Six: Slip So Simply
XLVII
"You should not be here."
Aemond asserts lowly, rising from his chair like a dragon rises to the sky. In one fell sweep of immense heights. He means this charge in more ways then one. This girl should not be in his private chambers. This girl should not be in Dragonstone. This girl should not be breathing and bright and brilliantly alive eating his berries, given that he had been in attendance at her burial not just a few hours past.
Yet this girl was standing in his private chambers now, this girl was back in Dragonstone after being absconded away from her mother's birthing bed by forces unknown, this girl-
This girl had risen from her own funeral pyre like dawn rises over the sea-
Like a dragon rises to the sky.
If Aemond had not seen the past hours with his own last good eye, he would think a sickness of delusion had swept through the castle unhindered. But he had seen, had he not? He had seen, and he could not reconcile what he had witnessed with the world he had awoken in yester-morn being irrevocably, irreversibly shattered by a slip of a girl who appeared like one good wind could knock over.
Taken children typically ended up dead. People typically did not come back from death. A private chamber is typically private, and one does not typically have a wayward niece come shambling in through your window.
There is nothing typical about Visenya Targaryen.
The gilt plate of fruit in the girls hand does not waver, even as her head cocks like a curious pup in a stable, and she hits back in a way Aemond does not see coming.
"Where else should I be, then?"
It's a ploy. A trick. Aemond knows this, as he knows, or at least suspects from this very small amount of dealings between the two, that Visenya Targaryen, who should only be a babe still but clearly not, uses her words like Aemond would use feints in a fight. A deflecting approach to keep the eyes away from the dagger hidden behind a back.
Clever-
But not clever enough.
"I dare say you should still be on your funeral pyre."
He replies, unimpressed and drawling despite feeling anything but, and Visenya does not take it as a threat as Aemond mostly meant for it not to be. Instead the girl smiles, crooked, crimped, bookended by deeply pressed dimples holding back laughter. Unceremoniously, she dumps the plate of berries onto the end of his bed, uncaring of how they roll into his furs and sheets and across the floor.
Indifferent of the mess she has similarly treaded into their lives by rolling in like a storm cloud.
"Do I detect a hint of jealousy in your voice?"
Her grin turns keen and a little mean, and somehow a little excited.
"Afraid of a little competition around here?"
The muscle in Aemond's jaw jumps and locks, tensing in his cheek unbidden. He has always prided himself on his observational skills, his ability to mask and preform to required faces for certain places. He knows how to be the dutiful son. He knows how to be the charming Prince. He knows as equally the dance of the court as the writhe of Fleabottom.
To be so easily read by someone who has barely spent an eve looking in his general direction makes him feel-
Naked.
XLVIII
"I am not jealous-"
Aemond barks back with a little too much bite. Yet he is telling the truth in a way. He is not jealous, he is merely-
"I am simply… intrigued by how you have managed to accomplish something Sorcerer's, Hermits and Emperors have spent lifetimes trying to achieve. The secret of resurrection is worth a kingdoms ransom."
Aemond does not ask how.
How did you do it? You who barely looks ten and six, who appears flush of cheek and soft and small-… how?
Aemond knows what power looks like, what it feels like, what forms it takes. Power comes in swords and thrones and Bannerman under your colours. Power comes in dragon scales and Valyrian steel and a lineage as old as the land they walked upon. Power comes-
Power comes with a King's crown.
Yet here she is, Visenya Targaryen, and she looks, she feels, she appears to have none of that, not a lick, and still-
Still she had done the impossible. More than a King, further than a Sorcerer, alone like a Hermit.
How?
The question is there, his hunger for the answer too, hovering between them, rolling around just like the berries Visenya had thrown down. He is normally more subtle, as refined as the edge of his favoured sword, thus far having witnessed what he had, with Visenya in front of him now after spending the hours after the funeral in this room trying to distract himself with his scrolls and his books, his faculties have seemingly taken a blunting.
And what does Visenya do in turn?
She shrugs, her pale shoulder gleaming in the window light.
"I have something they don't."
"And that is?"
Aemond pushes back, perhaps too fast, too keen, because the smile on Visenya's face closes to something a little sad and small.
"If you have to ask, you're not ready for the answer."
