crying; his jaw had been clenched so tightly that you wondered whether his teeth might crack beneath the strain. 

“I am fine,” he had insisted before you’d spoken a single word. Hardly ten years old and already, he had mistaken endurance for strength. 

Beside you, Daeron breaks the silence, making you jolt slightly against the saddle. 

“Do you think mother has changed much?” You glance toward him but he keeps his attention ahead, though uncertainty lingers in his voice as he continues. “It’s been such a long time, I just—I wonder…”

“I imagine she’ll be quite shocked with how tall you’ve grown,” you say, smiling easily at the thought of your beloved sister, at having her close once more. 

A beat passes between the two of you. A bird calls out, probably a gull from the bay. Your horse snorts. 

For a fleeting moment, all of this feels impossibly easy. 

“And… and Aemond?” he says quietly, giving voice to the question both of you have been circling since Alicent’s letter reached you. “Do you think he’ll be glad to see us?”

You hold his gaze only briefly before looking back toward the city, back toward those impossibly high towers as you try to picture him somewhere inside—a man you no longer know. 

“He’ll be glad of Tessarion,” you say at last, feeling Daeron’s gaze as it lingers on you. He knows well enough not to challenge your answer, and you know he’s smart enough to pick up on everything you choose not to say. 

Sighing, you shift slightly atop your horse, trying to ignore the way your pulse kicks up as you draw closer to the castle gates. In a bid to keep your thoughts from spiraling further, you attempt to focus on the city—on crowded market stalls and fishermen unloading the morning’s catch, on the bells of the Sept ringing as they signal the time, on the sails of distant ships bobbing in the Blackwater. 

Still, you cannot help but notice that there are more Gold Cloaks than you remember, more guards posted atop the battlements, and more eyes lifting instinctively toward the sky as Tessarion’s shadow passes overhead. 

The gates open, the sound carrying across the yard as heavy timbers groan against ancient hinges. 

I am home, you think again, though the word fits no better than it did the first time. 

Stablehands hurry forward to take reins from weary riders, servants weave between carts laden with supplies from Oldtown, and somewhere across the inner courtyard a steward begins directing men toward quarters prepared days before your arrival. The Hightower banners that had fluttered so proudly along the road are lowered one by one, no longer needed now that you’ve reached your destination. 

You’ve scarcely swung yourself down from your horse before familiar voices begin calling Daeron’s name. Guards who had only known him as a small boy bid him welcome with respectful bows, various attendants offer polite curtsies, and it strikes you then just how long he’s been gone. 

Just then, a movement at the top of the stone steps draws your eye—Alicent. For one impossible heartbeat, you see her as the dutiful older sister you had left behind years ago, looking as she always had. 

Then reality catches up. 

Time has been no kinder to her than it is to anyone else, but it seems to have landed differently upon your sister. She is still beautiful in the same ways she always was—wide eyes, shining coppery hair, a warm smile—though grief has carved itself into the corners of her mouth and left shadows beneath her eyes. Green remains her color, as ever, yet even that familiar emerald shade seems muted against the invisible weight she carries. 

Daeron reaches her first and hardly has time to draw air into his lungs before Alicent gathers him into her arms; he returns the embrace without hesitation, one hand settling securely between her shoulders. 

“Gods, you’re nearly a man grown,” the words leave her in a shuddered exhale, something caught between a laugh and a sob. 

“Mother,” he says so quietly you nearly miss it in all the commotion, as if the word is foreign on his tongue. “I missed you.”

One hand rises to cup his cheek like she’s reassuring herself he’s truly here, standing before her—that he is flesh and blood rather than another son slipping beyond her reach. Her thumb brushes once across his skin as she studies his face with an impossibly wide smile, pride clear on her features for the first time in longer than she would care to admit. 

“You haven’t the faintest idea,” she starts, shaking her head, “how much I’ve missed you.”

A moment later, their embrace loosens and her shoulders straighten, a quiet propriety settling over her once more as she turns to you. 

Whatever restraint she’d attempted to force upon herself dies in an instant.

She crosses the remaining distance between you without ceremony, wrapping both arms around you with a quiet, shaky exhale that she quickly buries against your shoulder. You hold her just as tightly, huffing out a laugh as the familiar scent of her washes over you—sweet and delicate and all her own. 

For a few seconds, everything seems to fall away. There is no court, no war, no throne—only the two of you, standing exactly as you had countless times before the world grew so much larger than either of you had ever wished it to be. 

When she pulls back, her composure has returned, but only just. 

“I missed you,” she says softly, that familiar wry smile on her lips—as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. 

“As I have missed you, sister.”

Something fragile flickers across her face before disappearing almost as quickly as it came as she wrings her hands, scanning the courtyard. 

“We shouldn’t remain here.”

You nod, knowing there will be time later for conversations and niceties and attempts to bridge the years between you. 

Ladies-in-waiting fall into step behind you as the three of you make your way deeper into the castle. The once-familiar corridors seem narrower than you remember, crowded now with messengers carrying sealed letters, guards changing posts, and whispering maids—all of whom fall abruptly silent as you pass by. 

Everything is exactly how you’d left it, truly, and yet it feels as if the stone walls themselves are holding their breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall. 

“Aegon left three days before your arrival,” Alicent says at last, keeping her voice low enough that only you and Daeron can hear. “Larys Strong departed with him. No one knows where.” 

You had known as much from her raven but hearing the words spoken aloud somehow makes them feel real—less like a rumor and more like a loss. 

