you reblogging those jace gifs have got me wondering what his and ls dynamic would be like dare i say him and aemond are the original (?) icespring/flame trinity
Oh, you cooked because 100% Jace/Lady Stark/Aemond would be the original icespring/flame trinity. Imagine the following:
You arrive at King’s Landing as Cregan’s sister. Northern charge sent south as a gesture of goodwill, a living treaty between ice and fire. You’re maybe five-and-ten, maybe younger. Old enough to be useful, young enough to be shaped by the experience. And you arrive expecting nothing, because Starks don’t expect much from South. You expect politics, cruelty and the kind of beautiful poison that Southron courts are made of.
What you don’t expect is Aemond.
He finds you (or maybe you find him, it’s hard to say later, when you’re trying to trace the origins of how it begun) in the library three days after your arrival. You’re reading a history of the North that gets everything wrong about your people and their customs, written by some pompous Citadel maester who’s never been further north than the Twins, and you’re seething quietly, the way Northerners do jut never say. Aemond watches you for a full ten minutes before he speaks, and when he does, it’s not a greeting.
“That’s wrong,” he says, flat, factual. “The Night’s Watch didn’t establish Castle Black until after the Long Night. That maester’s timeline is off by centuries.”
You look up. One eye, sharp as a blade, fixed on you with an intensity that should unsettle you but somehow doesn’t. There’s something predatory in the way he stands there, perfectly still, waiting to see what you’ll do with his intrusion.
He’s older than you. Not by much, maybe two years, but those years sit on him differently. He carries himself like someone who’s already survived something that should have killed him.
You close the book.
“The whole thing is wrong,” you tell him bluntly. “But that’s the worst of it.”
Something shifts in his face. Not quite a smile (Aemond doesn’t smile easily, you’ll learn that in time) but a recognition. Someone else who cares about getting it right. Someone else who also notices when history is being rewritten by people who weren’t there.
“I have better texts,” he says. “If you want them.”
It’s not an offer. It’s a test. You stand.
“Show me.”
It starts with books. With history. With the two of you sitting in the library until the candles burn down and some poor servant has to come find you both to tell you it’s past midnight and you’ve missed supper. Again.
Aemond doesn’t have friends. He has Vhagar, he has his studies, he has the sword—and now, somehow, he has you.
But calling it friendship doesn’t quite capture it. There’s an intensity to the way he focuses on you, the way he watches you move through the world like he’s memorising every gesture, every word, storing them away for later analysis. You’re both loners by nature, people who find the constant performance of court exhausting, and there’s something unspeakably relieving about finding another person who doesn’t require that performance. Who’s content to just exist in parallel.
But with Aemond, the parallel always feels slightly tilted. Like he’s not beside you but circling you, some apex predator recognising another and deciding (for now) not to strike.
The sparring comes next. You watch him train one morning because you’re awake early (Northern habits, you wake with the sun no matter how late the Southron court keeps you up) and you end up in the training yard as he’s running drills. He’s vicious. Better than good. He moves like violence is his first language, every strike precise, controlled, lethal. There’s something almost beautiful about it, the way he fights like he’s trying to kill ghosts only he can see.
You watch for an hour before he notices you. When he does, he doesn’t stop. Just pivots mid-form to face you, sword still raised, and the look in his eye is dangerous. Like he’s deciding whether you’re prey or witness.
“Well?”
Not what are you doing here or why are you watching. Just: well. Like he’s been waiting for your assessment. Like he wants you to find the flaw.
“Your guard drops on the left,” you tell him, meeting that sharp gaze without flinching. “After the overhead strike. Just for a second, but it’s there.”
Most people would bristle. Most people would make excuses. Aemond runs the form again, slower this time, and you’re right. His guard drops, just a fraction, just enough for someone fast enough to slip a blade between his ribs.
He stops. Looks at you. And something in his face changes, something settles into place that you won’t understand the weight of until much later.
“Again,” he says.
You spend the next hour breaking down his technique. You don’t train with swords the way he does (you’re a highborn lady, but you’re still your father’s daughter and watched him drill men all your childhood; you were taught to fight dirty, to survive, not to duel with pomp for a show) but you have an eye for it. For finding the places where form becomes habit and habit becomes weakness. And Aemond, who’s spent his whole life being told he’s not good enough, not whole enough, finds himself listening to a Northern girl tell him how to be better, and instead of rage he feels something close to hunger.
