Chapter Text
Part I: A Song of Words and Wings
A two-year winter was giving way to spring. This far from the mountains in the coastal edges of the Vale, each brook and stream was glutted with snowmelt that made fording perilous. Alyssa’s horse, Tansy, a sturdy mare that remained her obstinate favorite despite other fine candidates from their mews, balked at the fifth crossing of the morning. Already her piebald mare was soaking wet to the girth from braving each icy, running rill between Gulltown and Runestone.
“Come on now, you big baby,” she urged Tansy, blowing a wet, limp piece of hair that had escaped its plait out of her eyes. The morning sun beat warm on her face and made her riding leathers stick uncomfortably to her skin. Her outfit covered her from nape to heel, tall boots coming up to her knees, and she hadn’t peeled out of a single article of clothing since yesterday.
It was their second day on the road and both mount and rider were rank. Mud and sweat clung to woman and horse like overeager, messy lovers, not that Alyssa would know much about that business.
She had slept rough in the heath the night before, hobbling her mare to graze the just-sprouting grass before dropping into her damp bedroll. She was up before the sun, already mounted when the dusky fingers of dawn gave them enough light to pick out their way on the road and avoid the worst of the holes and ruts.
Icy water splashed her hands as they gripped the reins, Tansy dancing on the spot as she fought to shy away from yet another crossing.
Alyssa blew air out of her mouth in exasperation and thought of hot mead and cold cuts of venison and nutty cheese on a platter. The hearth in the great hall roaring with crackling, fragrant pine logs and her cozy, carven chair nearest to the fire laid with the overstuffed cushion she had sewn last year. That was the carrot on the end of the stick for the weary traveler, pending offer of an actual carrot for Tansy, while she urged and coaxed and cajoled her stubborn mare across another hellishly cold stream.
The woman atop the animal didn’t let up the pressure of her heels on her mare’s sides. She urged her on, soft clicking of the tongue and ‘come on girl, there’s a girl’ until the animal bunched up and took a big stride into the river. Icy water poured into Alyssa’s boots, soaking through the leather of her pants. It crawled, freezing and bitter, up the woolen underclothes beneath.
Fantastic, she thought. Cold wool on tender skin. Just one more miserable note to the miserable song of this miserable journey.
Alyssa locked her jaw, suppressed a shiver, and shoved the complaints away, focusing instead on guiding her mare along with soft hands and a strong leg on her flanks.
As the water grew deeper, Alyssa turned her mare’s head with a practiced hand. She guided Tansy along the shallower paths she knew lay beneath the ripples.
Gulltown to Runestone, Runestone to Gulltown. Alyssa knew every river and stone between the two by heart.
Gulltown was Runestone’s window onto the world, being the largest port the Vale could boast. The bustling seatown stood two day’s ride from Runestone, House Royce’s ancestral home. Runestone stood sentinel on the craggy cliffs north of the Bay of Crabs—a handful of times Alyssa made the journey from home to the port in under a day, changing out horses at the cottages that sat along the road to Gulltown. She’d leave gold enough for the cotters who farmed and fished the land, grateful for the loan of a fresh horse when her business called for a speedy arrival.
This trip needed no such haste. Instead it was a leisurely pace she set for her mare when they trudged out of that icy stream and sallied ahead on dry ground, breaking off at a brisk trot that allowed Alyssa to take in the signs of an impending spring as they passed: patches of green splotching the muddy brown heath as the season turned on its heel from harsh winds and snow drifts to warmer weather, thank all the old gods. Even the sun beat stronger without the oppressive cover of winter clouds, eventually drying out her pants and leathers.
The underclothes, however, stayed stubbornly, scratchily damp.
Often the business that called her to Gulltown and to traverse this familiar road was the matter of their accounts: her uncle had built well on the foundation laid out by their cousin, Rhea. No longer was House Royce dependent on sheep herding as the sole means of income from their land—Alyssa’s dear cousin knew the wealth of the land waited just under the grassy, craggy coastal plains. She called in surveyors and tradesmen from the Westerlands who could plot the veins of ore and precious stones with the accuracy of the best augurs. Bloodhounds for mining.
