Archive of Our Own

Laenor Velaryon is a degenerate.

Aemond has heard it spoken a hundred times over. By Ser Criston, clipped and cold as a sword drawn too swiftly. With a shudder of genteel disdain when Alicent turned away. From the mouths of their bannermen when Ser Laenor laughs too loud or favors his chosen knights with too fond a look. 

Aemond thinks it now as he stands in the courtyard, envy baking in the late summer sun. Ser Laenor has landed his dragon, and now he coaxes it across the yard, coils upon smoke-grey coils shadowing the stone. It arches its neck against the sun, hissing lazily between its teeth. 

Lucerys, only five, laughs in gleeful delight. When Ser Laenor lifts him to look the dragon in the eye, he throws his arms around its neck as if it is some overlarge dog.

Ser Laenor soothes the beast with commands of Valyrian, fluid and fluent. He pets the silver gleam of its scales, and then Lucerys’ dark curls.

Lucerys laughs again. What has he not to laugh of? His hatchling flutters overheard, tail whipping in quicksilver exuberance.

At his side, Ser Qarl boosts Ser Laenor with his hands, and the man vaults into the saddle. Ser Qarl lifts Lucerys up, wriggling wildly, and Ser Laenor lifts him with laughter of his own, so Lucerys sits before him, pride of place. 

Princess Rhaenyra looks on, one hand shading her eyes as she watches her son and husband with a fond smile. The other rests on her belly. It still holds a curve, though the bastard fussing in her handmaiden’s arms is nearly a moon old. 

Alicent had made her walk the length of the keep with it, to give her a taste of shame. Aemond did not see it, but Aegon told him. Rhaenyra had clung to pride, but all her hauteur and silks could not hide what she was. She had limped over the flagstones like a sow driven to market, fat and leaking, her bastard squalling in her arms. 

Ser Laenor had followed like a dog at her bloodied heels. Ser Laenor had kissed her bastard before his king and queen, and named it a Velaryon. 

Joffrey. 

When Ser Criston heard it, his eyes had gone dark as thunder.

They are dark now as he glances over his shoulder, to where Laenor Valelaryon stands beaming in the sun. He does not falter in his instruction, but his mouth furrows in a sneer.

Aemond is an apt pupil. His mouth curls in mirror. 

“They call that a man,” he murmurs.

Ser Criston glances over once more, as if he cannot help himself, before he turns back to Aemond. He guides his training blade higher, the motion deliberate and exact. 

“Laenor Velaryon is a canker,” he says, soft enough that only Aemond will hear. “And like all rot, he will spread if not cut away.”

Aemond doesn’t ask what he means. He knows already. The queen’s household have long whispered of Ser Laenor’s appetites, his pretty knights, his nightly absences. They whisper louder than they pray.

Even now, Ser Laenor’s companion lingers at the outskirts of the courtyard gathering. A dark-haired knight of low birth, little better than a free-rider. Yet Ser Laenor’s brooch pins his cloak, and he stares after Ser Laenor with more fervour in his eyes than does Laenor's flabby princess. 

Ser Laenor’s sons smile as if they see none of this. A pretence, as much as their name. But Ser Laenor plays as if it is no pretence at all. He embraces them before his queen. Rides with them. Looks at them like they are light made flesh.

“A real man,” Aemond says, voice low, “would have cast her aside after she bore him bastards.”

“Your father did not,” Ser Criston replies, lifting an eyebrow without lifting his eyes.

Aemond stills.

Across the courtyard, Ser Laenor dismounts with Luke in his arms, swinging him playfully with a noise that sends Luke into peals of laughter. Jace, older and stiff with pride, rolls his eyes. But he smiles anyway. Rhaenyra presses a kiss to Jace’s head, then to Ser Laenor’s cheek, and says something that makes them all laugh again.

Rhaenyra laughs with maiden’s delight. It is the only thing left of the maiden about her. The jewels strung about her throat and waist cannot disguise the thickness of her figure, how her fine dress clings beneath her arms. 

Beside her stepdaughter, Queen Alicent is slender as a needle. Her eyes are clear. Her tongue speaks only truth.  

Yet Queen Alicent stares after Rhaenyra when she passes by. Her eyes narrow, lips pursed, something unspoken between her teeth. Not hatred. Or not just that. Hunger, maybe. Or memory.

Rhaenyra is a whore. Rhaenyra drops bastards into her husband’s lap, and he laughs as if the jape is his. Rhaenyra is a flabby, aged sow, clinging to the memory of her maiden beauty. Rhaenyra is everything Alicent is not.

But still, his mother looks.

Aemond sees that, too.

His father does not. His eyes are full of dust, bent fast over his facsimile of Old Valyria, over his eldest child. He does not look to others. Not even when Aemond bows to his mother’s pleading and visits him in his chambers. 

Viserys pats his head with the distracted affection of a man petting a dog. “You’ll be taller than your brother in time,” he croaks, eyes still upon his ruins. “A fine prince.”

Aemond doesn’t answer. His father does not expect him to. He has already returned to his stone city, his hands steady despite the tremor in his fingers. They are blackened, three already worn to rotting nubs. He is more corpse than king. More corpse than man. 

That night, Aemond stands at the window of his room, watching the dragons return. A breeze rolls in from Blackwater Bay, and the torchlight below shivers on the stone. 

Ser Laenor rides in first, Seasmoke’s pale wings folding gracefully beneath him. The shape at his waist is barely visible in the moonlight. Luke, curls snarled by the wind, beaming with delight as he clings to the cuckold. His Arrax, too small yet to ride, flies after them in a flurry of smoke. 

Aemond’s heart clenches. 

They pass beneath a brazier. The firelight paints Luke’s dark hair in shades of gold and bronze. Aemond leans closer, until his nose brushes the glass.

The boy twists in the saddle, saying something to Laenor. Laughing, always laughing. Then he looks up - accidentally, unthinkingly - towards Aemond's window. 

