Nestled in a cocoon of thick trees and vines, it is barred from the world.
The iron teeth of its gates spring from the ground and guard it with a jealous ferocity.
A sliver of its slate-dark roof juts out of the foliage, flanked by willowy gothic spires. A single orange light burns in the tall, narrow window; flickering in the dark, and pale during the day.
The house admits no visitors, and none but the foolish wish to enter the property anyway.
On its grounds, a serpentine hedge maze sits and waits, coming alive when the mist descends. Though it would be more accurate to say, when it rises.
No one can tell you for certain how it looks, or how large it is, or whether it hides something.
Whispers, thin and uncanny, became legends, that make conjectures about walls and shrines inside the maze, and howls echoing in the thick, consuming mist, floating on the silent night air, occasionally reaching the slumbering city.
Inside the house, they say, the architecture changes at will. Walls erect themselves, or else obligingly crumble; stairs move, and grow taller or shorter, tripping up unwelcome walkers and leading them into frustrating dead ends. Doors slam and curtains draw when the house’s ire is awakened. Lights go out and rooms drop precipitously into freezing temperatures. Even figures in paintings – figures no eyes have seen – move alongside you, eyes snagged on your form, peering beyond their frames and at times hopping into adjacent ones, to help or deter.
There are all sorts of critters around, that much at least is verifiably true. They can be seen crawling close to the gate, spilling into the land beyond. Never too far, though. Spiders, fat-bellied and astute; black cats with white sigils on their chests and white mittens on their large paws - a sign of luck. Critters that defy description and cataloguing, bugs in glimmering armor, even shadows, agile and articulated, guard the house and grounds.
The Steward of Ravenwing wanders around, rarely seen by anyone. He sleeps most of the day and takes up his nightly vigil when the Sun is long past its zenith. He looks lost and disheveled, often shoeless, in overlarge jeans and a worn shirt, like he’s not of the world. At least not entirely of this one. He talks to ghosts and shadows and spiders, and clams up around people.
Martin is a strange, harassed boy, and many days, he’s barely alive.
I never knew what love was, or how it vanquished terror, selfishness, or even common sense – until I loved him.
Summary: modern!Osferth; sent to investigate crimes happening within the church, Osferth faces life outside the cloisters he is used to. Struggling with his heavy burden and the temptations that lurk on every corner, he succumbs to the charms of a neighbor.
(light on plot and heavy on angst and fluff/midly suggestive, part of a larger fic)
WC: ~1.1k
*
This new life Osferth was living, like a borrowed shirt, felt all new. Tight and chafing in odd places, but exciting, vivifying. It made him different.
One night, he followed a vague lead into a steamy basement night club that smelled like sweat and perfume and alcohol, where he watched scantily clad people walk and dance around. He let some drunk woman over a foot shorter than him drag him onto the dance floor and touch him in places he had no interest in being touched. Not by her, at least. He was indifferent, if a little disgusted at points, and in the wee hours before dawn, soaked in his small tub until the water went cold.
Another time, he met with a liaison and had a cigarette just to do it, just because they offered. Just because he could. It stank and made him cough, almost nauseated.
Those things he did not terribly enjoy.
But there were things he liked.
He even thought about getting a pet. The simple, small joys of feeding it and scratching his nails into its soft fur, seeing it sleep in some corner carved out just for that purpose.
He’d never thought he would miss jeans. Or, to be more precise, he never noticed he did miss them. An open collar. Beat up converse like he wore as a kid.
He even liked doing laundry, especially since that one night.
Basket perched on your hip, passing him in the doorway. You’d meant to go, and he meant to let you, but the conversation just kept going, easy and wonderful, only stopping when the constant readjusting of the basket became ridiculous and conspicuous, and you both finally accepted it was time you went.
On his floor, books were littered and splayed open, and he had an enormous undertaking ahead of him. He was searching for things he only half believed could be found, and half hoped were exaggerated if real. Black masses, and Sin Eaters, and too many dreadful deaths. He couldn’t bring himself to face them tonight. It was raining and the world felt small, shrunken to the dimensions of his tiny apartment and he wanted to breathe, wanted to feel something other than despair.
He was allowed to leave his order, and temporarily relinquish some of his duties. He wore everyday clothes, he didn’t have to pray or attend mass when he had other work, didn’t have to follow strict doctrines on comportment. Even vows of chastity and poverty could be bent and ignored on occasion, if it brought him closer to the answers he was seeking. More and more, however, he sought not to bend, but break. Break unbreakable things, he reminded himself, and it felt like drowning on dry land.
His wishes, half-concealed even from himself, brought you out in the hallway at the right time, as he stood in the doorway, leaning his long, lean body against the frame, unsure where to go, what to do with himself. He wondered if his throat pounded as you chatted, his heart firmly lodged in it.
He accepted the drink you offered, if he had nothing better to do. He would have dropped it all, even if he did.
No, he didn’t want wine. It reminded him of church too much. You didn’t need to know that part.
So now he stood in the doorway of your kitchen, shoes off and toes curling on the floorboards, watching as you looked around for something else to drink. Body moving casually, like he wasn’t on pins and needles, opening cupboards, stretching to reach the elegant glasses stacked in a neat row; the silence thick and heavy.
He fought and dismissed the urge to run, to close himself off, and let the moment wash over him, wondering had he ever really been on a date?
Was it like this?
Talking vacuously, not even hearing the words that fall on your ears as you try to appear fine, nonchalant; telling your hands to stay put, ordering your body not to move on theirs; cursing at your eyes when they glance at what you want, sure you’ve been caught and found out…
He didn’t avert his eyes over the rim of the glass when he drank. You looked away and flushed, and talked so sweetly, low and intimate, susurrating like the rain batting at the windows.
He draped an arm over the couch and listened, not bothering to extinguish the stars of infatuation in his eyes.
Was it like this?
When people like each other, unabashedly, when they don’t struggle against the pull they feel?
From one moment to the next, he knew, it revealed itself to him, forcefully and beyond doubt. It was exactly like this. His cheeks burned. He was in the middle before he knew anything had started.
He watched your nails, painted a shade of purple and dusted with iridescent glitter. You made a quick little wave with your fingers, and he looked away instead of meeting your eyes, wanting to keep his desires and affections, like an open wound gaping in his gaze, to himself.
Did he like the color, you asked, meeting his shyness with tenderness.
