A Song of Promises

Chapter 2

Aemond looked for her guard but found none had trailed behind her. He stared hard into the shadows of the castle from each angle of the yard to make out the presence of her husband's form but saw no shape of him cast by the sconce-lit stones. They were utterly alone together, and that unnerved him as much as it excited him.

He sheathed his dagger and stood. Brother, she called him.

"Princess," he greeted curtly in return.

Aemond had few childhood memories of Rhaenyra as more than a distant figure that loomed large in the mind of his mother. When he was born his half-sister was ten and three, already cresting into womanhood and finding little interest in Alicent Hightower's sons. By the time he was 4, she had a child of her own to tend to. The most significant interaction they'd shared was when Lucerys had disfigured him, and even then she had treated him less than family.

Rhaenyra was many things to him but he could not name her sister out loud while Helaena still breathed.

Her mouth tightened a fraction at his slight and she drew her shawl tighter to her body. In the glow of the torchlight, he spied the hardened tips of her breasts beneath her white chemise before she hid them from view.

"I had hoped that you and I could speak before my family left on the morrow," she said, crossing the dewy grass towards him.

He sat his spine straighter when she stopped but an arm's length away. The two of them had never been so close to one another in all his life, he thought, and certainly never since he had become a man. He towered over her slight height and was wide and angular in comparison to her soft, curvaceous frame.

She tilted her chin to stare up into his face and he was struck anew by how beautiful she was. Her long silver hair was loose about her cheeks, with wavy sweat-dried strands stuck to the arch of her brow and neck. Her pale skin was pinkened, and he noted a small sprinkle of freckles that kissed along the bridge of her fine nose. He'd think her the very image of The Mother were her lips not swollen and red; he wondered if she'd let her husband fuck her mouth to bring forth such a hue. He imagined Daemon had held her head still as he thrust into the sweet, wet channel of her throat and released his seed against her tongue, groaning and whispering mindless words of praise as she made him see stars.

His half-sister was deliciously disheveled from lovemaking and far from pious in behavior. It was inappropriate for her to be gazed upon by other men in this state, but he knew of the contempt she treated propriety and for once was grateful for it.

She reached out to grasp his hands with her own, her touch tentative as she brushed her thumbs against his knuckles.

"I do not wish for things to be as they are," she said. "It hurts me deeply to hear you say the things you have. My sons loved you and Aegon like their own brothers before we left for Dragonstone, and I know it to be true, still."

They had shared a shaky truce at best and blatant resentment at worst. She was naive to believe there had ever been love between them.

"You, Luke, and Jace are all much older, now," she continued. "Surely you can see that the events of your youth are not choices you'd make today. There is still time to make things right."

He gave her only silence in return. She clenched his hands and offered a small, encouraging smile.

"I ask only that you open your heart to forgiveness," she pressed on. "Luke will seek it from you when he gathers the courage to do so."

A quiet laugh escapes him. "Mm," he murmurs, mulling her words over his tongue, "and will he seek this absolution by his own will, or at the behest of his mother?"