Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is close to two months into their joint rule that he and his new Queen first receive a desperate call for aid from the far, far North. From the Nights Watch in fact, a brotherhood that he only has the barest awareness of, and seems to suffer from a vast difference of perception among the members of his court, depending on whether they or their families hale from either north or south of the Neck. The Southron lords laugh and call it an open prison for rapers and killers, while those of the North swear that it is an Order whose call should be respected and answered with all haste.

Aegon supposes that the fact that the Lord Commander is said to be the last remaining son of the North’s beloved Lord Eddard Stark doesn’t hurt their fervor. Indeed, within short order, there are subtle hints that Eddard Stark’s son should be released from his vows and allowed to take up the seat of Winterfell. Daenerys and Lord Connington are rendered livid by the suggestions, their hatred of all things Stark nursed by long years of exile.

If she wasn’t married to the Lord of the Vale, Aegon imagines that they might have demanded that Sansa Hardyng be dragged into King’s Landing and executed for her father’s crimes as well. He is glad to be spared from sharing their all consuming hatred, as he can see how it eats them both alive. He has given thought to to perhaps acquiesce to the Northerners’ request simply to thwart their blood lust and prove that he is above it himself.

But then Missandei reads the letter aloud to the court and suddenly the few Northmen present start to shift uncomfortably as the details of the letter are made public. They remain silent afterward. He thinks that perhaps they are embarrassed to have spoken so glowingly of the man only for him to be revealed as a lunatic.

Their new southron lords, on the other hand, laugh and jest about the superstitious Northmen; so addled with cold that they have been jumping at Snarks and Grumpkins and sending out ravens that read like the ravings of a madman for more than two years.

The prolonged time that the ravens have been coming strikes him immediately as odd, but their rule is young and they cannot afford to publicly give too much credence to something that their whole court deems beyond ridiculous. Not only might it make he and Daenerys appear inexperienced and naive, but with reports of such a fantastical nature, they could open themselves up to questions of their own sanity. An unfortunate byproduct of their family’s history and the sheer number of infamous and highly public incidents of Targaryen Madness, his own grandfather’s disastrous rule and end merely the most recent. Add on to it the stubbornly remaining whispers that even his father, the lauded Silver Prince, may have been showing signs of madness when he took Lyanna Stark… Well, let’s just say that he and Daenerys have their work cut out for them when it comes to proving which side the coin has landed on for them.

Aegon has grown up under the shadow of his father’s beliefs in a mystical ‘Prince that was Promised’, Jon Connington having waxed on at length about Prince Rhaegar’s determination that Aegon was this legendary figure. He himself does not put any stock in it, and thinks that possibly the whispers are right and Rhaegar Targaryen did have a measure of the Targaryen Madness—albeit a very tame version in comparison to his father Aerys. Aegon cannot allow his own reputation to be tarnished by rumors that he lives according to some delusional prophecy or gets worked up over things that go bump in the cold nights up North.

These are the primary concerns that prevent him from pursuing the matter of the strange message from the North despite his curiosity. Daenerys herself, with her immense hatred for all things even remotely Stark-related, certainly had no interest in going to the aid of a group that followed a Stark bastard, last they’d heard. Strangely enough, while the raven they had received did bear the name of Jon Snow, Eddard Stark’s bastard son, the man had neglected to title himself beyond his name. To his best knowledge, Stark’s bastard was elected Lord Commander within the last couple of years. When he later brings it up discretely with the maester, the man corroborates his supposition and confirms that until the last few messages, Jon Snow has indeed signed as Lord Commander, Jon Snow.

It is curious, but Aegon writes it off quickly enough as the man having been ousted peacefully from his position and relegated instead to a place of steward to the new Lord Commander. Although why the unknown man would not at least sign official documents himself rather than leave a steward to do it, he cannot fathom. Perhaps as an attempt to humble and remind an impertinent former Lord Commander of his new place by having to write and send out the same ravens as before, but without his lofty title.

Whatever the case, he determines to put the matter firmly from his mind and focus only on solidifying both his marriage and his rule. They have taken the South and hunting down the remnants of the Lannister men and their few allies is simply a matter of patience and good intel. Otherwise the South is at peace and he and Daenerys at last sit the Iron Throne—alternating who physically sits upon the throne daily because they are both loath to cede absolute power to the other. In time, the North will bend the knee and give up their aspirations of secession, but now is not the time to march their weary army straight back into another battle. First they will secure everything south of the Neck.

Ravens from the Wall continue to come to King’s Landing, and though he largely ignores them, he does acknowledge with a small measure of amused respect that Jon Snow is at least a stubborn man. His undaunted dedication to his beliefs is admirable, however mad he must be to talk of corpses rising from the dead and creatures from children’s stories. Aegon even begins to look forward to these messages as a source of entertainment as the tone and language of each grows increasingly scathing and insulting.

Nonetheless, busy as he is, he does not notice that the ravens experience a lull in the fourth month of his rule. Not until, late in the afternoon one day, he is informed that a man of the Watch is there in the Keep requesting an audience with the King and Queen—and a maester, oddly enough.

When Missandei comes to tell them, he and Daenerys are sitting in his solar eating an early dinner together while discussing an incident that occurred earlier in the day. Aegon raises a skeptical brow in the direction of the window, through which the orange light of the dying sun can be seen bathing the city.

“It is nearly nightfall,” he scoffs, “Tell him to seek a bed in the city and come back for an audience during the morning court.”

Missandei’s brows furrow and she looks to Daenerys. “He says that he needs the contents of a large metal box he has brought with him from the Wall to be examined by a Maester before dark and he insists that it is imperative that you and His Grace witness the event. He swears that you will understand when you see it.”

“And what was in this box?” Daenerys asks.

“I did not see,” the girl replies, “It was thoroughly chained shut. He had it carried into the Throne room though.”

He and Daenerys share a look, neither of them pleased that some Nights Watchman believes he can compel the King and Queen of Westeros to go scurrying about simply on his word, but… He admits that he, for one, is curious and he sees in Dany’s eyes that she is as well. The worst that could happen is that the man turns out to be crazy like the former Lord Commander, Jon Snow—

“What is his name, Missandei?” he asks sharply, “Is it Jon Snow? That madman who won’t stop sending ravens about fairy tales beyond the Wall?” Madmen are only amusing from afar, and if that one has traveled all the way to King’s Landing, Aegon is tempted to clap him in irons just to be on the safe side. Thankfully Missandei shakes her head.

“He did not give a name, Your Grace. But he is an older man—much too old to be Jon Snow.”

He hums thoughtfully and meets Daenerys’ gaze with a shrug. “What could it hurt to indulge him? It sounds serious enough and if it isn’t, he can maybe be made to waste some of his own time—in the cells.”

His wife gives an elegant little shrug of her own and stands. “Well then, if we’re going to meet him before sunset, we best go now. And Missandei, have a maester meet us in the Throne room as well, I suppose.”

They go down together, each donning their crowns, and enter the room to find a solitary figure sitting on a large metal box. Iron, his mind supplies absently as his gaze sweeps over the man’s gray hair and shaggy beard. Too old, indeed, to be Eddard Stark’s bastard, who is supposed to be younger than himself. The man appears greatly fatigued as he stares anxiously out the windows, concerned perhaps about how fast the sunset fades. When he sees them approach, he clamors to his feet and greets them with a distracted “Your Grace” and begins immediately to unlock the thick chains around his box.

Only, it looks less like a box, to his eyes, and rather more like a coffin.

Ser Rolly and Ser Barristan, members of he and Daenerys’ separate Kingsguard and Queensguard, step between them and the Nights Watchman warily. The man pays them no mind, does not even seem to notice their reaction, and shoves the last of the chains off after a brief struggle to untangle them. He begins to speak as he pries up the lid.

“Good, I worried you’d be too late to see it before it wakes. The dead too far south of the Wall aren’t affected, but once one has been raised, no matter how far you go, it doesn’t lose the taint. Lord Snow—oh damn it, the damned thing feels like it’s been welded shut—Lord Snow, though, he ordered me to bring one of these as evidence, what with the whole South apparently thinking we’re a bunch of simpletons pissing ourselves over shadows up at the Wall. I was worried it might stop moving after a I got too far from the Wall, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t wake up every fucking night. (*) Ah...Beg your pardon, Your Graces.”

The black brother gets the lid off with a final heave just as the maester Daenerys sent Missandei after walks in the room. A strange smell makes itself known in the air now, one that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end for some reason. He doesn’t recognize it and he can only describe the smell as...cold—if cold could have a smell.

They all draw close cautiously to see the mysterious contents and Aegon immediately curls his lip in disgust upon perceiving that his estimation of the container being a coffin was truer than he realized.

“Proof, you say?” Daenerys scowls as they both step away, their sworn shields’ hands now on their swords. “The only proof this constitutes is that the Nights Watch really is full of madmen. Guards! Get this atrocity out of the Throne room and arrest this man while the King and I decide whether to send him back to the Wall or execute him.”

Aegon slants her a wry look for how she takes utter control of the situation without so much as glancing at him, something they will eventually have to work out if they are to rule successfully together. But before he can say anything to her, the pale corpse begins to writhe.

“The fuck?!” he hears Rolly swear, the sound almost eclipsed by the ring of swords being drawn from their scabbards as Aegon finds himself and Daenerys forced away and surrounded by guards. He cranes his head to see over their shoulders as the corpse struggles ineffectually against the ropes and ropes of chains that bind it.

“It’s held tight,” the black brother pipes up then. “But if it gets loose, know that the only thing that can kill a wight is fire. You can chop it to pieces and the pieces will just keep trying to kill you.”

“Seven have mercy,” Aegon breathes out in horror, pushing the guardsmen out of his way so that his view is not obstructed. Rolly tries to protest, but Aegon just shakes his head silently to signal the man to stand down. He will not get any closer, but he has to see this...wight with his own eyes.

Eyes… Dear merciful gods, the creature’s eyes! They glow an icy blue, like candles set inside shards of sapphire. They are not beautiful though, imagery aside, they are sickening and unnatural. Just the sight is enough to make it feel as if a chill has set into the very marrow of his bones. The face they are set in is wasted and rotted half away, leaving little doubt as to the truth of the creature’s former state of death. And yet, despite the advanced rot, the only thing he smells is that awful coldness that first materialized when the coffin lid was removed.

He knows Daenerys has joined him when he feels her nails digging into his arm, but when he looks to her, she seems unaware of her action as she stares in open horror at the ghastly creature.

“Burn it,” she gasps, eyes never leaving the corpse and its macabre, though thankfully silent, attempt to escape. Several of the men dash to the walls, retrieving torches or candles, whatever fire they can lay hands on quickest, but Aegon holds up a hand and orders them to halt. Daenerys’ head whips around and she stares at him disbelievingly. Instead of answering her, he looks to the black brother standing casually aside, a torch sconce in easy reach, Aegon notes.

“How long will it stay...awake?”

The man looks surprised. “All night, Your Grace. Until the sun comes up.”

Aegon bites his tongue and watches the wight, calculating, before nodding decisively and addressing his Queen.

“The Nights Watch has obviously been telling the truth all this time, and these monstrosities—” he gestures to the wight, “—must be destroyed down to the very last. According to the Lord Commander, the wights have masters beyond the Wall. We must not allow these...Others and their creations to terrorize our Kingdom any longer.”

His Queen’s eyes have turned to steel by the end, her previous panic replaced with deadly resolve. He takes her hand in his and she squeezes back firmly.

“It is time to take the North back.”

If there are benefits to having a bunch of kowtowing sycophants, it is that they are so very eager to be of use to the “Rightful Targaryen King and Queen” now that he and Dany have sundered their forces with their combined armies and the dragons. When summoned, the Lords and Ladies of the court positively clamored to be the first to arrive in the Throne room despite the late hour. Men and women had poured in, some still in their finery while others looked as though they had hastily changed out of their night clothes, but all of them staring with varying degrees of—mostly false—adoration at he and Daenerys as they stood in front of the Iron Throne together.

Once the nobles had caught sight of the Nights Watchman, not exactly a feat considering that the man still stood with his iron coffin before the throne, many of them had smirked; unsure why they’d been called to see the spectacle, but eager to enjoy the show all the same. The moment their gazes were captured by the closed iron coffin, rocking back and forth on the ground behind him, many of them had lost their smug looks and instead begun throwing he and Dany apprehensive expressions.

The shadow of their mad Targaryen ancestors is a hard one to escape, he supposes, and it is something that will never be far from the minds of the people of Westeros.

So, once the stream of their subjects had finally ebbed and he could see all of he and his wife’s military commanders were present, Aegon had nodded to the Watchman to begin. The man proceeded to give a considerably more eloquent appeal than his previous attempt, though still addressing his apparent superior only as ‘Lord Snow’, oddly enough. The moment a pair of guardsmen reluctantly removed the lid of the coffin and exposed the abomination inside was marked by terrified shrieks and a sudden panicked recoil that left dozens of people flailing on the floor.

At the time, he’d noted with some humor, dimmed and overshadowed as it still was by his own horror, that one of the southron lords who always mocked the loudest about Northmen pissing themselves in fright, had himself been sitting in a puddle of his own making. The northern lords were as alarmed as any of their southron counterparts, but it had fast been joined by a pronounced sense of vindicated pride that they hadn’t been shy about voicing. Their esteemed lord’s son had proven himself before the entire court in King’s Landing—all without having ever setting foot any farther south that the Wall itself.

Then had come the hard part; convincing these people to follow him into the North to face an army of these creatures and their terrible masters.

But eventually, months of bellyaching by his men and southron nobles dragging their heels later, the combined might of the Iron Throne marched out from the south and into the heart of the north. Luckily, they make good time once they are on the march proper, the North having been weakened through years of war and long winter so that the entire region is ready to fold at the right pressure.

He has found that a trio of dragons tend to always apply just the right pressure.

By the time the ruins of Winterfell fall to their control and they set up a loyal regent as the interim Warden of the North, the incandescent fury of both Lord Connington and even his wife—whose anger is most often punctuated by the roaring of her dragons above them—has reached previously unfathomed levels. With Jon Snow now absolved of suspicions of being addled minded, the volume and frequency of the northern lords’ requests for the legitimization of Eddard Stark’s bastard grow with every day, it seems.

While he himself is not against the idea—pending, naturally, a chance to meet the man and take his measure first—his Queen and Lord Hand are as enraged by the suggestion as they’ve always been. Lord Connington now turns an unhealthy shade of purple every time Jon Snow’s name is so much as hinted at. No matter the context. As for Daenerys, well, he thinks he’ll have to confine the Stark bastard to his quarters for a while after they arrive just to avoid a hungry dragon “mistaking” him for one of their meals.

The day they arrive at the Wall is actually the night they arrive. As the—breathtakingly impressive, he notes, even when seen only by the light of a half moon—wall of ice looms ahead of them, he is engaged in yet another debate with his livid Hand and a seething Daenerys. Sparked, as many others before, by yet another unsubtle probe, this time from the newest northern lords to join them, as to whether Jon Snow will be released from the Nights Watch. Aegon confesses—to himself alone; he does have his pride—that even he is growing weary of hearing nothing from these men without their conversation starting and ending with the name Jon Snow.

As they absorb one northern house after another back into the broader scope of the Seven Kingdoms, it seems that there hasn’t been a single one who, upon learning of their ultimate goal of converging at the Wall, doesn’t have a burning desire for a Stark being raised up in Winterfell. Even if that Stark must be released from an oath held sacred here in the North, and even if that Stark must be relieved of the surname ‘Snow’ before he can be a Stark.

