Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
feel free to ignore this ask if you find it too strange đ
are you the author that wrote an aemond targ fic about the greens time traveling into the GOT timeline? it was an x reader too. i can't seem to find it anywhere on tumblr now, but i vaguely remember it having read it on your blog (that or im experiencing an insane mandela effect)
yes, that was me :D
that was the FIRST ever HOTD/ASOIAF series I posted on here: Last of Her House No More.
Fandoms have a serious problem with how creators are being treated these days.
Fandom creators spend hours of their free time to create something to make fandom thrive...for free and for the love of the game.
And what do they get? A wholeass heap of fuck all. No reblogs, no comments, no nothing. And people are surprised that creators are dropping out left, right, and centre??
"Why is there no long fic anymore?" "Why did my favourite writer stop?" "Why is my favourite artist not posting anymore?"
I implore you to ask yourself: "What's the last thing I did to support my fandom? Does my favourite creator know they are my favourite? When was the last time I left a comment under something?"
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Apologies for the lack of updates regarding my Aemond content, especially His Handmaidâs Tales and a few requests Iâve been sent.
Iâve received numerous AI-generated content accusations, both on here and on AO3, within the past several weeks, thatâs led me to take a step back to reflect on my writing styles.
Comments like this are massive blows to a writerâs confidence. I cannot emphasize that enough. Now, Iâm incredibly paranoid, which sucks because I love to write!
I love using italics, bold, em dashes, and semi-colons.
I do not love being accused of AI simply because AI has been fed so much writing content that itâs adopted common writing patterns and structuring.
Iâm not vanishing again; Iâm still here, but now Iâm trying to figure out what the hell I need to do so that my writing doesnât sound "really weird!"
By the Hour of the Bat, the ribbon had not come.
Sweetling told herself this was relief.
Warnings: Explicit sexual content (titty sucking & fingering; nothing regarding vaginal sex, we're building up to that).
WC: 9.3k (I think).
Notes: Smut. The bane of my existence. I'm not good at smut, particularly smut styled in an ASOIAF/medieval period. It's beyond difficult to make it work, because saying "âsheathe thy veiny sword between mine scalding loins" is just . . . not hot.
Posted first on my AO3.
His Handmaid's Tales | AO3 Version
dividers: #enchanthings
By the Hour of the Bat, the ribbon had not come.
Sweetling told herself this was relief.
She lay on her narrow pallet in the little chamber she shared with two other serving women, listening to rain skitter against the shutters and Bessa snore softly from the far bed. The air smelled of damp wool, lavender soap, and the onion broth someone had eaten too quickly before sleep. Her hands rested folded atop her blanket like a corpseâs.
The ribbon lay beneath her pillow.
She had hidden it there after supper. Then taken it out. Then hidden it in her sleeve. Then in the small pocket of her spare apron. Then beneath the pillow again, because apparently she had become the sort of girl who could not be trusted with cloth.
It had not come because he had not sent it.
Good, she thought.
Then: coward.
Then, horrified at herself: ungrateful fool.
He was doing what he had promised. He was letting her choose. He was not pressing. Not summoning. Not sending a seal that would force Alicentâs hand and hers together. Not making a spectacle of restraint so that she might praise him for it.
He was behaving honorably.
Sweetling turned onto her side and stared at the dark.
Honor, she decided, was extremely inconvenient.
Bessa snorted in her sleep and rolled over.
From the pallet nearest the door, an older maid muttered something about goats.
Sweetling closed her eyes.
Aemondâs mouth waited there.
She opened them.
âNo,â she whispered into the dark.
Bessa snored.
Sweetling slid one hand beneath the pillow and closed her fingers around the ribbon.
It was cool at first. Then warmed quickly.
A choice.
That was the trouble. Choices were heavier than commands. A command could be obeyed while one kept some little injured place within blameless. A choice belonged to the chooser. It could not be set down later at a princeâs feet, or a queenâs, or a godsâ. If she went to him, she would be going because she wished to. Not because of duty and not because of fear. But because she wanted the danger badly enough to name it.
Sweetling lay very still for a second more, then she sat up.
The room remained dark. Bessa breathed on. The older maid muttered again. Rain kept its counsel.
Sweetling slipped from bed and drew on her plain robe over her shift. Her feet found cold stone, and she stood for a moment with the ribbon clutched in one hand and her own heartbeat making war in her throat. Before, she told herself. Decide before you leave the room. She looked at the door.Â
âI choose,â she whispered.
No one heard.
That was just as well.
Sweetling tucked the ribbon into her sleeve and stepped into the corridor.
She did not go to Prince Aemondâs chambers.
Not yet.
First, she went to the linen room, because even foolishness required order. She lit one small lamp. She took up a basket and placed within it two clean cloths, a needle case, black thread, a pot of salve, and one of the princeâs shirts with a loose tie she had deliberately not finished after supper because some new, sly part of her had apparently learned strategy from dragons.
Then she stood in the warm little pool of lamplight and waited.
A corridor away, footsteps passed.
A guard coughed.
The castle breathed.
Sweetling took the ribbon from her sleeve and laid it atop the folded shirt.
Not sent by him. Sent by her. A warningâa questionâa confession in cloth. She lifted the basket. By the time she reached the turn before his apartments, her courage had become a thin, bright thing, liable to snap. The guard outside Aemondâs door straightened when Sweetling stopped before him.
âThe prince did not summon you,â he said.
âNo.â
His eyes dropped to the basket. Then to her face.
She hated him for seeing the heat there.
âI bring mending,â she said.
âAt this hour?â
âYes.â
The guardâs mouth twitched.
Sweetling lifted her chin by a fraction. âYou may announce me, or you may explain to Prince Aemond on the morrow why you turned away his handmaid with his linen unfinished.â
The guard stared. Then, very wisely, he knocked.
Aemondâs voice came from within. âWhat?â
The guard opened the door only enough to speak through. âMy prince. Your handmaid.â
Silence.
Sweetlingâs grip tightened on the basket.
Then Aemond said, âSend her in.â
The guard stepped aside, and Sweetling crossed the threshold.
Aemond stood by the desk, one hand braced on its edge, a letter open beneath his palm. His hair was loose. He wore no outer tunic, only a dark shirt unlaced at the throat and black breeches tucked into boots he had not bothered to remove. Candlelight made him sharper. Lonelier.
His eye went first to her face.
Then to the basket. Then to the ribbon lying on top. The whole room seemed to still. Sweetling shut the door behind her. Aemond did not move.
âYou were not summoned,â he said.
âNo.â
âYou were told the risk.â
âYes.â
His gaze pinned her. âAnd yet.â
Sweetling crossed the room on legs that felt much too mortal for what she asked of them. She set the basket on his desk, careful not to disturb the letter beneath his hand. Then she picked up the ribbon and held it out.
Aemond looked at it.
He did not take it.
âYou send my own warning back to me?â he asked.
Her pulse beat everywhere. âNo.â
âWhat, then?â
Sweetling swallowed.
Her mouth had gone dry. Of course it had. All her grand courage had carried her to the edge of speech and then abandoned her there like a faithless knight.
Aemond waited.
He could be patient when cruelty would have been easier. She wished he would stop proving that. It made everything worse.
âI choose the risk,â she said. âAgain. I shall continue to choose the risk, again and again.âÂ
Aemondâs face changed, enough that she noticed it. He came around the desk slowly, knuckles dragging across the wood. âDo not say that because you think I wish to hear it.â
âYou do wish to hear it.â
His mouth tightened.
Sweetling held the ribbon between them. âBut that is not why I said it.â
He stopped before her. âWhy, then?â
Because I wanted to know whether you would let me come to you.
Because I wanted you to know I could.
Because all day I have been praying for gentleness and thinking of your hands.
Because I am frightened, and I came anyway.
She said, âBecause I wanted to.â
Aemond closed his eye. Only for a moment. When he opened it, the hunger there had gone quiet. He took the ribbon from her hand and set it on the desk.Â
âThen we begin again,â he said, and then he kissed her as if he had been starving in silence.
There was no sweetness at first, no shy fumbling courtship such as girls whispered about over laundry tubs when the older women had gone. Sweetness came later in songs, polished clean by singers who had never stood in a princeâs chamber after midnight with a ribbon hidden in their sleeve and the door shut soft behind them. This was hunger made careful. This was a hand at her waist that could have bruised, and did not. This was his mouth taking hers with such deliberate restraint that Sweetling understood, with a sudden bright terror, that gentleness was not the opposite of danger. Sometimes it was danger held by the throat.
She had stepped into his hand, and he had taken that as an answer enough to begin, but not an answer enough to forget.Â
Even as he kissed her, even as his fingers tightened through the plain wool of her robe and drew her nearer until her basket pressed awkwardly against the edge of the desk, he kept a measured space between their bodies, no more than a breath, no less than a warning. Sweetling felt that space more keenly than she would have felt his weight. It invited. It asked. It made her choose again with every inch.
Her hands found his sleeves. Black cloth, warm beneath her palms. He wore no rings tonight, no jeweled ornament, nothing but the severe fastening at his cuffs and the leather belt at his waist. Somehow, that plainness made him worse. Less prince, more man. Less court, more body. Aemond Targaryen with his hair unbound and falling against her cheek, with his breath catching when she did not pull away, with his mouth hot and exacting and already learning the shape of hers.
He broke the kiss before she did.
Sweetling had not known she was clinging until his mouth was gone, and her fingers tightened as if to call it back.
Aemond looked down at her hands, then up at her face.
âYou came here,â he said.
Her lips felt swollen. âYes.â
âNot summoned.â
âNo.â
âWith that.â His gaze flicked to the ribbon lying on the desk where he had set it, dark against pale parchment. âAnd with mending.â
She remembered the basket then. The shirt inside. The needle case. The little cowardâs excuse she had carried with her so she could pretend to herself that she had not crossed half the sleeping Keep because she wanted to be kissed again.
Her cheeks heated.
Aemond saw, of course. His eye sharpened with that cool, unbearable pleasure he took in every honest betrayal of her face.
âWere you going to mend my shirt?â he asked.
âIf it needed mending.â
âIt does not.â
âI thought it might.â
âYou lie poorly after being kissed.â
Sweetling lowered her gaze, but he caught her chin before it could fall too far. His fingers were firm beneath it, not painful, merely refusing her escape.
âNo,â he said. âYou do not get to hide from the answer and enjoy the question.â
That made her breath catch, which was answer enough to darken his gaze.
Aemond bent, not to kiss her mouth this time, but the corner of it. Then beneath it. Then the place where her jaw softened toward her throat. The kisses were not hurried; he put them down one by one, as if each had a use and he meant to discover it. Sweetling stood very still under them, eyes half-lidded, fingers gathering black cloth at his sides. When his mouth found the pulse beneath her ear, her breath escaped her in a small sound she could not call back.
He stopped.
Not withdrew. Stopped.
His mouth remained against her skin. She felt the stillness of him before she understood it: the sudden lock of his shoulders, the halt of his breath, the hand at her waist gone fixed, as if he had taken himself by force and held.
Sweetling opened her eyes.
âAemond?â
He lifted his head just enough to look at her. The candlelight made a blade of his cheek, a shadow of his scar, a dark pool of his remaining eye. His mouth was parted. Not much. Enough.
âSay it again,â he said.
She swallowed. âAemond.â
The hand at her waist flexed once.
âAgain.â
âAemond.â
He kissed her then with something rougher in him, though still not careless. It was not the controlled lesson of the sept, nor the restrained answer at the threshold. It was hotter, deeper, his tongue pressing into her mouth as if patience had thinned and the taste of her had become an argument against every rule he had set himself. Sweetling answered without meaning to. Her mouth opened for him. Her hands slid from his sleeves to his shoulders, and when she rose onto her toes, chasing him, Aemond made a low sound against her lips.
That sound ruined more of her than any touch had.
It was not princely. Not composed. Not measured. A breath of want, caught too late.
Sweetling pressed closer.
This time, he let her.
The space between them disappeared. Her body met his through wool and linen and black cloth, softness against hard line, trembling against restraint. He was warm. Warmer than she expected. She had thought dragons might feel like fire, but he felt like a man who had trained until heat lived in his blood and then stood too long alone with it. His chest rose hard against hers. His belt brushed her stomach. One of his thighs came between the folds of her robe, not forcing, only there, and the pressure of it made her fingers dig into his shoulders.
Aemond broke the kiss with a quiet curse in High Valyrian.
She did not know the word, but she understood its shape.
âSweetling,â he said, and it was nearly a warning.
âYes?â
His mouth twitched, though there was no amusement in it now. âDo not answer me so sweetly when you know what you do.â
âI do not know.â
That was true enough to make him still.
Her face burned as she forced herself to meet his eye. âNot as much as you think.â
Aemond looked at her for a long moment, and the hunger in him changed again. It did not lessen. Gods, no. It deepened, became heavier, more dangerous because it had found tenderness and did not know whether to devour it or kneel before it.
âYou came to my chamber at night,â he said.
âI did.â
âYou brought my ribbon back.â
âYes.â
âYou told me you chose the risk.â
âYes.â
âAnd still you would have me believe you innocent?â
âNo,â she whispered. âOnly not practiced.â
His hand rose to her face. The backs of his fingers touched her cheek, then turned, knuckles brushing down the side of her throat. The path was slow enough that she felt every place before and after it, each inch of skin waiting its turn. He reached the tie of her robe and stopped.
âThen we will practice honesty first.â
Her pulse beat hard against his hand. âHonesty?â
âIf you want my mouth,â Aemond said, voice low, âyou will say so. If you want my hands, you will say so. If you want me to stop, you will say that too. Not with frightened eyes. Not with silence. With words.â
Sweetlingâs throat tightened. A fine thing, words. Useful things, in theory. She had spent a life learning which words to swallow, which to soften, which to bury entirely. The Red Keep had taught her that speech was dangerous, that a handmaid survived by becoming a shadow with hands. And now here was the prince, the most dangerous man in the room, demanding that she stand in the candlelight and name what she wanted of him.
It felt obscene before she had even spoken.
Aemondâs thumb brushed the knot of her robe. âDo you want my mouth again?â
Her lips parted. No sound came.
His gaze did not leave hers.
âSweetling.â
âYes,â she managed.
âWhere?â
The word went through her like a spark dropped into dry rushes. Her hands tightened where they rested against him. She could have said on my mouth. That was safe. True. Already known. But his thumb was still at her throat, and his body was still against hers, and the want in her had become a creature with claws.
âMy neck,â she whispered.
Aemondâs eye darkened.
He did not smile. That would have been easier to bear. Instead, he inclined his head as if she had answered correctly in some private lesson and bent to her throat.
The first kiss was soft enough to make her ache.
Then his lips parted.
The wet heat of his mouth closed over the place she had offered, and Sweetlingâs head tipped back before she could stop it. He kissed her throat, then sucked lightly, enough to pull a gasp from her, enough to make her fingers slide up into his hair without asking. He allowed it. More than allowed it; she felt his breath change when her fingers tightened in the pale strands. Aemondâs hand came up behind her neck, supporting, guiding, holding her exactly where he wanted her while his mouth moved down to the hollow above her collarbone.
