The Wild Dragon

Chapter 6 - Understood

Prince Aemond Targaryen was seen more and more walking the Red Keep, either to the dining hall or the library and even the godswood outside. Never before had he been by the King's quarters more than once a month at the most, if even that. Now he would walk by, maybe even look inside, as if searching for something or someone, at least once or twice a day.

He couldn't stop himself from searching for her. He had repeatedly gone through their last changed words, he had searched his memory for all of her gestures, had remembered her every touch again and again, her hands in his, on his face, on his neck, her fingers in his hair, her lips on his, her tongue entangled with his.... None of it convinced him that she did not love him or that she did not want him, even if maybe not as much as he did her. That did not bother him. What bothered him was that she seemed unwilling to risk it all for him as he would for her, without a second thought.

So he walked everywhere in hope of seeing her and finding that she was looking for him too. A few days had passed and it looked more and more like she somehow avoided meeting him alone. Sure, they had intersected at meals in the dining room a couple of times or in Helaena's quarters, but her gaze had not encouraged him to approach her later. She had been kind and friendly, all sunshine and smiles again, but that was not the true Alaera he longed for. He sat underneath the weirwood remembering her sad, her small smiles he would bring out and feel so proud of, the growing affection of those moments, the quiet comfort of shared silence between their younger selves.

"We've been waiting for you all morning, my Prince!" Ser Criston Cole, his mother the Queen's loyal protector and his sword fighting instructor said when they met by chance close to the exit to the training yard.

"My apologies, Cole," he said, frustrated by his own forgetting of the training hours. He was turning to continue but Criston's words halted him at once.

"Even Princess Alaera deigned to show up early today," the man said with a small smile on his lips. 

No other man knew Aemond as well as Ser Criston. He had been the princes' trainer from an early age, back when the boys had gathered almost daily in the yard to learn the art of wielding a sword. By that time Alaera , being older, was better than all of them, although her road had been much more difficult. 

The other knights of the Kingsguard often talked of her insistence as an eight year old girl, recently left motherless, to learn the sword. They had first tried to turn her away, but she came alone and tried to swing the wooden sword against imaginary opponents, copying the movements she had seen them make. They had then offered her help with the bow and arrow, all that she would give up the thought of learning the sword. She had fiercely applied herself and mastered it in less time than they would have thought if possible of a young girl...or even of a boy her age. When she had finally found no more challenge in that, she had quietly turned to the wooden swords again, until the King had allowed it. "Let the Princess find out for herself what it means to wield the sword," he had said and no knight had outright refused her again. "Maybe the difficulty of it will deter her!" he had said hopeful. It had not.

By the time Aemond came as a young boy to the yard, most of the knights offered her example in discipline and commitment to her half-brothers and later to her nephews too. Aegon dismissed it and made constant jokes about it, but Aemond noticed their sister going about as if not even affected by his words. She had the Lord Commander as trainer and none could deny her mastery or her technique.

Ser Criston turned to the yard and Aemond followed, recognizing to himself the bait he had just taken. He couldn't blame Cole, as he had exposed his admiration for his older half-sister even as a young boy.

"Ser Criston....and my brother, how nice of you to join us on this fine day!" Alaera exclaimed as if surprised by seeing the two men enter the training yard.