Aegon finds himself almost jealous—certainly House Targaryen does not hold this sort of absolute loyalty from any of the houses of Westeros, much less an entire Providence of noble houses and small folk alike. The Dragons must always fight for the right to rule, must always prove that they still have the mettle to conquer and hold their Kingdom. When they do not, the other houses of Westeros turn on them quickly and try to eat them alive.

And yet, here in the North, it was the northern lords themselves who crowned their four and ten year old lord as King in the North. They spiritedly went to war under the banner of their boy King, and even when Robb Stark blundered and became The King Who Lost the North, still these men want to raise up his brother in his place. Yes, House Stark has its enemies among its own banner men, but even these men are outliers and the sort that everyone knew were treacherous all along. It makes him perhaps believe what people say: that the men of the North, the descendants of the First Men, are a different breed of man from the rest of Westeros.

His Queen and Lord Hand are less sanguine about the matter and tend to look upon the ardent Stark loyalists with, at best, thinly veiled mistrust and even contempt. Lord Connington is particularly guilty of this kind of blind prejudice, still too full of rage over the events of 18 years ago to let it go. It is a trait that, now that Aegon is King, he has felt he must distance himself from, even at the expense of wounding his foster father’s feelings.

Aegon simply cannot feel as Jon Connington does, his anger has always been the sort that burns through him as a cleansing fire and does not sit and fester and rot him from the inside out. When his anger is roused, he cannot deny that his temper can be foul indeed, but after it has passed, he finds that he can always think more clearly, the obstacles in his mind having been purified in the fire. He is not vengeful, or the type to nurse old hurts close to his heart, pulling them out in the quiet hours to admire how their sharp edges can make him bleed. It is simply not in his nature.

He is sorry to say that this cannot be said of either his foster father, or his aunt. Daenerys does not have Jon’s bitterness, but she does have the bad habit of never letting go of a slight and never forgiving a betrayal. He understands that Dany has lived a hard life. A life of trusting people, only for them to let her down and even at times reveal themselves to have been her enemy all along. Each time her heart has taken such a wound, she has grown more callous, guarding the gentle heart she denies she has all the more fiercely.

Her true problem though, as far as he can tell, is that she is as mesmerized by prophecies as his father is said to have been. While Rhaegar obsessed over the prophecy of the Prince that was Promised, Daenerys relies on a fortune told by a mystery shadow-binder woman she met after the birth of her dragons. Daenerys even admits that the paranoia the woman, Quaithe, she calls her, instilled in her has greatly influenced her decisions over the years. She has never revealed the full contents of Quaithe’s warning to him, but sometimes Aegon gets the feeling that there may have been something about him mentioned in it.

There are times when he will catch Daenerys staring at him with an intensity that momentarily startles him as her eyes seem to try to penetrate his soul and take the measure of his worth. Once or twice, he has even experienced a chill go down his spine, wondering if he has failed her mysterious test and she will order her dragons to devour him. Rhaegal will not betray him, he is reasonably certain, but he has no such rapport with the other two as he has developed with the green.

Drogon absolutely would obey his mother’s command, and Aegon isn’t sure that Rhaegal would come between his brother and the human that he simply allows on his back with minimal fuss. The green might protect him, as it has from human threats in battle, but he has also seen the way Rhaegal and Viserion bow to their brother’s superior size and volatile temper. He would prefer not to ever have to test that theory, but Daenerys’ attachment to prophecies might prompt her to act irrationally, if indeed she suspects him because of her shadow-binder’s words. He would like to think that they have overcome their initial problems with each other and can rule together in a way that they strengthen one another. But sometimes…

He doesn’t think he merely imagines her general contentment in their relationship, both as co-rulers and in their marriage. While they have been engaged in a near constant fight for dominance in both, it is hardly a bitter struggle that leaves them feeling resentful. They test one another, pushing limits to see how far their partner will allow themselves to be pushed, but there is a remarkable lack of true animosity present in their interactions. It was harder in the very beginning, their personalities both too strong for either of them to bow to the other, but over their year or so of marriage, they have come to a somewhat comfortable compromise of giving and taking.

As regards to their marriage bed, they do often enjoy sharing a bed, fruitless though they both know the exercise to be. Lovemaking between them is done simply for the pleasure of it, and he assesses that neither of them leave their marriage bed unsatisfied. Although Daenerys has kept her lover Daario Nahris, Aegon has come to the conclusion that her stubbornness regarding the mercenary has more to do with standing her ground, rather than a deep affection for the man.

He plays with the idea of calling her Daenerys the Defiant one day, just to see if she will laugh at the reference, or act defensive and scowl. He thinks he has a good enough read on her by now to hazard a guess that she will react with laughter, appreciating the jest and not taking offense.

But then will come one of those deep, inscrutable stares, and Aegon suddenly is sure of nothing in regards to his wife’s true feelings. She is giving him one of those looks right now, as a matter of fact, but he is too caught up in rebutting Connington’s frankly ridiculous view of Eddard Stark’s son’s culpability in the fall of House Targaryen to do more than make note of it.

“I fail to see how your aversion to the man is any better than Robert Baratheon,” he says the name as if pronouncing a vile curse, “deciding that my sister and I were dragonspawn and thus deserved to die. Snow would have been a baby when his father rebelled, my lord. No more guilty of Robert’s Rebellion than my sister and I.”

Connington recoils, stung to have Aegon compare him to the Usurper, of all people, no doubt, but he swiftly recovers and likely would continue to stubbornly stick to his opinion if Aegon allowed him. He is sick and tired of this repetitious argument playing out day after day until he thinks he will scream if it is brought up one more time.

As it happens though, Aegon is saved from another half hour of ceaseless arguing by the sounds of a battle they have unknowingly stumbled upon in the dark.

A rank of Unsullied march in a protective formation around them and one of Aegon’s loyal Golden Company commanders and his men have been given charge of the advance guard, so by the time they arrive at the scene of the action, the fight is well over, though the aftermath is sobering enough. A good dozen or more corpses litter the field, each engulfed in a blaze of fire, while a handful of ragged, black-clad men with torches tend three of the fires.

At first he thinks all the pyres belong to slain wraiths, but then realizes that the bodies the black brothers linger over are actually their own men, freshly dead and not prone to easily burning. The smell of cooking meat draws horrified noises from several of their less battle-tested men and lords, though he cannot say as it does not affect him as well. He is simply too accustomed to wearing a mask of indifference to allow his own revulsion to show.

Aegon can hear when each segment of their men fall silent behind as they ride past the scene until they must seem an army of ghosts approaching the Watch castle. The only sounds are that of the horses clomping noisily through the snowy landscape and the bellows of a secluded few commanders as they lay out orders to the men. All of the idle chitchat and laughter that has followed them thus far is gone, the men nervous about what they will find at the castle proper. A call goes up for torches to be lit, and as the mass of fire doubles, then triples around him, Aegon imagines they must look like a hoard of fireflies from the top of the Wall.

The rest of the ride is somber.

A mood which turns swiftly to horror when they reach Castle Black and find it overrun with dead men. Not merely inert corpses, horrifying as that would have been, but the bodies of slain Nights Watchmen risen from the dead, their eyes glowing blue set in faces not yet rotting. A scattering of men, dressed all in black and wielding swords in one hand and lit torches in the other, fight not on the ground level, but on the meager raised porches and paths of the 'castle'. It becomes evident swiftly that this is in fact the wisest strategy, as it makes the wights come to them in threes and fours instead of as a monolithic swarm the way the creatures do when they attack the arriving army. It takes several minutes of sheer terror as many of the men forget and must relearn that swords and arrows do nothing to stop the unholy menaces before a strong voice from the direction of the castle yells out that they can only be slain by fire.

Minutes of controlled chaos later, the main yard is free of the creatures except for as merrily burning lumps of flesh on the ground. By the time the creatures are all put to the flame, the surviving black brothers stream down towards the ground at a run. There cannot be more than a dozen of them.

And yet, Aegon realizes, the sounds of fighting continue, and the men of the Nights Watch are dashing towards a tunnel in the ice. Aegon orders the men forward and leaves his wife behind as he maneuvers out of the protective formation to join the onward march to the other side of the Wall. It quickly becomes apparent that this is where the true battle lies, the wights in the castle yard and in the woods having simply forced their way through or slipped past the black brothers during the mayhem.

There must be five dozen—or more—of the undead, and less than half that number of still living Nights Watchmen. Despite this, the black brothers more than hold their own as they move together like a well oiled war machine, methodically taking down the creatures with torches and, oddly enough, gleaming little daggers. They do not use the daggers on the wights, and suddenly Aegon remembers the black brother in King’s Landing telling them of the Others; the White Walkers. While the wights must be destroyed by fire, their masters can only be killed by dragonglass and dragonsteel.

Aegon had forgotten, though thankfully not before order an excavation of the dragonglass deposits on Dragonstone. The first shipments of daggers and arrowheads, as requested by the black brother, would have left shortly after they themselves, and Aegon abruptly wishes that he had inquired as to the availability of these items. If these men feel most comfortable while facing an army of creatures double their own only if they have a tiny dragonglass dagger in hand, then there must be—

There.

Dear gods...

Suddenly, as if a fog has overtaken his sight, he barely sees the wights, his attention caught by a trio of tall pale figures that glide across the battlefield, striking down men with preternatural ease, gleaming swords of something like ice cutting through the air in their wake.

A ragged cheer goes through the Nights Watchmen when they catch sight of the Targaryen army, but the White Walkers are not intimidated. The creatures turn to advance on Aegon’s men, who quickly begin to cry out in horror as their swords shatter like brittle glass rather than parrying the icy blades. His men fall, only to stand again moments later, their eyes glowing blue like the wights as they turn on their comrades. He begins to panic.

We have precious little Valyrian steel and no dragonglass, his mind reels. I wield Blackfyre, but my men have no way of killing these creatures. They’ll all be slaughtered!

He curses himself as a reckless fool for leading his men into this battle without properly outfitting them for their foe, but before he can come up with a better idea than a strategic—cowardly, his men will say, and he dreads that they could be right—retreat, a massive wolf, pure white but for its startling crimson eyes, flies out of the assembly of black brothers and takes one of the figures down. A man bursts out after the wolf, a longsword in hand rather than a torch and dagger, and he swiftly stabs the Other, causing the creature to melt away before their eyes.

Aegon experiences a fleeting taste of relief at this evidence that a normal blade somehow can slay the creatures, but then realizes, as his men continue to engage the other two nightmarish figures and continue to be slain as easily as untried green boys, that the man’s blade is in fact not normal at all, but one of Valyrian steel.

It is complete, utter pandemonium, and Aegon sees that the only way to end it is to destroy the pale beings before they can...turn anymore of his men. So he spurs his terrified horse forward, Blackfyre drawn and ready in his hand, and rides towards one of the White Walkers. He changes his course towards the third creature once he sees the dark-haired man from before engage the one he had originally picked out, and ends up being able to intercept a killing stroke meant for one of his men with Blackfyre. The being, standing nearly as tall as Aegon sits upon his horse, wheels around in seeming surprise at finding another opponent who can match its blade.

Aegon, meanwhile, is thanking the Seven that his gamble paid off. Blackfyre can match their cruelly gleaming ice-swords, now it just remains to be seen if he can match the White Walkers themselves.

The creature is fast, faster than any opponent Aegon has ever fought before and stronger than its tall, thin frame would suggest. It is all he can do to keep from being run through himself, and his poor, terrified horse is almost more a hindrance than a help as the beast shies away from the White Walker, nearly making him miss a parry when it dances nervously away.

I have to get off this horse before the damn thing gets me killed, he thinks, heart pounding.

Easier said than done, he realizes as the White Walker chases after him as his horse attempts to escape. Trained and battle-tested warhorse or not, the beast refuses to come close to the Other and finally it just ignores Aegon’s struggles to guide it and turns to run.

His back is completely exposed.

He just manages to throw himself from the saddle before he hears the agonized screaming of his horse as the White Walker’s icy blade slices into its flank. He rolls to his feet and scrambles to right himself and find Blackfyre as the wight’s pale master glides around the writhing horse, completely composed except for a terrible smile beginning to pull at its bloodless lips. He spots his sword laying abandoned on the ground halfway between he and the White Walker. Without the sword, he knows he will not survive, but there also is a distinct possibility that he will not be able to so much as lay hands on the sword before the White Walker reaches him.

He will just have to chance it.

He steels himself and dashes forward into the jaws of death, hoping that luck and the Seven will be on his side so as to allow him to dodge its teeth.

But it isn’t the Seven who save him.

It is a tattered black cloak.

The White Walker snarls, one long fingered hand coming up to snatch at the heavy cloth that has somehow ended up over its head, quite effectively blinding it, and Aegon seizes the opportunity to take up his fallen sword and drive it unflinchingly straight into the creature’s heart.

It isn’t like killing a man, Blackfyre’s blade seeming to suffer no resistance at all as it slides through the frozen flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter. The creature stiffens for but a moment before it simply dissolves into watery sludge that pours down Blackfyre’s blade and is so cold that Aegon thinks his hands may be in danger of frostbite where the stuff soaks into his gauntlets.

He startles badly when a man that he hadn’t seen approach him seems to simply materialize beside him and reaches down to take the black cloak. The man shakes the sopping cloak out briefly, but swiftly seems to give it up as a lost cause and ends up throwing it back to the ground with a sound of disgust. When he turns, Aegon is arrested by a pair of dark eyes that pass over him curiously before the man gives a slight nod of acknowledgment and leaves as quickly as he appeared. It would be too dark to follow his progress except for the fact that the white wolf from before veritably glows in the moonlight as it trots obediently alongside him, and after a moment, even the wolf disappears into the throng of bodies.

With the only White Walkers in evidence now destroyed, the tide of battle turns without the foul creatures there to swell the ranks of their dead thralls. All the same, by the time they are finished, Aegon’s hands ache with the cold, though thankfully the frostbitten sensation has abated and he has hope that he will not need a maester to look at them.

His own horse dead and put to the flame, Aegon confiscates another horse for the trip back through the ice tunnel as he returns to Daenerys’ side. His wife notices the change of horse and his disheveled appearance with a delicately raised brow but asks no questions, for which he is grateful.

He sees the dark-eyed man again, the giant wolf at his side a dead giveaway as he trudges back through the gate, one of the last men through before the portcullis creaks ominously and slams closed. He stands apart from the rest, boldly approaching them while paying no mind at all to the burning corpses around his feet.

Ah, my valiant rescuer, Aegon thinks wryly.

Now that Aegon can actually see him properly with better light than that of the moon, he notes that he is tall, with a head of dark curls that fall long around his handsome, if scarred, face. Once he is closer, the long face and gray eyes are all the further physical evidence that Aegon needs to have a good guess as to who exactly this man is.

Eddard Stark’s bastard comes right up to Aegon and Daenerys where they still sit astride their horses, their features and crowns no doubt informing him of their identities as easily as Aegon was able to guess his. Even by only the faint light of the moon and flickering torches, Aegon can see the grim cast to the Northerner’s face, as if internally steeling himself for a duty he finds particularly unpleasant. When he falls to one knee and bows his head, the frown makes a little more sense.

“Welcome, Your Grace,” Jon Snow says tersely, shoulders tense as if waiting for an axe to fall on his head.

Aegon, meanwhile, feels his blood stir at the sight—along with something else, as he is greatly startled to note—and it is left to Daenerys to reply to the man’s begrudging salutation as Aegon processes the...unexpected effect the man has on him. As it is, he can do little more than stare mutely at the dark-haired man.

What is wrong with me? He asks himself, unsettled by his body’s powerful reaction to the younger man, and all of a sudden actually glad for his cumbersomely thick clothes and the heavy cloak that his body all but vanishes under. He barely hears Daenerys’ response or Jon Snow’s inviting them inside to speak in the castle’s great hall.