Their eyes meet.

Only for a moment. Luke scarcely seems to see him. He only looks, the way a boy might glance at a shadow and forget it.

Still, Aemond flinches.

He stays at the window long after they’ve gone inside, breath fogging the glass, heart beating too quickly for no reason at all.

Laenor Velaryon is a degenerate, and no man at all. His wife is a whore. His sons, bastards. And all of them, the shame of the court. They do not step inside the sept. When they kneel, it is not with prayer on their lips. 

Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, Seasmoke roars. The sound curls over the dark and stone, almost indulgent.

Aemond does not go to bed. He stands at the window until the night cools and the brazier burns low. And still, he stays.

The gods, Aemond has been taught, are sevenfold in form and infinite in judgment. The Father sees truth. The Mother offers mercy. The Warrior guides the sword. The Smith, the Crone, the Maiden, even the Stranger - each have their place. Each a beacon. A rule. A warning.

Bastards have no favour in their eyes. They are born of lust and betrayal. Their very nature is sin. Their presence in a sept, an affront. 

But the gods of Old Valyria are older. They are not carved in septs or prayed to in godswoods. Their worshippers bleed. They burn. They sing in tongues no septon would dare repeat.

These are the gods Rhaenyra and her bastards hold to, no matter the queen’s disapproval. The gods that love Luke better than he deserves. They grant him a dragon hatched in his cradle. They bless him with the king’s blind eye, with a smile that seemed to win his way out of trouble without effort. 

Luke delights in trouble. Aemond still feels the flush of shame and rage at memory of that pig. It sinks under his skin like a poison, the jeering of his brothers and nephews, the sparkle of mischief that had lit Luke’s eyes. 

Aegon, of course, delights in it. Luke lacks even Jace’s lofty pretensions at nobility, his pathetic efforts to make amends when Aegon is not around to see. Luke never hides what he is. He is ready and willing in all of Aegon’s games, nipping at his and Jace’s heels like an eager puppy. 

“Mother's wasting her breath. Anyone can see Rhaenyra's going to inherit the lot,” Aegon scoffs once, draped across a balcony with a wineskin sweating in his lap. “Father already showed Jace his seat on the Iron Throne. And Luke’ll do better than either of us. Driftmark’s almost as rich as the Rock. Not bad for such a strong pair of byblows.”

Aemond looks away.

“They don’t even kneel properly,” he says, quietly. None are close enough to hear, but the words taste dangerous. Thrilling. “At prayer.”

Aegon bursts out laughing. “You watch them pray?”

Their nephews are across the yard below, sparring with the master-at-arms. Luke is so strapped with padding that he can barely walk, slashing a wooden sword at the strawmen. He grins every time it slaps harmlessly against a shield. Jace shouts rules and corrections, trying to emulate a man grown. The master-of-arms humors them both, humors them as trueborn princes.

No sooner does the thought cross Aemond’s mind than Luke looks up, seeing Aemond watching from the balcony above Aegon’s insouciant slouch.

He waves. Bright-eyed, open. Almost inviting.

“Oi,” Aegon calls down. “Little Luke. Show your uncle how a prince should take a fall!”

Aemond can see the delicate pink flush of Luke’s face from even here. But Luke still laughs, as if it were all a game. As he can’t taste the edge beneath, the cruelty under Aegon’s cheer.

Aemond doesn’t speak. Not then. But later, when Aegon is gone and the dusk deepens the stone halls of the Keep, he finds himself replaying the moment. Not the insult, but the wave. That smile.

The mockery of it rankles. 

Luke delights in trouble. He entices Aegon in his games. He knows nothing of shame. He doesn’t care to.

Aemond wants him to care. To be abashed, to scrape in shame at who he is, what he is. Aemond is a prince, trueborn. Targaryen by name and blood, no matter that he has no dragon to prove it. Ser Criston praises him as his most diligent pupil. He has none of Aegon’s crude carelessness, nothing of Luke’s sin. 

Luke is a bastard. By his nature, Aemond is better than him. He wants to be better than him. 

He wants Luke to not shun his company. To not dare to laugh. To mean it when he waves. 

“Do not play with them,” Alicent warns him one day, when she catches him watching. Her tone is stern, but her eyes were sharpened by something colder, some old knowing. 

“Those boys will lure you until you have dropped your guard. And then they will wound you. They are her creatures. They offer nothing but deceit.”

Aemond folds his hands behind his back, mirroring her precise posture. “Why doesn’t the king see it?”

The queen’s lips purse. “He is blinded. Aegon too, no matter how they drag him into their games. He hasn’t your sense. Sometimes, I-“

Whatever she is about to say is bitten off abruptly. She reaches out, and strokes the silver of his hair. 

“You are wiser than your brother,” she tells him softly. “Your father too. I know you will keep from their mistakes.”

They kneel in the sept that evening. Father, Mother, Warrior, Crone, Smith, Maiden. She calls upon them all for him, her hands trembling as she folds them over his. Aemond stares at the wavering flames until his eyes burn, and clutches her back, willing her to find strength in him. 

The news comes soon after, borne on Aegon’s tongue like spoiled wine.

“They’re gone,” he announces to Aemond at breakfast, flicking his spoon at a serving platter on the table. “Off to Dragonstone without so much as a goodbye.”

Aemond blinked. “Gone?”

“Mother got her way,” Aegon shrugs. “Or Rhaenyra did. Couldn’t be fucked to listen at the door for more than a moment. Gathered up all her bastards and fled like a disgrace in the night. Not that anyone’s like to send me to a castle by the sea to be rid of me.”

Aemond looks to the empty places at the dais. His stomach feels strangely tight. “When are they expected back?”

Aegon snorts. “Never, if Rhaenyra’s got sense. Now Mother can stop walking around like someone’s lodged a broom handle up-"

“Shut your mouth,” Aemond snarls, his fingers curled into fists.