Aemond's first reaction to the glib answer is a dismissive she does not know herself. Nonetheless, by the not quite disenchanted glint in her lilac eye, Aemond too knows this isn't true. She knows-
She knows and she thinks him unfit for the truth. Unworthy, a tiny voice echoes in the back of his head, sounding just like his nephews' yell before the dagger came down over his eye.
It stings, it burns, and it brings Aemond back from his disbelief of what he has seen this day to himself abruptly. He is anything but unworthy now. He rides the biggest dragon alive. He is a Prince. He is a Targaryen with fire in his blood and the Gods blessing on his brow.
Visenya, moreover, is Rhaenyra's daughter. Daemons too. Of course she would hoard her own knowledge, selfish and avaricious for her own successes. What did he expect from the sister of the boy who stole his eye?
His nostrils flare, chin tilting proudly.
"You should not be here."
He reiterates more heatedly, dismissively, shoulders squaring.
"I did not think you would lower yourself to conversing with a Green."
XLIX
The confusion comes openly to her face, to her lashes that hood her gaze heavy. Clearly she has not heard the term yet, has not heard the whispers in the court, the murmurs of the guards of those recently monikered Blacks and Greens and the tension rising between the two.
Aemond is proven right by her bewildered little blink as she scans him from boot to brow.
"You don't look very green to me."
Her grin revives, flashing a neat row of pretty white teeth.
"In fact, you look very pink and pale. The whole… Goth-pirate leathers aren't helping. Maybe you should try getting out and about instead of sitting in dark corners like some sort of Byronic gargoyle brooding over books."
Aemond, despite himself, despite not understanding some of the exceedingly strange words she uses, snorts on an aborted chuckle. And just like earlier, he bats back just as quickly.
"And perhaps you should not steal yourself into places you have no right in being in."
It appears Visenya finds great mirth in this accusation, hands clasped behind her back, swaying on the balls of her feet.
"Ah-"
She chuckles with a swish of her smoke-like skirts.
"But being in places I shouldn't be is where the most fun to be had is found. Wouldn't you say so?"
"I would say-"
Aemond argues back.
"That nieces should show the due respect owed to an uncle, and that normally entails at least knocking on their door."
L
Again, Visenya finds the indictment amusing, and again, does not respond to it the way Aemond expects her to.
"Oh, so you're one of the uncles, then? Sirius told me I had two. One called… Egg and the other Almond, I think. Which one are you?"
"Aemond."
He corrects and simultaneously answers, and Visenya, a little infuriatingly, a whole lot infuriatingly, brushes him off with a graceful flap of her hand.
"That's what I said. Almond."
"Aemond."
"Yes, Almond."
"No, AEmond. AE-Mond, Aemond."
"That's what I'm saying, Almond."
"You-"
Aemond takes a step forward, lurching, but Visenya bounces away with the grace and air of a flap of butterfly wings, closer to the fire of his hearth, as if they were children playing a game of catch the cake, and suddenly, swiftly, it clicks with the press of those damned dimples.
She's playing with him.
"You are trying to irritate me on purpose."
Visenya does not even have the manners nor the decency to at least try for either an excuse or an apology. She's unabashed in her laughter, in her smile, in everything she is.
"To be fair, you seem remarkably easy to wind up. You might want to learn some breathing exercises. You never know when some miscreant might find some great joy in watching you pop your cork over something as silly as name pronunciation. How positively dreadful that person must be."
Aemond, anew, does not know what 'wind up' is, but he suspects its connotations, and he knows it is not true. He is typically calm, typically in control of any given circumstance, typically-
Typically.
It appears that not only is nothing typical of Visenya, but she gallingly brings out nothing typical of others around her.
Hmmm.
"You are not positively dreadful. You are maddening."
Once more, the accusation does not land, does not chaff, and Visenya seems… proud of the pin he has placed on her breast as if he has named her Hand of the King.
"Why thank you! That's the best compliment I've had all week."
Aemond's mouth pops open, slaps closed, a blink, two, finishing with a lost head shake that feels as if he has somehow stepped through a mirror and ended up in a place where everything is exactly the same but reversed.
He does not know whether it makes him feel sick or eager, confused or awed. Perhaps a heady mixture of all that rivals Milk of the Poppy.
"You-"
Neither Aemond nor Visenya would know what he would say next, as his voice is cut off sharply by a bout of knocking coming from his chamber door.
LI
"My Prince?"
A voice, the voice of one of his mother's guardsmen, comes reverberating through the wood. Visenya perks up by the hearth, already making tracks in his rug for the door to open. Aemond crosses the distance in three long strides, cutting her off.