Her robe had loosened. She did not know whether by his hand or hers. The cord hung slack, the wool gaping enough that cold air touched the thin shift beneath. Aemondâs mouth paused at the edge of exposed skin.
âHands?â he asked.
It took her a moment to understand.
Then the understanding nearly undid her.
He was asking.
Again.
Not because he did not want. She could feel the want in him, against her, hard and unmistakable. Not because he was gentle by nature, as his mother had said, he was not cruel by nature, both women speaking as if nature were a thing that mattered once power entered the room. He asked because he had chosen to make himself ask, and the effort of it showed in the set of his jaw.
Sweetlingâs fingers trembled in his hair.
âYes,â she said. âYour hands.â
âWhere?â
Her shame rose up hot and useless.
Aemond lifted his head. âYou came all this way to become shy?â
That should have angered her. It did, a little. Enough to give her spine back.
âMy waist,â she said.
His hands went there at once, fitting over her through the robe, large and warm and sure. A simple touch. Almost proper, if one were blind and charitable. But there was nothing proper in the way he drew her closer, nothing courtly in the way his thumbs moved inward, finding the curve beneath her ribs, measuring the smallness of her against the span of his hands. Sweetlingâs breath shook. Aemond watched it happen, then bent and kissed her again, as if her reaction had pleased him past patience.
The kiss turned hungry quickly.
This time, when he backed her toward the desk, she went with him. Parchment crinkled beneath the basket. A letter slid to the floor, and neither of them looked at it. Aemondâs hands remained at her waist until the edge of the desk met the backs of her thighs, then one hand shifted, palm pressing flat beside her hip as he leaned over her. The other slid up, not to her breast, not yet, but to the open edge of her robe.
âMay I?â
The words were quiet. Roughened.
Sweetlingâs heart knocked once, hard.
âYes.â
Aemond drew the robe open.
Only that.
Only wool parting from wool, the plain garment falling wider over the desk behind her, leaving her in the thin shift she had worn beneath. Yet Sweetling felt more naked in that moment than if he had stripped her bare. Candlelight passed through the linen where it pulled over her breasts and waist. She saw his gaze move over her, not greedily, not at first, but with terrible concentration, as if he meant to remember the sight correctly.
Then greed came.
She saw it enter him.
His eye lifted to hers, almost accusing. âYou wear this beneath your robe?â
âIt is only a shift.â
âIt is nearly nothing.â
âIt is what I sleep in.â
Aemondâs gaze dropped again. âI know.â
The answer was too quick, too dark. Sweetlingâs breath caught.
He had imagined it, then.
The thought of him alone in this chamber, severe and composed before others, imagining her in thin linen and undone braids, sent a shameful little heat through her belly. Aemond saw that too. His mouth parted faintly.
âWhat is that look?â he asked.
She shook her head.
His hand caught her jaw, not hard, but with enough command to halt the lie before it formed. âWords.â
âYou thought of me,â she said, barely audible.
The pad of his thumb touched the corner of her mouth. âOften.â
No embroidery. No denial. Often.
Sweetling felt the room tilt.
âAnd how did my prince think of me?â she asked before she could lose her courage.
Aemond went utterly still.
For one heartbeat, she thought she had gone too far. Then his thumb moved over her lower lip, dragging it down a fraction, and his eye fixed on the small parting of her mouth with such heat that her knees would have weakened had the desk not been behind her.
âDo not ask questions you are not prepared to have answered.â
âI am trying to learn.â
His gaze snapped back to hers.
Ah, that pleased him.
It was there and gone, a spark beneath black water.
Aemond lowered his mouth to her ear. âI thought of you on your knees.â
Her breath stopped.
âNot like that,â he murmured, and now there was a trace of cruelty in his softness, not enough to wound, enough to make her feel the blade. âNot yet. I thought of you kneeling to mend a cuff. Kneeling to gather fallen parchment. Kneeling because servants kneel when told, and every fool in this castle thinks obedience is the same as surrender.â
His hand slid from her jaw to her throat, thumb resting just beneath her chin.
âI thought of how often you lower your eyes when you wish to look. How carefully you hold your tongue when you wish to answer. How still you make yourself when fear passes through you, as if stillness makes you safe.â His mouth brushed her ear. âAnd then I thought of making you less still.â
Sweetlingâs hand closed around his sleeve.
Aemond kissed the side of her neck. âThere. That was the thought.â
âYou are cruel,â she whispered.
His mouth paused.
âSometimes.â
The honesty of it chilled and warmed her both.
âAre you cruel now?â she asked.
âNo.â
âThen what are you?â
His answer came against her skin.
âHungry.â
His hand moved at last to her breast.
Over the shift first, palm settling with firm, almost reverent pressure. Sweetling gasped. Her body arched before she could command it otherwise, and Aemond caught the movement with his mouth at her throat, sucking once, harder than before. The ache that answered between her thighs shocked her into silence. She had known wanting in little ways, in flushed cheeks and restless nights, in the memory of kisses that made her press her knees together beneath blankets.
This was different. This was want with teeth.
Aemondâs thumb found the shape of her nipple through the linen.
Sweetling made a sound she had never heard from herself.
His hand stilled.
âPain?â
âNo.â
âFear?â
She swallowed. âSome.â
His eye lifted. âEnough to stop?â
âNo.â
The word came fast. Too fast. She blushed, and his mouth curved against her skin.
âAnd want?â he asked.
Sweetling closed her eyes.
His thumb moved again, slow over the stiffened peak.
âYes.â
Aemond kissed her with a groan caught low in his throat. The sound was almost angry. His hand closed more fully over her breast, kneading through the linen, testing, learning. He was careful at first, maddeningly so, until she arched into his palm and his control slipped enough for his fingers to tighten. The sharper pressure sent heat racing through her. She clutched at him and heard herself whisper his name.
That did something to him.
His mouth dragged from hers to her jaw, then down. He bent, and for one dizzying moment, Sweetling did not understand what he meant to do until his lips closed over her breast through the shift.
She cried out softly.
The linen dampened under his mouth. Heat, pressure, the scrape of teeth barely there. Aemond sucked her through the thin fabric, one hand braced at her back to keep her from slipping off the desk, the other holding her breast to his mouth. Sweetlingâs fingers twisted in his hair. Her head fell back. The chamber blurred to candlelight and rain and the obscene wet warmth of his mouth pulling at her like he meant to draw the soul out through her skin.
Aemond lifted his head only far enough to look at her.
Her hand remained tangled in his hair, fingers gone tense where they had caught and held him to her. The linen clung wetly to the shape of her, transparent where his mouth had worked it, and beneath the damp cloth her nipple stood hard and dark against the fabric. Sweetlingâs eyes were unfocused, her lips parted, her fingers still twisted deep in his hair as though she had forgotten she could let go.
He looked at her hand first.
Then at her mouth.
He had had his mouth between her legs the night before.Â
âSweetling,â he said, and her name came low, roughened against the edge of his restraint.
She swallowed. âAemond.â
He had already made her cry out into the storm. He had already learned how she broke and how she trembled after, how quickly shame rose behind pleasure and how fiercely she tried to gather herself back into modesty once it was done. This was not the first opening of some forbidden gate. That gate had already yielded to him, and gods help them both, she had walked through it willingly. Tonight felt different because of that. Less discovery, more return.Â
Less accident . . . more answer.
âYou pull harder when you forget to be ashamed,â he said.
Sweetlingâs blush came at once, warm and furious, spreading from throat to cheek. âI did not meanââ
He bent again, but not to her breast this time. His mouth found the other through the thin linen, slow and possessive, and Sweetlingâs head tipped back with a little helpless sound she tried too late to bite down.Â
Aemondâs hand slid behind her, broad palm braced against the small of her back to hold her where he wanted her. He did not rushâthat, somehow, was worse. He sucked her through the fabric with lingering attention, dragged his tongue over the stiffened peak until her nails scraped lightly at his scalp, then caught her gently with his teeth and made her gasp his name again.
âThere,â he murmured against her. âThat one.â
âWhat?â
âThe sound.â His mouth moved to the damp edge of her shift, pushing it aside with the bridge of his nose rather than his hands, as though he meant to keep the act slow enough for her to stop him if she wished. âYou make it when you forget to be ashamed.â
Her face burned hot. âI do not.â
Aemond lifted his head.
The look he gave her was flatly disbelieving, and somehow that almost made her laugh. Almost. It died before it could become sound, smothered by the heat in his gaze.
âYou are a poor liar after Iâve had my mouth on you,â he said.
âYou keep saying that.â
âYou keep proving it.â
His hand slid from her waist to her thigh, gathering the thin shift upward by inches. He did not duck his head between her legs as he had the night before. He did not lower himself to his knees and feast until she came apart over his tongue, though the memory of it moved between them like a third presence in the room. She felt it in the way his eye darkened when her knees parted around him, in the way his mouth, still wet from her breast, curved with private knowledge.
âDo you expect my mouth to be there again?â he asked.
The wickedness of it stole the breath from her.
Sweetlingâs gaze flew to his. âAemond.â
âIs that yes or rebuke?â
âIt isââ She swallowed, dignity in ruins. âIt is your name.â
His expression sharpened, pleased despite himself. âSo it is.â
His thumb traced the inside of her knee. Not higher. Not yet. The restraint of it was cruel because it was deliberate, because she could see how easily he might have moved differently and chose not to. He watched the place where his hand rested against her bare skin, then looked back at her face.
âI remember how you tasted,â he said quietly.
Sweetling closed her eyes.
âNo,â he said.
They opened at once.
âThere. That is better.â His thumb slid higher, slow as sin. âYou do not get to hide from what you already gave me.â
âI gave?â she whispered.
His eye lifted. âDid you not?â
The question struck softer than a command and deeper than a kiss. The night before, he had asked. Again and again, in that severe way of his, as if words could make a wall strong enough to keep both of them from ruin. He had made her say what she wanted, made her answer fear and want separately, made her understand that surrender and permission were not the same thing.
Sweetlingâs throat tightened. âI did.â
Aemondâs hand stilled on her thigh.Â
His eye searched her face. He brought her hand back to his jaw and held it there, as if the touch were something he had decided to endure and wanted more of in the same breath.Â
So she touched him.
Only that.Â
Only her fingers against his cheek, the slight rasp of new-shaved skin beneath her fingertips, the hard set of his mouth easing by a fraction he would have denied if she named it. He looked almost angry with the tenderness of it. Sweetling understood. Tenderness was not safe for either of them. It stripped more cleanly than desire. Desire could be called weakness, appetite, sin; tenderness asked what a person might become if they were held and not used.
Aemond turned his face enough to press his mouth to her palm.
Her heart clenched.
Then his teeth closed lightly against the tender heel of her hand. The softness vanished into heat. For a breath, the hunger in him changed shape. It did not lessen. It became more dangerous, more focused, as though the truth had given him something to hold and something to break himself against.
He kissed her then, not gently, not at first. His mouth took hers with the heat he had left on her breast, and Sweetling tasted rain, candle smoke, and the faint salt of his skin. She opened for him because she wanted to, because she had learned the shape of his kiss and wanted it deeper. His tongue slid against hers; his hand tightened at her thigh; her body, traitorous and honest, rolled toward him.
Aemond groaned.
It was low. Almost swallowed. But she heard it, and hearing it made her bold.
Her hands left his hair and lowered her hand to the front of his tunic, fingers brushing the dark cloth where the fastenings sat. âLast night, you stopped.â
âYes.â
âYou did not let me touch you long.â
Aemondâs jaw flexed.
âYou said it would be another night.â
âI did.â
âAnd is this another night?â
The room seemed to still.
Rain whispered at the shutters. The candlelight bent in the draft. Beneath her fingers, his breath went shallow and controlled, each rise of his chest too measured to be natural. Sweetlingâs own courage faltered beneath the weight of his stare, but she did not take the question back. It had cost too much to ask.
Aemond leaned closer, one hand braced beside her hip on the desk. âDo you know what you are asking?â
âNo,â she said, because he had taught her better than lying. âNot wholly.â
His eye darkened with something more dangerous than desire.
âThen ask what you mean,â he said.
Sweetling swallowed.
Her hand slid lower, not to his belt yet, only to the place where his tunic ended, and the leather began. She could feel the heat of him even through the cloth. Feel how still he had made himself. The control in him was frightening. The wanting beneath it more so.
âI want to touch you,â she said.
Aemondâs mouth parted slightly.
For one breath, nothing happened. Then he closed his eye, just once, as if gathering the words inside him before they could come out as a command rather than an answer.
âWhen you touched me last night,â he said, âyou did it because I guided you.â
âYes.â
âIf you touch me tonight, it will be because you choose to.â
âI know.â
âNo.â His eye opened. âYou know the words. That is not the same.â
Sweetlingâs temper sparked, small and bright beneath the heat in her face. âThen teach me the difference, if you are so determined to lecture me half-naked on your desk.â
Silence.
Then Aemond laughed.
It was quiet, low, gone almost as soon as it came, but it was real. The sound caught Sweetling so wholly off guard that her own mouth softened into an answering smile before she could stop it. Aemond looked at that smile as if it were the most inconvenient thing in Westeros.
âYou will be the death of someone,â he said.
âHopefully not me.â
His amusement faded, but not into coldness. âNo. Not you.â
The promise was too grim to be sweet. Still, it settled warm somewhere beneath her ribs.
He took her hand, the same hand that had hovered uncertainly at his belt, and placed it flat over the leather buckle. Sweetling stared at her fingers there.
Aemond did not help this time.
The difference was immediate. Last night, he had guided her through the first shock of it, taken her wrist, and shown her the shape, movement, and pressure that pleased him. Tonight, he made her reach for knowledge herself. It was cruel in the way honesty could be cruel. It was also exactly what she had asked for.
Her fingers worked the buckle loose. Slowly. Too slowly, perhaps, because Aemondâs breath grew rougher above her. The leather came free, then the ties beneath. Her hands trembled once at the threshold of it, and Aemondâs gaze snapped to her face.
âStop there if you wish.â
The words made her look up.
He meant it. Again, curse him; he meant it. His pride hated the offer. His body hated it more . . . yet he gave it.
Sweetling shook her head.
His eye narrowed.
She remembered. âI do not wish to stop.â
âGood.â
The word sounded almost pained.
She drew him free with less surprise than last night but no less awe. The sight of his cock still stole the sense from her for a momentâthe hard, flushed length of him, heavy in her palm, hot against her skin. He was pale in thickness and a bit darker at the tip, a soft pink that nearly matched her lips. Aemond watched her face so intently she felt the flush spread from her cheeks down her throat to where her shift hung loose and damp from his mouth.
âYou are warm,â she said foolishly.
His mouth twitched. âWas I meant to be stone?â
âNo,â she whispered. âOnly you seem it sometimes.â
âThat is because stone is rarely asked what it wants.â
The words came too quietly. Too bare.
Sweetling looked up.
