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Listen. There was so much to unpack in this angsty ass chapter: starting with Daeron's isolated understanding [minus his tap tap taps to his new buddy McCain] of his role as the sacrificial lamb being tortured daily in Vietnam, to Mimi's funeral and Io's budding friendship(s??) with Ludwika [who unknowingly is giving Io info about Aemond's tomfoolery] and Fosco [who definitely is aware something going on between her and Aegon], and of course the passion-red phone call that was made.

But the ending, oh my fucking-

Aegon kisses the nape of your neck—so slow, so kind—and then goes to the doorway. You wait for him to leave, but he doesn’t. He’s looking at you as you hold up the ruined gown so it covers your belly and your chest. You gaze back helplessly, wanting him, needing him, a moon chained to another world’s gravity.

I love the tenderness of his gesture and their palpable pining that is sucking the air away in the hallway. And the reference to Jupiter's moon! 😭

Just fucking brilliant. This story is going to kill us all.

1968 [Chapter 8: Demeter, Goddess Of The Harvest]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 6.2k

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Is it a story worth telling? I think so. It’s better than nothing. It’s better than watching raindrops slither down the cracked concrete walls until the prison guards come back to bloody us again.

Today I’m sending John McCain taps in the shape of the tale of Io. John has a hard time tapping back—they’re doing something to his shoulders, they’re destroying him—but he likes to listen. He’s getting it a lot worse than I am; perhaps even the North Vietnamese fear Aemond’s retribution if I die here. They should be afraid of him. He thinks he owns everything he touches, and he’ll snap bones to keep it.

So anyway, Io was a king’s daughter, a mortal who Zeus saw and wanted and took when her father kicked her out to avoid the god’s wrath. That’s easily half of Greek mythology, right? Zeus appears, irrevocably fucks up someone’s life, vanishes in a plume of clouds and thunder. He leaves human rubble behind him: ribs, nerves, disembodied hearts that leak blood from torn ventricles, minds broken in two. Zeus impregnated Io and then turned her into a cow to hide her from his wife Hera, ever-watchful, ever-vengeful, an aspiring mass murderess. When this disguise failed, Hera condemned Io to wander ceaselessly through the wilderness, tormented by the constant stinging of a gadfly. Eventually, Zeus returns Io to human form and she pops out a few bastard kids, as if Zeus needs any more of those. Then he ditches her and she marries some Egyptian dude. There are other details that I’ve forgotten. I don’t think John McCain will know the difference.

I’m sure you’re wondering how I acquired all this fabled trivia. I don’t seem like the type to lie around under trees reading folklore from religions that died thousands of years ago. You’re right, I’m not. But Aemond is. He would tell the stories, and Helaena would embroider scenes on quilts for us to burrow under in the winter, and I would dramatically act out the best parts (mostly murders), and Aegon would scribble comics in jagged black pen strokes. He has all these notebooks down in the basement filled with his new versions of ancient myths: Poseidon as a horny dolphin, Aphrodite as Marilyn Monroe.

Wait, I remember what I skipped. While Io was roaming across the globe, she bumped into Prometheus—chained to a rock for giving humans the gift of fire—and he cheered her up somehow. I guess meeting a guy who gets his liver continuously chewed out by a giant eagle would make me more appreciative of my circumstances too.

I have a lot of time to myself here in solitary confinement. My social circle is microscopic. I tap to John through the wall, I have dinner dates with Tessarion the rat. And I think about my family. They’re fucked up, but I miss them. I miss going to Monmouth Park with Fosco to bet on horse races, I miss getting hammered with Aegon while he sings Johnny Cash or Beatles songs. I miss my mother and Helaena and Criston. I even miss Aemond’s wife, though I only met her a few times before I deployed. She’s sharp, she’s hilarious. She’s mean as hell to Aegon, and sometimes he deserves it.

At first I wondered why Aemond hasn’t gotten me out yet, but I understand now. It sounds a lot better to have a brother being tortured as a prisoner of war than one who received a Get Out Of Jail Free card. It’s the kind of thing Aemond would consider. He understands which stories are worth telling.

