Chapter Text
The morning sun found Prince Aemond where he felt most at home: in the training yard. The sound of steel on steel was his favorite music. He moved with lethal precision, each strike, each parry, a testament to years of discipline forged in resentment. To any observer, he was the picture of concentration, a warrior focused solely on his art.
But, since dawn, he had felt something else. A subtle disturbance at the edge of his perception. A gaze.
At first, he ignored it. But the feeling persisted. Between a lunge and a spin, his violet eye swept across the yard and found the source. Hiding behind one of the thick stone columns that surrounded the arena, was Luke.
It wasn't exacly just the weeping, broken nephew from the night before. He was a acting as a small shadow now, the little boy was trying to make himself invisible. He didn't look scared, not in the same way he was before. The look he cast in Aemond's direction was a complex mixture that brought a nearly imperceptible smile to his uncle's lips. There was guilt, yes, the guilt of an act he regretted, bitter guilt for years on end. But mostly, there was an intense, almost magnetic curiosity.
Luke was watching him as if Aemond were a dangerous puzzle he desperately needed to solve.
Aemond turned and delivered a brutal blow against the shield of Ser Criston Cole. He gave no sign that he had noticed his observer. Let the little mouse watch. Let him wonder. The seed had been planted, and Aemond delighted in watching it sprout.
Minutes later, while Aemond was still training, Luke fought a different battle, on a much more suffocating battlefield. In his mother's chambers, the pressure from his family bore down on him like a wall.
"...she is a good match, Lucerys. Rhaena is strong, she has the blood of the dragon, and this union would forever solidify the support of House Velaryon," Jace said, his tone a mix of older brother and crown prince.
Beside him, Daemon agreed with a nod, his arms crossed. "This is not about feelings. It is about duty. It is about ensuring your mother sits the Iron Throne. You will do what is required."
Luke flinched. The idea of marriage, of a future, of feigning a normality he didn't feel, seemed absurd. The previous night, the interaction with his uncle, it had hollowed him out, left his skin feeling... raw. How could he think of Baela or Rhaena when his uncle's hand on his arm and his venomous voice in his ear were the only things that felt real?
"I-I don't want to," he said, his voice low but firm. "I'm not interested, mom..."
Daemon shot him a glare. "Interest is not part of this."
"Daemon, Jace, that's enough," Rhaenyra intervened, her voice weary. She looked at her second son's pale, anguished face. She saw the same trap that had once been set for her, the same gilded cage of a political marriage. To force Luke to marry, when she herself had fought tooth and nail against her own forced destiny with Laenor, would be the height of hypocrisy. A conflict settled in her chest: a mother's love versus a queen's need.
"We will discuss this another time," she decided, more to end the subject than to postpone it.
Jace and Daemon looked ready to protest but fell silent under the queen's gaze. To them, it was simple. It was duty. For Luke, it was a sentence. He felt like a stranger among them, their concerns with thrones and alliances seeming distant, irrelevant.
As they continued to discuss strategies, Luke's mind wandered back to the training yard earlier that day. To his uncle's figure in black, moving with a deadly grace. To the single violet eye that saw him in a way no one else did. For Luke, at this moment, being Aemond's prey seemed less of a burden than being a prince.