Aemond seemed to regret them at once. His face hardened, the prince returning like armor drawn over skin, but she had heard the man beneath. She had felt his heart. She leaned forward and kissed the place beneath her palm.
Aemondâs breath caught.
Not much.
Enough.
His hand moved to the back of her neck with dangerous speed, not hurting her, but holding her there as if the kiss had struck somewhere he did not know how to defend. Sweetling pressed another to his chest, then another, her mouth warm against him through the open tunic. She did not know what she was doing. Not truly. But she knew what he had done to her: the deliberate learning of her body, the way he had followed every breath and tremor until she could no longer pretend she was not being known. Perhaps this was the same. Perhaps it could be.
Aemondâs fingers tightened in her hair.
âSweetling.â
She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, mouth still close to his skin.
The sight seemed to undo something in him.
He bent and kissed her, hard enough that she had to brace one hand behind herself on the desk. His other hand returned to her breast, but no longer content with damp linen. He tugged at the neckline of her shift until the fabric slipped low, baring her properly to candlelight.
Sweetling sucked in a breath and almost covered herself.
Aemond caught both her wrists in one hand.
âNo.â
The word was firm, but not angry. A command, yes, but one that waited on her face. His gaze moved down to her bare breasts, and this time there was nothing between his mouth and her. Nothing to soften the sight of his hunger. Nothing to save her from the way he looked at her, as if the court, the crown, the gods, the rain, all of it had become less real than the small, trembling lift of her chest.
âYou are lovely,â he said.
It sounded almost resentful.
Sweetlingâs eyes stung. âYou say it as though it displeases you.â
âIt does.â
That surprised a laugh out of her, breathless and shy. âWhy?â
âBecause I have enough trouble.â
Then his mouth closed over her bare breast.
The laugh broke apart into a moan.
Aemondâs hand released her wrists so he could grip her waist, holding her steady as his tongue circled the stiffened peak. The first touch was wet and hot and direct enough that her spine arched. He sucked slowly, then harder, drawing at her until pleasure pulled tight from her breast to the deep ache between her thighs. His teeth scraped with just enough edge to make her gasp his name, and when she did, he answered with a low sound against her skin that she felt more than heard.
He did not rush.
That was the cruelty of himâthe devotion of him. He gave the same attention to her breasts that he had given to the rest of her the previous night, as if no part of her body deserved to be passed over simply because he had already learned another. He tasted one nipple until it was swollen and wet from his mouth, then crossed to the other with maddening patience, his hand kneading what his lips had left behind. Sweetlingâs shift sat bunched beneath her breasts, her robe open around her, her thighs parted around the hard line of his body. She had never felt so exposed. She had never felt so held.
Her hands went to his shoulders.
This time, she did not ask.
Aemondâs mouth curved against her breast.
âGood,â he murmured.
The praiseâif praise it wasâsettled low and hot inside her. She hated how badly she liked it; hated worse that he knew.
His hand slid beneath her shift again, over her hip, across the soft lower curve of her belly. Sweetlingâs breath quickened before he reached where she wanted him. Aemond paused.
âAlready?â he asked.
âYou are being cruel.â
âI have barely touched you.â
âYou know what you are doing.â
That pleased him.
Gods help her, it pleased him.
His fingers slipped beneath the edge of her smallclothes and found her wet.
They both went still.
Aemond shut his eye for one brief moment, as if some disciplined part of him needed darkness to survive the discovery. Sweetling watched his face while his fingers rested against her, not moving yet, only feeling the slick heat she could not hide. The night before, she might have died of shame beneath such attention. Tonight, shame still burned, but it no longer stood alone.
She wanted him to know.
That was the terrible part.
Aemond opened his eye. âYou are not frightened of this now.â
âI am frightened.â
âNot of my hand.â
Her lips parted.
No answer came.
He was right.
The fear lived elsewhere now: in the door; in the whispers; in the queenâs quiet gaze, Ryleneâs warnings, and Jeyneâs mean little smile.
Not here. Not exactly. Not with his hand between her thighs and his mouth still warm from her breast.
âNo,â she admitted.
His expression shifted. Hunger, satisfaction, and something like wonder made darker by pride.
âNo,â he repeated.
His fingers moved.
Sweetling bowed forward with a broken breath, forehead nearly touching his shoulder.
He stroked her slowly at first, parting her with the kind of care that made the intimacy worse. He knew her now. He knew what made her hips lift, knew where to press, knew that circling too softly made her impatient and circling too firmly made her clutch at him with both hands. He knew because he had learned it from her body the night before, and now he used that knowledge without the clumsiness of first discovery.
She made room for him.
That, too, he noticed.
His mouth brushed her temple. âThere she is.â
The words were soft, almost fond, and filthy for all that.
Sweetling turned her face into his shoulder. âDo not say it like that.â
âLike what?â
âAs though you have been looking for her.â
His fingers slowed.
For a moment, only rain spoke.
Then Aemond said, âI have.â
The answer entered her more deeply than his touch.
She lifted her head. His face was close, too close for either of them to pretend. His eye moved over her features as if searching for the line between what she could bear and what he wanted to take. His fingers were still under her smallclothes, slick against her, but his attention had gone to her mouth.
âI thought of you today,â he said.
Sweetlingâs breath caught. âWhen?â
His mouth curved faintly. âOften.â
âDoing what?â
The question came before shame could stop it.
Aemondâs eye darkened.
âYou ask dangerous questions after midnight.â
âYou answer them better after midnight.â
That earned her a look sharp enough to cut silk.
Then he kissed her, and while he kissed her, his fingers slid lower, one pressing slowly inside. Sweetling gasped into his mouth. Not surprise, not the way she had the night before. Recognition. Her body clenched around him as if welcoming a known trespass. Aemond felt it and groaned softly, his composure slipping again, just enough for her to feel powerful and endangered all at once.
He moved his finger inside her with slow, deep strokes, his thumb working above in the rhythm he had discovered before. Sweetlingâs hands found his open tunic, pushing it wider, needing skin beneath her palms. He let her. More than let her. He shifted closer, giving her access to the hard plane of his chest, the lean cut of muscle beneath pale skin, the heat of him. She touched him clumsily, greedily, while his hand ruined her. His breath thickened when her nails dragged lightly over his ribs.
âYou like that,â she whispered.
Aemondâs eye flashed to hers.
The answering pride in her own voice seemed to surprise them both.
His fingers withdrew almost fully, then pressed back in with a second alongside the first.
Sweetlingâs pride vanished into a moan.
Aemondâs mouth found her breast again, sucking hard as his fingers worked inside her, and the room turned molten. Desk beneath her. Maps crushed under her palms. Rain at the windows. His hair against her skin. His hand was between her thighs. His mouth at her breast. Her own hands learning the shape of him with growing desperation. She was not new to pleasure now, but knowing did not make it smaller. Knowing made it worse because she could feel where he was leading her, and she still went willingly.
Her hips began to move with his hand.
Aemond lifted his head.
He watched.
The look on his face made her burn hotter than the touch itself. Not because he seemed amused. He did not. Not because he seemed gentle. He did not. He looked fiercely attentive, almost reverent in the most dangerous way, as if her pleasure were a thing he had summoned and now meant to master without breaking.
âDo not stop,â she whispered.
His jaw tightened. âI had not planned to.â
A laugh almost escaped her, but his thumb pressed more firmly and it became a whimper instead.
Aemond kissed her mouth, her jaw, the side of her throat. âThat is it. Let me feel it.â
The words were too much. His voice was too close. Sweetling clutched at him, body tightening around his fingers, pleasure coiling low and bright. She knew the edge now, and knew the terrible swelling rush before it. Her thighs shook around his hand.
âAemond.â
âI know.â
He did not take her maidenhead. He did not push toward what he had promised would not be tonight. Instead, he made the denial into another kind of torment. He touched her where she was already swollen and slick, pressed and circled and stroked until she shook against him, all while he thrust into her hand with harsh, controlled movements that grew less controlled each time she moaned. His mouth returned to her breasts, dragging the shift lower now, baring one to the candlelight so he could close his lips over her skin without linen between them.
Sweetling cried out.
Aemondâs free hand rose at once to cover her mouth, but his lips did not leave her breast. The double claim of itâhis hand silencing her, his mouth drawing pleasure from her, his body straining into her touchâsent her nearly senseless. She tasted salt and skin against his palm. Her eyes stung, not with pain, not with sorrow, but with the intensity of being held in so many ways at once.
âQuiet,â he murmured against her breast.
She nodded, though both of them knew obedience would soon fail her.
His fingers moved faster.
Pleasure climbed in her again, familiar now and no less frightening for it. She knew the crest. Knew the bright, impossible edge of it. Last night he had pulled her over it with his mouth. Tonight he brought her there with one hand while the rest of him trembled for what he had not yet allowed himself to claim.
Sweetlingâs hand moved desperately around him. She wanted to give him that same loss. Wanted to see his control break and know she had done it. Wanted, with a sudden fierceness that startled her, to be the reason Aemond Targaryen forgot himself.
His breath caught against her skin.
âSweetling.â
The warning in her name made her pulse leap.
She tightened her grip as he had shown her last night, twisting on the upward stroke, thumb brushing the place that made his hips jerk harder into her hand.
Aemond groaned.
It was not loud. The storm outside might have swallowed it. But she felt it in his chest, in his mouth at her breast, in the sudden rough pressure of his hand between her thighs. That sound undid her. Pleasure broke hard and sudden, wringing a muffled cry as her body tightened beneath his fingers. Aemond kissed the sound from her mouth, then dragged his lips back down to the breast he had dampened earlier, taking it again through the linen while his hand worked between her thighs. Sweetling nearly lost her grip on him.Â
His teeth grazed her, his tongue soothed the same place, and pleasure folded in on itselfâhis mouth at her breast, his fingers below, his hard length in her hand, all of it too much to keep separate.
Her release took him with it.
His head bowed against her shoulder. His hips drove once, twice into her hand, control shattering in tight, restrained pulses as he spilled over her fingers with a sound bitten nearly in half by pride. Sweetling held him through it, dazed and shaking, her cheek pressed to his hair, her own pleasure still moving through her in faint aftershocks.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Rain tapped at the window.
The candle guttered.
Parchment lay crushed beneath them, maps of kingdoms ruined by the weight of a handmaidâs hip and a princeâs poor restraint.
Aemond removed his hand from her mouth slowly.
Sweetling drew a breath that trembled on the way in.
He did not lift his head at once. That was the strangest part. He remained bowed against her, mouth near the bare curve of her breast, hair falling over her loosened robe, breathing as if the world required effort. Sweetlingâs clean hand rose, hesitated, then settled on the back of his head.
He went still.
She stroked his hair once.
âAemond?â
âDo not,â he said.
Her hand froze. âDo not what?â
His voice came low against her skin. âMake it gentle yet.â
The words hurt in a place she could not name.
Not because he rejected gentleness. Because he recognized it and feared what shape it might demand of him.
Sweetling resumed stroking his hair anyway.
Aemond said nothing.
After a moment, his hand closed around her wristânot pulling her away, only holding her there.
Afterward, Aemond cleaned her fingers himself.
Sweetling protested at once, because there were limits to what a girl could survive with her dignity intact, and apparently having a prince kneel between her knees to tend to the evidence of his pleasure was very near one of them.
âI can do it,â she said, mortified.
âI know.â
He did not give her the cloth.
She sat on the edge of his desk with her shift pulled properly into place and her robe tied loosely enough to be a lie. Her hair was half fallen from its braid. Her mouth felt swollen again, though less from being taken by surprise than from being kissed too thoroughly for too long. Her knees still trembled whenever she shifted. Aemond stood before her with a damp cloth in hand, his own clothing restored with irritating efficiency, though his hair and breathing had betrayed him enough that she did not feel entirely conquered.
He took her hand.
The warm cloth passed over her palm, between her fingers, along each knuckle with the same grim care he gave wounds and weapons. He did not make a spectacle of it. That made it more intimate, not less. Sweetling watched his face as he worked. His expression was severe, almost distant, but the set of his mouth had softened in ways he likely did not know. Or knew and hated.
âYou are thinking,â he said.
âI am often thinking.â
âNot always wisely.â
She almost smiled. âNo.â
His gaze lifted to hers. âWhat?â
The question was too direct. She looked at their hands instead.
âLast night,â she said carefully, âafterward, I thought I would feel ruined.â
Aemondâs hand stilled around hers.
Sweetling felt the room tighten.
âAnd did you?â he asked.
âI felt frightened. And ashamed. And pleased.â She swallowed. âThe pleased part frightened me most.â
His thumb moved once over her cleaned palm. âAnd now?â
She should have lied. Not because he would fail to catch it, but because honesty had begun to feel like undressing more thoroughly than desire had managed.
âNow I feel foolish,â she said.
Aemondâs face hardened.
Sweetling shook her head before he could speak. âNot because of you. Because I thought knowing what your mouth could do would make me less helpless to it.â
The corner of his mouth shifted.
Ah. There was that flicker of wickedness. He tried to hide it and failed poorly enough that, despite herself, Sweetling laughed under her breath.
Aemondâs eye narrowed. âYou find your helplessness amusing?â
âI find your pride amusing.â
âMy pride?â
âYou look pleased enough to start a war over it.â
âI have started no wars over your thighs.â
âYet.â
The word escaped before she understood how bold it was.
Aemond went still.
Sweetlingâs laughter vanished.
For half a heartbeat, she thought she had ruined the ease between them. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth, slow and dark, and she realized the danger was not anger.
âNo,â he said softly. âNot yet.â
The heat that went through her was immediate and devastating.
He finished cleaning her hand, then set the cloth aside with more force than necessary. That, too, pleased her. Aemond Targaryen, undone by a handmaid saying one foolish word. She would have liked to keep that knowledge folded somewhere secret, pressed between the pages of herself like a stolen flower.
His hand came to her chin, tipping her face up.
âYou grow bold after midnight,â he said.
âYou told me you disliked half-courage.â
âI did.â
âI am trying to be obedient.â
His mouth curved.
âLiar.â
This time, the word was almost fond.
Sweetling did not know what to do with almost fond. Fondness seemed far more dangerous than lust. Lust had at least been named in warnings. Fondness came quietly, wearing no heraldry, and set itself beside a girl before she realized there was room for it.
Aemond seemed to sense the same danger, for he stepped back and turned toward the basin.
âYou will return by the west stair,â he said. âNot the lower passage.â
Sweetling gathered the edges of her robe, pulling herself back into order piece by piece. âYou said that last night.â
âAnd you remembered?â
âYes.â
âGood.â
She slid from the desk, and her knees nearly betrayed her. Aemond caught her elbow at once.
They both looked down at his hand.
It should not have mattered after everything else. Yet this touch was different. Public enough in shape to be innocent, private enough in timing to undo her.
âI can walk,â she said.
âI did not ask whether you could.â
âNo. You merely grabbed me.â
âI kept you from falling.â
âI was not falling.â
âYou were considering it.â
That startled another laugh from her, softer this time. He watched it in the way he watched things he meant to understand and disliked needing. His hand remained at her elbow.
âAemond,â she said.
The name altered the room again.