Aegon swallows a mouthful of wine, gazing resentfully over his cup. “Gods, Jace is ten times the fun you are. Knows how to take a jape without running off to his nursemaid. Knows how to play. Not like you, brooding, sulking, glaring all the time. Gods, I wish it’d been you shipped off.”

Rising from the table, Aegon staggers away. Aemond makes no move to stop him.

In the absence of his eldest daughter, the king seems to fade. He rises later, retires earlier, and seems more reliant than ever on the brimming cups of milk of the poppy the maester discreetly brings.

It falls to his Hand to sit the throne more and more. Mother takes her own seat at the foot of the stairs, straight-backed and solemn before the court. But she breathes easier now, her eyes clearer. The marks of the Seven hang in prominence around the Keep, at the breasts of courtiers in their newfound piety.

Peace descends.

The new order is a relief. Aegon may complain that all is unbearably dull now, but Aemond is content to leave him to his cups and games. He trains in the yard under Ser Criston’s approving gaze, studies under the maester’s eye. His focus is absolute, every breath spent sharpening body and mind to a razor’s keen edge. 

Only sometimes does Aemond look across the Blackwater, smooth but for the far reaches where the wind shivers across its surface.

Only sometimes does he think of his nephews, standing on Dragonstone’s distant shores, and wonder what they make of their strange new home. 

Fewer yet are the times he wonders if they think of him in turn. 

On Driftmark, all eyes are red from grief. Rhaenyra’s head is bowed before the bier upon which Laena Velaryon lies, clinging tight to Jace’s shoulders as he holds solemn vigil next to her.

Ser Harwin burned under the shadowed stones of Harrenhal, far from his princess and his sons. Aemond has heard his mother speak of it.

Such a queer catch to her voice. Her hand clutching the seven-pointed star of necklace so tight that the emblem had stayed pressed to the flesh for hours afterwards. 

Aemond looks to Luke.

Luke does not look to him, nor to his mother and brother in the drawn white of their grief. Not even to the thunderous boom of Ser Vaemond’s voice as he speaks of blood and legacy, roaring cold as the surf before them. Luke looks only to Ser Laenor, clasping his hand all the while. His eyes follow anxiously as the man he calls father wanders silently into the tide.

Far away at the crest of the shore, Vhagar mourns alone.

Aemond’s heart hammers wildly when she opens her eye to behold him, the slit pupil almost as tall as he is. But he fights the fear back down. He is a Targaryen. Dragonflame is his birthright, dominion in his veins. If the others - Aegon, his crumbling father, his jeering nephews - will not see it, then Aemond will make them.

Sōves, he commands, but no book in the world could prepare him for the feeling of the salt wind blowing through his hair, scouring his face, gusting away breath and thought. No tale the king ever croaked to him could tell what it means to watch the world shrink to a blur beneath him, to know himself a god above it all. 

A dragon.

And a dragon he is when the dogs come howling from the shadows, a herd of mongrels snarling about him. They scream of theft, as if a dragon is a prize to be taken.

As if they have a right to demand anything of him, they who only ever offered him scorn and laughter.

Words fly, and then fists. 

Cravens that they are, they think nothing of throwing themselves four against one. And, filth that they are, it does nothing. Aemond has stood alone all his life, and with Vhagar’s ferocity roaring through him, their numbers cannot keep him at bay.

The fingers of one hand scrabble through the dirt, finding the jagged surface of a rock. The other closes about the soft skin of Luke’s little throat. 

Aemond can feel the pulse trembling wildly against his palm as Luke stares up at him, eyes wide and bastard-dark. No mockery any more, only fear.

It’s not enough.

“You will die screaming, in flames, like your father did,” he promises. His eyes meet Jace’s and his lips twist, resentment and righteous fury boiling out in a word he has only ever dared whisper. “Bastards.”

“My father is alive,” Luke chokes out beneath him, clutching at Aemond’s wrist. 

“He doesn’t know, does he?” Aemond laughs, Luke still caught fast in his grip. “Little Strong.”

With a shout of rage, Jace springs forward. A knife flashes from its sheath. 

Aemond flings Lucerys aside, lashing out with the rock still held in his fist. It cracks across Jace’s cheekbone, sending him crashing down into the dust at Aemond’s feet. Where he belongs, where all of them belong. 

Aemond’s hand stings, peppered with grit, but he draws it back still again as Jace gapes at him stunned. The rock weighs his hand, and he raises it above that crown of bastard curls, ready-

A yell cuts through the night.

The last sight Aemond’s eye sees are Luke’s, terrified and determined, bright as dragonfire.

And then, the agonising kiss of steel. 

His eye is lost. And, for a time, so is much else besides. Depth, balance, all the skill he has ever worked for. The last of his mother’s fantasies of peace. 

But not purpose.

The gods have taken one sight, and in return, they give him another.

In the dark, when the maesters’ poultices cool and the pain is numbed to a dull, incessant throb, Aemond dreams of Lucerys. 

Not as a child, not as a nephew, but as the beast who has done this. Who has maimed him. Who has marked him. Who has taken all and then fled laughing beneath his mother’s skirts to escape judgement. 

The septons often speak of signs. And this - this bleeding, this humiliation, this stumbling, agonised path back to himself - is one laid upon him as clear as if he had read it upon the altar of the Grand Sept. 

Ser Laenor had died upon Driftmark. Someone - his mother, or mayhaps Helaena - told Aemond this, as he floated in his poppy haze. Murdered by his own favorite and the corpse left in his father’s halls, comely features scorched to ruin. His sin come home at last. 

This, too, is a sign. Aemond is an apt pupil. He knows his future now. His duty.  

His mother comes to him often in those weeks, holding vigil at his bedside. It takes its toll. She weeps for him, so often and bitterly that Aemond often seeks to comfort her more than the opposite. She has grown thinner, shadows dark as decay under her eyes.

