Chapter 8: The Servant's Devotion
The silence after was worse. Criston pushed himself up, avoiding Aemond’s eye, and left without a word. The tent felt larger, emptier. The evidence cooled on Aemond’s skin. He did not clean it off. He let it dry there, a cracked map of their transgression. He dressed over it, the linen sticking unpleasantly to his belly. The hollow, for a few moments, had been filled with fire. Now it was just an ash-choked cavity.
He spent the day on Vhagar’s back, scouting the approaches to Raventree Hall. The world below was a tapestry of muted greens and browns, threaded with silver rivers. From this height, men were ants. Castles were child’s blocks. He felt a pull, a terrible urge to simply dive, to let the dragon’s fire unspool and turn the knot to glass. The simplicity of it sang to him. Burn it. Burn it all.
But his mother’s voice, thin and reproachful, whispered of legacy, of a kingdom to rule, not a graveyard to tend. He banked Vhagar hard, the great beast’s complaint shuddering through the saddle, and returned to camp as the sun bled out behind the western hills.
His tent now smelled of cold smoke and the roasted boar brought for his supper. He picked at it, the meat greasy and tasteless. The oil lamp guttered, making the painted castles on the map seem to tremble. The stone knot. The fucking Blackwoods.
The flap rustled. Criston entered, as he always did for the final watch report. He was clean, his cloak swapped for a fresh one, his face a mask of dutiful stone. The perfect Lord Commander. The memory of his choked, desperate groans was a phantom between them.
“Sentries doubled on the western perimeter. The foraging party returned with less than expected. The streams near Raventree are running foul. They’ve poisoned their own waters,” Criston recited, his voice flat. He did not look at Aemond, but at a point on the tent wall just beyond his shoulder.
Aemond watched him. He saw the tightness at the corner of his mouth, the slight weariness in the set of his shoulders. The shame was a living thing on him, a stink Aemond could scent beneath the soap.
“Is that all?”
“It is, my prince.”
“Look at me.”
Criston’s jaw tightened. Slowly, his gaze shifted. His eyes were haunted, the eyes of a man who had seen his own reflection in the mud and could not scrub it clean.
“You regret it,” Aemond stated. It was not a question.
“My duty is to protect you. To counsel you. Not to…” He trailed off, the word too vile to speak in the context of his white cloak.
“Not to fuck me? But you did. You wanted to. You still do.” Aemond leaned forward, the lamp-light carving his face into a stark mask. “I can see it. It’s eating you alive. You’re terrified you’ll dream again. You’re terrified you’ll wake up hard and needing, and I’ll be right here, watching you fall apart.”
Criston said nothing. His silence was a confession.
Aemond stood. He walked around the table, stopping so close he could feel the heat coming off the older man. “Your vows are a chain, Criston. You cling to them because without them, you’re just a man with strong arms and a taste for violence. Like me. It must disgust you, how much we are alike.”
“We are nothing alike.” The words were ground out between his teeth.
“Aren’t we?” Aemond’s hand came up, not to strike, but to trace the fastening of Criston’s cloak. He hooked a finger in the wool. “You gave your life to an idea. So did I. And we’ve both watched those ideas turn to shit in our hands. All we have left is the doing. The taking.” He pulled, just slightly. “So take. Or are you only brave enough when you’re asleep?”
The mask shattered. Criston’s hand shot out, grabbing Aemond by the front of his tunic, shoving him backward. They stumbled into the campaign table, sending the map sliding, daggers clattering to the ground. Aemond’s back hit the post holding the lamp, which swayed, casting lunatic shadows.
There was no preamble, no false devotion. This was a collision.
Criston spun him around, bending him over the rough-hewn wood of the table. The edge dug into Aemond’s hips. Criston’s weight pressed him down, a hand firm between his shoulder blades. With his other hand, he yanked Aemond’s breeches and smallclothes down to his knees in one brutal jerk. The cold air hit his exposed skin.
He heard the spit, a wet sound, and then felt it, slick and warm, as Criston’s hand pushed between his ass cheeks, smearing it over his hole. There was no preparation, no oil, just the crude, urgent wetness.
“This what you want?” Criston growled, his own laces tearing open. “This is what you are. A hole to be used.”
Aemond braced his hands on the table, the grain biting into his palms. “Stop talking. Just fuck me.”
The blunt, hot pressure of Criston’s cockhead pressed against him. It wasn’t gentle. Criston shoved forward, a hard, inexorable push that breached him in one ruthless stroke.
Aemond gasped, a sharp, pained sound punched from his lungs. It was a burning, tearing fullness. Criston was large, and he was dry, and it hurt. Aemond’s knuckles turned white on the table. He welcomed the pain. It was real. It was a feeling he could own.
Criston didn’t wait for him to adjust. He set a brutal, punishing rhythm, each deep drive slamming Aemond’s body into the unforgiving wood. The table legs screeched against the ground with every thrust. Criston’s hand left his back to fist in his silver hair, yanking his head back, arching his spine into a painful curve.
“You see?” Criston panted into his ear, his breath hot and ragged. “You’re just a fucking receptacle. For my seed. For your mother’s schemes. For the kingdom’s shit.” He punctuated each sentence with a jarring thrust.
Aemond’s own cock, trapped between his belly and the table, rubbed against the wood with each impact. The pain from behind blurred into a dark, shocking pleasure. He was being unmade. He was being filled. The hollow was gone, hammered shut by this violent, claiming force.
“Harder,” Aemond grunted, the word mangled. “Stop holding back, you coward.”
With a snarl, Criston obeyed. He fucked him like he was killing him, his hips a piston of pure resentment and need. The sounds were obscene: skin slapping against skin, the creak of the table, their ragged, shared breaths. Criston’s control was gone, eroded by days of shame and a lifetime of suppressed fury.
Aemond felt the coil in his own gut tightening, a spring wound to breaking. The friction, the degradation, the sheer physical dominance of it was hurtling him toward the edge. “I’m going to come,” he warned, his voice broken.
Criston’s hand snaked around his hip, gripping Aemond’s cock, his stroke rough and perfectly timed with his thrusts. It was too much. Aemond came with a silent, wrenching shudder, his release spattering the map of the Reach below him, dripping over the painted forests and rivers. His body clamped down around the cock inside him, milking it.
Criston cried out, a raw, unvarnished sound. He buried himself to the hilt, his rhythm shattering into frantic, shallow jerks as he poured himself into Aemond, his warmth flooding the clenching heat. He collapsed over Aemond’s back, his weight a final anchor, his face pressed into the sweat-damp hair at Aemond’s neck.
They stayed like that, glued together by sweat and spend, breathing in ragged unison. The lamp’s light steadied. The world outside the tent continued, unaware.
Slowly, Criston pulled out. The sensation made Aemond wince. He straightened, pushing himself up from the table, his breeches still tangled at his knees. He turned. Criston was already lacing himself up, his eyes on the ground, the shattered mask painfully reforming.
Without a word, Criston turned and left the tent.
Aemond looked down at the map. His seed lay across it, a pearlescent stain obscuring the lands around Raventree Hall. He reached out a finger and smeared it, blurring the ink of rivers and roads.
A cold, crystalline clarity settled over him. The stone knot. The correction. He would not untie it. He would burn it. Vhagar’s hunger and his own were now the same thing—a devouring fire that would leave nothing but clean, silent ash.
He called for a squire, his voice perfectly steady. “Bring the maester. I am sending a raven to the capital. Then summon the captains. We attack at first light.”
The hollow was gone. He was empty. He was full. He was ready.