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Emma had already planned out what she would do if a lord approached her.
Of course, she’d done her best to prematurely stave off any advances by cultivating the impression of overwhelming, impenetrable frigidity. Too cold for any man to want her. But she knew that in the Red Keep, that might not be enough for a maid to keep a nobleman at bay, or even one of the knights or male servants. Emma was no court beauty, but she was young enough and pretty enough to need a plan.
If the lord who approached her was not to her taste, she would scream, as loud as she could. It might not be enough to save her, but at least it would be clear to the rest of the castle what had happened. A declaration that she hadn’t wanted it.
If the lord who approached her was one she considered suitable – for Emma suitability was not only looks, but a sensible enough personality to trust – then she would allow the caresses, and hope that some gold might come her way as a result. She had no desire for a bastard, but she had memorised the recipe for moon tea, and knew where to obtain the ingredients. She could look after herself.
She just hadn’t ever expected serious advances from one of the princes.
Aegon, she was fairly certain, had fondled every single maid in the Red Keep who could charitably be called pretty. Luckily for Emma, the worst she’d had from him was some groping of her buttocks before she managed to be on her way.
Aemond, though…
Aemond didn’t want anybody except, according to rumour, a certain madam of a certain brothel. Until his brother arrived, mocked Aemond’s commitment to a single woman. Aemond had left the woman and the group of Aegon’s friends. Apparently Aegon had as good as ordered his squire to bed down with the madam. Aemond had not returned to the brothel since.
Emma found herself considering the madam. Did she miss Aemond? He had certainly been a steady client – had that made him a favoured one? Attending to a prince must have brought her a fair degree of coin. Emma could sympathise with a woman trying to save her coins. And while Aemond was not classically handsome, he was beautiful and intelligent in his own way.
But maybe he had not been a favoured client. Maybe Prince Aemond had made that woman’s life hell, and she was well rid of him.
Who could say. Gossip could only be partially relied upon at the best of times.
If Aemond missed his erstwhile lover, or felt anger towards his brother, he did not show it upon his face. As usual, he barely attended to Emma’s presence as she set things to rights in his chamber
Until he did.
She was finished, about to go, when she found a cool, long-fingered hand encircling her wrist.
Emma looked back, and found herself looking into the prince’s eye.
He said nothing, merely regarded her. That peculiar mouth of his, turned up at the corners, but not always smiling. There was something hungry behind his expression, though it was barely there, a flickering thing easily concealed.
This was, Emma knew, the moment where she would scream if she did not want him.
She remained silent.
He moved forward slowly, not breaking her gaze.
When the kiss came, it was surprisingly soft. Aemond, like Emma, had cultivated an air of iciness. It was easy to forget that underneath it all, they were both made of living flesh.
One single deep kiss, and he was letting go of her wrist, moving away, turning away, his business with her complete.
Emma took the hint, curtseyed, and left.
The next day, he did it again.
*
“You are discreet,” Aemond remarked. Probably the first words he had ever spoken to her.
Emma straightened and turned to face him. “My prince.”
He regarded her out of his one good eye. “Five kisses in five days, and not one word about it anywhere in the castle. Are you really so impervious to rumour?”
“Rumour could destroy a woman like me.” Emma knew what she was: smallfolk, no-one.
“How much can I rely on your discretion?”
Probably not absolutely. There were some things Emma would not be able to tolerate. But he was a prince and so she said, “Absolutely, my prince.”
Aemond regarded her a moment longer. He enquired if she was clean. She knew what he meant, and replied that she certainly was; she was still a maiden. Saw a little surprise in his face, but not displeasure. Then, businesslike, matter-of-factly, he rattled off a series of directions to take Emma to one of the many hidden rooms in the Red Keep, as well as a time of day, and instruction to find a mattress, pillows, and blankets.
He did not ask her for sex. He did not need to; the instructions made it plain enough.
Instead, Aemond reached into his purse and took out five silver stags, holding them out. “They were good kisses.”
Emma hesitated. These were unnavigated waters, and with royalty offering to take her into them. They could easily drag her down.
“If I may, my prince… there are some things I would wish to be clear upon.”
“Explain.”