What started as a scant handful of old tin and copper mines had grown into a wealthy business venture. Like the veins beneath the earth, metal ran in Royce blood. Alyssa’s house descended from the line of the Bronze Kings who reigned before the coming of the Andals, and her relatives still sometimes wore the famed peerless armor of old. But it was Rhea who saw the value of making those metals a major export, mining deeper. Expanding the scope of the operation. Exports of ingots abroad. Partnership with House Grafton in Gulltown.
Uncle Gerold had taken it a step further and had sent out criers to regularly recruit boys who would normally live and die as shepherds in their far flung homes along the coast. Now, those boys left their homes to come to Runestone and Gulltown as laborers in the mines or loaders at the shipping docks for a good wage. Some even got apprenticed to blacksmiths and other skilled trades, if they had a talent.
Trade boomed in Gulltown and both Royces and Graftons profited from it—the ore funneled along this very road from the Royce mines to the port where it was refined and shaped into all manner of weapons, tools, and armor by the growing number of talented smiths. Ser Gerold had installed a counting house for the Royce profits on the waterfront and posted sworn bannermen to hold the pursestrings.
And within the last year, he’d entrusted his regular fortnight trip from Runestone to Gulltown to Alyssa. It was now her task to gather the accounts, always by hand, for review.
“But why do we have to do this in person, uncle? Can’t you just have a rider carry the accounts there and back?” She remembered complaining miserably to him one rainy ride home from Gulltown.
It was years ago, when she was two and ten and had much better things to do than learn the mechanisms of running a holdfast. She could be hawking or have her nose buried in a tattered, anonymous account of the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, which seemed exciting and wonderful and far from rainy, windy Runestone. She could be curled up with the sleepy bundles of the castle’s kittens up in the hayloft of the mews, where the smell of horses and leather and the animal noises of purring and knickering would lull her to sleep.
Instead, Alyssa sat on horseback beside her uncle, which was usually her favorite place, but her oilcloth cloak was doing nothing to keep the worst of the rain off the back of her neck and it marched like crawling ants down her spine.
“Because a good lord never lets their gold and the sum of it out of their sight, my little Lyssie,” was her uncle’s gruff reply.
“But I’m not a lord,” she grumbled into the rain, adjusting her grip on the reins and sitting up taller in the saddle.
“No, you’re worse off—a lady in her own right, who has to fight twice as hard as any little lord that inherits a great house and all its lands. Which is why this is so damned important for you to take any advice you’re given to heart. Now stop your whinging and lead that horse on, don’t dawdle. There’s a good lass.”
As with most of her uncle’s advice, this proved a worthy lesson to learn. Graft was common and more than once Alyssa had to sit through a stern interrogation while her uncle sniffed out an accountant or coin master who was skimming from their accounts.
After the second man appointed by her uncle to run their counting house in Gulltown had been found guilty of embezzlement and lost his left hand in recompense, Ser Gerold had done away with installing a coin master and managed it himself from Runestone. The accountants, in turn, were watched closely by paid spies, knew they were being watched simply to remind them of limbs being on the line if they snuck a coin into their pockets, and kept the books clearly documented for audit.
Now, Alyssa picked up the accounting books every fortnight from the Gulltown counting house. She tucked them securely in her saddlebags to take back to Runestone as part of an ever growing list of responsibilities her uncle delegated to her as she grew into her majority. The roads were safe enough for a young noblewoman on horseback—patrols ran in a regular circuit from the mines, villages, and holdfasts.
The region was safer than most is the Vale, far from the mountain clans, and Alyssa always kept herself armed to the teeth with all manner of knives and a sturdy shortbow. The quiver strapped to her saddle’s cantle was stuffed full of barbed iron arrows that were made to kill men or beasts without discriminating.
As she grew, Alyssa came to love the tasks that had seemed a burden in her youth. Instead of resenting them, she embraced the responsibilities as a sign of the trust her uncle had in her. He thought her capable. He thought her sensible and worthy of the work like he would a son. She wouldn’t be confined to the keep like a treasure spun of glass as she grew into a woman, made to mind her needlework and think only of organizing menus and marriage prospects so she could be put out to pasture to breed like a ewe.
No, she would be a lady regnant of her own seat. Lady Alyssa Royce of Runestone, thank you very much. She would set her own standards and schedule, run the keep like her uncle taught her to and find a strong, worthy, comely husband of her own choosing.