If there is one thing to say about Aemond Targaryen, it is thus. He is no fool.
He knows too well the friction that is simmering hotter and angrier between his mother and Princess Rhaenyra along with the rise and fall of the sun. He did not believe you needed two eyes to see that. Similarly, he knows how this will play out.
Visenya Targaryen has only barely been on Westerosi soil for a day break, if she were to be found in Aemond's chamber, no matter that it was she who stole herself in here uninvited through his window, Rhaenyra will come with curses to their father of vice and corruption, lay blame at his feet for somehow drawing his niece here just as she laid the blame of the lose of his eye at the rumours of bastardry that swarm her sons. Comparably, his Mother would respond with accusations of her own, of how Rhaenyra could not keep control of her own children, how if corruption and vice has taken place, it could not be her son, her pious son who spent whole seventh days in the Sept, who instigated it but surely the girl who was as beastly as stories say she can become on her own whims and impulses.
It would only escalate from there.
Typically, Aemond would be amicable to this outcome. Allowing the court to see how hot-headed Rhaenyra could be would only strengthen Aegon's contending claim. Any dent in Visenya's reputation, a reputation she clearly doesn't care about herself if she were so willing to be seen here and now with him, would impact Rhaenyra's.
A crack in Rhaenyra's reputation was an embolden to his own.
Additionally, the ensuing spat that would rumble up between them would be exceedingly entertaining-
Typically.
Nothing to do with his niece was typical.
Perhaps it would be more headache then it was worth right then. Or, at least, that is what Aemond tells himself. Grief that he is in no mood to instigate. It had nothing, nothing, to do with the apparent air of naivete his niece is swanning around in. How she doesn't seem to understand any of the repercussions that would come if she opened that door. How, in all their conversation, she has not once, not ever, looked at his patch or his scar, one that matches her own over her pale brow, in disgust or revulsion. As if he was lesser. Unworthy.
In truth, she had not looked towards his missing eye at all. As if she could not see it. That bitter-sweet irony was not lost on Aemond.
But it had nothing at all to do with any of that.
And so Aemond does what only the few seconds he is spared can conjure. He scoops his niece up by her arms as she gives an undignified Hey!, and she's light in his hold, bird boned and impossible, and he backs her further up, shoulders open his robe cabinet-
And promptly crams her in between his shirts and breeches.
"What do you think you're doing-"
"Do not make a noise."
And, just as promptly, he slams the door in her outraged face.
LII
"Yes, Ser?"
Aemond asks courteously as he opens his chamber door. The Kingsguard on the other side not so subtly tries to peak over his broad shoulder.
"Are you entertaining guests, my Prince? I thought I heard-"
"You heard me practicing my prayers."
The man, Ser Lowell, does not seem entirely convinced, but he is a smart enough a man not to question Aemond directly. Good.
"Of course. The Queen has sent me with word to ready yourself for the banquet. She wishes for you to collect your brother and to meet your kin in the Great Hall of the Stone Drum. The feast will begin very shortly."
Aemond nodded along.
"I will be there soon."
The knight tries one last plain peer around Aemond before the Prince shuts the door on him. He lets his hand rest on the brass knob, breathes slowly out through his mouth, tries to figure out how in the Seven his day had come to all this-
And when he turns around to deal with the stowaway in his cabinet, to try and figure out how he was going to get her out of here without the guards outside seeing, he finds Visenya has already freed herself and is, now, crouched in the window well she had come stumbling in to begin with.
"I suppose I best head back to my own room before they come and collect me and find me missing. Nice meeting you, Almond."
She slips from the sill onto the overhang, shuffling off before abruptly stopping, glancing over her shoulder. The sunlight behind her haloes her head, reminding Aemond of the stained-glass window in the Sept, of the Maiden dancing in spring.
Funny enough, Aemond knows better.
She's much more fitting of the Stranger.
"Oh, and if you ever shove me into a cupboard again I'll make sure the next thing your shove is your bowels back into your open belly."
She smiles, she winks, and then Visenya is gone, out of sight-
And still, with no more answers than he had before, perhaps having left him with more question, berries in his sheets, and the unsettling notion of the Stranger with the Maidens smile, Visenya does not slip so simply out of his mind.
