hi! i'm philomena! you can call me phia.
i am 26 and from florida, usa (est timezone)
i am irish & indigenous american! i am also non-binary, any pronouns are okay.
my ao3 • my main is @eiralune, so follows & likes will come from there!
i don't do taglists any more unfortunately, its mostly because i never remember and then feel bad about it so i've made a second blog just for reblogging my fics!
@huramuna-fics -- follow & turn on notifications for just my fic postings!
requests are closed.
i am currently obsessed with HotD, more specifically, Aemond Targaryen.
i also love Alicent Hightower and Helaena Targaryen and am always up to talk about them. i am a new aegon ii girlie, but i love that pathetic sopping wet cat!
i have been writing most of my life but finally have the courage to actually publish some of my work, so enjoy!
my general fic recs are here!
take a look at my golden grail fic recs here! these are fics i would take with me to a desert island, to the grave, adorned on a shrine, etc. they are the ones that i reread semi-regularly and are my absolute favorites.
my work is 18+, so minors please DO NOT interact. i will smite you.
MASTERLIST
feel free to drop requests, but there is no guarantee i will actually do them -- my writing drive comes and goes and i usually hyper fixate on the one thing i am currently working on, but i will mark them for later and reply once the request is done! rest assured, i am looking at every request. 🤭
i will write for aemond, helaena, alicent and aegon II.
i will only write wlw for alicent and helaena.
i won't write requests the following themes:
- non-con
- incest
- underage
hey!! i hope your recovery is going well so far <3 how has progress been on your original works? are you enjoying the process?
hiii thank you dearest ❤️❤️❤️
unfortunately my progress for my novel is at a standstill… i’ve been unfortunately neglecting it while i was prepping for my surgery. I’m hoping that once I’m recovered, I can get back to it!!
The Princess and the Dragonknight | Aegon x OC | Chapter Three
Rating: Explicit
Ships: Aegon II Targaryen x Abrogail Strong (Lyonel Strong's Daughter), Jacaerys Velaryon x Helaena Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen x OC, Gwayne Hightower x OC
Summary: A disastrous wedding. A looming war. A castle echoing the screams of its past. Dalton Greyjoy and his kraken fleet threaten war upon the Riverlands while the machinations of politics at home and in the capital keep playing their tune, pulling Aegon and Abrogail into a dance they wish to escape. The pair must navigate the pressures on their marriage, and hold onto one another as the rivers rise and the flames threaten to burn them all.
no tag list. please follow @emkald-fic and turn on post notifications for updates or subscribe on AO3
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Author's Note: It's been... a really difficult time but I think I'm finally making it out the other side. Maybe? Hopefully. All my love to everyone still hanging in here with me!
And huge major shoutouts to @foxinthegodswood and @nightswatchyaoi for being them. I remember the light in the world because you guys are with me.
CHAPTER THREE
Aegon clawed with the little energy he had left, kicking, struggling until he broke the surface of the cold pond, gasping and reaching for something to grab onto, to pull himself from the depths. Someone lifted him from the pool, and he coughed up pond water, with a raw and painful throat as he clawed at the mud, vomiting water, and blood that soaked into the tree's roots. He collapsed against the soft, damp ground with salt and iron vibrant on his lips while his aching body wracked with sobs.
He would die here, wouldn’t he? Amidst the twisted white roots on the banks of the pool, the rustle and rush of leaves above him—the funerary prayer. Aegon gave in, his body to become one with the earth, if only for respite until he could claw his way back to her, where everything was warm and soft and didn’t hurt. Let the roots rise over him and cage him in the darkness and the damp and the eternity.
Aegon turned onto his back to stare up at the creaking bones of the weirwood he lay beneath, blinking as a scarlet leaf fell gently between his eyes. Brushing it away, he froze at the looming figure above him. The face looking down at him was square, ruddy and worn, beard twisted and almost so long it might touch Aegon’s face if he lifted his head. His eyes were dark like a stag’s, tunic woven with leaves of green and red, and his antlers...Aegon couldn’t tell if it was an elaborate headpiece or if the figure truly had stag’s antlers sprouting from the head, so tangled and bushy was the man’s hair.