He did, he admitted, running the tips of his fingers over the length of your fingernails, feeling the gritty texture of glitter and the smooth coat of polish, and then your skin against his palm. He liked everything about you.
*
Kissing was easy enough. He met you in the middle, and it was a light brush of lips on lips. He pressed closer and sighed when you touched his face, running your thumb over his cheekbone. The kiss fell away with a gentle pop, and his head swam. Again. Please. He was afraid he’d said it out loud when you smiled and leaned back in. It was longer then, and deeper, and he was sure he died a little when your mouth parted and his tongue smoothed over yours. Osferth was firmly in his head, eyes snapping open every now and then, checking if you liked it.
When he moved away, face hidden in the crook of your neck, his stomach twisted. Oh, god, you would know. You would figure out any moment he had barely any clue what he was doing, hands unsure and flitting away before they really touched or grasped anything, palms buzzing to stay. Would it be too much?
Did you mind that his open mouth was on your neck? Maybe he was going too far, too soon? It seemed too easy, too simple, to just do what he wanted, get away with it, be welcomed. There had to be some catch.
He was rescued from himself when your hand slipped into his, one finger at a time slithering between his and curling around the knuckles to hold him fast, body arching under him. He fell, and fell, and fell, and was caught.
[whatever they tell you, the wedding is not about the bride]
Summary: HOTD x Ready or Not x Happy Death Day AU. Plays fast and loose with ages, continuity, some character backstories.
The Targaryens fall under the influence of a Red Priestess and resort to human sacrifice as a way to preserve power, and protect themselves and the Kingdom from a devastating plague that recurs every thirteen years. Ravenna is set to marry Aegon and, on their wedding night, the family plans to sacrifice her. Aemond is chagrined when he realizes the bride does not know what she is in for.
Now, here’s the catch – the bride has already done this. Many times. She has been stuck in a loop, repeating the night and all its terrors, over and again, trying for a very specific outcome.
POV shifts between Aemond and Ravenna, italics are past loops and they sometimes appear out of order.
CW: all of them?, strong language, death, gore, sexual content, incest, cult behavior, mental abuse, sexual abuse, sugar, spice and everything not nice
Word count: ~9k
*
Aemond stood arrow-straight in the hallowed halflight of the Grand Sept. Its carved stone walls reached impossibly high, towering over the worshipers like a mountain over a hill of roiling ants. The light poured in at a slanted angle from the largest window above the dais, drawing every eye to it. He, alongside his family and that of the bride, had the choicest position to observe the ceremony. Standing on the dais, raised up and displayed to the unwashed masses, he faced the gathered crowd and the happy couple. The Septon was pontificating in his usual droning, self-important way. The spare prince had learnt many moons ago to ignore his drivel.
All these ceremonies had sounded insincere and hollow to Aemond, from his earliest youth. Watching wretched men and women piously bow and sagely repeat words of wisdom and mercy and benevolence, only to turn around and head into pleasure houses or dedicate themselves to thievery and lying, or any other path to the destruction of their soul. For all his flaws – constantly enumerated to him and rubbed in his face – Aemond at least did not count hypocrisy as one of them. That had to be worth something, he told himself. At the very least, he could sneer to his heart’s content and feel nothing but self-righteous satisfaction. As the Septon’s words faded into a tangle of echoes bouncing off the Sept’s stone walls, he focused his eye on the bride and groom.
The woman was as tall as Aegon, possibly inching him out by the height of a thumb. Aemond smirked as his gaze dropped to his brother’s polished, ornate boots, made specially for this occasion. Larys had intercepted whispers that the cobbler surreptitiously modified the insides of the boots to make Aegon stand taller on his wedding day and, looking at him now, Aemond was sure the murmurings had been correct. As the second-born son of the King, he ought to disdain malicious rumors such as these, but the relentlessly harassed child in him still preened in delight whenever Aegon showed just how low and inadequate he was deep down, and even on the surface. Still, an evil, tormenting voice that never allowed too much joy to bloom in his heart reminded Aemond that it was his brother – not he or anyone worthier – who was marrying the captivating beauty from the Riverlands.
Her dress was a shock of white with silvery embroidery that looked like it took a lifetime to stitch. A nod to her house’s emblem, the silvery trout. It was an unfortunate sigil, Aemond had always thought, one of the stupider and less auspicious ones he was forced to learn by heart as a boy. The Dragon, the Direwolf, the Lion, the Kraken - those stirred the imagination. Still, the Tullies made their little bride take everyone’s breath. A collective gasp of admiration swept across the Sept as she was walked from the doors to the dais, on the arm of her proud father, in a manner of speaking. A deep, regal blue cloak, trimmed with auburn furs to represent the House Tully colors covered her frame and concealed most of her dress until the ceremony demanded she be uncloaked.
She stood tall and poised, her long raven hair framing her face in meticulous braids and curls before spilling in lush waves down her back. The shimmer of her dress seemed to make her skin glow in the twilight of the gloomy Sept as she hid her two mismatched eyes – one sapphire blue, the other emerald green - under her lashes. Aemond realized he had half expected to see her wear some odd, multicolored cowl, or ostentatious jewelry or hairstyle as a nod to her much-discussed heritage. But it seemed her maids and likely her house’ council knew the bride would shine brightest with nothing beyond her odd brand of preternatural beauty adorning her.
Lady Ravenna had started life, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, as an orphan in some secret corner in the shadows of Asshai. All Otto and his spies could ascertain was that a missive from Pentos paid for her board on a ship bound there, where the Lord of the Riverlands grew enchanted by the babe crying in the night while he was being hosted in Pentos. The Lord had had three wives who died in childbirth, spurring rumors of his mad rages that their children had been female, or a curse drifting over from Harrenhal and striking the lineage dead. His gesture of taking in an orphaned female child with no name from a distant land to ward, and later adopting her, had quashed at least one of those rumors. If he could dote so achingly on a stranger’s child, and a daughter at that, he wouldn’t have struck dead his own wives and his own blood. When the beauty from Asshai, now the beauty from the Riverlands, grew hale and hearty, as wise as she was pretty, and as strong as she was kind, the rumors of Harren’s curse slowly evaporated as well. Lady Ravenna was a credit to her father and her lands. Lands that could be useful and contested soon, when King Viserys inevitably succumbed to his long and awful ordeal of an illness.