He released her slowly.
Sweetling reached for the basket she had brought, only to find that it had been knocked half beneath the desk. The shirt inside remained unmended. The needle case had spilled open, black thread looping over the floor like some little shadow-snake. She stared at it.
Aemond followed her gaze.
âThe mending,â she said.
His mouth twitched. âYes. That grave purpose for which you came.â
âI did come with mending.â
âYou came with an excuse.â
She bent quickly to gather the thread, because if she looked at him her face would show too much. âIt was still mending.â
âYou mended nothing.â
âThat is not true.â She tucked the needle case into the basket with unnecessary care. âYour patience was in tatters.â
Aemond stared at her.
Then, impossibly, he laughed again. This one lasted even less than the first, but it warmed her all the same. It made him look almost startled at himself afterward, as if she had somehow stolen the sound from him rather than earned it.
Sweetling straightened with the basket in hand, her smile small and traitorous.
âDo not look so pleased,â he said.
âI am not.â
âYou are.â
He sent her away with one final kiss.Â
The corridor beyond was cold enough to make her shiver. She walked as he had told her, west stair, Maegorâs tapestry, eyes lowered but not blind. No one stopped her. No one saw enough to matter. Beneath her sleeve, the ribbon brushed her pulse with every step.
By the time she reached her narrow bed, the castle had gone quiet in the strange way living beasts went quiet before dawn. She undressed without lighting a candle and slid beneath her blanket with shaking legs and a mouth still warm from his.
Bessa snored softly from the far pallet. The older maid near the door muttered in sleep. Sweetling lay on her back and stared into the dark. She had crossed into his chamber as a handmaid with a basket; she had returned as something else. Not beloved, maybe, and not safe. Not ruined, though the court would name her so if it knew.Â
Not wife, not whore, not lady, not lamb.
His, if she gave it. Hers, if she chose it.
Between those two truths, sleep came for her at last, dark and deep and full of dragons.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
By morning, the rain had made liars of all clean things.
It came down over Kingâs Landing in thin, needling silver, not hard enough to empty the streets, though not soft enough to ignore. The gutters choked. The flags above the Red Keep hung sodden and heavy from their poles, green and gold and black-red alike gone dark at the edges. Smoke crawled low from the cityâs chimneys, too damp to rise properly, and the whole of the castle seemed to breathe wet stone.
Sweetling hated rain more after that night.
Warnings: Mentions of oral from the previous chapter.
WC: 7.4k
Notes: This chapter was technically 16.7k words, but Tumblr is not allowing me to add all of it in here :( (stupid "1,000 block" thing), so you have two options:
(1) wait for the other corresponding chapter to come out, which will probably be posted within the next two days or so.
or
(2) go to my AO3 to just read it. It's Chapter 7, and it's smut. Kinda. No penetration/no p in v yet. We're building up to their first time.
His Handmaid's Tales | AO3 Version
dividers: #enchanthings
By morning, the rain had made liars of all clean things.
It came down over Kingâs Landing in thin, needling silver, not hard enough to empty the streets, though not soft enough to ignore. The gutters choked. The flags above the Red Keep hung sodden and heavy from their poles, green and gold and black-red alike gone dark at the edges. Smoke crawled low from the cityâs chimneys, too damp to rise properly, and the whole of the castle seemed to breathe wet stone.
Sweetling hated rain more after that night.
Not because of the cold. Cold was honest. Cold bit and was done with it. Rain crept. Rain found seams, loosened knots, dampened hems, drew hair from pins, and secrets from mouths and tongues. Rain had put her in Prince Aemondâs chambers with her robe clinging and her courage behaving like that of some drunkardâs fool. Rain had beaded on his pale lashes when he looked down at her, and made the linen of her shift treacherous beneath his hands, and turned the sound of his breathing into a thing she could still hear now, though the morning bells had long since rung. Rain had found her in Prince Aemondâs bed, with her robe twisted upwards, and his head between her thighs.Â
Foolness, though, or perhaps shame, had her sitting in the queenâs sewing room with six other women, a basket of mending at her feet and a green sleeve across her lap, and tried very hard not to think of Aemond Targaryenâs mouth and tongue and hunger.
This proved difficult because her body had become a traitor.
Every prick of the needle called back the scrape of his teeth against her throat. Every draw of thread through cloth remembered the slow pull of his fingers at the cord of her robe and across her breasts. When one of the serving girls leaned across the table, and her sleeve brushed Sweetlingâs wrist, she nearly flinched as if touched somewhere bare.
Fool, she told herself.
Then, more harshly: grateful fool.
That was the danger of a little wanting, she was learning. It did not remain little. It did not stay where one placed it. A girl might tuck it into her sleeve like a ribbon, close her fingers around it, swear she understood the risk, and still by dawn find it had crawled under her skin and warmed itself there.
Mistress Rylene stood near the brazier, reading from a small ledger with the grave displeasure of a woman taking account of sins. Her keys hung at her hip, dull in the grey light. âTwo tablecloths to be rehemmed,â she said. âFour napkins from the kingâs dinner with grease at the edges. A torn cuff from Ser Lorentâs surcoat. A green oversleeve from Her Graceâs blue chamber gown.â
âThat sleeve is mine,â said Jeyne.
Sweetling did not look up.
Across the table, Jeyneâs needle paused. It always did when she wished others to notice she had been interrupted by some thought worth noticing. The other girls knew the pause, and one or two glanced her way with that small, hungry readiness women had when boredom had softened their morals.
Mistress Rylene did not glance up from the ledger. âIt is whoever finishes it well.â
âI only meant,â Jeyne said, all sugar and old vinegar, ââthat I had been told to see to Her Graceâs finer gowns. By Her Graceâs own woman.â
âThen Her Graceâs own woman may sew with your hands for you, if she likes them so much.â
A little laugh tried to rise at the table and died stillborn beneath Ryleneâs gaze.
Jeyne lowered her eyes. âYes, mistress.â
Sweetling kept her needle moving.
The sleeve in her lap was indeed Alicentâs, dark green silk over linen lining, the embroidery at the edge done in thread so fine it seemed spun from candle-flame. The tear was small. A careless jewel had caught it, perhaps, or a thorn from some arrangement of winter greenery brought too near the queenâs chair. It required patience. Sweetling had patience enough when her mind obeyed her.
Today, her mind was a dog without a leash.
Aemondâs voice: Tell me to stop.
Her own foolish head shaking. Aemondâs hand catching her wrist when she tried to close her robe. No. Not cruel. Not gentle. A command that sounded, horribly, like reverence.
She drew the stitch too tight.
The silk puckered.
Sweetling froze.
âOh,â Jeyne said softly.
There it was. Barely a word. A breath in the shape of triumph.
Sweetling did not answer. Carefully, she slid the needle's point beneath the stitch and worked it loose with steady fingers. Thank the Seven for that, if the Seven had any hand in small mercies. Around her, the room resumed its quiet clatter of thread, scissors, and women breathing.
Rylene closed the ledger.
âSweetling,â she said.
The needle stopped in Sweetlingâs hand.
Every head at the table lifted just enough not to seem as though it had.
âYes, mistress.â
âTake the finished linen from the queenâs solar to the press. Then report to the sept. The candles have gone low after last nightâs vigil.â
The sept. Sweetling felt the ribbon inside her sleeve as if it had warmed at the word.
âYes, mistress.â
âYou will not wander.â
âNo, mistress.â
âYou will not linger in upper corridors.â
âNo, mistress.â
âAnd if any man stops you, you will remember that being polite is less useful than being missed.â
âYes, mistress.â
Ryleneâs mouth pressed flat. That was all. No accusation. No soft Oh, child. No hand at her chin searching for the evidence of a kiss. That, somehow, made Sweetling feel worse.
Jeyneâs gaze followed her as she rose. Sweetling folded the queenâs sleeve and set it aside to be corrected later. She took the basket Rylene indicatedâlinen warmed from the brazier, clean, sweet with lavender and rosemaryâand moved toward the door. As she passed, Jeyne said quietly, âMind the rain, Sweetling.â
Not girl. Not handmaid.
Sweetling stopped, and the room sharpened. It would have been wiser to keep walking. She knew that. Wisdom sat in her like a small, severe septa with a switch in hand, and for once, Sweetling heard her clearly. Walk on. Be quiet. Let spite spend itself. Instead, she turned.
Jeyne looked up at her with wide innocence. Too wide. Too innocent.
Sweetling smiled, only a little. âThank you,â she said. âI have been learning when to stay dry and when wetness serves a purpose.â
Jeyneâs eyes narrowed by a hair. The other women around them paused, needles stilling in their stitches. Mistress Ryleneâs keys gave one soft chime. Sweetling curtsied to the roomânot deeply, not mockingly, only properlyâand went out with the linen against her hip and her heartbeat behaving as if she had stolen something.
The Red Keep had more passages than sense.
Some were wide enough for three knights to walk abreast beneath carved beams and painted shields, where lords liked to hear their own boots on stone and ladies drifted by in gowns that whispered money. Others were scarcely more than cracks hidden behind screens or tapestries, servant-ways with walls close enough to bruise an elbow if one turned too sharply. Sweetling knew more of the second sort than the first. Everyone belowstairs did. The castleâs fine face was for those who owned it; its bones were for those who kept it standing.
She took the western service stair because the eastern way crossed too near Prince Aemondâs apartments.
That was prudence. Halfway down, she realized the western stair also passed beneath the gallery overlooking the yard. That was punishment. Or the gods were laughing. Perhaps both.
Steel rang below.
The sound slipped up through the open arches with the smell of wet sand, horse, leather, menâs sweat, oiled mail. Sweetling should have kept walking. She did keep walking, mostly. Yet at the turn, where a narrow window opened to the training court, her steps slowed of their own will.
Aemond was there. Of course, he was there. Where else did dragons go when not permitted to burn?
He wore black leather darkened further by rain, his pale hair tied at the nape and already escaping in damp strands. Ser Criston Cole stood across from him with shield raised, white cloak sodden at one shoulder. Three squires waited near the wall, miserable and fascinated. The yardâs sand had turned treacherous with mud, but Aemond moved as if the ground owed him firmness and dared not disappoint.
His sword struck Cristonâs shield with a crack that made one squire wince.
Again.
Again.
Not wild. Never wild. Each blow was placed, and each retreat measured. His anger, if anger it was, had been folded so neatly into discipline that only someone looking too closely might see the shape of it.
Sweetling was looking too closely.
Criston said something she could not hear.
Aemond answered with steel.
The next exchange was so quick she lost the first half of it. Cristonâs blade came low; Aemond turned it, stepped inside, drove an elbow toward the knightâs ribs, and stopped the blunted edge of his sword an inch from Cristonâs throat. The yard went still after that. Aemondâs mouth moved.
This time, Sweetling heard him.
âAgain.â
Criston lowered his sword a fraction. âMy princeââ
âAgain.â
Aemondâs head turned then. Not muchâbarely at all, in truth . . . but only enough for his eye to find the window. And he then found her. Sweetlingâs breath caught with a shiver down her spine. She stepped back at once, though not quickly enough. The basket shifted at her hip. Linen brushed stone. Below, Aemond neither smiled nor frowned. He only looked at her through rain and distance with the same terrible stillness he had worn among the candles.
Like a man watching the first line of a war . . . or perhaps a man watching his future.Â
Sweetling lowered her eyes and moved on. Behind her, steel rang again. This time, she did not stop.
By morning, the rain had made liars of all clean things.
It came down over Kingâs Landing in thin, needling silver, not hard enough to empty the streets, though not soft enough to ignore. The gutters choked. The flags above the Red Keep hung sodden and heavy from their poles, green and gold and black-red alike gone dark at the edges. Smoke crawled low from the cityâs chimneys, too damp to rise properly, and the whole of the castle seemed to breathe wet stone.
Sweetling hated rain more after that night.
Not because of the cold. Cold was honest. Cold bit and was done with it. Rain crept. Rain found seams, loosened knots, dampened hems, drew hair from pins, and secrets from mouths and tongues. Rain had put her in Prince Aemondâs chambers with her robe clinging and her courage behaving like that of some drunkardâs fool. Rain had beaded on his pale lashes when he looked down at her, and made the linen of her shift treacherous beneath his hands, and turned the sound of his breathing into a thing she could still hear now, though the morning bells had long since rung. Rain had found her in Prince Aemondâs bed, with her robe twisted upwards, and his head between her thighs.Â
Foolness, though, or perhaps shame, had her sitting in the queenâs sewing room with six other women, a basket of mending at her feet and a green sleeve across her lap, and tried very hard not to think of Aemond Targaryenâs mouth and tongue and hunger.
This proved difficult because her body had become a traitor.
Every prick of the needle called back the scrape of his teeth against her throat. Every draw of thread through cloth remembered the slow pull of his fingers at the cord of her robe and across her breasts. When one of the serving girls leaned across the table, and her sleeve brushed Sweetlingâs wrist, she nearly flinched as if touched somewhere bare.
Fool, she told herself.
Then, more harshly: grateful fool.
That was the danger of a little wanting, she was learning. It did not remain little. It did not stay where one placed it. A girl might tuck it into her sleeve like a ribbon, close her fingers around it, swear she understood the risk, and still by dawn find it had crawled under her skin and warmed itself there.
Mistress Rylene stood near the brazier, reading from a small ledger with the grave displeasure of a woman taking account of sins. Her keys hung at her hip, dull in the grey light. âTwo tablecloths to be rehemmed,â she said. âFour napkins from the kingâs dinner with grease at the edges. A torn cuff from Ser Lorentâs surcoat. A green oversleeve from Her Graceâs blue chamber gown.â
âThat sleeve is mine,â said Jeyne.
Sweetling did not look up.
Across the table, Jeyneâs needle paused. It always did when she wished others to notice she had been interrupted by some thought worth noticing. The other girls knew the pause, and one or two glanced her way with that small, hungry readiness women had when boredom had softened their morals.
Mistress Rylene did not glance up from the ledger. âIt is whoever finishes it well.â
âI only meant,â Jeyne said, all sugar and old vinegar, ââthat I had been told to see to Her Graceâs finer gowns. By Her Graceâs own woman.â
âThen Her Graceâs own woman may sew with your hands for you, if she likes them so much.â
A little laugh tried to rise at the table and died stillborn beneath Ryleneâs gaze.
Jeyne lowered her eyes. âYes, mistress.â
Sweetling kept her needle moving.
The sleeve in her lap was indeed Alicentâs, dark green silk over linen lining, the embroidery at the edge done in thread so fine it seemed spun from candle-flame. The tear was small. A careless jewel had caught it, perhaps, or a thorn from some arrangement of winter greenery brought too near the queenâs chair. It required patience. Sweetling had patience enough when her mind obeyed her.
Today, her mind was a dog without a leash.
Aemondâs voice: Tell me to stop.
Her own foolish head shaking. Aemondâs hand catching her wrist when she tried to close her robe. No. Not cruel. Not gentle. A command that sounded, horribly, like reverence.
She drew the stitch too tight.
The silk puckered.
Sweetling froze.