“Was it you?” Aegon rasped, voice ragged from screaming.
The man cocked his head, his voice a rush of river water over stones, rasping as if he inhaled too much smoke. “Tá rogha le déanamh agat.”
Agat, he thought. “You...have? I have?”
Aegon slowly sat up, eyes widening as he took in the unnatural legs the man had. Those hairy, crooked legs were deer limbs, not a man’s. He swallowed past his aching throat, shivering.
“Déileálacha déanta, fuil geallta,” the man said, gesturing behind Aegon. He turned to look up at the angry, weeping face of the weirwood, red sap sticky beneath its eyes, and took in the numerous cuts across its face. Thirteen cuts oozed the same red sap from the wounds in the bark, as vivid as the leaves that clung to the shivering limbs.
His knees shook, legs as unsteady as a foal when he rose, hands scrambling against the trunk so he could meet the face. Beneath his touch, the tree groaned, and air rushed around Aegon’s body as the maw of the face rounded; the mouth moving as it exhaled.
“Lig don tine dó geal agus fíor, mallacht ardaithe, croí a rinneadh nua.” Everything vibrated, the words themselves rumbling through the twisted roots around him, shaking through his arms, the air crackling. Aegon could not look away as the tree spoke to him, trying to understand what it said. “Sa luaithreach, éireoidh lá nua. Scéal tine, mallacht dúshlán.”
The groan the tree let out at the end of the last word was a settling one, like a giant gone back to sleep, the hills and forests settling around the disruption. Croí. Aegon knew that meant ‘heart’, mallacht meant ‘fire’. Something about hearts and fire?
“A bride for Harrenhal.”
The clear use of the common tongue jerked Aegon’s attention to the stag man, now standing beside him. “They leave quickly. Sickness. Water. Poison.”
“Was Abby poisoned?” Aegon asked, panic rising inside of him. The impassive look that answered his question stilled him. “Was I poisoned?”
The leaves rustled above him. Aegon's legs could no longer bear his weight, and he crashed down on the twisted tree roots, the bark digging into his ass, aware that he was naked to the world, to this strange man-beast and the talking weirwood tree.
He’d been poisoned
“Promises made for you,” the man said in the startlingly clear common tongue. “But they were not yours. You do not have to honor them if you wish to leave.”
Aegon frowned. “But I did promise. I made her promises. They’re mine to make and mine to honor.”
The limbs shook with sobbing, their creaks and groans frantic and frightened. “Aegon, you promised...Aegon, please don’t do this. I love you, Aegon, you promised. Aegon, no! No!” The leaves above him wept, their tears dripping onto his cheeks and coursing down, salt upon his lips.
He couldn’t leave her. He promised never to leave her, no matter how much the endless sky called him, beckoning him to give up and fall.
Helaena pursed her lips and poured the third cup of tea, the amber liquid steaming hot as it spilled from the decorative spout: the tea pouring from the roaring mouth of a dragon with silver crests on the side of its face. Rich shades of blue and silver painted the ceramic, and a chip along the lid of the pot revealed the pristine white beneath.
Ser Simon himself brought the tea service to Helaena when she arrived, explaining that it belonged to Princess Rhaena. It was rightfully hers in his estimation.
She looked up at the portrait above the fireplace. These were also the princess’ rooms, cleaned and made ready for her. A portrait of her fellow rider hung above the marbled mantelpiece. Gold still clung to her curls that had gone more to white with age, crows feet creased around lilac eyes that were so like her brother’s.
Would both their Aegons perish at Harrenhal? Helaena’s brother was not hers in the way Rhaena’s brother had been, but Helaena still loved the mess of her older brother, worried for him as ribbons of dreams she couldn’t quite remember tightened around her. Spools of green and black threatened to choke them all, weaving not a tapestry but a noose.
“Helaena?”