Dismounting without cluing in anyone in regards to the condition that seeing the handsome Northerner on his knees with that pouting mouth twisted downwards has left him in is an uncomfortable experience, and one he can honestly say is a new one for him. His body simply doesn’t spring sudden, unexplained arousals just because a pretty face kneels in his presence—he shudders to think how embarrassingly his coronation would have gone if it did.

Focusing instead on his lingering annoyance for the man’s insulting ‘rescue’, Aegon is able to will away the reaction with enough success to trust that he’ll not end up embarrassing himself in public. With that in mind, he speeds up, outstripping Daenerys for the moment to fall into step with the gray-eyed Northman.

“I didn’t need your help,” he says, even though in his mind he’s calling himself a terrible liar. “I could more than handle the White Walker without you intruding.”

The man side-eyes him with those dark eyes, blankly but for a trace of scorn he can just detect in them. His cock stirs again—Dammit, what is going on?—but he also bristles in offense. Before he can say anything though, the man speaks, his voice hard and brittle.

“When you fight the Others, forget any notions you have of honorable battle,” he says, eyes narrow. “There’s no glory in death by the hand of an Other. There is no honor in being enslaved and turned on your comrades. They don’t just kill you—they kill you and turn you to their cause. So you kill them first, and you kill them fast, by whatever means necessary, and with whatever dirty trick will do it.”

There is outright contempt in his voice by the end, but Aegon finds that he is no longer offended. This man is a survivor, he sees now. This man has learned the hard way not to let “notions of honor” get in the way of his mission or his survival.

“Well said,” Aegon acknowledges with a nod. The other appears surprised by his easy acquiescence, but buries it quickly and turns his head away so that his dark hair blocks Aegon’s view of his eyes.

Daenerys comes up beside him then, hooking her arm through his and giving him a curious look, to which he shakes his head faintly. She doesn’t look particularly appeased; she is used to getting things her own way and having people jump to answer her every query. But while she may be Queen, Aegon is also the King. He does not bow to her every whim, nor she to his, and so instead of demanding an answer, she lets it go with just a displeased frown.

It is inside the Keep, sitting at a long table across from Jon Snow as he explains everything he knows of the White Walkers, that Aegon has the sudden and entirely inappropriate thought that he is indeed the son of Rhaegar Targaryen. For why else would this Stark, bastard or no, light a fire in his blood so thoroughly that even as he describes horrors the likes of which Aegon has scarcely dreamed of, his trousers feel like torture and he has trouble focusing on anything but the movement of Snow’s pale pink lips.

Oh, come on! He snarls to himself. He’s not that attractive! His squire’s prettier and less scarred on top of it. Get a grip, Aegon!

Meanwhile, Snow says nothing of the delay, and instead is all business, explaining everything that has happened to this point and describing the masters of the awful shambling dead. For all his dourness, Aegon can tell that Eddard Stark’s bastard son is actually profusely grateful for the aid and makes an effort to welcome them as graciously as he imagines the man can manage with so few of his men alive.

Steel-gray eyes flicker to meet his own indigo throughout, the action seemingly independent of their owner’s control, and Snow’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly as he catches Aegon staring at his mouth. Snow’s speech stumbles momentarily, and once he recaptures his train of thought, his eyes stick unerringly to Daenerys alone seemingly by sheer force of will alone. Aegon thinks he sees that pale complexion redden some, but it may just be a trick of the dim lights and his own imagination. But no, Snow’s sudden need to hide his face in his long hair as he “thinks” cannot be mere coincidence.

Well, well. Maybe I’m not the only one losing my mind here.

When their discussion is finished, Aegon having missed most of it, they all stand and Jon Snow, his bottom lip red from being bitten repeatedly, offers the King and Queen quarters in the King’s Tower. His chambers, if Aegon is not mistaken. For while Snow indeed still has not introduced himself as Lord Commander, and seems to hold himself largely apart from the rest of the black brothers, there is no other man that appears to hold the position.

Curious, he muses, rounding the table to follow the man’s lead.

Daenerys declines the shared chambers, choosing instead to keep a separate, rather smaller set, where no doubt, her lover Daario Nahris will join her shortly. Aegon is not bothered. He knows that she is barren and there will be neither bastards nor trueborn children from her side of the bed chamber. He prefers to have her content rather than faithful and disgruntled by having her affairs cut short.

Besides, he has himself been struck by a most delightful itch. One that he fully intends to scratch.

Despite his—rather blown out of proportion, he freely admits—reputation when it comes to women, Aegon has had men before, he’s simply much more discreet about bedding them than he is with women. There exists a certain stigma in Westeros where ‘sword swallowers’ are concerned, and Aegon has no desire to add that particular headache to his load when he already has quite enough as it is just with the running of his kingdom and keeping his wife content. But he enjoys men just as much as, and sometimes even more than, he does women.

Women can become very, very attached, even when they swear they will not, and of course, with women, he has to worry about fathering bastards. Men tend to be better at separating their feelings from the act, and ergo, rather less likely to start tearfully declaring their everlasting love and running away nosily sobbing when they are rejected. And, naturally, a thickening waistline on one of his former male lovers does not make him nearly break out in hives. Overall, if not for the stigma, he is of the opinion that a man makes a better paramour for a King than a woman. Certainly a much less complicated one.

Which is why, when Snow tries to back out of the room after surrendering the key, Aegon shakes his head and waves him further in with a lazy twist of his hand.

“No, no, Lord Commander. Stay awhile. I insist.”

Snow closes the door, but remains stubbornly where he is. “I’m not Lord Commander anymore,” he says, expression wary. “I was...mutinied against almost a year ago.”

“And yet, you live? And you still keep these chambers? Quite unusual for a man that has been ousted from his command.” Aegon replies dubiously as he sits in one of the two chairs by the fireplace. The fire is already merrily crackling in the hearth and must have been for some time with how warm the room is despite the temperature outdoors. Aegon gratefully strips the gloves from his hands and shrugs his heavy cloak off to drape over the back of the chair.

Once he is comfortable, he leans back to watch Jon Snow’s reactions carefully. Beyond merely unusual, it is almost unheard of for men to mutiny only to leave the man they’ve mutinied against alive and still in possession of many of the trappings of his old position of power. Just what is Jon Snow trying to pull with such a bizarre story?

“There were extenuating circumstances afterward, Your Grace,” Snow answers, expression going abruptly flat and his tone on edge. He looks ready to leave, hand groping the door handle restlessly. “Will that be all, Your Grace?”

“No,” Aegon replies a little sharply with brows raised. “I believe I asked you to stay. So stay, Lord Snow.”

Gray eyes flash at the mockingly pronounced title, and Snow’s pretty mouth pinches into a scowl. But the man does reluctantly let go of the handle and finally obliges Aegon by coming fully into the room. At a gesture from Aegon, the man takes a seat in the other chair, muscles clearly tense, even through all the leather of his armor. He stares resolutely into the fire, his hands remaining clenched in the fabric of his trousers.

Aegon hides his smile at the hint of petulance and instead takes the opportunity to openly appreciate the view while the Stark bastard ignores him. He really is quite attractive, scars aside, and his glowering only makes Aegon want to put the sullen bastard on his knees and fuck his pouting mouth all the more.

“I admit I’m curious,” he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip and catching the other man’s unwilling attention. The action holds Snow’s eyes only until they flick up and notice Aegon watching him back, after which, the man whips his gaze back to the fire. Aegon smirks and continues speaking.

“So tell me about these...'extenuating circumstances', Lord Snow. How did you survive this mutiny? Did they decide you were too pretty to kill in the end? Afterward, did they regret their rebellion and grovel at your feet, asking you to forgive and forget?”

To his own faint amusement, the lingering edge of mocking in his voice appears to greatly nettle Snow; his gloved hands clenching into fists on his knees, heedless of the thick cloth of his trousers threatening to tear in his hands. He remains obstinately silent though, even as Aegon can see the fury flash in the single visible gray eye.

Oh? Struck a nerve there did I, Lord Snow?

He supposes it wouldn’t be out of character for the infamous murderers and rapers of the Nights Watch to turn on their pretty commander and rape him rather than kill him. It’s disappointing, all the same, even if only because now he’s rather sure that seducing the man will get him absolutely nowhere.

Snow shows signs of a reciprocal attraction, yes, but a man that’s been violently gang raped is unlikely to be open to following through on such an enticement as a casual tumble with another man. Especially as it appears that Snow still holds great indignation in his heart over the vile circumstance. And Aegon has never been the type to just demand ‘royal privilege’ and essentially rape the man himself.

What a shame, he sighs to himself. Goal ruined, he is ready to dismiss the dark-haired bastard—and consequently spend a miserable night alone but for his left hand—when the man speaks.

“It wasn’t like that,” he bites out, “They did kill me—I have the marks to prove it. I laid dead for two days before the Red Priestess resurrected me.”

Dead. For two days.

Red Priestess.

Resurrected.

...What?

“What?”

He realizes that he has echoed his last thought aloud only when he hears his own voice, horrified and incredulous all at once. His erection is gone as gone can be, thankfully, but otherwise he’s aware that he probably still isn’t the image of kingly dignity with his mouth hanging wide open and his eyes huge with shock.

Snow shrugs. “Her powers are potent—it’s her visions you can’t trust.”

Aegon isn’t sure what to say to that baffling statement and so he ignores it in favor of something else the man said.

“And you have marks still, you say?” Aegon asks as he tries to wrap his mind around it. Snow nods and so Aegon says, “Show me.”

It is nothing less than a command, and by Jon Snow’s startled look and flushing face, he knows it. “Show me,” he repeats, standing and gesturing impatiently for Snow to follow suit, which Snow does after several seconds of hesitation. Gray eyes meet his, the man perhaps gauging how serious he is, but once discovering that the answer is ‘completely serious’, he begins loosening the buckles of his leathers and shucks them into the chair.

Underneath, Snow wears only a quilted doublet, abominably thin by Aegon’s standards for such weather, but then again, this has been Jon Snow’s home for years. Perhaps he no longer feels the cold. Gloved fingers stall on the carved-bone buttons, and so Aegon reaches out and undoes them himself. Snow’s breath hitches and he can see him staring at him through apprehensive eyes, but Aegon simply finishes the last one and tugs the tunic open.

Incongruous with the otherwise somber mood, the first thought that comes to Aegon’s mind is to wonder if Jon Snow has ever heard of the concept of blocking. To say he has never seen so many scars in his life would be a ridiculous claim, though he is fairly certain that he can say he’s never seen so many on someone so young.

A number of silvery pink lines litter the pale skin, most of them small, the size of daggers of varying sizes, though a few are wider, nearly an inch and a half wide. Aegon can tell the difference between the wounds caused by a slashing sword, and those caused by straight out stabbing. These are mostly of the latter; the wounds showing signs of a blade having punctured the flesh, only to be torn harshly from it. Several are clustered around his belly, and must have pierced any number of vital organs there. But Aegon spies another, larger wound further up his chest and pushes the shirt off Snow’s shoulders entirely to better see. He cannot help his loud inhale through his clenched teeth.

Larger than the others, and all the more gruesome for it, someone evidently stabbed Jon Snow right over his heart—and then twisted the blade as they ripped it out. A mortal wound even without the others.

“Gods be good...” Aegon says with breathless dismay.

His hand seems to move of its own accord, and when Jon Snow gasps in response to Aegon’s bare hand covering the terrible scar, Aegon thinks he is just as surprised by his actions as Snow. His eyes are only for the pale canvas of scarred flesh, but he can feel the Stark bastard shiver, his tense muscles trembling under his hand. He feels warm and alive enough to Aegon, but he doesn’t doubt the man’s story—not with these mementos. And that is what they are; everlasting reminders of a heinous betrayal.

The wounds have healed to thick, rigid puckers of skin that look and feel as if they’ve had a year to heal, and Aegon wonders with morbid fascination at the...mechanics of Snow’s resurrection. They are prominent under his fingers, the ridges easy to follow by touch alone, and he’s certain he could make them out even in the pitch dark. That would seem to imply that they took their time healing, at least on the outer, skin-deep level, for surely his punctured heart and organs could not slowly heal without the trauma killing him again—could they? Do the normal rules of nature even apply in such a circumstance where magic has interrupted the natural order?

Strangely—maybe even a little alarmingly so—the plain unnaturalness surrounding Jon Snow’s resurrection proves insufficient in cooling his blood for long, and Aegon finds himself audaciously skimming his fingertips down Snow’s chest to rest instead on his taunt belly. Ostensibly he is simply interested in touching the rest of Snow’s scars, but he doesn’t bother lying to himself. It may be depraved of him, but as he imagines mapping these marks out in the dark with his hands while he presses this man back into soft sheets, his arousal makes a demonstrable return.

I am on the verge of spending in my trousers like a greenboy over scars—scars! He thinks disbelievingly and with not a little self-disgust. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this ‘Red Priestess’ had put me under an enchantment.

He swallows roughly from the surge of heat that has blossomed in is belly and steps around the man, hand trailing along in his wake and leaving Snow shivering under it. He halts behind him and puts his hands on both lean, muscled hips, right where the swell of a woman’s would begin. But Jon Snow is no woman, and instead of the cushioned handholds he is used to with them, he feels only honed muscle padding the slender hips over his bones. It is different, but no less pleasing, and he uses his grip to turn the man until the glow of the fire illuminates his back.

Snow goes easily, not fighting him in the least, though he is still very tense, and Aegon gets the feeling that Snow does not often allow a man to stand so close to his unguarded back. Which, considering what Aegon has just seen, he does not blame him in the least, and actually finds it encouraging that, even with his quite justified reservations, Snow is showing himself willing to be handled with such grace. But the burgeoning smile on his lips quickly dies as he sees straightaway that there are a plethora of scars there as well, maybe half a dozen like the distinctive stab wounds on his front.

“There was a commotion in the yard, and when I went out to try to calm things down, they surrounded me and just started...stabbing me,” Snow says in a raspy voice, looking over his shoulder warily like he’s worried that Aegon might take it in his mind to put some more there.

In deference to Snow’s evident leeriness, Aegon forces himself just to hum thoughtfully and instead thumbs a puckered scar that he recognizes as an arrow wound. A very messy arrow wound.

“Did you remove it yourself?” he asks.

“Remove what, Your Grace?”

Aegon snorts and taps the wound. “The arrow, what else? The scar’s quite a mess, like you had to reach over your shoulder and rip it out on your own at a nasty angle.”

“Oh. No,” Snow laughs and his mouth twists in a humorless smile. “But I did fall off a horse with them still in my back.”

Aegon cringes just imagining it, and then, sure enough, sees a second scar of the same type on the other side of Snow’s spine.

“She got me again in the leg,” Snow says quietly, warming to Aegon’s inquiry, perhaps. “And probably would have punched me full of a few more if I hadn’t been riding away as fast as I could at the time.”

“She?”

Snow hesitates. “One of the wildlings,” he admits at last. “I was returning to the Wall after infiltrating the wildling camp and discovering they meant to attack the Wall in force. She caught up to me and tried to kill me.”

“Well she certainly made a good attempt at it,” Aegon comments, sweeping his fingers back over one of the arrow marks. “If this one had been just a little further to the right, it would have pierced your heart.”

Inky curls fall forward, leaving the knob at the top of his spine and his neck exposed when Snow’s head bows forward at that. “I know,” he whispers lowly. Aegon thinks he sees the way of it now.

“Ah,” he says, head nodding as a piece of the puzzle clicks in with the rest. “She was your lover,” he continues, just to see Snow’s reaction. A flinch.

