Chapter 6: The Claiming
The stain on the velvet pillow had dried to a stiff, crusted patch. Aemond left it there, a testament. He washed himself with water from the basin, the cold shock doing nothing to cleanse the residue of the dream, the memory, the act. He dressed in silence, the black leathers still smelling of yesterday’s smoke. The emptiness in the room was a physical presence.
A soft knock, too tentative for a servant. The door opened before he could respond.
Alicent stood there, not in her torn gown from his chambers, but in a high-necked dress of deep green, her hair coiled and pinned with severe perfection. She looked every inch the Queen Mother, except for her eyes. They were raw, the green dulled by a sleepless dread. She held a rolled parchment in hands that did not tremble, but seemed carved from ice.
“We must speak,” she said, her voice flat.
He leaned against the carved post of his bed, crossing his arms. The ruined pillow was just visible behind him. Her gaze flicked to it, then away, a flinch so minute only he would have caught it. “You’ve come to my chamber to talk, Mother? Usually, you come for other things.”
She ignored the barb, stepping inside and closing the door. “Lord Strong’s son has arrived. He demands an audience. He does not believe his father’s death was an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” Aemond said, picking a piece of invisible lint from his sleeve. “It was a necessity. The man was a traitor in thought, if not yet in deed. His thoughts were clutter. I tidied up.”
“His son has brought fifty men-at-arms. He is waiting in the outer yard.”
Aemond’s single eye lit with a cold interest. He pushed off the bed and walked to the window. Below, in the muddy courtyard, a knot of men stood around a banner bearing the burning tower of House Strong. They looked small, insignificant. Like ants.
“Let him wait,” Aemond murmured. Then he turned. The quiet energy that had thrummed in him since waking coalesced, sharpened, and fixed on her. “You’re afraid.”
“I am prudent.”
“You’re afraid of me.” He took a step toward her. “Right now. Standing here. You’re wondering if I’ll snap your neck like I did that raven last week.”
She didn’t deny it. Her knuckles were white around the parchment. “Aemond, this cannot continue. The… the whispers. The violence. It is a tree with poisoned roots. It will bring the whole castle down upon us.”
He was in front of her now. He plucked the scroll from her hand and tossed it onto the table. It rolled next to the candle. “Poisoned roots,” he echoed softly. He brought his hand up, not to strike, but to trace the high collar of her dress with his fingertip. “You know what’s at the root of it all, don’t you?”
She closed her eyes. “Do not.”
“Tell me.” His finger hooked under the collar, pulling it down slightly, exposing the pale column of her throat. There were faint bruises there, from two nights prior. His mouth on her. “Tell me what’s at the root.”
Her breath hitched. “You.”
“And what feeds the root?” His other hand came up, cupping her jaw, forcing her to look at him. His thumb brushed over her lower lip.
She was silent, trembling.
“What feeds the root?” His voice was a low crack.
“I do,” she whispered, the confession torn from her.
He kissed her then, hard and claiming. It was not a kiss of passion, but of confirmation. She stood rigid for a moment, then her mouth opened under his, a shudder of surrender moving through her body. He walked her backward until her legs hit the edge of his massive bed.
He broke the kiss. “On your back.”
She complied, lying back on the black silks, her green dress a shock of color against the gloom. He didn’t undress her with ceremony. He pushed the skirts up to her waist, revealing her legs, the auburn curls between her thighs. He unlaced his own breeches, freeing his cock. He was already fully hard, the memory of the pillow, of her, having never truly left him.
He didn’t enter her slowly. He mounted her, positioned the broad head of his cock at her entrance, and shoved himself inside in one deep, unyielding stroke. She cried out, a sharp, pained sound that melted into a gasp as he filled her completely.
He braced his hands on either side of her head, his silver hair falling around them like a curtain, and began to move. His thrusts were deep, measured, and relentless. Each one drove the breath from her lungs, pressing her deeper into the mattress. The bed, heavy as it was, gave a faint, rhythmic groan.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She opened her eyes. Her gaze was clouded, shame and a terrible, hungry need warring within it.
“I bet my father,” he grunted, snapping his hips forward, “never made you feel like this.” Each word was a piston stroke. “Never filled you up so completely you couldn’t think of your fucking gods. Did he?”
“Aemond—”
“Did he?” He punctuated the question with a brutal, downward drive that made her see stars.
“No,” she moaned, the denial finally breaking. “Never.”