LIII
Visenya sits at a long table, sandwiched in by Rhaenyra at one hip and Daemon at the other, with Jacaerys and Lucerys to their mother's flank, and Baela and Rhaena at their fathers.
The spread is impressive. Roasted hare smothered in honey and a motley of toasted vegetables, golden wines poured freely from golden vessels into golden goblets, there's jams and creams next to freshly baked cakes, sugared fruit candies in thin footed bowels, and the grand hall is alive with light from candle chandeliers swinging above their heads, with the mellow chew of a small band of lyres playing off to the side.
All this finery and regalia and good, hearty food-
And not a single soul looked truly happy.
Down the way on Visenya's side of the dining table, Hermione sat near Ron and Sirius, the last of their lot, all who clearly felt the tension as much as Visenya did.
And boy, was there tension.
For, on the other side, as if a trench had been dug between the carrots and the tangerines, sat the Queen, followed by a gaggle of silver-haired visitors. Aegon, Aemond, Helaena. Above her is a man Sirius had mentioned earlier as Otto Hightower, Visenya only knowing it was him by the badge Sirius had described hanging on his fine, velvet green robes. At the head of the table, smack bang in the middle, was the King.
A King who was either, Visenya guessed, purposefully flouting the heated glances each side of the table was inconspicuously throwing each other, or was blissfully ignorant of the almost suffocating silence that was awkwardly drowning them all.
Bloody hell, Visenya curses to herself, skewering a parsnip on the end of her fork before chomping it off. Perhaps I shouldn't have been too harsh on Slughorn's parties if this was the alternative.
"I see you've met your sisters?"
It takes a long while for Visenya to realize someone was speaking to her, longer yet to muster up the effort to glance up from her plate where she had been boredly smashing peas, to find the Queen-
Alicent, Sirius had called her when he gave Visenya the low down, looking towards her. She was smiling politely, hands in lap, patiently waiting for a response-
When Daemon cut in.
"She would have had longer to reacquaint herself with her brothers and sisters if you had not demanded that the feast be held precisely now."
Daemon was not exactly… wrong. He had flown back into Dragonstone with Baela and Rhaena scarcely half hour ago before guards had come and demanded everyone's presence in this Great Hall for this farce of a feast.
Visenya was not stupid either.
This feast was orchestrated by the Queen, with the King's blessing of course, and that… well, that was just shy of a power play, wasn't it? Coming into someone else's home and assembling everyone to your own time… perhaps not a powerplay, but at the very least reminding people of your higher station.
Daemon, nevertheless, was having none of it.
"She should be resting and recuperating, and not playing show pony for your own desires."
Alicent stiffens in her seat, ostensibly affronted.
"I merely meant for Visenya to have a chance to meet the rest of her family, of which I am sure you would have put off until you had no other choice but-"
And it seemed now the ball was rolling there was no stopping it.
Otto, plainly a man who held his own opinions high, waded into the barely civil conversation.
"We also believe it is important to discuss… let us say, the constraints we should place on Visenya as promptly as possible."
Rhaenyra's fork clinked loudly as she dashed it down into her own plate, using her napkin to wipe angrily at her mouth.
"Constraints? What do you mean by 'constraints', Lord Hightower?"
The man in question scoffs.
"Surely you do not have to ask?"
He questions with a sweep of his gaze down the table, as if searching the for needle in the haystack.
"You all saw what we did. The girl is clearly… unsafe. Not only is she apparently adept of… of turning herself into a winged beast capable of mass destruction, she is capable of skirting death. Truly, look at her-"
Otto gestured without even regarding Visenya with his own eye.
"She's evidently unaccustomed to following etiquette and custom, and she hardly has a care about authority. Best we find an adequate way to… teach her these things swiftly. I say she should come back to Kingslanding with us where the King can show her the intracacies of court life-"
Otto is not cut off by anyone. There's no outward reason why his lips suddenly clamp shut, nor why the skin pulls tights, superficially glued, as he tries to speak more.
There is no outward reason, but there is a reason.
A reason that causes Sirius to sigh heavily from down the table.
"Visenya."
Visenya's grip tightens on her fork until she threatens to bend the metal in her hold. Even then, she doesn't let up on the spell.
"I'll give him his mouth back when he learns not to be a cunt."
Alicent gasps at her use of language, offended, but now Otto looks at her, now he sees her, now he knows.
"Visenya."