She might be tying her own noose, but Emma continued. At least she’d die for her dignity. “If I am to do this, my prince, then… only with you. No squires, no manservants, no other woman if you want two women at once. And you don’t call me a whore.”
She was in no position to give him orders. But he absorbed the information readily, and said, simply, “Take your money.”
Emma did so, the silver warm from his palm.
*
Emma had been prepared to grit her teeth and bear it, but it was easily bearable.
Aemond did not want her to be much of an actress. He wanted no exaggerated compliments upon his person, or heightened cries of pleasure.
He wanted quiet. He, too, was quiet, even though Emma knew he must take some pleasure from sharing her body. Even though Emma knew he was putting some effort into her own side of the experience, where some men would not even think to bother.
It took some time out of her days, but it was much easier than she had thought, and at the end of it, he paid her in gold.
Aemond remarked upon it once, after he was finished with her for the moment. “I pay you that gold, yet you bought yourself no jewels, no new dresses.” He had seen her often enough now to identify every dress Emma owned. There were not many of them.
“Jewels would be suspicious,” said Emma, sat upright, facing away from him. “And I don’t need a new dress. I save the gold. One day I won’t be young or strong enough to work. I will want to rest, and I won’t have any children or husband to look after me. The gold will keep me then.”
“Ah, a woman who plans ahead. I knew you for the sensible kind.” He paused. “Are you barren, then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never taken that chance, my prince. But childbirth is dangerous; I would rather avoid it.”
“And no husband either.”
“He would be allowed to control me absolutely. Lock me in our house and never let me out again if he wanted to. Beat me – oh, I know there’s a law for only six strikes, but how many men go beyond that without any consequences?” Emma inclined her head, indicating the space between them. “This, my prince, is much easier.” Aemond could command her, but that applied to any servant in the Red Keep, and they were not tied together by marriage.
“You value freedom more than love.”
“That’s true, my prince.”
*
That, too, it seemed had been a test. Aemond moved on from simply fucking her, and began to make requests. They were not what she had expected.
He wanted to be held. He wanted her arms around him, gentle but present. He wanted to put his head in her lap while she stroked his hair. No wonder he’d always seemed to like it when Emma’s arms tightened around him when they fucked. He’d wanted her arms around him from the start.
Aemond would undress for this, shuck his princely trappings, but sometimes he did not even care if Emma stayed fully clothed.
It hadn’t much been about the sex, Emma realised. Aemond had no-one to comfort him, so he purchased comfort from her. Purchased caresses, a body beside his own, arms to hold him gently, soft touches as she stroked that silken white hair.
His eyepatch stayed on. It was said he wore it so that he did not frighten ladies. Strange, that he kept it on around Emma, though she was only a maid.
Emma knew she lived in unpredictable times. One day she might regret allowing a Targaryen to take her to bed, even if he was better to her than his older brother would have been. But in the present, she believed she had made the right choice.
She, too, had gone a long time without a gentle touch. Without another’s body close to hers. Aemond’s beauty was arresting, all slender body and muscle and strangeness. The scar on his cheek bothered her not at all. She wondered at what his sapphire eye must look like under the patch.
As more days pass, he began to tell her things. Whispers in the night.
Regrets. Humiliations. They had teased him when he was younger. The wounds were still open. Emma made no reply. She understood that Aemond simply needed someone to tell these things to, someone to hear him and not injure the open wounds with the barb of a fresh retort.
Some nights, he fell asleep in her lap. Later, serving at the royal breakfast table, Emma would hear Aegon joke that his brother must have been with a woman the previous night, but he had not been seen on the Street of Silk, so where had he been? He liked them older, didn’t he, so whose wife had he been fucking?
Emma was a little older than Aemond, but not so old.
The next time they lay together, Aemond buried his head in her shoulder as they moved against one another.
*
When it came time to march upon Harrenhal, Emma was not surprised to find that Aemond planned to take her with him – concealed within a group of servants he was taking, so that she seemed no particular choice.
Travelling there, they had little opportunity to meet, except for a few planned encounters when they both wandered out into the woods, ostensibly alone. There was no time then for anything much, other than for him to rest her head on her shoulder as she held him.