âOh,â Jeyne said softly.
There it was. Barely a word. A breath in the shape of triumph.
Sweetling did not answer. Carefully, she slid the needle's point beneath the stitch and worked it loose with steady fingers. Thank the Seven for that, if the Seven had any hand in small mercies. Around her, the room resumed its quiet clatter of thread, scissors, and women breathing.
Rylene closed the ledger.
âSweetling,â she said.
The needle stopped in Sweetlingâs hand.
Every head at the table lifted just enough not to seem as though it had.
âYes, mistress.â
âTake the finished linen from the queenâs solar to the press. Then report to the sept. The candles have gone low after last nightâs vigil.â
The sept. Sweetling felt the ribbon inside her sleeve as if it had warmed at the word.
âYes, mistress.â
âYou will not wander.â
âNo, mistress.â
âYou will not linger in upper corridors.â
âNo, mistress.â
âAnd if any man stops you, you will remember that being polite is less useful than being missed.â
âYes, mistress.â
Ryleneâs mouth pressed flat. That was all. No accusation. No soft Oh, child. No hand at her chin searching for the evidence of a kiss. That, somehow, made Sweetling feel worse.
Jeyneâs gaze followed her as she rose. Sweetling folded the queenâs sleeve and set it aside to be corrected later. She took the basket Rylene indicatedâlinen warmed from the brazier, clean, sweet with lavender and rosemaryâand moved toward the door. As she passed, Jeyne said quietly, âMind the rain, Sweetling.â
Not girl. Not handmaid.
Sweetling stopped, and the room sharpened. It would have been wiser to keep walking. She knew that. Wisdom sat in her like a small, severe septa with a switch in hand, and for once, Sweetling heard her clearly. Walk on. Be quiet. Let spite spend itself. Instead, she turned.
Jeyne looked up at her with wide innocence. Too wide. Too innocent.
Sweetling smiled, only a little. âThank you,â she said. âI have been learning when to stay dry and when wetness serves a purpose.â
Jeyneâs eyes narrowed by a hair. The other women around them paused, needles stilling in their stitches. Mistress Ryleneâs keys gave one soft chime. Sweetling curtsied to the roomânot deeply, not mockingly, only properlyâand went out with the linen against her hip and her heartbeat behaving as if she had stolen something.
The Red Keep had more passages than sense.
Some were wide enough for three knights to walk abreast beneath carved beams and painted shields, where lords liked to hear their own boots on stone and ladies drifted by in gowns that whispered money. Others were scarcely more than cracks hidden behind screens or tapestries, servant-ways with walls close enough to bruise an elbow if one turned too sharply. Sweetling knew more of the second sort than the first. Everyone belowstairs did. The castleâs fine face was for those who owned it; its bones were for those who kept it standing.
She took the western service stair because the eastern way crossed too near Prince Aemondâs apartments.
That was prudence. Halfway down, she realized the western stair also passed beneath the gallery overlooking the yard. That was punishment. Or the gods were laughing. Perhaps both.
Steel rang below.
The sound slipped up through the open arches with the smell of wet sand, horse, leather, menâs sweat, oiled mail. Sweetling should have kept walking. She did keep walking, mostly. Yet at the turn, where a narrow window opened to the training court, her steps slowed of their own will.
Aemond was there. Of course, he was there. Where else did dragons go when not permitted to burn?
He wore black leather darkened further by rain, his pale hair tied at the nape and already escaping in damp strands. Ser Criston Cole stood across from him with shield raised, white cloak sodden at one shoulder. Three squires waited near the wall, miserable and fascinated. The yardâs sand had turned treacherous with mud, but Aemond moved as if the ground owed him firmness and dared not disappoint.
His sword struck Cristonâs shield with a crack that made one squire wince.
Again.
Again.
Not wild. Never wild. Each blow was placed, and each retreat measured. His anger, if anger it was, had been folded so neatly into discipline that only someone looking too closely might see the shape of it.
Sweetling was looking too closely.
Criston said something she could not hear.
Aemond answered with steel.
The next exchange was so quick she lost the first half of it. Cristonâs blade came low; Aemond turned it, stepped inside, drove an elbow toward the knightâs ribs, and stopped the blunted edge of his sword an inch from Cristonâs throat. The yard went still after that. Aemondâs mouth moved.
This time, Sweetling heard him.
âAgain.â
Criston lowered his sword a fraction. âMy princeââ
âAgain.â
Aemondâs head turned then. Not muchâbarely at all, in truth . . . but only enough for his eye to find the window. And he then found her. Sweetlingâs breath caught with a shiver down her spine. She stepped back at once, though not quickly enough. The basket shifted at her hip. Linen brushed stone. Below, Aemond neither smiled nor frowned. He only looked at her through rain and distance with the same terrible stillness he had worn among the candles.
Like a man watching the first line of a war . . . or perhaps a man watching his future.Â
Sweetling lowered her eyes and moved on. Behind her, steel rang again. This time, she did not stop.
The queenâs solar was empty when Sweetling entered, except for a sleepy hearth and the ghost of Alicent Hightower.
Some women left scents behind them, the way others left gloves and handkerchiefs. Alicentâs rooms held lavender, rosemary, beeswax, old parchment, and the faint metallic worry that seemed to cling to the queen no matter how fine her gown. The chairs sat in their places; the embroidery frame near the window was covered with emerald-green cloth, and a cup of cooled tisane rested untouched beside a folded letter.
Sweetling did not look at the letter.
Looking was not reading, and reading was not betrayal, but in the Red Keep, such distinctions often died under questioning.
She placed the linens in the proper press, checked the shelf for dampness, and smoothed the stack twice. Her hands moved by habit. That was useful. Habit kept a girl alive when thought became dangerous.
At the little side table, she found one of the queenâs gloves.
Alicent favored gloves more than most women. Fine kid leather, green or cream or black, depending on the occasion, worked tight over fingers that had learned to fold themselves in prayer rather than claw at the world. This one lay palm-up beside the tisane as if dropped in weariness. The inner seam had split near the thumb.
Sweetling ought to have left it for Jeyne.
She took out her needle.
It was foolish. Small foolishness, yes, but foolishness all the same. The sept waited. Rylene had said go and come back. The queenâs glove was not her charge.
Still, she sat by the window where the light was best and mended the seam.
The leather was soft, the split clean. A quick repair. A little kindness, if anyone could call service kind. Sweetling bent her head over it and let the rainâs hush fill the room. Stitch by stitch, the torn place closed.
She thought of Alicentâs eyes, shaped by marriage and childbirth and betrayal that arrived much too early in girlhood. Not angry, though anger existed in the same breath as exasperation, but . . . careful measuring.
She thought of Aemondâs mouth shaping the words: My mother believes herself subtle. She is not.
Then she thought of his hands on her waist, on her breasts, and his tongue collecting wetness between her thighs, and pricked her finger. âSeven hells,â she whispered.
âAn unusually devout prayer.â
Sweetling surged to her feet so quickly that the chair scraped against the stone.
Alicent Hightower stood in the doorway. Not crowned. That made her worse. A crown announced a queen. Without it, Alicent seemed more wholly herself: a woman too young to look as tired as she did, hands folded over a dark green gown, auburn hair bound back, face soft in all the places worry had not sharpened.
Sweetling dropped low. âYour Grace.â
Alicentâs gaze moved from her face to the glove on the table, then to the needle in her hand. âRise.â
Sweetling rose.
The queen came forward. Her steps were quietâa ladyâs steps, learned young and never unlearned. âI sent for that glove this morning. I was under the impression that Jeyne, perhaps, would be the one mending it.â
Sweetlingâs stomach tightened. âForgive me, Your Grace. I found the seam torn and thought to mend it beforeââ
âBefore anyone noticed?â
The words were mild. The trap beneath them was not.
Sweetling lowered her eyes. âYes, Your Grace.â
Alicent took the glove and examined the repair in silence. For a moment, there was only the sound of rain at the shutters. âYou sew well.â
âThank you, Your Grace.â
âMy son thinks so.â
Sweetlingâs mouth went dry.
Alicent set the glove down, pulled her shoulders back, and laced her hands together. âDo not look so frightened. It makes me feel crueler than I have yet decided to be.â
That startled Sweetling into looking up. A mistake. Alicent saw too much in her face. Queens did that. Mothers did worse. The silence lengthened into something terrible, something that sent twelve stones, heavy and round, into her tummy.
Then Alicent said, âHe trained hard this morning.â
Sweetling had no idea what answer was safe. âYes, Your Grace.â
âYou saw him?â
âI passed the gallery.â
âAnd stopped?â
The room had become very cold.
âFor a moment,â Sweetling admitted.
Alicentâs mouth tightened. Not anger; pain, perhaps, or recognition, which was less merciful. âFor a moment,â she echoed.
Sweetling wished for Ryleneâs hard voice, for Jeyneâs spite, for Marraâs steam and lye, anything simpler than being alone with a queen who loved her son enough to fear him.
Alicent moved to the window. Rain blurred the city beyond into dark streaks and pale smoke. âWhen Aemond was small, he would follow the others into the yard and watch them with such hunger that I could hardly bear it. Not hunger for play. No. He was never much for play. Hunger to be included. To be feared less, mocked less. A Targaryen with a dragon is terrible for the world. A Targaryen without a dragon is worse.â Her fingers touched the windowsill.Â
â. . . then came Driftmark.â
Sweetling did not move; she did not need to. Everyone in the castle knew the word. Driftmark. The Lady Laena Velayronâs funeral. The she-dragon Vhagar, one of the conquerorâs mounts. The blade, the eye, the sapphire, and the prince made sharper by what had been taken from him. âHe came back to me with one eye gone,â Alicent said softly, ââand told me it was a fair exchange.â
The queenâs voice did not break, and that made it worse.
Sweetling swallowed. âI am sorry, Your Grace.â
Alicent turned. âDo not be sorry for old wounds. The court has enough mourners when it wishes to seem virtuous.â Her gaze fixed on Sweetlingâs mouth. Her lips were not bruised . . . at least not visibly, though Aemond had kissed her enough the last night that Sweetling felt the look all the same.
âMy son is not his brother,â Alicent said.
âNo, Your Grace.â
âAnd yet . . . that is not enough.â
Sweetlingâs hands tightened around the needle.
Alicent saw. Her eyes softened, briefly, and then hardened because softness had so rarely served her well. âHe has given you a choice, I take it.â It was not a question.
Sweetling felt the ribbon hidden in her sleeve.
âYes, Your Grace.â
âDo you understand how strange that is?â
âYes.â
âDo you understand how dangerous?â
âYes.â
âDo you understand,â Alicent said, voice sharpening now, âthat a prince may give a choice one day and resent being held to it the next? Or that a dragon might possess you like gold? My son Aegon has fathered enough bastards that Flea Bottom is said to resemble Valyria. While Aemond is not Aegon, men are still men, and men prefer to think with their cocks than their minds.â
Sweetlingâs throat tightened. Aemond would not, some foolish part of her wanted to say, but she did not know that. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. She did not know if Aemond would keep her the way men kept their favorite whores at the brothels, or if his tongue and mercy held more promises than expected.Â
âI . . . understand that he is a prince,â she began, each word slow and careful.
Alicentâs face changed, only slightly, though enough. âGood.âÂ
It was not praise. It did not stop Sweetling from gathering her courage in both hands and hating how small a handful it made of it. âYour Grace.â
Alicent waited.
âHe stopped.â
The words hung between them, improper and plain.
Alicent went still.
Sweetling forced herself onward. âWhen I did not know how to ask it. When I was frightened. He stopped.â
Alicent looked away first.
For a moment, she did not seem like a queen at all. She seemed like a woman who had prayed for a son to grow into something better than the world allowed men to be, and feared every day that prayer was another form of pride.
âAt least he knows the shape of it,â Alicent murmured.
âOf what, Your Grace?â
âRestraint.â
Sweetling thought of Aemond in the yard, rain in his hair, blade at Cristonâs throat. She thought of him in the sept, stepping back when she had wanted him closer. She thought of him at the desk with his hand around her wrist, and his voice roughened by wanting. âHe is learning,â she said before she could stop herself.
Alicent looked back at her.
This time, the queenâs eyes were not soft.
âThey all learn,â she said. âThe question is what lesson they prefer.â
Sweetling bowed her head.
Alicent crossed the room and took up the mended glove. âGo to the sept. Leave the candles neat. And Sweetling?â
âYes, Your Grace?â
âIf he sends the ribbon, you may refuse.â
Sweetlingâs breath caught.
âIf he sends the seal,â Alicent continued, âyou will come first to me.â
That was no small command. It was treason in miniature, if one wished to be dramatic. A seed of betrayal planted in the soil of protection. A queen laying claim across a princeâs claim. A mother reminding the handmaid that dragons did not own every sky they flew beneath.
Sweetling curtsied. âYes, Your Grace.â
Alicentâs mouth pressed thin. âDo not make me regret protecting you.â
âNo, Your Grace.â
âAnd do not make him regret trying.â
Sweetling looked up, but Alicent had already turned toward the window, glove in hand, rainlight on her face as she stared across the yard.
The audience was done.
The sept smelled of wet wool and melting wax.
It was colder than the queenâs solar, colder even than the service stairs, for holy places in Kingâs Landing often seemed to mistake discomfort for virtue. The seven faces above the altar watched with their usual stone patience. The Motherâs carved eyes were kind if one stood far enough away. The Fatherâs were not. The Strangerâs face, shadowed behind a black candle, offered no opinion at all.
Sweetling preferred the Stranger for that.
No novice slept near the candles today. No septa scolded. The chamber stood quiet but for the rain whispering somewhere beyond the walls and the soft, faint hiss of dying wicks. She knelt first, not because she was especially pious in that moment, though she tried to be. Habit drew her down before thought did. Her knees found the worn place in the stone and her hands folded.
Maiden, keep me gentle.
She hesitated. Gentleness had begun to seem like a gown sewn for another girl.
Mother, keep me strong.
That, at least, she could pray honestly.
Father, keep me just.
Justice belonged to those high enough to afford it, but she prayed anyway.
Warrior, keep me brave.
That one felt dangerous. Brave girls died quicker than quiet ones, Rylene had said in a hundred different ways without ever saying those words exactly. Brave girls perished in childbirth, and beneath men they had believed they could tame.Â
Smith, keep my hands true.
Her fingers still bore faint marks from lye and needle, though the skin had healed where Aemondâs salve had done its work.
Crone, keep my eyes open.
Too open, perhaps.
Strangerâ
She stopped. The black candle guttered.Â
In the silence, footsteps sounded behind her.
Sweetling did not turn. Fear moved first, then hope, and she disliked hope more, as hope had no discipline. Hope was a little animal running toward a hand that might hold bread or a knife. The footsteps stopped beside the Warrior.
âI thought to find you here,â Aemond said.
Her eyes closed.
Of course.
She rose carefully and turned, head bowing just a little. âMy prince.â
His gaze dropped to her mouth at the title.
âAemond,â she corrected, softer.