Looking out over the scrubland as they rode past, she let herself slip into a well-rehearsed, comfortable fantasy.
Her husband would not wrest control of Alyssa’s holdings right out from under her. Instead, he would be a partner to her rule. He would bring her books and go hawking with her. He would ride the second-finest horse (after her own) and woo her with poetry and song even after they had made heirs and grown gray together. He would look at her sun-freckled face, strong shoulders, and thighs thick from riding and still see something beautiful.
Wistful thoughts—Alyssa thought herself a touch foolish for mooning over a man who had yet to come into her life.
But the familiar road ran on and on, leagues of fields passing her by as the sun crept higher into the sky and midday saw them remaining at a steady pace. What harm was it to daydream here, when there was so little else to do?
As they drew nearer to Runestone, the scenery changed from rolling moors to the craggy hills covered in heath, grouse flying out of the underbrush and seagulls turning overhead. The air once more smelled of salt—the road that ran from the bottom of the great peninsula on the Bay of Crabs terminated at its opposite side. From there stretched the great, open expanse of the Narrow Sea.
The road began to switchback, turning and curving up the ascent. Here, on the high roads that crested the hills, Alyssa could look across the stretch of land that pierced the heart of the Vale ensconced by its high, jagged peaks. She paused there to look out on the vantage and could see the white-capped mountains off on the horizon, faint but distinct in the clouds.
Alyssa recalled the great sounds from the mountains as they groaned and creaked with the warmth of spring, glaciers flaking sheets of ice as big as meadows to slide down their rocky screes and careen into empty air.
As a child, Alyssa would stand on the parapets of the Eyrie and watch the ice fall off the mountains from the safe cocoon of fox furs and velvet swaddling her small face. Her nose would chap and her cheeks would grow ruddy in the constant wind that blustered the Eyrie. The cold was indescribable. The Wall itself could not be more inhospitable. How unhappy and remote the high Eyrie felt to her, perched up on that mountain with nothing but air like ice-fire surrounding it. A castle of snow and stone.
Down here in the lowlands, where the earth stretched from jagged peaks into hills and crags until stone tumbled into the churning sea, Alyssa had a happy life. Here was a land of hunting and laughter, of warm hearts and hearths, toasted honey cakes that burned her fingers but were so sweet and delectable that Cook would crack her knuckles with a spoon for sneaking so many from the kitchens. Feasts in the great hall where the tables groaned from the profusion of mutton and sheep’s cheese and braised fish and haunches of venison.
A library filled with every strange book her ancestors could lay their hands on, some fraying tomes from the ends of the known lands like Ibben and the Summer Isles, brought to Runestone from Gulltown by all manner of seafarers who visited to pay homage to the former Bronze Kings. The library shelves were so crammed to the gills that even still Alyssa rooted out texts from before her house was cast down as the rulers of the Vale—things that couldn’t be considered traditional books.
Runes of the First Men written on weirwood bark: chalky in color, stained red with sap like their heart tree in Runestone’s small godswood. Puzzles within puzzles etched into the scrolls in interlocking characters—the new maester posted to Runestone before the winter had earned his link in runic studies and was making progress in translating them into copies of the common tongue, but Alyssa had begged a runic alphabet off of him and had plodded through a few scrolls painstakingly.
Stories of love, stories about long-dead heroes from the Dawn Age. Tales about the Children of the Forest and horrors from beyond the Wall. Alyssa devoured every last word with breathless wonder.
Already she thought about what book to pick up for this evening after supper. A merchant from Oldtown had recently sold her uncle a set of histories on Aegon’s conquest and her mind itched to crack open that first volume and delve in.
Dragons, war, and Aegon’s sister-wives (how strange it seemed, to marry so close a kinswoman? Not to mention doing it twice) preoccupied her thoughts when she rode into the inner bailey of Runestone just before the evening set in. It was mostly empty in the yard save some goats milling about their pen.
The forge was cold and the big, oaken door to the kitchens was cracked wide. Within she could see their cook marshaling the dinner service into order with her scullery maids. By the smell of it, roasted mutton and potatoes swimming in butter. Alyssa could not get her feet out of the stirrups fast enough.
