Chapter 1: Chapter 1
The sharp scent of rain on hot stone washed over King’s Landing, doing little to cut the thick, familiar stench of the city below. Aemond Targaryen stood at a high window in Maegor’s Holdfast, his single eye fixed on the gilded procession crawling through the Mud Gate. His knuckles were white where they gripped the ledge.
Three years.
Three years of silence, of reports filtered through whispers and spies paid from his own purse. Three years of picturing her face in the flicker of every hearthfire, only to have the memory dissolve into smoke. And now she was back, a reluctant jewel returned to its dusty setting.
The door behind him groaned open, but he didn’t turn. “They’ve passed the outer bailey, my prince,” a servant’s voice squeaked.
“I have eyes.”
The boy scurried away. Aemond finally moved, his black leather jerkin whispering as he strode from the chamber. The corridors of the Red Keep were a stage, and every lord and lady a player pretending not to watch him. He was taller now, broad in the shoulders, his scar a violent punctuation on a face carved from cold marble. The tap of his boots on the stone was a measured, threatening beat. The din of the throne room washed over him as he entered through a side arch, a wall of sound—clattering plates, shouted gossip, the rustle of silk. He ignored it all, his gaze sweeping the dais.There.
She stood beside the Iron Throne, where their father wheezed a welcome. Visenya. Her silver-gold hair was coiled in a complicated southern style, bound with thin ropes of pearls. A high-collared gown of Lannister crimson swallowed her slender frame, a color that seemed to leach the warmth from her skin. She was smiling. It was a small, perfect, utterly false curve of her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. Those eyes, a deeper violet than his own, scanned the crowd with a polite vacancy that made his chest constrict.
Beside her, Lord Mern Lannister of Lannisport preened. He was a man built of polished arrogance and soft living, his beard meticulously trimmed, a hand resting possessively on the small of Visenya’s back. Aemond watched that hand. He cataloged the slight, almost imperceptible stiffening of Visenya’s spine at the touch.
The feast was a slow torture. Aemond drank sparingly, his eye tracking them from his seat further down the high table. He saw how Lannister’s laughter was too loud, how he leaned into Visenya’s space, his words for her ear alone causing her fingers to freeze on her goblet. He saw the practiced way she sipped her wine, the way her gaze dropped to her lap, the briefest flinch when Lannister adjusted the fall of her sleeve, his grip lingering too long.
Aegon, already drunk, slouched in his chair. “Looks like marriage suits our sweet sister,” he slurred, wine dripping from his chin. “Cersei Lannister reborn. Or is she just enjoying the gold?”
Aemond said nothing. He simply watched as Lannister, flushed with wine and pride, stood to regale the court with a tedious story of a boar hunt. He punctuated a point about the beast’s ferocity by slamming a fist down on the table. The platters jumped. Visenya, sitting beside him, did not. But Aemond saw the way her breath hitched, the way her eyelids closed for a heartbeat too long. A memory, not of the story, but of similar, sudden violence in private chambers.
His blood, always ice in his veins, began a slow, deadly simmer.
It erupted two days later in the training yard. The morning was bright, the clash of steel a pleasant rhythm. Aemond was drilling with Ser Criston Cole, their practice blades a blur, when Lannister swaggered in with a few of his golden-cloaked retainers.
“A spar, my prince?” Lannister called, his tone jovial but his eyes keen. “I’ve heard much of your prowess. I’d test it.”
A crowd gathered. Aemond lowered his blunted sword. “Live steel,” he said, his voice flat.
A murmur rippled through the yard. Lannister’s smile tightened, but he could not refuse. “As you wish.”
The fight was not long. Lannister was competent, well-trained, but he fought like a man who expected to win through prestige. Aemond fought like a man who had carved his skill from bitterness and pain. He was a storm, relentless, his movements efficient and brutal. He drove Lannister back, step by step, until the lord’s heel caught on the uneven cobble.
As Lannister stumbled, Aemond’s blade swept in, not for a killing blow, but to slash a line of red across his opponent’s cheek. Lannister cried out, more in shock and indignation than pain. He staggered, dropping his guard.
“Yield,” Aemond said, the point of his sword at Lannister’s throat.
Humiliation burned in Lannister’s eyes, brighter than the blood on his face. He glared past Aemond, toward the shaded archway where Visenya had come to watch, drawn by the commotion. He saw her there, her face pale, her hands clasped tightly.
“You fight well for a half-grown boy,” Lannister spat, his voice low, meant only for Aemond. “Is this how you impress her? The sad, one-eyed dog of the king, barking for a bone he’ll never have? She finds you pitiful. She told me so. She finds your scar… grotesque.”