And yet, there is strength in those eyes, strength in those hands as they cradle his. She alone had spoken for him. She alone had sought justice. She had scarred the whore in retribution for Aemond’s blood, whilst the king raged impotently and a bastard wailed.

“You must forgive me,” she whispers once, as if he had accused her. “I prayed for strength, not violence. I asked the Warrior to make you brave. I did not mean for you to be… punished.”

“I am not,” Aemond rasps, voice hoarse. “Mother, they heard you. I'm more now than I ever was before." 

She looks at him for a long time. In the soft ochre of her eyes, he sees a shadow of Vhagar's bronze.

“Good,” she says at last. “For there will come a day when justice must be served. When your brother sits the throne, and they are made to answer for this. All of them.”

She rises, smooths her skirts. 

“There is still a debt owed,” she adds, quiet as prayer. “We will see it paid.”

Whilst Aemond's mother wept for him, Rhaenyra had shed no tears. Not for her lost goodsister, and most certainly not her husband. She wears the crown of a princess, but her blood is hot and hungry as that of her bastards. As that of Prince Daemon. 

His mother and father rage alike when the news reaches King’s Landing. There are no bells rung in the city to celebrate.

There had been none rung on Dragonstone. The marriage was sealed not in a sept, but on the black cliffs of Dragonstone, in fire and blood. 

Rumors fly from tongue to tongue in the streets and court alike. They speak of old rites, of blood spilled onto stone, of Rhaenyra’s eldest bastards gathered before the flames in witness. 

Aemond has read of such things, in the books his father had gifted him when his own eyes had failed him. Whispers from the Old Freehold, the rituals of dragonlords twisted into myth. Theirs are gods older than the Seven. Gods that demand sacrifice.

“D’you think she bled for him?” Aegon asks one night, his eyes bright with wine and mirth.

“She did,” Aemond murmurs, more to himself than anyone else. 

He pictures it, all too easily. Daemon, his blade in hand and his bride before him. Rhaenyra, resplendent in the old regalia, her flesh soft and white. Offered freely.

Luke standing beside her, grave, watching. 

Aemond dreams of him again. He so often does. 

But not the knife this time, or the rack, or the poker gently heated. Luke stands before him with his solemn-eyed gaze. Without hesitation, he reaches up and plucks the eye out himself, knuckles digging into his browbone as he pulls it free.

He places it in Aemond’s palm and gently presses Aemond’s fingers closed about it. He tilts his head, socket red and hollow, and ruined, and he smiles. 

The brothel is lit by an array of small lanterns, perfumed with clove and roses and the hot, rank smell of sweat. Aegon pulls him through the doorway like a child dragging a reluctant dog, all eagerness and rotten delight.

“It’s my little brother’s nameday,” he announces to the crowd of women, cooing around him in their wisps of silk and lace. “A gold dragon to the one who makes a man of him!”

That sets off an immediate scuffle, no less furious for the simpering smiles and breathy voices surrounding it. The winner emerges with a toss of her golden hair. She is older than them both, full-mouthed, heavy-breasted. She trails a coy hand down Aemond’s cheek. 

“A scar?” she murmurs, voice thick with the Riverlands. “How dashing. Maidens always love a scar, my prince.”

“You’re in luck, Aemond,” Aegon chortles. “Sylvi’s one of the best on the whole street. Play nicely with her, won’t you?”

Sylvi dips her head, her painted lips curled in demure silence. Aemond is silent too as she leads him under the hanging silk banners, his ears ringing with Aegon’s guffaws. She smells of crushed flowers and linen. The same smile lingers on her face as she undresses them both with practiced ease. 

Aemond lies stiff beneath her hands. She murmurs things he can’t hear. His eye stares past her shoulder, into shadow. When she kisses his throat, he closes it tight as he can bear.

In the darkness of his mind, Luke as Aemond last saw him kneels instead, small and round-faced. Bleeding. Offering.

Aemond comes with his jaw clenched, shame curled tight in his gut like some starving animal.

When it is done, Sylvi wipes her mouth and helps him from the bed. She drapes his cloak back around him without a word. 

Aemond is grateful for her thoughtfulness, her mercy. Aemond has never hated anyone so utterly in his life, save Luke.

Aegon is lounging against the wall when Aemond stumbles out. His face is flushed, his doublet unclasped, and he leers at Aemond knowingly. 

“Got it wet at last, little brother,” he laughs. “How does it feel?” 

Aemond nearly strikes him where he stands. 

Instead, he turns on his heel and leaves without speaking, breath shaking in his lungs.

A fountain stands in the street outside, water gushing over the gaping stone mouths of fish and fowl. Aemond washes his hands and face in it, over and over. Until his skin is numb with cold, until his fingers nearly bleed, until he can feel nothing at all.

In the early hours of the dawn, he dreams again. Luke beneath him. Writhing under Aemond's hands, eyes wide with fear. Crying out - not in pain, not quite. Blood at his lip, trailing down his chin like a wedding mark.

Aemond wakes, his mouth bitter with the taste of salt and bile. It is two days before he allows himself to sleep again. 

The ravens fly again, this time from Driftmark. The Sea Snake has taken a wound on the Stepstones, one that is now festered into fever. He has taken to his bed, his days dwindling away. 

Not dead, not yet. But neither is the king, and already, the crows circle for them both. Vaemond Velaryon has brought a petition to the Iron Throne, claiming right of inheritance. 

The Hand’s eyes shine at this. He thinks of Driftmark’s fleets, of Rhaenyra’s allies robbed from underneath her.

Aemond’s heart sings too with joy. But it is not of Aegon’s throne he thinks.

It is of Lucerys, and the justice come for him at last. Named a bastard before the realm, stripped of a throne, of a name that was never his - and forced out from beneath Rhaenyra’s skirts, to face Aemond after these long years. 