“Hello the house!” she called out, loud enough to stir some chickens out of their roosts to flap and squawk and cause more noise in the sleepy yard. She slung down to the ground and made a noise of content when she had her first good stretch of the day after spending nearly every minute of it with her rear glued to the seat of her saddle. A stable lad ran out from the mews to take Tansy, Alyssa untying her bags from the horse before heading into the warm, fragrant recesses of the kitchen.
At the end of the line of apron-bedecked workers scrambling around the trestle tables and hearth at the booming direction of the cook, Martis, stood a finer dressed figure. The imposing, round figure of Alyssa’s aunt stood among the controlled chaos and kneaded a lump of bread into submission, the fine dark wool of her gown’s sleeves pinned up to her elbows so the flour only covered her thick arms. She caught sight of Alyssa by the door and gave her a toothy grin.
“A letter came by raven from the Eyrie, Lyssie,” shouted her aunt, Ayda, a sturdy woman from the North who had taught Alyssa to dress pheasants, make bread, and speak loudly, not meekly. She spoke with a brogue, rough-edged speech that differed from how the Valemen talked. “Go and see your uncle before you wash up for supper, mind you. Seemed he was all aflame with whatever was in it.”
She pulled an intrigued face for her aunt and swiped a bannock from a serving tray. Cook squawked and flapped her arms at her to warn her off of thieving more bannocks, ever omniscient even though she was managing three scullery maids and two pages. Her cue to retreat—she darted from the kitchens with her saddlebags slung over one shoulder, stuffing honeyed, yeasty bannock into her mouth.
Alyssa’s curiosity prickled as she turned to make the long march up the stairs to the receiving hall, making a beeline for the next staircase that led up to the family apartments and her uncle’s study. She was ready to shed her riding leathers and unbind her hair from its plait so she could sink into a hot, sudsy bath to wash the road off of her, but duty called.
News from the Eyrie was always an ever-changing and interesting affair. As bannermen of the Arryns and one of the houses the lady kept in close confidence, Lady Jeyne had been in frequent correspondence with Ser Gerold ever since he took up lordship of Runestone. As of late, the ravens had been volleying back and forth more frequently—the contents of the letter were drafted by Alyssa’s own hand while Uncle Gerold dictated.
Largely the letters focused around the disclosures of commerce coming out of Gulltown, a summary of the accounts from the mining ventures. But as of late Alyssa and her uncle circled with Jeyne the topic of her prospects. Alyssa knew she was well past the time to make a betrothal, being one and twenty. It had fallen by the wayside on both her and her uncle’s watch, each year passing with both of them growing more preoccupied with the mines and the counting house, Gerold teaching Alyssa each aspect of how to run Runestone from top to bottom.
The winter had especially hampered the urgency of becoming betrothed—roads had been nigh on impassible to make visits to the prominent houses in the Vale.
Alyssa had written out a list to Lady Jeyne at her request for names to consider, cheekily starring Corwyn Corbray amidst all the Waynwoods, Eleshams, and Graftons she’d named. Of all the second and third sons she'd written out, his was the name she hoped for most. Alyssa had always expected as much for her choices in husbands: a second or third son that could rule Runestone with her full time. Corwyn was a prodigious swordsman who flirted shamelessly with her during each gathering where their paths crossed.
Her uncle’s study was warmly lit when she stepped into it after announcing herself with a loud rapping on the door. Ser Gerold sat at his desk, each section of it organized by Alyssa’s hand every morning so as to keep both of them on top of business. His expression was a fixed, studious one as he read through the scroll stretched across the desk. She felt a lifting feeling in her chest, looking at her uncle’s craggy, kind face covered with its salt-and-pepper beard.
The Royces always tried to marry within the Vale families that kept the Old Gods and sought brides from further afield if the marriage pool looked particularly uninspiring for candidates. The North boasted plenty of well-bred women with blood of the First Men and Ser Gerold had been particularly taken with the handsome Flint woman when he’d visited Widow’s Watch in his youth as a young squire and spied Ayda at her father’s table.
They’d wed and after many years had no issue. When Alyssa’s father had died, a favorite younger brother of Ser Gerold and himself already a young widower from the passing of her mother, Gerold and Ayda had taken Alyssa in when she was still in swaddling clothes and raised her as their own.
In all aspects, her uncle was her father and her aunt was her mother. She knew no other parents and counted herself lucky to have such fortune to be raised by them, their manner kind but firm as they confidently steered her out of childhood and into adulthood.