I feel kind of bad for her. Aemond’s wife, I mean.

I don’t think she knows about Alys.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a chilly mid-September morning cloaked in fog, Mimi is laid to rest in the Targaryen family mausoleum at Saint George Greek Orthodox Cemetery in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Most of the golden plaques already have names chiseled into them: Viserys and Alicent, Fosco and Helaena. Aegon will one day be interred beside his wife. You have a spot reserved next to Aemond. All of you have already lived and died and been entombed; all of this was predestined by the stars eons before you had blood or bones.

Ari’s vault—an unnaturally tiny drawer, less than half the size of anyone else’s—is located just above yours. You can’t stop staring at it. You can’t hear anything the bearded priest in his black robes is chanting. Then Cosmo squeezes your hand and you look down at him. Mimi’s other children are somber but seem to be coping well enough—they are used to being raised by consensus, they would probably be more affected if one of the nannies died—but Cosmo always wants to be near you. He gazes up with those vast, wet, murky blue eyes, so much like Aegon’s, and you offer him a sad, reassuring smile. Cosmo smiles back. And you think: Life goes on.

Alicent is sniffling noisily; it echoes off the walls of the mausoleum. Criston—a man with no plaque assigned to him—is trying to console her. Aegon is watching you from across the cold granite chamber, grim and red-eyed in his black suit, the first time you can remember seeing him in one since your wedding. He wears no small gold hoops, only a row of stitches in his right ear. He wants to say something, to do something, but he can’t. Aemond is beside you, a hand heavy on your waist but muttering something to Otto. Back in Omaha, Otto had spent a few hours alone with the medical examiner, and when the death certificate was issued it revealed that Mimi died of a heart defect, a perfectly blameless sort of misfortune, an innate impending disaster. And so that’s what the newspapers printed, and any gossip to the contrary is confined to salacious rumors, untrustworthy and unproven.

When the ceremony is over, journalists are waiting to scavenge for photos and quotes under the guise of expressing their sympathies. It’s a shameless display, though they at least have the decency to wait by the cemetery gates. Aemond and Otto go to meet them. Alicent, Criston, Helaena, and Fosco, protective of the children, keep them far away from the feeding frenzy, hungry-eyed reporters like sharks without fins. Ludwika is reapplying her lipstick. Aegon is smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to his oldest son, Orion, a stilted exchange that holds the promise of turning warm with time.

You sit on a stone bench and Cosmo curls up beside you, rests his head in your lap, dozes off as you thread your fingers through his wavy blonde hair. In the mist there are shadows of gravestones and trees that turn skeletal as they shed their leaves.

“He is okay?” Fosco says as he ambles over, meaning Cosmo. He has his hands in the pockets of his slim black trousers that stop at his ankles. His suit is velvet, his eyeglasses speckled with drizzle from the slate-grey sky.

“He’s alright. He’s resting. Are you okay?”

“Oh,” Fosco sighs mournfully. “I keep thinking someone is missing. We came into this family together, Mimi and I. We got married six months apart. I have never had to do this without her. And I know she had her problems, but she was different when she was younger. She always liked a party, that’s why she and Aegon got along so well at first. But she was so loud and so funny, always telling these long stories, and everyone in the room would be grinning as they waited for the good part. Viserys loved her. Otto loved her. And then she had all those children one after the other, and that was hard, and Aegon self-destructed when he was the mayor of Trenton, and that was worse, and she was supposed to fix him and she couldn’t, the harder she tried the farther he ran from her. She started drinking her Gimlets before dinner, and then after lunch, and by the time you showed up it was never ending. But that wasn’t who she really was. She was like a moon that got smaller and smaller until the only thing left was a sliver.”

This family breaks people. This family kills people. “We’ll make ossi dei morti for Mimi tonight. I’ll help you, and we can teach the kids.”

Fosco smiles, swipes a tear from beneath his glasses, squeezes your shoulder with one wiry hand. “I am very glad you are still here.”