Aemond is not in the courtyard the morning when Princess Rhaenyra’s retinue arrives. Few are. The queen has better matters to attend to than greeting the household of a disgraced princess, and the king has not stirred from his bed in moons. 

The tales reach him nonetheless. Rhaenyra, defiant as ever, even as the smallness of her station must have made itself apparent. Prince Daemon gliding grimly as her shadow.

And her sons.

Aemond is not long into his spar in the training ground when he becomes aware of a new audience. Whispers of disdain and curiosity both are fanning through the crowd gathered around he and Ser Criston. As Aemond twists with the force of a blow, he glimpses the reason. 

Two new figures stand apart from the crowd. One watches with keen-eyed wariness, the other in fearful fascination. 

The distraction almost costs him his shield. Furious, at himself, at the boy, Aemond tosses it aside and strikes under Ser Criston’s guard.

It doesn’t take long. All these years that Aemond has spent honing himself in dreams of justice, every swing of his blade a prayer. In a matter of moments, his sword is pressed against Ser Criston’s neck, and respect warms the knight’s eyes.

“Well done, my prince,” he tells Aemond, nodding at the cheering crowd. “You’ll be winning tourneys in no time.”

Aemond wastes little breath in his reply. His eye is already upon Lucerys.

Years, it has been now, and he hungrily takes in the changes they have wrought. Lucerys is taller now, but nothing to Aemond’s height. His hair curls about his face, damningly dark against the soft white of his cheeks.

And - Aemond realises this with a thrill that lights up the hollow spaces within him as he meets the wide dark of his eyes - Luke is afraid. 

His nephew has never known what it is to pray, to cry to the gods and hear no answer. He is young, soft, untried. Aemond will teach him. 

“Nephews,” he croons. “Come to train?”

Lucerys does not rise to this of course, craven that he is. Perhaps Aemond might have lured the bristling Jace into the ring, but Ser Vaemond’s arrival draws all attention in an instant.

Watching Luke wilt beneath the man’s naked contempt is a delight. A promise of the humiliation to come. But to see it whets the sharp edge of Aemond’s own hunger.

His debt is the older, the greater. His to claim. 

Later, he promises himself. He is content to watch the crows descend, tear strips from Lucerys’ soft belly, rip his pride, his pretences, his very name from him. 

And then, to let Aemond close in for the rest.

But Aemond is a fool. The savage gods of Dragonstone have smiled on Lucerys Velaryon all his life. Of course the bastard stays blessed, even now.  

The king has only been able to take a thin broth for days. When Helaena comes to visit him, he can no longer remember the names of her children. He is rotting in his sheets, a corpse that breathes still only from habit.

But when Vaemond Velaryon stands before the throne and savages Lucerys’ claim for the farce that it is, when the bastard cowers against his mother and can offer not a word in his own defence - a corpse arises and speaks for him. 

The king’s entrance crashes over the audience in shocked silence. He shuffles before them, a threadbare tapestry of bone and skin and breath. His crown tumbles from him, fate’s last, desperate stab at justice.

But, as he never has been before, Prince Daemon is there to catch it, and then his brother in his outstretched arms. 

Aemond already knows the outcome by the time Daemon has helped the ailing king to his seat. Ser Vaemond however is not so quick on the uptake. Were it not for the resigned anger churning his belly, Aemond might find the man’s pop-eyed outrage amusing as Princess Rhaenys is called before the throne. 

She regards them all with cool serenity. Her eyes give nothing away. But the faint nod she offers Rhaenyra seals Driftmark’s fate even before Rhaenys claims it is her husband’s wish for Lucerys to inherit as Laenor’s trueborn son. 

A laughable pretence. Aemond doesn't blame Ser Vaemond for his sputtered rage. But Princess Rhaenys' purpose is clear a moment later, when she announces Luke’s betrothal to her own granddaughter. 

Luke’s blush is visible across the room as he exchanges a look with Lady Rhaena. 

The sight boils the anger brewing under Aemond’s skin to a new hardness, a fury he struggles to name. Daemon’s daughter is lovely as the statues within the keep, silver-haired, violet-eyed. Another prize the bastard doesn’t deserve.  

Vaemond cannot accept it. His anger is hotter, careless. He is blind to the king’s warning, to the threat curling from Daemon’s lips like smoke as he dares a desperate man to speak the truth. 

“Her children are bastards-”

Aemond has barely moments to savor the wide-eyed shock on Luke’s face, the soft oh of his mouth. 

Daemon - still smiling that narrow smile of his - steps forward and cleaves Vaemond’s head in two with a single, smooth motion. The tongue remains, twitching on the floor like a fish before the appalled eyes of the spectators.

Aemond does not look away.

Daemon cleans his blade with a flick of his wrist, unruffled by the exclamations of outrage around him. He saunters back to his princess, sharing a look with her of cool satisfaction. 

To Daemon, this is nothing. Life and law bends to him easily as knee. As with his blade, so with his marriage. 

He took Rhaenyra, first as maiden and then as widow, because he wanted to. Because he could. Even when the laws of gods and men forbade it. Even when the king himself had begged otherwise.

Aemond watches him. Learns him. 

He understands.

The family gather together for supper at Alicent’s behest. A ridiculous notion, this last snatch at unity. Sometimes, her sense of duty is chain as well as balm. 

Lady Rhaena seats herself next to her new betrothed. She lays a hand over his, giggling in his ear. Luke whispers back, his eyes lowered sweetly. 

Aemond swallows a mouthful of wine and doesn’t look away. 

Alicent leads them all in prayer. Her voice is careful, controlled. She calls on each and every face of the Seven, each but the Stranger peering behind her husband’s mask. 

Luke bows his head. Closes his eyes. Folds his hands in a picture of perfect submission.

Aemond watches him through the flickering candlelight. He isn’t fooled by the display. Not from that delicate mouth. Those laughing eyes. 