Lady Ravenna’s ambition had been to train as a translator, since the privilege of studying with the maesters in Oldtown was denied to her sex. Having educated herself as well as she could with the tutelage provided by the Riverlord’s own maester and various teachers about the world and the place where she had come from, the value of any knowledge, especially knowledge that unlocked access to new people and heretofore undiscovered information via arcane languages, the young lady had become infatuated. She studied voraciously and was by all accounts a prodigiously talented student. So much so that the ailing King himself was charmed by her abilities and accomplishments. To the Riverlord’s surprise and partial dismay, King Viserys had his own maester make himself available to the precocious lady, supervising her instruction in High Valyrian.
It was the only time Aegon had shown any concerted attempt to master and use the language, trying to impress the studious young woman. To Aemond’s barely concealed pleasure, the lady far outstripped his pathetic brother’s abilities within weeks. Days, probably, Aemond was comfortable in guessing, even though he kept a respectful and wary distance from Lady Ravenna, especially in those early days, and he could not vouch for how speedily she progressed while he was busying himself training doubly hard in the yard and riding Vhagar until she got restless and resentful of too much aimless flying taking a toll on her limited stores of energy.
Aegon’s quickly developing infatuation was a nuisance and an embarrassment to the royal family, as the wretch possessed manners suited only to taverns and the shadiest of pleasure houses. When he embarked on his ill-advised courtship of Lady Ravenna, it mainly served to mortify those present. Soon, however, it became apparent Aegon had no intentions of letting up his advances, tantamount to assaults. Too late, it seemed, he was taken seriously, as his affections – perverse and intense as they unfailingly were - had taken deep root in his rotten heart.
Fate was calamitous in its persistence to bring the Riverlord’s daughter together with the young dragon prince. The Lord of the Riverlands had become concerned when his daughter had taken up and excelled in several languages, and all the more when word of her gifts and determination reached even the ears of the King. His support for his adoptive daughter was a dagger to the Lord’s heart, though he was not yet prepared to admit it. Ravenna’s ambitions to work as a translator and train up even more would inevitably take her away from him, most likely far across the sea. The very notion broke the Lord’s heart, long ill-used and trampled upon by the vagaries of fate that had taken three good women he loved in his own way from him, and every child he had fathered along with them. Now fate was still not satiated of his pain, working its fingers through the unraveling tapestry of his family to spirit his adoptive daughter away as well.
To tempt her into staying put, desperate to keep her by his side, the lord had floated the idea of making Ravenna his heir. Her ambitions and abilities would serve her well in that position and she might have opportunities still to develop and satisfy herself further in her new potential role. There was resistance among his people, turbulent and difficult at the best of times, when the idea was first brought forth. A woman, and a foreigner at that. One not even born to their Lord, or anyone in the Riverlands. It was an outrage and an unacceptable notion. Over time, seeing the Lord’s determination and persuasive arguments, alongside Ravenna’s own admirable comportment and wide array of skills, the other lords gradually softened to the idea.
Then at last, fate dealt a kindness to the Riverlord. The young prince, the King’s first trueborn son had taken a shine to her. More than that, he made repeated advances and demanded a betrothal from both the Riverlord and the ruling family. It was an opportunity not to be missed, a gift wrapped invitation from destiny to remain in Westeros and embrace a life no one could have dreamed up.
Since the Riverlord seemed to be following in the King’s footsteps, naming a woman his heir, it stood to reason that the Riverlands would be keeping faith with Rhaenyra once she made her claim to the crown. Marrying Ravenna to Aegon was far more of a political move and far less an appeasement of Aegon’s preposterous tantrums and declarations of love. What niggled at Aemond’s mind was why the Lady Ravenna would agree to the wedding, as it was to proceed.
As far as advantageous matches went, one of his loathed bastard cousins would have been a better choice, as much as he hated to admit it. Conflict seemed inevitable, whether it was contesting Rhaenyra’s reign in the immediate future, or contesting the reign of her bastard children, ugly dark-haired pretenders sired by hardly more than servants, and living only to shame their family as long as they drew breath. Being orphaned herself and begotten gods know how, Aemond wouldn’t expect Ravenna to care all that much if either of the three snivelly toad-faced bastards, Luce or Jace or Joff, was made her husband, as long as they were in line for the throne. Unless she supported the succession of Aegon and intended to rally her father and the other lords to his side. But even if she did, the price she would need to pay for this wedding seemed too high. Aemond wondered, more than once as the nuptials approached, if he were to marry a princess, or if he were a woman marrying the son of a king, would he have the ambition and fortitude to face what awaited Ravenna this night?
His answer was as easy as it was clear. Yes. He, Aemond, would. But he, Aemond, was not the soft animal that Ravenna seemed to be, only just uncurling out of the lifelong loving embrace of a doting father, adored for her beauty and benevolence. He, Aemond, had hardly ever been held. People looked away from his ghastly, ferocious visage. He was feared and detested, starting with his closest family and reaching endlessly around him, like an evil miasma that left him only to train with the sword, read philosophy and history, disdain and best others, honing his ambition and fortitude to a fine point, until that was sharper than the points of blades crowding around him and piercing into his once-soft heart. He couldn’t imagine what the demands of this night of fire and blood would do to someone who was not a dragon. And then he knew.
One final once-over told him beyond a shadow of a doubt. Ravenna did not know. With her open expression and rapture with the ceremony, there was no way she was prepared.
Aemond now grappled with a disapproving scowl on his face, trying not to glare at his brother. His arms were folded behind his back and he balled them into tight fists, feeling the lean muscles that coiled up his arms and shoulders start to shake with the effort. He didn’t tell her, Aemond clenched his jaw, the thought repeating relentlessly in his head, the snivelly lying spineless little ferret didn’t tell her. He wondered then if he had ever believed Aegon at all when he assured him that he had, or if he was only trying to appease his own conscience. But now, there he stood, shaking under his black leathers, conscience decidedly unappeased as he looked at her, walking headlong into a trap, unaware.
The other time his family had attempted this desperate maneuver, all parties had entered it with a clear understanding of what was at stake. Some, he shuddered to remember, quivered with a deranged kind of anticipation of the bloodshed. He never so much as pitied the priestess, even if her ordeal had horrified him as much when he was a boy of three and ten, as it did now when he was a man of six and twenty. The ordeal turned out to be for naught, and that was the main thing his family ever seemed to regret. Now the wheel was turning again, the time was ripe for another attempt, and the same evil threatened them all again. Aemond had no qualms about spilling blood, or doing what was necessary. The crucial difference between the last sacrifice and this one, however, was that they all knew what was coming and what was at stake.