But he paid her anyway.
At first, Emma had worried about what it would mean to leave the capital. She had, in her way, always been ready to run, and she’d thought it easier to run from Kings Landing. But when word came that the Red Keep had fallen, she knew she had made the right choice to follow Aemond to Harrenhal.
Even if they said the Red Keep was cursed, at least it was big. Plenty of space to hide away, and plenty of space for Aemond to lie down in Emma’s lap, her hands gentle against his hair.
One night he forgot the eyepatch, paused in the doorway as Emma took in the deep glimmering sapphire between the ruined eyelids. She made a point not to react with fear or horror, and he stayed the night with her anyway.
When she was not working or with Aemond, Emma walked the draughty halls, the empty rooms. Struck up something like friendship with Alys Rivers, a woman who seemed to understand her well. They said Harrenhal was cursed, but Emma was already made of ice. What could it do to one woman like her?
*
Emma pounded on Aemond’s chest long after she’d begun to lose hope, until suddenly he was curled on his side, spewing water.
Emma’s whole body ached. Her head pounded. To pull him from the Gods Eye she’d had to dive and dive again, pulling off his armour and unclipping him from his saddle before she was able to pull him to the surface. The water had been hot from two dragons’ plunging into it. Every time Emma returned to the surface to take a few more breaths of air, she had been certain she was consigning Aemond to die.
Soaked to the bone, Aemond turned his one eye upon Emma, before it roved out over the water.
“Vhagar.”
Caraxes, badly injured, was thrashing around on the lakeshore some distance away, and would not last long. Vhagar was nowhere to be seen. “I’m sorry.”
He did not speak again after that, even as a thought occurred to Emma, and she told him to stay by the shore, stay out of sight, be careful, she would come back with supplies but it wouldn’t be a quick thing, she just needed him to stay by the lake.
It was a daring plan which had slipped into her head, but she could feel it fully formed in her mind.
She would escape Harrenhal. And she would take Aemond with her.
*
She came to Harrenhal with her story: the fight between Aemond and Daemon, both of them going down.
As Aemond’s faithful maid, it was her duty to see to his wishes, to reward those who’d been faithful to him.
Nobody thought it odd when she unlocked some of the great chests of money that had been brought to Harrenhal, for soldiers and servants must be paid. Nobody thought to ask how she knew where the keys were kept.
She went about the castle, giving out bequests. Little handfuls of silver distributed out.
The servants were too pleased by this to question it. Those in charge did not think to deny it, for rebellious servants were a dangerous thing.
It allowed Emma to go about the castle all day, back and forth, in and out of the hidden places.
Making her preparations.
So, late at night, Emma rode out upon a wagon drawn by two horses that were strong but nothing special. Nothing that would raise suspicion about their quality. The cart was ostensibly carrying hay.
Beneath the hay, a box of gold, a box of her own meagre possessions as well as some of Aemond’s sturdier clothing, and a box of the necessaries to survive in the world. Beside the boxes, swords. Mail. Aemond’s armour had gone down in the lake, but she had found a few things that were his size. Emma was no warrior, but Aemond was a warrior well trained. She would see him properly equipped.
She found Aemond still by the Gods Eye, staring out into the water. When she pulled him into a stand to change out of his soaked clothing and into something dry, he did not speak and barely seemed to see her.
Over the next few days, she turned the horses south, mapping the journey out in her head from what she knew of the Seven Kingdoms. She had spent her whole life in Kings Landing, but how difficult could it be so long as she kept to roads that went south?
Aemond still barely spoke. He did not eat unless she spooned the food into his mouth. For warmth, they curled up together at night, her around him. Emma would have liked to set watches, but Aemond was in no state for it and she needed her rest. During the day, he sat in the hay, cloak pulled up over his head, hiding his eyepatch, hiding his hair.
Even with the food she put into his mouth, he was losing weight, growing thinner as she put her arms around him night by night. His ribs showed through his jerkin. His skin held the grey cast of despair, though his face was statue-blank.