“I’m not trying to race you to that mausoleum.”

Fosco laughs. And then he says as he spies Aegon approaching: “Um…I will go avoid the paparazzi somewhere else.”

“You don’t have to leave, Fosco.”

“It is no trouble. And I suspect you enjoy your very rare privacy.” Fosco gives you a knowing glace and then heads back to where Helaena, Alicent, and Criston are lingering with the rest of the children. Now Ludwika is fluffing her blonde curls with her French tips, a smoldering Camel cigarette tucked between two fingers.

Aegon comes to you through the mist, plops onto the bench, and looks fondly down at Cosmo—now fast asleep, his face smooth and peaceful—before he speaks. “I can’t grasp that she’s really gone. We barely spoke for years, but she was always there, you know? Christ, she deserved better than this. She could have been happy somewhere else.”

“Your children need you.” It’s not the first time you’ve said it, but it’s the first time he believes you. He nods, staring out into the fog. “They have to get away from this whole circus for a while. And you have to learn how to be a real parent.”

“I’ll have time to work on it. I’m staying here. I’ve already been informed.”

You are alarmed. “What? By who?”

“Aemond and Otto.” Aegon says. “When the rest of you fly west, my kids and I will be at Asteria.”

“They’re getting you off the campaign trail,” you realize.

“They’re putting me on house arrest.”

Not seeing Aegon, not being near him? How long can I stand that? “I’m sure you’re relived. You hate the grandstanding and the media.”

He shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I have Fosco and Ludwika.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that they need to look out for you.”

“Aegon, I’ve been doing the political wife thing for over two years.”

“But it’s different now.”

He’s right, it is.

“You’ll call, won’t you?” he asks. “You’ll let me know how the trip is going, you’ll tell me if anything bad happens? Because I can always get on a plane and meet you wherever you are. Otto might pay someone to murder me, but I’d risk it.”

“Of course I’ll call.”

“Hey.” Gently, he turns your face so you can’t hide from him. “Will you be okay without me?”

I have to be. I don’t have a choice. Instead you reply: “I’ll miss the weed.”

The tension breaks and Aegon smiles, and then he pats your cheek twice with his open palm. “Behave yourself.” He waves Ludwika over, interrupting her meditative chain smoking.

“What, what?” Ludwika says. “Are we leaving soon? Yes, it is so sad what happened to Mimi, but us standing around in the rain won’t resurrect her. And I look terrible in black.”

“I can’t be there for the last leg of the campaign.” Aegon points to you. “I need you to pay attention and check in with her at least a few times a day.”

“This is a common request. I should get a degree in it so I can charge people.”

Aegon furrows his brow at her. “What are you talking about?”

