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“Did you know that in Lys, they serve peafowl to visiting rulers?”
Aemond looked up. He had been watching Jaeheara play with a ceramic dragon. It had been painted golden, to resemble her father’s Sunfyre.
“I misremembered then, I thought it was… bee-eater.”
“Those too, but they’re more common among the populace. Peafowl, meanwhile, is only served to kings and queens,” Helaena said, all the while not taking her eyes of Jaehaerys, who was trying to put his hand in his mouth.
“No, no, don’t do that,” the handmaiden said and gently pulled the prince’s arm away. The boy looked up at her with wide eyes - and obeyed. He was a sweet-natured boy, Jaehaerys - Aemond had never bothered to ask his mother whether his brother had been a sweet-natured boy once upon a time. He had a hard time imagining his brother as anything but the man he was today, and ‘sweet-natured’ was not an apt word with which to describe him.
“Lyra, I think you can leave us for a while. They are under watchful eyes,” Helaena said kindly, but not hesitantly. This was a quality of her that Aemond admired a lot; the ability to speak her mind and not budge from it. An unshaken honesty that was so refreshing from the intrigues within the walls of the Red Keep.
The girl, just a winter older than him, bowed her head and took her leave, not before whispering a quick goodbye to the children for the time being.
Once unbidden eyes were gone, Helaena visibly relaxed and she shifted into a more comfortable position on the lounge, laying down on it while propped up on one arm rather than sitting as if on a chair. She grimaced and held her side, almost as if she had forgotten that there was something that caused her discomfort.
“What is wrong?” Aemond asked, now alert.
He knew all too often why Helaena carried bruises with her, and every single time he needed to recall to himself that there was nothing he could do to make it stop. Of course, he could tell Aegon to go to the brothel or keep to his maids whenever he wanted to still his carnal desires and let things run out of control, but something told him he would not be successful. He could tell his mother or his grand-sire that her first-born son and his grand-son respectively, who despite everything they always protected, was forcing himself on his lady wife without a care to how she felt about the ordeal, but he knew he would not be successful with that either. The Queen and the Lord Hand were sticklers to duty, and it just happened to be Aegon and Helaena’s duty to provide the realm with heirs. They were convinced that Jaehaerys, named to honour the grand-father of his grand-father, would one day sit the Iron Throne after King Aegon the Second had passed away - but should something happen to the boy, there needed to be another heir, lest their struggle was all for nothing.
One could say, thus, that the future of the Seven Kingdoms depended on Aegon’s seed, of which he had never been particular careful into which cunt he was squirting it in, and Helaena’s womb, which needed to carry children. It didn’t matter if she was with child after Aegon had pressed himself against her, his breath reeking of wine because that was the only way he could approach her, his thrusts sloppy and hard, or if Helaena quietly sobbed into her pillow as she was taken.
He could also simply kill Aegon, take that accursed dagger their father always carried while he slept, steal into the prince’s chambers, and drive the blade between his ribs, just above his heart. Obviously, he could not do that either.
Helaena shook her head. There always was something in her eyes after nights like these. She took refugee within herself, turned around, locked the door behind her in her head, and let no one in.
Aemond stood from his couch and crossed the distance between him and where Helaena sat, carefully stepping around Jaehaera who pretended the small Sunfyre was flying right at him.
Helaena didn’t budge when he approached her, so instead, Aemond kneeled next to her on the ground, just besides Jaehaerys, who babbled nonsense to no one in particular. His mother had told Aemond that he would also talk to someone even though there was no one near him, that infants did it quite often.
“Can I?” Aemond asked and slowly raised his hand. Helaena didn’t deny him, which was her way of giving him allowance. He felt very privileged that he was the only person with whom she showed no discomfort upon being touched - even seeking his touch from her own volition.
Gently, he put his hand on the side of her thigh, covered by her long skirts. She properly laid down on the side, arms tucked underneath her as she stared at a point just above the back of the couch where Aemond had sat on.
Aemond carressed her. Helaena had once told him he made her feel like a cat whose fur was being petted, but that she liked whenever he did that. To this day, she had never flinched away from him or slapped his hands away like she had done so often with their mother.
“What do you think would happen if I did it?” Aemond asked after a while.