Aegon has lived surrounded by hardened war veterans for years, their scarred bodies living testaments to both their greatest victories and their most humiliating defeats. Jon Snow’s body, on the other hand, seems to be nothing if not a monument to the most painful of betrayals.

Snow refuses to open his lips to either confirm or deny though, and Aegon does not press. Instead he circles back around so that he stands almost chest to chest with the Stark bastard, causing the other man to shift uneasily, but refuse to be the first to back away. Steel and amethyst match and Aegon moves closer so that he must tilt his head slightly in order to not look down his nose at the shorter man. Snow doesn’t retreat even as Aegon can see the conflict in his eyes and feel the shakiness of his breath against his own skin.

So headstrong, even as you stare down a King, Aegon thinks, mostly amused but with an underlying—and growing—hunger. I wonder how well you’ll keep that up while I’m making you scream. Will you glare at me then—or beg me for more? I wouldn’t put it past you to do both.

His own resolve falters at the image such thoughts evoke in his mind, and he at last forsakes their battle of wills in favor of a more…pleasurable clash. As it is, he barely has to lean in at all to close the tenuous distance between them to take the other man’s lips in a deep kiss.

Snow jolts and gasps into Aegon’s mouth, but the King just grabs a handful of the man’s hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him in. The dark curls are thick and silky in his fingers, and Aegon can taste the ale that Snow must have drank earlier on his tongue as he plunders that beguiling mouth at last. Snow shudders in his arms and Aegon swallows a moan when he feels an answering hardness against his thigh where he has slipped it between the dark bastard’s legs to rub teasingly.

When Snow moans into his mouth and his still gloved hands clutch the front of Aegon’s shirt, all he can think of is how he wants to have Snow first; whether he’ll get him into the bed first, or just take him on the floor here in front of the fireplace.

But alas, it is simply not meant to be, it seems.

“Wait!” Snow gasps, head jerking back and to the side, heedless of the hold Aegon still has on his hair. “I can’t, Your Grace. I just can’t.”

Breathless and with his mouth red and shiny and just begging to be kissed again, he is unspeakably tempting to Aegon’s eyes at that moment. But he is also full on shaking and there is a wild look in his eyes that Aegon is used to seeing in the eyes of men about to bolt in terror out of Rhaegal’s path of death and destruction. Reluctantly, he decides to have mercy on his prey and give him some space—not release him entirely, dear gods, no, but at least allow him time to catch his breath and calm himself some.

With that in mind, he uses his hold on Snow’s waist to turn him around and maneuver him back into his own seat. It is large enough, he can set his knee between Snow’s and bracket the man in with his arms on either side of his head. Snow’s eyes are squeezed shut, but his breathing is still fast with panic, so Aegon lightly strokes his fingers over the pale skin soothingly and shushes him like he would a skittish horse.

“There now, deep breaths. Shhh… You’re fine, just breathe deep,” he murmurs, cheek pressed against one of Snow’s so that he can feel the dark-haired man’s every quavering breath against his neck. The sensation does nothing to quell his own desire, rather the opposite, really, and he is painfully hard by the time Snow’s heartbeat slows. He draws back a little and looks directly into Snow’s eyes as long lashes flutter and the gray irises are almost entirely hidden by blown pupils.

“Now tell me,” Aegon says huskily, “Why can’t you? Do you have a lover? Is it your wildling woman?”

Snow shakes his head slightly in a negative, and so Aegon kisses his mouth once more, almost chastely as compared to before. “Then why?” he persists between soft, closed-mouth kisses.

“I’m not—kiss—attracted—kiss—to men—kiss—your—kiss—grace—kiss—I’m sorry.” Snow answers, though contrary to his words, he doesn’t try to escape or push Aegon away. Aegon huffs a laugh and smiles into one of his kisses as he lets his hand trail down Snow’s naked chest and gently cup the man through his trousers.

“This rather says differently,” he whispers against gasping pink lips and massages the thick bulge of Snow’s cock through the fabric of his trousers. He is rewarded by the further spreading of the muscular thighs his knee is planted between and a sharp roll of Snow’s hips up into his hand. And yet, despite his clear enjoyment, Snow turns away once more with protest.

“Just a—uh!—a...a physical reaction,” he pants. “It means nothing. I don’t bed men.”

“Ever?”

Aegon likes the sound of that, actually, and rewards him with a generous squeeze that makes the man keen.

“Ne—eeverrr. Oooh gods, please, no more. I—I can’t...”

“Very well,” Aegon sighs and stands up. Snow is obviously surprised by the abrupt stop, and cannot quite stop his hips from bucking up into the disappearing pressure once more. He looks absolutely mortified by his reaction, but Aegon can also detect something like disappointment in his handsome features too. Like he perhaps didn’t think his protests would result in the complete removal of all of Aegon’s attention at once and now regrets it.

You are like to drive me mad, Jon Snow, he thinks cheerfully. But I promise I will return the favor—in full.

“That’s it?” Snow asks, as if waiting for the trick. “Just like that?”

Aegon shrugs and pastes on a put upon expression. “That’s it,” he confirms. “I’d like to bed you, I won’t lie. But it’s not as if I’m going to rape you if you’re truly unwilling.”

Jon Snow turns scarlet and looks down into his lap, dark curls obscuring his face.

Gotcha.

“I didn’t think you were going to...”

“Look at me,” Aegon interrupts him sternly. Snow jerks his face back up and Aegon can see the arousal and embarrassment warring on his pretty face. “Look me in the eye,” Aegon commands him. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want this. Do that, and I’ll apologize for infringing on you so egregiously and then you can leave. I’ll never mention this again, or attempt to seduce you. Just look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not interested.”

A filthy, filthy lie, of course, but if he has Snow figured out as well as he thinks he does, that never has to be revealed. The way the dark-haired Northman has reacted to him so far, he feels reasonably confident that the man protests for the sake of protest. He’s a virgin to a man’s touch and unsure of his own desires. Though if Aegon had to guess, he’d say it wasn’t for lack of trying by his fellows in the Watch. Jon Snow is too pretty not to have been propositioned a dozen times over since he joined.

Which prompts Aegon to wonder how young Snow was when he joined the Nights Watch. He must be around 18 or 19, and yet rose to the rank of Lord Commander several years ago. The thought of a 15 or 16 year old Jon Snow being here, among these men, softer and more innocent, with no scars to mar his looks… Frankly, Aegon is a little suspicious of Snow’s claim of both not being raped by his black brothers and never bedding a man.

The steel-colored eyes match his and Snow’s mouth opens, but he says nothing and eventually closes it.

And now you’re mine. You just don’t know it yet.

Aegon allows himself to gloat inside—he can almost taste his triumph—but he allows nothing of his inner exultation to show on his face. Snow reacts badly to mockery, he’s learned in his short time with the man, and though the last thing in the world Aegon wants to do to Snow right now is mock him, he’s not blind to how a smug smirk on his part could be misinterpreted by the man. And so he keeps his face smooth and allows the silence to drag on for several more increasingly uncomfortable seconds. Uncomfortable for Jon Snow, that is. He is greatly enjoying the awkward scene, himself—even if he can taste blood in his mouth from where he’s bitten his cheek too hard trying to keep his expression carefully blank.

Just when it seems that Snow has worked up the nerve to say something, Aegon snatches up Snow’s discarded tunic and presents it to the man.

“You can go,” he dismisses him curtly and revels internally at the taken-aback look that Snow gives him. “I see you’re not ready just yet, so think it over and we’ll speak again later.”

Snow takes his tunic, and when he stands he turns his back to hide the thunderstruck expression that he can’t seem to wipe off his face.

It is a gamble, sending him away like this. He could come back the next day, having processed every thing and decided that he really doesn’t want to share Aegon’s bed. But that being said, Aegon honestly does not foresee that happening. Snow rather strikes him as a man who needs desperately to let go. The stresses of power and command have worn the Stark bastard down into the ground and he is very plainly tired of having to be strong and in control. Once he can convince him just to try giving the reins to Aegon, he’s certain that the man will learn to crave that sort of release. And Aegon looks forward to being his sole source while he is at the Wall.

Besides, Aegon, contrary to popular opinion, is capable of playing the long game. Somewhat. Not that he intends his seduction of Jon Snow to go on much longer than it absolutely must in order to get the man in bed, but he’s not opposed to taking his time and doing a proper job of it. He knows—just knows, in his bones—that he wants more than a single messy tumble with the man.

He feels...drawn to Jon Snow, almost the way he felt drawn to Daenerys when he first met her. With Daenerys he’s sure it was the draw of family, helped along by the fact that his aunt’s reputation as the most beautiful woman in the world was by no means an exaggeration. But that does not explain why he can hardly keep his hands off this Northern bastard, pretty though he may be under the scars.

And then, with a jolt, it occurs to him to wonder if this is how his father felt when he first saw Lyanna Stark. The famed wolf-maid of the North who drew his father’s eye away from his mother, and over whom a war was fought.

That is...a terrifying thought, actually.

But an undeniably thrilling and, dare he say, pleasing one as well.

There have been skeptical whispers about Aegon ever since they first made landfall in Westeros. Even he has heard them, try as the whisperers have to be subtle, and though he shows nothing—proclaims nothing—but absolute belief in his own bloodline…

Even Aegon has his doubts.

He has wed Daenerys Targaryen, thus solidifying his right to rule and reunifying his sundered house, but though he sits otherwise uncontested upon the Iron Throne with as beautiful a woman as has ever lived by his side and sharing his bed, his triumph cannot help but be tainted by a single insidious question. Is he truly Aegon VI Targaryen, son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, or is he, as the rumors that refuse to die away claim, a Blackfyre usurper that has finally stolen the throne?

He isn’t knowingly a Blackfyre, this he does know, but then he didn’t know he was Aegon VI until Lord Connington told him when he was ten. And Lord Connington himself admits, very grudgingly, that he didn’t come into custody of Aegon until he was near five, and had hardly ever seen him at all when he was still a babe in his mother’s arms. With such bias and so many holes in his history, Aegon long ago decided that Lord Connington, loyal as he always has been, is not as… reliable a witness as some might think on the matter.

The man is as a father to him more than anything else, and Aegon is reasonably certain that if it were to be revealed that Aegon was in fact nothing more than the son of a Lysene whore, Lord Connington would still fight for Aegon’s right to be King. It is a less comfortable feeling than Aegon would have imagined it to be, and it does nothing to quell the nausea that sometimes strikes him when his doubts prey too heavily on his mind.

But this? This instant, burning desire he felt upon meeting the bastard Stark? This is the first real feeling of genuine kinship that he’s ever really felt for the man who has only ever been a story to him before. He has been taught to play the harp and sing; taught to be courtly and charming; and taught to fight and hold a lance in the same manner as the larger-than-life spectre in his life that is Rhaegar Targaryen.

Sometimes it feels as if his life and experiences have been carefully manufactured so as to turn him into Rhaegar Targaryen’s mirror image. Just the idea shakes his belief and makes him doubt himself. Would he bear any resemblance to his supposed ‘father’ if he hadn’t been carefully molded his whole life to be as much like the man as possible?

This feels like the answer. Jon Snow feels like the answer—to that question and a hundred others that have plagued him. And judging by Snow’s own bewildered reaction, Aegon surmises that such an immediate, visceral attraction is as unusual on his part as it is for Aegon.

Which is precisely why he wants to do this right, even though he’s certain he could have him now if he just pushed a little more. But no, he will let Snow stew on his offer and return with his mind clearer and, with any luck, a little more ready to surrender on the morrow.

When Snow finishes redressing, he stops a moment to look upon Aegon once again, his dark eyes wary. It is then that the silver-haired King notices the fine job the other man has done of putting himself back together.

It almost...irks him, he realizes bemusedly as he finds himself frowning at the almost complete lack of evidence that Snow was only minutes ago moaning and thrusting his cock up into Aegon hand. As the other begins to head to the door, Aegon makes a snap decision and catches hold of him. Jon Snow turns startled eyes his way, but does not protest when Aegon pulls him around and crowds in close.

“Just once more,” Aegon whispers against his lips, waiting until Snow’s lashes flutter closed of their own accord to place a hot, lingering kiss upon them. He keeps his own mouth closed, not wanting to push Snow too much, but kisses him so passionately otherwise that he might as well have. His hands bury in Snow’s whirlwind mess of curls and the man’s own hands grip Aegon’s sides in response. He lines their cock up as best he can—Snow is a little shorter than himself—and while he does no more than that, he can feel the powerful effect that the action has on Snow as the other man shudders again and groans against his mouth.

When he draws back, Snow is as thrown off balance as he was when he’d first begun panicking, and his appearance just as appealing. Nonetheless, Aegon forces himself to let him go rather than shove him up against the nearest wall and finish what he has started like he is dying to. Snow steps back with dazed gray eyes and a crimson flush covering his face. The man unconsciously wets his lips with his tongue, but thankfully for Aegon’s ability to control himself he immediately retreats shakily out of the room. He throws Aegon just one more overwhelmed look before the door closes, and afterward Aegon lets his head fall back and groans ruefully.

So close! So fucking close!

He could have spent tonight fucking the handsome Stark bastard, but now instead he’s sentenced himself to that same miserable night alone with his hand that he’d bemoaned earlier.

“Dammit!” he swears aloud and then makes himself a promise as he walks to the bed, loosening his laces as he goes.

Tomorrow, he vows, taking his cock in hand with a moan. Tomorrow, for sure. He’ll either be ready tomorrow or I’ll go mad tomorrow. Either way I’ll be put out of my misery.

When he spends over his hand just a few minutes later, he is picturing Jon Snow’s mortified blush and the way his scarred belly trembled under his hands. His Kingsguard stationed outside can probably hear him as he shouts his completion, but Aegon spares no thought for embarrassment as he lays back, chest heaving and the vision his mind has conjured up still wrecking havoc on his control.

Tomorrow.

Chapter Text

When the door to his former quarters snicks safely closed behind him, it is only because he is only too aware of the knowing eyes of the Kingsguard knights outside that keeps Jon from allowing a loud exhale of relief. The scandalous picture he no doubt makes with his blushing face and kiss-bruised mouth after leaving the King’s chamber is one of a distinct nature, he’s sure. And not only that, he has a nagging suspicion that was exactly what the King intended with his ‘just once more’ kiss.

He waits until he turns a corner and is out of the view of the two knights, and then he leans back against the icy stone, letting the frigid cold seep into his back and cool his blood.

Gods, the nerve of that wretched man! He seethes, the hot flush of arousal on his face giving way to a deeper red of humiliation. I should have punched him right in his smug mouth, except his Kingsguard would have probably executed me for it.

After waiting several moments to calm himself, he scrapes what is left of his dignity together and retreats to the secluded room that Satin has managed to procure for him—probably by forcibly kicking the former occupants out—in the time since Jon surrendered his own quarters in the King’s Tower to the visiting royals. Satin has always been an efficient worker, and Jon is thankful to still have the man’s loyalty even after he made it clear that he no longer considered himself part of the Watch.

Some of the men had grumbled, but as far as Jon is concerned, his death more than paid his ransom to the Nights Watch. He was free from the moment that their blades slid into his flesh with the intent to murder him. The fact that Melisandre was available and willing to resurrect him does not absolve them or mean that he must pretend that it never happened and continue to play along to their tune.

Satin understood, though Jon could tell that it grieved the man all the same, and thus Jon had still been surprised when Satin Flowers had come to him and pledged his loyalty to him again, just as Jon Snow, not the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch. Hence, Satin has continued to act as his steward and squire, turning himself willfully deaf to the complaints of the black brothers. Jon is just glad to still have one ally that he can put his trust in at the Wall with Sam still forging his maester’s chain in Oldtown. Though in the beginning it had been difficult to trust even Satin.