Aemond stood stewing in his righteous anger, watching the ceremony slip irrevocably by like sand in an hourglass. He watched as Ravenna’s father pulled off her pristine maiden cloak, telling himself in some distant, secret corner of his mind that he would do something about this. Help her, surreptitiously somehow, even kill his own brethren if they were particularly bloodthirsty or played unfairly. He would actually gleefully murder Aegon given even a shadow of a reason. But there were others around him now, in this Sept, who he suspected could stay his hand with a look or a well-chosen word. So he knew all this supposed determination was for nothing – even if he did have some moral fiber, which was disproven time and again, it wouldn’t avail to anything. Shrykos always won in the end, ending and restarting invisible cycles, raising up the insignificant and smiting the giants. There was no contending with the gods, especially the deranged, wicked ones, sprung from the blazing infernos of Old Valyria.
Aemond resumed listening after Aegon was handed his Targaryen cloak to robe it over Ravenna’s shoulders. Their mother had to relent to the standard black and red of the Targaryen house, but made sure the cloak was pinned together with a bright emerald pendant. It had the effect she intended, glimmering in vibrant green sparkles, drawing every eye and bringing to mind Hightower colors, twinned in Alicent’s own luxuriant velvety emerald dress. It announced to the world this exquisite woman was for the first and trueborn son of Kind Viserys, her son, not just another ornament to the great dragon’s scales. Aegon stepped closer, moonstruck and stupid, unfurling the long cloak. Aemond had to look away in disgust from his brother’s idiotic expression, anticipating those fateful words of covenant on the air, with this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife. How anyone could say them with any degree of earnestness was beyond him, and he wondered if his dimwitted brother was capable of remembering any short string of words that did not include expletives.
Aemond’s interest in the insipid words waned as his attention was caught by a marked change in the bride’s expression. She stiffened, like she suddenly woke from a nightmare, face darkening and growing contemptuous. Aemond glanced around himself and no one else seemed to notice it right away. ‘No,’ she announced decisively, snatching her hands back from Aegon’s and stepping away. Her resolute cry echoed through the quiet Sept, as though casting a spell over the gathered throng. No one reacted for a long, incredulous moment. Things like these simply didn’t happen outside of nursemaids’ and troubadours’ tales, and even there, they beggared belief. Ravenna stepped back again, and again, more surely, and within a few steps, she was making her way backwards down the aisle where her father had escorted her to give her over to her husband-to-be. Murmurings started, but still no one thought to take any decisive action. Had she run, hunting instinct would have sent dozens of people descending on her. Yet, her strange confidence in leaving almost leisurely created a sense of normalcy, like this was the right thing.
At the door of the Sept, Ravenna paused, turned, and locked eyes with Aemond. Deliberately. The look ripped through him like a quarrel. He got the odd, yet undeniable sense that she was saying something to him – saying a lot; so much all at once that he could decipher none of it, except that it was deathly important.
*
The commotion finally started outside the Grand Sept; Aegon came to his senses at long last and perfunctorily raced outside, pushing through the roiling crowd to catch up. It was no trouble on Ravenna’s end to explode on him, not after the night she had just had, screaming herself hoarse about what a liar, coward, pitiful, wretched, twisted, disgusting creature he was, that she’d rather die than marry him. Being exactly the coward, pitiful, wretched, twisted, disgusting creature she knew him to be, Aegon just stared, first in shock, then indignation and, finally, humiliated fury as she stalked off. The guests gathered around the jilted prince, gobbling like confused, outraged turkeys, faces suitably red and wattles jiggling under their weak chins. The Targaryen family gathered in a separate circle, talking in hisses and murmurs, exchanging hurried, loaded glances. Queen Alicent landed her heavy gaze on Aemond. ‘Find her. Convince her to come back,’ she commanded and Aemond nodded, a habit upon receiving an order. It would be easier said than done.
*
“You’ve been helping her?” Aegon demanded, outraged. Aemond didn’t see who it was that actually dealt the blow, but his clothes were quickly drenching with blood, the warmth almost pleasant against the chill of the night. An axe lodged itself deep in his chest and his lungs refused to breathe through the sharp, scorching pain.
“You of all people should be thanking me,” he managed to gurgle, the effort of it almost insurmountable. He was fading fast. “She’s your wife.”
“What are you talking about, ‘my wife’? Are you trying to get us all killed, you disfigured freak?” Aegon bellowed in hysterics although plenty of the night remained still to do the ritual. In his already limited, and now quickly shrinking, field of vision, Aemond saw how Ravenna struggled against Daemon’s pitiless arms that closed around her, trying to reach for him, eyes desperate to express how sorry she was for what happened to him. He knew. He was sorry too. They had been so close, the gate was right there. It was careless to stop and share looks. Try to express this madness that seemed to develop between them. It cost them everything in the end.
Spitefully, Aegon rose to his feet next to Aemond’s prone body and stomped the axe further in.
*
There was nothing to be done today, Aemond assured himself as he walked aimlessly around, circling the enormous leering skull of Balerion deep in the cellars of the Red Keep. Vhagar’s skull wasn’t much smaller, he mused reflexively whenever he found himself there. He swelled with an odd mix of pride and shame at the familiar thought. Pride, to be the rider of the mightiest living dragon, battle-hardened and fierce. There would likely never again be another to match her splendor and size. The dragons hatched over the last few decades had been markedly smaller, slow to grow, reluctant to bond with riders. Vhagar was the last true dragon worthy of the name. And then rose shame, that he needed to cling so desperately to Vhagar’s strength and might as a reflection of his own worth. There had been a time when he would have been happy with just an egg, or with the smallest, most inauspicious dragon, as long as it was his.