“And Aemond assumed control immediately?” You question, earning a silent nod in reply, her lips pressed tightly together. “So everyone simply…” you pause, searching for the right word, “...accepts it?”

“They accept necessity,” she answers without hesitation, looking over her shoulder before glancing back toward you. “We do not have the luxury of time.” 

She says no more than that, but she doesn’t need to. You understand well enough what remains unspoken—King’s Landing is being held together by routine and the looming uncertainty of Rhaenyra’s inevitable arrival. 

Silence stretches between you for several paces before you break it, unable to tamp down the cautious curiosity within you. 

“And what of Aemond?”

“You will see him soon enough.”

There’s something in the way she says it—the quiet resignation of someone who, despite every attempt to the contrary, has found that the only way out is through. 

The corridors begin to widen as you get closer to the Great Hall, its heavy wooden doors lying ahead, standing open beneath banners bearing the three-headed dragon. Voices drift faintly from within, bleeding through the space in hushed murmurs. 

“He should still be here,” Alicent says, stiffly looking between you and Daeron. “Come.”

Your feet move before your mind can protest. Despite all the many hours you’ve had to imagine this meeting, now that it has arrived, you discover that you were never truly prepared for it at all. 

Inside, the throne room is more somber than you remember it being, stripped of the usual pomp and circumstance that comes with a public court. Any petitioners or noblemen that were here have departed, leaving behind only a handful of men gathered near the foot of the Iron Throne; Maester Orwyle stands with several rolled parchments tucked beneath one arm while Lord Wylde speaks in measured tones, giving the last of some report from what you can make out. 

Contrary to what you’d feared, there are no raised voices; instead, there’s an eerie calm. 

You can’t seem to decide which is worse. 

Despite its placidity, there’s still a carefulness that lingers in the air—a deliberate weighing of every word. These men are long accustomed to kings and councils but even they seem to measure themselves warily. 

Slowly, your gaze rises to the throne itself, to where Aemond sits bareheaded, absent of the rubied crown that Aegon had worn. It had departed the city with him, leaving behind only the Iron Throne itself and the man who now occupies it. Somehow, the missing symbol of legitimacy fails to diminish him; if anything, it makes him appear sharper. 

He has no need for the authority of Valyrian steel when he believes he possesses enough of his own. 

One hand rests lightly against the arm of the throne as he listens to the men before him with a sharp gaze. Your mind whirls as you try to reconcile the image before you with the boy you’d once known—there is nothing boyish left in him now. Even from across the hall, he carries himself with an absolute certainty that hadn’t been there before. 

“How many men remain posted at the River Gate?”

“Two hundred, Your Grace.”

“And how many have seen battle?”

“Perhaps…” Lord Wylde hesitates briefly, “only half?”

Aemond nods once, head tilting to the side just slightly as he lets out a thoughtful hum. 

“Then replace the rest.”

“Your Grace,” Wylde begins carefully, “we are already strapped for—”

“Do you think an army of untested boys capable of defending the city from the threats Rhaenyra brings, my lord?” His tone is soft, though laced with a hardness that makes it clear this is a question he does not want answered. “See that it is done.” 

“As you command.”

He is good at this, the thought comes to you unbidden, almost painfully. The solemn little boy who had spent entire afternoons with his nose buried in dusty tomes, who had longed to be taken seriously—to no longer be a mere second son—appears to have gotten what he had so desperately wanted. 

Silence settles again as Lord Wylde turns and takes his leave, pausing only to offer the three of you a polite bow, followed by Maester Orwyle who does the same. Their footsteps echo softly across the cavernous hall until the doors are pulled closed behind them. 

It’s only then that Aemond’s gaze lands on you. 

For a second, hardly a second, something perilously close to relief shifts over his face before vanishing so completely that you wonder if you’re inventing mercies where none exist. 

You share an impossibly heavy glance with Alicent as he stands from the throne and saunters down the sword-lined steps, his hands clasped behind his back while he makes his way over to the three of you. He’s grown tall in your absence, formidable with broad shoulders and a restrained strength. There’s a surety in him now that had been missing before, the relaxed confidence of a man who knows his capabilities very, very well. 

“You have returned,” he murmurs, coming to a stop before you. There’s no warmth in his tone, no familiarity. He offers nothing else—not your name, not aunt, not even a question of your travels or your health. 

“So I have,” you say in return, bowing your head politely, if only to give yourself something to do. 

He studies you for only a second longer before drifting to Daeron at your side. You can see him shift in your periphery, practically thrumming with a confused excitement—was he missed? Was he not? Where is the ease of family?

“Your dragon will be of good use to us,” Aemond says. “I trust you have been trained well?”

Daeron inclines his head with the same courtesy he has shown every step of the journey from Oldtown, though you don’t miss the way he seems to deflate a little as his shoulders lose their sharpness. 

“Yes,” he answers with a nod, looking at Alicent as she places a hand on his shoulder. “I am glad to be of service.”

“Mm,” Aemond hums, giving a single nod, no sign that he has spent years apart from the brother standing before him. 

Despite yourself, you search his face anyway, looking for a trace of the boy who had once followed you through halls asking questions far too large for his age. 

Yet, you find only the king. 

Beside you, Alicent exhales softly, smoothing a hand over her skirts. 

“We should leave you to your work,” she says to him, each word too tight—too formal. “Besides,” she continues, turning her attention to you and her youngest son, “I must show you both to your chambers.” 