Because you don’t see him as broken. You see him as a weapon that could be sharper. And that kind of clear-eyed assessment, that refusal to pity him or patronise him, makes him want to pin you down and make you explain exactly what else you see when you look at him.
But he doesn’t. Not yet. Instead he just watches you with that unblinking intensity and says, “Tomorrow. Same time.”
It’s not a question.
It becomes routine, becomes ritual.
You watch him spar every morning and afterward you read together. Sometimes in the library, sometimes in the Godswood where you feel less homesick, sometimes in his chambers which raises eyebrows but neither of you care.
The silence between you is comfortable in a way that nothing else at court is, but it’s also charged. Aemond takes up space differently when you’re alone together. Sits too close. Lets his leg press against yours when you’re reading side by side. Touches your hand when he’s pointing out something in a text and lets the touch linger just long enough that you notice.
He never crosses a line. But he makes sure you always know exactly where the line is.
The Valyrian lessons start because Aemond is tired of having conversations in Common where anyone can eavesdrop. He wants to be able to speak freely with you, to say things in public that remain private, and the only way to do that is to teach you the language.
He’s a brutal teacher. Utterly unforgiving. He drills you on conjugations until your accent smooths out, until you can roll the vowels the way a native speaker would, until you’re dreaming in Valyrian and thinking in it without meaning to. When you make mistakes he corrects you with a sharp edge that would wound coming from anyone else, but from Aemond it feels like attention. Like he cares enough about your fluency to push you past your own limits.
And when you finally get something right (when you conjugate a particularly difficult verb or use a subjunctive clause correctly) he looks at you with something that might be pride, might be possession, might be both.
“Again,” he says, and you do it again, and again, until the words feel like they belong to both of you.
It takes months of gruelling work. Maybe a year. But eventually you’re fluent enough that he can murmur something to you during a feast and you’ll understand, and no one else at the table will catch more than every third word.
You use it to mock the lords who bore you with their petitions. He uses it to say things that make you flush and look away, comments about the cut of your dress or the way some young lord was staring at you during the dancing, observations delivered in that flat affect that makes them feel almost clinical except for the way his eye tracks your reaction.
It should feel like victory. But then Aemond realises: the bastards speak Valyrian. Daemon’s daughters speak it. Half the fucking court has at least enough to parse a conversation. Your private language isn’t private enough.
“We need another one,” he tells you one evening, apropos of nothing.
You’re reading (some Essosi text on the history of Old Ghis) and you look up, confused.
“Another what?”
“Language. One no one else here speaks.”
You stare at him. He’s serious. His face has that set expression he gets when he’s made a decision and won’t be moved, but there’s something darker underneath it. Something that looks almost like jealousy, like the thought of other people understanding your conversations with him is intolerable.
“You want us to learn an entirely new language,” you say slowly, “just so we can talk without being understood.”
“Yes.”
“You’re insane.”
“Probably,” he agrees, and his mouth curves into something that’s not quite a smile. “Old Ghiscari or Summer Tongue. Your choice.”
You end up choosing Old Ghiscari because it’s harder, more obscure, and if you’re going to do this you might as well commit. It takes another year. By the end of it, you and Aemond have something no one else at court can touch: a language that exists only in the space between you, a way of speaking that’s yours and no one else’s.
He can lean in close during a council session and murmur something in your ear that sounds like gibberish to everyone else but that you understand perfectly. Can tell you exactly what he thinks of the lord who just proposed an alliance, can say things that would be treason in Common but in Old Ghiscari are just observations between the two of you.
People notice. It’s impossible not to. The Prince and the Stark girl, always together, always apart from everyone else. They whisper about betrothals, about alliances, about what it means. But anyone who asks gets the same answer from both of you: We’re friends.
And you are. You’re friends in the way that matters more than romance, in the way that’s harder to sever. But there’s an edge to Aemond’s friendship that feels almost like ownership.
The way he appears at your elbow during feasts and steers you away from men who look at you too long. The way he speaks for you sometimes, answers questions directed at you as if your thoughts are his to interpret. The way he watches you dance with other lords and his jaw tightens, his hand grips his wine cup just a fraction too hard.