Ludwika smirks as she puffs on her Camel. “You are not the first person to ask me to keep an eye on her.” She nods subtly towards Aemond, then sashays off to give a quote to the journalists.

~~~~~~~~~~

In San Diego, Aemond meets with residents of a new public housing complex to hear their concerns about neighborhood jobs and infrastructure. In San Jose, he visits labor activist Caesar Chavez—being treated for debilitating back pain at O’Connor Hospital—and expresses support for the ongoing boycott of all grapes produced in the state. In Sacramento, he attends a Jimi Hendrix concert and receives a standing ovation from the audience; the next day he joins high school students protesting for a more inclusive curriculum. In Oregon, he makes a speech at Portland State University acknowledging the tremendous cost of the Vietnam War—in money, in time, in blood—and pledges to begin dismantling U.S. involvement as soon as he is sworn into office in January. Aemond talks about hope and despair, the bleak reality and the American Dream, and he is so overwhelmed by the crowd that he doesn’t even notice when someone takes his cufflinks as souvenirs. His lack of concern for his own safety exasperates Criston, but Aemond can’t be convinced to increase his security or his distance. If he expects the disaffected masses to carry him to the White House, he has to be real to them.

“What if another Wallace supporter tries to shoot you?” Criston demands. “What if a Nixon stooge stabs you or a crowd tramples you?”

“No one can kill me,” Aemond says, grinning wryly. “I’m not supposed to die yet. I’m supposed to be the president. It is God’s will.” And how can anybody disagree when that appears to be so true?

The earth dies as you drive north, summer withering into autumn. That familiar brisk cuttingness reappears in the air. You shake thousands of hands, smile for countless photographs. Mothers and wives of dead soldiers sob into your shoulder as you embrace them; teenage girls ask how they can get a good man like Aemond. Only one thing is missing from his glorious pilgrimage: something he wants desperately, something he cannot have (though he’ll never know why), you conceiving his child in time to announce it before Election Day. Each morning you sneak a pill and every night you bite the bullet. As often as you can, you duck into Dairy Queens to order lemon-lime Mr. Mistys.

George Wallace is in the South, galvanizing segregationists and accepting the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Nixon is working his way across the Midwest. He has chosen a politically moderate Greek as a running mate, Spiro Agnew; this does not strike you as a coincidence. He even shares a name with Aegon’s second son.

Nixon promises “peace with honor” in Vietnam, which means no immediate end to the draft. He makes speeches about “states’ rights” and “law and order,” ambiguous euphemisms designed to attract Wallace’s white supremacists without alienating too many suburban moderates. He commiserates with those lamenting the proliferation of sex, drugs, and divorce. He says he will return the nation to a more moral time. You wonder what he means. You can’t think of any such refuge in the bloodletting, spine-crushing history of mankind.

A kindergarten teacher tells you in Olympia, Washington, her eyes alight with reverence usually reserved for heroes, saints, gods: “People are voting for Aemond, but they’re voting for you too.”

And you find yourself thinking as a thousand miles roll by beyond the glass of limousine windows: How many people will I condemn if I don’t help Aemond win? How many lives is mine worth?

~~~~~~~~~~

The Hotel Sorrento in Seattle insists on giving you and Aemond the honeymoon suite: a retreat from the breakneck campaign, a romantic oasis for the future president and first lady…according to half the country, anyway. You are in the impractically large pink bathtub, surrounded by snowy dunes of bubbles. The wall to your right is a mirror, foggy around the edges; just a few yards to your left is the king-sized bed. In the top drawer of your nightstand is the card Aegon gave you in July. You aren’t sure where Aemond is, and you don’t especially care. You are relieved to be alone.

There’s a passion-red phone built into the rim of the tub, conveniently located for sudden room service revelations, champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, steak and lobster. You have a different idea. It’s 7:15 p.m. here, so after 10 on the East Coast. On the steam-slick keypad, you dial the number for the main house at Asteria.

Eudoxia picks up and demands gruffly: “Geiá sou? Ti?”

“Hi, Doxie. Is Aegon around?”

“Where else would he be? Making himself useful somehow? Killing communists, driving a rocket to the moon? No. He is a burden as always.”

“Please be nice to him. His wife just died.”

“And so he cannot put his empty cups in the sink?” Without waiting for a reply, she sets the handset down on the kitchen counter with a clunk. There is distant, muffled shouting in Greek; she seems to back and forth with somebody. Then Eudoxia returns. “Antio sas,” she says, and hangs up just as a phone elsewhere in the house is lifted from its cradle.

Aegon answers with something halfway between a groan and a yawn. “Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hey!” You can hear it riding the wire like electricity: a rustling as he sits up, a fresh clarity in his skull. His voice is deep, hushed, still husky with sleep. “What’s up, little Io? Any interesting happenings to report from your neighborhood of the solar system?”

“I just left a riveting tea party. Apple cinnamon scones and smoked salmon sandwiches. We talked about what kind of couches I should get for the White House and I wanted to kill myself. Are the kids okay?”

He’s smiling; you can tell. “They’re alright. I could have used you this afternoon. I was trying to help Spiro with his math homework. Trying, not succeeding.”

“Well he’s in middle school and thus beyond your skill.”

“How’s Jupiter?”