As you take your leave, following closely behind Daeron as the three of you make your way out of the Great Hall, you can feel his stare on your back. 

The following day, afternoon sunlight spills so warmly through the Keep’s gardens that it’s easy to momentarily forget how precarious everything is, how the entire realm seems poised on a knife’s edge. 

The fountains bubble softly into still pools, birds chirp as they flit from tree to tree, and roses climb sun-warmed stone. You watch as a butterfly dances between flowers, suddenly struck by the fact that it knows nothing of dragons, nor kings, nor the weight of crowns. 

That is why you’ve always tended to seek solace here—nature has always possessed the enviable habit of simply carrying on. 

For a while, neither you nor your sister says anything as you walk side-by-side, the gravel pathway crunching underfoot. A gentle wind wafts over you, rustling the neatly pruned hedges, and you take a second to glance over at her. 

Alicent’s hands are folded neatly before her in an attempt to hide her bloodied cuticles—a nervous habit she never quite outgrew. 

“I’m sure you’re glad for the breeze the bay brings in,” she says after a time, a faint smile touching the corners of her lips, “given how humid Oldtown can be.”

“Definitely,” you nod, taking a second to look up at the winding branches of a particularly old chestnut tree. “The air there could be stifling at times.”

Conversation comes easier after that, the two of you quickly filling the silence. You speak of the journey here, of Ormund’s tendency to be a spendthrift, of Daeron’s understated confidence and how naturally he has seemed to grow into himself. Alicent listens more than she speaks, asking after small details that you’d never thought to include in the many letters you had sent her over the years. 

Does he still forget to eat when he’s learning a new song on his lute?

Does he still insist on rising at dawn?

Does he still not take well to compliments?

Each answer earns a small smile from her or a breathy laugh or quick quip, though none of it quite erases the shadows beneath her eyes. Still, it’s enough to give you a glimpse of the sister you’d known as a child. 

The longer the two of you walk and talk, the more you find yourself speaking of Oldtown itself. You each share childhood memories of watching merchant ships dock in the harbor and of evenings spent beneath the glow of the great beacon. Both of you seem to long for those quiet days that, at the time, had felt unbearably ordinary, though now they seem more like an untouchable luxury. 

Still, the longer you talk, the more it feels as if each of you is carefully side-stepping the one glaring thing that weighs most heavily on your mind, as if neither of you wishes to arrive at it and break whatever sweet spell you’re under. 

Eventually, it becomes unavoidable. 

“He will not hear me,” she says at last as she slows beside one of the fountains, watching sunlight scatter across its rippling surface. You don’t need to ask who she means, you both know well enough. “I have tried as his counsel, as his mother,” she continues quietly; a faint, humorless smile crosses her lips, “none of them reached him.”

“What is it you wished for him to hear?”

Sighing, she doesn’t answer immediately. Her brows furrow as she resumes walking, her skirts whispering softly over the pathway. 

“I—I want peace,” she says simply before stopping again, so suddenly that you whip around to face her. She’s not looking at you, not at first. Instead, she’s gazing at the ground as if wishing it would swallow her whole, teeth worrying at her bottom lip.

“Sister, has something—”

“I went to Dragonstone,” she whispers, so faintly that for a moment, you’re sure you must have misheard her. She must see it as a million questions immediately flood your mind, each more incredulous than the last, because she quickly continues. “I didn’t go because—because I believed Rhaenyra would simply forgive me,” the words pour from her, “nor because I imagined she had suddenly forgotten all that has transpired between our families, I just…”

She lowers her eyes, wringing her hands. 

“I had to know that she might still choose not to burn the realm,” her words are almost sheepish, like a child confessing an inane fear, “that she too had considered… negotiations, a way through this without—without—”

She needn’t give it voice. 

For several moments, you say nothing, instead blinking up at the sun overhead, like it may provide you with some great wisdom. Shock flows through you, a steady thrum in your veins, but beneath that an understanding begins to rise. You know your sister and for all her many faults, you have never known her to be rash nor willfully careless. 

Peace no longer promises triumph, perhaps it never did—you’d seen your brother-in-law make that mistake many times over the course of his long reign. But it may promise fewer widows, fewer orphans left to the streets, fewer graves dug into damp earth. 

Of course she’d had to try, you think, absentmindedly fiddling with a loose thread at the hem of one sleeve, that is still something worth seeking.

“Aegon could be… managed,” you say quietly. Alicent sighs beside you, her eyes closing as she gives a single nod. 

“Yes.”

“Aemond cannot.”

“No,” she whispers, the word landing heavily between you, “and that is what frightens me.”

Her voice wavers, causing you to instinctively reach toward her. Stepping closer, you wind your hands around hers, jaw set against the sudden tightness at the back of your throat as her gaze finally finds yours. The tiredness there makes your heart ache. 

“If Aemond remains in the capital, Rhaenyra will come eventually, she’ll have no choice,” she says lowly, leaning closer to you, “but Daemon holds Harrenhal, alongside Caraxes, several dragonseeds, and a growing army.” Your pulse grows louder as she speaks, an incessant drum in your ear. “Vhagar is mighty, but she is one dragon.”

She pauses, looking toward the Red Keep as it towers above the gardens. 

“And one rider,” she finishes, her eyes flicking to yours. 

The finality in her gaze, along with the million words she cannot say, make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. 

“If Aemond were to ride for the Riverlands…” you start, your eyes remaining fixed on hers, “he may not return.”

“Yes.”