He doesn’t realise he should be worried. Why would he? You’re his sparring partner, his language partner, his only companion. You’re the only person at court who doesn’t exhaust him, who doesn’t require him to be softer or gentler or more whole than he is. You’re his, in every way that matters to him.
The fact that he’s never kissed you, never formally courted you, never actually claimed you in any way the court would recognise… that doesn’t seem to register. As far as Aemond is concerned, he’s put in the time. He’s earned this, earned you. You’re his by right of proximity, history and the fact that you shaped each other.
Everyone at court knows the only lady Prince Aemond will dance with willingly is you.
Even that’s rare (Aemond hates dancing, hates the performance of it) but when he does, it’s with the settled certainty of someone who doesn’t need to prove anything. He holds you exactly the way he holds his sword: with absolute control, with the confidence of someone who’s mastered the form.
And then there’s Jace.
There’s something about you that gets under his skin in a way no one else does, something that makes him feel like he’s losing his mind in slow motion.
He’s mild-mannered, a true prince, a future king. His mother likes you. His siblings adore you. Luke follows you around like a puppy, and Joff asks you endless questions about direwolves that you answer with infuriating patience. Even Daemon likes you, in his own way, because you don’t flinch from him and don’t preen and that’s better than most court ladies can muster up.
But Jace? Jace feels like he’s trying to grab smoke, like every interaction with you leaves him with nothing but the ghost of something he can’t quite name.
You’re calm. That’s what gets under his skin, what makes him want to shake you just to see if there’s something hot underneath all that ice. You’re always calm, always measured, always in control. Even when Aemond says something cutting in Valyrian and you respond in kind, even when court politics get ugly and people start taking sides, you never lose your composure. You’re like winter itself: cold, clear and impossible to shake.
And your friendship with Aemond makes him insane.
He tells himself it’s because Aemond is dangerous. Because Aemond is a Green, or will be, when the sides finally split. Because Aemond is everything Jace isn’t: trueborn without question, purely Valyrian, a dragonrider without the weight of whispers following him everywhere. He tells himself he’s worried about you, about what it means for the North’s alliance if you’re too close to the wrong side.
But that’s not it. Not really.
Really, it’s the way you look at Aemond. Not with desire (Jace could fight desire, could understand it) but with ease. Like being near him is the most natural thing in the world. Like you’ve built something together that exists in a language Jace doesn’t speak and can never learn.
Jace wants you to look at him like that. Wants to be the person you choose to sit with in comfortable silence, the person you spar with verbally and physically, the person who gets to see you without your armour on. But every time he tries to get close, you’re cordial. Pleasant. Distant. You smile at him the way you smile at every other courtier, say the right things at the right times, and somehow it all feels like you’re holding him at arm’s length while pretending not to.
It makes him crazy. Makes him sharp-edged in a way he’s not with anyone else, makes him lose the careful diplomatic composure he’s spent years cultivating. He starts needling you. Subtle digs about where your loyalties lie, about whether you’re more comfortable with the Greens than the Blacks, about whether you’ve forgotten you’re supposed to be representing the North, not Aemond Targaryen’s personal interests.
And you never rise to it. That’s the worst part. You just look at him and wait for him to finish, and then you say something calm and factual that makes him feel like an ass, and he hates it, hates the way you won’t just react, won’t give him anything real to work with.
He starts watching you almost obsessively. Notices things he shouldn’t: the way you tuck your hair, the way your mouth curves just slightly when Aemond says something in that language that makes you want to laugh, the way you hold yourself differently in the Godswood than you do in the throne room, looser and more yourself. He hoards these observations like a man possessed, turns them over in his mind late at night when he should be sleeping, and he doesn’t understand what he’s doing until one day he realises: he’s trying to learn you the way Aemond has. Trying to find a way in.
But there is no way in. You’ve already let someone else build a home in that space, and Jace is on the outside looking through windows at something he’ll never have.
Until one day he pushes too far. Implies outright that you’re a Green sympathiser, that your friendship with Aemond means you can’t be trusted, that maybe the North should reconsider sending someone who’s clearly more interested in currying favour with the second son than in representing her brother’s interests. It’s cruel and he knows it, knows it even as the words are leaving his mouth, but he can’t seem to stop himself.
You go still. And for the first time since he’s known you, Jace sees something cold flash across your face. Something that reminds him that you’re a Stark, that winter runs in your blood, that there are wolves in your words even when you don’t bare your teeth.
