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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years

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Have You No Idea That You’re In Deep? [Chapter 2: The Same Agony]

Aemond is a fearless, enigmatic prince and the most renowned dragonrider of the Greens. You are a (newly widowed) daughter of House Mormont and a lady-in-waiting to Princess Helaena. You can’t ignore each other, even though you probably should. In fact, you might have found a love worth killing for.

A/N: Thank you all so much for the love this series has received! I hope you continue to enjoy it. 🥰🥰

Song inspiration: “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys.

Chapter warnings: Language, slightly more extensive witchcraft, mentions of death and violence, sexual content, this fic is for readers 18+!!!

Word count: 4.8k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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“You wouldn’t happen to have any bear teeth, would you?”

“Bear…teeth?” Aemond blinks at you, confounded. You are standing together in the doorway of Helaena’s chambers as she plays on the floor with the children: stacking wooden blocks into diminutive castles, demolishing them with cloth dragons, chanting childhood nonsense songs in a wavering, whisper-soft voice. It is late-morning, and sunlight pours in through the open windows in sheets like rain.

“You see, bears are large terrestrial mammals. Their pelts make good rugs. They are commonly found in caves and forests, eat lots of salmon, and have often been observed—”

“Kindly desist your taunting,” the prince says, though fondly. “Why on earth would you require bear teeth?”

You hesitate. “They’re for…a tradition.”

“A tradition?”

“Um…perhaps…rather…a ritual.”

He flashes a devious grin. “A ritual, or a spell?”

You sigh in defeat. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”

“You still worship the Old Gods,” he realizes. His single remaining eye—bright, cunning, oceanic blue—sweeps you up and down. He is not mocking, not appalled; he is forever seeking to uncover more pieces of you like shells collected from sand. “Well…that’s alright. We won’t tell Mother.”

“Yes, please don’t. She’d send me to the Wall.” This is an exaggeration, though not by much.

“What sort of spell involves bear teeth?” Aemond inquires, amused, like he’s waiting for a punchline.

“One for protection.”

“Oh? And who do you believe needs protecting?”

You peer up at him guiltily. He’ll hate that you’ve had this thought. “You’re riding in the tourney tomorrow.”

“Me?!” he exclaims, and laughs. It’s an alarmingly beautiful sound; you have to stop yourself from reaching out to touch him, his face or his forearm or his long silvery hair. “You think I need protection?”

“You never joust. You haven’t in years, I know, people won’t stop talking about it. They’re all baffled by your sudden interest. Everyone’s wagering bets. And you’re out of practice.”

“Hm, yes, well if Axel Hightower can do it then surely I’ll manage.”

You’re dismayed; if you’ve unwittingly encouraged him, that makes you responsible for any resulting catastrophes. In your own heart, at least. “Please tell me you aren’t doing this to outshine my dead husband.”

“Logistically, it would be rather difficult to compete with a corpse.”

“You don’t joust,” you say. “You never joust…”

“You know, my Uncle Daemon was known to joust on occasion.”

“Perhaps, but you aren’t.”

“Calm yourself.” He’s impatient now. “It’s a tourney, not an execution. And my match is some Lannister boy, it’s not like I’m stepping into the tiltyard with Ivar Kellington.”

“Right.” Ivar is the son of a house sworn to the Baratheons, and he is positively monstrous: tall, broad, fearsome, immovable. When he spars, he has to face two or three ordinary men to keep it competitive. He’s responsible for no less than four deaths resulting from tourney mishaps. He has a reputation even larger than he is; you’d heard about him all the way back in the Reach during your marriage. People around the court refer to him—with both awe and shudders—as ‘Sir Killington.’

Aemond considers you, always searching, never quite finding his footing. “I thought you weren’t one to shy away from battles.” And then he adds swiftly, just to emphasize how beneath him this is: “Not that a tourney is anything like a real battle, of course.”

“I’m not trying to stop you. I’m just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” he replies briskly.

“Fine.”

He stares out into the hallway with his arms crossed. You stare over at Helaena and the children without really seeing them. Neither of you speak, but neither of you leave either.

“Enjoy your sparring,” you say eventually.