“And—and if he stays?”

“Then the war will come here,” she nods, tensing for an instant, “and thousands will die.”

Your teeth sink into your bottom lip as the implication of her words hangs over the two of you, heavy with the weight of an impossible choice. You know better than to argue with her, knowing that what she says is true. “I need you to speak with him.”

“Me?” you balk, jolting a pace back from her as if you’d been burnt. 

“He will not hear me.”

“Sister—”

“He was so fond of you as a child,” she implores, desperation bleeding into the edges of her voice. “You may still be able to—”

“The man I saw yesterday,” you cut her off, shaking your head, “did not look like someone waiting to be persuaded.”

“No—no, I suppose not.” 

The simplicity of her answer causes a frustrated huff to spill from you as you pace about the small alcove the two of you have found yourselves in, the sunlight on your skin suddenly stifling. 

“He isn’t the boy I left behind,” you manage, the words tight in your throat. 

“I know,” she says, reaching out to steady you in the same way you had done for her only moments ago, “but he is still my son.”

The grief in her voice nearly undoes you, like she’s mourned him before he’s even left—like she’s done it a dozen times before now. 

You think of the throne room the day before, of the man sitting where Viserys once had, who now seems little more than a stranger to you, and of Daeron’s face after being dismissed as little more than another dragon rider. 

Most of all, you remember the split-second of relief that had flickered across Aemond’s face before it had vanished. 

Staring off at a hazy point in the distance, you’re unable to decide which frightens you more—that the boy you had loved is truly gone, or that a small part of him still remains beneath everything that time has forced him to become. 

You draw a slow breath, looking out across the gardens where branches continue to sway in the afternoon breeze, utterly indifferent to the burden resting upon your shoulders. The backs of your eyes sting as you let them flutter shut for a moment, willing your breaths to steady. 

“I—I will speak with him.”

She nods and squeezes your hand, though neither of you speak again as you make your way back toward the castle. Nothing has changed, not really. Birds still sing and flowers still bloom and butterflies still dance between them, yet everything feels colder than it had only an hour before. 

The task before you feels impossible—how are you supposed to reach someone when you’re no longer certain any part of them still exists?

In the few hours since you’ve spoken to your sister, night has settled heavily over the castle. Your steps echo in the quiet corridor as you make your way to Aemond's—to the king’s—chambers, alone in hallways that are usually filled with guards, servants, and the occasional messenger. Torchlight pools across the old stones, stretching in long shadows that sway and flicker with every draft that slips in through the narrow slit windows. 

You approach the chambers that had belonged to Aegon only days ago. One of the guards posted outside nods his head as you come to a stop, announcing your arrival while opening the doors for you. 

A fire burns in the hearth, throwing amber light across the tapestried walls. According to Alicent, he had altered many things already. She spoke of orders to servants to stock the shelves with various old tomes, to move in his personal belongings, and to rid the place of emptied wine flagons. 

Even still, the room itself seems to remember Aegon, as if frozen in the transition between owners.

Aemond occupies a chair before the fire, one leg stretched before him as a forgotten book rests atop his other thigh. He looks up as the doors thud closed once more, leaving the two of you alone. 

“Mother sent you,” he murmurs, not bothering to question it. 

“She did,” you answer, stepping further into the room. That earns you the faintest tilt of his head as something like interest passes across his face. 

“Mm,” he hums, “at least you do not insult me with denial.”

“I see no purpose in lying to you, Aemond.”

“How novel,” he says through a dry huff of laughter. His gaze moves over you with a calm precision that makes your spine straighten despite yourself. “Though I suppose you were always cleverer than that.”

His words catch somewhere you didn’t expect, the faint familiarity in them making the absence of any tenderness all the more jarring. You remember, absurdly, a solemn little boy leaning over a library table as he asked whether intelligence or courage mattered more. 

You had told him that you supposed it merely depended on who survived long enough to use either. 

That same little boy isn’t the one looking back at you now. 

“You remember enough to flatter me, nephew.”

“I remember a great many things,” he says, calm but pointed. 

Neither of you speaks as you move to stand more in front of him, your back warmed by the fire as you watch the light of it move over the hard lines of his face, catching in the pale fall of his hair and the sapphire set where his left eye should be. He looks more human here than he had on the throne, away from all those swords and watching eyes. 

He’s handsome like this, the thought comes unbidden. Perhaps this would be easier if age had been less kind to him. 

“You may sit,” he says at last, gesturing toward a matching chair that sits beside him. 

“I prefer to stand,” you say, remaining where you are as if rooted to the spot. He studies you for a long while, tracking the slow shift of your hips before returning, almost reluctantly, to your face.

“As you wish.”

The silence that follows is unnerving—he appears to have no desire to fill it and, as the seconds wear on, you begin to wonder if it is a test of some kind. For what, you cannot yet say. Perhaps he’s waiting to see if you’ll begin, if you’ll falter when you do, whether you have come as a messenger, an aunt, a spy, or something less easily named. 

Finally, you can take it no longer. 

“My prince—”

His gaze lifts immediately to that, sharp and insistent. 

“My king,” you correct, internally berating yourself for giving him any sort of upper hand. 

Aemond tilts his head slightly, satisfaction kept so tightly leashed that anyone else may not have noticed it at all. “You found the word eventually.”

“I apologize,” you say, shifting your weight from foot to foot while you inhale shakily. “I am—I am finding many things difficult tonight.”

