Blood of Old Valryia (Aemond Targaryen FF)

Chapter Twenty Five

"Tell me about Rhaevon." Aemond twirled a strand of Aesira's platinum-white hair around his finger.

"Aemond..." she reached up to stroke his cheek. He'd asked her about it in the Wheelhouse on the way back to the Keep, then again when they'd gone to bed. Her avoidance stemmed from an aversion to recalling that part of her life.

Aemond pursed his lips, then—remembering a trade so long ago—sighed, "You see me as kin, as a friend, as a confidant, as a person. To the rest of Westeros, I am the crippled Second Son of the King. I denied their whisperings through my youth and without you in the Keep to remind me that I am a person in own my right, I fed into the falsities. In the three years, you were gone, I realised how little anyone cared for what I had to say and focused on what I couldn't change. I redirected the narrative as much as I could, honing in on my sword skills and my histories, but it did little to change what had already been set in motion.

"It wasn't until I saw you on the balustrade outside my father's Chambers, that I felt like myself again. I was upset at you for leaving me so easily—intentional or not—and in doing so, I lost my sense of self, becoming whatever everyone else needed. My life is not so interwoven with yours that I cannot exist outside of you, but your presence in my life reminds me that I am mine, before I am anyone else's."

Aemond opened their space to sharing vulnerabilities, just as she had after his fourteenth name day. He wanted her to know that she, and any secrets she shared, would be safe with him. Just as Aemond had always been safe with her.

Aesira swallowed hard, then sat up in the bed, tucking the soft fur-lined blanket under her arms to cover her nakedness, "My father hated me for not being a boy. He wanted a son to inherit Sakaris after my mother passed. It infuriated him that Sakaris hadn't hatched for him, that instead, she'd hatched for an Arryn, and a woman. If he couldn't bring Valyria back with the blessings of a Blue-Breath then he wanted his son to do it. 'No kingdom would bow down to a woman' was his preferred reasoning. And so my mother kept me from his mind, with pregnancies, with her body, with spectacles and grand gestures, or simply by keeping me from his view.

"Every time she laboured, he would tell the maesters to save his son, and every time, his sons would die and my mother would survive. Barely healed, my mother and I would bury my brothers, all of them named Aerys, all of them dead. Until one of them finally killed my mother."

Aesira remembered how the small folk had bawled as they'd told her the fate of her mother, how their condolences hadn't been for Naerys but for the little girl she'd left behind. She remembered how they whispered that the Gods knew how poorly her father had treated her mother and because the sons were more for him than for her, the Gods had taken every single one of them as a blessing to her mother. And in the end, her blessing had been to be free of Aesira's father, taking the babe with her.

"My father had four buyers lined up for me within a week. He wanted to be rid of me and the curse he thought my mother had bestowed on us both. My father wanted to start over while he was still virile enough to have children. Rhaevon was among them, in need of a young wife to carry his family name while he pursued his own ambition. After another week of bartering and finally, the Red Temple of Volantis approached him with an offer of two thousand gold dragons.

"They were in need of a slave who would later become a bedmaid for the priests, and he had a daughter he did not want. On the night he was told to ready me for their collection, he stumbled home drunk and...and..."

Aemond leaned forward to push her hair aside and drop the gentlest of kisses on her shoulder before he thread his fingers through hers. He knew this part of her past, how her father had forgotten himself and Sakaris had reminded him by taking his life.