Sirius echoes once more, and with a wave of her hand, the wandless magic falls. The green Lord gingerly rolls his jaw, fingers curiously prying at his own lips, testing the flesh. Nothing would be hurt.
Only his pride.
"This is exactly what I speak of. She is uncontrollable and wild and in need of a strong hand to guard her to propriety and-"
Visenya's chair screeches as she comes to a stand, long before Daemon can make the move.
"You know, I've met men like you before."
Visenya smiles, beginning to walk around the long table, towards the Green Lord who stands to meet her head on too.
"Twice my age and thinking they had twice the brains. Men who thought they could lock me up and pull me out when they needed a weapon."
She speaks as if she is talking about a quidditch game, something jovial and inconsequential to pass away a Sunday morning, ignoring the guards dotted around the room now drawing their swords at her approach, which in turn is met with Daemon and the other guards meeting them like for like.
"Funny thing is,"
Visenya finally crests the bend with a laugh, holding her hands out as if she was giving a punchline to a joke.
"They're all dead now and yet I am not. There is a reason for that. A very good reason. So let me give you some advice free of charge."
To be fair to Otto, he does not back down from her, does not step away, and he even waves his men off with a fap of his hand. Visenya respects him a little for that. A lot, actually.
It took guts to sail into a tsunami hull first.
"We have a saying where I am from. A saying I think is very apt for you to learn right now."
Visenya stalls before the man, the man who reminds her of Dumbledore and Riddle, all the worst parts of them crammed in emerald velvets and a shiny pin badge he thinks means anything to her, the machinations that had shaded her life since cupboard to Forbidden Forest.
No, she thinks. Visenya won't allow herself to slide back into invisible chains so easily.
The smile drops from Visenya face, and she doesn't see it, of course she doesn't, but she can feel the coldness that takes its place, roots into her flesh like ivy vines, feel it seep and creep around her mouth, her eyes, the snarl she barely gets her words out of as she presses the final stretch closer, invading his space.
"Fuck around and find out."
LIV
"Enough!"
The King finally intervenes, slamming his cane foot onto the stone floor with a resounding thwang. Visenya had not known Baela had followed her over with dagger handle in hand until she turned around to face the noise and nearly smacked nose first into her.
Just behind Baela, off to the side, the old King rises, out of breath, pale, a strange mark on his wrist that flashes as his doublet rides up.
A mark he quickly hides once more by tugging on the cuff.
Huh, Visenya thinks, gaze flicking to the unlit hearth in the hall.
A hearth the King had asked to be smothered when he arrived.
Could it be-
"Can we not dine as a family no longer? Must we wield our words along with our swords? I have told you once already, Lord Hightower-"
The King regards the man.
"That Visenya is perfectly fine keeping with her mother and father. I am sure my daughter will teach her all there is to know about courtly life, as I am sure-"
His watery gaze swings around to Rhaenyra.
"That she will likewise come to understand the duty and the rules that must apply to her as they apply to everyone else."
And that would have been alright. Visenya would have happily agreed-
If the King had stopped there. Yet, he doesn't. Oh, he doesn't.
"For the greater good of us all."
It's like a switch is flipped in her mind. A very nasty, horrible switch that turns her inside out-
That makes her feel like that little child in Dudley's old clothes, locked in a cupboard, begging for anyone to let her out. A switch that tastes-
Tastes like lemon drops.
"Fuck your duty."
Visenya curses back, steely calm and quiet.
"And fuck your rules."
"Visenya-"
Daemon tries, but it's too late. The tenuous grip she has on her temper is frayed beyond recognition.
"You don't get to talk to me about duty. You're not my King. This isn't my land. I don't know who you think you are, but you have no power over me-"
"Visenya, little Love-"
Sirius tries instead, him too coming to a stand.
"The King didn't mean it like… that. I know Dumbledore told you the same when he asked you to-"
"No!"
Visenya shakes her head, and somewhere down the table, a glass vase shatters. Maybe she's over reacting, she's definitely over reacting, the King can't know what those words mean to her, what they caused, the conditioning she'd spent years under-
But he speaks those words, and Visenya hears Dumbledore.
It's for the greater good that she stay at the Dursleys and is hideously abused year after year. It is for the greater good that Dumbledore tells her nothing about the war efforts and yet somehow still expects her to follow along with his plans. It's for the greater good that she bleeds, and she dies and she-
For the greater good. For the greater good. For the greater good.