“I imagine you are,” he answers too quickly, too smoothly, like he’d already anticipated the conversation before you had even entered the room. You’re reminded of the way he’d simply listened in the throne room the day before: patient and scrutinizing, allowing men space enough to reveal their hand. 

“The castle talks,” you try, though he gives you nothing in return. 

“It always has.”

“This is different—”

“No,” he replies, leaning back in his chair as if he hasn’t a care in the world. “There are always whispers but it is merely the idle chatter of smallfolk, nothing more.”

“Aegon is gone—” 

“I am aware, yes.”

“Then you must also be aware of what that looks like,” you say, the words coming more sharply than you intend, “of what it implies.”

At that, his expression shifts by a fraction, cooling faintly as if you’d veered off of whatever script he has in his head. “It looks like the realm is being governed in my brother’s absence,” he mutters.”

“Aemond, it looks like uncertainty—”

“Necessity.”

“To those inside these walls, perhaps,” you say, forcing yourself to remain calm despite the way your pulse hums beneath your skin. “But outside? To the city? To any of Rhaenyra’s supporters waiting for any fracture that they might widen into a wound?”

He watches you for a long moment, the firelight throwing half of his face into shadow. 

“You sound like my mother,” he sighs, dismissive. 

Your throat works as you swallow thickly, your hands tightening into fists at your sides before you catch yourself and will them to relax. 

“I have spent many years away from this court and even I can still see it plainly,” you start, your voice low enough to draw his attention once more. “Let me speak the words everyone else here is too frightened to say.”

That gives him pause, you see it in the way a muscle jumps in his cheek, in the way his shoulders tense and his fingers tighten around the arm of his chair. 

“The servants speak. Soon the city will, then the realm. It will get back to Rhaenyra and she will use it as a weapon in her hand before you ever have the chance to drum up a counterattack,” you say quickly, not wanting to give him a chance to cut you off. “You are not daft, Aemond. Surely you know this to be true.”

“The city will believe whatever it is commanded to believe.”

“No,” you shake your head, brows slightly raised. “It will believe whatever best explains its fear, which is precisely why you cannot remain here.” 

The words hang between you before he gives a dry, humorless laugh. Disappointment flashes across his face, as if he’d hoped you had come for a reason other than to parrot his mother’s words at him. 

“So,” he sighs, nodding once to himself, “this is why you came.”

“Daemon sits at Harrenhal gathering men beneath Rhaenyra’s banners while you remain behind these walls waiting for the war to arrive at your doorstep,” you press on, unwilling to surrender any ground you may have been granted. His eye follows you immediately, dropping only for a heartbeat before lifting again as though nothing had happened. “Every day he’s left unchallenged, another river lord bends the knee and more men join his host.”

Aemond’s expression betrays nothing as you continue, though you don’t miss the way his lips press together in annoyance. 

“This war hinges on the Riverlands,” you say, determined to get the words out. “You know that as well as anyone.”

“And so my aunt would have me abandon my capital.”

“I would have you seize this initiative before it is too late.”

“And leave the city leaderless while my dearest brother remains missing?” His eye narrows, the corners of his lips twitching into an incredulous smirk. 

“You have a council,” you try. “And Prince Daeron, and your mother—”

“My mother is a fool,” he interrupts, “a snake with two tongues, so poisoned by Rhaenyra that she cannot see Harrenhal for what it is—a trap.”

Inhaling a shuddered breath, you bite at your bottom lip, swallowing thickly. 

“Daemon wants you to hesitate,” you counter, “by remaining here, you’re merely obliging him.”

For the first time since you entered, he doesn’t appear to have anything to say in return. His lips tighten as he glances around the dim chambers, blinking while his chest rises and falls unsteadily. You think of Alicent in the gardens, hiding her bloodied cuticles beneath folded hands, of the grief in her voice. You think of Daeron deflating by inches beneath the weight of his brother’s cool assessment. 

You think of the boy after Driftmark, choking on the pain he would rather swallow than share. 

He scoffs, the sound almost like a laugh, if there were any warmth to it. “You have been in Oldtown too long, aunt,” he says sharply, “surrounded by maesters that flatter themselves to believe that wars are won upon maps rather than by the men who fight them.”

“And you have been here too long if you believe this city would not fall were Rhaenyra forced to challenge you head on.”

He falters once more, glancing about the room for a split second before his expression hardens once more.

“I have Vhagar,” he starts with an easy confidence, shrugging his shoulders just slightly as if any counter to her mere presence means nothing at all, “and Tessarion, the city watch, scores of soldiers—”

“You hear yourself, don’t you?” You murmur before you can stop yourself, mouth shutting tightly as Aemond goes quiet, his stare cutting as he glares at you. Even as your pulse seems to falter in your chest, you cannot help but feel a small thrill shoot down your spine as irritation flashes plainly over his face—the first true sign of any weakness he may have left. 

“You think me ambitious,” he mutters after a tense moment, his voice slightly softer than it had been before. 

“I think you are too intelligent not to understand how this ends.”

He huffs, annoyed, and shakes his head incredulously. The harshness you’d managed to strip away before climbs back into his angular features and when he speaks next, it’s with the same condescension one would use to scold a small child. 

“Aegon abandoned the throne, he fled,” he starts, each word slow and measured. “He was never a man, not as he should’ve been,” he continues, his voice carrying an edge sharp enough to cut. “He remained a boy who drank too much and hid behind skirts because no one expected him to become anyone worth following.”