For a long time, he’d thought that he would never trust another man again, but slowly it had become evident, even to his hyper-alert and always on guard new state of mind, that there were still good men at the Wall. Good men that hadn’t played a part or even known about the plot to murder him until after he was a cold corpse they discovered laying in the yard. Slowly Jon had relearned the ability to give someone his back and not carry naked steel at all times. He learned to sleep again without the need for a dagger under his pillow, his fingers curled around the handle so that he could defend himself even coming out of a dead sleep.

He has apparently progressed so far as to allow that pompous silver-haired prick to manhandle him without feeling the need to bash his head in—even when the man had touched the stab marks and left his sight to gawk at his back. It was an unexpected test of his ability to trust a stranger, but it seems that he has passed. He would love to know why exactly King Aegon chose him as his target instead of someone like Satin, but he supposes that he’s...relieved as well.

Because I don’t have to defend someone else from him. I couldn’t just let him take advantage of Satin, at least, even if he is the bloody King of the Seven Kingdoms. This way, I’m the only one in any danger if the man turns out to be a monster. That is, if he doesn’t simply decide to find an easier quarry when I keep refusing him.

And Jon will refuse him. Whatever the arrogant man thinks, Jon is not attracted to men, he never has been, and he never will be. He has gotten enough offers over the years, offers to ‘warm him up’ and ‘teach him to use his pretty mouth’—gods, he hates when men call him ‘pretty’. There are few things so demeaning.

He’s under no illusion as to what would have happened to him when he was younger if he hadn’t had Ghost. Once it became apparent that his uncle was outright missing, most of Jon’s protection disappeared along with him, and without Ghost constantly at his side, someone would have eventually not taken ‘no’ for an answer. The time between his returning to the Watch after infiltrating the wildlings and Ghost finally showing up as well had been somewhat harrowing. He was considered to be a traitor by more than one of his former...admirers, and Jon had dreaded the day when one or more of those men got him somewhere alone and decided that a traitor didn’t deserve to say ‘no’.

Even after he became Lord Commander, men still tried to bed him, they were just—slightly—more respectful when asking. But since his death, no one has had the stones to approach him and try to flirt with him.

Until now.

What game is he playing at? Why me? Jon ponders as he lays on the lumpy mattress in his new room.

And why send me away instead of insisting that I let him bed me? I know he wanted to, or at least it certainly seemed like he wanted to. He was plenty repulsed by the whole resurrection thing, but he also seemed to get over that quickly enough. I wonder if it is just because I’m the only person with blood of the Starks he can get his hands on to disgrace.

It isn’t a pleasant thought, and Jon rolls over onto his side, feeling a bit ill. He wishes he’d thought to ask for some dreamwine to help him sleep, but that would have meant seeing more people as he looked for Satin.

He has been blamed and scorned for his father’s actions plenty of times in the past, but someone wanting to attack him in so intimate a fashion just because he is Lord Stark’s bastard is a new one even for him. Maester Aemon hadn’t held his relation to Eddard Stark against him, but then again, Maester Aemon hadn’t lived his entire life in exile, never knowing his family because they’d been butchered when he was just a baby. The Dragon King had.

Still, it strikes Jon as a very odd way to revenge oneself upon a dead man. Why not just kill him? Exterminate the last of Eddard Stark’s blood and be done with it?

Unless that is precisely the plan…after King Aegon feels that he has sufficiently shamed and dishonored him first.

Gods, why couldn’t Stannis have lived to take the throne? Why did it have to be a pair of mad Targaryens with dragons? Hopefully, the dragons will at least be an asset in the fight against the Others.

He has heard...mixed reports as to how tractable the Targaryens’ dragons are; from stories of courtiers accidentally slain and eaten, to tales of dragonfire unleashed out of the blue on the ranks of Targaryen allies because the dragons could not tell friend from foe. They say that the King and Queen each ride their own dragon, but that the third still flies wild in combat on its own and the royals must spend half their time in the air just keeping the riderless dragon under control.

Jon cannot fathom Ghost acting like an insane berserker that Jon had no control over in battle, the direwolf killing and maiming Jon’s own men. No one would put up with it, and Jon would be quickly overwhelmed by calls to slay the wild creature. But who would have the guts to stand up to a King and Queen and demand that they put down their mad dragon?

Absolutely no one, he thinks dourly.

Jon finally gives up on sleep with an aggravated sigh, conceding that his mind is simply too engaged to manage it, and he instead closes his eyes and sets himself to a different pursuit.

He slips into Ghost’s head easily, finding the direwolf laying before a hearth in the kitchen and scaring the daylights out of a pair of cooks with his begging stare. The men are unfamiliar to him, and must have just arrived with the Targaryens, thus explaining their alarm over Ghost’s presence, despite the direwolf behaving himself other than his shameful begging. Jon laughs to himself and nudges the direwolf away with thoughts of a hunt. The cooks let out audible sighs of relief behind him and quickly begin squabbling over what to prepare for the nobility to break their fasts in such a short amount of time.

Ghost pads out of the Keep, newcomers to the Wall easily identified by the way they leap out of his way with curses and cries of alarm. He looks up at the King’s Tower and catches sight of the Queen as she stands framed by the large window of her room, resplendent even while smothered in such thick furs. Ghost’s excellent eyesight allows him to see that a Tyroshi man with dyed blue hair stands behind her, his big hands on her petite shoulders.

When she turns and kisses the man, Jon is so surprised, even Ghost’s jaw drops, effectively petrifying several more people, but Jon is too absorbed in his own shock to take any note of the chaos around him. He hastens Ghost out into the woods, eager to lose himself in the hunt and forget about all of the pair of scandalous Targaryens he is now evidently trapped with at the Wall.

What the hells is wrong with these people?!

It certainly puts a new spin on King Aegon’s behavior. Either he is getting back at his Queen for her infidelity, or they neither of them care to keep to their marriage bed.

Ugh. Either way, that means that he’s chosen me as his next...conquest. And here I thought being called ‘pretty’ was insulting.

As Ghost goes streaking past the Targaryen army to disappear into the woods, Jon decides then and there that he will get involved in the King and Queen’s insane relationship over his dead body. And if the King tries to force the issue, Jon will make sure that he is too busy cradling his crushed stones to grope Jon’s.

His foul mood translates into an increased aggressiveness in Ghost, and the direwolf snarls as he catches the scent of prey. Nonetheless, it proves a good outlet for him, and sometime after Ghost takes down and savages several plump rabbits and an unfortunate bird that makes the mistake of flying too low, Jon finally is able to drift off to sleep. The remnants of his connection to Ghost leaving him with dreams of blood and racing through the snowy landscape.

By the time he comes awake to the sound of approaching footsteps some time later, he feels well rested despite the night of vicious fighting against not only wights, but several White Walkers. He attributes it to the sheer relief he feels that his calls to Kings Landing have finally been answered. The Wall has not had outside help since Stannis Baratheon died and most of his men disbanded to go slinking back south with their tails between their legs. While the wildlings’ numbers have greatly helped, even they cannot compare to the tens of thousands of men that the King of Westeros can field.

As he’d discussed with the Queen upon the Targaryens’ arrival—the King having stayed oddly quiet at the time—the castles along the Wall have scarcely enough men to keep them garrisoned, and many have been abandoned completely. Castle Black boasts the most, with not even thirty men by last count. With the previous night’s casualties, they are probably closer to twenty five—or lower. The situation at the Wall crossed the line from merely ‘desperate’ to ‘catastrophic’ more than a year ago when Val’s prediction about poor little Shireen Baratheon came true.

Queen Daenerys graciously agreed to speak more of how to divide the army to better guard the Wall after Jon had time to rest, the woman noticing how close Jon was to simply collapsing after the adrenaline had worn off and he’d been able to sit.

Her King is apparently less observant, unfortunately, and as he sits up with a spine-cracking stretch, Jon mourns that the possibility of sending King Aegon along to one of the other castles is probably too much to hope for.

Somehow, I get the feeling that he’s not going anywhere, he sighs to himself.

Just as his visitor knocks on the door, Jon gets to his feet with his sheathed sword in hand, having put on and relaced his boots hurriedly in an effort to not be caught barefoot should he come under attack.

Regrettably, he expects that it will take years at this rate before he is rid of the restive distrust that has embedded itself deep in his heart. As it is, it feels almost instinctual at this point. Perhaps he will never be fully free from it.

“Jon?” says a clear voice that he is well familiar with, making him relax his stance.

“Come in, Satin,” he calls and stands his sword up against the wall as the perfumed young man slips inside with a covered tray and a smile.

“The King and Queen are both in the common hall, milord,” Satin says as he sets down a steaming plate and mug. “I swiped this from the kitchens for you in case you wanted to eat before you went to speak to them. I haven’t tasted food this good in years, I guess there’s something to be said for having cooks from the royal kitchens, hm?”

Jon hums noncommittally, but quickly changes his tune when he bites into a sandwich made of bread still warm from the oven and meat so tender and juicy that Jon thinks he must be hallucinating it. He all but moans at the taste of honest to goodness saffron in the leek and potato soup.

“I know, right?” Satin laughs.

Jon shakes his head in amazement. “Gods, there’ll be another mutiny when they try to leave if all the men get a taste of this.”

His friend shifts uneasily, despising any reference to mutinies or murders. Jon supposes it isn’t particularly kind of him to bring them up in jest, but then again, if he can deal with it, so can everyone else, his friends included.

Just keep telling yourself that, bastard, a nasty voice sneers in his head. Maybe someday it’ll actually be true.

Hand clenched crushingly tight on the spoon in his hand, Jon grits his teeth and tries to sweep such cynical thoughts from his mind. A distraction. He needs a distraction.

“Have you found out what happened at the gate?” he questions suddenly, seizing on the topic in his desperation for something to take his mind off his own damnable insecurities.

Satin’s mouth purses in a frown. “Maybe,” he shrugs uncertainly. “No one can say who, but someone opened the gate in the middle of the night.”

“What?!”

His friend nods grimly. “Like I said, nobody saw who, but the dead where clamoring around the gate along with a White Walker. They were shooting fire-tipped arrows through the murder holes and trying to aim at the Other with dragonglass arrows, but then suddenly the gate was open.”

“A betrayer?”

Surely not. What fool would betray them to the White Walkers when it is clear that the creatures are an anathema to all life. They are not the sort to bribe with gold or promises of power. They kill and then they enslave the dead, simple as that.

Satin shakes his head. “I can’t imagine it,” he says, mirroring Jon’s thoughts. “But I also don’t know why someone would open the gate in the first place. If someone had some harebrained scheme they were trying to enact, they certainly aren’t admitting to it now—if they’re even still alive.”

So a fool or a betrayer. Just what I need. Another damned mystery.

Jon lets the rest of Satin’s chatter wash over him as he eats, the man so used to Jon’s silences by this point that he doesn’t even wait for a comment to any of his gossip before he is moving onto the next topic. Once the plate is empty—the food is sinfully good after all these years of gamey meat and the plainest of fare—Jon has a good idea of all that has happened in the Keep and the Targaryen camp in the time that he has been sleeping.

How Satin comes by such impressive amounts of gossip has always been a mystery, one that Jon really isn’t keen to explore, so he just thanks the dark-eyed man and stacks his dishes back on the tray. Satin picks it up, but instead of leaving like he expects him to, the other stares at him pensively while biting his lip, looking for all the world as if he has a burning question, but isn’t sure he should ask. In light of recent events, Jon dreads what it could be.

“What is it, Satin?” he sighs.

“I...noticed something strange earlier, my lord,” Satin says hesitantly after another moment.

“Oh?”

Satin wets his lips nervously, but watches his face intently. “It was the King—” Oh shit. “—In the hall, he was staring at you like he… Well, like he either wanted to eat you—or like he was fantasizing about tearing your clothes off with his teeth. I—Jon? Are you okay?”

Jon suddenly groans and shakes his head as he buries his face in his hands in despair. No, he isn’t okay, he is in fact as far from okay as possible right now!

That...that idiot! The entire hall must have seen, and now anyone who might have noticed how long I was in the King’s Tower will think I was—

Think he was what? Kissing the man? Getting undressed by him? Being bedded by him? They’d only be wrong about the last one.

Oh gods. My reputation is ruined. There’ll be rumors that I’m bedding the King before the day is out.

“—ord! My lord!”

Satin is shaking his shoulder, laughter in his voice.

“My lord, I promise it isn’t as bad as you’re probably imagining,” the young man says chuckling once he sees he has Jon’s attention once more. “I’ve long years of practice in noticing and recognizing such looks, but I doubt almost anyone else saw anything but the King staring broodily and maybe trying to intimidate you. It wasn’t so much as outright lust that he was looking at you with as much as—” He waves his hand around as he struggles for the right word. “—a deep...intensity, I guess, might be the best way to describe it. Less like he wanted to tumble you right then and there, and more like...uh...

“More like him feeling me up while kissing me?” Jon mutters morosely under his breath and winces when Satin’s eyes light up.

“Did he do that while you were in the Tower?” Satin asks eagerly. Jon doesn’t believe he mistakes the enthusiasm in his voice.

Uh… What’s going on here? He wonders, baffled, mouth opening, but no words emerging.

Satin nods to himself in seeming satisfaction. “I thought so,” he says. “You were a while in there, but you also looked pretty angry leaving, so I wasn’t sure what to think. Did you not like him then? He’s very attractive, but if he’s an arsehole, I guess all the looks in the world can’t remedy that. Though I thought he seemed pleasant enough—obsessive staring aside, naturally.”

“What?” Jon asks with incredulity, wondering if perhaps his friend has suffered a blow to the head that he is unaware of. “Satin, I—I don’t like men. At all. I’m sure he’s perfectly...pleasant—when he wants to be—but I’m just not attracted to men.”

Now it is Satin’s turn to look skeptical. “Jon, he wasn’t the only one who looked interested in there. I watched you both, and I was almost certain that if he asked, you’d consider it. I’ve never seen you react to anyone like that. Not even Val, and everyone can tell that you fancy her.”

“...Really?” Jon asks warily and is rewarded by a deadpan expression.

“You were blushing, Jon,” his friend says with emphasis. “You caught him staring and you started turning pink immediately.”

“I’ve blushed around Val plenty!” Jon defends tartly, and then wants to hit himself for that frankly absurd line of defense.

Still, he fails to see how exactly blushing around the Targaryen King is somehow so much more significant than doing so around Val. The wildling princess is a beauty to rival even the Dragon Queen, and, yes, he has been enamored of her for years, though he has never sought to do anything about it, even firmly turning down a marriage to her in years past. The silver-haired King is a striking man, he cannot deny, but he’s also shameless in his display—which is the only reason Jon blushed.

The only reason, yes.

...He’s not even fooling himself, he realizes with dismay.

“Yes, when she teases or flirts, you do indeed blush like a maid,” Satin agrees, though his tone is pure patronization. “He didn’t do anything but look at you though. Although,” he grins, “it seems he did more than that once he had you alone.”

For several moments, Jon attempts to formulate some sort of effective response to that, but ends up just sputtering inarticulately and, yes, blushing. Satin appears quite satisfied with his results, his mouth tugged into a sly grin.

“I rest my case,” he says and turns to go.

Jon stares after him agog before closing his eyes with a groan.

If I keep my eyes closed long enough, can I pretend that this was all just a bad dream?

Shaking his head mournfully, he sweeps such hopeful delusions out of his mind and stands to put on his sword. Their royal guests await, after all, and Jon well remembers how much royals hate being kept waiting.

When he steps outside, he realizes why he feels so well rested. The sun is high in the sky—and on the wrong side of it. More than half the day is already gone, and Jon wonders if perhaps Satin was sent to wake him by an irate King or Queen.

