Lady Arianwyn Targaryen, Lady of Runestone, was not born of love. Nor passion. Nor even a sense of duty. She was seeded by her father, the Rogue Prince Daemon Targaryen, in an act of unbridled hatred, and borne of her mother, the late Lady Rhea Royc...
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"Marry me."
Arianwyn's heart stopped.
"What did you say?" she asked, the question hardly more than a sigh. She hardly noticed that her tears had stopped, frozen where they fell on her cheeks.
Aemond swallowed, turning his gaze from her as if he hadn't altered her world – her entire existence – with just two words.
Years ago, in this very spot, she had told him how she feared being married. She did not want to return to a strange castle with a strange man who may mistreat her. She was afraid she would meet the same fate as her mother. Rhea Royce had married a strange man, and it cost her not only her happiness and reputation but her life.
Marriage was not as it was in many of the fairy tales they read throughout their childhood: romantic and full of magic and wonder.
Those were always Aemond's favorites, she knew, because in the realm of those stories, he could pretend was not a forgotten second son whose fate was limited to playing a small part in the grand tales of his more important siblings, but a valiant prince destined for greatness. And for him, she would pretend she was not a child borne of hatred, eternally haunted by the sins of her father, but the noble daughter of two ancient bloodlines fated to rule her people with kindness and grace.
No, Arianwyn preferred the other kind of fairy tale. The ones where valiant princes fought admirably against evil to no avail. Where princesses stayed locked in their towers because their keepers were too powerful to be defeated. The ones where good did not win, but endured within the shadow.
Good did not win. She was proof of it. If good won, she would have grown up in Runestone with her mother, alive and unharmed. Daemon would be dead for the crimes he'd committed. And Aemond would not have lost his eye.
But good could endure. In small, secret, bright moments. Like when he'd taken her to her old apartments, and she'd read to him. Like her having the chance to meet Helaena's children. Like that quiet moment of contentment they'd shared at dinner before it was ripped away by the cruelty of her stepbrother. It was those moments that made life worth living.
What Aemond was offering wasn't real. Even if she wished it could be.
He moved his grip on her chin to cradle her cheek. "If you marry me, you will no longer belong to your father."
"I would belong to you," she countered. Her face twisted with confusion as her heart resumed its hammering. But it did not feel like rage. Nor the all-consuming sadness that had only just threatened to overtake her. Still, her pulse raced, her face flushed, and an exhilarating chill spread through her body.
"Yes," Aemond breathed, "but I would never command you, Aria. I would never even try. You know that. In all the ways that truly matter, you would be free." His face was as open as she had ever seen, his beautiful eye almost pleading, begging her to let him save her.