A rapid succession of deaths had led her to her current status: that of heir to Runestone, the seat of House Royce. First went her cousin, Lady Rhea, who by official accounts had died in a riding accident. Though Alyssa and all the rest of the Vale would tell a different account: that her lady cousin was murdered by her Targaryen husband, damn his black soul to the seven hells.
After Rhea, it had been her older cousin Gunthor, who had died of sweating sickness. The house had barely been out of mourning for him when his young son Willam, next to inherit after his father, had died in a true riding accident on a hunt. Alyssa had remembered the wailing his young wife had sent up from the inner bailey when she pulled back the drape they had lain across poor Willam’s crushed head after they carted him home.
And then it fell to Ser Gerold, the only living male relative of Lady Rhea’s deceased father. Said man lifted his eyes to her when she crossed his study, announcing herself by unceremoniously dumping the account books onto the desk with a proud grin. She tugged bits of disheveled hair back from her face and tried to braid it into her messy plait. “Weather held up nice all the way to Gulltown and back. The new accountant just about pissed himself when I came in unannounced. They weren't expecting us until tomorrow.”
“Hmm,” Ser Gerold grunted, turning his attention back to the spidery, pretty script that Alyssa knew was Lady Jeyne’s. Alyssa leaned over the table to try and read it upside down, crowding her uncle’s vision like a pest. He gently batted her head away with a bear-paw hand.
At the bottom of the page sat the coat of arms of House Royce. The runes of the First Men emblazoned their coat of arms at the borders, encircling the black iron studs on a bronze field. In runes below the shield it etched their words: We Remember.
Alyssa’s playful manner instantly plummeted along with her stomach when she snatched one word off of the scroll and noticed another sigil sitting alongside House Royce. Hot fear burned in her chest and she felt her hands go clammy as all the blood rushed out of them, pumping to her chest where everything was squeezing, tightening. Seven hells, even her ears were burning.
A crimson, three-headed dragon, breathing flames on a field of black. Fire and Blood declared under the shield in bold lettering.
Targaryen.
The queen’s apartments in the Red Keep had changed since Aemond was a boy. No longer were the walls decorated with frescoes of couples mid-tryst, a licentious anniversary gift from the old king, Jaehaerys, to his sister-wife, Good Queen Alysanne.
Instead, Queen Alicent had the frescoes whitewashed and painted fresh with pious scenes from the Seven-Pointed Star.
Penitents bent under self-inflicted flogging in brilliant scarlets and pale pinks.
The maiden placed a gentle, white hand on the cheek of a kneeling supplicant.
These scenes stirred more unease in him than the rutting couples. To see religious fanaticism painted on every inch of his mother’s walls when he knew how whipped up the smallfolk could get by agents of the Faith. As a boy, he thought the old frescoes were amusing: the men’s stupid, slack expressions funny alongside their florid cocks sticking into the pink, oyster-like innards of the painted women. His mother always seemed to studiously ignore the surroundings of her own rooms and wave off his and Aegon’s pointed questions about the frescoes.
No, he’d take the fornications back over religious fervor. Aemond couldn’t call himself religious. The closest thing he kept to a faith was being able to name all of the gods of Old Valyria without fumbling his pronunciation. Beyond that, his interest in the Faith was purely academic.
Certainly she’d tried to budge his disinterest into some semblance of piety. His mother had his tutors walk him through the Seven-Pointed Star, but none of it inspired undying loyalty to the Seven in Aemond. Out of all of her four children, only his youngest brother Daeron seemed slightly inclined to believing in the Seven. Aemond knew his lack of faith was an unending source of disappointment for Alicent.
His mother as of late seemed to dig deeper into her religion as a means of finding answers for some question only she knew and wanted every one of her children to pursue alongside her. But Aegon worshiped only his whores and his wine, Helaena her spiders and portents. Aemond contented himself with his books and training, bound to no one god or faith.
When was the last time he’d been in her rooms? He pondered and absently flipped through a sheaf of blank papers stacked neatly on the queen’s desk. Ah, yes. It was after the septons had finished with their regimen of ungents and curatives for his lost eye. The wound had festered terribly in the weeks that followed Lucerys taking half his sight.