Fantastic, he thinks sardonically. I’m sure they’re both positively thrilled by the wait. On the other hand, maybe I’ve given them enough time for the Queen to have torn herself from her lover’s arms long enough to bed her husband, and now he won’t want to bed me. And while I’m thinking of farfetched possibilities, perhaps Val will decide today to become a perfect southron lady, and the Nights King will choose to emulate her example and show up to battle in a delicate pink frock.

He is grumbling audibly by the time that he reaches the common hall, and one of the black brothers gives him an odd look, no doubt having heard something about the Nights King and a ‘pink frock’ and now wondering what exactly he’d heard wrong. Jon ignores the man and instead makes his way to where he can see the silver-haired couple standing with a tall, redheaded man and—

“Lord Tyrion?” Jon blurts out disbelievingly as he sees the last man, the patchy white and gold hair simply too distinct not to jog his memory. The dwarf turns about to face him fully, and it is only by the grace of long years of serving amongst the winter and battle-maimed men of the Wall that Jon can swallow his horrified gasp. He can feel his eyes widen though, and by the short man’s slightly bitter expression, it has been noticed.

“Well, well. Jon Snow. Not as pretty as when I last saw you, but then, I don’t really have any room to be talking, do I?” the dwarf lord says, jovial enough in appearance but for the poorly hidden offended pride in his mismatched eyes.

Jon knows this game though, also from years of serving with other such maimed men, and so rather than saying anything ill advised about his ravaged face, or, gods forbid, an apology, he instead says, deadpanned, “No it seems not, my lord… It appears you have put on some rather unappealing weight over the years. Too many lemon cakes, perhaps.”

The other three of them look upon him with shock at his rudeness, but it has the desired effect soon enough when Lord Tyrion himself starts laughing uproariously, offense quite forgotten.

“I confess, I had all but forgotten this of you, Jon Snow,” the Lannister dwarf says once his laughter dies down some. “But before your weapon of choice tended more toward sullen silence and your wolf. Sharpened your own teeth in the last years, have we?”

Jon bares said teeth in a smile and inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment. When Tyrion smiles back at him, he sees that he is forgiven. He sees also the intrigued looks that the King and Queen trade one another at the quick withdrawal of Lord Tyrion’s anger and he can guess that such a thing is almost unheard of by them. But Jon hasn’t lived with men who have suffered terribly disfiguring wounds for the last years of his life without learning how to speak to them without making them explode from offense.

Some men wear their disfigurement as a badge of honor—Tormund, comes to mind—while others are so horribly ashamed that they lash out at even the slightest of reference to it—and sometimes even at the lack of acknowledgment. Remembering he and Tyrion’s exchanges as a boy, Jon wouldn’t at first have thought that Tyrion would be one of the latter. Then he really thinks about what he’d said, not just applied to himself, but what such ready advice had implied about Tyrion, too.

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be used to hurt you.”

Make it your strength so it can never be used to hurt you…

Certainly a good philosophy to live by, in theory, but Jon himself knows just how hard it is to actually live it. He can claim that the word ‘bastard’ doesn’t bother him, but that hardly stops it from stinging every single time someone refers to him as ‘the bastard’, or ‘Honorable Ned Stark’s one mistake’.

It is hardly a stretch to believe that Tyrion Lannister has also always been a man who hates that which makes a mockery of him—including his own stature. When Jon was young, he’d assumed because of how proudly Tyrion had proclaimed himself that he was truly not bothered. Looking back on it now, he thinks his younger self a blind fool for not seeing it even after the man’s own words told the truth of it.

I wonder how many others and their motivations I made such assumptions about when I was too young and stupid to see past my own nose. And how many do I still?

A comment from the Queen drags him out of his own mind, and he soon finds himself engaged in a discussion about the Wall and its castles with she, the red-haired lord, and Tyrion. The King speaks but rarely and seems to much prefer to peer intently at Jon as he tries to ignore him. He feels a familiar heat suffuse his face, like standing before the forge with the bellows aimed at him. The Queen shoots him a knowing look as she slants her eyes towards her husband, but mercifully she does not say whatever it is that she suspects.

The red-haired lordthat Jon has since learned is called Jon Connington, the King’s Hand, watches him with undisguised disdain, the sneer never leaving his face if he is looking in Jon’s direction. He’s not sure what exactly he’s done to earn this man’s enmity, but it reeks of a grudge long nurtured and jealously guarded; one that has spoiled over the years and tainted everything that it has touched. Really, it is simply too much to have spawned during the time of their short acquaintance—even Alliser Thorne had required some direct antagonizing on Jon’s part before he’d wanted to mount Jon’s head on a pike.

He also discovers during their talk that the Dragon Queen is actually quite interesting, and would probably be more so if she didn’t hold such obvious hatred for the blood in his veins. As it is, he ignores the odd ache in his chest that her hostile stare—heated where Catelyn Stark’s was cold—causes for reasons that he cannot fathom.

Where Lord Connington’s contempt does nothing but make him both curious and troubled in equal measure, the Queen’s has a rather different effect on him. She is barely civil, her words used as knives to flay him if he isn’t careful, and yet Jon is having a hard time finding her anything less than…intriguing.

She’s beautiful, but I’m not overly attracted to her, he thinks distractedly, trying not to lose track of the turns the conversation takes, but truthfully more interested in solving this new mystery of his.

Satin was right. I’m more attracted to her husband. He snorts softly to himself as that bizarre realization comes to him. Now there’s something I never thought I’d say.

“Tell me, Lord Commander,” Queen Daenerys says, suddenly addressing him after a long lull in his part of the conversation. “How well do you think these White Walkers would stand up to dragonfire? You say they are not susceptible to normal fire, but dragonfire is not like normal flames.”

He hesitates, thinking on it, but eventually shrugs. “I could not say for sure, Your Grace, as I’ve never seen dragonfire myself. But I believe that there is a good chance that it would prove more effective. Valyrian steel, forged with dragonfire, is one of their few weaknesses. And I’m not the Lord Commander any longer, Your Grace,” he finishes and immediately feels like kicking himself for, once again, not being able to resist.

One of her delicate silver brows raises. “Oh? Your men still refer to you as ‘Lord Commander Snow’. Why is that, if you no longer hold the office?”

Here we go again, he winces wearily and notices that the King’s attention has been caught as well. Hopefully the Queen will not react the way her husband did. I don’t think I can handle another oversexed royal molesting me today.

“I was deposed a year ago, but the Watch hasn’t elected a new Lord Commander since, and so some of the men still call me by that title,” he tells her simply.

“Deposed peacefully?” she counters skeptically, suspicion heavy in her voice. “When Ser Jorah’s father was mutinied against, the black brothers of the Nights Watch murdered him. And yet they left you alive and even still call you by your supposed former title? Doesn’t that mean that you’ve simply been reelected? Or is there a reason you don’t want to be held responsible for the Nights Watch?”

He considers just shrugging and leaving it at that, but he also made himself a promise a year ago. A promise that while he would stay at the Wall in order to do what he knew was right—namely, defend the realm from the Others—he would do it separate from the Nights Watch. When they killed him, his Watch ended and his vows no longer applied upon his revival.

He is not a member of the Nights Watch.

He is not one of the black brothers.

Which is exactly what he tells her, and then sits back to watch the explosion with suddenly fatigued eyes.

Her violet eyes turn to slits and her voice comes out as a furious hiss. “Are you admitting, then, to desertion—”

“YOU DARE, YOU TREASONOUS BASTARD—”

Her voice is quickly drown out by the booming of the huge, barrel-chested Lord Jon Connington.

“Lord Connington—” the silver-haired King attempts to interject, but the Lord Hand is too enraged seemingly to even hear his voice. Jon watches as the older lord turns nearly purple in his apoplectic fury, and wonders whether the man will collapse from the sheer strain of his anger.

“—A DESERTER—”

“Enough! Lower your voice, my lord!”

“—SHOULD BE EXECUTED!! REMOVE HIS HEAD! KILL THE TRAITOR!”

“LORD CONNINGTON!!”

The King apparently has lost his patience, the volume of his voice actually dwarfing his incensed nobleman’s and making Jon’s ears ring. The red-haired lord gapes at his King, looking for all the world as if he cannot imagine what his liege could possibly be upset with him over. The Dragon Queen, meanwhile, looks approvingly at her husband’s reaction, like a cat feasting upon her favorite treat. It isn’t hard to guess that she and the red-haired nobleman are most likely enemies, or at least currently feuding.

“My lord, you are making a fool of yourself,” King Aegon spits in an undertone that Jon can only just hear because of his proximity to the two men. “You are raving like a madman, demanding we execute a man for desertion when he has clearly not left his post and without so much as asking for an explanation. Now hold your tongue, before you embarrass yourself further.”

Turning to the room at large, as well as his Queen, consequently, the King continues in a raised voice, “Let us hear Lord Snow out before we pass judgment on him, shall we? Surely there is no harm in listening first, is there, my Queen?”

The Dragon King’s voice leaves no room for arguing, something that, judging by her soured expression, his queen clearly does not appreciate. Just from what he has seen so far, the King and Queen seem to have a highly complicated relationship. As Lord Stark’s bastard, Jon never really had the opportunity to observe many highborn couples, usually being shuffled somewhere out of sight before honored guests, if not by Lord Stark’s command, then by the frigid stare of his wife.

Before this, the only highborn marriage that he has ever seen up close was that of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn. Theirs was clearly a warm, loving match, and when King Robert came to Winterfell with his disdainful Queen, Jon had been genuinely shocked by the clear animus between the royal pair. In truth, King Aegon and Queen Daenerys’ relationship bears little resemblance to either of Jon’s only real examples of what shape highborn marriages take. While they both appear to hold respect for one another, their dispositions toward each other can go from hot to cold and then hot again in an instant. And that isn’t even touching on the subject of the Queen’s apparent lover or the fact that the King has actively tried to seduce Jon.

It’s exhausting just watching these two. All the more reason to keep my distance from their relationship—if the Queen doesn’t just demand my head, too.

The silver-haired King returns to his Queen’s side, and when he turns back to face Jon, they make an impressive picture of shared power. Neither gives so much as a hint of deference towards the other in the angle of their bodies, both of them facing forward as if they alone stand in judgment, separate from their spouse. There is no indication of there even being a ‘weaker’ partner, the Queen exuding as much power and authority as her King. Clearly a practiced pose, for all its effectiveness, it is more like standing before a pair of Kings.

Daenerys Targaryen is no simpering Queen. Nor is her husband a power-jealous tyrant to try to force her to be.

It reflects well upon both of them, he decides.

“Lord Snow,” King Aegon addresses him in a loud, commanding voice. “I presume you have reasons for such a declaration. Please do explain.” He gives Jon a significant look at the end, a subtle raising of his silver brows, and Jon would be lying if he said that he isn’t surprised by the apparent assistance that the man is extending him. Though why he is going through the mummer’s farce of being ignorant of Jon’s story is currently unclear. It crosses his mind to question what the man will want from him in return, although, he supposes that based on their earlier interaction, the King might as well have made that abundantly clear.

Determined to not think about whatever it is the Dragon King will want in recompense, Jon takes a deep breath to calm himself. When he lets it out, he is disappointed to note that the action does little to ease the queasy turning of his stomach.

Best get it over with, he tells himself and thus proceeds to do just that.

When his retelling reaches the circumstance of his murder and its aftermath, he is both astounded and somewhat touched by the sheer number of people who come forward to corroborate his story. Not just Satin and the wildlings like Tormund or Val, all of whom have proven themselves as his most faithful of allies, but also more than a dozen of his former brothers.

“And without a doubt, he was dead?” The Queen presses one man.

He nods grimly. “Without a doubt. He bled out in the yard, a knife still poking out of his back when he was finally brought in.”

“Aye,” another agrees, “I saw the wounds myself when they stripped him down to sew ‘em up. Big, nasty gaping things all over his front and back.”

There is uncomfortable shifting among some of the black brothers as more and more of them step forward to lend their voices and their testimony, but Jon is hardly surprised by that. Rather the opposite, really, for there are many among the men of the Watch who openly disagree with Jon’s declaration of his own release from their lifelong vow of service, and they have been neither quiet, nor always peaceful, in their protests. And yet, now that they might have a chance to betray him once again by banding together and denouncing him before the Targaryen monarchs, so many of them have instead joined in an effort to help him.

It leaves him standing in near open-mouthed awe as men who have made their utter contempt for him well-known, put aside their animosity for his benefit.

Meanwhile, the Targaryens stand grim-faced, the Queen in particular. He would worry but for the fact that she has not once shot one of those narrow-eyed looks in his direction since men began to step forward in his defense. If anything, her eyes when she glances his way are downright benign. The King has of course already heard the whole tale, but even he seems further affected by the numerous accounts by the witnesses.

“Tell us more of Jon Snow’s resurrection,” the King says with a frown. “How did this Red Priestess do it?”

More anxious shifting, the men darting uncomfortable looks at one another. This part has always unsettled all of them, and Jon cannot blame them. In a time of the dead rising to savage the living, Jon’s resurrection had spooked many; wildlings, Stannis’ men, and the brothers of the Nights Watch alike.

Satin steps forward.

“It was at his funeral, Your Grace,” his friend says. “After he was murdered, his killers just wanted to burn him without ceremony, but there were those of us who wanted to send him off properly. With a proper funeral.” He swallows, looking haunted, and Jon feels a rush of gratitude for one of his most loyal friends. It would have been easy for his few friends among the Watch to just melt away into the background after his death as his enemies took power. Instead, they had stood by him, even in death, when ostensibly he had nothing more to offer them in way of favor or protection.

Gods, I’d forgotten how much they risked for me.

“We built a funeral pyre in the middle of the yard and laid Jon on it, his sword in hand,” the dark-eyed young man recalls, staring at the ground. Jon can see men crane their necks, trying to hear. “Lady Melisandre was there as well. She laid the first torch at his feet and then just stood there, refusing to back away as others added their own.”

Satin’s head shakes and he furrows his brow. The audience is absolutely captivated by this point, Jon included. His own memories of the event are foggy at best. Just smoke and heat and pain as he’d tried to make sense of the impossible.

“The flames ate part of her dress, she stood so close, watching Jon as the fire consumed him. And then, with no warning at all, I heard a groan and Jon…” He glances back at Jon himself with a curious expression on his face as he continues. “Jon rolled right out of the fire into the snow, completely naked, his clothes burned away, and covered in ash. There was panic; everyone thought he’d come back as a wight, but his eyes weren’t glowing, blue or otherwise.

“He was clawing at the wounds on his chest as he writhed, and the Priestess swooped in and started tearing out the stitches that hadn’t burned. She prostrated herself afterward and began preaching that Jon was R’hllor’s champion.” He snorts. “Seeing as she’d been saying the same thing about Stannis Baratheon up until he was killed by the Boltons, none of us put much stock in her raving.”

There are chuckles among the men then; everyone at the Wall having become well used to Lady Melisandre’s preaching.

Once it is quiet again, Satin licks his lips and looks up resolutely to meet the eyes of the King and Queen. “What is true though, Your Graces,” he carries on, gaze unshakable and his voice strong, “Is that Jon rose from the dead that day after being murdered. ‘And now his watch is ended’. It’s what we say over the bodies of our fallen brothers, and it’s what we said over Jon before his funeral. He may have risen from the dead, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was dead.”

His piece said, Satin’s eyes fall back to the ground and he shuffles back into the press of bodies as if suddenly abashed at his own assertiveness. Jon makes sure to catch his eye and mouth a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to him, earning a shaky smile in return.