“Yes, little bird?” Helaena looked at her littlest brother, who sat beside her, and clucked her tongue, reaching out to stroke his unkempt hair. His red-rimmed eyes showed dark circles, but he had concealed tears for hours. It took all of her cajoling to get him to stop pacing in front of the apartment doors and to come sit with her and the princess and have some tea. “Here, they brought food as well.” Heleana put one of the small meat tarts on his plate next to the slice of cream cake. Hers was untouched, her pastry-crowned meat tart looking forlorn, as if floating in the sky or sea that was the delicate, matching blue of the plate.
“Is Aegon going to be alright?” Daeron’s voice broke into her thoughts.
Helaena scraped her teeth against her lower lip, her fingers tapping against her own teacup, and finally tore her gaze from the painting. He looked at her with such innocent worry it broke her heart.
Her baby brother could not understand. Though, Helaena supposed, he was no longer a baby and almost a man grown. She could see the touches of it in his jawline and how even now, in clothes just made, his shoulders were straining at the seams. Not long before, she and Abby had been carting him, collecting sticks and leaves to cushion his nest, while Septa Lyserra's screeching made Helaena’s ears bleed when they tried to feed him worms.
‘He’s just a baby bird,’ Helaena mused. Then, ‘He’s a terrified boy.’
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, toying with the ends of his short, dark blonde hair that curled like Aegon’s around his ears.
In the low light, she could see the shades of red clinging to the strands. He’d been far more strawberry as a babe, and Helaena remembered Mother crying into the fine baby curls, a sad smile on her face that she couldn’t understand. Aegon whispered in her ear and claimed it was because Daeron didn’t look like them. Afterall, they looked like their sire. Helaena wasn’t sure what their hair color had to do with anything, but maybe it was everything to Mother.
Sunfyre cried in the silence, and Dreamfyre responded. The disquiet twitched in her limbs. Helaena’s jaw clenched, her throat scorched.
Visitors filled Harrenhal to the brim, and Helaena didn’t have the energy to entertain them all. Being here alone with her brother and sending away everyone else was helpful. She didn’t want simpering women who didn’t care and only wanted what they could gain. Her ladies were in the other room; Margaery had ushered them out to give Helaena some quiet, and she was grateful for it. Margaery understood. She could not replace Abby; that was impossible. There was too much there, woven in their tapestries, that tied them together, now stretched thin from the distance pulling them apart.
But Margaery Crane would do.
The quiet had settled Dreamfyre enough for Helaena to stop tugging at her hair and clothes, wearing a trail into the already worn rug with all her pacing. And now there was tea and cakes and a worried little brother.
Helaena was not good with comfort, or change, or people who did not speak what they meant, but she tried all the same.
It had been more than a day since Aegon had collapsed with blood foaming on his mouth. The sun was high in the sky, and no word came except of his lingering, like the story about grandfather Baelon and his burst belly.
“Aegon’s in the hands of the Stranger now, I suppose. Or the Crone with her lantern lighting Aegon’s path. Both, probably, because the Crone is very wise because she is so old and must have some agreement with the Stranger to keep her from death.” Helaena hummed. “Aegon does need all the wisdom he can get, doesn’t he?”
Daeron hiccuped a surprised laugh as his blue eyes filled with tears, and she hushed him, drawing him into her arms like she knew the others preferred, and let him cling to her.
The sun had slipped beneath the horizon, the room aglow from the fire in the hearth: a gaping dragon’s maw that growled and hissed from wind snaking through the flue and the incessant drip of water that needed to be repaired. Long shadows danced along the walls from the fireplace and braziers attempting to warm the space, but all she felt was the icy embrace of grief and the Stranger. Abby could not make out the ceiling; the room was tall and too many shadows lived in Harrenhal.
They said Aegon wouldn’t make it until dawn.