“I’m loyal to your mother,” you tell him, voice flat and hard as winter stone. “And to you. My future king.”
And Jace’s heart stops.
My future king.
Not the future king. My.
The possessiveness lands like a fist to his chest, knocks the air out of his lungs, and he’s staring at you like you’ve just said something in a language he’s been trying to learn his whole life. You stare back, unflinching, and he realises: you mean it. You’re not playing politics. You’re not hedging your bets. You’ve made your choice, and it’s him—or it’s Rhaenyra, but that’s the same thing, isn’t it? He’s his mother’s heir. He’s the future.
Except the way you said it makes him think of something else entirely. Makes him think of my king in a different context. In a bedroom. In a Sept. With a crown on your head and his ring on your finger and the entire realm watching you choose him, watching you say mine the way you just did, like it means something more than politics, like it means everything.
My queen.
The fleeting thought lands in his chest like a blade, and suddenly he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything except stand there and want you so badly it feels like it might kill him. But he doesn’t say any of that. He just nods once, sharp, and walks away before you can see what those words have done to him.
That night he lies awake and lets himself think it. Lets himself imagine you in his bed, your Northern ice melting under his hands, your calm finally breaking as he makes you feel something other than that controlled composure. He imagines what sounds you’d make, what you’d look like with your hair spread across his pillows, whether you’d fight him for control or yield to him the way you never yield to anyone else.
The feast happens months later. Long enough for Jace to have spent countless nights lying awake thinking about you, about that moment, about the way you said my future king like it meant something more than politics. Long enough for the want to settle into something focused and driven, something he carries with him at all times.
He’s watching you dance with Aemond, because you always dance with Aemond when you dance at all, which isn’t often. Aemond doesn’t like dancing, everyone knows that, but he’ll do it for you. And when he does, it’s with the kind of settled certainty that makes Jace want to scream.
Aemond holds you like he already owns you.
Not possessively (or not just possessively) but easily. Like it’s understood. Like there’s no question there that you two belong. His hand is at your waist, your hand in his, and you’re speaking to each other in that language, that fucking language that Jace has heard whispered about in corridors, the one that only you and Aemond know. You’re smiling at something he said, a real smile, the kind Jace has never seen you give anyone else, and it makes him feel like he’s suffocating.
He can’t look away. It’s torture, watching you like this, watching you be soft with Aemond in a way you never are with him. He wants to know what Aemond said to make you smile like that. Wants to learn that fucking language just so he can understand what passes between you. Wants to cut in and pull you away and make you look at him, really look at him, see him as something other than just your future king.
And then he overhears it. Two ladies of the court, gossiping behind their fans:
“What a fine pair they make.”
“Oh, I quite agree. And so close, have you noticed? They’re always together.”
“Won’t it be wonderful when they wed? Two great houses united.”
“The Hand will be pleased. And the Queen, I should think. Prince Aemond has always been so distant. This is doing him good. A strong Northern alliance.”
Jace’s blood turns to fire. The want that’s been simmering in his chest for months suddenly crystallises into something hard and focused, and he’s moving before he thinks, cutting through the crowd with single-minded purpose. When the song ends he’s there. Right there. Offering his hand.
“Lady Stark,” he says, and his voice is controlled, measured. “May I have the next dance?”
You blink at him. It’s the first time he’s ever asked. In all the years you’ve been at court, you’ve never danced together. Not once.
Aemond’s eye narrows, and for a moment something passes between him and Jace: an old animosity, some silent challenge, some line being drawn yet again. Aemond says something to you in Old Ghiscari, voice low enough that Jace can’t make out the words but can hear the tone: possessive, questioning.
And gods, the way you respond to Aemond (fluid and easy, like breathing, like you’re not even thinking about it) makes Jace want to put his fist through a stone wall. You say something that makes Aemond’s mouth tighten before he steps back, letting you go.
And then it’s just you and Jace, and the music starts, and he’s touching you.
It’s different immediately, and Jace knows you can feel it too, can see it in the way your breath catches just slightly when his hand finds your waist.
Aemond dances with control, with the settled belief that he has some part of you no one else does, which isn’t wrong. But Jace?
Jace dances like he’s trying to undo you.