The world narrowed to a pinprick of cold, roaring silence. The simmer in Aemond’s blood ignited.
He did not drive the sword forward. He took one swift step back. “On your feet.”
Confused, Lannister rose. As he regained his footing, Aemond attacked again. This was not a spar. It was annihilation. He broke Lannister’s sword arm with the pommel of his own. He shattered his knee with a brutal kick. He drove him to the muddy ground, a boot on his chest, his own discarded blade now in his hand—not the practice sword, but the dagger from his belt.
The yard was frozen. Ser Criston took a half-step forward, then stopped. No one moved.
Lannister gasped, terror finally dawning. “Mercy! I am a Lord of—”
“You are nothing,” Aemond said. His voice was quiet, almost conversational. He looked not at the man beneath him, but at Visenya, holding her gaze across the yard. He saw her eyes widen, not with horror, but with a dawning, desperate comprehension. He gave her the faintest nod, a question and a promise in one.
Then he plunged the dagger down.
The sound was wet and final. A great sigh seemed to go through the onlookers. Aemond straightened, pulling the blade free. He walked toward Visenya, the dagger still dripping. He stopped before her, the chaos of the yard swirling around them.
Her eyes were locked on his, full of shock, yes, but beneath it, a terrible, profound relief. A silent tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek. She did not look at the body.
“He will not touch you again,” Aemond said, and then let the guards lead him away.
The king’s fury was a predictable, withered thing. Confinement to his chambers. Lectures about diplomacy, about the wealth of Lannisport, about the need for strong alliances. Aemond endured it in silence, his eye on the window.
A moon’s turn passed. The whispers in the court were of little else. A tragic accident during a heated spar. The prince’s temper, so fearsome. And the poor, widowed Visenya, her mourning clothes a pale grey against her haunted beauty.
Viserys, his body failing but his sense of dynasty stubborn, summoned Aemond to the small council chamber. The room stank of decay and sour wine.
“Lannisport must be appeased,” Viserys rasped, his form lost in the massive chair. “A marriage. Tyland Lannister’s second son is of an age. He will take Visenya as his wife, the dowry to be paid from the crown’s coffers. It will mend the rift.”
Aemond stood before the table, feeling the gaze of the councillors. “She is not a broodmare to be traded to the next available stud in the pride.”
“She is a princess of the blood, and her duty is not finished!” Viserys coughed, a wet, rattling sound. “It is decided. The ravens fly at dawn.”
That night, Aemond moved. The guards at Visenya’s door were his own, bought or intimidated into loyalty. He dismissed them with a glance. He did not knock. He entered her chambers, a shadow in black.
She was at her window, wrapped in a silver shawl, watching the Blackwater. She turned, and in the dim light of a single candle, she looked younger, and impossibly weary.
“Aemond,” she breathed. Not a question.
He crossed the room, stopping an arm’s length away. The distance felt like a chasm. The ruthless prince, the scourge of the training yard, felt his carefully constructed walls crack. Here, in this quiet room with her, he was once again the boy with the empty socket, hiding in the library.
“He means to marry you to another Lannister,” he said, the words rough.
“I know.” Her voice was a thread of sound. “I received the tidings this evening.”
“Will you go?”
She looked down at her hands. “What choice do I have?”
“Look at me.”
She raised her eyes. In their violet depths, he saw the ghost of the girl who had shared her lemon cakes with a lonely, angry little boy, who had read histories to him when no one else could bear his sullen presence. He saw the woman who had endured three years of silent cruelty in a gilded cage.
He let out a breath, and with it, the last of his defenses. His shoulders sagged, not with defeat, but with the exhaustion of a lifetime of pretense. When he spoke again, his voice was stripped bare, vulnerable in a way that would have shocked the entire court.
“You have a choice. Me.”
She went very still.
“All my life,” he continued, the words coming in a rush now, stumbling over each other. “They saw a spare. A grotesque. A threat. You… you saw me. You were the only kindness in that entire damned keep. And when they sent you away, they carved out the only soft thing I possessed and left a hollow place. That hollow filled with something else. Not just memory. Not just brotherly affection. I have loved you, Visenya. Fiercely. Desperately. Not as a sister. As a man loves a woman. It has been the only truth in me for years.”
He took a step closer, his hand rising, but he did not touch her. He offered it, palm up, a supplicant. “I killed him for you. I would burn Lannisport to the ground for you. I would defy the king, the council, the gods themselves. Do not let them send you away again.Choose me. Marry me. In secret, before the dawn, in the sept beneath the keep. Bind yourself to me, and I will spend every breath of my life ensuring no one ever looks at you with anything but reverence again. I will give you a dynasty of our own. I will give you everything.”