He wonders what true penitence would look like on Luke.

He wonders what it would take to force it from him. 

Viserys removes his mask and croaks a pious litany of blood, of family, of forgiveness. A meaningless plea. Aemond is unmoved, only scornful of the misguided effort. The man has so few breaths left to waste.

But Rhaenyra, ever eager to curry her father’s favor, lifts her cup - to the queen. 

Rhaenyra is thick with Daemon’s child. Flabby with age, a whore long gone to seed. And now, flush with her bastard’s victory, condescending to offer recognition. 

Still Alicent, slender as a maiden, watches her. Still Alicent, who swore the debt was not forgotten, lifts her cup in turn. 

Lucerys glances at his brother contemplatively. The torchlight gleams over the unadorned dark of his hair. Color rides high in his cheeks. 

Aemond’s fists tighten.

After the exchange of wistful sentiments, the tense air lulls. The musicians strike up a reel, and Jace pulls Helaena into a dance. The king, smiling, is borne away.

Conversation continues, strained but civil. And then the pig arrives. Roasted, lacquered, accusing eyes glazed in fat. 

The servants set it before Luke with a bow. 

Luke looks at it. His mouth lifts in a smirk. 

When he looks at Aemond, laughter dances in the black depths of his eyes. 

And Aemond’s rage descends with the howling cold of a storm.

That night, his dreams return. 

Against the perfumed sheets of the brothel, Luke is pressed down with an unyielding hand. He weeps, and bleeds, and begs. 

But for more, more. His arms twine around Aemond’s neck, his hips rolling against his, eager mewls painting the air. The candlelight catches in his curls, twined with Aemond’s fingers as he wrenches him close. Lucerys laughs against his lips, face canted upwards, seeking.

Aemond kisses him. His body strains with want, heavy with loathing. Lucerys cradles his face between palms soft as cloud, and kisses him back, drinking him deeper, deeper.

It is the answer to every prayer that Aemond has ever offered. It tears aside his composure, shatters every oath he has ever made. It is hideous, and it is unspeakable, and he will die happy with its taste on his tongue. 

He wakes sweat-damp and panting, shame thick as bile in his throat.

For the first time, Aemond begs mercy. He prays that the gods carve this shame from him. He prays to burn if he must, that one may sieve their fingers through the ashes, and never see the truth of how Lucerys has seared himself into Aemond's very marrow. 

But when he closes his eye, there is only the bastard's smile still. 

In the hearth, last night’s fire still licks at remnants of kindling, low and crackling. Lucerys’ laugh echoes amidst the rush of blood in Aemond’s ears, taunting, tempting. Luke knows. He has always known. 

Ser Laenor’s true heir indeed.

Seized in sudden fury, Aemond flings the blankets from him. He throws water over the hearth, and watches the hiss of the embers, flickering, dying.

The gods rarely shine upon him. Now, as ever, Aemond must seek his own respite.

When Alicent sends for him, Aemond can scarcely bring himself to look at her, at any of them. She doesn’t notice. She is frantic with purpose, her hands spread wide to beseech them.

Viserys has rattled out his last breath. Alicent insists he used it to name Aegon heir.

Aemond does not believe it. He has not been blind to the arrangements she and the Hand have been making all these years, far from the eyes of Dragonstone. If his mother wishes to cloak her ambition with a feigned blessing, Aemond has no need to sop his conscience with the same. 

But greed and shame still coil hot within him, choking tight under his mother's desperation. He will accept any task she sets and pray it is enough to atone.

"Aegon must be found and he must be brought to me. The very fate of the Seven Kingdoms depends on it." 

They find him, fled to the Great Sept, eyes still bruised with last night’s cups. What a jape, that Aegon should imagine his sins will find sanctuary there now. 

But Aegon has always been a craven, afraid of the same birthright that Aemond craves. Even now, with the crown held before him, he tries to flee like a rat before lamplight. 

He babbles pleas and promises as Aemond drags him out by stained collar. He has a ship waiting, he begs him, clutching at Aemond’s arms with a wild grin. If his brother only lets him go, he will never be found. 

Aemond opens his mouth to pour forth the scorn that boils through him. And yet, for the briefest, brightest moment, it shows itself to him. 

The Iron Throne cold and shining, waiting. The realm bowing, his brother lost, Lucerys on his knees- 

Cole steps up next to Aemond, one hand on his sword, the other on Aegon’s shoulder as he guides him back like the recalcitrant child he is. 

Aemond closes his eye. Sighs at his brother’s disgruntled moans. And turns away.

For now.

Storm’s End looms like a broken tooth on the sea’s edge, dark and thunder-crowned. Even within its halls, one can hear the wind shrieking as it tears at the battlement. The rain has already begun. 

And into this, Lucerys Velaryon delivers himself.

He must have seen Vhagar curled like a siege weapon against the castle walls. Yet he has the arrogance to walk within anyway, his head held high as if he is merely strolling into a village upon Dragonstone. 

He does not look to Aemond. 

Rage rears within Aemond, hot with poison. Behind his back, his hands curl into fists.

But this is not time for anger, but satisfaction. 

It is everything he has always longed for, watching Lucerys squirm and plead as Lord Borros cuts him down to size. How unsurprising, that Rhaenyra sends her pup with empty hands. 

Aemond has been made to offer marriage, to pledge his life to the stone-faced maiden beside him. Not so for Lucerys. Of course, nothing hard is ever asked of him - nothing, at least, that he will willingly give. He shakes his head to Lord Borros’ questions, claims loyalty to his betrothed.

Rhaena Targaryen. That insipid wisp of a girl. Too craven to claim Vhagar, too weak to do anything but simper at her betrothed as her hand was sold for his claim. For that chit, Lucerys would give up the swords of Storm’s End.

It makes Aemond want to laugh. It makes him want to knot his fingers around Luke’s soft little throat and squeeze.