The more he speaks, the clearer you see why your sister fears him so—his viciousness rarely begins with invention, each word carries a truth to it that he’s learned to observe and sharpen until it becomes useful to him. 

“And you?” you ask, determined not to falter further—to see this through. “You’re sure you want it?”

His eye narrows. “The throne?”

“The burden of it,” you murmur, tilting your head just slightly as you regard him. “The very same that crushed your brother under its weight and led Viserys to become what little he became.”

For an instant, it’s as if the room tightens around the question, tensing like the air itself is waiting for a blow. 

Aemond rises then, unhurriedly, as if he’s simply grown bored of sitting rather than because you’ve struck anything near vulnerable. It strikes you once more how tall he’s become, formidable and fearsome enough to make good on the threats he utters. Whatever softness remained in him from childhood has been cleanly carved away, replaced with discipline and war. 

“I want victory,” he answers, taking a few measured steps toward you. 

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” he concedes, pursing his lips, “but it is the only answer that matters.”

“Or it’s the answer men give when the truth is less flattering.”

His head tilts at that as he comes to a stop before you, hands clasped behind his back. The firelight dancing over his face makes the sapphire in his eye socket glimmer, beautiful and infinitely dangerous all at once. 

“And what truth do you imagine you’ve uncovered, aunt?”

A small voice in the back of your mind bids you to stop—anyone wiser most likely would—but you tamp it down, throat working as you swallow against the nervous tightness at the back of it. Alicent had not sent you here to be wise, not entirely. 

“You deal in cruelty,” you start slowly, watching him as closely as he watches you, “because you are scared—terrified of seeming weak.”

The silence that follows is immediate and absolute, like all the air has been pulled from the room. 

“Careful,” he mutters lowly from between clenched teeth, the word venomous enough to have your hair standing on end. 

“But you’re not weak, you never were,” you press on, using the split second of surprise that crosses his face to step forward just enough to rest a hand lightly on his shoulder, ignoring the wanting shiver that moves through you at the contact. “You have the makings of a great king—a better king than Aegon could’ve been, you said as much yourself.”

His lips part, but no sound comes out. For a terrifying instant, he seems caught between pulling away entirely and giving in. Then his lilac eye darts to your lips, so quickly you wonder if you imagined it as your heart seizes in your chest.

The gesture strikes something buried deep in your memory of a boy scarcely older than eleven blushing scarlet when one of Aegon’s lordling friends had laughingly declared that he would make some maiden very happy one day. He had looked at you then with exactly the same startled intensity before fleeing from the room altogether. 

“I know you, Aemond,” you say softly, pressing half a step closer. Your hand shifts, moving from his shoulder to his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing beneath your fingertips.

“You have been away half of my life, you cannot—”

His eye flickers downward, following the movement of your hand where it rests against his chest. It’s such an ordinary thing—so quiet, so simple—that for one instant, you see him as he once was: no taller than your neckline, questioning you about whether it was better to be strong or kind. The illusion is gone almost as quickly as it comes, swallowed beneath the hard line of his jaw as his gaze meets yours once more. 

“And still, I know you,” you murmur, victory within your sights, “I loved you—”

For the briefest of instances, he goes completely still before you. Every part of him seems to lock up, as if the words struck a part of his mind that cannot make sense of them. His lilac eye glistens, and your lungs tighten, and—

His hand is around your throat, not crushing but firm enough to silence you.

“Loved me?” he echoes, his voice dangerously soft as he leans in close enough that you can feel his breath ghost over your lips. “Is this how you show it? By coming to whisper pretty words? By lecturing me about being some frightened boy?” His fingers tighten just slightly, enough to make your next inhale a struggle.

“Tell me,” he growls, “do I look like a boy to you now?” His thumb presses harder against the hollow of your throat, his eye blazing with something dangerously close to satisfaction as he studies the way your pulse flutters beneath his touch. 

Your throat works beneath this palm as you eke out a feeble, half-formed whimper, your hands scrambling for purchase against his forearm. Knees weakening, you shake your head as much as his grip will allow, not daring to take your eyes off of his. A strange pins and needles feeling begins to grow beneath your skin as the edges of your vision blur, and then darken. 

Blessedly, he loosens his grip just enough to allow you to suck in a lungful of air—gasping, heaving, and spluttering. 

You had been so close only moments ago, you had seen the cracks in him. Perhaps, a small, desperate part of you thinks, if I give him this—

“I was—I was merely trying to counsel you—”

The moment your feeble protests reach his ears, Aemond’s patience shatters. A derisive scoff escapes him as he drags you toward the chair he’d occupied earlier, his grip on your shoulder unrelenting. The chair groans faintly as he shoves you over its arm, your body bent at the waist beneath his hands while your breaths come in ragged, uneven gasps. Your fingers dig into the material of it as you brace yourself, nearly forced onto your tip-toes. 

His voice, when he speaks, is a blade pressed to you—cold and unyielding. 

“Counsel?” He sneers, leaning over you, his weight pinning you in place. “You mistake your place, aunt. You are not my advisor, not my equal.” His hand finds the back of your neck, fingers tightening just enough to have you stilling beneath him. “I will not tolerate deception, no matter how prettily you dress it up.”

You pant, whining as the arm of the chair digs into your waist, though you don’t dare move, even as your cheek is pressed against the seat cushion. You nearly jolt as he presses more firmly against you, eyes widening as the hard line of his arousal becomes more and more prominent. 