They passed few enough people on the road, but if anyone asked, she told them that her mother had died when their cottage burned down. They were travelling to stay with her uncle’s family, herself and her father, who sat in the back. Please don’t talk to my father. He’s devastated. We need to get to my uncle as soon as we can. We mustn’t tarry.
It took more days of travel, south, always south, before Aemond looked at her as she began to break camp and said, “Where are you taking me?”
“Dorne.”
“Dorne? Are you in league with the Dornish, then?”
“No. I know nothing of Dorne. But it’s away from the war, and women live better there.”
“Then why take me? Who will you sell me to?”
“Nobody.” Emma insisted. “I’ve done my best to keep you out of sight, and I intend to keep doing so.” She did not add that he had been in no state to look after himself.
Something flickered behind his eye. He said, breathily, “Which side are you on?”
“Me?” Emma gave a brutal laugh, the first time she had ever laughed in his presence. “I’m smallfolk, Aemond. I don’t get a side. My job in the Red Keep was good enough, under any ruler. I think Daemon was a monster. I think Rhaenyra is the rightful queen. I know her children are bastards. I think Criston Cole needs a good hard slap. I know I don’t want you to die. Tell me, what does that make me, a black or a green?”
Again, that look in Aemond’s eye, as if she had become alien to him. “Why. Are you taking me. To Dorne.”
“Because otherwise this war will kill you. It nearly did kill you. It will be so much easier for them to kill you now that Vhagar is gone.”
Emma had dreamed, once, of flying upon Vhagar’s back with Aemond. Now she never would.
*
Maybe Aemond had died. Maybe this was an afterlife.
He and Emma slept in shifts now, Aemond in the wagon during the day, Emma at camp during the night. It was a sign of trust from her, he knew, that she would sleep at a time when he could take everything from her, even her life. Sleeping like this brought to an end their prior sleeping arrangements, close together, her arms around him. He missed it. By this lonely stage, he would even take something so simple as holding her hand.
They were still heading south, but would he go to Dorne with her? Should he not be fighting for his family, to keep on with the war?
Keep on with the war that had killed Vhagar. Fight for a burned-up brother who had never given him due respect. A mother who had failed him more than once. If Aegon were to die then Aemond might make it to be king, but where was Aegon now?
If he left to continue the war, would Emma come with him?
No, he decided, she would not.
Before, he had thought her simply a woman suitably discreet, clever enough to see that it was worth the gold to hold him at night the way he so very badly needed.
Now, he realised just how much of her he had missed. Emma had discovered a long time ago that this world would be cruel to her, especially to a woman, and she had identified the ways in which it was most likely to hurt her – marriage, childbed – and she had constructed a stone mask out of her own face in order to keep such dangers away, knowing too what she would be giving up by raising her defences – love, companionship. Family.
Somewhere behind the stone was a woman who knew exactly how vulnerable she was, and if her mask slipped, then she carefully reconstructed it with more discipline than an ascetic.
Now that he had noticed it, Aemond knew exactly what she was doing. He did it himself every day.
She had been good to him, too. Pulling him from the lake was a sign of immense bravery. He could not think of another person he knew of who would have done such a thing for him. He still had not thanked her for that. He ought to. He did not know how.
The only thing he could do, in the end, was make himself useful. Do his share of the work in the camp. Keep his face hidden during the day. Not think about lying with her at night.
And travel south, south, and farther south.
*
This was the sort of place where they could make a home.
The abandoned villa was within easy travelling distance from the nearest village, but not too close to it. Many walls were half tumbling down, but there were enough intact rooms for the place to be habitable. The well still brought forth water. Some repairs to the shutters, some new furniture, and it could be an easy place to live.
Enough space for the two of them, enough distance from the rest of the world.
Emma was the one who went into the village for supplies. Aemond was far too recognisable for anything closer. It occurred to him that if he stayed here, Emma might be the only person he talked to for the rest of his life, and decided he could bear that. Or perhaps she wouldn’t. He could claim some disfiguring scar on the left side of his face, wear a half-mask to cover his eye, his real scar, all of it. Claim that he came from over the Narrow Sea to account for the colour of his hair.
Some might suspect his identity, but how likely would it be for Aemond Targaryen to be hiding in a run-down villa in Dorne? Besides, everyone knew that Aemond, Protector of the Realm and Prince Regent, had gone down with his dragon.