He holds you close, closer than is strictly proper, and his hand at your waist is warm, firm and deliberate in a way that’s hard to explain away. He’s looking at you with an intensity that should unsettle you but instead makes something low in your stomach tighten. The cold of you makes his blood run hotter. Makes him want to burn through your composure until he finds something molten underneath, until you give him something real.
You try to make small talk. Ask after his mother, his siblings, the usual courtesies. But your voice has a slight edge to it now, something uncertain, and Jace notices.
“You’re nervous,” he observes, and his voice is calm, matter-of-fact.
“I’m not,” you reply, but you don’t sound convincing.
“You are.” His thumb presses against your waist, just slightly, through the fabric of your dress. “You’re never nervous. What’s different about dancing with me?”
You don’t answer, and Jace files that away. The first crack in your armour, the first sign that he affects you at all.
The conversation drifts somehow to the North, and you mention Winterfell, Cregan, the cold, and something shifts in Jace’s expression.
“Do you miss it?” he asks.
“Every day,” you admit quietly.
“I could take you,” Jace offers, and he pulls you just slightly closer. “On dragonback. Fly you home. You could see your brother. See Winterfell again.”
You look up at him, startled, and for the first time since he’s known you, you look genuinely caught off-guard. Your lips part slightly and Jace’s eyes drop to your mouth before he can stop himself.
“That’s kind, my prince, but—”
“We could leave tonight,” he cuts you off, and his voice is still controlled but there’s something burning underneath it now, something intense. “Right now. Forget the court. Forget the politics. Just fly north and leave all of this behind.”
His hand tightens on your waist, and he’s close enough now that you can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that anyone watching would notice. But his face is calm, almost serene, except for his eyes. His eyes are dark, focused, fixed on you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters.
“Jace,” you start, but your voice wavers.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about it,” he says, voice low and steady. “Tell me you’re happy here, playing politics and learning dead languages, pretending this is where you belong.”
“I am happy,” you say, but it comes out uncertain, and you both hear it.
“With him?” Jace asks, and there’s no jealousy in his voice now, just honest curiosity. “With Aemond? Is that what makes you happy?”
“He’s my friend—”
“He wants more than that,” Jace states, flat and factual. “Everyone can see it but you.”
“He doesn’t,” you say, but you sound less certain now.
Jace is quiet for a moment, just looking at you, and when he speaks again his voice is calm, almost wanton.
“I’ve imagined you in my bed,” he admits, and he’s not ashamed of it, doesn’t sound embarrassed or apologetic. He says it like he’s stating a fact, like he’s telling you the sky is blue. “More times than I can count. I’ve thought about what you’d look like with your hair down, what sounds you’d make, whether you’d fight me or yield. I think about it every time I see you with him, every time you speak in that language I don’t understand, every time you smile at someone who isn’t me.”
Your breath stops. The music is still playing but you’ve both stopped moving, standing too close in the middle of the dance floor, and you’re staring up at him with something like shock in your eyes.
“I want you,” Jace continues, voice still steady, still controlled. “I always have, and I’ve spent months trying to figure out how to make you see me as something other than a duty you owe to the North. So I’m telling you now, plainly: I want you. In my bed. At my side. With a crown on your head and my ring on your finger. I want all of you, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise anymore.”
The world tilts.
You’re staring at him like you’ve never seen him before, and maybe you haven’t, not really. You’ve seen the perfect prince, the heir, the diplomatic future king. But not this. A man who’s been lying awake at night imagining you beneath him, who wants you with a focus and intensity that leaves you breathless.
“I have to go,” you manage, voice shaking slightly, and you pull away.
Jace lets you, because what else can he do? But his hand lingers at your waist just a moment too long, and when you flee (you’re Northern, you don’t do anything dramatically, simply go, quickly, back to your chambers) you can still feel the ghost of his touch burning through your dress.
You don’t see the way Jace stands there in the middle of the dance floor, perfectly composed, watching you go with those dark, focused eyes.
And you don’t see the way Aemond watches from across the room, eye sharp and calculating.
After that, everything shifts.
Jace doesn’t push. He doesn’t chase you down or send desperate letters or show up at your door. He just… continues. But there’s a weight to his presence now, a deliberateness to every interaction.
When he finds you in the library, he doesn’t sit across from you anymore. He sits beside you, close enough that your shoulders touch, and he reads quietly while you try to focus on your own book and fail. When he walks with you in the gardens, he steers you down paths where you’ll be alone, but he doesn’t say anything, just lets the silence stretch between you, charged and heavy.