He reported to his mother’s rooms daily for treatment and gritted his teeth through the agony of scraping and poking at the tender, puckered flesh. Alicent clutched his hand like she was the one being sliced and prodded and murmured words of encouragement to him, something like guilt in her eyes when he looked at her through the blur of pain and tears.
Leeches got stuck to his face to drain off the worst of the poisoned blood and he remembered his mother’s petrified expression when the maester’s voiced their worry that the infection, streaking red across his skin by the day, would cause him to lose more than just an eye—maybe even his nose.
Fate had turned out in his favor and the infection abated within the same perilous week that it had appeared.
His eye cast around his mother’s solar. The settle where he’d lain each time for those torturous sessions had been reupholstered. It used to be a cream-colored silk but the blood had soaked through the draping they’d covered it with each time before he’d laid down to submit to the maester’s examinations. Now it was a soft, mossy green velvet like every other piece of furniture his mother redecorated.
Queen Alicent entered, five minutes behind the time she’d appointed for their meeting. The note that arrived that morning by page had been brief. It requested his presence precisely at the Hour of the Bat in the queen’s apartments, when the sun was setting and most of the court would be away at their dinner.
Nothing about the note was personal—it read as generic summons from the queen that any courtier might receive. The diminished nature of his and his mother’s relationship had only solidified in the years after he’d lost his eye. Queen Alicent seemed to not know what to do about her son’s disfigurement besides to double her hand-holding of Aemond and summarily he had forged ahead on his own with his hampered sight, shrugging off her coddling. His moody rebuffs as a youth seemed to have stung and she drew away from him, instead focusing all of her energy on her last child, Daeron. Perfect Daeron.
She took her place behind her desk, placing her hands along its glossy surface and fixing him with a cool, calm look. Alicent wasted no preamble on Aemond and cut straight to the point, as was their way of things. His mother bore as little patience for beating around with smalltalk as he did. “Your grandfather and I have been in conference with Lady Jeyne Arryn,” she explained. “Concerning your marriage prospects.”
Surprise made his eyebrows lift high up on his face and his lips pursed.
“I thought it was to be one of the Baratheon girls.” There were four to pick from, weren’t there? Certainly one would be appealing as a wife. One to four odds were favorable unless each of the girls was unspeakably plain or, worse, an uninteresting bore .
“We’ve decided your brother is best suited for a match in the Stormlands once he has his knighthood. He only has a few more years of squirehood with your cousin Ormund in Oldtown.”
Ah, Daeron. Her favorite. Of course. His arms crossed and his one-eye fixed on his mother, not offering up a comment.
While Aegon was someone his mother considered her resounding failure, Aemond had remained her favorite for a time. Helaena was too much of a Dreamer for his mother to understand and favor. After she’d paired off Helaena and Aegon, she seemed to abandon fostering a close relationship with her eldest two children out of a sense of self-disgust.
His mother was a Hightower, not a Targaryen—wedding sister to brother was as foreign to her as how the Lysene kept slaves, or how the Dornish sat their bastards at the same table as their trueborn sons and daughters. Alicent married Helaena to Aegon out of consolidation and hated herself for it. Aemond lost her favor by his maiming and her failure to claim vengeance for it. Daeron, though, was her brave, perfect little knight.
“Lucky Daeron the Daring,” he muttered. “So I’m to be drafted to the Vale. Grandfather seemed to think there was no match to be made, considering the ties from House Arryn to Rhaenyra.”
“Rhaenyra is a cousin of Jeyne’s through her mother, Aemma, yes. But Jeyne has no love for Rhaenyra after she wed Daemon. They barely speak his name in the Vale for what he did to the Royces.”
“It’s treasonous for them to think as much. Lady Royce died in a riding accident and my uncle was blameless,” he parroted back the phrase he’d spoken many times in his life to rebuff courtiers who dared to allude to the incident as suspicious.
It was one thing to discuss his uncle’s sins with his mother in confidence, or his grandfather. But Daemon had and always would be held in esteem by Aemond—his was the fiercest reputation of all living Targaryens. A warrior to the core and with command over the Blood Wyrm, Caraxes. Aemond had a hero worship for his uncle as a boy. One second son admiring another.
Even now, Aemond couldn’t say he disliked his uncle. Instead, he held only a healthy respect for the man. Aemond wasn’t ashamed to say that respect was tinged with a bit of wariness. Daemon was dangerous, unpredictable, respected.
