Chapter Text
part i: pages turned with the bridges burned (everything you lose is a step you take)
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chapter one: Aemond I
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Aemond died in a blaze of dragonfire, with blood in his mouth, and pain—agonising, excruciating, savage pain surging through him like calamitous quakes of the Doom.
He remembered the heat of Vhagar’s roar, the cool kiss of Valyrian steel, and the gentle, sweet embrace of the waters of Gods Eye as they closed above him—pulling him down, down, down, deeper into their crushing depths.
“On that much we agree,” Daemon replied, sad and tired. His uncle was nine-and-forty where Aemond had not yet turned twenty, a young man in his prime.
Aemond smiled. Sharp and cruel—vindictive. “I’ve made a promise to my sister, sweet Helaena, whose son was murdered before her eyes on your command: my face is going to be the last thing you will see before I’ll kill you, Nuncle. This I vow.”
An eye for an eye, a son for a son, a prince for a prince—land turned to ash and rivers ran red when the dragons danced.
Aemond’s fingers grasped the short chains which fastened him at the belt to Vhagar’s saddle, desperately working at the buckles. Vhagar was sinking to the bottom of Gods Eye, the blood gushing from the wound on her neck boiling the lake’s waters, and Aemond with them.
“Vhagar, kostilus!” he screamed, but no sound came out. Air escaped his lungs as water rushed in. “Sōvegon!”
All men must die.
But Aemond was a dragon—in heart if not in body, in spirit and blood if not in tooth and claw—and dragons could live forever.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
✨✨✨
“How much further?”
“Not long now,” he assured, her clammy hand gripped tightly in his. For all that he was smaller than both his older siblings, Aemond was twice as fierce.
The torchlight flickered, painting dancing, ghoulish shadows on the walls, and dimmed to barely a wick of flame, plunging Aemond and Helaena into almost tangible darkness. They were deep in the cellars beneath the Red Keep, searching through a maze of passageways with only a ball of blue thread tied to Helaena’s waist keeping them from being utterly lost.
Aegon had told them they would find wild dragons beneath the keep, and thus deeper into the cells they went. Curiosity spurred her, desire drove him. Neither Helaena nor Aemond rode a dragon: the egg laid in Helaena’s crib had tinted grey and turned to stone; whilst Aemond had never been granted one. Dragon eggs were a scarce commodity and at the time of his birth, there had been only two in the Pits—one untouchable, and the other had been granted to Jacaerys, even as the boy was still in womb. King Viserys deemed his dead first son by the late queen and the firstborn grandson take precedence over the second son from his second marriage.
“I hate the dark,” Helaena complained.
“History was made at night. Only in darkness we are revealed,” Aemond quoted, sanctimoniously.
“Who said that?”
“Some dead man,” came his flippant reply. He spun around, turning to watch his sister, and smiled warmly. “I’ll share a secret: I hate the dark, too. Does it ever feel to you like it’s watching you back? It does to me; I loathe it.”
“No,” Helaena said, wide eyes blinking owlishly. “Why would it? Darkness is merely the absence of light. When darkness rises, so does light to meet—”
From behind them, a sudden rush of hot air swept through the narrow passageway, extinguishing the remnants of a torch Aemond held, and whatever else Helaena meant to say had been drowned by a terrible, woeful roar resounding through the lower cells of the keep, slicing through the air like steel. The stones themselves shook, groaning; dust and debris falling like rain onto the siblings.
Vhagar, Aemond realised, wildered of thought, and made a move backwards, only to be caught at the wrist by Helaena.
“You can’t,” she said, shaking her head. In the pitch darkness, Aemond could not see his sister, but he felt the brush of her long hair across his cheeks all the same.
“Helaena, let me go! She’s calling me.”
“You closed an eye for her, brother. I won’t let you give her more.”
“I didn’t close any fucking eye, Hel. Both of my eyes are open. Let me go,” Aemond hissed. He tugged and pulled, but his wrist was caught in a vice of Helaena’s iron grip. His struggles were fruitless; Aemond’s elder sister seemed a force of preternatural, insurmountable strength.
In the distance, Vhagar’s roars turned to piercing, desolate howls. It felt like his own heart was sobbing, tearing itself in twain. “She’s crying, she needs me.”
Helaena said nothing; she ran down a pitch black corridor, pulling Aemond further into the bowels of the Red Keep, further and further away from the sounds of distant baying.
As they descended the ancient stone steps, walls rumbled and pounded like a heartbeat. He could feel something grow warm within his chest and echo every pulse, reverberating through him, clawing into his bones, and etching itself into his marrow. Aemond was not sure how long they ran for—it felt like hours, it could have been minutes.
He staggered, tripping over a rock.
When he looked up, they were in the Great Hall.
The throne room’s walls were lined with dragon skulls: as black as onyx, polished smooth—the bones shimmered, coated in black diamond dust. Green flames of wildfire flickered behind their empty eye sockets, making gruesome shadows leap and dart on the marble walls: dead men laughed merrily, missing limbs with leeches crawling out of their open mouths; devils danced, black as night, tongues long and serpentine. From behind long, curving teeth, sharp as daggers, a light simmered—warm and red and full of threat.