"No. I earned my autonomy. I won the war. I died twice. I have paid enough for something that should have been free. My life. I will not allow another old, decrepit fuck-face to come along with terms and conditions on how and why I should exist-"
"You know the King did not mean it like that, matches. You need to calm down-"
"Calm down? Fuck that! Maybe if one of you, any of you, just one single soul got angry on my behalf I wouldn't have been raised as a pig to slaughter, Sirius-"
"Visenya-"
There's a hand on her arm, gentle and warm, but she's too far gone. Violently, she shirks it off, yanks herself away, can't quite catch her breath even when she meets Daemon's face.
His crestfallen face.
"I can't-"
She can't do this. She can't-
Visenya pushes away, swirling in her skirts, storming out the hall.
"Your feast was shite, anyway. You burnt the potatoes and clearly none of you have heard about spices. I've ate better bin scraps."
She thinks she hears Sirius groan, and perhaps turn to the King.
"I warned you not to say those words to her."
LV
There's a knock, knock, knocking on her chamber door. Visenya barely glances over from her perch on the floor at the bottom of her bed, idly plucking the fur rug bald in great big patches. Idly, glibly, she wonders if she's going to be taunted by a raven.
"Piss off!"
She goes back to her short work of ruining the expensive rug. Good, she thinks pettily. Vindictively. Maybe the King will have to pay for a new rug, for the 'greater good'.
"I see you are now at least answering back."
It's Daemon at her door. Visenya suspects Rhaenyra had come at some point between the hours she had locked herself away in here. Her siblings too.
She'd kept quiet until they shuffled away.
"I won't be so easily ignored. I hope you know this, Visenya."
Visenya tugs harder at the rug, ripping free great big tuffs of amber fur. She thinks she might slash the paintings next. Burn up the bedframe.
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-
"Oh for Merlin's sake-"
Visenya ditches her inconsequential task and shuffles for the door, releasing the heavy locking charm she had placed on the brass and the wood. When she swings the door open, Daemon had already made himself comfortable, leaning on the door jam by his shoulder, lax fist raised to keep on knocking.
Visenya doesn't speak, but she doesn't shut the door either, instead abandoning it all to turn her back and head for the bed, where she plops down.
"Do you wish to speak about it?"
Daemon asks, his words punctuated by the sound of the door closing behind him. Visenya turns her gaze to the window.
"Not really."
She hears the thudding of his boots on the flagstone floor, feels the bed dip beside her. She still does not look his way. She's not afraid of what she'll find there.
She's not.
"Lord Nero has explained-"
"Lord Nero,"
Visenya intrudes with a hearty scoff.
"Seems to be explaining many a thing he does not understand seen as he missed half of it."
The bed creaks under a shifting weight, but this is not a match for the softness of the voice at her side Visenya refuses stubbornly to look towards.
"He means you well. We all do."
Visenya, finally, sighs, shoulders sagging, heat evaporating until it feels like she's an empty campfire, nothing left but blackened stone and ashes.
"I know."
She gives back just as softly.
"I know, I just… this is all very, very strange to me."
When she ultimately turns to face the man sitting beside her, it is not disappointment she is met with as she suspected, not anger or regret, only something that looks a little like understanding.
It makes her feel even worse, in all honesty. A hell of a lot better too.
"These are not easy circumstances we find ourselves in. We are bound to chaff against one another as we find our footing."
Visenya can't help but chuckle.
"Yeah, well, I don't think calling a King a decrepit old fuck-face is merely chaffing."
Daemon matches her grin.
"Neither calling the Hand a cunt, I suspect."
Visenya winces, but Daemon does not leave her to wallow in her own embarrassment for long. He reaches over, lays the same hand that had wrapped around her arm over her knee, as soft and gentle as earlier, and this time she does not shun it off.
"Trust me when I say to you that I have called my brother far worse-"
Brother? Visenya thinks. Didn't Sirius say earlier that he was Rhaenyra's father? How did that-
Visenya, nevertheless, does not have time to ponder on this as Daemon trundles on.
"And it is not the first time Hightower has been called a cunt to his face. I am afraid I beat you to that one long, long ago."
Again, Visenya chuckles before she shakes her head.
"I messed up a little."
Daemon does not lie to her.
"Yes, but not for the reasons you believe. Look at me,"
He chuffs the underside of her chin, tilting her face back to him, and the smile is long gone, replaced by open determination. The hand on her knee squeezes.