To redirect his thoughts, he walked carefully, foot over foot, back achingly straight, to the mass of candles, burning serenely and occasionally crackling, fusing together to create a solid, oozing mass of wax, endlessly burning in this underground shrine. He held his hand over the candles, warming his blood to a boil, testing the dragon inside. The action brought to Aemond’s mind one evening, while Aegon was courting Ravenna, trying to impress her. He similarly held his hand over a candle for a hideous amount of time, steady and self-satisfied, enjoying as horror swept across onlookers’ faces. Not a flinch nor a wince to betray any pain as they gasped and looked away. Aemond knew Aegon had used his old trick of affixing a scrap of leather to his palm, smooth and thin enough to be imperceptible, but resistant enough to flames to shock those not privy to his childlike antics. In his youth, a similar trick was used on Aemond by Aegon and his bastard cousins, convincing him he was resistant to flames and the test was likely to help him in bonding with a dragon. For his efforts, he was rewarded with a swift scolding from his mother and many weeks of applying a thick, reeking ointment to his palm from the maester’s apothecary. The cloying ointment did its job well, there was hardly any mark anymore to betray Aemond’s shame and stupidity from that long-ago time. He was silently gratified when Ravenna didn’t coo and swoon from the sight of Aegon’s feat, merely inquiring if he was sure he was in no pain. He smirked to himself, rubbing his long fingers over his warm palm, soothing the burning spot in the middle.
The day, and night, would be eaten up by appeasing guests and trying to save face, he knew. In private, there would also likely be a sacrifice. A goat – maybe a lamb this time? Something to rival the innocence of Aegon’s runaway bride in the eyes of the ancient gods, so they don’t precipitate their vengeance on the Targaryen family. They were overdue a willing sacrifice, or at the very least an offering, thirsting for blood that was human. The wedding would simply be postponed until whatever got into Ravenna was settled, and then all would be well, Aemond thought. Well. From the Targaryens’ point of view, that is. What was good for the axe wasn’t necessarily good for the tree. Aemond had chosen to be the axe and there was no going back, he protested against himself, against the queasy roiling in his gut. He thought he had made his peace with it long ago; aligned himself with the interests and beliefs of the dynasty his family was building, stone by bloody stone. But every now and again, something woke his nagging conscience and he was left wrestling with it in the impenetrable dark, and each time, he came closer to losing.
“You should take me away from here. Hide me,” Ravenna told him, the pleasant tones of her voice echoing gently in the intimacy of the shrine. She didn’t make it a demand, or a question either. Aemond did not feel surprised she was there, which should have been cause for alarm in itself. He knew he would take her, and she seemed to know it too. He should have felt like she fell into his lap, appearing here out of nowhere, and making his job of retrieving her and convincing her of going through with the wedding that much easier. But something told him her actions were more purposeful than just falling haplessly into a trap.
The Kingswood.
Nestled deep in the forest, Aemond had come across a dilapidated cottage. While the King’s retinue amused itself with hunting defenseless animals, he spent his time wandering away from the party and dedicating himself to restoring the ruin with his own hands, for his own private use. When the place was decently restored, he could lock himself away for hours and read or just be with his thoughts, uninterrupted. The secret cottage had bestowed the opportunity on the young prince to clash with outlaws and bandits who sought refuge in the woods. On several occasions, he’d found men sniffing around the cottage, stealing the belongings he’d left behind and even trying to break in. He’d easily bested them all, which was only to be expected, given his superior weapons and advanced combat training by the rigorous Ser Criston Cole. Still, he found satisfaction in rising to the challenge when ambushed and besting opponents in real life scenarios, not just the practice yard. Those minor skirmishes soon became more of a nuisance than a pleasure, so Aemond decided to conceal the cottage to the best of his ability so as not to have it attract unwanted visitors, and undid some of his restorations to make the interior less hospitable.
By this time, the cottage had been abandoned for many months, with the prince struggling to remember the last time he’d retreated there for some solitude. The forest was vast and it gave sufficient room to Vhagar to rest and to spread her wings, so he only ventured to the Kingswood to give the old girl some space and sport.
The place was bound to be squalid and in disarray, and he wondered if the lady would object and be insulted to be taken there. But for secrecy, there was no other place that Aemond could guarantee was unknown to all but him.
*
Ravenna shuffled quietly down the corridor, back against the wall for safety, and slipped into the library like a shadow. Several nights of sneaking around and some useful instruction from Aemond had taught her how to get around as unseen as a ghost. Aemond was waiting there, as he always did, each new night after the chase for Ravenna had started. A sword hung off each of his hips and he towered over a table, resting his weight on his two clenched fists. He never joined the hunt, hiding himself away for as long as he could, until she inevitably ran into him, as though pushed by unseen hands of fate. She stared wordlessly at the back of his head, listening for anyone in the corridor outside.
“I have to call for them. You know that,” Aemond said quietly, his tone resigned. He kept his eye on the long desk in front of him, shined up and stretching deep into the large library, heavy with scrolls and bound books.
“But you won’t. You want to make it fair for me, at least somewhat. To give me a head start,” Ravenna countered, quiet and as collected as the surge of panicked hot blood rushing through her constantly for days and days now would allow her to be.
His decision never changed. Aemond was loyal to his family. Loyal and true, as unbending as the metal of his armor. If he turned his back on them, he was no better than his whore-sister, spewing out bastard after bastard, or his perverse brother. But for all his superficial iciness, he did not have a cruel soul. He especially hated seeing innocent and damaged things suffer for the amusement of tyrants. He couldn’t put her above his family’s dynasty; that was absurd. But he didn’t have to offer her up himself either.
/
Ten seconds, Aemond decided, that night and all others before, and all the ones to come. Ravenna had to save herself, and he would remain sitting in the solitary library, playing deaf and dumb, and blind in both eyes. He would count slowly, he knew that as well. That didn’t seem too egregious a thing to do. And if she proved resourceful and smart, then he would be vindicated. Then he could do more without feeling like a fool and a traitor. But how did Ravenna know that? The words she spoke and more than that, the way she spoke them, sounded like a prophecy of some oracle, or a witch.
Aemond turned to take in the sight of this peculiar, entirely confounding woman, and the corner of his mouth curled in a strange sort of delight. She had already gotten rid of the excess on the bottom of her dress, making it easier to move. If he wasn’t mistaken, a small dagger she picked up along the way was tucked into her sleeve. It almost felt like she had come prepared for this very eventuality.