Bay leaves smoldered in a bowl at the bedside, red hawthorn berries rolling amidst the ash. The same scent permeated her mother’s chamber in the Hand’s Tower. Burning bay and chamomile and rosemary formed what became an oppressive cloak meant to clear the miasmas in the bad air of the capital. The smoke made her nose twitch, the memory of the scent causing her hands to tremble. The lump stuck in her throat felt like she was forcing down her childhood, crying in fear at her mother’s long impending death. All that was missing was the scent of iron and a red-stained bowl next to the jar of wriggling leeches. Orwyle did not prescribe such things and Abby was grateful. She did not think she could stomach watching those long, dark worms grow fat on Aegon’s blood.
Abby fiddled with the long, supple strands of green rushes in her lap, fingers moving to fold them into a poppet. These she could do from instinct; a toy that could be made from a collection of ribbons as easily as river grass. The imperfections in the grass caught on her fingertips, scratching lightly, offering her something green and grounded when she felt like she would burst apart or float away from the grief and fear and anger that roiled inside of her. Before the High Septon blessed Aegon, they had pulled down the woven branches of the larger wreaths. Abby had found them when the room had emptied, the twisted branches buried beneath the bed. She wondered if she left them long enough if they would grow wild and unchecked, rising around where her husband lay to cocoon him in brambles like a maiden from a story until they could heal him.
Wylla reached into the basket for another rush, weaving it through her fingers to make her own northern poppet. She was quiet and curled up in a chair she’d pulled in front of the balcony door, legs tucked beneath the flared, tartan wool of her kirtle. “If you insist on looking as you are,” she’d said, lugging the heavy chair across the rug, “then I’ll sit here.”
“We make these to guard against the long nights when winter comes. It was before Rickon was born, when we were stuck at Last Hearth. Madge Umber taught me to twist and bind them.” Wylla tugged the strip beneath the folds and loops already made. Abby watched with dull eyes, her fingers frozen against her own poppet. She found it easier to be lulled by the quick and sure movements, much like watching Helaena focus on her embroidery, or the way the lady’s maid would braid her mother’s hair.
Movement against her ankles drew her attention to Theraxis, who coiled himself around her feet, rubbing insistently with his warm, vibrating bulk. His purr was loud enough to fill the silence, forcing his way into grief as he forced his way into wherever he felt that he belonged. The cat jumped upon the bed as if it were his right, and lay on Aegon, purring, with his head laid upon his breastbone.
That should have woken Aegon. Theraxis was heavy and even when he pressed all his paws against Aegon’s chest, what normally would have had him groaning awake did nothing to stir him. His lashes were long and dark against his cheeks; the flush bled from him until the pale dusting of freckles offered their own attempts to bring him color. His lips were slightly parted.
Abby reached forward to trace a finger against his lower lip, feeling the whisper of a puff of breath from his lips. She pressed the supple flesh, wriggled her finger inside to pull it down and look at the red of the inside, the crooked line of his lower teeth before she drew back. His lip bounced into place. No movement, not even a fluttering beneath his eyes.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
He did not.
“Wake up, Aegon,” she repeated, commanding him, ordering him, confident and strong.
He still did not wake.
Theraxis cracked open a great, yellow eye to peer at her.
“Wake up, please.” Three times for a wish, three times to make it true; a plea, desperate, cracked like this crumbling fortress. Heat flooded her eyes once more, and she furiously blinked, wiping her cheeks to stem the flow.
They whispered about Harren’s curse, that each who held the seat had come to ruin. Five families held the seat before the Strongs. Was this the next manifestation? Her family’s downfall? Athair had been married twice before, gone with fever and drowning, her own mother from illness. Aegon? Aegon with poison, stolen from her desperate grasp with cruelty. Her fingers instinctively curled around his wrist to press in the weak flutter of his pulse. Could she hold him tighter?
Theraxis shifted only just while Abby curled into Aegon’s side, resting her head on the pillow beside him and pushing his limp, silver hair from his pale forehead. The oils the High Septon had smeared across his brow caught the dancing light, the ghosts that whistled through the cracks throwing shadows across the bed. Her cat turned his head to bump against the hand she had wriggled beneath his purring body and above Aegon’s heartbeat.