He’s courting you, but not the way other men court. There are no flowers, no pretty words, no performances. Just his presence. Just the steady, focused weight of his attention, his charm. Just the way he looks at you sometimes, direct and unashamed, that makes you remember exactly what he said on that dance floor.
I’ve imagined you in my bed.
And the worst part is that now you can’t stop thinking about it too. Can’t stop wondering what it would be like. Whether he’d be gentle or demanding. Whether he’d let you set the pace or whether he’d take control the way he took control of that dance, firm and sure.
“Tell me something true,” he says one afternoon when you’re walking in the gardens. His voice is measured, conversational.
“Why?” you ask.
“Because Aemond knows everything about you,” Jace says simply. “And I want something that’s just mine. Something he doesn’t have.”
And gods, the honesty of it. The way he’s not even trying to hide what this is.
You find yourself telling him things despite yourself. Small things at first. How you miss the sound of wind through the godswood at Winterfell, how you’ve never quite gotten used to the taste of Southern wine, how sometimes you dream in the Old Tongue and wake up disoriented. And Jace listens. Not the way people at court listen, waiting for their turn to speak, but the way Aemond listens, like he’s memorising every word, storing it away, making it part of himself.
But where Aemond’s attention feels like being devoured, Jace’s feels like being wanted. Like every word you give him is a gift he’s accepting with both hands.
Including Aemond.
Aemond, who’s spent years assuming you were his by right of proximity, suddenly understands he’s been taking you for granted. That friendship isn’t the same as claim. That Jace is offering you something he never thought to offer: choice. Desire. The chance to be wanted instead of just known.
But Aemond doesn’t know how to court. Doesn’t know how to translate what he feels into something legible as romance. What he knows is intensity, possession, the kind of dark certainty that doesn’t ask for permission. So instead of softening, he tightens his grip.
He starts touching you more deliberately. Letting his hand linger at the small of your back when he guides you through doorways. Standing too close when you’re reading together, close enough that you can feel his breath on your neck. Speaking to you in Old Ghiscari in increasingly intimate contexts, saying things that sound like observations but aren’t: You didn’t sleep well last night. You’re wearing your hair differently. That lord was staring at your mouth during the council session and I wanted to take his eyes for it.
He asks you to fly with him on Vhagar one morning, and when you do, he holds you differently than he has before. Not carefully, not like you’re fragile, but like he’s trying to imprint the feel of you against him into his memory. Vhagar is massive and ancient and terrifying, and Aemond flies her like he’s showing you what it means to have power, to command something that could burn the world.
When you land, he helps you down and his hands stay at your waist just a beat too long, and he looks at you with that single sharp eye and says, in Common this time so there’s no mistaking it: “You belong here. With me. You know that, don’t you?”
It’s not a question. It’s a fact, delivered with the kind of dark certainty that makes you realise: Aemond has never courted you because he’s never thought he needed to. You were always his. The idea that you might choose differently has genuinely never occurred to him until now.
And now that it has, he’s not going to let it happen.
But you’re caught between them, and you don’t know what to do.
Aemond is your history. Your comfort. The person who knows you in ways no one else does, who’s put in the time, who’s earned his place at your side through a thousand quiet moments. But there’s something dark about his certainty, because to him love and possession are the same thing.
Jace is fire. Jace is focused, driven and wants you with an intensity that should terrify you but instead makes you feel alive. He looks at you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters, like he’d burn the realm down just to keep you, and gods help you, part of you wants to let him.
And the worst part is that you can feel yourself responding to it, to him. Can feel the way your heart kicks up when he appears at your elbow. Can feel the heat that pools in your stomach when he stands too close, when he looks at you with those dark eyes that promise things you shouldn’t be thinking about. Can feel yourself starting to wonder what it would be like to give in, to let Jace pull you into his orbit and burn.
You start avoiding them both. Spending more time with Baela and Rhaena, with Luke, with anyone who isn’t trying to pull you in two directions. But it doesn’t help. They’re always there. Always watching.
Jace with his controlled intensity, his steady presence, his calm acknowledgment that he wants you and isn’t ashamed of it.
Aemond with his dark certainty, his too-close touches and his private languages, reminding you with every breath that he was here first, that he knows you better, that you’re his in ways Jace will never understand.
And then the Dance starts.