Ravenna came close, angling herself perfectly into his limited line of sight, as though she knew exactly how far his field of vision stretched. Aemond felt like he would erupt in a furious, humiliating blush at the idea, and clenched his jaw tightly against it, willing his body not to flush. She laid her hands on the desk and stooped to be on eye level with him. Having caught him with her gaze, she leaned in, coming intimately close. “You know the shortest path from the Tower of the Hand to the dungeons?” she asked, her eyebrow arched meaningfully. It wasn’t really a question. “I’ll be behind the locked door – you come find me when you’re able.” So she knew about at least one of the hidden passages in the palace. Ravenna could see his face pull into confusion and suspicion, a dozen questions crowding on his tongue. “Just do it. Please,” she gritted out, eyes boring into him, deep and unyielding. His gaze flickered over her face, taking it in. It didn’t feel like some desperate ploy to throw herself at him, at anyone at all, and ransom her life with her body. Others had tried that, with him and others besides, and it never panned out anyway, irrespective of how cheap it was to begin with. No, this was something else. Aemond didn’t understand it, but time was short. He knew he wanted to hear more.
*
What madness possessed him? Aemond hardly thought of anything as he took the old winding passages built all those years ago by Maegor for all his secretive and sinister purposes.
So much of the time, Aemond struggled with himself, trying to bury unwanted, treacherous feelings as they worked to knock him off his path. He feared losing himself in them. Jealousy ruled him, anger washed over him like waves crashing into rocky shores, uncertainty about his place in the world a constant, silent companion. It was maddening. Now, for the first time he could recall, he was attempting to stir any of them up. Guilt, hesitation, even the mildest aversion or suspicion. All those usually roiled right under his skin. But there was none to be found now.
He slipped into the narrow, dank corridor, throwing his cloak over Ravenna. They quickly worked, of one mind, to cover the sparkling slashes of her dress, throwing the hood halfway down her face and fastening the long cloak everywhere they could. As he gave her an assessing once over, Aemond told himself this was the first cloak she was robed in after her maiden cloak was removed; his. Even then, no guilt or aversion could be summoned.
They scuttled like rats all the way down the winding path – a familiar, well-trodden trail that led to Sylvi’s brothel. The madam was unsurprised by Aemond’s appearance, as ever, and didn’t bother disguising any familiarity between them. That was the only pang he’d experienced so far, his eye flying surreptitiously to the bride’s half-hidden face, looking for any scowl or twitch of her shapely mouth at the recognition passing between the prince and the madam. There wasn’t time to search long for her reaction or offer explanations – besides, he hardly needed to give account of himself to his brother’s would-be wife. The bride was tucked away in Sylvi’s brothel until Aemond could appease and dismiss guards and other miscellaneous searchers, sending them away from the roads he needed to use.
They rode hard, under cover of darkness, into the Kingswood. He hadn’t said a word the entire time. He barely even needed to look back to see if she was following as the drumming of her horse’s hoofs right behind him told him she was keeping up with perfect ease. He wondered if he should break the silence once they arrived at the cottage, but it seemed too hard to begin. What was there to say, really, beyond acknowledging their madness?
“Get me out of this thing,” Ravenna’s tone was a demand this time, for the first time in their acquaintance. She twisted as though the dress was burning her, laced on the inside with some insidious poison. Aemond didn’t react immediately. This should be the groom’s job, he mused, his lean fingers twitching at the thought of touching her and disrobing her. Was he really devoted to Aegon at all, or simply to social mores; what was holding him back? She needed to get out of that dress eventually anyway, he rationalized, urging his legs to move.
It was her voice, the tone she used. Familiar and unabashed, like she wasn’t afraid of him at all. Like they had known – trusted – each other. Pushing with defiance against the flutter that thought gave him – he would not look weak, not look like a fool – Aemond looked the dress over and tackled the task ahead of him.
She was buttoned and laced in, from the wrists to the elbows and from the chest to the chin, the rich fabric heavily embroidered with silver. It must have taken an age to sew and lace her into the thing. The rest of her dress followed her curves until it flared, silken and dreamy, giving her the appearance of some ethereal being, something that might come to a man only in a dream.
His progress was slow; fingers too twitchy and clumsy to fiddle with the delicate buttons and lace. His pride was wounded when a voice in his head reminded that it had been a very long time since he had laced a woman out of her clothes too. He wouldn’t be this clumsy if someone put cold steel in his hand. But a warm, soft, attractive woman… One leagues above those in Flea Bottom. That was a novelty.
The bride had both her sleeves all the way unbuttoned and he was still making his slow way up her spine, hands clammy and growing shakier with every passing moment, imagining the full weight of her undivided attention on his pitiful efforts. She moved her hair obligingly from her neck when he made his way up high enough. Almost done. Confidence bloomed in Aemond for a moment; he could do this. Finish the last button and give her leave to go into the bedroom, if one could call it that. It was a tiny room with a bed that was less uncomfortable than the long bench, bare wood and punishingly narrow, that protruded from the wall in the main area that served as the living and dining quarters, library, solar and armory. He resigned himself to it, knowing he would wake up stiff and achy. But he needed to do the respectable thing if he stood a chance of convincing her to go back and go through with the wedding.
The last button came undone and her body slumped in relief, grateful to be free of the binds. The two sides of the dress came apart, sending a rush of cool air across the sensitized skin, making her shudder.
He could not do this at all. As though pulled in by the tide, Aemond’s fingers ran down the trail of spine he had exposed and his heart raced from the contact, pounding in his ears. She shivered some more.
It was a terrible, stupid, wrong-headed idea. He was weak, and a fool, and this would end badly, so badly. Aemond chastised himself bitterly as she turned and caught him by the collar; as she seared her lips into his; as she pulled him inside the bedroom. He screamed and hurled insults at himself in his head as he pulled the rest of the dress off her; as he helped her undress him; as he groaned with need at the lightest touch. He admonished himself as he tumbled back on the bed; as he relished the sensation of a slick, hot cunt around him; as he stared at the ceiling, buzzing and empty, vowing to continue the barrage in the morning.
*
It was bound to happen sooner or later. He had died already several times, by someone else’s hand and once or twice by hers. A mistake once - he snuck up on her in the dark. It was a reluctant, ultimately unsuccessful attempt to help her, despite every reasonable thing inside him telling him not to do it. It wasn’t instantly fatal; Aemond bled out slowly in their hiding spot, an evil reward for his instinct to do the honorable thing. Ravenna found him, pale and lifeless, at dawn. Another time when he was caught under the wheels of the carriage hurrying her out.