“Enjoy the beach,” Aemond replies, and departs almost soundlessly like a shadow. You tug on your pendant as you watch him disappear down the hallway: the lines of his shoulders, the sheen of his hair, the way strips of sunlight fall on him through windows and doorways. As your grip tightens, the oval of moonstone etches its shape into your palm; the silver chain digs into the soft vulnerable flesh at the back of your neck.

That did not go well. That did not go well at all. You frown absently, your mind elsewhere. So much for my attempted witchcraft.

“Lady Mormont?” Helaena beckons, breaking your apprehension like glass. She clutches one of Jaehaera’s tiny hands in hers while Jaehaerys stomps around demolishing microscale castles. You hope this is not prophetic of his (possible, far-off) future reign. “Help me get the children ready. The sea is calling for you.”

You shimmy the toddlers into swimming clothes, gather up toys and linens and pieces of fruit, and walk with Helaena and her white-haired twins down to the golden sand, to the water’s edge. As Helaena supervises her children—which consists primarily of having flustered handmaidens chase them around while the princess sits on a sand dune and embroiders a green-thread praying mantis onto a pillowcase—you wander ankle-deep in the warm, foreign surf.

King’s Landing is nothing like Bear Island. Home was stormy and grey and fog-cloaked, harsh, cold, rocky, inescapably brutal. Home felt old, hopelessly old, older than the stars; there was no hope of changing one’s life there. The people of Bear Island have been scraping out an existence—forcing an untamed, unwilling land to nurse them at blade-point—since long before the Targaryens ever set foot in Westeros, since before the Andals, since before there was any divide between history and myths. But here…here…

As you stand on the beach below the Red Keep, there are gulls circling far overhead and clear blue skies and invigorating heat and ships gliding ceaselessly in and out of port. This land yields life plentifully, effortlessly. Within the walls of the city there are people clawing their way up ladders every minute of every day, and tumbling down them as well; there are always new futures to be made. This is an idea you could get used to. This is a world you could get used to.

Later, much later—after bathing the children, after lunch, after visiting the sept with Queen Alicent (requiring some pantomimed piousness on your part), after a meandering stroll through the godswood, after music and dinner and dancing—he finally returns. You don’t need to see him come in. You can hear his footsteps; you can feel the room shift like a ship rocked by waves.

“Aemond!” Helaena squeals in glee and rushes over to him. Meanwhile, you loiter by the fireplace pretending to be engrossed in a letter. In truth, you’ve read it twice already, and it wasn’t all that enthralling to begin with; one of your cousins, married into House Manderly, has just birthed her fifth child in seven years and feels the compulsion to tell the whole world about it. It occurs to you that some people’s luck is really quite excessive.

You try not to listen as Aemond asks Helaena about her day, as she prattles on about the beach (but mostly about her insect embroidery), as she gets sidetracked and scurries off and lowers herself onto the couch to finish the aforementioned embroidery. The prince’s familiar footsteps approach you. You refuse to look up until he’s waited several minutes with nothing but the dry, popping fractures of wood in the fireplace to split the silence.

“Did you and Sir Criston have a productive time hitting each other with sticks?”

“There was a slight change of plans.”

He tosses a leather pouch to you. You catch it in mid-air. Inside are cracked, bloodied bear teeth. You gasp in the flame-lit stillness. “How…?”

“It was the strangest thing. I, entirely unprompted, was struck by this intense desire to go bear hunting.” He grins: impish, off-kilter, waiting to see if you’ll forgive him. “I hope they’re adequate, they were difficult to…uh…dislodge. From the skull, I mean. And I wasn’t sure if you wanted them…you know. Cleaned.”

“No, you did well. It’s better if they’re bloody.” You are struck by a sudden, ludicrous vision of the prince practically dragging Sir Criston Cole through the woods for hours—their boots coated with mud, their brows sweated, twigs embedded in their hair—while dodging Sir Criston’s increasingly exasperated inquiries. “I don’t know why you did this for me.”

“I know what it’s like to hold something sacred that others don’t understand.”

From the couch, Helaena murmurs: “He had to close his eye.”

You turn to Aemond for a translation.