The silence stretched, filled only with the distant whisper of the sea and the frantic hammering of his own heart. He watched the emotions play across her face: shock, confusion, a flicker of fear. Then, something else. A dawning, a realization so deep it seemed to physically alter her. The weariness in her posture melted, replaced by a straightness of spine he had not seen since her return. The vacant sheen in her eyes cleared, revealing the sharp, intelligent woman beneath.
Her own hand came up, slowly, and her fingers slid into his. Her touch was cool and sure.
“All those years,” she whispered, a tear escaping to trace the same path as before. “I thought my gentleness was a weakness he exploited. I thought my memories of you were a childish fantasy I clung to. I was wrong.”
She stepped into the space between them, closing the distance. She looked up at his face, her gaze tracing the line of his scar without flinching.
“The kind boy is still there,” she said. “But he is stronger now. And he is mine.”
She lifted his hand and pressed her lips to his scarred knuckles.
“Yes, Aemond. I choose you. I will marry you.”
A shudder ran through him, a release of a tension he had carried for a lifetime. He folded her into his arms, burying his face in the silver-gold hair he had dreamed of for a thousand nights. Outside, the first grey light of dawn began to bleed into the black sky over King’s Landing.
Outside, the first grey light of dawn began to bleed into the black sky over King’s Landing.
Aemond did not release her. He held her face between his hands, his thumb stroking her cheekbone as if confirming she was real. “Before the sun finds its place in the sky,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “There is a place. A sept, forgotten. We will use the old ways. Our ways.”
She simply nodded, her trust in him absolute, terrifying. He moved then, swift and silent, fetching a heavy cloak of dark wool from a chest. He wrapped it around her, pulling the hood deep over her silver hair. His own black attire blended with the shadows.
They slipped from her chambers like ghosts. The Red Keep was still, the only sounds the distant calls of the watch and their own soft footsteps on cold stone. He led her down spiraling stairs, through a disused gallery where their footsteps echoed faintly, and into the heart of the mountain upon which the fortress sat. The air grew colder, damper. Finally, he pressed a hand against a section of rough wall. A hidden door, known only to a few, swung inward with a groan of old stone.
The chamber beyond was small, circular, and ancient. It was not a sept of the Seven. The walls were bare black stone, and in the center stood a rough-hewn altar of obsidian. A single brazier of coals cast the only light, painting everything in a hellish, flickering orange. The air smelled of dust, cold stone, and a metallic, smoky scent.
“A Valyrian altar,” Visenya whispered, her voice full of awe.
“A place for true gods,” Aemond said. He walked to the altar and from a niche beside it, drew forth two items: a slender, ancient dagger with a dragonglass blade, and a simple braided cord of black and red silk.
He turned to her. In the firelight, his scar was a river of shadow, his single eye burning with a violet intensity that mirrored the hot coals. He looked every inch a dragonlord of old, ruthless and conquering. But when he spoke to her, his voice was stripped of its usual ice.
“There are no septon’s words here,” he said. “No songs of the Seven. Only blood and fire. Only us.” He took her hand, his grip firm. “The words are simple. Say them with me.”
He drew the edge of the dragonglass dagger across his own palm. A line of dark red welled up instantly. He did not flinch.
“Nyke ābrar, Aemond Zaldrīzys, gaomi naejot ūndegon ao hae ñuha jorrāelagon,” he intoned, the High Valyrian flowing from his tongue like a dark prayer. I, Aemond of House Targaryen, take you to be my beloved.
He offered her the dagger, hilt first. Her hand did not shake. She took it, the obsidian cool and impossibly sharp against her skin. She mirrored his action, drawing the blade across her own pale palm. The sting was sharp, clean. Her blood, the blood of the dragon, welled up to meet his.
“Nyke ābrar, Visenya Zaldrīzys, gaomi naejot ūndegon ao hae ñuha jorrāelagon,” she said, her voice clear and strong in the hollow chamber. I, Visenya of House Targaryen, take you to be my beloved.
He reached for her wounded hand. Their palms pressed together, blood to blood, a hot, slick seal. He wrapped the black and red cord around their joined wrists, binding them tight.
“Hen sȳndror ry īlē, hāros bartossi, va moriot ut nās,” he continued, his gaze locked on hers. From this day, until the end of days.
“Hen sȳndror ry īlē, hāros bartossi, va moriot ut nās,” she repeated.
He leaned forward, his forehead resting against hers. Their breath mingled. “Bring your fire to mine, Visenya,” he murmured, shifting to the common tongue. “Burn with me.”