The story now told in its entirety, Jon stands alone before the Targaryens and their advisers, awaiting their judgment. Behind the royals, even the red-haired Lord Hand stands silent, grinding his teeth, by the looks of it, while Lord Tyrion merely stares at Jon with an intrigued expression. Jon has a feeling that the Lannister dwarf will be positively bursting with questions after this is over, and he just hopes that someone else can answer them. He finds that he is beyond done with talk of his own murder.

“You were betrayed by those you thought were friends,” the Queen murmurs softly at last, breaking the silence, but looking almost lost in her own thoughts before her stunning purple eyes flick back up. “Show us these scars, Lord Snow,” she commands, and Jon’s mouth drops open as he experiences a feeling of déjà vu, recalling an almost identical incident that occurred only hours previous.

He does not readily show his scars—to anyone—and so Queen Daenerys’ order immediately causes a susurrus of anticipation to spread amongst the men in the common hall. The black brothers are hardly immune to the desire to see what they have only heard about up to now, after all, and all this talk of them has certainly whetted everyone’s interest. The only ones of them who have seen his scars are the those who might have come to gawk at his stripped body, or Satin, who had apparently been the one to sew his wounds shut in a curious gesture of respect. He remembers them, because when he’d revived, it was to the stinging sensation of Melisandre ripping each stitch out as his body healed around them.

I will get them back for this, he swears sullenly as he begins stripping out of his clothes for a second time that day. I don’t know how, but I will.

Once down to just his breeches and boots, he huffs impatiently and turns a slow circle to also highlight the wounds on his back. By the time he turns fully around to face his intended audience, they are all suitably impressed, though the redheaded lord looks as if he has just been forced to swallow excrement.

It is Tyrion who regains his voice first, and it comes to no surprise to Jon that the first thing out of the man’s mouth is as irreverent as can be expected from the man who’s greatest joy in life seems to be taunting other men into a blood-frenzy.

“It seems I spoke truer than I knew when I said you were less pretty than before, Snow,” Tyrion japes. “Here I thought they’d just gotten your face, but now even a bag over your head won’t help.”

The hall is dead still but for the turning of a hundred pair of eyes to stare first at the dwarf, then at Jon to see his reaction. Jon himself is mute for a long moment as he locks eyes with the smirking little man until somewhere off to the side, someone—it sounds rather like Val—gives an indelicate snort. And just like that, unable to control it, he finds his head tilted back as a helpless peel of laughter escapes him. The sudden sound rings uncomfortably in the hall until others begin to join him, and the hall is filled with laughter as the tension is thoroughly broken.

It seems he can always count on Tyrion Lannister to soundly wreck any moment of solemnity that the man plays any part in—including the part of simple observer. As the laughter dies away, he thinks about responding with a jape of his own, something to continue their earlier exchange, perhaps, but before he can, the Queen speaks.

“We have heard your testimony, and seen your evidence, Jon Snow,” her voice cuts in, tone regal, as she arches one of her silver brows until Jon’s teeth click shut. She and her husband share a look and he picks up where she has left off.

“In my own name, Aegon VI of House Targaryen, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, we hereby hold you…blameless of the crimes of Oath-breaking and Desertion, Jon Snow, and instead we formally release you from your vows. From this day forward, you are free to leave the Wall—as you are free of the Nights Watch.”

Am I…dreaming? He asks himself faintly.

A great whooping cheer goes up behind him and he jumps like a scalded cat when his former brothers converge on him with congratulations. He only just keeps from drawing Longclaw in his initial alarm, an action that thankfully goes largely unnoticed as seemingly every man in the common hall tries to lay hands on him, as if wanting some of his good luck—ha!—to rub off on them.

“Thank you, Your Graces,” he bows to the Dragon King and Queen when the clamor has finally abated, and the men have begun to go merrily about their business again.

The Dragon Queen nods, her manner much kinder than before, but it is her husband that Jon watches most intently. He wants to see if the man will give some hint as to what he expects for this most unexpected and precious gift. For Jon is well aware that he can say that he is not held to his vows until he is blue in the face, but without a royal pardon, once he left the Watch, his only choice would be to sail to the Free Cities. Anywhere in Westeros, he ran the risk of execution if discovered, and his father and Robb have left him a bleak inheritance of their many, many enemies throughout Westeros.

Now though…

I am free, he thinks numbly. I am free and my first act as a freed man might well be that of a paid whore.

If it is so, the King gives no such indication with the regal incline of his head, all business now instead, he sees. Jon turns away with the feeling of what ought to be his moment of joy being outlined in tar. (*)He tugs on his clothes mechanically so he can leave, but he barely makes it across the room before his arm is caught, and when he looks, his stomach drops at the sight of the silver-haired King.

Here it comes.

But the man just smiles and tilts his head towards the back of the room where it is empty of people. “A word?” he asks. As though it is really a question—or a request.

“Of course, Your Grace,” Jon replies, leaden, and goes with him easily.

The King grins. “If I may make a suggestion, Lord Snow,” he chuckles. “When you do leave the Wall, don’t become a bard. You’ll starve within a month.”

The Hells is he on about? He wonders and narrows his eyes at the man.

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, what you told me a few hours ago, and what I just heard over there? Seven have mercy, Lord Snow,” he rolls his eyes.

“Ah,” Jon realizes what exactly the King is complaining about and discreetly rolls his own eyes. “Apologizes, Your Grace, but I’m no mummer.”

“Indeed not,” the King says, that smirk still on his face, as infuriating as it is attractive. “But you managed fine, and your...friend did quite an excellent job. In the end, there was no other choice but to release you.”

“Yes, and I thank you again, Your Grace,” Jon says curtly, and then, because he truly has never learned to stop while he’s ahead, he asks, “But if you were going to, why not earlier? I’d already told you and showed you once, as you said.”

The King shrugs. “Daenerys,” he answers simply. “I needed you to convince her as well, and I was confident you could. It would have hurt your cause, more than helped it, if she felt offended by my presuming to do so without consulting her. Now she considers it her own idea—and will defend it all the more so for it.”

He grins wickedly then. “And it has the happy coincidence of that takes some suspicion of my…impure motives off me if I ever do manage to get you naked, don’t you think?”

Ah, I’d wondered when that was going to come up again.

Unfortunately, preparedness does not to stop Jon from turning red, nor to help him think of anything to say that doesn’t include inarticulate babble.

Undaunted, the Targaryen King gives him a small, pleased smile and flicks one of Jon’s unruly curls with one finger. “Ah,” he sighs, sounding so pompously satisfied that Jon wants desperately to hit him. “Much as it pains me, I did make myself a promise earlier,” he says, and indeed the man seems genuinely mournful. “And so, Jon Snow, I will see you tomorrow.”

It is a promise, not a threat, but Jon can’t help the way his breath catches or the thrill that goes down his spine in response.

Or perhaps because it is a promise, he considers, watching mutely as the man spins on his heel to return to the side of his wife. Jon can see how he effortlessly joins in the conversation cheerily, a marked difference to the two such public conversations that Jon has had around him so far.

He shakes his head disbelievingly and snorts to himself, mercifully finding his head clearer now without the silver-haired prick looming over him. Get me naked will he? Gods, that man is an entitled ass. As bad as Theon Greyjoy ever was, except now I’m in the role of the scullery maid whose skirt is being chased.

He rolls his eyes again and slips out of the hall, turning down a dozen or more offers of drink as he goes. Wryly he notes that his status as a pariah to be scorned unless he is handing out battle commands seems to have disappeared without a trace. It will be interesting to see how many ‘dear’ and ‘loyal’ friends he now has at the Wall. Friends who were, naturally ‘always on his side’.

Ghost, one of his few truly dear and loyal friends, meets with him briefly in the yard but only stays long enough to give his gloved hand a lick before moving on. He hears someone give a soft ‘oof’ as the direwolf apparently barrels into them on his way, and that man reveals himself to be Satin as he calls out to him.

“My lord, wait up!”

He obliges, but wishes he hadn’t when the first thing Satin says as he matches his pace is a coy, “Believe me now?”

“Satin,” he sighs.

“Okay, okay. I agree, not out here.”

How about not anywhere? He thinks but aloud he simply gestures towards his new quarters and says, “Lead the way.”

“So,” Satin rounds on him the moment his door is closed behind them. “Are we a little less in denial now?”

“About what exactly?” Jon asks mulishly, and Satin frowns.

“About you desiring him too!”

“He’s an entitled prick, Satin,” Jon fires back, unimpressed.

“He’s a King. Of course he acts entitled,” Satin replies, equally unimpressed. “He’s also very, very attracted to you, from what I’ve seen.”

Jon bristles. “Just because he’s attracted, doesn’t mean that I have to sleep with him!”

His friend’s brows raise, surprised at how badly Jon reacts. “No,” he agrees slowly. “But you know that’s not what I’m saying.”

“What does it matter, Satin?” Jon growls, exacerbated. “Honestly, why do you care at all?”

“‘What does it matter’,” Satin repeats disbelievingly. “It matters because you renounced your vows almost a year ago, and yet you have yet you’re still going about as if held to an oath of chastity when Val would bed you in a heartbeat if you would give the slightest hint that you were interested. If not her, then one of the other wildling women. And the Seven know that there’s any number of men who would be happy to tumble you.”

“I didn’t renounce my vows so that I could have sex!” Jon says indignantly. “I did it because they stabbed me to death!”

He starts pacing in an agitated fashion as well as the confines of the room allow, but there is so little space, that he ends up forcing himself to stop and sit down on the bed. “I stay because the White Walkers are a very real threat and fighting them is the right thing to do. But afterward—if there ever is an afterward—I’m leaving. I can enjoy my freedom then!”

Satin’s head bows, his lips pursing, and Jon immediately feels a sting of remorse. It isn’t fair to take his frustrations out on Satin like this, especially as the man only wants to help, however unwelcome Jon considers such a form of help. So, reeling in his temper, Jon bites his tongue and tries to calm himself so as to apologize. Before he can though, Satin looks back up, his face deadly serious.

“I understand that, Jon,” he says solemnly. “Which is exactly why I think you need to live a little. Now. Not in some nebulous future that may never come. What if we all die here? What if the Others cannot be beaten? Don’t live what could be your last days waiting to be free and making yourself miserable. Go to bed with the Dragon King—or someone else! Just whatever you do, make the most of it and enjoy living right now, Jon.”

“But he—! Satin, the King clearly expects me to just jump in bed with him now that he’s released me from the Watch. I don’t want to sleep with someone just because they expect me to.”

Satin is quiet for a few moments as he chews his lip. “Did he say that?” he asks, a furrow between his brows.

Jon tries to think back on the exact way the King expressed himself.

“Not in so many words,” Jon concedes reluctantly. “He did mention that he wanted his wife to be the one to initiate my release from my vows. He said that it would help alleviate suspicion of his having had ‘impure’ motives when he, and I quote, gets me naked.”

His voice is pure scorn at the last, and even Satin startles before he starts laughing. Jon scowls at him.

“Dammit, Satin, this isn’t funny,” he hisses. “Impure motives, my ass. The man is all but trying to bribe me into bed with him!”

“I think you’re reading a little too much into this, Jon.” He holds up his hands to stay Jon’s outraged response. “I’m not saying he couldn’t have given you that impression,” he says, trying to sooth Jon’s offense.

“I’m just thinking that he maybe gave it by mistake. He’s very—ah—confident. He wants you, but he may very well not know any other way to seduce than a full on frontal assault. But mark me, I know the sort of men who try to blackmail or threaten their way into others’ beds, Jon, and that man isn’t one of them.”

Jon winces at the reminder. Sometimes he forgets that Satin grew up in a brothel his entire life before coming to the Wall, but then he’ll say something like that and Jon will feel like a thoughtless heel. Of course Satin would recognize that sort of scum better than Jon would, and he certainly wouldn’t encourage Jon to have anything to do with such a man.

He sighs. “All the same, I’m not sure I want to be involved with him. I can already tell he and his wife have some odd…” He waves his hand uncertainly, trying to find the right word before giving up. “I don’t even know how to describe it, but I have a feeling that nothing good can come of me being caught in the middle of it.”

“I’m not saying you have to choose him,” Satin shrugs blithely. “Like I told you, there are plenty of other options open to you.”

“But you think I should lay with him? With the King?”

Satin laughs and says cheekily, “I think you should lay with someone, so why not a handsome King who stares at you like he wants to pin you down and worship you.”

Jon turns his face away hoping to hide the shiver he feels at those words. King Aegon’s indigo eyes seem to always carry a wicked gleam whenever they are turned on him, it’s true, and just the memory is enough to ignite a spark of something hot and almost animalistic in Jon’s belly. It is a feeling unlike anything he can recall, and the magnitude of it nearly frightens him. There is something...primal about it, as if his very blood sings at the man’s presence.

It is utterly intoxicating, and indeed comes complete with all the symptoms of excessive alcohol consumption—including the part where he wants to crawl off and die somewhere afterward. Thankfully that urge is fueled only by sheer embarrassment, rather than the more familiar feeling of a nauseous hangover. Rather, when he can get away from him, the haze lifts and Jon can think straight again as he reels at his previous behavior. The entire phenomena is a puzzle, one he isn’t sure he wants to solve.

“I’ve never slept with a man,” Jon weakly protests, unsure why exactly he is confiding this at all—or why he is even considering it, really.

His friend shrugs again though, unconcerned. “I doubt he’ll mind that, but if you want, I can tell you what to expect—”

Jon interrupts emphatically “No!” he half shouts, but quickly flushes and moderates his volume as Satin grins mischievously. “Thank you, but no.”

Gods, if there is a better way to make this conversation more uncomfortable than it already is, I don’t know what it would be.

“Well get some more sleep then, Jon,” Satin says, a contented smile on his lips. “The wights and Others won’t care a wit about the torrid affair between the Dragon King and the former Lord Commander. They’ll still be here to kill us come nightfall, without fail.”

Jon snorts. “You’ve spent too much time with Edd,” he says, waving the man goodbye.

When he is gone, Jon lays back on the bed, not bothering to shed his boots as he stares at the ceiling and turns over he and Satin’s conversation in his head. His friend has been gently prodding him for months on the issue of his renounced vows and what they mean for him, but Jon is adamant in his decision to never father a bastard. Today is the first time that the prospect of bedding a man has been introduced, and Jon isn’t sure he likes the direction the idea turns his thoughts towards.

If only he wasn’t so unbearably sure of himself. But he thinks he’s already won and the only reason he hasn’t bedded me yet is because he hasn’t chosen to yet!

He lets out an aggravated sigh and admits that this is hardly a train of thought conducive to sleeping. In fact, the entire day so far have been less than helpful towards such an endeavor. The only reason he managed it earlier, he’s certain, is because of how absolutely ragged he has been running himself lately.

Before last night, Longclaw was the only Valyrian steel sword at the Wall, and while the other men allow themselves breaks every few days from the nightly fighting, Jon simply feels too guilty about skipping out to rest. From time to time he has no choice but to take a night for himself to avoid passing out of exhaustion in the middle of the battlefield, but every casualty his men—not his men any longer, he reminds himself firmly—suffer those nights eats at him.

It’s ridiculous, of course. Even when he is on the field, men die, but at least when he’s there, he knows that he’s done everything he can to preserve lives. When the White Walkers join the battle while he isn’t there, it leads to some of the most awful mornings of his life. He and Ghost have all but perfected a system to take down the Others together, something that the men take heart in.Thus, it is like a knife in the gut when the casualties are tallied after a battle and he hears that someone he knew was struck down and turned by a White Walker before the men could swarm the creature and manage to kill it with a well placed dragonglass dagger in his stead.