“To get my dragon,” he says softly, then gestures to his lost eye: quickly, as if he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to it than he absolutely must. You know it happened in some sort of childhood scuffle between Alicent and Rhaenyra’s sons—every noble who’s ever travelled south of the Neck knows that—but you’ve never heard the details. Unthinkingly, reflexively, you reach out for him, resting your right palm against the mutilated half of his face. He’s so perfect in spite of the destruction his flesh holds like a memory; he’s so fucking beautiful. Your thumb ghosts across the section of scar that slits his cheek in two. Aemond flinches and catches your wrist.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

Gently, he lowers your hand back to your side. Then he grasps your pendant to examine it more closely. “Hm. Moonstone and silver, together, entwined. Curious, don’t you think?”

“Very,” you agree. You wonder what he looks like without his eyepatch, not in a morbidly curious sort of way but out of a longing—a craving—to know every part of him entirely.

“I’ve studied the Old Gods, you know,” he says. “Purely for scholarly purposes. And the Drowned God, and the Lord of Light. There are temples dedicated to Him in Dorne. I’ve exchanged letters with several of the maesters there.”

“I’m sure your mother is positively delighted that you’re writing to maesters instead of eligible Baratheon and Lannister women.”

He smiles wryly. “Aegon has brothels. I have the library.”

“So you don’t spend all your time sulking around unnerving courtiers.”

“Well, not all of it.” His face is illuminated by the fire, amber and scarlet and gold. He reads the nervousness on yours: the tourney, the joust, your own dawning realization of how much he means to you. “Fear not. I’m coming back.”

“That’s exactly what my mother said before she left me in the Reach with Axel Hightower. And I never saw her again.”

Without speaking, Aemond cups your face in his hands. He touches his forehead to yours—lightly, lightning-briefly—and then backs away. He takes several long strides, as if he’s afraid of what will happen if the space between you could be so easily closed.

“Good luck tomorrow, Silver,” you tell him.

He glances down at the leather pouch of bear teeth still clutched in your left hand. “I thought you were taking care of that for me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

When the rest of the Red Keep is slumbering in unwitting darkness, you slip unnoticed back to the heart tree. You have to do this part here, where the Old Gods can hear you; you have to give Aemond the best chance you can. You pour a handful of the bloodied teeth, rosemary, sage, sea salt, and your last few pebbles of black jade into the mortar you left Bear Island with, and then Oldtown after Axel’s death. You hope you never have to leave King’s Landing. Everything in you struggles against the thought of it, like an animal with its paw in an iron-jawed trap. You light a white candle and set it on a root of the heart tree.

“Protect him,” you implore the flame again and again. It flickers and bends to you in the cold night wind. You grind the teeth until they are a fine, pale-pink dust. “Break others if you must, burn others if you must, bury others if you must…but protect him.”

This next part is the trickiest. Back inside the Red Keep, you evade guards and handmaidens to slink inside the prince’s chambers. The man you are regrettably falling in love with—Aemond Targaryen, Aemond One-Eye, the dragonrider of Vhagar—is exactly where he should be: asleep in bed. He is sprawled on his stomach and occasionally murmuring as if in the middle of a very consequential conversation. He is mostly obscured by blankets, but you can see he’s not wearing his eyepatch; his white hair flows freely and unincumbered over the pillows. You are careful not to look too closely at him, only because you know he wouldn’t want you to.

You crouch down on the cold, hard floor and scatter the powder you’ve ground under his bed. No one would ever recognize it as witchcraft. It could be sand, it could be dust, it could never be noticed at all. When you are finished, you flee the room with feather-light steps.