Aemond swore the dragon skulls watched him; Balerion the Black Dread’s huge open maw curved into a wicked grin and—
“You must wake the dragon from the stone.”
He spun around and saw his sister standing at the foot of the Iron Throne.
Except, it was not the Helaena who took him by the wrist and dragged him through the labyrinth beneath the keep. The sister before him was a woman grown: small of stature and much rounder where Aemond was all sharp angles. Her face wan and waxen, knuckles bruised like violets, her silver hair thin and matted. She looked as wearied and wretched as Aemond felt.
He took a step towards her and suddenly he was in front of her, grasping her fingers betwixt his own. “Hel—”
“You broke your promise, as I dreamt you would,” she whispered, sorrowfully, eyes distant. “You will not come back. I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I do not hate you, brother.”
He staggered back, as if struck. Whatever words he meant to say, died in his throat. Sweet Helaena was his favourite, most treasured sibling—strange and misunderstood, tormented by her dreams. Hers was the embrace which offered him solace and forgiveness, hers would be the only hate he could not bear.
“In a moment, I’ll take a step forward and fly. In a moment, you’ll fall and rise…but before destiny must come to pass…let me have this,” she muttered, reaching around and guiding him into an enclasp, small hands wrapping themselves behind his back. Aemond drew her closer still, until they were chest to chest, calloused palm brushing through her hair. Inexplicably, his heart was weeping.
She whispered something tender into her shoulder.
Aemond paused his ministrations, failing to catch her words. “What?”
Suddenly, the tall, narrow windows lining the eastern and western walls burst open sharply. The glass cracked and shattered all at once. Aemond moved to shield his sister, just as the glass scattered through the Great Hall and dug into his flesh—his arms, his legs, his face. The wind howled and a cold unlike any Aemond knew before swept through the hall.
“Helaena—” he started, but stopped, violet eye growing wide and fearful.
His sister was a phantom in the carnage, whole and untouched. She passed through his arms like a ghost, gliding over shattered glass. She swept her arms wide, like a bird taking flight, pointing to what lay beyond the Great Hall’s walls. Aemond’s gaze followed the movement, expecting to see King’s Landing, instead he saw…
An open sky, blue as the sapphire in his eye.
For a passing moment, he could almost believe he was on dragonback, drifting above the clouds, so high up his line of sight was. Somewhere unseen, a soaring bird cried. As far as his eye could see, the horizon was bleak and inhospitable: a perilous, rocky mountain range. Row upon row of snow-capped grey-green peaks.
To him, it was beautiful.
A hand touched his bicep and when Aemond looked down, Helaena was staring at him—through him. All trace of the girl she was was gone, before him stood a wraith wearing his sister’s skin. “Your song is not yet finished, Aemond of House Targaryen. You must wake the dragon from the stone.”
Wake the dragon from the stone, echoed the skulls of Balerion and Meraxes.
Wake the dragon, the skulls of Arrax and Caraxes jeered.
Stone, stone, stone, sang the Meleys’ skull.
“Fire and blood, brother,” Helaena reminded, and gave him a shove.
Too startled to even scream, Aemond toppled backwards out of the window and empty air. There was nothing to grab on to and no dragon to ride. Aemond dove through the sky and sharp mountains rushed up to meet him.
Aemond felt his head crack open, brains spilling out.
In the distance, a wolf howled.
✨✨✨
Aemond jerked violently into wakefulness, his heart rabbiting in his throat.
A dream, he thought. Only a dream.
Yet the dream was kinder than the reality: his body was a patchwork of sharp pain and throbbing aches—breathing hurt, pulling at his chest and back; his limbs felt numb and heavy, useless; a stabbing headache almost felled him senseless. All the same, Aemond pulled himself up into an upright position, muscles stiff with exhaustion, cataloguing the state of his body and his surroundings. He was on a thin, straw cot and with a low, smothered groan, he swung his legs off the edge of it, until he felt the cool, wooden floor with his bare feet.
It was dark, wherever he was. Pitch-black. He may have one eye, but his night vision was sharp, able to see clearly in low-light conditions, yet he could not even pick up on vague, shadowed shapes—
He was blind. The realisation swelled inside of him with mounting ghastly horror, not quite registering as reality.
“You’re awake, princeling,” a voice spoke, low and craggy.
Aemond sprung into action, heedless of his injuries. He got to his feet and lurched in the direction of the voice, tackling the person gracelessly. They both fell to the floor with a resoundant trump. Aemond’s hips bracketed the intruder, squeezing their body beneath him with his knees, caring not for the fight they put up. His hands roved until they found purchase around a skinny neck—his grip strong and steady, despite the claws raking his forearms till they drew blood.
“Where am I?” he hissed, breath laboured, and fingers squeezing lightly as incentive for a truthful answer. Necks were funny things; fragile, vulnerable, and easily breakable.