The displeasure left his face by half a degree. He wore the same black from the yard, though he had changed his damp outer leather for a dry tunic. His hair was still tied back, but rain had curled one pale strand against his cheek. The eyepatch made him look severe. The sapphire beneath it, unseen, made him feel worse: a secret blue fire hidden where an eye had been.
âYou spoke with my mother,â he said.
Sweetling folded her hands. âYes.â
âYou were alone.â
âYes.â
âAnd?â
âAnd she told me to come here.â
His mouth tightened. âThat is not what I ask.â
âYou did not ask anything.â
Aemond stared at her.
The sept seemed to grow interested.
Sweetlingâs courage immediately tried to flee her body. Too late. The words had left. They stood now in the space between them, small and bold and foolish as a candle set beneath a curtain.
Then Aemondâs mouth moved. âHm.âÂ
Not quite a smile.
âYou are becoming a trial.â
âI am trying not to.â
âNo.â He stepped nearer. âYou are not.â
Warmth moved through her, not modest warmth, and not proper. A low, curling thing she had no prayer for.
Aemond stopped a pace away. âWhat did she say?â
Sweetling glanced toward the seven faces. âShe told me that if you send the seal, I must go first to her.â
His eye hardened.
âI see.â
âShe means to protect me.â
âShe means to manage me.â
âBoth may be true.â
âThat is her great talent,â Aemond said coldly. âMaking a chain look like shelter.â
Sweetling looked at him then, really looked.
Rain had left a line of damp at his collar. His jaw was tight. His hands, those careful hands, were held still at his sides. But the stillness did not fool her; she knew him better than that now, knew the little signs, and knew when pride was hurt and when anger was covering something less armored. âYou gave me the ribbon,â she said.
His eye flicked down to her sleeve. âYes.â
âWas that a chain?â
âNo.â
âWas it shelter?â
âNo.â
âWhat was it, then?â
âA choice.â
She stepped closer, not by much, barely enough to count, but enough that his gaze sharpened and held. âAnd choices are not shelter?â
Aemond said nothing.
Sweetlingâs heart beat hard. She wondered if all courage felt like sickness at first. âThe queen does not trust you,â she said carefully. âNot with this. Perhaps she is wrong. Perhaps she is not. But she fears for me, and I cannot hate her for it.â
âYou defend her to me?â
âI defend fear when it is not cruel.â
His expression changed.
âCareful,â he said.
âNo,â Sweetling whispered.
His eye narrowed.
The word had startled them both.
She swallowed, then made herself continue. âNo. I am careful in corridors. I am careful with Jeyne. I am careful with Mistress Rylene, and with Her Grace, and with every guard who looks too long. With you, Aemond, I am trying to be honest.â
Aemondâs breath left him slowly.
âYou think honesty safer?â
âNo.â
âThen why?â
Because you listen, she had said once.
That answer had been true. It was not all of it.
Because you stop, she might have said. Because you gave me a way to refuse you and hated needing to give it, and gave it anyway. Because when you look at me, I feel seen and endangered and chosen and doomed, and some foolish part of me has begun to prefer danger with a name to safety without one. She said none of that. Instead, she reached into her sleeve and drew out the ribbon.
Aemondâs face went still.
The cloth lay across her palm, dark and plain. A servantâs scrap. A princeâs signal. A warning. A mercy. A thing that had become too heavy for what little it weighed.
âI have it,â she said.
âI see that.â
âI did not return it.â
âI did not ask you to.â
âNo.â Her fingers curled around it. âYou asked me to understand the risk.â
âAnd do you?â
âNot enough.â
His gaze held hers.
âThat answer pleased you yesterday,â she said.
âThat was yesterday.â
âAnd today?â
âToday,â Aemond said, âI find I dislike how well you remember me.â
Sweetling smiled before she could help herself. Aemond looked at her mouth. The sept changed at once.
Not in any way the gods would admit. The candles still burned. Rain still whispered. Stone still watched. Yet all the air between them drew tight as pulled silk, and Sweetling felt the memory of his hands at her waist as if he had touched her anew. Aemond did not move, and somehow that was worse than movement.
âDo not smile at me so,â he said.
âHow do I smile?â
âAs if you think me better than I am.â
Her smile faded. âI do not think that.â
His eye returned to hers.
âI think you are trying,â she said. âThat is different.â
Aemond laughed once beneath his breath. âA poor compliment.â
âIt was not meant as one.â
âNo. That is why I believe it.â
Then he touched her. Only her hand. His fingers closed over the ribbon and her palm together, warm and dry, sword-callused, frighteningly careful. Sweetling looked down. His hand was larger than hers, the bones long and clean, the knuckles marked by training. Hers disappeared under his for a moment.
âTell me,â he said.
Her voice thinned. âTell you what?â
âThat you understand this, too.â
His thumb moved once over the back of her hand. It was not enough to be called a caress, but it was enough to make her breath catch.
Sweetling looked up. âThat you want me?â
His face hardened with the bluntness of it.
âYes.â
âI understand.â
âNo,â he said softly. âYou understand that a man wants. You do not yet understand how a dragon does.â
Her pulse stumbled. Aemondâs fingers tightened, then eased at once, as if he had felt himself do it and corrected the force before it could become command. âThere,â he said, almost bitterly. âThat is the lesson.â
Sweetling drew in a breath.
âYou could be gentle,â she said.
The words struck him more visibly than she expected.
Aemond stared at her as if she had accused him of some secret vice.
âI could be many things,â he said.
âYes.â
âThat does not mean I am.â
âNo.â
âYou are determined to be foolish.â
âI am determined to know.â
âTo know what?â
Sweetling looked at their joined hands. The ribbon was trapped between them. âTo know whether restraint is all you will allow yourself.â
Aemond went very still.
For one heartbeat, two, she thought she had truly gone too far. That he would step back, turn cold, cut the little growing thing between them down to the root because she had dared name it. But he did not step back. He came closer. Slowly. So slowly, she had every chance to move away. Her back met the edge of the altar rail. The carved wood pressed through her gown. Aemondâs hand left hers and rose to her face, stopping just shy of her cheek, though he did not touch her there yet.
âSay my name,â he murmured.
âAemond.â
âNo.â His voice lowered. âNot like prayer.â
Heat flooded her throat.
âAemond,â she said again, and this time it was not prayer.
His hand cupped her cheek. The first touch was barely there. His thumb rested beneath her lower lip, not pressing, simply feeling the warmth of her breath. Sweetling held still because if she moved, she feared she would move toward him too quickly and shame them both before the gods.
Aemond bent his head.
He kissed her as if the last kiss had taught him manners and made him resent them.
Not soft, not quite, but slower. A mouth held back by will. His lips brushed hers once, parted, returned. Sweetlingâs fingers caught the front of his tunic, not clutching this time, only holding. The difference seemed to please him; she felt it in the way his breath changed.
He drew back a fraction. âOpen your eyes.â
She had not known sheâd closed them.
She obeyed.
Aemond was very near. Near enough that the sharpness of him blurred: scar, cheekbone, pale lash, the dark leather of his patch, the living eye fixed on hers with such hunger that her knees weakened.
âThere,â he said. âLook at me when I kiss you.â
âI thought you liked lowered eyes.â
âI like obedience.â His thumb brushed her lower lip, feeling the plump softness there. âI also like knowing when you forget it.â
Sweetlingâs breath shook.
That pleased him too. Gods help her, she liked that it did.
This kiss went deeper. His tongue touched hers, slow and hot, and she made a small sound into his mouth that drew his hand from her cheek to the back of her neck. He held her there, not trapping, but making the possibility of escape feel like something she would have to choose aloud.
She did not choose it. Her hands slid up, over damp black wool, over the hard line of his shoulders. Aemond shuddered. The sound was slight, more felt than heard. Sweetlingâs heart answered it. He broke the kiss and set his mouth to the corner of hers, then her jaw, then the tender place below her ear. Each kiss was measured, deliberate, as if he were learning a map and meant never to need it drawn again. Her head tipped without permission, and his hand tightened at her nape.
âAemond,â she breathed.
âAgain.â
âAemond.â
His mouth found her throat.
The sept vanished by degrees.
Not truly. The gods remained; the candles remained; the rain remained. But the world narrowed to his lips, his breath, the heat of him against her, the altar rail behind her, and the ribbon crumpled in her hand. When his teeth grazed the side of her neck, she gasped and caught at his sleeve.
He stopped at once.
Sweetling opened her eyes.
Aemond had gone rigid, his mouth still near her skin, breath warm and uneven.
âPain?â he asked.
âNo.â
âFear?â
She swallowed, mouth tugging at the corner. âA little.â
He drew back enough to see her face.
âAnd want?â
The word was indecent in a sept. It was also honest.
Sweetlingâs cheeks burned. âYes.â
His eye darkened. For a moment, she saw what it cost him not to take that yes and make a feast of it; she saw it in the hard line of his jaw, in the tendon standing at his throat, in the faint tremor that moved through the hand not touching her.
A prince of the blood. A dragonrider. Vhagarâs chosen. Aemond One-Eye, feared in the yard and corridor, holding himself still because a handmaidâs voice had gone soft around the word yes. Sweetlingâs chest ached. Without thinking, she lifted her hand and touched the edge of his eyepatch.
Aemond caught her wrist before she reached it.
The movement was quick enough to frighten.
Not painful. Never painful.
But fast.
His face had closed.
Sweetlingâs breath hitched. âForgive me.â
He did not let go.
âYou do not touch that,â he said.
âNo.â
âNot unless I allow it.â
âI understand.â
âNo,â he said, and now there was steel in him again, but it was not turned only outward. âYou do not.â
Sweetling held still beneath his grip. âThen tell me.â
Aemondâs mouth tightened.
For a moment, she thought he would refuse. Men disliked explaining old wounds. Princes disliked it more, because explanation made of pain a thing shared, and shared pain could become pity if handed to the wrong person.
Aemond despised pity. She knew that as surely as she knew he liked order and quiet.
But he did not release her.
âMy eye is not yours to wonder at,â he said.
âI know.â
âIt is not a curiosity.â
âNo.â
âIt is not a debt I owe your courage.â
That struck her. Her eyes stung, which was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
âI was not being brave,â she said. âI wanted to touch you.â
His grip loosened.
Not fully.
Enough.
The anger in his face shifted, uncertain of where to stand.
Sweetling lowered her wrist from his hand slowly. This time, he let her. She did not reach for the patch again. Instead, she set her palm flat against his chest, over the black wool, above the place where his heart beat hard and uneven beneath her hand.
âThis,â she said. âOnly this.â
Aemond looked down at her hand, and a moment later, his own rose and covered it. The silence that followed was worse than any kiss. Worse, because it was tender and neither of them knew what to do with tenderness. Tenderness in the Red Keep was a smuggled thing. Contraband. A knife hidden in flowers. A loaf of bread stolen from a lordâs table and passed beneath a door.
Aemondâs fingers closed over hers.
âSweetling,â he said.
She looked up.
His voice was rough. âI cannot make you safe.â
âI know.â
âI can make others afraid to harm you.â
âThat is not the same.â
âNo.â
The admission seemed to cost him more than the kiss.
She stepped closer. He allowed it. âI do not need you to make me safe,â she said. âI need you not to make me less so.â
His eye searched hers, then his mouth curved, faintly and without joy. âThere is the clever girl my mother feared.â
Sweetling huffed a laugh before she could stop herself.
Aemond stared.
The sound had surprised them both.
It was not graceful. Not courtly. Barely more than breath. But it escaped her honestly, and once it did, she could not call it back. Her smile followed, reluctant and small.
âYou should not laugh at princes,â he said.
âNo.â
âEspecially not in septs.â
âNo.â
âEspecially not when they are trying very hard to behave honorably.â
That did it.
The laugh came again, softer this time but real.
Aemondâs face changed.
For one impossible heartbeat, he looked young.
Not harmless. Never harmless. But young enough that the burden of his pride showed as something worn rather than born. Young enough that Sweetling could imagine the boy who had watched others laugh and sworn never again to be the cause of it.
His hand left hers and touched the corner of her mouth.
âDangerous,â he murmured.
âMy laugh?â
âYour joy.â
The words made the laughter die.
Aemond seemed almost angry that he had said them. He kissed her again before either of them could examine it.
This kiss was different.
Not gentler, exactly. Aemondâs gentleness had edges. But it was less like hunger being denied and more like hunger being taught patience. He kissed her until the altar rail pressed into her back and her fingers curled in his tunic. He kissed her until she understood that restraint was not the absence of want; rather, it was want given a shapeâwant held in two hands and made to kneel. When he drew away, his forehead nearly touched hers.
âGo,â he said.
Sweetling blinked. âNow?â
âYes.â
Her lips felt swollen. âWhy?â
âBecause if you remain, I will become less honorable, and you will no longer stand there a maiden.â
The answer sent heat through her so fierce that she could hardly breathe, and she felt the slightest feeling of wetness beginning to pool between her thighs. Her face felt hot. Aemond noticed. Of course, he noticed.Â
His mouth tightened with dark satisfaction. âAnd because you are smiling like that.â
âI am not smiling.â
âLiar.â
She was, but only a little, only for him.
Sweetling stepped back, though every foolish part of her wanted the opposite. She smoothed her gown, then realized it needed no smoothing. He had not disordered her. Not truly. The danger of him remained mostly invisible. Mostly. Her mouth, perhaps. Her eyes, too.
The gods would know. But gods gossiped less than servants.
She curtsied. âMy prince.â
His eye narrowed.
She rose. âAemond.â
âBetter.â
She turned toward the candles because she had duties, and duties were the last rope left to pull herself from madness. The low candles needed trimming. Two had guttered nearly to nothing before the Mother. She replaced them with fresh tapers, hands careful, breath slowly steadying.
Aemond watched her work.
That, too, she felt.
When she finished, she took up the empty candle box and moved toward the sept doors.
âSweetling.â
She stopped, smiling before she turned, which was dangerous.
âYes?â
He stood where she had left him, black-clad before the seven faces, rainlight silvering his hair. His expression had returned to composure, but not entirely. Something remained beneath it. Some heat. Some wound. Some wanting thing leashed and waiting.
âIf I send the ribbon,â he said, ââwhat will you do?â
She touched her sleeve.
âI will choose.â
âAnd if you choose no?â
His mouth barely moved around the word. No was still a foreign thing to him. A difficult language. He was learning it anyway.
Sweetlingâs throat tightened.
âThen you will have to endure it,â she said.
Aemond looked at her for a long moment, then he bowed his head. Not much. Not to her. Never that. But enough. âI will.âÂ
Sweetling left before her face could betray her any further.
The Red Keep had not changed while she was in the sept.
That disappointed her, though she had not realized she expected otherwise.
The corridors remained cold. The rain remained sly. Servants still hurried with baskets and trays, guards still watched without seeming to, and somewhere below, a woman scolded a boy for tracking mud across clean rushes. Life did not pause because a handmaid had been kissed before the Father and Mother and Warrior alike. The castle did not tremble. The gods did not strike anyone dead.
A pity, perhaps. It might have simplified matters.
