green lies, black hearts

XXVIII

a/n - another one hehe. enjoy! hope you like this next batch of chapters and where this story is heading :)

- mint

~+~

Aemond

"To Storm's End, then," Alicent sighed, pouring herself a glass of wine.

(How many had she had today? Not enough to make her into a fool like her firstborn, but certainly not enough to make the pounding in her head stop. Since she stirred in the morn, it had been a constant ache building behind her eyes. Building in her skull. She thought it may be due to the tears she shed before she slept. All the weeping she had done.)

Aemond sat silently on a chaise, staring at a crackling fire, and feeling both everything and nothing at all. His father's ring was heavy in his hand. He couldn't seem to let it go. Holding it felt...right. He couldn't wear it. He thought his finger would rot and fall off if he did-like his father's. But if he let it go. If he set it off to the side, he feared he would lose the ghost who stood behind him. Who leaned over the back of the chaise, rested her arms over his shoulders, and whispered nothing into his ear. Nothing he could comprehend. Nothing he didn't love. Nothing he didn't hate.

His ghost braided some of his hair, giggling airily, saying he needed to pick the right marigolds lest his cuts not heal.

Aemond looked down at his hands.

His nails were red-lined with old blood, his knuckles were still split. Healing but split. Cuts and scrapes and bruises littered his skin, and he gently rubbed over them. Or perhaps his ghost did, her fair hands also littered with old blood along her nails. And she was the only who touched him so gently. So sweetly. So softly.

(Divine in a way his Seven never were.)

"Aemond."

His mother. The Mother. Who was better? More devout? Holy? Sighing, Aemond rubbed his temples and turned to Alicent, hoping his ghost would leave if only so he could focus on the conversation. If only so he could protect her one last time, for his grandfather sat at a table, writing missives for great and noble houses for them to declare for Aegon. And where was the king now?

Drowning in his cups? In his whores? If Aemond were the king-

His hand clenched tightly over his tense thigh.

Alicent approached, setting her wine down, and she sat beside Aemond, taking his hands into hers. Her hands which were also scarred but not in the same way. Her touch was not the same as hers. Not so sacred.

"I ask that you go to Lord Borros, reaffirm your intentions to wed Lady Cassandra, and return once you have ensured his house's support," she said, thumbs brushing roughly over his knuckles.

Cassandra Baratheon.

Aemond thinned his lips. Cassandra was not the woman he wished to wed. Both of them would be damned to a life of hollow vows and empty halls, for no laughter, no love, nothing so joyous could fill a marriage built off of necessity. He had seen the marriage of his own parents. He felt all too akin to his mother in this moment.

(Broken. Trapped. A prisoner donned in finery.)

"Today?" he asked quietly.

(Alicent frowned at her son's dejected disinterest. At the way he didn't hold her hands back. At the way he refused to stare at her, instead turning his eyepatch her way, as if he was looking at someone else who was not there.)

His grandfather stood abruptly, finishing off some letters he then sealed with wax. "The...king and your mother wished to see terms sent to Rhaenyra. I shall head the envoy myself with Grand Maester Orwyle. Before we return, see to it you've gone to Storm's End."