Emma took to wearing Dornish silks, fine enough but not too fine, in colours he had never seen her wear before, deep purples and reds. Did she prefer those shades, or were they simply convenient to blend in with the other Dornishwomen? She wore blue sometimes, but never green.
Aemond had new clothes as well, but he could not find himself able to dress in much other than Targaryen black.
News from the war filtered through the village from time to time. Aemond kept abreast of it.
There was still the tension in him, the mask of indifference he had worn for so long that he knew not how to remove it, but there were fewer threats to that mask than before. Fewer stressors. Nobody to taunt and raise his hackles.
He still habitually kept his hair tied away from his face, but sometimes he wore it loose for simple pleasure.
He tried new foods Emma had brought in from the market. Gained back some of the health he’d lost in the days after Vhagar’s death. Learned how to wash clothes so that between the two of them, they could keep their home running without having to hire a servant. Drilled with his sword, because as much as he sincerely hoped to never have to use it again, he had his pride, and he knew better than to let standards slip.
He taught Emma something of how to use it, so that they would have something to do together in the length of the days. Still a beginner, she was less than skilled and would be for some time, but it gave them both a sense of achievement. More than that, Emma bought paper and ink and feathers from the village so that he could teach her how to read and write.
They slept in separate chambers. This should not have surprised him. He was no longer paying her. If he slipped out of his own bedroom and into hers, would she even welcome him? Would she be repelled? Had she ever wanted more from him than the gold in return for her hand stroking his hair? When they were together, had she ever closed her eyes and imagined a handsomer man, a man with two eyes, a man less cold, a man without Aemond’s strangeness?
It was too late for him to change his nature. He could not change for her.
*
In the cool of the evening, Emma sometimes went up onto the villa’s flat roof to look out over the undulating landscape.
Not in the direction of the village; she wanted to look at the barrenness, the uninhabited places. None of it peopled. So very peaceful.
Sometimes she wondered what she would have done if Aemond had not woken on the shore of the Gods Eye. If he had died, she would have burned him, as was right for a Targaryen. If he had been trapped, sleeping, not waking but not dying…
She would have tended him. Found some cave by the Gods Eye where she could keep his body living even if his eye never opened again. They could keep each other company in the silence.
Familiar footsteps behind her. Aemond sat beside her, saying nothing. For a long, drawn-out moment, they simply sat together in silence, watching the landscape below.
Without ceremony, Aemond removed his eye patch and slipped it into a pocket. He sat on her right – Emma at his left, she was on his blind side.
Without any prior indication of his intention, Aemond shifted sideways and laid his head in her lap. He was very pointedly not looking up at her with his good eye. Not wanting to see her reaction.
“I know I am not – paying you,” he said, very quietly. Usually when he was in her lap, he relaxed, one of the few times he would ever relax. She could feel the tension in him.
“I understand.”
“You understand that I need this.” He paused. “What do you need, Emma?”
She answered without hesitation. “Food. Shelter. Safety.”
“That is what you need to live. What do you need?”
This time, Emma did pause to think. He was a familiar presence in her lap. Something she could know without having to look down at him. “Maybe I need this too.”
“You don’t call me ‘my prince’ anymore.”
“It would be suspicious if I did.”
“You could call me Aemond.”
“Aemond.”
“… Emma.”
“And you won’t ever marry me.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t care about being married.”
Several more moments of silence. Moments of Aemond in her lap. Emma began to stroke his hair, the familiar slow rhythm.
Eventually, he rose. Knelt before her and pressed their foreheads together, as if simply breathing in the air close to her was enough. His good eye was closed. The sapphire glimmered blindly. Emma never knew which side of his face she found more arresting. They gripped each other’s forearms, holding on. As long as they held on, nothing could pull them apart.
The kiss was brief and easy, far easier than Emma had anticipated, and afterwards Aemond’s head rested on her shoulder, his good eye looking up at her. He’d been happy so rarely since Vhagar went down, but she knew what his happiness looked like, as he was coming to know hers.
Their arms around each other. Their peace. Their safety. It felt like freedom.