Yet you think you might have heard it as you crossed through the doorway, just maybe, just barely: a creak, a stirring, the prince rising to catch a glimpse of you with his sleep-bleary eye.

~~~~~~~~~~

A Mullendore unseats a Buckwell. A Tyrell unseats a Rollingford. A Westerling gets so drunk he falls off his horse mid-charge and the Tully proclaims victory. Sir Ivar Kellington breaks some poor Massey boy’s jaw. Everyone applauds politely.

Aegon leaps to his feet. “Well done, Sir Killington!” he shouts, raising his wine cup. “Uh…I mean…Kellington.” Aegon drops back into his seat. Otto Hightower glares at him.

You tug nervously on your moonstone pendant. Helaena claps and smiles when necessary but otherwise watches the birds, the clouds, the horses and works on the favor she’s making. The queen is wringing her hands and dressed—predictably—in a rich emerald-green gown. Alicent has always struck you as kind and affectionate enough, albeit in a distracted sort of way. You suppose she has plenty of legitimate distractions. Her husband the king is ailing, rarely seen, unlikely to live much longer. Her father is ruling the kingdom in all but name. Her estranged stepdaughter, a prospective schemer and confirmed dragonrider, is the heir apparent. And she has an adult son in need of a politically-expedient marriage…a son who doesn’t have any spare eyes to sacrifice to this tourney.

You turn to Aegon, who stares vacantly down into the tiltyard with red, groggy eyes. “I know the prince is good on his feet, but can he joust? You know…without his…?” You point to your own unharmed eye in explanation. Aegon shrugs listlessly. This does not inspire confidence.

As Ivar Kellington exits the tiltyard, Aemond comes in. They exchange a look as they pass each other on their horses, a silent antagonism, a taking of measurements. It can safely be assumed that Ivar—a man whose legacy will be built on the bones of the people he’s brutalized—would like few things more than a chance to publicly skewer the prince, but he won’t get it. The Hightowers would never allow such a match. Aemond smirks up at the giant triumphantly.

The crowd cheers as Aemond and the Lannister boy he’s scheduled to joust gallop around the tiltyard, but in a way that is tentative, taunt, uneasy. No one can recall ever seeing the brooding, one-eyed prince participate in a tourney before. As his long white hair flows out behind him like a banner, as he sizes up his opponent with a cool, stoic gaze, people chatter about how much he reminds them of Daemon Targaryen. Is Aemond another rogue prince? Is that primal breed of fear that he inspires in people deserved? You observe the nobles gathered here from your seat between Aegon and Helaena, noting for the first time just how many seven-pointed stars there are: on cups, on chairs, on pieces of embroidery, on necklaces. Queen Alicent wears them constantly.

What do they do to witches here? Burn them?

A bolt of dread pierces through your chest like a blade. No one is looking at you, of course; no one is paying any attention to you at all. But suddenly you feel naked in this crowd.

Sir Criston has appeared to give Aemond his parting words. He grabs the horse’s reigns and says something to Aemond that you can’t hear over the thunderous noise of the audience. The prince nods. Criston speaks again, miming a technique. The prince continues to nod. His mood is evident from his posture: Yes, okay, alright, let’s get on with it. Criston hands the prince his helmet, which is open in the front and without a visor, and people murmur about how Daemon always wore the same style. You think it has less to do with an homage as it does with practicality. Aemond cannot afford what sight he has left to be obscured by metal. He doesn’t look at or acknowledge you in any way, but when he dons his helmet and his hair is momentarily displaced you see it rubbed onto the back of his neck where no one will notice: a fine, chalky, pinkish dust.

He saw me after all. In his bedroom.

You can envision him crawling out of bed and dropping to his knees, investigating while still clumsy and half-asleep, pressing his palm to the dust before marking himself with it. You smile, a solitary moment in a pulsing space.

That has to be good luck, doesn’t it? That has to give the spell more power.

You wish you knew more about magic. You wish your mother was still alive.

Sir Criston hands Aemond his shield and his lance. Aemond asks Helaena for her favor. She gives it to him wholeheartedly: a small wreath of green calla lilies she’s been weaving together with jittery fingers. She waves him off and then sinks back into her seat, silent and remote.

Aemond takes his place at one end of the tiltyard. The Lannister boy—Leland or Luca or Landon or Lyndon or something like that, you keep forgetting—waits on the other. Their horses paw at the earth restlessly. There’s already blood in the soil, the air. Everyone else clears the tiltyard. The seconds tick down.