A cruel, triumphant smirk touched his lips. “No. He had his duty. I have this.” He shifted, hooking her legs over his shoulders, bending her almost double. The new angle was devastating, hitting a place that made her vision blur. He fucked her deeper, harder, the slap of his hips against her thighs a rapid, wet drumbeat in the quiet room.
Her control shattered. Her hands flew to his back, her nails digging into the leather, then beneath it, scoring the skin of his shoulders. She was mewling, little helpless sounds, her hips lifting to meet his drives. The coil inside her, the one she prayed would never wind again, pulled taut with terrifying speed.
“That’s it,” he snarled, watching her face unravel. “Come for me. Come on your son’s cock.”
The obscenity was the final key. Her body convulsed, a silent scream locking in her throat as her cunt clenched around him in a series of frantic, fluttering pulses. The sensation was a vice, hot and impossibly tight.
It ripped his own control away. With a guttural roar that was pure animal triumph, he buried himself to the hilt and came. His release was a torrent, hot pulses flooding deep inside her, joining what was left from the night before. The intensity of it was blinding; spots danced before his eye, the room tilting. He collapsed onto her, his body shuddering, his face buried in the crook of her neck.
They lay locked together, sweat-slick and breathing in ragged unison. The only sound was the distant, muted clamor from the courtyard, a world away.
Slowly, the feeling returned to his limbs. The hollow was gone, burned out for now. He softened inside her and rolled off, lying on his back beside her. She didn’t move, her arm flung over her eyes.
After a long silence, she spoke, her voice hollow. “His son is in the yard.”
Aemond stared up at the shadowed vaults of the ceiling. A plan, cold and clear, crystallized in the aftermath. “I know.”
“What will you do?”
He turned his head to look at her. The scent of their sex was thick in the air. “I will give him an audience. From Vhagar’s back.” He sat up, his movements fluid now, decisive. “He brought fifty men? I bring a dragon. Let us see how cluttered his thoughts become.”
He stood, lacing his breeches. He was Regent. He was Targaryen. This, the fucking, the violence, it was all the same fire. It was who he was.
Alicent finally moved, pulling her skirts down, sitting up. She looked broken, used, and utterly complicit. She had fed the root. She would watch the tree burn the world.
“Go to your sept,” he said, not unkindly, as he fastened his vambrace. “Pray. For his soul, if you like. It will be leaving his body shortly.”
He left her there, on the stained silk, and strode from the chamber. The parchment on the table, Lord Strong’s final complaint, curled in the heat of the candle flame, blackened, and turned to ash.
The scent of ash followed him down the turnpike stair, a ghost of the burned missive clinging to his leathers. The clamor from the yard sharpened into distinct sounds: the nervous stamp of a horse, the low murmur of men, the metallic whisper of a sword being loosened in its scabbard. Aemond emerged into the flat grey light of the courtyard. Fifty men in mail and surcoats formed a tense knot around young Lucerys Strong, who stood clutching his father’s banner as if it were a lifeline.
All movement ceased. Eyes, wide and white-rimmed, lifted from the young lord to the solitary figure in the archway. Then, they lifted further, to the monstrous shadow that swept across the cobbles.
Vhagar’s bulk blocked the weak sun, her wings churning the damp air into a foul wind. A low rumble vibrated from her chest, a sound felt in the bones more than heard. She settled on the curtain wall with a crunch of breaking stone, her head snaking down, her great citrine eye level with the gathered men. Her hot, carrion breath washed over them.
Lucerys Strong’s face, so full of righteous fury moments before, drained to the color of curdled milk. He took an involuntary step back. The banner pole slipped in his sweaty grip.
“You requested an audience,” Aemond called out, his voice calm, almost conversational. He did not shout. The dragon’s presence made shouting redundant. “Speak your piece. My mount is impatient. She dislikes… clutter.”
The young lord’s mouth opened. Nothing emerged but a dry click. He tried again, his voice a reedy crack. “My father—his death—it was not—”
“It was.” Aemond took a single step forward. The collective breath of fifty men hitched. “He forgot his place. He questioned my reign. I reminded him. It was a lesson, Lucerys. Are you a quicker study than your sire?”
Vhagar hissed, a plume of sulphurous smoke curling from her nostrils. It enveloped the front rank of soldiers. They coughed, eyes streaming. One man dropped his spear with a clatter that echoed like a crack of doom.