"This place is a pit of green vipers. They will take any sign of weakness as a reason to strike. You showed them the arrows to use down there in the Great Hall. They will not forget them, and they will not let them go to waste. Do not give them anymore."
Visenya searches his gaze that eerily matches her own, hunts for the lie in the lines of his face, and she finds nothing but frail truth.
"Is it really that bad here?"
Daemon's hand drops from her chin, but he leaves the one on her knee at home.
"Tensions are… rife, yes. They will only mount now. Otto will see you as a threat. He has already said just as much at the feast. He will not leave this alone. He will use the Queen as he always does to try and manipulate my brother into taking you from us under the guise of 'helping' you. He might go as far as offering a Hightower welp in marriage to you. My brother will see it as an easy way to peace. I have… I have…"
The hand on her leg trembles slightly, only a little, but its enough.
"I have only just got you back. I do not wish to lose you again so soon."
Visenya laughs, bright and easy, happily clapping her hand over the one on her knee, squeezing back with threaded fingers.
"It's fine. I can head back to Hogwarts through the Veil for a bit. I'll come back to visit and you won't have to tell the Hightowers I'm here-"
"Through the Veil?"
"Uh… yes. If I head back-"
Visenya's voice pitifully filters off as she loses her voice. Why? Because Daemon is looking at her, lilac to lilac, and suddenly her stomach sinks down to her feet.
"You do not know."
It's not a question. It's a statement. Visenya is smart enough to be weary.
"Know what?"
"They have not told you? Not your friends or Lord Nero?"
"Told me what?"
Daemon's hand slips from her own, slips from her knee, and she knows, oh she knows, a blow is going to come.
And it does. It fuckin' does.
"The Arch is broken. When you faced the Cannibal in your dragon form, you knocked him into the hollow. There was a cave in. We managed to dig through a little while later, but I saw the Arch for myself. It's nothing but a stump of a pillar in the sand now."
Visenya tries to hear what Daemon says, but it sounds like she's only listening to a panicked sort of ringing. As if she's accidently tuned a few channels shy on a radio.
"But… there has to be another Veil somewhere. Have you looked-"
Daemon is swifter yet to shoot this down with his own arrows.
"The one under Dragonstone is the only recorded Arch in all of Westeros. Sirius believes that a Targaryen ancestor who was… like you, may have been the creator of it. If so, they must have built it on the first flight over from Valyria, perhaps before permanent settlement, and whatever knowledge of its building would be lost to the exodus."
Visenya eases, pushing off the bed, animated in her hands as she talks.
"Well then, if we just go to this Valyria place then we can look around for some books or-"
Daemon too stands, but he is not lively, he is not pleased.
He looks scared.
"You cannot go to Valyria."
He declares intensely, vastly, almost as panicked as Visenya had felt before.
"No one can go to Valyria."
Visenya stalls on the rug she mauled earlier, wondering where the man who had looked proud at her for calling someone a cunt had so quickly been transformed into this worry.
"Why ever not? I can fly, I'll be back before-"
"Valyria is doomed."
Daemon interceded, scooping Visenya closer by her shoulders. He has to bend a little to meet her eye for eye, but the fact that he does go to the effort hammers the weight of the conversation home.
"It bloated and blew underneath its own black magics. It is nothing but a wasteland of cursed air and foul creatures. Those who walk its soil are damned to a horrible death. Our ancestor, Aera, once tried. She came back skeletal, riddled with things that squirmed beneath her flesh, with a fever that burnt so hot it melted her own eyes."
Okay… okay, Visenya would admit. That doesn't exactly sound optimal.
Daemon, now his turn, must see something in her face that he recognizes, that he, anew, understands, because the hands on her shoulders turn stern, not heavy, but insistent.
"Promise me, Visenya, you will not try to go there."
Visenya, in turn, tries to laugh it all off.
"I'm sure the stories have been exaggerated-"
But no, there really is a sort of fear in her father's face, a fear tinged with the resonance of ghosts long dead.
"Promise me."
"I Promise,"
Visenya begins, and then verbally sidesteps. She feels a little dirty for it… but-
But.
"I promise I won't go alone."
Daemon does not catch her diversion-
Not like Aemond had earlier. He hadn't given her a single advantage in their verbal tango. Not enough footing either. He knew how to parry her lunges. Visenya didn't know whether that impressed her or aggravated her. But…
"Good."
