Desires Be Damned • Aemond Targaryen

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Aemond

"Vhagar! No!"

But it was too late as the crunch of bones and squelching of flesh being torn filled his ears over the whipping of the wind. His chest that had been quaking with laughter shortly before was now hollow with horror, paralyzed by panic. The sight of his dragon showing no mercy to her smaller kin as she tossed him from her maw robbed every trace of warmth from Aemond's blood, freezing his body and fogging his mind.

He didn't mean for this to happen.

It was never meant to go this far.

All he wanted was for them to feel a fraction of the anguish he did, of the torment they both had put him through.

Aemond had been made the ass-end of every joke and prank for nearly his entire youth, and Luke's laughter had never been far behind. His bastard nephew never answered for his sufferings, instead seeing fit to take his eye after beating him bloody for claiming Vhagar, for fairly claiming his Targaryen birthright, another crime that yet again went unpunished as he was told to forgive and forget by a father who never loved him.

Dyaena had fled, failing his test that she would return to him, to choose him over her family that never exceeded her value past a means of securing peace or allies through marriage. He had chosen courses of action for her benefit, the ones that would cause her the least pain while maintaining his loyalty to his brother's cause. He could have easily allowed Aegon to be taken into his grandfather's charge, and plans would have proceeded to secure Aegon's rule via assassination, ending this war before it began. All uprisings of Rhaenyra's supporters would have been quelled by reminding them of the great strength of House Targaryen, and if they couldn't be swayed by the eclipsing power of Vhagar's might, then they would burn, their ashes serving as examples to the rest of the realm, to convince others to choose more wisely.

But no, what he did for her hadn't been enough. She had forsaken him, and in doing so, solidified where she stood while tossing aside their betrothal like it meant nothing, like what they felt for each other meant nothing. When she had stared down at him atop Meleys in the Dragonpit, the complete absence of any and all warmth that he had always found in her gaze before had jarred him. After everything, she had left him alone, allowing his family to make use of his new liberty to marry elsewhere by sending him to Storm's End to secure Borros Baratheon's support via a marriage to one of his daughters. And because he was the ever dutiful son, he obeyed with a bitter heart, one that ached for the girl that shattered it like it was a piece of glass. But when his obeisance granted him the chance reunion with his painfully alluring niece, those bleeding shards of his heart turned their jagged edges towards the attack, ready to enact justice, for if he couldn't have her, then no one could, and certainly not the son whose father could sway this civil war to his cunt of a sister's favor.

He always knew his niece was meant to be his, as though the gods crafted her soul to be everything he wasn't or couldn't be, to drive him mad with need or sedate him when no one else could bear to draw near or even look his way. The first time she had been taken from him was not of her own will, and their favor for one another then had only been two children that were smitten. But this time she had left of her own accord, abandoned him, abandoned what they could have been, after all they had said and done, all in order to serve his lying, whore of a half-sister. She wouldn't have been the only one to make necessary sacrifices in order for them to obtain their future, but they would have been happy in the end. How could she not see that the ends justify the means?