She had revealed too much, the time it happened. Too eager to get a move on, coax him to her side, she pushed too hard, made him nervous. She knew far too much of exactly what she shouldn’t and he panicked. His hand was swift, merciless around her throat. It was her turn to learn how it felt to die at the hand of the one she was trying to save.
/
He wanted her, from the very first time, when it was all terrifyingly new. And, while he didn’t remember the loops, not in the literal sense, that feeling accumulated – an instantaneous, demanding desire, to keep her from what was coming, to possess her. So when she pushed and yelled and went from that meek, but intelligent creature Aemond felt so much tender compassion for to an angry, demanding mess that led him expertly through passages and hiding spots even he barely knew, it was too unsettling. ‘Are you a spy? Who sent you? Who told you all of this?’, he demanded, shoving her against the wall as soon as they ducked into a hidden passage that she by rights should not have known existed.
‘It will sound mad,’ she bemoaned, eyes hopelessly filling with tears. She knew she had overstepped and his temper flared, fearing the danger he imagined in her, ‘but you did. We found it out together, over time.’ He faltered for a moment and she called his name, as if she knew him, as if she expected him to save her.
He pushed her harder against the wall and squeezed his gloved hand around her neck, first one and then, reflexively, the other. Black spots appeared in her vision, further obscuring the already dark passage. He didn’t mean to; he thought she would crack and confess. But Shrykos, unseen but felt, stoked his rage and he didn’t even know his own strength in that moment. The windpipe between his squeezing hands was crushed. Moments before, she seemed like a hurricane, capable of crumbling the Red Keep and all the dragonblood within it, and then she snapped between his hands, fragile like a bird. Aemond slumped in time with her body, in a grotesque act of mirroring, and his vision blurred with unshed tears before he ever touched ground. This was the last thing he wanted, and it came still, regardless of his desperate wishes, and at his own accursed hands. It was too much, and none of it made sense.
She wasn’t dead yet. The body clung to life still, holding on to the last breath still in her chest. But no more would enter through her ruined throat. Her eyes were bloodshot and a tear slipped silently down her face. She reached for him, hand crawling pitifully in his direction. It felt like grief, and forgiveness. She could no longer feel it by the time he peeled off his gloves and lunged for it, squeezing her hand uselessly with both of his.
*
Aemond woke up with the glare of the sun on his face. He remembered that the day before, a part of him was wondering if he and his family would survive to see this dawn. If he did, he questioned how he would feel about it. If he confessed to them, or to the bride, that he wasn’t even sure he believed that all of this bloodletting served any purpose at all, would if bring relief to anyone, himself included? Those concerns seemed endlessly distant in this moment.
His mother, his brother, the specter of the Red Priestess as she burned all those years ago, even the immeasurable threat of a plague were far, and in this unassuming cottage, tucked out of the way and humble, one could imagine the old gods of Valyria were far away too. What would they want in an unremarkable place like this?
The bride was asleep still, breathing deeply, her shoulders rising and falling slowly. She had not redressed the night before and neither had he. Her hair, carefully done up for the wedding, was ruined by what they did the night before and now stuck out in places it shouldn’t. He wanted to touch it, cradle her head and cup her cheek. He wanted to be given languid kisses and have breakfast, one bite at a time out of her fingers, in no rush to go anywhere or do anything.
Instead, Aemond slipped carefully out of bed and got dressed, scribbling a short note with his finger into a metal mirror that hung on a wall and gathered a generous coat of dust since the last time he visited. He should bring some essentials to the cottage; paper, ink, food, clothes.
Stay, it read, and he placed it on his pillow.
*
Aegon’s nose cracked under Aemond’s knuckles and he cried out like a dying animal, cowardly and over-dramatic as always.
“Shut up!” Aemond descended on him when he fell to the floor, grabbing his collar and pushing a knee into his chest. The broken nose was for his own satisfaction – Aegon would have squealed under the mere threat of physical violence. Therefore Aemond waited to make his demand until after. “There’s got to be a way out of your chambers, to the dungeons or to Flea Bottom. Even if Maegor hadn’t built a passage, someone would have in the intervening years,” Aemond snarled and Aegon looked from him to his bride and quickly surmised that compliance would keep him safer than trying to cry out and alert anyone to their presence.
Aegon crawled on hands and knees, whimpering and wheezing with every whistling, gurgling breath, slinking under the bed and revealing a hatch covered by a priceless Dornish rug. The descent was steep, landing onto a small clearing that branched in several directions. Most of those were collapsed or dead ends. They belonged to abandoned projects or restorations, forgotten over time or relinquished in favor of better routes. They still served different Kings and their confidantes for stashing treasures and illicit substances in their nooks and crannies. The only path that led where Aemond demanded to go was long and narrow, opening onto a small room.
Once a part of an old private cellar and later used for storage, it became the place where Aegon could take young girls and hide. Eventually, it was where he would take Helaena. It had a sofa, an old dresser and some chairs that were broken or out of fashion. There were some clothes scattered around, likely forgotten or discarded after the acts took place, and a small desk with paper and an ink pot. A few cups and plates, crusted and stained, along with a long empty cask of wine, showed that the pair spent many hours there once upon a time, away from prying, judging eyes. Even before any idea of a brother-sister marriage was ever considered between them, Aegon considered it to be his right. He knew, however, that attitudes were changeable. An increasing number of wagging tongues considered the old ways to be unnatural. But they didn’t know what it was like to be blood of the dragon. It couldn’t mix and dilute, it refused to. So Aegon knew he wanted them to be alone for it.
Aemond knew very well what the room meant, but beggars can’t be choosers. He hoped Ravenna wouldn’t infer anything distasteful. Once he was satisfied that the three of them were out of the way and there was very little chance anyone would happen upon the room, he whirled on Aegon. Aegon was about to plead for his life, but Aemond was fast, slamming the pommel of his sword against the side of his head. He collapsed and, just to be safe, Aemond stuffed some fabric – a stocking by the looks of it – into his mouth before tying his wrists and ankles together.
“You should be safe here,” he stood and smoothed his long hair into place, adjusting inside his leather doublet and securing his sword back into its sheath. He walked the few paces over from where he stuffed Aegon in a corner, incapacitated and posing no threat. “I’ll go--”
“Stay,” she asked, timid but sincere, clasping her fingers around his wrist.