“A-Aemond, please, just—just stop and think,” you try, knowing well that that’s a bygone notion. His hips move against you and, shamefully, a shiver rolls down your spine—a mixture of anxiety and something far more treacherous. “I wasn’t—wasn’t trying to—”

“You thought yourself clever, didn’t you?” he murmurs, his free hand tracing the curve of your hip with mocking gentleness. “Coming here to question me, to control me, as though I would simply bow my head and thank you for the wisdom.” His fingers dig more harshly into your skin, hard enough to bruise. “You were wrong.”

Your cheeks flush somehow further with each word he utters, his touch like fire on your skin. Even as your head spins, you desperately try to think back to your reason for coming to him at all—Alicent, Daeron, the city itself.

“I—I shouldn’t have pushed you,” you say, voice trembling. “I have never been your—your enemy, Aemond,” you pant, shaking your head as best you can as you attempt to look over your shoulder, to catch his gaze. “I only want what’s best—”

He lets out a low, dark chuckle as he presses a hand over your mouth, silencing any protests you have left. His fingers flex slightly, savoring the warmth of your lips beneath his palm, the way your breath hitches in surprise. He leans down, his voice a whisper against your ear, low with intent. 

“You still think of me as a child,” he says, his free hand bundling the silk of your gown against your skin as he drags your skirts higher and higher with a deliberate slowness, baring your skin to him. “As though I’m little more than some thoughtless brute, such as Aegon.”

Whimpering beneath his palm, it settles over you—for the first time all evening—how woefully unprepared you were to come here, to face him. 

You squeeze your eyes shut as your skin warms as a traitorous pang of desire rises within you when his palm trails up the back of your thigh, possessive and firm but laced with an impossible reverence that steals what little air remains in your lungs. 

“They gave you away to Oldtown,” he mutters so softly you wonder if he realizes he’s spoken at all, “when you should’ve been mine.”

Settling on the curve of your backside, his fingers press against the soft flesh there and a satisfied hum escapes him as firelight catches the arousal between your thighs—proof that your body knows its place even if your tongue struggles to obey. 

“All that talk, and yet so quick to yield,” he murmurs, dragging his fingers through the slick heat of you, his voice dripping with cruel amusement. His fingers slide deeper, teasing at your entrance but not yet granting the sweet relief of filling you—not yet. “Tell me, which part of you should I believe? Your sweet words, or your traitorous body?”

Your body seems to move of its own accord as you squirm, chasing the press of his fingers as much as your position will allow. A muffled whine spills from you as your walls spasm around nothing, instinct driving you. 

He withdraws his hand abruptly, leaving you empty and shuddering, before replacing it with the one over your mouth, smearing your own wetness against your lips and cheeks. 

“You shame yourself for this, don’t you?” he murmurs, shifting just enough to free his cock from his trousers, his length already hard and heavy against your thigh, making your skin prickle with apprehension. He groans as he drags his tip through your slick folds, teasing but not giving in quite yet. “How long has it been since someone’s had you properly, sweet aunt? Since you’ve been reminded of your place?”

Panting, you press back against him as he taunts you, need threaded through each movement. 

His palm presses harder against your lips as he pushes inside with a single, brutal thrust, filling you in one smooth motion. A sharp, satisfied exhale escapes him at the feel of you—tight, wet, his. His free hand rests at your hip, gripping tightly as he holds you in place. 

“Mmph!” you mewl, squirming as your feet falter against the stone floor, knees weakening at the stretch of him. Your vision blurs, eyes nearly rolling to the back of your head. 

“This is how you should be—how you should’ve always been,” he hisses, his voice rough with arousal and something darker—something dangerously possessive. “By my side, as my queen—not hidden away beneath duty.” He pulls back only to snap his hips forward again, forcing a choked gasp from behind his hand.

Nodding, something you’ll tell yourself later was merely a bid to appease him, all you can do is claw at the cushions while he takes.

His pace is unforgiving, each thrust deeper than the last, each one punctuated by the quiet slap of skin against skin. He keeps his hand over your lips, reveling in the sound of your muffled cries, in the way your body clenches around him, in the way you yield—finally, finally—to his will. 

Aemond’s breath comes harsh and hot against your ear as he fucks into you, slowing his strokes to deliberate rolls of his hips while he savors you. His fingers dig into your hip, nails biting against your skin, marking you as his. The sound of your faint pleas only spurs him on, his voice coming as a dark whisper against your back. 

“You thought to counsel me—to command me—when all you truly wanted was this,” he growls, dragging his hand between your legs and moving the pad of his thumb over your clit in rough, punishing circles. His thrusts grow sharper, his cock dragging against your walls in a way that makes your thighs tremble. “To be mine,” he grunts, “just as you always should’ve been.”

His free hand remains firm over your mouth, silencing any retort you might have—not that you could form one, not with the way he’s moving against you, nor with the way pleasure coils tight and desperate in your belly.

“I will win this war for you,” he promises, teeth grazing the curve of your shoulder. “I will mount Daemon’s head on a spike and lay it at your feet, I will throw a feast in your honor, and you will never forget who it was that brought you victory.” His fingers press harder against your clit, his pace unrelenting. “And when it’s done, I will have you in the Sept as my bride,” he murmurs through rough pants. “I will right their wrongs, I swear it to you.”

One of your arms comes up and grabs tightly at his forearm, not to pull him away so much as desperately holding to him, trying to anchor yourself as your eyes squeeze shut. You have no doubt he means what he says, that every promise may as well be sealed with blood. That alone is enough to send a horrible thrill through you as you nod, your mewls silenced by his hand. 