Luke doesn’t respond to his scorn. He stands there, cheeks flushed pink from the wind, hair dripping wet down his collar, and still he will not lower himself to offer Aemond acknowledgement. Contrition. A single glance. 

Even a blade tossed before him does not make him buckle or beg. 

“I came here as a messenger, not a warrior.”

Not a warrior. That’s the one truth the little bastard has spoken tonight. Aemond can see the fear flickering across his eyes, clear as the lightning outside, as Borros’ guards surge to hold them apart. It is delightful.

It is not enough.

Aemond watches Lucerys leave, head still high no matter the haste with which he crosses the flagstones. When the doors open, the rainstorm comes raging  into the hall, so strong that three grown men struggle to close it behind him. It howls with the god’s own fury, the gods who stoked this hunger inside him, who have blessed Luke and every turn, and yet-

Lord Strong’s little dragon stands no chance against all that. 

And now, the thrill of the storm’s cold, of the promise of a hunt rising through him, Aemond understands.

There are no mistakes. This is providence. This is all that he has bled and striven for, dropped by the gods in his outstretched palm. 

If he cannot cast this hunger from him, they will have meant him to slake it. 

Lord Borros leans forward, anxiety clouding his small eyes. “I will not have blood spilled in my hall. You’ll not settle your quarrel here, Prince Aemond.”

“No,” Aemond says, smiling thinly. “Not here.”

Vhagar crests the sky like the Doom itself.

Aemond can see Arrax and his rider, far, far beneath him - where Lucerys belongs, where he has always belonged. The sight of him huddled low on the saddle, soaked through - wet, bastard, have you pissed yourself already? - and small, sends a laugh cracking through Aemond’s chest.

He wonders what fear tastes like on Luke’s tongue. 

“You owe a debt,” Aemond flings over the scream of the wind. “Won’t you dare face me, boy?”

A pearl-white flash is just visible as Arrax darts through the clouds. His wings flurry against the wind, his tail lashing quick as the rain. Nimble, but small. Weak. 

The gale tosses him about like a child’s toy as the sky cracks open around him. Lucerys has steered him away from the white-frothed waves of the bay, cutting towards the pitch-dark smear of forest that runs along the spine of the coast. 

A desperate bid; to take the longer route inland in a bid to escape the worst of the winds and flee Aemond’s reach. Desperate and worthless. Arrax banks too sharply, still unbalanced by the roar of the winds. 

Vhagar follows, ancient, unstoppable. 

He catches a glimpse of Lucerys’ face, lit white in the fork of lightning. His nephew urges Arrax higher, trying to vanish within the clouds. But Vhagar surges up behind him, sky shuddering anew with the force of her roar. 

When the wind turns and the lightning flashes low in the belly of the clouds, Arrax drops. Not by choice. 

Vhagar strikes with her tail, not her teeth. It matters little. The force of the blow would be enough to fell a castle wall, and a young dragon’s wings are as nothing to it. Arrax spirals down without so much as a cry, talons raking the sky as he twists one final time to take the impact. 

And then-

The trees. 

They strike the forest below with bone-shattering force, a chaos of snapped branches and earth fountaining upwards. 

Luke would have been flung to his death thrice over were it not for the chains holding him in place. Even they have their price. He is white-faced and swaying as he untangles himself, hand pressed tight against his ribs.

He tries to rise from the saddle, but his legs give out in the effort. He falls, the breath punched out of him as he hits the ground, staring with sinner’s wretchedness at the sky. 

When he struggles to his feet, Aemond is there to meet him. 

Vhagar curls around the dell like the distant mountains, her eyes focused on the still-twitching heap of scales atop the needles. Rain streams through the gash torn when Arrax crashed through the forest canopy, but otherwise, the green above them is too dense to penetrate.

They are cut off from the world entirely. No guards to interfere. No Daemon.

Only the gods witness now. 

Lucerys has already drawn with his dagger. It shakes in his hand like the boot he has braced upon the earth.

Aemond doesn’t draw. 

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he says quietly, eye of flesh and gem both fixed on the burning dark of Luke’s own. “Of the moment you’d kneel.”

Luke doesn’t kneel.

He swings.

The blade slashes across Aemond’s shoulder. Pain bursts along its path, brief and slight. It’s just the edge, a glancing blow. Shallow.

Aemond knocks the blade from his hand in one breath, and sends Luke crashing back to the earth in the next. The wind has fallen, enough for him to hear the pained gasp as his boot presses deep into Luke’s chest, as his fingers close around his throat. 

Even through the chill of the storm, the warmth of his skin is palpable. Aemond can feel the leap of Luke’s pulse, thrumming in the white curve of his neck. It is fast with fear. Or excitement. Aemond has heard it whispered that there are none so lusty as a bastard born. 

He is decided then. 

“What do you want?” Luke spits. The defiance would have more strength if it weren’t for the tremor of his breath as he gazes at the blade at Aemond’s hip. 

“You,” Aemond answers plainly. “Your blood, to answer mine.” 

And then he lowers his head, and kisses him. 

There is nothing gentle in this kiss. Nothing sweet. It is a claim. A violation. A prayer. 

Their skin is slick with rain, gritty mud and pine needles scratching into Aemond’s palm as he braces it against the earth by Luke’s shoulder. Aemond is aware of these things, but scarcely, scarcely. Luke’s lips are soft and dry, pliant with shock, unresisting. They send heat scalding down to the very marrow of his bones, coiling low in his hips. 

Luke has frozen beneath him, a quivering rabbit before the hawk. His lips move, Uncle snatched into the echo of the wind. The white of his eyes are swallowed up with dark, wild with panic.

Aemond curls his fingers deep into the tangles of his hair, wrenching Luke’s head up for another savage kiss. 

