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Rhaenyra finds that the three of them take midnight walks often. It is as if when one of them cannot sleep then none of them can sleep. So they walk.
Daemon’s cloak is wrapped around Allicent where the woman walks to her left. Daemon himself walks to her right with one hand resting on the pommel of his sword and the other at the small of her back leaking heat through the thin fabric of her robe. Allicent takes her hand, and she nearly swears at how cold the woman is.
It pays to have dragons blood running through your veins. Rhaenyra wraps both of her hand’s around her lover’s hoping some of her own warmth will transfer over.
They don’t often walk on the outside areas of the castle when it is so late, but tonight they are following the sound of music. The bards are practicing for the upcoming feasts, she knows, and the music gets louder as they turn another corner.
The widest courtyard balcony will be coming up soon. They are likely practicing beneath it. As far away from any sleeping royalty as they can get.
The song is more recognizable now as they close in on the balcony. It’s a longer, slower song. The music is almost romantic and she knows the words that accompany it are an ode to winter and its beauty.
They round the curved wall to the balcony and stop in their tracks. Rhaenyra almost can’t believe her eyes and if she weren’t so close with her partners witnessing it she would assume it to be a midnight maroge. Something her sleepless mind conjured up to send her back to bed.
Under the light of the half moon, dance two familiar young men.
Aemond practically glows in the silver moonlight, his hair in a mussed sleeping braid laying over his shoulder on his scarred side and he is wearing soft pants and a thinner shirt, much more dressed down than usual. His hands are bare and he’s wearing lounging shoes rather than his normal boots.
It’s the first time she’s ever seen him without a sword or a dagger on his waist. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him without his eyepatch. There’s a sapphire where his eye should be, interrupting the scar and reflecting moonlight.
He would be freezing like his mother if not for the dragon's blood running through his veins.
Lucerys is in a shirt too large for him. It’s clearly not his own but neither is the green blanket shawl around his shoulders. The leggings he wears are his, as are the boots. His hair is a mess and there is color across his cheeks and nose like he’s cold.
The two boys are in their own little world, gazes meeting bodies swaying. It’s clear, from the hand Aemond has on Lucerys’ hip and the way Luke rests his forearm along the top of his arm with his hand curving across his uncle’s shoulder, that they are comfortable with each other. The older boy is leading them in a slow sort of dance that doesn’t seem to involve much turning.
Rheanyra steps closer as quietly as she can, keeping herself and her lovers to the shadows of the balcony. Daemon, the bastard, looks smug. Allicent looks as confused as Rhaenyra had felt when she’d first seen them.
The tune of the song starts over and the blond pulls their knitted hands towards him, kissing Luke’s fingers. Allicent’s breathing hitches.
And then Aemond begins to sing. His voice is low, barely carrying to them over the instruments, but it is sturdy and smooth. She can feel it deep in her bones, prickling her skin.
“ Nyke jāhor jorrāelagon ao, nyke jāhor ōregon ao. ” He pulls Luke closer by the waist and her son smiles up at him as if he has hung the moon.
Daemon’s hand trails up and down Rhaenyra’s spine gently.
“ Nyke jāhor henujagon ao, nyke jāhor jaelagon ao .” Luke’s hand slides up from its resting place on Aemond’s shoulder to cradle the scarred side of his face. His thumb caresses the mark over Aemond’s cheek and the older boy seems to lean into it.
They shouldn’t be watching this. It’s a private moment. Rhaenyra just can’t seem to move, as if her feet have been shackled to the ground.
“ Nyke jāhor find ao, nyke jāhor vūjigon ao ,” Aemond turns his face into Lucerys’ palm, kissing the curve of it three times to punctuate his words.
Allicent’s fingers tighten around hers.
“ Gō se hūra, ” Aemond sings, “ Se gevie hūra .”
The older boy presses their foreheads together. “ Se qēlossās jāhor ūndegon īlva. Se jēdar jāhor urnēbagon īlva. ”
Lucerys’ eyes flutter shut. She can see the fan of his dark lashes against his pink tinted cheeks. Aemond keeps looking.
“ Nyke jāhor ōregon ao, nyke jāhor vūjigon ao .” Two things he’s already sang but now they seem different, leading.
They sit in her chest as he continues on. “ Nyke jāhor jorrāelagon, ao nyke jāhor idīnagon ao.”
Daemon’s hand stops in the middle of her back abruptly and with it stops Rhaenyra’s heart.
Aemond is going to continue but Luke’s eyes are open and he’s cutting the older boy off with a look of absolute wonderment on his face. “ Ao jāhor sagon issa valzȳrys? ”
The older boy lets Luke’s hand go only to cradle his jaw in it. “ nyke jāhor tepagon issa zaldrīzes naejot sagon aōha valzȳrys. ”
Rhaenyra is pretty sure she stops breathing. Her ears might be ringing. Allicent is looking to her in confusion because after nearly forty long years she still somehow doesn’t even have a toddler's grasp on Valyrian.
“I do hope we’ll be invited to the wedding, nephews,” Daemon drawls because of course his dramatic ass can’t let them sneak away quietly and pretend they never saw the boys in such a state.
She’s never seen Luke move so quickly.
Her half-brother may for once be unarmed, but her son draws his dagger from his boot with ruthless efficiency, twisting around and throwing on instinct. His other arm is spread out in front of Aemond, protective despite his smaller stature and she sees his face pale and his eyes widen in realization of who he just threw his dagger at.
