Salvation - Aemond Targaryen / Aegon Targaryen

Expeditious Farewells

Jeyne watched her father's retinue gather on the third day of the sixth moon. He, her lady mother, sister and brother stood about as their servants loaded their trucks and gifts into large wheelhouses that would follow behind the grand, golden wood with flying green sigils perched birdlike on the pointed roof. Her lady mother's face was solemn, as was Bethany's. But Lyonel and Lord Ormund Hightower's faces were contorted with anger, exchanging hushed whispers as their eyes darted nervously toward Tessarion, the Blue Queen who loitered in the southernmost part of the courtyard, gilded saddle glimmering in the afternoon sun.

Jeyne watched from the ramparts with a cold, benign indifference.

Lord Ormund Hightower was always a man of his word and that did not change in his child's betrayal. Jeyne Hightower was no daughter of his. He and his family had packed their things in the dead of night, called for a wheelhouse to take them home, and were set due south for Oldtown. All of that had been done without speaking to her, his newly deceased daughter.

Despite the hatred and hurt she knew she was to feel, Jeyne's body was cold. Unfeeling and uncaring as she watched Lady Sam and Bethany cling to each other below. She watched as the women piled into the wheelhouse, wiping tears from their eyes and Lyonel called his squire for his horse.

Aemond stood next to her, hands digging angrily into the stone barrier. "He has no right to be angry," her lord husband growled, positively seething next to her. "We have been solidified by his faith, by his king."

"I defied him," Jeyne's monotone voice made Aemond shift. "I have forsaken our gods and wed in secret. He has every right to be angry."

"I'll take his head then." Aemond grumbled. She felt his hand rest on hers, pulling her attention from the scene below her. His eye searched for permission across her face, though she was careful to not give it to him. "And Lyonel's. Garmund's. All the way down the fucking line until someone gives you the respect you deserve."

Jeyne remembered how willing he had been to kill Jason Lannister for her, how he had offered it to her days previous as casually as if he had offered her a lemon cake. She smiled, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek. It still stung from the cut he had given her which—Jeyne later came to know—had been from their traditional Valyrian wedding.

She remembered the fear that grew like a weed in her belly as she stood before the ailing king and her uncle, waiting for them to decide her fate. She remembered Aegon's drunken ramblings, telling her that he wouldn't let his brother and his lady-wife starve in Pentos and of how he knew his great aunt, Princess Saera, still ran her pleasure house in Lys.

Jeyne shivered at the idea of living in a pleasure house—the debauchery that lingered at every corner. She had only to look to the Queen, her face upturned at the idea of her son being whisked a world away to a life of even more sin, for her to veto that idea.

She also remembered the wedding—the one where Prince Aemond nicked her bottom lip and kissed her passionately, the taste of their blood melding swelling their mouths.

Jeyne felt little regret in that. Three days of silence from all those but the youngest Targaryens had convinced Jeyne that—perhaps—they were enough for her. Aegon and Aemond seemed... overjoyed at a life without gods, without parents to care for them or the rules that came along with both. Little Helaena she was sure could barely understand the concept of gods. She threw herself into a life filled with what she loved: her children and her insects.

Perhaps that was enough for Jeyne. Perhaps Aemond could be enough, and the children he gave her. The life they could live.

Jeyne smiled at him, sadness in her eyes that she could not dismiss. "No, my prince." She whispered, standing on the tips of her toes to place a kiss on his nose. "It's alright."