Helaena didn’t reply.
“Perhaps Father would feel more inclined to name me heir than he would with Aegon.” It was a joke, of course. If the relationship between Aegon and their father was cold, then it was non-existent between Aemond and King Viserys. Sometimes, he thought his father only remembered his name because the Lord Hand, their grand-sire Otto, had to tell him every morning when they broke their fast.
“Or maybe it just reenforces his point that Rhaenyra ought to be queen, and we are to be tolerated at court as the Queen’s family. Or Mother disgraces me and sends me away for kinslaying.”
“She wouldn’t,” Helaena said, almost as if she was dreaming awake.
“Oh, she would.”
He knew it, and Helaena knew it as well. Queen Alicent would do it with a heavy heart, but she’d pledge for exile or the black because the alternative of seeing her son put to the sword would be too much to bear.
He smiled and briefly indulged himself in a fantasy he dreamt of much lately.
“King Aemond, First of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Realm and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. But the people, from Flea Bottom to the high lords, from Castle Black to Sunspear, they’d call me One-Eye the Kinslayer.”
“No.” Helaena still wasn’t looking at him. “They’d love you. Just as I, and they, love you.”
Her eyes wandered to the twins, still enthralled in the games each played. Jaehaera was giggling while Sunfyre flew in circles, and Jaehaerys was crawling to the discarded books Aemond had put next to his couch. Quickly, he stood up and picked his nephew up. Jaehaerys stared at the eye patch that hid the sapphire in his socket from unwanted looks. He always did that, perhaps confused as to what was it that stuck to Aemond’s face while the others did not have it.
Aemond put him in his cradle and proceeded to do the same with Jaehaera, who struggled in his arms like a stubborn cat and almost dropped her Sunfyre toy while trying to free herself.
Once more alone, Aemond returned to Helaena. She watched him as he approached her, and this time she moved for him to sit down to her feet. There were tears glinting in the corners of her eyes as he took his place.
“Disgraced as I would be, surely Mother would not allow me to wed you unless I were king or even despite it, but it’s what I would want. You as my wife, be it that you are Queen or Lady Helaena.”
Then he leaned over to kiss her. Her small mouth with its plush lips tasted of the tarty blackberries she loved so dearly, and it was a flavour Aemond wished he could be able to enjoy every morning, every evening, every night, for the rest of his life, and not during stolen moments when they were alone.
“Everytime I am in the Sept, I ask the Maiden why she did not tell our mother to betroth us. I would have as good to you as I am now.” He kissed her again, put small kisses on her lips, the corners of her mouth, her jaw, then her cheeks. They tasted of salt, and when Aemond pulled away, he saw Helaena’s eyes were lilac and rimmed with red, tears flowing silently as if they could wash away all the misery of her matrimony.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her as she cried into his shoulders without making a single sound, just the shaking of her shoulders and her heavy heaving of her chest against his betraying her.
When he felt her go still and her breath calm down, Aemond pulled out of her embrace to look at her. Her face was red and puffy, the fabric of his robe was wet, and still some tears clung to her long pale eyelashes. He kissed them away, and then kissed her on the lips again, longer and slower than he had before.
Helaena’s hand caressed his cheek but he knew what she wanted to do.
She loved the sapphire. Aegon would surely scoff if he knew, that ‘Helaena had always fostered a love for bizarre miscarriages of nature’ such as the creatures she studied in her free time with a love that only came close to Aemond’s love for swordfighting - but if Aegon knew that his wife not only had another favourite brother, but that she enthusiastically led this brother into her bed and between her legs, he might not scoff anymore.
He had also cried, and for some reason even without his human eye, he could still cry from the sapphire one. Helaena pulled the eyepatch off his face and in return kissed his tears away. She kissed the skin around the sapphire as she drew circles with her thumb on his cheek, and Aemond wished that this moment would last forever.
When she inititated the next kiss, there was a passion behind it that told him exactly what he wanted from her. Of course. They had not have many opportunities, but they took all that were given to them. It was a good thing he had brought away Jaehaerys and Jaehaera to rest already, apparently they had tired themselves out during their playing. Aemond pulled Helaena up from the couch and together they went into her chambers, to her canopied bed with pine green curtains that would hide them away from the world.