The dagger soars between Rhaenyra and Daemon’s heads, and her husband has to lean to the side so that he won’t be cut, before it lodges between the stones of the castle wall. It’s not a knife they have given him. With its curved hilt and artfully decorated Valyrian steel blade it can only be a gift like her own necklace from Daemon.
Rhaenyra looks from the dagger to her son as Daemon begins to work it out of the wall with a half impressed look like he wasn’t the one to teach Luke to throw knives in the first place.
Lucerys looks like he’s going to be sick.
Aemond doesn’t look much better.
Her half-brother is stricken and wide eyed, in her distraction his braid has been pulled out and his hair covers the sapphire embedded in the side of his face. He looks like he’s been frozen in place yet his hands are still shaking where they are clasped in front of him. It’s the least put together she’s seen the boy since Luke took his eye.
Her son is taking sharp, fast breaths like he cannot breathe. It seems to be the only thing that breaks Aemond from his fear induced stupor.
The older boy reaches out and grabs Lucerys by the shoulders, pulling his arms down to his sides before he wraps his own arms around the slighter boy. He’s talking in a normal, calm tone, lips moving against Luke’s temple despite the tremble in his voice.
“ Lykirī, gevie taoba. ” Aemond soothes Luke like he’s a dragon and calls him ‘beautiful boy’ the same way Daemon calls her ‘my queen’ or Allicent ‘little flame’. “Breathe, Lucerys. It is your mother, you are safe, she will not harm you.”
Allicent’s hand leaves the clutch of Rhaenyra’s and the woman rushes forward towards the boys. She’s the kindest, most gentle person Rhaenyra knows despite decades of Otto Hightower’s manipulation. Surely she can calm them.
“Please don’t separate us,” Lucerys croaks. He’s holding Aemonds arms around him like they are a lifeline.
Allicent gathers the two in her arms and they’re both too big and too old to be pulled protectively into her chest but they let her do it anyway. She pets their hair and Rhaenyra gets a flash of what could have been .
“We will do no such thing,” she says with all the fire of a former queen. She looks to Daemon and Rhaenyra for help.
Daemon finally pulls the dagger from the wall with a self-satisfied grunt. “Look at the engraving, the carving of the handle,” he mumbles, “definitely a courting gift suited for the soon-to-be Lord of Driftmark.”
Daemon flips the dagger around in his hands, clearly no help.
Rhaenyra is not above dragging her husband over to the boys and Allicent but she knows he’ll follow anyway, so she walks towards the three. Her fingers caress Lucerys face even as she meets Aemond’s one eye.
“Too many bad things have happened to this family just because the people who loved each other were forbidden from being together.” Allicent removes an arm from the boys to pull Rhaenyra into the awkward group hug.
“The wedding will have to be Valyrian though. Westeros weddings aren’t accepting of men marrying men and women marrying women,” Daemon offers up.
He’s really no help.
Though, Lucerys does hiccup a sharp laugh before burying his face in Aemond’s shoulders and her brother looks at her son like he hung the moon. So she supposes she can keep her husband around for a little longer.
Once they’ve calmed the boys, and sent them back to bed — Rhaenyra finds out that Aemond’s room is significantly closer to the balcony and the training grounds than anyone else’s and she reins Daemon in from making any sleazy, hypocritical comments about sex before marriage — the three of them return to their own rooms.
Daemon unbelts his sword from his waist and sheds his boots as he steps into the room, leaning both neatly against his favorite seat as they follow him in at a more sedate pace.
Allicent leans her head against Rhaenyra’s shoulder. “Can you tell me what he was singing? What they were saying?” She sounds unsure, as if she doesn’t want to pry but she wants to know more than anything.
“You’ll have to dance with us,” Daemon says around the goblet of wine he’s somehow already managed to pour.
Rhaenyra can’t help but roll her eyes, but she takes Allicent into her arms anyway, swaying back and forth slightly until he sets his wine down and joins them. He slides up behind her, wrapping his arms around them both with one hand on her hip and the opposite one on Allicent’s.
“ I will love you, I will hold you ,” Rhaenyra sings quietly. She tries not to hate the way her own voice sounds in the near silence of the room. She squeezes the other woman a little closer to her in an imitation of how Aemond had drawn Luke closer.
“ I will leave you, I will want you ,” Daemon translates the next line.
“ I will find you, I will kiss you .” Rhaenyra pulls Allicent’s hand up to her own face and presses three little kisses into her palm. She can feel Daemon brush a kiss over Allicent’s fingers as well.
“ Under the moon ,” Daemon sings, “ The beautiful moon. ”
“ The stars will see us. ” She presses their foreheads together, a mirror of their sons. “ The sky will watch us .”
“ I will hold you, I will kiss you. ” Daemon presses his own forehead against her temple.
“ I will love you, I will marry you ,” Rhaenyra finishes the song.
Allicent’s eyes are wet with unshed tears. “And then?”
Daemon hums and pulls away, moving back to his goblet of wine. Clearly all the emotional openness is draining him.
Rhaenyra keeps swaying them. “Luke said ‘You will be my husband?’” She translates.
“And Aemond?”
Her voice almost sticks in her throat so she just translates directly. “I will give my dragon to be your husband.”
Allicent’s whole body sags against her and Rhaenyra has to plant her feet to keep them both from toppling over. “Oh my sweet boy.”
Rhaenyra runs her fingers through her lover’s hair and presses kisses against her forehead. “They’re good boys. They’ll make it. Better than we did.”
“I hope so,” the other woman breathes. “Stars I hope so.”