Luke bites his lip, hard. Aemond laughs, panting, full of relish, and bites back, deepening the kiss. When he finally pulls away, it is with the taste of blood filling his mouth, sweet and coppery. It blooms scarlet on Luke’s lip as Aemond cups his face.

“You bleed for me,” he whispers.

Horror shutters Luke’s eyes.

“Get off me,” he breathes. 

The words are tight, controlled. But his nephew’s fear betrays him. He bucks wildly, twisting his hips in a desperate attempt to throw Aemond off, as if he cannot feel the hardness of him pressed against Luke’s own flesh. It takes three blows - quick, hard, a litany of fists, Maiden, Mother, Crone - before he is subdued again. 

The rain filtering through the canopy has died down, just a little, falling in a fine mist around them. The world has quietened. The only movement are the leaves trembling against the moan of the wind, the hiss of steam where Vhagar’s breath warms the wet stones before her. 

Aemond presses Luke back against the earth. The boy’s threats and pleas double when he sees the cold gleam of the blade in his hand, but Aemond is undeterred. 

He presses it against Luke’s throat lightly, almost a tease, and then he draws it down. The Valyrian steel cuts through cloth like water, buttons flying off into the dark. Underneath, Lucerys is soft and white as cream, naked as his nameday and thrice as helpless.

Aemond idly strokes a finger down the bared column of his neck, watching a shiver travel down Luke’s chest.

“Afraid?” he asks.

Luke’s eyes flick up to his, the scattered embers of his defiance kindling once more. “No.”

But he cries out when Aemond forces him over, arm braced across his back to keep him still as Aemond’s fingers find his cunt. It is not so easy as in the brothel. Even with the wetness of the rain, and the added slick of Aemond’s spit, Luke does not open readily for him. 

But once he is inside, the bastard cannot hide himself. Lucerys was born of lust and treachery, and as ever, his nature betrays him. Even as he screams, and kicks, and curses Aemond’s very name, that wet warmth is grinding down against his knuckles, squeezing him, swallowing him deeper. 

With bared teeth, Aemond reaches around and grasps his cock, stroking mercilessly until Luke’s pained cries have died down to a choking, broken noise. He turns his head from Aemond’s gaze, eyes fixed instead on the broken body of his dragon feet away.

It is enough. Aemond takes himself in hand, pressing and pressing until Luke’s body yields, until he is sheathed to the hilt in raw heat, achingly tight around him, locked between Luke’s trembling thighs.

It is a pleasure he has never known, heady, maddening. A sweetness he has not found in facing any opponent in the training yard with steel singing in his hand, not in the cloying smile of the whore. 

This had been what it had felt to claim Vhagar, the moment when he had risen in the sky and seen all the world laid out before him, the moment Aemond might have thought himself a god. 

The air is ragged with his pants as Aemond thrusts inside, his hips bucking in graceless, wild motion. He can smell blood again, salt and iron painting the inside of Luke’s thighs, easing the way. 

Bleeding for him again, and is that not proof enough? That this is meant, that Luke was always meant for him?

“This is your fault,” he reminds Luke, his hands digging into Luke’s hips as he drives himself in further. His body aches with it, with how sweet it feels, with how he takes and takes and takes, and still he roars for more. 

Luke is writhing beneath him, clawing at Aemond’s back, the only part he can reach. The scour of his nails is welcoming. It anchors Aemond into place, into this moment, where otherwise he would lose himself utterly in the pleasure of it all, spiralling off into the dark like a scrap of silk in the storm. 

 He mouths at the stark line of Lucerys’ collarbone, biting, sucking at the sting of it as his thrusts deepen, slow. Luke’s struggles are weakening now, and Aemond laughs against his skin, relishing the patterns that the sapphire casts across it. 

He presses his face against the curve of Luke’s neck, and sinks his teeth in again, deep enough to rip a yelp from Luke. It locks Aemond against him as his hips seize, spilling wet into the space he has carved out inside Luke, for him, only for him. 

Vhagar roars, deep and echoing through the trees. 

Afterwards, he sprawls atop him, lax and boneless, his softened cock still nestled between the warm, soft slope of Luke’s thighs. He stares lazily at the overarching branches above, the thinning clouds just visible in the sky beyond.

He feels emptied. Filled. Redeemed. Cleansed.

Beneath him, Luke’s breath catches in shallow, angry bursts. 

“Get off me,” he repeats, his voice little more than a whisper.

When Aemond makes no move to do so, Luke shoves at him, abruptly, furiously. 

Aemond raises an eyebrow and digs his knee into the soft flesh of Luke’s stomach instead, watching Luke’s face contort as he gasps for air. 

“You do not command me,” Aemond reprimands him. He reaches down, tracing a thumb over Luke’s lip. It is bleeding still. He watches the blood run scarlet down Luke’s chin, rainwater carrying it in a enticing line down his throat. 

"You wanted it as much as I did.”

Luke shakes his head wildly against the earth, trying and failing to dislodge Aemond’s hold. “No.”

A lie. 

“You asked for this. You prayed for it.” 

“You’ve killed Arrax,” Luke says, voice raw. “You have-”

His throat works as he glances down at the mess of his thighs, trying to find the words. In this, as in so many things, he fails. 

“You’re a monster,” he says, flatly, finally. “And you are mad. There will be war for this. You’ve damned us all. Daemon will have your head-”

“Let him try,” Aemond tells him, smile curling at the whiteness of Luke’s face. “Jace too. Even your whore of a mother. I’ll bring them to see you in our chamber. One piece at a time.”

“Our-”

Lucerys’ voice breaks into a snarl of rage. Or horror. It makes no difference, no more than his violent twisting and kicking as Aemond steals another, biting kiss. Nor his screams as Aemond binds his wrists and hauls him to Vhagar. 

The storm has softened now, rain lightened to the steady fall of tears. The wind has died. The gods watch in silence. 

They have given him this hunger. And now Aemond will feast forever.