Sweetling returned the candle box to the linen room and found Mistress Rylene waiting.
Of course.
Rylene stood at the folding table with both hands planted on either side of a stack of towels. Her keys were very still.
Sweetling stopped just inside the door.
âDid you wander?â Rylene asked.
âNo, mistress.â
âDid you linger?â
Sweetling hesitated.
Ryleneâs eyes sharpened.
âYes,â Sweetling said.
The room seemed to inhale.
Rylene looked past her, toward the corridor, as if expecting a dragon to appear in the doorway. âWith whom?â
Sweetlingâs fingers tightened around the empty box. âPrince Aemond.â
Mistress Rylene closed her eyes; it was worse than shouting. When she opened them, she looked ten summers older. âChild.â
âI am notââ
âYou are,â Rylene snapped. âDo not be proud with me. Pride is for people who have somewhere to fall from.â
Sweetling lowered her eyes.
Rylene came around the table. âDid he summon you?â
âNo.â
âDid you summon him?â
âNo.â
âDid he touch you?â
Sweetlingâs face burned.
Rylene swore softly. âSeven save me from princes and girls who smile at them.â
âI did notââ
âYou did.â Ryleneâs voice cut clean. âPerhaps not with your mouth. Perhaps not where anyone saw. But you smiled somewhere, else he would not have had the courage to be a fool.â
Sweetling stared at her.
Rylene gave a bleak little laugh. âYes, courage. Men call it desire when they want to feel innocent. Often it is only courage without discipline.â
âHe has discipline.â
âHe has training,â Rylene said. âDo not confuse the two.â
Sweetlingâs hands curled.
Rylene saw and sighed, which was nearly worse. âAh. There it is. You want to defend him.â
âHe stopped when I asked.â
âDid you ask?â
Sweetling had no answer.
Ryleneâs face softened by the smallest degree, though her voice did not. âThat is the matter, isnât it?â
âI would have,â Sweetling said, hating how small it sounded.
âIf you knew how. If fear did not tangle your tongue. If wanting did not make you stupid. If a princeâs hand did not feel like command even when he means it otherwise.â
Sweetling looked down.
Rylene took the empty candle box from her and set it aside.
Then, very unexpectedly, she reached out and adjusted the edge of Sweetlingâs sleeve. The gesture was brisk, almost irritated, but not unkind. Her fingers paused.
She felt the ribbon hidden there.
Ryleneâs eyes lifted.
âHe gave you that?â
Sweetling nodded.
âTo refuse him.â
âYes.â
The older womanâs expression became unreadable.
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then she tucked the sleeve back into place and stepped away. âKeep it where no one sees.â
Sweetling blinked. âYou are not taking it?â
âWould you give it?â
The answer came at once. âNo.â
Rylene made a sound that was not quite approval. âThen I would have to wrestle a handmaid over a scrap of cloth, and I have too much dignity left for that.â
A laugh startled out of Sweetling.
Rylene pointed at her. âDo not make that noise at me. I am not your friend.â
âNo, mistress.â
âI am also not your enemy, which in this castle is nearly as useful.â She returned to the towels. âListen to me now. If he sends the ribbon, you decide before you leave whatever room you stand in. Not in the passage. Not at his door. Not after seeing his face. Before. Do you understand?â
âYes.â
âIf you choose yes, you take someone with you as far as the door.â
Sweetling swallowed. âThat will make people talk.â
âPeople are already talking. Give them work to do while they do it.â
âAnd if I choose no?â
âThen you send it back by the same hand that carried it, and you go where there are witnesses.â
Sweetling nodded.
Ryleneâs mouth tightened. âAnd Sweetling?â
âYes, mistress?â
âIf you choose yes because you fear his displeasure, you are a fool.â
âI know.â
âIf you choose yes because you think desire is the same as devotion, you are a greater fool.â
Sweetlingâs face heated.
Ryleneâs gaze did not soften. âIf you choose yes because you understand the cost and still wish to pay it, then the gods help you. I cannot.â
The words were harsh. They were also a gift.
Sweetling curtsied. âYes, mistress.â
Rylene looked at her for one more moment, then waved toward the table. âFold those towels. Your hands are not broken, and neither, despite your best efforts, is your head.â
Sweetling obeyed.
For a time, there was only the quiet snap and fold of linen. Outside, rain tapped the window. After a while, Rylene said, without looking up, âWas he gentle?â
Sweetlingâs hands stilled.
The question sat strangely in the room. Not like gossip. Not like an accusation. Like a woman asking whether a door had held against the weather. Sweetling thought of Aemondâs mouth at her throat, his hand catching her wrist, his voice saying, Pain? Fear? And Want? She thought of his hand covering hers over his heart.
âHe tried to be,â she said.
Ryleneâs face gave nothing away.
âThat is something,â the older woman said at last.
Then, quieter, so quiet, Sweetling almost missed it:
For his twentieth nameday, Queen Alicent presented her second son with a handmaid of his own.
âHe is the only one of my children yet without such attendance,â Her Grace is reported to have said. ââlet her be sweet and devoted, and quick upon her feet . . . a girl who will swear undying loyalty and service unto him, and to his needs.â
We are told Prince Aemond accepted the gift with all due courtesy, to the queenâs evident satisfaction. Yet if Alicent had intended only to soothe her sonâs temper, or to bind him closer to her through gratitude, she misjudged the matter.
For what began as service did not remain so, and what had been offered as obedience took root, in time, as something perilously akin to love. So smitten was the prince with this girl, the pretty bastard daughter of a serving wench from Harrenhal (as Mushroom claimed).
By the end of 130 AC, Aemond had taken his handmaid to his bed and, in time, sired three children upon her. Any hour away from Vhagar was soon spent at the side of his âsweet girl,â as he took to calling her.
These, then, are the tales of their love story.
I. Mushroom's Accounts:
Wherein a Handmaid is Chosen
Wherein Prince Aemond Makes His Preferences Known
Wherein Mercy is Given
Wherein the First Mistake is Made (And Want is Named by No Honest Word)
Wherein a Dragon Learns Restraint (and Succumbs to Desire)
I totally forgot to post "Wherein the First Mistake is Made (and Want is Named by No Honest Word" on here! It is the 4th chapter of the series and plays a significant role in Aemondâs and Sweetlingâs relationship.
Itâs posted on my AO3, and the link is accessible via this masterlist here.
I greatly recommend reading it if you were wondering how the ever-hell our handmaid went from co-existing with Aemond in a classist, platinum blonde-riddled Keep to getting her coochie eaten with care.
In the meantime, Iâm embarrassed as hell, so no one talk to me for the next two business days.
that's the night that the lights went out in texas (that's the night they tried to hang an innocent man)
Dodge Mason x Dani Rushman/Daniyah Red Cloud [OC] | Panic x MCU
Senior year started on August 12th.
Panic waited next summer like a loaded gun left on a table everybody swore not to touch. And between now and then, there were bills to pay, broncs to ride, shifts to work, names to learn, rules to figure out, and a town to read before it ever realized he was reading it back. Dodge looked out at the dark road stretching past their lot, past the half-dead grass and the mailboxes and the tired little houses, all the way into Carp.
Best worst-kept secret in Texas.
-
Or Dodge Mason was doing fine until Dani A. Rushman got hired at Dotâs Diner.
Unfortunately, Dani is pretty, weird, sweet, impossible to ignore, and apparently determined to climb straight into his bloodstream. Now, senior year is starting, Carp is watching, Panic is waiting, and Dodge is discovering that having a beautiful girlfriend with a beautiful, whimsical, weird-as-shit little heart is not for the weak.
m. list | ao3
Well, don't trust your soul to no backwoods Southern sheriff
'Cause the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hands
Main Series:
I. thatâs the summer that panic started breathing harder in texas
II. thatâs the day that help was wanted
III. thatâs the afternoon that dani rushman walked into texas
IV. thatâs the shift that andrew dodge mason forgot how to speak
V. thatâs the week that hair became more than hair in texas
VI. thatâs the night that sonic looked like salvation
VII. thatâs the morning that senior year opened in san maverick
VIII. thatâs the month that ray hall got stupid in texas
IX: thatâs the night one week from halloween
X: thatâs the day that FD&C blue meant a death sentence in texas
XI: thatâs the night that the hospital lights stayed on
XII: thatâs the night that "i love you" was finally said
XIII: that's the night with three rats in a jar in texas
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Qualityâ Free Actions
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Tags ⢠angst, lovers to enemies, emotional torment
Wordcount ⢠2,400
As regent, Aemond rules as king in all but name, but what he needs most to assert his power is for his wife to bend the knee to him. However, you remain loyal to your mother Rhaenyra, which prompts him to send your children away to force you to comply.
Aemond Masterlist
âDoubts. Only evil, sir, never has any.â âAndrzej Sapkowski.
While it was not in Aemondâs character to be naive, he had never expected his own wife to ever turn against him in such a fashion. He believed his union to you to be strong, based on duty but woven tighter by mutual respect and admiration, until he could hardly distinguish his own person from you. In many ways, you made him a better man, a complete man, and he knew he had a similar influence on you.
For several years you had lived happily as husband and wife, bringing into the world children that brought two sides of a divided family togetherâthe match had been made from a young age, and he had grown into a man with the knowledge that one day he would be yours, and you would be his.
Nothing had come to undo the betrothal made by the king, and therefore you had wed upon your coming of age, and as quick as could be, the Gods had blessed you with a child.
King Viserys had praised the two of you upon the birth of your eldest boy, Aerion, then again when a second son followed, and those were perhaps the only times he could remember praise from his own father.
However the kingâs death had shattered what Aemond had thought to be unbreakable, as though the man responsible for the match truly was the one force keeping it together.
From the very day Aegon was crowned, you slept in separate chambers and could barely bring yourself to look at him. As weeks went by and it became apparent that the war would last, you became colder, but Aemond bore it with gritted teeth despite his bruised heart, for the sake of his children.Â
Now months had gone by, and Aegon laid in bed, unable to make any sort of rulings, leaving his brother to step in and take his place on the throne. It was the right decision to name him as successor, however Aemond could hear the whispers in the hallways, behind the pillars, an undercurrent of resistance.
The people of the court struggled to accept him as regent, and he knew the one way to remedy it. He knew the one way to assert his power and finally gain the respect he was owed.
Were you, the pretenderâs daughter, to bend the knee to him, they would get inspired to do the same in turn, and not simply for survival, but out of conviction.Â
After all, how could they respect him if his own wife shunned him?
Aemond found you in the quiet of the afternoon, curtains drawn in the nursery, watching over your youngest sonâs sleep. Maelor was near two years of age now, and you still preferred to nurse him and care for him on your own rather than leave him in the care of a nurse.Â
If there was one quality all could see in you, it was your devotion to your children, complete and absoluteâyou gave them your time and attention, and thought there was no other duty you would rather perform than that of raising them.
He stepped into the nursery quietly, unwilling to wake his son, and under your watchful eye, approached the crib and bent over, pressing a kiss to his sonâs hair. âThere is a matter that we ought to discuss, that we have let quiet for too long,â Aemond said quietly, watching over the slow rise and fall of his childâs breath.Â
âI have no wish to discuss any matter with you,â you replied curtly, voice as quiet as his. Piercing your canvas with your needle, you followed along the pattern you had drawn, hoping the conversation would not take place, but your husband was determined.
From the corner of your eye, you saw him lay a hand on your childâs back, the tender gesture reminding you of times long lost, making your heart clench painfully. How a man could be so tender with his own and so ruthless with others had once charmed you, but now you found it distasteful.
âI am regent while Aegon is incapacitated, and it reflects badly upon me that my wife is nowhere to be seen, when she should be at my side, supporting me,â Aemond said, his tone cold and punishing.Â
âIt is so because I do not support you, as you know. It is true, you are my husband and while there is still love in my heart for youââ you replied, a choked sob shattering your voice.Â
Aemond looked at you then, and for a second you felt as though the chasm between the two of you had mended once more, but the feeling was as quick as a blink, and you could not dwell on it. âI will not show you support,â you said, decisive.Â
âYou will,â Aemond said, almost regretfully.Â
âI recognize no monarch but my mother,â you replied. Setting your canvas aside, you rose, unwilling to hear the arguments you had already heard too many times. The chair rocked a few times under the absence of your weight, creaking quietly.Â
âFor this you might lose everything,â he replied, and his calm demeanor unnerved you more than any outburst of rage could have. âI will not give you a choice.â
âYou cannot force me to my knees, and there are no threats you can make against me that will change my mind. You might threaten me with violence, and I shall not cave,â you whispered furiously, but still too loud, and your son stirred in his cot.
Aemond soothed him with hushed coos and a firm hand at his back, rocking him side to side until he calmed again, a deep sigh coming from his parted lips. Then, Aemond looked at you, almost sad. âI will never lay a hand on you. I do not need violence to make you obey.â
He took a few steps forward, towering over you, the smell of leather and ash overpowering. âSay farewell to your children, they depart for Oldtown on the morrow.â
Your breath froze in your chest, as well as your heart. âNo,â you whispered.
âThe capital is not safe for them, I am sending them with my own kin, my cousin Lord Ormundâs wife will look after them,â he said over his shoulder as he left the room, and you followed him running calling after him.
âI beseech you not to do this. Children need their mother!â you cried out, nausea rising in your chest until you could hardly breathe.
Aemond came to a stop in the middle of the hallway, turning to face you with the disinterested coldness he usually reserved for his courtiers. âI agree, and I wish it was safe for them to remain,â he said, and you wondered how he could pretend sending his own sons to the other side of the realm was not shattering him as well.
There was no arrogant smile upon his face, no cruel sneer, and you thought you could not give him the satisfaction of your sorrow. Taking a deep breath, you clung to reason, forcing your tears away.
âPerhaps you are right, and they will be safe from harm in your cousinâs home,â you choked.
Aemond tilted his head, giving you an unconvinced hum, but you carried on. âI will never betray my mother, even if you take my children from me,â you vowed.
At that, the corner of his mouth finally lifted. âWe shall see.â
As he had threatened, the next morrow found you at dawn in the courtyard, watching your sonsâ trunks being loaded into a carriage. Since the announcement had been made to your eldest the evening prior, that he would be sent to Oldtown with a distant cousin, he had clung to you more than he had done in recent months, and had refused to sleep unless you were watching over him.
Aerion watched as his dragon, locked in a cage like a hound, was hoisted upon the roof of the carriage and secured into place.
âMother,â he pleaded, and you loathed to see such confusion in him, a boy who had since birth shown much sensitivityâin many ways, he reminded you of Aemond as a child, and you mourned the boy you had fallen in love with, before the throne had twisted him into this cruel stranger.
âIt is for your own safety, my son,â Aemond assured him gently, pressing a kiss to his brow. âNow say your farewell to your mother.â
Swallowing your tears and forcing a smile on your face, you kissed Aerionâs cheeks, tucking his hair behind his ears. âIt wonât be long until we are reunited,â you promised him. âLook after your brother, and speak of me often. Tell him the stories I used to tell you.â
âI donât want to,â he protested, tucking his head into your chest when you embraced him tightly.