Suddenly—like falling forward—both riders have kicked their mounts and the horses are hurtling towards each other. The space between them evaporates like a waning moon. People are screaming all around you, and some of the noise is pure exhilaration but a good amount of it is horror, because already people can see it: the prince’s lance is aimed just a bit too low and too far to the left, and the Lannister boy’s lance is poised to collide with Aemond’s unguarded face. Aemond sees it too, soon enough to know but not soon enough to fix it. His blue eye is wide and gleaming with doomed shock.

Before the riders can strike, there is a deafening snap, a cracking of bones. The Lannister boy’s horse plummets to the earth as its left fetlock shatters. The Lannister boy’s lance goes flying, his lips loose a shriek…and his body falls perfectly into the line of Aemond’s lance. The prince’s lance crashes into the Lannister shield and sends the boy soaring off the back of his collapsing horse. The crowd explodes into cheers and applauds. Aemond has won.

He is dutiful about it, honorable about it. He dismounts and helps the Lannister boy to his feet and expresses sympathy about the horse: such bad luck, so unfortunate, although everyone knows horses are prone to such accidents. He bows graciously to the crowd of courtiers who have so consistently ignored, avoided, misunderstood him. And only then does he come to accept congratulations from his family.

Aemond receives a giddy hug from Helaena, a sloppy whack on the shoulder from a very intoxicated Aegon, and kisses on his hands from the queen. Otto Hightower gives him a proud, beaming nod. Sir Criston sprints up from the tiltyard to embrace—in fact, nearly tackle—the prince. In the joyous mayhem, you make no attempt to capture Aemond’s attention, but he does fight his way through it to find you. He circles an arm around your waist to pull you close so he can whisper to you as he places Helaena’s calla lily wreath on your head like a crown.

“I’m awfully glad I found you those bear teeth, Moonstone,” he says, and then he’s spirited away by admiring nobles.

You watch—alone in the havoc—as Aemond is commended by the great families of Westeros, the fathers and the matriarchs and the marriageable daughters too; and you are struck by a sudden and overwhelming sadness.

He is going to marry a Baratheon or a Lannister or an Arryn or a Stark, you think. And any fantasy that deviates from that eventuality is pure, self-inflicted cruelty.

You don’t belong in his world. Perhaps you don’t really belong anywhere.

Unnoticed—or so you believe—you escape through the spectators and into a small, empty stairwell of the Red Keep. You crumple onto a step, entertain the possibility of composing yourself, and then rupture into helpless, pitiful tears. You sit there sobbing with your face in your hands for five minutes, or ten, or twenty, you aren’t sure. It doesn’t matter. No one misses you.

When you hear the footsteps, you immediately know who it is. You don’t even look up. You wipe your sore, drenched cheeks with the sleeves of your gown and stare down at the stone floor in abject humiliation.

“What troubles you?” he asks. You marvel at his voice, and not for the first time: calm yet compelling, soft-spoken and yet so heavy with gravity.

You consider lying to him, but you don’t. The answer is so simple. Now your eyes find his. “I want something I can’t have.”

Aemond nods, solemn, pensive. “I find myself afflicted with the same agony,” he says. And then he’s gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

There is an informal feast held in the Great Hall to celebrate the winners of the tourney. People roam and mingle and eat off of plates balanced precariously in one hand. There is dancing and music, an anxious plucky sort of sound that plays from the strings. Aemond is the guest of honor, although no stranger would guess it; after his short obligatory exchanges with various nobles and fellow jousters, he makes his way back to his immediate family. You are obliged to accompany Helaena, and thus bound to stay near Aemond; all night you orbit each other like planets, like seasons. Sometimes he catches you watching him as you sip your wine, sometimes he skates his palm along the small of your back as he passes behind you, over and over again you find excuses to stand next to each other while saying nothing, while thinking everything, while feeling each other’s heat through the infinitesimal space between you. Finally, as the evening careens towards midnight, he finds you alone in the doorway of the same winding staircase he tracked you to earlier, except now you’re at the top of it. You’re nursing a cup of wine, unnoticed and unnecessary, still wearing the crown of green calla lilies. Helaena is thoroughly preoccupied with a plateful of pear tarts and the doting attention of Otto Hightower. Aegon is presumably off badgering a servant girl somewhere…or perhaps passed out under a tree.