You know who he means. “I don’t want to talk about Aemond.”

“Okay.” Aegon says, curious. “So what should we talk about?”

A few seconds tick by, silent and perilous. “Where are you right now?”

“In my lair. Like a beast.”

“Alone?”

A transitory pause. “At the moment.”

“On the shag carpet or your futon?”

Now he’s very intrigued. “Futon. Why?”

“I just want a visual.” Beneath the water, your free hand is resting on the velvety inside of your thigh.

“Where are you?” Aegon asks.

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Maybe I want a visual too.”

You chuckle, peeking over at yourself in the mirror. Your skin is dewy with steam; stray wisps of hair stick to your face. “I’m in a gigantic pink bathtub. It’s ridiculous, it’s shaped like a heart and everything. They have a phone installed right here in case I find myself in desperate need of filet mignon.”

“Oh.” And then he hesitates, like he’s afraid to say the wrong thing. “Big enough for two?”

“More like five. You should get a tub like this for your basement, it would delight the campaign staffers.”

“My basement’s been pretty empty recently.”

Softly, vulnerably, glass offered for him to shatter: “You aren’t seeing other girls?”

“Nah, babe. I want something they can’t give me.”

You picture him, messy hair falling over his forehead, drowsy eyes that gleam with clandestine wisdom. You can smell the smoke and rum that bleeds from his skin. “I wish you were here.”

“In Seattle?”

“No. Right here.”

Aegon exhales shakily, swallows, takes a few seconds to collect himself. “How’s the water?”

“Extremely hot and full of bubbles.”

“So I wouldn’t be able to see you.”

“No,” you say, baiting him.

“But I could touch you.”

“You already have.”

“Not enough,” he murmurs. “Nowhere close to enough.”

“Do you remember what I felt like?”

“Oh God,” he whispers, and you envision him closing his eyes, rubbing his face with the open palm of his left hand. “Yeah. Of course I do. I can’t get it out of my head. But I’ve been trying not to…you know…it felt wrong to think about you that way unless you were cool with it. Like I was betraying your trust or taking advantage of you or something.”

“No, I want you to think about me.”

You can hear Aegon moving around on the green futon, repositioning himself, yanking down a zipper. When he speaks again, his breathing is quick and jagged. “Where’s your other hand, huh?”

“Under the water,” you reply coyly.

“You bitch,” he says, laughing. “I miss you so fucking much. The house isn’t right without you in it. You belong here, you belong where I am.”

Beneath the veil of bubbles and steam, there is no scar on your belly, no infidelity, no campaign, no distance of almost 3,000 miles separating you and Aegon. Your fingers slip between your legs, finding slickness the water can’t wash away. It’s a familiar sensation, though you haven’t felt it in a while: rising steadily until you hit a plateau like a jet reaching cruising altitude. From here, it will either glide along smoothly until it dies out, or eventually turn sharp and painful. “Tell me about you,” you pant.

He can hear it in your voice, a needful surrender that sets him on fire. He can’t believe this is happening; he never wants it to end. “I mean, I’m…I’m insanely hard.”

“Stroke yourself, imagine it’s me. I wish it could be me.”

“Oh fuck,” Aegon whimpers. “Okay, okay…I want you. I want you with my fingers, I want you with my tongue, I want you to beg for it, and then…”

Impossibly, incomparably, your own pleasure is climbing faster than you can reconcile yourself to it, no longer a hunger but a violent aching, a crushing gravity you can’t fight against, a ship being dragged to the floor of the ocean. What’s happening? When will it end? You moan into the phone, amazed yet petrified. You can’t get enough air; it feels like drowning, like dying.

“I need to see you,” Aegon says. He’s close to the climax that you know men experience, he has to be; he’s gasping. “I need to be with you, let me give you what you want.”

“I want you to finish inside me.”

“Io…babe…oh my God, you’re gonna kill me…”

There are sounds out in the front room of the suite: a lock clicking, footsteps, keys and a wallet tossed onto the kitchenette counter. You’re so consumed you almost don’t notice. Aemond is back. Aemond is back!! And every ion of your ascending euphoria evaporates. “Gotta go, bye.”

