Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Seventeen

Dyaena

Sleep was slow to free the groggy princess from its grasp, for she had little of it that night and felt as though she had even less. Her eyes fought her exhaustion nonetheless as her mind came to, but immediately closed when the curtains covering her windows were cruelly opened and blinding sunlight flooded her chambers. A voice spoke to her, but their words were unintelligible.

With a stretch, Dyaena said through a yawn, "What was that?"

"I said it's time to wake, Princess," Gretta's familiar soft voice became clearer as she strode over to her bedside. "Should I draw you a bath before breakfast? It is to be a quick one though, the hearing is to start in a few short hours."

"The hearing," she muttered as she rubbed the last of the sleep from her eyes. "I had almost forgotten the true reason for our return." Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed to sit up, the unexpected dull ache that pulsed through her thighs and core made her pause and grimace, both of which did not go unnoticed by her lady-in-waiting, and memories of her surreptitious night of adventure and pleasure came flooding back. "A hot bath would be most welcome, Gretta. Thank you."

"My lady..." The girl wrung her hands uneasily as her eyes danced from Dyaena's to elsewhere and back again.

"Yes?"

"Forgive me, I know I shouldn't pry..."

"It's all right, speak freely," Dyaena said as she rose and began walking over to her looking glass to brush her surely tangled mess of hair.

"It's just, last night, when I brought supper to your chambers, you weren't here." Gretta followed Dyaena, her concern and caution very plain in her words. Before she reached her looking glass, she paused and turned towards her timid lady-in-waiting, whose eyes were locked onto her feet.

"Oh, I was just at the library," she said as nonchalantly as she could. "Time had escaped me and I returned at a later hour than I had meant to, my apologies."

"But, Princess, I had been awaiting your instruction to bring you supper for a long while, well past the sun's set, until I took it upon myself to bring you food anyway. Looking back, I know I shouldn't have, but I had just assumed you had forgotten. When I had arrived and asked the guard if you had returned, he said yes before letting me inside, but when I found your chambers empty... My lady," Gretta stepped towards her before taking her hands and wrapping them around Dyaena's, her round brown eyes finally rising as she spoke in a whisper, "normally, I wouldn't probe, but... did something happen? Did someone hurt you?"

"What? Why would you think such a thing?"

"You have markings on your neck and chest, my lady, and you seemed to be in pain as you rose from your bed."

Rushing over to her looking glass, Dyaena saw the unambiguous proof that last night hadn't been just a dream. Grazing her fingers over the red markings on her neck and then pushing her shift aside to see the ones scattered on her breasts, she relived the dangerous and intoxicating thrills in her mind of her and Aemond's secret passion and the narrow escape that prematurely put it to an end.

~•~

After shutting the secret door as quietly as she could--though she wasn't sure how quietly given the deafening pounding in her ears muffling out everything else--the dusty tunnels echoed the sounds of her heavy breathing as she leaned against the cool stone of its walls. Placing a shaking hand over her chest, she willed her heart to calm before she would begin her journey back to her chambers. It was darker now that the torches had begun to burn out, and she needed a clear head to remember which tunnels to take.