Blood of Old Valryia (Aemond Targaryen FF)

Chapter Twenty One

"What are you doing here?" Aesira asked, offering a skewered piece of lamb to Aemond.

"I could ask you the same thing." He took the skewer, if only because she offered it. "You're supposed to be in the Keep, where there are guards to protect you."

"I am not in any danger, Princeling." She waved him off, finding a vacant tree stump before a somewhat empty bonfire in the square. Aesira chanced upon the square when she'd followed the sound of the drums. And though her ability to play the flute was not nearly good enough to join a minstrel, the sound had livened up the beat of the drums.

Aemond lowered himself onto the log beside her, his hood still raised, "You could be. You've done nothing to conceal your heritage, not even changed out of your riding leathers."

In truth, Aesira hadn't thought much about her appearance when she'd left the Keep. For all his talk of her not being safe in King's Landing, no one had stopped her when she walked out through the front gates. And as for her riding leathers, they could be passed off as a gown for a woman on unofficial duties. Fashioned in a burnt gold leather dress that flared from her waist to her knee, and sky blue small clothes that could be seen through the lined cuts when she bent her arms, along the neckline of the leather dress, and made up the layers of the skirt. Not to mention the trousers that sat on her thighs like a second skin, tucked into knee-high brown boots.

At least she'd had the foresight to rebraid her hair over her shoulder, tucking her bangs behind her ears so as to show off the circlet she never thought she'd remove from her brows.

"Aesira? I asked you a question." Aemond prompted her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Whatever he'd done to secure his hair under the hood, worked. Not a strand stuck out.

"What?"

"Why are you here?" He asked again, more tenderly. He didn't just mean out in the square—though he wanted to know that too—he wanted to know why now? The King had sent many letters for her visit and if she wanted, she could have ignored the missive too. The King cared deeply enough for her that a rejected missive wouldn't have affected her at all.

"I couldn't watch you leave," Aesira admitted, reigning his question in. "I've successfully avoided you for three years and I couldn't watch you leave me behind, while I dance around that Keep, alone, for a fortnight."

"You left me behind." Aemond spoke from a place of vulnerability and when Aesira lowered her skewer, too stunned to chew the piece in her mouth, he cleared his throat, "At the Keep. If you were to venture down into this perverse part of King's Landing, the least you could have done was bring me along."

He couldn't hide behind falsities now, he'd already exposed himself to her. Aesira swallowed hard then angled herself towards him—not that anyone around them could even understand High Valyrian—"I was scared, Aemond. I'd overheard an alarming conversation that the Queen might try to use me to supplant Rhaenyra as the King's named Heir, by means of you. I didn't think I was strong enough to fight the Queen, if what I'd heard proved to be true."

"You should have come to me with your fears." He sighed, tossing the skewer he'd still been holding into the flame before them. "Viserys is a fool and all my mother plans to do is protect us, because he refuses to."

"Protect you from what? Who would harm the Princes and Princess of the Realm?"

Aemond's eye flickered to Aesira, "Rhaenyra. As long as my brothers and I live, we are a threat to her claim. There will always be Houses that support a male Heir, even if the King himself has named his daughter. Viserys is too blind to see the position he's put my mother in."

"Rhaenyra would never—"

"Yes, she would." Aemond cut her off, ripping the half-eaten skewer out of her hand and tossing it into the flame as well. "And if by chance, she doesn't, there are others who would act on her behalf."

"Stop this folly, Aemond." She grabbed his face, hand on either cheek until he was forced to see her, see the truth and promise in her eyes, "I will not them harm you. I will not be used to supplant Rhaenyra but I can promise you, Prince Aemond Targaryen, I will use whatever power I have unto me to protect you from any who seek to harm you in Rhaenyra's name."

Aemond's expression softened and then he lowered his head to kiss her. The music, the warmth, the sounds of the children, the flirting women, the moaning men, and the screaming gamblers all melted away into absolute silence. Aesira felt as though she'd slid from the log and fallen into a pool of water.

As his lips pressed to hers, everything that made Aesira who she was eddied out of her like a balloon losing air, a crack in a dam. Aemond slid his hands across her back and tugged her closer, while Aesira stroked his face, his neck, before sliding her fingers into his bound hair.

Aemond parted his lips and her tongue swept in, tasting vanilla and something she couldn't quite name. Aesira pressed her body to his, uncaring of the limited mobility. Aemond, be it the closeness or the kiss itself, couldn't stop the soft moan that broke free and was immediately lost and swallowed up by Aesira. The sound turned her body into a molten flame while shivers skittered across her skin. Consequences be damned, she would have him.

And then, all at once, it was over. Aemond was the first to resurface, panting as he slid back to put some space between them. "I can't do this anymore, Aesira."

"Have I done something wrong?" She asked, feeling like she'd been doused with a bucket of ice water. Aesira wrapped her arms around herself, hoping she'd shrink and shrink until she all but disappeared.

Aemond chuckled under his breath, "I don't think I can go back to mindlessly kissing you in the shadows. I have shared a bed with many women, Aesira, hoping—pleading with every God I know to be worshipped—that your touch was wiped from me. Your heart, your skin, your words, you are a plague unto me and the man I am today does not have the strength to fight all the things I wish to do to you."

A tentative smile blossomed on Aesira's face as the shock of his words settled on her. He'd never spoken about her like that before and yet, it was not unwelcome. "Then take me. Take all of me."

Aemond shook his head, "I do not want to a gentle love tonight."

"I feel—"

Aemond peered up at her, silencing her with the heat in his eyes, "Tell me, Lady Aesira, does your yearning for me wish for you to tear the flesh from my bones and leave me ravaged?"

It did now. Aesira would ride him until he saw stars if he asked her to. Aemond, having mistaken her bewildered silence—more to herself and what she saw herself capable of doing—as hesitation, rose to his feet and made to depart from the square.

Aesira leaped to her feet and chased after him, grabbing a hold of his arm in the alley and yanking him to a stop, "Take me, Aemond. Or I will find myself a pleasure house and have someone else do it for you."

His violet gaze darkened and she knew she'd won.