green lies, black hearts

XXII

a/n - hope y'all are doing well :) gonna post another chunk of chapters tonight! thank you for 30k reads and 1k votes! it means the world! enjoy and thank you for reading!!

- mint

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Aemond

"You killed a man."

Otto Hightower sat upon the Iron Throne, fingers tapping impatiently along the sword-molded arm of the throne. Sunlight streamed in behind him and Aemond thought the iron-wrought seven-pointed star should have created a hall around his grandfather's head, but instead it looked only like a crown of thorns. A crown that Otto Hightower should not be wearing.

"I did," Aemond answered slowly, holding his grandfather's dark gaze. He had never been at the end of such a look. It was always Aegon. Rhaenyra. Once when Daeron had snuck out to see Tessarion at the Dragonpit before he was sent away. Never Aemond. And yet he saw the gleam shining in his grandfather's brown eyes. And he knew everyone else gathered in the throne room did as well.

Good, he thought, folding his hands behind his back.

Otto's nose flared for a moment. "And can you explain to the Lord Hand and the lords and ladies of this court as to why you would murder a man?"

So out in the open? is what Aemond thought his grandfather meant. His lips twitched. He wished to ask if he should stick to the shadows the next time he killed a man. If he should do it in secret-like he had originally planned-just like his grandfather would have preferred? Just as his grandfather had attempted to do.

"Certainly," Aemond replied smoothly.

His eye roamed from his grandfather and to his brother. Aegon was staring with wide eyes at the corpse of Ser Byron Swann, and for a moment, Aemond knew well that his brother was sober, but there was something...off about the way Aegon stared. He thought it to be a play of the sunlight. Aemond looked further around the room and admittedly, he frowned for just a moment.

(Aegon stared, and stared, and stared, and he stared some more at the dead body. How many times had he seen one? Enough to count on one hand, he thought. Recently, he had seen Vaemond Velaryon lose his head with a single swing from Dark Sister. But this?

This was not clean.

This was carnal.

This was not for feast but for sport for the beast that was his younger brother, who stood with head high and hands folded behind his back as if he was an innocent mutt who had done no wrong. And in his mind, Aegon realized as he looked from the body and to his brother, Aemond undoubtedly thought he did no wrong. He wouldn't be so confident if he did.

But despite the wrongness of it all-Aegon had done his fair share of wrong-a part of Aegon wished to ask his brother what it was like.

The killing. The doing it yourself. The feeling of flesh and bone giving way beneath one's own hands.)

"My mother is not here yet, my Lord Hand," Aemond said. "Neither my half-sister nor uncle. Should we not await their presences? I believe this concerns them just as greatly as it does you."

(He was appreciative that Helaena was not standing beside Aegon. Aemond would not want her to see this.)

"I do not believe this to be a" -Otto sneered down from his perch- "matter befitting the hearts of women."

"And yet there are ladies of this court here."

Undoubtedly ladies whose husbands and houses supported the king's son, not his firstborn child. He could not begin to care who was who. He knew houses and he knew words, but he knew not the faces surrounding him. Shaera knew that manner of things. If she were here, he thought, she would know who exactly was betraying her mother.