“This is an odd question, I freely admit it,” the prince says, close enough that you can see the ring of dark blue around the edge of his iris like the ocean at night. Torchlight glows on the flush in his cheeks: one pristine, one ruined. “But would you happen to have been in my bedroom last night?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Lying is a sin in any religion.”

“Alright, yes, I was there. Briefly. Very briefly.”

“So you didn’t want to stay?”

In reply, you only gaze up at him, wanting him so badly it puts aches in your hands, your spine, your lungs, the threads of your heart. His smile is knowing and playful and warm and kind. He reads you the same way he pours over dusty, long-forgotten books in the library and you read him like a spell. You want to know everything he’s made of. You want to feel him beneath the innate design of your fingerprints. He looks into your eyes and sees all of this and more; and then he turns and descends the stairs.

You follow after him, your dress dragging on the stone steps. His footsteps are so light they’re nearly soundless. He moves like a storm, like a wolf; you don’t hear them until they’ve got their jaws around you. Torches burn overhead as you traverse the staircase down, down, down. You can still hear the muffled music of the strings through the castle walls. You can feel the pounding of your heart, the blood roaring in your ears like waves. The music fades as you walk, and then disappears; but your heart grows louder.

When you reach the final step, Aemond catches you, presses you against the wall, kisses you so deeply it feels like you’re drowning in him: in heat, in insatiability, in all that long-caged wildness screaming to be freed. Your wine cup and crown of calla lilies both tumble to the floor. His hands are gliding beneath your dress. You’re ripping open his tunic. In the sea of fabric, his fingers find the velvet-soft inside of your thigh and follow it upwards. You’re soaked for him already. He moans, licks his fingers, kisses you so you can taste yourself on his lips, his tongue. Your hands tangle in his hair and drag him closer, closer, until there’s no space left between you, not even enough to second-guess this. You open your thighs wider, bite his neck, beg him to fuck you. His fingers stroke you until your hips are thrusting in rhythm, until you’re stifling your cries against his bare, flare-hot skin. There is a powerful, shuddering sensation of an opening, a warm glowing like liquid gold. Reflections of fire dance over you both. His breathing is ragged, ravenous. Even through his clothes, you can feel how hard he is, how thick. You are starving to be filled with him.

“Wait,” you gasp, and immediately he stills. You touch his face, your palm to his scar, and this time he doesn’t flinch away. “Can I see you?” you say. “I want all of you. The real you.”

He hesitates. He reaches for his eyepatch. He rips it away in one fluid motion, like a bandage off a fresh wound, like he’s afraid of losing his nerve. Where his left eye should be is jagged flesh framing a glittering, savage-blue sapphire. You can see the shadow of the little boy he was when he was disfigured and never avenged. You can see every brick he’s built himself with since.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” you whisper, your words weightless and vanishing like smoke.

“I never wanted people to pity me.”

“No one pities you. They fear you.”

Aemond asks, mesmerized, spellbound: “Why don’t you fear me?”

“Because I was raised to admire ferocity, not to run from it.”

“You are perfection,” he breathes. “You were made for me.”

You grab his face with one hand, hook it around his jaw, and look him straight in his eyes, both of them: one flesh, one sapphire. “Show me.”

You’re still throbbing, still slick, still roiling in aftershocks as he plunges inside you. You fuck with your faces close and your hands entwined, kissing, moaning, biting, whispering promises that cannot be kept. When he comes, his teeth close around your collarbone to keep himself from crying out; and then he rests his forehead against yours. You remain there together in this dying moment, in the receding seconds, dwelling in them like the last days of summer. Then he steps back and the illusion is shattered.

You let the hem of your dress drop to the floor. Aemond refastens his tunic and smooths his hair. As you find your balance on weak and trembling legs—as you adjust to the unwelcome absence of him—you push Aemond away. “Go,” you say, glancing to the steps. “Go. I know you have to.”

His hands are open, empty. “Are you sure—?”

“Go,” you insist. “Please, just go. Before you’re missed.”

He looks at you like he’s going to say more. Then he picks up his eyepatch off the floor, secures it over what remains of his left eye, and ascends the staircase to rejoin his family in the Great Hall. That’s where he belongs, after all. That’s where he will always belong.

You wait to follow him until enough time has elapsed to evade suspicion. You wait at the bottom of the staircase in silence, in agony, your skin crawling with the echoes of flames.

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