Aemond watched, his single eye unblinking. He saw the exact moment the fight left them. It was not in the young lord’s face, but in the shoulders of the grizzled master-at-arms beside him. The man’s posture, once rigid with readiness, slumped into defeat. He had seen dragons before. He knew what came next.
MEN SURRENDER.
It did not happen with a shout, but with a sigh. A sigh of released tension, of awful acceptance. Swords, one by one, were laid carefully on the wet cobbles. Spears clattered down. Bows were placed beside them. Hands rose, empty and open. They did not look at their young lord for a command. They looked at the ground, at the shadow of the dragon, anywhere but at the cold prince who had become their executioner without striking a blow.
Lucerys stood alone amid a growing circle of surrendered steel. He was a boy playing at war, his toy banner suddenly ludicrous. A choked sob escaped him. The pole slipped from his grasp completely, the cloth of House Strong pooling in the mud at his feet.
“Good,” Aemond said. The word was a dismissal. He turned his back on them, on the son whose father he had murdered, on the men who had chosen abasement over ashes. “Disarm them. The boy goes to a cell. Let him reflect on family legacy.”
He walked back into the keep, the dragon’s roar of triumph shaking the very stones behind him. It was not a sound of rage, but of profound boredom. The hollow in him was back, yawningly wide. The surrender had been too easy, too bloodless. It provided no warmth, no satisfaction. It was administrative. His boots were clean.
He found her not in the sept, but in his own chambers again. She was standing by the window, her back to the door, her hands gripping the stone sill. She had not changed her dress. The ghost of their earlier joining still haunted the room.
“They surrendered,” he said, closing the door.
She did not turn. “I heard the dragon.”
“Of course you did.” He came up behind her, his body not quite touching hers. He could see the tense line of her neck, the frantic pulse at its base. “They laid their swords in the mud. Like offering bones to a god. Your prayers were answered. No blood was shed.”
“Is that a mercy?” Her voice was hollow.
“It is a punctuation mark.” His hands settled on her hips. She flinched, but did not pull away. He pressed his hardness against the curve of her backside, still damp from the yard’s mist. “This is the only sentence I understand.”
He spun her around. His kiss was bruising, a transfer of the violent energy denied in the courtyard. She tasted of salt and the sweet wine of despair. His fingers worked at the laces of her gown with impatient brutality. The expensive fabric tore, giving way. He pushed it down her shoulders, baring her breasts. He bent his head and took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, biting down until she cried out.
“You wanted blood,” he muttered against her skin, walking her backward toward the bed. “You can have mine. Or yours. It’s all the same heat.”
He threw her down onto the silks. The green dress was a tangle around her waist. He didn’t bother removing it. He shoved his breeches down just enough to free his cock, thick and urgent. He grabbed her thighs, spreading her wide. She was wet, a slickness born of fear and a terrible, addictive shame.
He plunged into her without ceremony. The force drove a punched-out groan from her chest. He fucked her with a driving, rhythmic intensity, each thrust a attempt to obliterate the quiet victory below, to replace it with a louder, more personal conquest. The bed rocked against the stone wall.
“Look at me,” he grunted, his hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back. “See who you serve.”
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the dusk. Her body, treacherous and alive, rose to meet his. Her heels dug into the small of his back, pulling him deeper. The slick, wet sounds of their coupling filled the chamber, a vulgar counterpoint to the distant, respectful silence of the yard.
“You’re my good whore,” he breathed, his pace becoming erratic, punishing. “Aren’t you? The Queen Mother is my perfect, filthy whore.”
She didn’t deny it. A broken, rasping moan was her answer. Her internal muscles clenched around him, a spastic, tightening rhythm. Her climax was silent, a seismic shudder that locked her body rigid beneath him. The vise-like grip of her cunt milked his own release from him. He came with a sharp, ragged cry, spilling into her, his seed joining the cold dread in her womb.
He collapsed, his weight pinning her. His face was buried in her hair. They were both slick with sweat, their breathing the only sound. The hollow was gone, filled with a temporary, exhausted heat.
After a long time, he rolled off. He lay on his back, staring at the canopy. “You will receive the young Strong tomorrow. You will offer him mercy. A posting at the Wall. You will be gentle. You will be the compassionate queen.”
Alicent lay still, feeling his spend leak from her onto the silk. “And you?”
"Criston Cole and I will take a host out to the Riverlands."