Aemond half-wanted the smallfolk to fear him like they did the Rogue Prince.
“So, it’s to be Jeyne Arryn then?” he asked, resting his hand over the hilt of his sword. He flicked a thumb over the rounded, smooth steel of its pommel.
The woman had to be twice Aemond’s age by now. While that didn’t pose any issue to him (he’d swived more than one woman north of thirty) rumor had it that the Lady Arryn was not inclined to male attention in the slightest.
“I’ll be hard pressed to make a marriage work with that Redfort woman occupying a husband’s space in her bed.”
Alicent shook her head, chestnut curls swinging over her shoulders and catching against the green samite of her gown.
“Not Jeyne Arryn,” his mother supplied. “She deferred her own hand on the grounds that she wishes to leave herself… open to other prospects. It will be a deputy house in the Vale that this prospective bride is pulled from.”
A Corbray, Aemond thought. Their women were passingly fair—most tall and raven-haired with comely features, a contrast to the silver hair that ran strong in Targaryen women. He recalled the house was still serving as castellans at the Gates of the Moon these past five years. Or maybe the Arryn woman has a sense of irony and paired me with her Redfort instead, just to keep me under her eye.
He could taste the bitterness just on the back of his tongue as the situation declared itself. Of course he’d be matched with someone from a deputy house. Aemond One-Eye would not even stand in line to inherit through his spouse a paramount seat. There would be no Riverrun through a Tully or Highgarden through a Tyrell bride. It could have been Storm’s End with one of the Baratheon girls, but Daeron had taken even that from him.
Aemond wondered if he was still whole and hale, would he be consigned to such a low match as a prince of the realm?
He imagined not. If he was a full man, his mother would laugh Jeyne Arryn out of the room with such an offer. She wouldn’t accept such for Daeron, but here Aemond stood with Alicent ready to sell her maimed son cheap to secure the alliance and clear another territory off of her and grandfather’s list.
“And the lucky lesser house that wins the one-eyed man is?” The sarcasm lacing his tone practically dripped off every word.
His mother shot him a reproving look and firmed her mouth into a thin line.
Alicent tapped at the bottom of the parchment: House Arryn’s swooping blue falcon against a white moon on a blue field sat below Jeyne’s signature. Their words were etched in a delicate scroll under their shield, As High as Honor.
Next to the Arryn heraldry was another coat of arms. This one was darker, ancient runes scrolled around the border of a bronze shield punched with black iron studs. This house certainly didn’t mince their words, instead declaring plainly, We Remember.
Aemond recognized the house at once. Its shield had been quartered with the Targaryen’s before, and still showed as much in the lineage of recent marriages.
Prince Daemon Targaryen. Lady Rhea Royce.
He spotted that in a well-worn registry as a young boy, back when the court was buzzing with the news that his uncle had taken Laena Velaryon to wed. His uncle’s first marriage line was crossed out and Rhea’s birth year terminated with a – died 115 AC.
Alicent stood with lips pursed at the parchment, gripping the edge of the table. “I won’t say that the Arryns are without irony. They’re putting forth a girl from House Royce.”
Aemond stood struck for a moment. Shock and unpleasant surprise made his lip curl up.
Visits from his uncle had been infrequent, even more so after he’d abruptly wed Rhaenyra. There had been an unspoken falling out between his father and his uncle. Viserys’ health continuously deteriorated—the two-year winter had been hard on the king’s already failing constitution. His joints swelled and no matter the amount of poultices slathered on his necrotic flesh and potions the maesters poured down his throat, Aemond’s regal sire languished in his apartments and rarely was seen out of doors.
But even with so infrequent exchanges between him and his uncle, Aemond remembered Daemon’s legendary discontent about his first marriage. The Bronze Bitch had been his uncle’s moniker for Lady Rhea Royce. Her house was of the blood of the First Men, with the women sporting coarse, dark looks and long faces like the Starks. Mannish in manner and dress, hard as flint and scornful of the refined Southron folk. Rhea’s looks and temperament had caused his uncle to find every opportunity to shun his seat at Runestone as was his right as her husband.