“Wait—!”

You hang up just as Aemond is opening the bedroom door. He walks in—immaculately tailored dark blue suit, polished black leather shoes trampling soft pink carpet—and turns to you. He has already taken his glass eye out and put on his eyepatch. Vaguely, fleetingly, you wonder where he’s been. His gaze darts to the red phone, your fingerprints in the condensation. “Who were you talking to?”

“My parents.”

If Aemond doubts this, he doesn’t show it. He crosses the room, sits on the edge of the bathtub, peers down at you with an omniscient metallic glint in his eye. He’s always been less a man than a force of nature. “I know this year has been hell.”

You envision Persephone being stolen by Hades, Orpheus searching for his dead wife Eurydice, Charon ferrying souls across the River Styx. “You haven’t made it easier.”

There’s a flash of something in his scarred face, blazing and instantaneous like lightning, and then it fades. He reaches out to touch your hair, swept up and neatly bound with clips and pins. “We can’t forget everything we’ve accomplished together,” Aemond says. “I still need you. You’re my Aphrodite.”

He’s going to tell you to get out of the tub, to lie down on the bed, to open yourself so he can fill you. You distract him, forestalling the inevitable. Each morning Prometheus dreads the return of the eagle that pecks out his liver; as every summer ends Demeter mourns the loss of Persephone. “Any luck with Nixon?”

Aemond sighs, furious, brooding. “He still won’t agree to a debate. Wallace is onboard, he’s rabid for it, he’d show up if we held it in the fucking asteroid belt, any opportunity to spew his idiocy. But not Nixon.”

“Because he knows standing on the same stage as you can only hurt him. People thought he looked bad in 1960, can you imagine now? Television has gotten so much clearer. They’ll be able to count his sweat drops from their living room couches.”

“So how do I get him to do it?”

You look up at Aemond. It’s not a hypothetical question; he’s really asking for advice.

“I have to debate Nixon,” Aemond insists. “It’s close in the polls, which means it will be even closer on Election Day. I’ll underperform whatever is projected, my coalition is less likely to show up when it counts. College kids, hippies, transients. That’s just a fact. But the old people vote. The suburban housewives vote. Nixon’s resting on his political experience and accusations that I’m a communist, an agent of chaos. But I could slaughter him in an hour on ABC.”

You think of the mutilated Vietnam veterans waving their signs and screaming at LBJ from the other side of the wrought-iron gates of the White House. “Challenge him in public. Say that the American people deserve to see the candidates debate, and do it where everyone can hear you.”

“What if Nixon still refuses?”

“Then you call him a coward. You say he must have something to hide. You ask how he’s supposed to square up with the Russians and the Chinese if he can’t even face you.”

Aemond grins admiringly. “You’re vicious.” And he lifts your hand from the rim of the tub so he can kiss your knuckles. Once you licked up drops of his approval like Tantalus, cursed with eternal thirst. Now it is poison that turns your veins black.

“If there’s a debate, everyone should go,” you say, seized by sudden inspiration. “We should have a united front, including Aegon. It can be his return to the public eye. A month will have passed since the funeral, the timing is right. He can pose for a few photos with the kids to show the nation that they’re doing well and distract from any lingering rumors about Mimi.”

Aemond isn’t grinning anymore. He’s studying you with his cold blue gaze; no, he’s trying to intimidate you, to overpower you. “Otto and I will decide what to do with him.”

“He’s a Targaryen. He should be with the rest of us.”

Aemond stands and motions for you to follow, a snap of his wrist like a man calling a dog. “It’s late. Let’s go to bed.”

Panic, tension, an iron sinking in your belly. The water is only lukewarm now, but you don’t want to leave it. “I’m not done yet.”

“Yes you are.”