Daemon nods, releasing her.
"Good."
Something worse than fear takes place in Daemons eyes, worse than worry, worse than stern. Suddenly, he looks unhappy. Achingly sad as he stands before Visenya.
"Is the prospect of being here with us so worth the risk it would take to get away?"
Visenya, immediately, shook her head.
"Of course not,"
She readily denies, as brutally honest as he had been with her.
"But Ron has a family to get home to, and so does Hermione, and I would like the chance to see my friends on the other side every now and again. Plus, you're the one who said Otto was going to be out for my head. I thought it might be easier on you and mother if I took off for a little while-"
Daemon does not chuff her chin, neither does he lay a hand on her knee or grasp her shoulders, instead he crosses the distance that separates them, both physically and in the harder to describe spaces, cradles her face in his warm hands, and he laughs a little.
Visenya belatedly realizes why.
It is, perhaps, the first time she's spoken of Rhaenyra as mother. She hadn't even meant to. It just sort of… slipped out.
Natural. It feels natural… naturally.
"You leave Hightower to me. I will deal with him. Until they leave our home, stay out of sight. I doubt he will be bold enough to do anything underneath our own ancestral roof, but he will be trying to talk the King into bringing you to the capital. If not only to keep you away, but perhaps to try and sway you against us."
Visenya smiles and Visenya chuckles and Visenya… well, she tells a lie halfway gone into a truth.
"It'll be like I'm not even here."
LVI
Aemond is drifting off into sweet sleep when the knocking comes. Not the thudding knock of a fist on a door but the rattling of a knuckle on glass. He startles up in bed, shirtless, starlight on pale skin and legs tangled in his furs. The night is crisp and heavy, cold enough to pimple his flesh, the moon nothing but a slither of a fingernail spread across his chamber floor.
He does not have time to reach for his eye patch as the rattling comes once more, interspersed with a hissing voice.
"Pssss! Let me in!"
He knows immediately who it is, where the noise is coming from, long before he turns to face his window, long before he catches the sight of a cloaked figure balancing on the overhang of a stone dragon.
Aemond, half asleep, wrestles with his furs, holding one in place over his hips in hopes of keeping his dignity, his propriety, as he lumbers for the window, flicking the latch and yanking it wide open.
"Are you mad? What-"
"I thought it was maddening you called me earlier? There is a difference between the two, don't you know."
Visenya Targaryen grins from beneath the hood of her cloak, once more slipping into his room without an invite, jumping down from his desk that lay in the moonlight. Again, she scatters all his research across the flagstones, his scrolls he has only just put back to right, scraping a piece of delicately written parchment off on his bedpost as if it was horse shit trod in a Fleabottom alley.
Aemond flushes, feels the heat in his cheeks for reasons more than indignation.
This is not right. This is not proper. He is undressed, it is the middle of the night, she shouldn't-
A pair of leather breeches strikes him in the face. Aemond has to scrabble to catch them, and then rush to keep his furs keeping his dignity.
His niece, his mad, wild niece who had called the King things another man would lose a head for, who had not only stood before his grandfather, but dared to threaten him as if she were talking down a nervous squire, was now standing before the very same cabinet he had crammed her into earlier, pilfering through his doublets.
"Gear up, buttercup."
She throws a tunic blindly over her shoulder, towards him, allowing her gaze to follow its flight. Aemond, more gracefully this time, catches the garment. From over her shoulder, she grins.
"Me and you are going to fly to Valyria."
Somewhere outside, a cloud rolled over the moon.
"I once again find myself forced to ask whether you are mad?"
Next Chapter: Visenya tries to convince Aemond she is not, in fact, insane and that trying to fly to Valyria is a perfectly acceptable adventure to undertake...
A.N: Hey everyone! I know it's been a hot minute, but unfortunately life has been a bit cunt-y lately. As it is sometimes lol. I'm slowly getting back into writing, and thought to visit our Almond-joy-boy once more, so here we are.
Once more, thank you all so very much for the favourites and follows, and honestly, I've been re-reading the reviews over the last few months and I want to sincerely thank you all for the smiles they brought to me. So thank you all very much! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, forgive me if my writing isn't quite up to scratch, I'm getting there hopefully, and I will hopefully see you all again soon with some more wayward Visenya being an absolute terror to Westerosi civilisation.
Until then, stay beautiful! ~ AlwaysEatTheRude21