And now here Aemond stood, another second son about to be hitched to the exact same loathsome burden to carry until one of them should die. Would this one be as shrewish as Rhea Royce had been? Would she turn her nose up at the mere sight of Aemond? Could she even entertain the thought of keeping a marriage bed with him? That thought alone drove him to wonder at the girl herself. If Lady Arryn was happy to foist her off to the realm’s second-tier Targaryen, maimed and one-eyed…what must this girl be like? Was she unsightly, with frizzy hair and uneven teeth? A crooked nose? Did she possess coarse manners and chew with her mouth open?
The potential horrors were endless, and Daemon’s continuous complaints of his first wife were ringing in his ears. Obstinate, ugly, venomous. The likelihood of Aemond reliving his uncle’s first marriage step for step was daunting.
“No. Have the Arryn woman put forward a different girl. A Corbray. I’ll even take a horse-faced Waynwood over another bronze bitch. Or would you like for me to lose this one as well?” He pointed at his remaining eye.
Alicent’s grip on the table turned white-knuckled and he could see the anger at him throwing that at her boiling in her gaze. “How can you speak to your mother thus?” she gritted through her teeth.
Leaning forward, Aemond met her fury with his. “Those houses of the First Men don’t break oaths and they don’t forget a slight. If they believe Daemon killed his wife, they’re bound to be looking for retribution with this match. Why else would they consent?”
Alicent bit back at her son with her words, “They consent because while you are Targaryen, the Arryns and their bannermen know, Aemond. They know what is coming and they are seeking out every safeguard they can to back the right people. Jeyne Arryn would not ally herself with the wife of a kinslayer, much less a man that took from her own sworn house. She would not let the son of a king come to harm and the Royces are not foolish enough to take retribution on someone who is innocent of any crime against them. She’ll advocate for this just to spite Daemon.”
His mother spoke just shy of treason, of plots and sedition that she wouldn’t dare air out to Aegon or Helaena or even perfect Daeron. This was her and grandfather’s safety net: weighing more paramount houses in their favor—factions had long since formed the day Lucerys Velaryon took his eye.
Aemond was Alicent’s secret-keeper. Even now after he’d fallen in her esteem, he was the son she could lean on and entrust her thoughts to, a surrogate for things that she’d dare not speak to his father—only his grandfather and himself were privy to this part of the queen. Once, that trust made him feel special to be in her confidence, but as Daeron grew older and Aemond grew more strained with her after his eye was lost—her coddling, her self-flagellating shame at not getting retribution for her son, it only made him resent his mother all the more.
Alicent seemed to be watching his face for what he knew bore a stormy expression for the slightest change, like watching the clouds for a change in the wind. “Lady Arryn wishes to mend the rift and asks for you by name for her Royce girl, who stands to inherit in her own right Runestone and all its holdings. You ride Vhagar. You stand in the line of succession. You are not an unappealing prospect.”
Despite you having one-eye. Maimed. Half-sighted. Less appealing. Those caveats hung on the air between them and Aemond resented his mother all the more for not giving them life. She would never speak them aloud, for they were her own shame. A crime that had gone unpunished for her once-favorite son, something that diminished his worth and made every tongue in the land wag with how poor the prince must be, to have gained a dragon and lost an eye, forever crippled.
Those exact sentiments are what sent him to the training yard every morning before daybreak. It spurred him to plod through each lesson with the maesters as a youth, one-eyed and struggling to keep up with the material until everything clicked—arithmetic, the histories, philosophy. He strove every day of his life since he lost his eye not only to be unhampered by his lack of sight on the left-side of his body forever, but to be twice as better than every other man for it.
Especially his wine-soaked degenerate of a brother.
And now here he stood, about to be married off to a second-string barbarian. Taking his expected place as a discard paired with another discard while Daeron got a polished Baratheon bride, the pick worthy of the second prince of the realm instead being passed to the number three son. His disbelief was enough to make Aemond laugh unsteadily and his mother reeled away from the sound, alarm written on her expression.
“Find someone else,” he grated out, turning on his heel without dismissal. He heard the queen calling after him in a harsh, barking voice she only used with him—her former favorite, her dependable son. The one who could bear the brunt of the burdens, the son for his mother to lean on so she wouldn’t trouble Daeron’s pretty head with it. Aemond ignored his mother’s demands and shut the heavy door on her shouting with force enough to make the bang reverberate through the corridors.