Then his mouth was on hers.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was a claim, a conflagration. Years of stifled longing, of hidden glances and silent dreams, erupted between them. Her lips parted under his with a desperate gasp, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue surging into her mouth. He tasted of salt and smoke and something uniquely, dangerously him. Her hands flew to his face, her fingers tangling in the silver-gold strands of his hair, pulling him closer as if she could fuse them together through will alone.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. He stared at her, his eye blazing. “Tell me you want this,” he commanded, his voice rough. “Say it.”
“I want you,” she panted, her own desire a startling, fierce fire in her gut. “I have always wanted you. Please, Aemond—”
He didn’t let her finish. He kissed her again, bruising and possessive, as his hands went to the laces of her gown. The fine silk, the symbol of her Lannister prison, offered no resistance to his determined fingers. He peeled it from her shoulders, letting it pool at her feet on the cold stone. Her shift followed, until she stood before him in only the firelight, her skin glowing like pale marble.
He made a sound low in his throat, a growl of pure, unadulterated want. “Gods,” he swore. “You’re… fuck, Visenya.”
His own clothes were a frustrating barrier. He tore at the leather ties of his jerkin, shrugging it off, then the tunic beneath. His torso was a landscape of hard muscle and old, thin scars, a testament to a life of relentless training. He was powerful, and in that moment, every ounce of that power was focused on her.
He lifted her, his hands gripping her bare hips, and set her down on the edge of the obsidian altar. The stone was shockingly cold against her skin, but his body, pressing between her thighs, was blazing heat. He kissed a burning trail from her mouth down her neck, to the hollow of her throat, lower. His mouth closed over her breast, his tongue and teeth working her nipple into a hard, aching peak. She cried out, her head falling back, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders.
“Aemond,” she gasped. “Don’t wait. I can’t— I need—”
He understood. The years of denial, of marriage to a cruel man, of secret yearning, had built a pressure in both of them that was now unbearable. He guided himself to her entrance, the head of his cock pressing against her wet heat. He was thick, and she felt a spike of pure, carnal fear mixed with dizzying need.
He looked into her eyes, his face a mask of tortured restraint. “This will hurt,” he warned, his voice strained.
“I don’t care,” she breathed, lifting her hips. “Fuck me, Aemond. Make me yours.”
With a raw, guttural sound, he drove into her.
The pain was a sharp, splitting intrusion, quickly consumed by a wave of exquisite, full sensation. She screamed, a short, sharp sound lost in the hollow chamber. He buried himself to the hilt inside her, his body shuddering. He held there, locked deep, his forehead damp against hers, both of them panting.
“Gods… you’re so tight,” he groaned, his control visibly fraying. “So fucking perfect.”
Then he began to move.
He set a brutal, claiming pace from the start. There was no gentle exploration, no shy discovery. This was about possession, about sealing the vow they had just made in blood and fire. Each thrust was deep, hard, driving her back against the cold altar. The dragonglass dagger lay beside them, a silent witness.
She met him thrust for thrust, her nails scoring his back, her legs wrapping around his waist to pull him deeper. The pain had vanished, replaced by a climbing, coiling pleasure so intense it bordered on agony. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, his hips snapping against hers, the sound of skin on skin echoing off the stone. He captured her mouth again, the kiss messy and wild, all teeth and clashing tongues.
“Say my name,” he demanded against her lips, pounding into her.
“Aemond!” she cried, each thrust punching the name from her lungs.
“Again.”
“Aemond! Aemond!”
He shifted his angle, and the new friction sent a shockwave through her. She shattered. Her climax ripped through her with a violence that stole her breath, a silent scream shaking her body as she convulsed around him, milking his length. The sensation tore his own control away. With a final, deep drive, he groaned her name like a curse, his head thrown back, his body rigid as he spilled himself inside her, filling her with his heat.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the popping of the coals. He slumped over her, his weight a comforting burden. The cord was still tied around their joined wrists, the knot now soaked with their mingled blood. He pressed his lips to her shoulder, her neck, her jaw, gentle kisses now, a shocking contrast to the ferocity of moments before.
Slowly, he pulled out of her, both of them wincing at the sensitivity. He untied the cord from their wrists, but instead of discarding it, he carefully wrapped it around her own wrist, a secret bracelet. Then he gathered her trembling body into his arms, lifting her from the altar. He sat on the floor, his back against the cold stone, cradling her in his lap, his cloak wrapped around them both.
He stroked her hair, his touch now infinitely tender. “Mine,” he whispered into her hair, a statement of fact, weary and triumphant. “Now and always.”
Outside, through some unseen crack, the true dawn finally broke, a thin blade of sunlight piercing the darkness of the chamber to fall across their tangled legs. The world was waking up. Their secret, written in blood and sealed in flesh, was the only truth that mattered now.