evil eye | Aemond Targaryen

2. rising tides

...

The healer promised to come every two days at midnight to change the wrappings on your husband's body, yet the feet and palms would need to be massaged twice a day, so you learned how to do it properly before he left.

When the healer left, strangely giddy and full of energy, you sat on the edge of the bed and crocheted for a few hours while your husband napped. Your voice was still a little bit hoarse from the humming but you knew it helped to lull him to sleep.

You did not ask what they talked about, did not want to know really.

Healer Lyonel took care of the village and its people well for decades. Your family was indebted to him even more since he had helped you many times in the past. And when your mother grew sick he was the first to venture through the Riverlands in search of a knowledgeable maester who would help for a small payment.

And then with your father and the barn—

You flinched when the bed moved as your husband turned onto his side, a low rumble leaving his chest. You watched his face, smiling softly, and raised the blanket to cover his chin.

As the healer requested, you took notice of your husband's condition scrupulously. The fever was down completely and whenever you helped him stretch in the morning, you noticed how he would do some exercises without your help completely. Yet you still reserved the right to feed him, out of care of course.

No other reason.

You observed him throughout the days, and whenever the world grew silent around you, a sense of realisation would encompass him — a kind of grief you could not understand the roots of. His gaze would become unfocused as if he was miles and worlds away.

At first, you feared it was because of his physical state. Even earlier you glimpsed at the other side of his face and it left you sorrowful. A deep slash across the eye, a purple hole where the eye once was. The only consolidation was how healed it was. And how unbothered by it he seemed.

Yet the same could not be said about his body. You saw the way he looked at himself whenever you changed the bandages on his legs or massaged his palms. At first, he averted his eye, as if in disbelief before jerking underneath your careful strokes. With time a sort of acceptance came over him.

There were harder and better days. Sometimes he would surprise you with a determined glint in his eye and go through the stretches and exercises, his muscles shaking from extortion until you deemed it too much. On those days you would have to fight him to not overdo it, even making comments to the healer in the evenings to speak some sense into him.

And there were mornings when you had to pull him up and raise his arms above his head, struggling to dress him, to get him to move. To want to live.

Those days were rare yet they stripped a part of you each time. His blank gaze, his shallow breaths.

Seeing a person you love lose all hope and light, in a body they did not recognize and with a grief no one understood—

You hurt for him. How you wished you could be the one to hold this pain and heartache.

Especially with how restless he became. You noticed his glances at the windows, as if he suspected the sky fall down upon him should he turn away. How he tensed up whenever you mentioned needing to drop off your commissions at the village—the reassurance that it will take only a few hours lost on him.

And then one night you woke up to an empty bed.

You remember screaming and running around the house, breaths stuck in your throat as you fought to breathe, to see through the tears.