𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐄 | aemond targaryen

𝐱𝐢𝐢. there were pages turned by the bridges burned

❝I am a fountain of blood

in the shape of a girl❞

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

The gates of Harrenhall stared up at them from dragon back and Aemond looked to his wife with a raised eyebrow but she merely smirked back at him as Balerion glided through the clouds to land within the gates.

One well placed bribe had had Larys strong choking on his own saliva mere hours before and now the ancestral seat of the Strongs belonged to her dear friend, Alys Rivers. The bastard daughter of Lyonel Strong.

Jumping from Balerion's back, pulling her gloves with her teeth, Visenya was immediately brought into an embrace by the bastard girl. Kings Landing had never been a lonely place and yet Visenya had felt a distinct lack of kinship in the walls of the Red Keep.

A great love can make you feel whole but sisterhood can make your soul feel greater than any God. Girls love each other grin some primal way with total bare, vulnerability from the very beginning with claws and teeth. Especially women like Alys and Visenya.

The apothecary Visenya had become a patron of had been where Alys leaned her craft, the two forming a fast friendship over the years until the bastard girl was called back to Harrenhall as a wet nurse for a noblewomen. Alys missed her friend in the fierce way one does, in the taste of the blood when she bit her tongue and she found that blood beautiful.

But she knew there were some things she should never love, like death and girls.

Some badly informed history books would call her 'Aemond's witch queen' or 'the One Eyed Prince's bed mate' but none would recall how Aly Rivers would only yearn for his wife.

"Witches." Daemon muttered to himself in realisation as he landed Caraxes beside Vhagar. Aemond looked to his father in law with a nod of confirmation before slipping off of Vhagar to go to his wife's side.

"Have our children arrived?" Aemond asked the witch girl. They had not met before but Aemond trusted whomever Visenya trusted in this war.

"Not as of yet, little prince." Alys said, not releasing Visenya's hands much to Aemond's suspicion. "I have sent an envoy to retrieve your family from the port but it could be some hours more."

"The roads are dangerous for us now." Visenya said, jaw clenching as she remembered the hatred on Aegon's face as he had crawled atop her bleeding body. "They won't be safe."

"I can follow behind the carriage on caraxes." Daemon offered, coming to their congregation. He had no ties to Alicent nor her daughter but his grandchildren were with her and he would never allow them to be in harms way.

"Good, go." Visenya nodded and Daemon slinked back to his dragon and took off as quickly as he had arrived. "Now, how are we going to take my kingdom back?"

"With fire and blood." Aemond said with a smirk, his hand falling to Visenya's lower back as Alys lead them into Harrenhall.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

"Who are our allies at this point?" Visenya asked as she stood at the head of the painted, candlelit table that Lyonel had received once as hand of the king many years ago. "Those who pledged their allegiance to Rhaenyra and I am Rhaenyra's rightful heir."

"Butonly in the event of her death." Daemon said with a sigh as all eyes flickered to him.

Their council was made up of a strange series of nobility and even common folk. Lady Johanna Lannister of Casterly Rock had joined her side without hesitation the moment she heard of Aegon usurping. She had come to support her rightful Queen with Visenya's promise that as Queen she would send aide to exact revenge on the iron islands for the Westerlands after her husbands the death and his brother being crippled.

"Are you suggesting the Queen should kill her own mother?" Lady Johanna asked, eyebrow raised at the rogue prince.

"If she were to be truly crowned without the title 'usurper' then yes." Daemon said, after years of murdering and maiming he did not think that killing one's own cruel mother to be a bad choice.

"You'd rather she have the title of 'Kinslayer?'" Alysanne Blackwood, daughter of the house of Blackwood better known as 'Black Aly' and a fierce, fearless woman with a bawdy tongue, said to receive a glare from the Queens father.

"She would not have to be the one who kills Rhaenyra." Aemond said gravely and all eyes flickered to one eyed prince. Visenya met her husbands eye and he cocked his head at her. "With only a word I would stain my name for yours, my Queen."

"There is no need for that yet." Visenya said, laying her hand on her husbands as she looked back to her council. "First we will send ravens to Lady Jane Jeyne Arryn of the Vale and Cregan Stark in the North. Lady Alysanne, I wish for you to go to the North with the message for Cregan Stark as I fear it may take some convincing to bend the Northmans oath."

"Never has there lived a Stark who broke an oath." Alys Rivers said, fiddling with a sigil of House Targaryen.

"I said bend, Alys." Visenya said, a calculating smile on her face. "Not break."

Aemond watched as his wife lead the war council as though she had been taught to do so her entire life and in some cases that was true. He remembered with a startling clarity how his father had brought her into small council meetings, holdings of court and teaching her the ways of the Kingdoms. Viserys had been grooming her to rule.

He loved his wife more than anything and her in power had stirred something within his soul. She was his everything but with every slight wince of her expression as she walked, he was reminded of the night before. It had not been long ago that he had let her walk away with a devil on her shoulders.

Visenya had not blamed him, she had said over and over. But he still blamed himself. The only way he could see to repent was to kill his brother and any man who so much as looked at his wife in a bad light. His was a violet devotion, Aemond dedicated his entire existence to his wife and children and the god shaped pit within him had been filled by them.

He would rather die than let them be harmed again.

"We will need to secure Storm Ends loyalty as well as Winterfell's and the Eyrie." Visenya said, placing Targaryen sigils upon the painted table. "Thanks to Lady Johanna and Lady Alysanne, we have the support of the river men and westerlands."

"We have likely lost the Velaryon fleet to the princess Rhaenyra-" Johanna began but was interrupted by her Queen's husband.

"That is no matter." Aemond said as all eyes flickered to him. He smirked at the confused looks everyone was giving him besides his wife. Visenya and him had been made in the image of fire and blood, they were dragon riders and in some ways the second coming of all those less pure in their morals like targaryen rulers. "We have the two great dragons of the conquests."

"We shall rule the skies." Visenya said in some form of a metaphorical sign from Valyria, Balerion the black dread roared an earth shaking sign that could be heard all the way in Dragonstone.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

Rhaenyra looked from her own war council, her heart stopping for her speech as she heard the roar. It was like she could feel the dark fire upon her skin, the teeth of it's great jaw drawing her blood.

"Rhaenyra?" Corlys said as the Princess' council looked upon their leader. "What is wrong?"

"My daughter is coming." Rhaenyra swallowed, a hand on her stomach. "She is coming to destroy us all."

Rhaenys sat silently. She knew whom her cousin, Viserys, had chosen on his death bed to be the next ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. She knew what single name he had whispered in his final breath and she knew who the rightful Queen was.

And it was not Rhaenyra.

But she could do little. Rhaenys was the Queen who never was and she had a loyalty to her house and so she had chosen her side. It was why she would not bend the knee to her cousins daughter.

It would be treason against the rightful Queen Visenya of the Seven Kingdoms.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.