“Riverlands,” a woman wheezed—for Aemond now realised it was a woman he was grappling with, old and small and wizened. “A boy went to fish and instead found you unconscious at the edges of Gods Eye—how you swam to shore, no-one knows; in full plate of armour it is miraculous you haven’t drowned—and took you to me. Battered and blue, not an unmarred spot on you, but alive. For three days and four nights you stayed in this room until your fever broke, nursed and cared for. Ah,” she rasped, chuckling, “I see you’re doing better. How’s that bruised shoulder and hip, and the cracked ribs? Giving you trouble? If it is a tumble you wanted, you need only ask. I wouldn’t have said ‘no.’ You’re a pretty thing, princeling. All silver hair and sensuous lips. A kiss from you would be sweet. Aye, a long, sloppy kiss would be payment enough.”
The disgust Aemomd felt must have shown on his face for the old woman cackled. “I’m old, too old. No-one has kissed me for a thousand years. It’s hard to be so old. I’ll have a dance then, a dance with a dragon ought to satisfy me.”
Aemond’s patience was begging to wear thin. “You’ll get no kisses from me, or dances. Lest you wish to be parted from your life, you’ll answer me quick and true: has anyone else been found? A man, tall like me, silver haired and in black armour?”
Daemon, Aemond thought, darkly. Where was Daemon? Last he had seen his uncle, the man was driving Dark Sister through his sapphire eye, just as Aemond himself was burying a dagger to the hilt in his uncle’s belly. Still, Aemond lived, thus it stood to reason Daemon could, too. If he did, Aemond would not know peace until he took his uncle’s head. He was a kinslayer already, cursed and damned; what was adding murder of another member of their rapidly dwindling family tree to his list of sins?
“There was no-one but you and the boy around for miles. If the waters of Gods Eye rejected anyone else, they are now food for fishes.”
The woman’s words eased some of the tension out of Aemond’s shoulders. His other eye was a worthy exchange for Daemon Targaryen’s life. Helaena would not thank him, but their mother would.
He eased his grip on the woman’s neck, but kept his hands there, forefinger on her pulse. It was a surprisingly strong and steady heartbeat for one so old, unflinching under his questioning. He had not discerned any falsehoods from her; however, it disquieted him how unperturbed she was by his menacing.
“And my dragon? Where is my dragon?”
“What dragon? There are no more dragons, princeling.”
“Where is Vhagar?” Aemond growled. “Where is my dragon? She would not be parted from me.”
“No… you were parted from her,” the woman said, mournfully, her touch on his forearm almost comforting, “my girl was taken from me, too, by another prince. She danced in a castle and now she dances with ghosts, and all I am left with are sorrows and insurmountable grief.”
Something sour and discomforting settled in the pit of Aemond’s stomach even as recognition bloomed. If there was one type of woman he knew how to agnize it was a witch.
“You shall return,” in his memory Alys proclaimed after he kissed her, wildfire-green eyes alight with purpose and conviction. “I have foreseen it.”
“Tell me,” he said, softly, releasing the old woman and moving away, “what happened?”
“I dreamt of you, dragon prince, star child,” the woodswitch said, in lieu of an answer. “The fates are cruel to have led me to you—princeling, blood of the dragon, son of woe and strife. Before your time is out you will gorge on pain. You’ll lie with a serpent and drink from her poison, the taste of it sweeter than honey. She’ll bring you joy, or she’ll kill you, dark heart. The debt has not been paid and your fate is not set in stone.”
Unconsciously, Aemond touched his uncovered eye. “A debt…”
“Oh, you’ll see daylight again,” she snorted, ungracefully. “You’ve hit your head something fierce and blood pooled in your skull, the pressure of it made you temporarily blind. You’re lucky the blow you suffered had not made you go soft in the mind.”
“What are the news from King’s Landing? How is the King?” Aemond prompted, trying to steer the conversation where he wanted it.
“The king is dead,” the woodswitch said and Aemond flinched. “Aye, kings are dropping like flies. The kraken king, the flower king, the wolf king, and the lion king—the stag king is not long to live neither.”
Aemond’s temples throbbed, his head started spinning. The clarity of mind and strength he’d gained with the rush of blood was waning, and his injuries and blood loss were catching up with him. “Kings?” he muttered, thinly. “There is but one king—my brother, Aegon.” And that usurping whore, his half-sister Rhaenyra, but she was no Queen. Aemond refused to name her such.
He tried to get up from where he was sitting back on his haunches, but his legs buckled. He gritted his teeth, grasping for purchase blindly until he found a wooden stool and used it to haul himself to his feet. He staggered and felt calloused hands grasp him at the forearms.
“All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days,” the woodswitch explained, taking Aemond’s hand and guiding him to the cot. “There are as many kings in the realm these days as there are pennies.”
She put him to bed, drawing blankets over him, and put her hand on his forehand, her touch pleasantly cool. As he drifted off, he could hear her voice in the distance, whisper softly:
“Peace, princeling. In the darkness, you shall meet your creators: monsters born and monsters made. Who will you see there in the darkness? When no-one is watching, who will you be?”