Powerless, you then allowed Aemond to take him by the shoulder and guide him to the carriage, holding onto the certainty that no matter the agony of it, it was the righteous path to follow. Honor would prevail and your mother would soon come to deliver you.Â
With a sob upon your lips, you kissed Maelor, breathing in the scent of his hair before handing him to the nurse, who looked at you in utter sadness. No doubt sensing your distress, he fussed, and you tucked his blanket under his arm, against the nurseâs chest, upon which he would now rest his head.
âPlease do not let them forget me,â you pleaded to her, to which she nodded before turning and making her way to the carriage.Â
Maelorâs wails broke through the morning air, and Aerion looked over his shoulder, distraught. Still, you let them go, holding on your composure until the carriage had left the courtyard. Then and only then, hand clapped over your mouth, did you wail. Pressing your other palm to your belly where you had borne them, it was a miracle that you did not buckle to your knees.Â
At your side, Aemond loomed over you, his mouth to your ear. âYou know what to do,â he said before kissing your temple in cruel affection. âBend the knee, and I shall bring them back.â
Never before had you wished violence upon anyone, but in that moment, your hand burned with the desire to slap him across the face and scratch his skin until he bled. âYou are cruel, I was aware of that. Never had I expected you to extend this to your own sons,â you nearly spat in his face.
The grin that he gave you made you shiver. âYou shall cave, I know of it.â
For days that turned into weeks, you held on with all your might, drawing strength from prayer and the knowledge that your sons would not be mistreated. Despite the loathing that had replaced your love for your husband in your heart, you knew the Hightowers would care for Aemondâs sons.
Haunting the castle like a wraith, you lingered in the gardens, breathing in the cold air from the sea, the first licks of winter, and prayed that this war would end quickly.
The aching throb inside of you was not easing, if anything it was growing with each day, desperate to hold the babies you had birthed. At first you had hoped you could find solace in their nursery, breathing in their smell on the pillows, but Aemond had the room emptied, and you were left with nothing but your memories.
Then the first letter came, written in the nurseâs careful handwriting but with Aerionâs wordsâit was a plea to come back to your side, telling you of the sleepless nights, the way little Maelor had retreated into himself.
For days and nights you prayed and pleaded with the Gods for strength, for resilience, but your dreams were plagued by your crying children, Maelorâs wails from the morning of their departure ringing in your ears even after you had woken.
As your husband had predicted, you caved.Â
Your mother had birthed, nursed and loved six childrenâyou hoped she would understand, one day, and forgive you for your betrayal. Now you understood what she had told you one day, that there was nothing a mother would not do for the sake of her children, even surrender her own dignity.
One cold morning you made your way to the throne room, waving through the crowd that parted to let you pass. Seated on the Iron Throne, his hand resting atop the pommel of Blackfyre, Aemond was holding court with the assurance of a man who knew he would soon be uncontested.Â
The whole of the court was present, and people from the city, having come to make their petitions. All would now witness your downfall, at the hands of your own husband, the man who had loved you, held you so tenderly and given you two sons. How such an act of love could be used for such pain was beyond your understanding.Â
Heart in your throat, you fell to your knees, trembling, as your husband looked upon you with severity.
âIââ you stammered through your name, knowing you were betraying it. âHereby swear allegiance to Prince Aemond, and acknowledge him as regent of the Seven Kingdoms, and protector of the realm.â
Aemond leaned forward, looking at you pointedly, and you forced the words out of your mouth, closing your eyes against burning tears, conjuring the faces of your sons to your mind. âI do also declare my mother, Princess Rhaenyra, a pretender and usurper of the Iron Throne,â you sobbed.
A murmur of surprise rippled through the crowd, but you could hardly hear it over the thundering of your own heart. Shame spread like a poison through your veins and you were locked into place, your knees heavy into the ground, and you thought then that you would never be able to rise again.
âRise, my lady wife,â Aemond called loud enough for all to hear, with a falsely reverent tone in his voice, but did not trust your legs to carry you.Â
Slowly, Aemond made his way down the steps of the Iron Throne, and as though he was being galant, helped you to your feet with a firm hand at your arm. Holding you firmly, he lifted your face towards his with a finger hooked under your chin, and watched as you sobbed silently, trembling ever so slightly.
With a low hum, he kissed your mouth, bolder than he usually was in the public eye. âI shall write to my cousin tonight. Your children shall be back in your arms soon enough,â he promised, and to all it must have looked like a husband consoling his wife, an act of genuine affection. âIn the meantime, you shall be back in mine. I expect you in my chambers tonight, and all the nights to come.â
A/N: Dividers by @/saradika. Based on an anonymous request.
summary: âsheâs a bastardââinnit the truth, mother?â
warnings: explicit language. angst. much angst. nothing but angst. i cannot stress it enough.
notes: well this is rather unfortunate.
his handmaid's tales | main masterlist
The raven arrives at nightfall, at an hour so late that only Aemond is awake to accept it. The princeling could not find sleep that night, instead rolling off the bed and crossing the chambers to his windows, before pulling back the heavy tapestries and throwing them open one by one.
The cool air is a welcoming feeling to his feverish skin, hot to the touch from hours of lovemaking under the sheets.
He stands facing the darkness, naked and at utter peace, in pure happiness. His precious girl sleeps soundly behind him, with the thick furs pulled up to her chin, hiding the most of her beneath the blankets. She is so utterly beautiful in the moonlight. Itâs been three long months since his sons were born, and Aemond was beginning to hope his seed would again take. His loins ache at the thought, and he fights the sudden urge to slip in between her thighs. Perhaps sheâd give him a daughter this time.
In his dreams, she wears her motherâs face, in a gown of Targaryen colors with a dragon hatchling sitting on her shoulder. She pokes him awake in the morning, and pleads for a quick ride atop Vhagar before grandmother arrives to begin her history lessons.
His daughter has his loveâs eyes and smile, he thinks again, and her nose scrunches up in the same way hers does. Â
I want it.
He shakes his head.
Let her rest, you fool.
When the black raven arrives at his windowpane, he is a bit confused. He waves the bird away before it could make another squawk, and stares down at the scroll taken from it, eying the blood-red ribbon tied into a pretty, tight knot around. In his head, he weighs the choices in taking it as his own. Should he� Or should he not? His curiosity clashes with his righteousness.
Aemond decides to, in the end.
He takes the scroll to his desk, quietly lighting a small candle before taking a seat and unrolling it out to read. The writing is in pretty cursive yet smells of cheap ink, with a slight smudge staining the edge of the paper. It is addressed to his handmaid, he realizes, starting with her name that leads to a sweet congratulations on her newfound motherhood. Twins, your uncle had said. How marvelous to hear. I hope to meet them soon, my dear.
With all the love in this lifetimeâyour mother, Alys Rivers.
âWith all the love in this lifetime,â he repeats aloud, shaking his head, refusing to believe. His fingers tighten around the letter, the tips turning a jarring white. âYour mother, Alys Rivers.â
Aemond then glares up at the woman lying in his bed, a bitter twist on his mouth. She shifts a little bit beneath his gaze, but remains relaxed and asleep and blissfully ignorant of the rising anger sparking deep inside him.
Who is she? For the first time since he met her, he asks himself that.
He shouldâve suspected this.
âA bastard, Lord Beesbury, mothered by the daughter of a milk cow.â Â
Aemond turns away from her, back to the darkness outside.
Her mother is a bastard rivers woman, it seems. At least that is how it reads. Alys Rivers. She carries no manâs last name in her letter. What is her daughter, if not the same as her? He picks at his mind, trying to remember if she ever mentioned her father. Aemond returns to staring up at the moon and the white stars blinking high above in the midnight sky.
He suddenly feels no desire to return to bed with her tonight.
But she is the mother of your children, his mind argues, and it leaves him irritated.
Sheâs given him two heirs, his first-born children, beautiful twin boys that are mirrors to their own father, himself. And the daughter heâs dreamt ofâŚButâŚtheyâre bastards too, he then reminds himself. You love them the same way you love her, do not lie to yourself. It was not enough to ease his thoughts, and reason with him, and stop the ugly bitterness from rising in his throat.
Damn her.
Aemond stuffs the letter inside one of the desk drawers, not wishing to lay eyes on it again. Maybe heâll burn it later in the day. He then shrugs on his robe, tying it around his waist, before leaving the room. Sheâll wake up in the morning, and search for his hand buried within the sheets. When she realizes she is alone in the bed, he knows she will pout before readying to tend to her babies, like the mother heâs made her into.
Damn her.
Then she will move on to her responsibilities, like the silly, dumb handmaid she is.
Damn her.
That is all she shouldâve remained, Aemond thinks, curiously calm as he strides down the hallway. He doesnât know where he is going, but he knows he will not return this night. Bastards never amount to anything else. Â
Aemond hasnât spoken to her in three days, dismissing his handmaid from his bedchamber before he retires for the evening. She no longer fetches his hot baths or crawls beneath the blankets with him. He hasnât allowed it. He avoids the nursey too, where he knows his twin sons sleep in their cots, too young to notice their fatherâs absence. Aemond walks the halls of the Red Keep, as he has walked a thousand times before, but disregards all the rooms where he knows her presence painfully lingers.
She does not fight nor question him. He knows she wonât.
âAemond.â
He hears her voice in his slumber, always- sometimes in a breathless whisper, and most times in a scream, or a whimper, or an anguished howl. She always manages to find him, following him into his dreams and nightmares and antagonizing him into insanity. Her shadow stands over his bed. And around her neck dangles the sapphire necklace, while her pretty eyes weep both tears and blood.
âAemond, please!â she cries, bawling up the sides of her dress in her fist. The plain cloth is stained in dried blood, splashed across her belly and thighs. âAemond, please, I need you, husband!â
âAEMOND.â
This time tonight, it causes Aemond Targaryen to jerk upright, pulled from a horrible nightmare that still clouds his thoughts. The sheets are tangled between his fingers, and his heart is heaving heavily within his breast. He hears her voice echoing, begging for her husband. âAemond.â His attention quickly darts to the door, where his mother stands, tall and regal and noticeably pissed. She calls his name again loudly. Although still groggy, he stumbles his way towards her. Â
His mother does not greet him. Instead, her brown eyes remain on his empty bed, skimming across the sheets and the way the heavy fur blanket nearly hangs off the foot of his bed. He mustâve kicked it off him during his sleep.
She frowns at the sight, before looking back at him.
âSo it is true, then.â
Aemond rubs at his eye, tilting his head in confusion. âWhat is true, mother?â
âThat she hasnât been seen in your room for the past three days; instead, sheâs returned to her old room across the castle, where the other maids sleep. Three days, and three nights.â His mother spoke in anger, yet her face remained a mask that betrayed nothing. It is one thing he greatly admired about her, in the same way it terrified him the most. âAnd you havenât visited your sons as well, Iâm told.â
He flushes. âIâve been busy,â he grumbles, shifting on his bare feet. âIâll see them tomorrow, in the morning after we break fast together.â
âTomorrow? Youâll see them tomorrow? AEMOND!â she shouts, incredulous. Her hair hangs loosely around her face, and she pushes a thick strand behind her right ear. âYou wanted these babies so badly, and yet you are beginning to neglect them before their second nameday. Have you lost all fucking sense?!â
Aemond bites his tongue in an attempt to keep his own temper from flaring up in response to her yelling. He says nothing in return, which he knows only upsets his mother further.
âWhat has happened, Aemond?â she asks. âThis is unlike you. You love those boys, and that girl too.â
âNothing,â he says, a bit too quickly. âNothing has happened. Iâve simply been too busy to play anymore games with her.â
âGames? Games?! That is all shit,â his mother blazes. âUtter shit. Do not begin to take me as a fucking fool, Aemond. I am not your father, and I am not your brother, and eldest sister either. Now you tell me, boy, what has happened.â
Aemond sighs. âSheâs a bastardââinnit the truth, mother?â He meets her eyes and feels his poor heart sinking at the silent shock that instantly falls across her features and the way she makes no move to deny it. âA bastard.â Saying it aloud, it makes him wish to return to his bed, and curl up in his sheets, completely hidden from this cruel world that damned him to fall in love with a stupid bastard girl. âA damn, no good, bastard girl from Harrehnalââ
But he is then cut off by a sharp backhand blow to the side of his face that quickly sends him stumbling two steps back, almost falling hard against the wall. Aemond holds his cheek, breath hitching as he brushes a tender finger against the already reddening skin that he knows will surely show a dark bruise on the morrow. It feels hot, and it stings. He looks up at his mother, who has never hit him before.
âHow dare you speak of her in such a way,â she spits, purpled with rage. Her hand twitches at her side, as if she itches to slap him again. He deserves it, he thinks. âHOW DARE YOU. She is the mother of your children, and you dare behold her with such loathing venom?â
âAND YOU DID NOT THINK TO TELL ME BEFOREHAND?â he shouts back, half hurt from the realization that she watched him fall smitten with the bastard, and never thought to tell him the truth. âShe is the cousin of those bastards that took my eye, their own blood!â
âAnd? It is the truth, yes, that she is a riverlands bastard, born to a woman at Harrenhal. Lord Larys is her true uncle, who brought her to us at my request. But damn you, Aemond, that girl is so fucking in love with you.â
All his words fall stuck in his throat, and he fails to push them out.
âHave you nothing more to say?â
His queen mother sniffs when he says nothing, shaking her head. âUnbelievable. Perhaps it is best she drinks the moon tea, lest she gives you another child that you wonât love nor appreciate because of its motherâs unfortunate bastardy.â Aemond remains silent, and her mouth drops into another scowl. âYou lied to me when you promised that you would never be your father or Aegon.â
I am not, he wants to scream out. His knees buckle in weakness at her cruel words, and the sheer disappointment laced within them. It hurts worse than her slap.
I love her so much, I swear, and my boys too. I love anything she gives me, and I promiseâŚI promiseâŚI promiseâŚ
âYou, Aemond, carry their eyes and hair and nose, everyone can see. But I know the truth nowâyou carry their pig attitude as well,â she remarks, pushing herself toward him. âIâll send her back to her mother, I promise, and find another handmaid for you, one that is to your liking.â Â
She says not another word, instead turning to the houseguard that had accompanied her to his hall. âIâm tired. Please help me back to my bedchamber,â she asks, pressing her fingertips against his temple. âI would appreciate such, my good knight.â
His mother leaves him silent and still, sad and scared and helpless and heartbroken, staring down at his toes as they grow damp from his tears.
tag list for "his handmaid's tales": @aemondsblog @dc-marvel-girl96 @neobanguniverse @missalycat21 @enchantingcupcakecollectionfan @padfooteyes @alexizodd @avidreader73 @the-common-cowgirl @inlovewithhisblueeyes @elegantsplendour @katzarantos @fan-goddess @okfashionista @randomdragonfires @aemvnd @mochimommy2002 @fangirlninja67 @iiamthehybrid @bellstwd @katzarantos @crazymusicgirl104
taglist for everything aemond: @randomdragonfires @aemvnd @moonteas @chompchompluke