There’s nothing else to say. Legally, a wife’s flesh is one with her husband’s. You slip as you step out of the bathtub, and Aemond grabs your forearm. Not like he’s helping you; like you’re something he owns.

~~~~~~~~~~

Two knocks, swift and forceful. “Hey, it’s me. You ready? Everyone else is downstairs in the lobby waiting for the limos.”

You hurry to open the door, almost twisting your ankle as you stumble in your heels. They’re an inch higher than what you’re used to. Aemond chose them, and your dress too, and your sapphire teardrop earrings, and the silver chains around your wrist and throat, and your future and your past, and your life itself. It’s mid-October, and the night of what will almost certainly be the sole presidential debate of 1968. Aemond’s retinue is staying at the Hotel Saint Louis. It’s harvest time, the fields beyond the city being reaped of their soybeans, wheat, corn, cotton, and rice, the beef cattle culled in mechanical underworlds. Aegon’s flight must have just landed.

As soon as he sees you his eyes drop, wide and bewitched, ensnared everywhere except your face. You say: “Can you help me zip this, please?”

He blinks a few times, then shakes it off. “Sorry, what?”

“The zipper’s stuck. I need you to get it.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He steps into the suite and stands behind you. The gown is a vivid blue like the Greek flag, gorgeous and shimmering but a size too small. It wasn’t tight a week ago, but now it is, and you aren’t pregnant just always gaining and losing weight in new places, first the baby and then the pill, and it wouldn’t bother you if Aemond didn’t seem so confounded by it. Aegon says as he tugs at the zipper: “I don’t think it’s gonna fit, babe.”

“It has to fit.”

“Even if I miraculously get this closed, you won’t be able to breathe.”

“Do whatever you have to. Just…just…” You push every last molecule of air out of your lungs, suck in your belly, and you hear the triumphant squeal of the zipper. “Yes!” Oh, but Aegon was right: you really can’t breathe. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“You’re not gonna last the whole debate in that. You’ll be sweating more than Nixon.”

“I’m fine.”

“Io…”

“I’m fine. Come on.” You snatch your matching purse off the coffee table by the couch, check your makeup one last time, and hobble in your heels as you walk with Aegon out into the hallway.

At the Kiel Auditorium a few blocks away, the Targaryen children—Aegon’s five and Helaena’s three—are presented for photographs before being escorted back to the hotel by the nannies. And even in the few weeks that have passed since you last saw Aegon’s kids, there have been extraordinary changes. They talk to their father, and he talks back, and he ruffles their hair and rests his hands on their shoulders and asks them about what they’re learning from their private tutors. Cosmo tackles you before he leaves—a powerful bear hug, though he can only reach your legs—and he says he hopes you’re coming home to Asteria soon.

“Me too, kiddo,” Aegon tells him, and then smiles at you; but above his gleam of teeth his cloudy blue eyes, like the Atlantic in a storm, are gloomy and troubled.

As the audience takes their seats and the journalists are poised to capture the best images and quotes of the night, the three candidates and their wives (minus Wallace’s dear departed Lurleen) meet briefly backstage to exchange the perfunctory well-wishes. Pat Nixon is introverted and bookish, though she tries to hide it; but Aemond reels her in like swordfish until her eyes are filled with him. George Wallace gets one glimpse of your venomous glare and escapes, claiming to need one last trip to the restroom before the debate begins. But Richard Nixon beckons you to accompany him to a quiet, discrete corner of the room.

“I tried to call,” he says. He’s a remarkably normal man: medium height, receding dark hair, rough voice, weathered skin, not a god but a mortal, and—you have the impression—more aware of his flaws than his fiercest critics will ever be. “But no one at that damned beach house would ever put me through to you.”

You aren’t sure what he means. “Oh?”

“I never got the opportunity to tell you how sorry I was for your loss in July, Mrs. Targaryen,” Nixon says with unglamorous, plain, genuine compassion. “Pat and I, when we heard, we wept for you. We truly did. And for your husband to be clear across the country…I can’t even imagine. It must have been awful for you. A parent never gets over something like that. It stays with you like a scar.”

