Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I am lying on my bed, just letting my body rest when I hear rustling on the balcony. I turn, expecting an animal or just leaves scraping the ground from the wind when I realize the person rattling the doors isn't those things at all. It's a man. The same man that stumbled into me a couple nights ago while coming back from dinner. He has a long, curving knife in one hand and a smile every bit as sharp pulling at his mouth.
"What..." I scramble into a sitting position. I realize I'm whispering as though I'm afraid of this man.
"Just who I'm looking for." The man says, striding closer. He smells like alcohol, not surprising, and woods. I am not sure where he's been before this, but I don't think he's sober.
"This is my home. Who do you think you are trying to enter it?" I am prepared, I have a knife in my boot and another at my hip, but I don't reach for neither. I am completely flummoxed by this man being here, in Aemond and I's chambers.
He walks up to my bed. He's holding the knife well enough, but I can tell he's not particularly good with it at all. He is not a man.
"None of this is yours, girl." He tells me, voice shaking with pure venom.
"If someone put you up to this, you should really rethink it." I say, finally, now afraid. By some miracle, my voice stays steady though. "Because if I scream, there are guards placed everywhere, especially outside my room. They'll come. They've got big bigger swords than that puny one in your hand. You're going to get killed."
He doesn't seem to be absorbing my words. His eyes are wild and not entirely focusing on me. "Do you know what my wife told me when I told her you stabbed me? That the Queen stabbed me? She told me...it was no more than I deserved."
"What did you expect? You threatened me in my home, the Queen in her own home." I say, trying to hide my surprise.
If he wasn't sure he wanted to stab me before, he's certainly sure now. With a leap, he slams the blade into my mattress as I roll out of the way and onto my feet. Feathers fly up when he draws back the blade, drifting through the air like snow. He scrambles to his feet as I pull out a dagger of my own.
The man advances on me again. He's intoxicated and furious and not all that well trained, but he's still one of my people. One that I don't want to hurt. My heart is hammering in my chest. I should scream for help. I should scream.
I open my mouth, and he lunges at me. The scream comes out as a whuff of breath as I lose my balance. My shoulder hits the floor hard as I roll again. I am practiced enough that despite my surprise, I kick his knife hand when he comes toward me. the blade skitters across the floor.
"Okay, I say, as though I am trying to calm us both down. "Okay."
He doesn't pause though. Even though I am holding a knife, even though I've avoided his attack twice and disarmed him, even though I've stabbed him once before, he grabs for my throat again. His fingers sink into the flesh of my neck, and I remember how it felt to drown at seven years old, water flowing into my open mouth. I remember choking on the salty taste which just made me inhale more. I look into his eyes and find the same expression there that had been on his face the night he first attacked me.
I feel him grab my dagger from my boot and with his eyes on mine, he slams the knife into my hand. The pain is a wave that rises higher an higher but never crashes. I make a sound low in my throat. His expression is odd, blank. He lifts himself off of me, as though I am the one who did the shocking thing instead of him doing it. Then he clears his throat.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" I gasp and draw the blade out again. Blood runs over the floor and part of my dress, more than I expect. I feel suddenly dizzy. "Serves you right."
He's wrong about me. He doesn't get to tell me how people think of me or what he thinks of my mother. He doesn't get to bastardize my family and myself. If I can't be better than the men before me, I will become much much worse.
His fingers aren't on my windpipe anymore and despite the way my vision has begun to go dark around the edges because of the influx of air in my lungs, I make sure of my strike before I drive my knife that I picked up off the floor with my injured hand, into his chest. Into his fucking heart.
The man rolls off of me, making a gurgling sound. I suck in lungfuls of air. He tries to stand, sways, and falls back to his knees. Looking over at him dizzily, I see the hilt of my knife sticking out of his chest. The white of his blouse turning red. He reaches for the blade as though to draw it out.
"Don't," I say automatically, because that will only make the wound worse. I grab for anything nearby- there is a discarded sheet on the floor that I can use to stanch the blood despite my hand screaming at me to stop. He slides down onto his side, away from me, and sneers. "Please, let me-"
"I curse you," The man whispers. "I curse you and your bloodline. Three times, I curse you. As you've, the Queen, murdered me, may your hands always be stained with blood. I ho-hope death is your sole companion. I hope-" but he breaks off abruptly, coughing. When he stops, he doesn't stir nor breath. His eyes stay as they are, half-lidded, but the life in them has gone.
My wounded hand flies to cover my mouth in horror at the curse, as though to stop a scream, but I don't scream. I haven't screamed this whole time, and I'm not going to start now when there's nothing to scream about.
As minutes sip by, I just sit there beside the man, watching the skin of his face grow pale at the blood no longer pumps to it, watching his lips go a kind of blue. My hand hurts awfully bad, I feel as though I may pass out as I look at my own reflection in the mirror across the room: a Queen, hair tousled, eyes feverish, red dripping down my chest and hand onto the floor below at my feet.
Aemond is coming soon. He should know what to do with a dead body, right? I'm sure he's killed people before...maybe. No, I should be able to hide the body myself. I need to hide the body myself. Adrenaline still rushing, I scan the room, hoping for inspiration but all I see is the bed against the wall so I'm quickly getting the sheet, spreading it out, and rolling the man onto it.
I feel a little queasy and not just from my hand. His body is still warm. I ignore it though, and drag him over to the bed and push him and all the skirts underneath first with my hands and then when I feel like passing out from that, my feet.
Only a smear of blood remains. I get the pitcher of water near the bedside and splash some on the stone floors and then some on my face and hand. My good hand is shaking as I finish wiping up, and I sink to the floor, both hands in my hair.
And when the doors open and Aemond comes in seeing the reddish water on the floor and blood in my hair, on my dress, and my injured hand, only then do I allow myself to finally feel the pain. I'm hurting, badly. I can't focus on anything, especially Aemond as he rushes to me. My muscles tense and shake with the strain, my breathing coming in short, pained gasps.
"Aemond." I whimper as I feel him sweeping me into his arms and the world goes dark.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