His hips grind against you, causing you to jolt in his hold as pleasure shoots down your spine like lightning. You nearly go limp in his grasp as you hurdle over the edge, sobbing beneath his palm as your release crashes into you like waves against the shore. Your cunt clamps around his length in a harsh rhythm, pulling a deep, satisfied groan from him. 

He savors the way your body ripples against him, convulsing as he continues tormenting your sensitive bud with slow circles, drawing out your climax ruthlessly until you’re twitching beneath him, oversensitive and trembling. 

“There you are,” he pants, voice ragged with barely restrained need as he nips at your shoulder. He growls while he grinds against you, savoring the way your cunt milks him desperately. “You have fought every battle the same way,” he breathes, thrusts growing erratic as his own release builds, “surrendering inch by—Gods—by inch.”

It’s only when he feels his climax cresting that he lifts his hand from your mouth, his fingers smeared with your spit. He pants as he buries himself to the hilt one last time, spilling inside you with a low, possessive snarl. 

He holds you there for a long moment as he pants, his chest heaving against your back while the world slowly seems to right itself once more. 

You slump against the chair as he straightens up with a sigh, pulling himself from you with a quiet groan. A shudder goes through you as a thin trickle of his spend slips down your inner thigh, warm against your skin while you try to steady the frantic rhythm of your heart, listening as he tucks himself back into his trousers. 

Your joints protest as you rise, fingers trembling slightly while you take the time to smooth out the rumpled silk of your gown back into some sort of order. No amount of careful hands will erase the evidence of the night, nor the ache that settles deep within your bones. You can hear him moving about the space behind you, though you don’t look toward him, not yet. 

Instead, you busy yourself with fastening what can be fastened, with straightening out your hair and bodice, grateful for anything that delays whatever words must surely come next. 

When, at last, you gather the courage to face him, you find him standing with one hand raised and resting lightly on the mantel, his back half turned to you. Firelight throws restless shadows over the sharp planes of his face as he stares into the embers, his expression foreign to you. 

You open your mouth, though you’re not entirely sure what to say. How are you meant to return to the Riverlands or politics or Alicent or anything at all after that?

“I will go,” his words are so quiet that for one bewildered second, you wonder whether you imagined them. He doesn’t turn to face you. “I will ride for Harrenhal.”

You simply stand there, your hand still resting against the fastening of your gown as you search his rigid profile for a clue as to what tipped the scale, only to find none. The silence stretches as you wait for him to speak further, perhaps of triumph or mockery, or another cruel lesson delivered in that same measured tone. You had imagined that, if he yielded at all, it would come only after another battle of words. That he would force you to defend every point, every strategy, every warning you had brought on Alicent’s behalf. 

Instead, the words come almost carelessly, spoken into the dim quiet of the chambers as though he’d made the decision long before you’d even walked through the door. 

“Why—”

“I’ll summon the council before dawn,” he continues, glancing toward you just enough for the fire to catch the sapphire in his eye. 

The distance between the quiet, dutiful boy you had once known and the man standing before you now has never felt wider, nor more perilous. 

Aemond inclines his head once—a dismissal. 

Nodding, you make your way toward the chamber door, unable to shake the cold chill of uncertainty that follows you. 

You find your sister upon the western battlements just after dawn as the sun begins to rise over the waters of the bay, staining the sky in muted shades of lavender and gold. She hardly acknowledges your presence as you come to stand beside her and for several minutes, neither of you speaks. 

Her hair drifts lazily about her shoulders with the breeze, while the skirt of your dressing gown stirs about your ankles. 

“What did you say to him?” she asks eventually, her eyes never leaving the broad fields beyond the city walls. 

You think back to the night before, back to the tense conversation that had transpired between you and your nephew—if you could even call it that. You think of his hands on your skin and of the fire dying low in the hearth, of his hand upon the mantel while he stared into the ashes, as if the answer had been waiting for him there all along. 

“Enough, I suppose,” you answer quietly, your brows furrowed. 

Alicent closes her eyes beside you, not bothering to question you further. 

Movement begins to ripple across a distant field; at first, it’s difficult to distinguish one cluster of men from another. Soldiers scatter outward with practiced haste while dragonkeepers weave between them. 

Then, she moves. 

Vhagar rises slowly, so immense that, for one breathless moment, she resembles another hill unfolding itself from the landscape. Bronze scales catch the first rays of the sun, each ancient movement carrying the certainty of something that has outlived kingdom upon kingdom, and may outlive countless more. 

Even from a distance, you imagine you can feel her weight settling through the ground beneath your feet. 

Your chest lurches at the knowledge that he’s there, saddled to her great back—the boy who once wandered after you through shadowy halls, who had once asked whether good men ever made good kings. 

Vhagar spreads her wings, the first beats of them sending dust spiraling across the fields before she lifts from the earth and climbs steadily to the north, becoming smaller and smaller with each passing second. 

Beside you, Alicent watches until they have become little more than a dark shape against the morning light. When she speaks, her voice is little more than a mote of dust carried in the wind. 

“Have we done the right thing?”

The question hangs between you, unanswered, a nearly tangible thing. 

How could you have done anything otherwise? If he had remained, the city may have burned, thousands may have perished. And, yet, as he goes…

Your gaze follows the shrinking silhouette until even Vhagar’s impossibly large wings disappear into the pale morning haze, the rider on her back no more than a pinprick against the clouds.