“It does,” you say softly.

“I lost two brothers. Arthur died when he was seven, tuberculosis killed Harold in his twenties. God, it just about destroyed my mother. You’re a remarkable woman. You’re lightning in a bottle for Aemond, do you know that? You’re like one of those Kennedy gals, but even better. More personable than Jackie. More intelligent than Ethel…although, to be frank, who wouldn’t be? And you’re not afflicted with any ghastly vices like Ted’s wife Joan. What would Aemond do without you? He’d lose, that’s what he’d do.”

Nixon’s smart, but he’s wounded. He’s capable, but he’s so desperate to prove it. Power could ruin a man like this. “You’re very kind, sir. You did some great work under Eisenhower. Self-made like my father was, a devotee of the American Dream. I believe you have an important role to play in this country…” You smirk, a bit mischievously. “Just not as the president.”

Nixon chortles. “No matter what happens tonight, rest assured that I hate Reagan more than I could ever dislike your husband,” he says, meaning the Republican governor of his home state of California. “You know that bastard tried to primary me?”

“Actors don’t belong in politics.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nixon says, and then bids you farewell as the lights turn blinding and the curtain begins to rise.

As soon as the adrenaline begins to fade, all you can think about is that you can’t breathe. You take your seat in the audience between Aegon and Ludwika, who won’t stop making jabs about Nixon: “He looks like a troll,” “He looks like a sasquatch,” “Do you think Pat makes him wear a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask in bed so she is not so repulsed by him?” The most you can offer is an occasional distracted nod in response.

“You alright?” Aegon whispers.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look alright.”

“I’m great.”

“Sure,” he says, and he acts like he’s teasing, but there’s something tremendously sad underneath. He can’t save you from this. He can’t save you from anything. What must that feel like?

On the debate stage—broadcast to a national audience—Aemond performs brilliantly. Nixon salvages what could have been a bloodbath with a handful of clever retorts that Aemond pretends not to be rattled by. The real loser of the night is Wallace, who is brutally attacked by them both: Nixon because Wallace is commandeering some of his voting bloc, and Aemond because of his near-assassination back in May. After an hour, the contest concludes and the candidates descend to the main floor to pose for photos and get lassoed into brief interviews with various journalists. Everyone in Aemond’s entourage besides you and Aegon flock to his side. By now you’re gasping in shallow gulps, close to tears and in agony from your ribs to your wobbling feet.

“I told you,” Aegon says. And then: “Come on. We’ll take the first limo back.”

In the front room of your hotel suite—one yellowish end table lamp glowing dimly, the rest of the space like twilight—Aegon wrestles with the zipper as you struggle for every breath, trying not to pass out. “Ow,” you whine. “Oh fuck, this was so stupid…”

“Don’t let him make you wear shit you don’t want to wear.”

“I have to do what he says, Aegon.”

“He doesn’t own you.”

“Legally, he does.”

He’s tugging futilely at the jammed zipper. “Are you planning on using this again?”

“I believe that would be wistful thinking.”

“You probably look better out of it anyway.” He grabs his Zippo lighter from the pocket of his emerald green suit jacket and flicks it to life. “Don’t move, okay?”

“Okay.”

“At all.”

“Got it.”

You can feel heat, intense but not painful. Aegon has pulled the edge of the fabric as far away as he can from your skin and is singeing it until it turns black and charred and brittle. Then he tucks the lighter back into his pocket and with both hands rips your dress down to the small of your back. Cool air rushes to meet the ridge of your spine; goosebumps prickle all over. Aegon is marveling at you; you can see it when you glance over your shoulder at him. Then he lays a palm against your bare skin, leans into you, inhales everything you’ve ever been: smoke and sex and starlight, strategies, shadows, secrets.

The others will be pouring into the hallway from the elevator any minute. Aemond. Aemond could find us.

“We can’t,” you whisper, hating yourself for it.

We can’t, we can’t, we can’t.

“I’m so sorry,” you say.

And only then does Aegon vanish.

#☆ arcie's library #aegon ii targaryen

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