She buried her face in his soft hair. The incense clung to him; the frankincense making her nose tickle, mingling oddly with the familiar, bright scent of his lavender and mint soap. Her cat purred against Aegon’s body where her hand pressed, beneath him.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped pathetically against his neck. He was not a plant in need of water, but her tears might have held magic. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder. Beneath the soft linen, the imprint of her teeth branded his skin from his nameday tourney and the heated, passionate embrace in the tent. She could still feel him against her, his hands on her body, his mouth burning her skin, and his voice, “I love you.”
Wylla’s fingers were gentle in her hair, her breath warm against the shell of her ear. “I’ll be back. I’m going to send for some tea.” Abby said nothing until Wylla squeezed her shoulder.
“Alright.”
“You’ll stay here with Aegon?” Another squeeze.
“Yes.”
Her insides felt raw and empty, a jagged wound exposed and too big to stem the bleed. The cage of her ribs that held Aegon inside her shattered open, leaving ragged splinters stuck in her flesh as someone ripped her love away, cruelly robbing her of all warmth.
Wriggling her fingers free from beneath Theraxis, who mewled in his usual, vague annoyance, Abby propped herself up on her elbow to look down upon Aegon’s still face. Expressive features so often contorted in amusing faces, twisted pouts and comically raised eyebrows, seeking to draw laughter from sulking siblings losing a toy in the muck of the garden pond, or to stem tears and chase away shadows from broken orphans with aching knees in the sept.
“Wake up.”
His sun-warmed skin, now gray and waxen, remained still and lifeless. The gargoyles perched alongside the ravens atop the Hall's roof weren't so still, lifeless.
Sobs caught in her throat like moths in a spiderweb, and she shut her eyes against the vision, tears breaking from her and spattering upon his face like spring storms. She shoved her cat away to mount Aegon’s body, her body pressed against his. Abby cupped his face in her hands and lowered herself, breathing in the meager whisper of his soul.
“My bright star...please don’t leave me. I cannot live without you. I love you too much to let you go.” Would that she could take him inside her body and bring him back to life. “Mo réalta geal,” she whispered, breath puffing against his pale, plush mouth like she could breathe his soul back into him, the precious thing he’d given her to keep her warm. Or, more than likely, her own spirit, snaking through herself to fill his gaps and spaces where he had grown hollow.
She sealed her vow with a kiss, her mouth molding against his. She kissed him as deeply as she wished she could have in front of the realm, but nerves and shyness had drawn her back. Abby kissed him with all the breath in her body, all the warmth she held, with all the longing and ache.
To kiss him, she wanted to die. She wanted to be with him forever; she didn’t want to draw breath when he could not. She didn’t want to feel the sun if he could not. She did not want to live in a world without him.
His lips shifted against hers with the pressure, and Abby’s fingers clutched at his face and into the fine hair at his temples. Aegon’s mouth moved again, opening against hers and inhaling her exhales as he responded to the kiss.
Aegon was kissing her back.
Was there poison still clinging to his lips? Had she too also tasted death and succumbed to it to fall into the realm where this could be real? Aegon’s mouth gasped against hers, inhaling her, drawing her in as if the kiss itself would give him life. Was it giving him life? She didn’t want to open her eyes and tear herself from this dream or afterlife she had fallen into. Abby didn’t question it, tears dripping onto his face, coursing down his cheeks and salting their kiss.
When Aegon’s tongue caressed hers, warm and familiar, there was no denying it. He was kissing her back. Abby’s eyes flared open, and she tore herself away in confusion, not realizing that his hands gripped her arms and her motion drew him up with her. She searched his face, taking in the flush of his cheeks, the movement of his mouth as he panted for breath, and...
Aegon’s eyes, lilac irises now golden with black slit pupils, gazed back at her.
Hey, if no one told you today, I'm telling you now: I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you woke up today.
No translations for the river tongue in this chapter cause everyone gets to be in the dark about what Aegon was being told.