/
“Stay,” Ravenna pleaded, tired of the screams, of blood, of running. Three days in a row now, no rest, no breaks. Who knew how many more. Maybe none, maybe this would work. Maybe a thousand more.
Aemond followed and sat opposite her on the sofa, having assiduously dusted it off first. It wouldn’t sweep away the acts performed on it, but she didn’t want to make him uneasy by pointing that out. He sat stiff and cautious, like a cat only recently tempted into proximity with a human.
The air was thick with questions, with incredulity, impossibility. Perhaps he wanted to apologize, on behalf of Aegon and the rest of his family, for trying to ritualistically kill her. Or perhaps the Targaryen prince in him, the blood of the dragon, before all other things, wanted to undo the moment of mercy and pull her by the hair to be thrown like so much kindling before Vhagar. There was something studied and inscrutable about him, the way he held everything back at all times. Perhaps the best guess was that he didn’t know himself what he wanted, or what he would do next.
“You said you…” he started, voice betraying how dry his throat was, “ahem, that you… have done this? Before?”
She nodded. How could she explain? If she said she struck a bargain with a dark deity, would he think her insane for believing it, or merely stupid for doing it?
“Can you,” he started the question, not sure if it was fair to ask what he was about to, “tell me how this all started?”
*
“Congratulations,” a voice said, gleeful and unearthly.
Ravenna ignored it, staring out the window at the gathering dawn. The air was thick with the acrid, choking smell of burning bodies. Their skin and hair reeking as it burned, their fat crackling, blood turning to black tar. Jewelry fused into charred bones and petrified flesh, the only indication now to the identity of the mangled corpses, vanquished by brilliant green flames. Smoke rose from the Dragonpit and a throng of people was gathering around to investigate. Ravenna wondered what sort of sight the incinerated dragons inside their once dwellings, now tombs, would make. Vhagar, too large to fit inside with the others, had been resting in a field outside the walls of the Keep. She had soared into the air with a desperate screech, mourning the loss of her rider and her kin. Ravenna looked away with a heavy heart, expecting the enormous dragon to come plummeting through the air like a blazing falling star, wreathed in green flames until all of her flesh sloughed off her ancient bones.
The smells and stains of the previous night clung to her dress, blood and viscera splattering every inch of her body. The insides of all those dead on her dress and skin felt dirtier than anything she could imagine, so she absent-mindedly ran her hands down her now red dress, wiping off what she could. She wondered where to go now, how to explain the doom that befell the Keep in the night.
“It’s rude not to respond. Especially when you are being congratulated,” the voice went on, vibrating through her bones.
“Am I free to leave?” she asked, trying to project a confidence she was nowhere near embodying.
“Yes, but surely we can talk as you go?” the voice said and Ravenna started making her way down the cavernous Council room, descending the blood-slicked staircase, stepping over yet another concealed hatch that could have made all the difference in the preceding night, but she was still unaware of. “What are you going to do now?” the voice asked just when she dared to hope that maybe all the horror that surrounded her was all a product of her rattled imagination. It all just seemed too much, too unreal.
“I’m going as far away from here as possible.”
“Oh, really? Don’t you want him?”
The voice of Shrykos took shape, insinuating her presence onto the room. It was beyond human, beyond even concepts of holy and unholy, as far as Ravenna understood them. The form ate up all the air, all the gravity, pulling the floor at a slanted angle, and every ounce of Ravenna’s weight toward it. Her gaze helpless to look away, it struggled to take in the goddess. Taller than any man, Shrykos stood unrobed and unblemished before her. Around her head, dragon horns raised and curved, giving her a frightening, reptilian appearance. Her skin was in places smooth and marble-like, and in others, covered in scales that shifted hues in an oily sheen. Folded behind her sculpted back and shoulders were dragon-like wings. She pulled one aside to reveal what she was offering to Ravenna.
She froze, unable to look away from either. Before Shrykos said anything else, before she could take in the sight fully, Ravenna knew what the hideous goddess was talking about. Aemond was lying dead on the floor, his chest cracked open, dark and deep, like dry earth at the height of a scorching summer. They had buried an axe in him out by the gate when he was trying to sneak her out. She imagined him being dragged back to the Keep at the same as she was; Ravenna, knocked out with a vicious blow to the back of her head and waking to find her wrists strapped to a bloody altar; Aemond, hanging hideously loose on the shoulders of his brother and his sworn protector knight, dead or dying, and dropped like garbage on the floor as they joined the sacrifice in the bowels of the palace. It seemed Shrykos did not bother incinerating what remained of Aemond until he was little more than ash, like the others. Maybe it was because he was already dead and she had more amusing, living prey to toy with. Maybe his preserved corpse was a shining lure to reel Ravenna back in.
“No,” she said feebly, not wanting to look. There was so little holding her together after this night, she couldn’t stand to see him lying there.
When the goddess spoke again, her voice, now coming from an adamantine body, made Ravenna’s very bones feel like they were on fire. She closed her eyes, shaking with the effort of not crying out, of remaining upright despite the searing, blinding pain shooting through every inch of her body. She wondered how all those who burned that night felt as the green flames consumed them, bones and all, and if the agony could have been worse than what she was feeling now.
“You kissed him out by the gate, in a dark little corner when you thought you were alone and no one was watching. Someone is always watching,” Shrykos whispered confidentially.
“So?” Ravenna scoffed, trying to lie to the goddess, as if she couldn’t see right through her façade.
“You asked him to leave with you. So sweet. He wanted to, you know. He was this close to taking you by the hand and running out with you right then and there.”
“I don’t want to hear this anymore.”
“I can give you another opportunity; to get what you want. All that you want.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He helped you. Once, and again. You don’t want to help him at all?”
“I’ve seen how you’ve dealt with your worshippers. And I’ve read enough histories and heard enough sermons besides to know not to play games with gods. There is no winning,” Ravenna said, reminding – convincing – herself. She was mere steps away from being free of this, whatever it was.
“But you did, you won. You can do it again, dragonslayer girl; I believe in you. And whether you know it or not, it is your destiny. And this time,” Shrykos added, as though sharing a secret, “we’d both be playing for something that we actually want.” Ravenna’s eyes were coaxed to go where they didn’t want and landed on Aemond’s lifeless body resting in a halo of his own blood.
“When does this game end?”
“You’ll know when it’s over.”
“How many tries do I get?”
“As many as necessary. Until he is either yours or mine.”
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