The silent accusing stares of his former brothers burn into his soul, asking ‘Where were you?’ and ‘How could you abandon us?’. The times when his answer is ‘sleeping content in my warm bed’, or ‘eating peacefully in my comfortable rooms’, he feels so ashamed that he almost thinks he could die of it.

To make things worse, last night was one such case.

As the later hours of the day dragged on, Jon had been forced to admit that he was fatigued to the point of unconsciousness; his eyes barely able to stay open and his body starting to fumble drunkenly at even the most mediocre of tasks. When he’d bumped into Satin and accidentally made him spill the tray of his dinner and all but ruin a report from the men at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the man had looked at him, looked at the mess, and then pointed his finger in the direction of Jon’s bed in a silent, but unequivocal command.

I never did get a look at that letter. It’s still on my desk in my quarters. Or rather, the King’s quarters now.

Jon scowls as he thunks his head back against the mattress.

Can I send Satin? Do I trust the King enough to send Satin?

“Damn it all,” he growls as he judges the answer to in fact be a resounding ‘No’.

I’ll have to go myself, he decides and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s starting to get a headache.

Laying in his bed, Jon had bleary witnessed Satin carefully unfold the letter and lay it out on his desk to dry on top of one of Jon’s tunics. He’d been out like a light before Satin had finished tidying up, but his sleep hadn’t been near deep enough to block out the panicked screaming mere hours later. Stumbling to his feet, he’d pulled on his boots and leathers and grabbed his sword. The sight he’d found outside the tower had been the stuff of nightmares.

As Satin explained, someone—they did not yet know who—had opened the gate in the middle of an attack. The black brothers had managed to bottleneck the incursion of the dead there in the entrance, and even to force the wights back fully past the Wall, but more than a dozen had slipped through. Jon had quickly taken command of the situation, sending men to chase after the wights that had escaped them, and joining the fray outside the gate himself upon hearing of the accompanying White Walkers. There had been six, but that had thankfully been whittled down to half that number by the time the King and his men had ridden in unprepared.

King Aegon was very brave, Jon realizes thinking back on it. The man had been clearly terrified, as any sensible man ought to be, but he’d still engaged the White Walker himself rather than scamper back to the gate when he had seen what the creatures were capable of. The madman had even charged it, completely unarmed in an effort to snatch up his lost sword. Jon has to respect the man for having stones of Valyrian steel for that stunt alone.

“Oh, I give up,” he sighs to himself and levers out of bed. He’ll have no more sleep this day, it seems. On the contrary, he is almost jittery, still energized from the scene in the common hall—both his formal release from the Watch and his encounter with the King.

Should I try to go retrieve my letter? He wonders, sucking on his bottom lip.

The King is unlikely to be within at this time—surely he’s still hobnobbing in the common hall, right?—but he isn’t so sure that the man’s Kingsguard will allow him inside, the fact that the room was his until this morning be damned. And even if they do, Jon then runs the risk of the King coming back and finding him inside. An event that would no doubt delight the man.

...Maybe I should just go prepare for tonight. If I see him, I’ll ask him to send along my letter.

Decided, Jon heads outside and then towards the winch.

His single minded purpose as he considers how best to conserve their scant supply of dragonglass without having to take the fight outside the Wall to the Others is a testament to just how monotonous his years at the Wall have become, weeks and months of daylight boredom divided by a couple of hours of terror each night. It has become so routine, in fact, that he is honestly surprised when his trek is interrupted by the King and Queen.

“Lord Snow!” someone calls out to him. He turns, and is startled to find the Targaryen royals, accompanied by Tyrion Lannister, approaching him.

“Your Grace,” he says, bowing his head a little. “I was heading to the top of the Wall. Can I do something for you?”

“Yes, in fact, you can,” the Queen grins toothily. “Aegon and I wish to try the dragons on the creatures, but naturally we do not want unnecessary deaths—or injuries.”

Jon nods, taking her meaning quickly. “I’ll make sure that none of the men loose arrows while you are flying.”

“Excellent,” the King claps his hands before theatrically extending one towards his wife. “Shall we, my lady?” She smirks and they soon disappear arm in arm together into the jumble of men traversing the castle yard in preparation for nightfall.

Huh. That was relatively painless, he thinks drolly.

If he is to be perfectly honest with himself, he is still a little disconcerted by these casual meetings with the King after having had the man’s tongue in his mouth and his hand upon his groin. As it is, he’s grateful that he at least didn’t come out of this encounter blushing. For once.

Then he remembers the letter and he scowls. I’ll have to ask later.

At his side, he can almost feel Tyrion Lannister getting ready to say something cutting, and so he swiftly turns about and gestures towards the winch.

“Will you be joining us atop the Wall, my lord?”

“Yes, yes. I believe I shall. I never lose an opportunity to see the dragons in action.”

“I remember you telling me that you once dreamed of dragons, my lord,” Jon says as they make their way into the winch. “Are they everything you hoped they would be?”

“Everything and more,” the man sighs wistfully while peering into the woods intently.

Jon guesses that he is watching for the dragons to take to the air, wherever they are. Tonight will be the first time he sees them with his own eyes. He has heard a great deal about them—up to and including hearing what he believes to have been the dragons themselves rumbling and screeching their discontent in the distance—but so far they have yet to make an actual appearance that he has seen. But then, he has spent most of the day sleeping.

“Can you tell me about them?” he asks, genuinely curious. And why not? Dragons were near mythical beasts even before they went extinct.

“Where to begin?” Tyrion laughs. “You’ll see them soon enough, so I shan’t bother describing them physically. I will say that their personalities are intriguingly disparate from one to the next. Drogon, the Queen’s mount, is probably the best behaved—but with the worst temper. He answers to Daenerys, and Daenerys alone. Rhaegal took to the King well enough, but he had a devil of a time getting the beast to listen to a word he said.”

He snickers then. “I still remember the days when he would sit on the dragon’s back, giving orders so commandingly while that dragon would just stare blankly back at him until the King would throw up his hands and give up for the day. Ah. Good times.”

“But there are three, aren’t there?”

“Viserion,” the dwarf nods. “Not the most well behaved, I’m afraid, but certainly the most even tempered of the lot. He does as he pleases, for the most part, and really no one can do anything about it. He follows his brothers without too much fuss, but he doesn’t abide by commands—not even the Queen’s.”

“Is he dangerous?” Jon asks concerned, to which Tyrion snorts and throws him a look that is pure condescension.

Right. Stupid question.

“What I mean is does he attack allies?” he quickly amends his question while rebuking himself over the sheer absurdity of asking if a dragon was dangerous.

Honestly, Jon Snow, you idiot. What will you ask next? Is rain wet? Is ice cold?

Tyrion meanwhile chews his lip pensively. “Well,” he begins slowly. “If you have happened to hear rumors of…rogue dragon attacks, Viserion is likely your culprit. Dragons don’t really understand the concept of ‘allies’ or ‘enemies’. For them, it is ‘edible’ and ‘not-edible-but-fun-to-kill-nonetheless’. Drogon and Rhaegal are bonded to their riders. Viserion has no such...leash.”

It’s as I feared then, he broods.

“Speaking of leashes,” Tyrion suddenly says with such gleeful relish that Jon’s hackles raise at once. “I do believe there’s someone who hopes to have you on one soon.”

“I...I don’t know what you mean, Lord Tyrion,” he replies, hoping he doesn’t sound as caught off guard as he feels. It is a useless hope, it seems, for the Lannister’s smile only widens.

“My boy,” the little man laughs patronizingly. “I promise you, only a blind fool could have stood there watching the two of you interact without figuring it out. Thankfully for you, Jon Connington is a willfully blind fool when it comes to his precious ‘Young Griff’, and so I think your secret is safe from him.”

“...And the Queen?” Jon asks hesitantly.

“Very much on to you,” the other assures him blandly, squashing Jon’s feeble hope to escape with some dignity.

Merciful gods, what a disaster.

Tyrion must read the thought on his face, for he begins laughing all the harder. Thankfully, the winch cage reaches the top before Jon has to dig himself into a deeper hole, and while the Lannister dwarf continues to look highly entertained, he too permits the subject to go by the wayside.

Overall, Jon finds Tyrion to be good company as he wiles away the hours, mostly spending the time in the warming shed after he has made sure that the Queen’s request has spread through the ranks. Lord Tyrion is a talented storyteller, he finds, the man able to spin a tale wonderfully well. By the time nightfall approaches, Jon is nearly in stitches over the tale of King Aegon’s early, clumsy attempts at wooing his new Queen. Before that, it had been a retelling of Robert Baratheon ruining his brother Stannis’ wedding—a very…colorful retelling.

“—And of course, quite naturally, our dashing King then decided that if the lovely Daenerys could not be moved by terrible love poetry, then he would simply have to try—”

“WHITE WALKERS!”

Startled, Jon is on his feet with his hand on Longclaw before he registers that he is on top of the Wall, and in very little immediate danger, even from White Walkers.

The sentry horn blows in the night as its minder hears the warning as well.

Uuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooo.

Jon leaves Tyrion sitting gaping in the shed as he hurries outside. The men are scrambling to take position, their routines drilled into them after long years at the Wall fighting wildlings, wights, and Others.

“Remember!” he bellows. “No bows when the dragons take flight! Any man who looses an arrow at a dragon; the King will have to fight me to take your head first!”

Uuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooo.

Tyrion Lannister comes following after him, edging as close as he dares to the drop off, his mismatched eyes wide and searching. It is not difficult to guess what his gaze seeks.

Jon points slightly eastward. “There. You should be able to see them gathering at the treeline if you know what you’re looking for.”

Uuuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooooooooooo.

“Ah, yes, I think I do see something moving.” Tyrion squints and then looks towards Jon incredulously. “Are those spiders?”

“Yes. The Others ride them.”

The dwarf blanches visibly. “Gods be good,” he mutters, looking about in search of something, though Jon doesn’t know what until the man brightens and points several feet above his head at a wooden torch sconce attached to the warming shed. “Aha! If you’d be so good as to hand me that torch, Lord Snow.”

Curious as to his intent, Jon fetches the torch as asked and bends at the waist to present it to the dwarf. Tyrion smiles widely as he takes it. Without his nose, it is much more difficult to make out exactly what emotions the man tries to convey, but Jon has the niggling suspicion that right now, Tyrion is doing his best to earn his nickname: The Imp.

When the little man waltzes up to the edge of the Westerosi side of the Wall and chucks the flaming torch over with a grand gesture, that impression seems rather validated.

“What are you doing?” Jon asks, absolutely bewildered, and runs up to watch the torch’s progress. Thankfully it doesn’t look as though it will land on one of the wooden structures below, they themselves standing clear to the left of the castle.

Tyrion grins unrepentantly. “Yes, sorry. The Queen asked for a torch to be thrown from the Wall as their signal that they could—”

An earsplitting roar makes half the men on the Wall drop to their knees and thoroughly drowns out Tyrion’s last words.

“Shit!” Jon exclaims, snagging the dwarf by the coat and dragging him away from the ledge when the man’s own startled reaction brings him dangerously close to pinwheeling himself straight over the side.

“A little warning next time would be appreciated!” he yells, still shaken, as he assesses the damage. The morbid fascination with seeing the White Walkers and their army of dead has abated for the men of the Nights Watch after years of fighting them up close and personal, and the newcomers are not so comfortable with being 700 feet in the air that they are willing to brave standing too close to the edge. Hence, Jon neither hears panicked screaming—from a man falling from the Wall or men forced to watch that awful descent—nor sees any panicked flailing and falling except away from the edge.

He judges that Tyrion looks sufficiently spooked by his own near death experience, so Jon deposits him beside the broken remains of a great trebuchet before running to the edge, grinning. He wants to see what the Others made of the dragon’s roar.

He laughs, exhilarated, to see their advance stalled, the great ice spiders skittering nervously, much to the chagrin of their riders, if their frantic pulling at the ‘reins’ is anything to go by. He just hopes that they won’t turn tail and run before the dragons actually arrive to test their flames.

No need to worry about that, he discerns as an enormous shadow passes overhead, blocking out the light of the moon and plunging the Wall into darkness for several impossibly long seconds. His jaw drops as he takes in the sheer size of the first creature, its dark scales making it difficult to make out except for as a huge blot of darkness. A tiny figure wearing a pure white fur that he recognizes as having been wrapped around the Queen earlier sits upon the thing’s back, the fur and her long gleaming hair almost indistinguishable as both stream out behind her. She is like a fleck of starlight against a vast midnight sky—except the sky in this case is a dragon’s tremendous neck and astounding wingspan.

That thing could damn near eat a young mammoth—whole!

The second and third dragons are smaller and rather more easily seen, especially the pale dragon. Dazedly, he wonders what colors they are, though such a piece of information right now is as irrelevant as knowing what color small clothes their riders are wearing.

Aaand now he’s thinking about the King’s small clothes. Fantastic.

Shaking his head ruefully at the contemptible turn of his own thoughts, he can just pick out another figure astride the darker of the smaller dragons. He says ‘smaller’, but when they are both the size of a trio of mammoths all tethered together…

And then comes the dragonfire.

Gouts of strangely colored flame pour from the maws of the three dragons. Rather than normal red and orange fire, the dragons breath flames of black, gold, and yellow-orange shot with luminous green. He rubs his eyes, unable to believe what he’s seeing, but the exotic view remains and begin to mix in a mesmerizing show of fiery death. But as the dragons swoop and pivot in the air, coming round for a second pass, Jon reminds himself that the only ones they are dealing death to tonight are the White Walkers. The rest of the ‘casualties’ of dragonfire are already dead, and the dragons are merely releasing them from their bondage.

He has heard of the Dragon Queen’s moniker ‘Breaker of Chains’, and tonight that is exactly what she and her husband and dragons are doing: sundering the invisible leash and collar that the Others forcibly yoked the dead with.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Tyrion Lannister waddle unevenly to his side. “I said they were magnificent, didn’t I?”

“Yes you did,” Jon answers breathlessly, watching the landscape come alive with flame as the dead army tries to disappear into the forest, the Others leading the way on their many-legged ‘steeds’. The trees catch fire, becoming enormous fonts of gold, black, and green-tinged fire that make the land beyond the Wall glow like daylight.

Magnificent really doesn’t cover it.

I do believe that this will be the single shortest battle against the Others that I’ve ever seen.

The two dark dragons chase after the mass of wights, igniting half the forest and making Jon genuinely question if there will be anything left north of the Wall once the dragons are done. As it is, huge swaths of the forest are already crumbling to ash, and the dragons show no sign of stopping just yet.

If it means destroying the Others, I can live with that, he thinks wryly as the King and Queen’s dragons weave around one another almost playfully, each of them seemingly trying to outdo the other.

I guess it just makes sense that a pair of fire-breathing lizards’ favorite game is setting things on fi—wait a minute.

Realizing that something is missing, Jon scans the sky briefly before turning to Tyrion to ask quizzically, “Where’s the third one?”

CRASH!

Something heavy hits him in the shoulder blades, effectively knocking him on his face, and he hears the other men on the Wall yelp in surprise and pain. Dazed, he looks blearily up, spiting blood as it pools in his mouth from where he has bitten his tongue.

By the gods, what was that?

The view he is met with as his eyesight rights itself is one of confused pandemonium, the men shrieking as they dart away, climbing over the mess of wooden debris that he’s quite certain wasn’t there just a moment ago.

Did one of the catapults break? I swear, if I find that some fool was aiming a trebuchet at a dragon, heads will roll.

His shoulders ache something fierce, and he’s not at all sure he can regain his feet just yet. As it is, his breath comes out in a pained puff of air as he drags himself gingerly to his hands and knees. There are more sounds of wood and ice breaking and cracking though, so he forces himself to crawl around a jumble of smashed timbers as he tries to locate the source of the disturbance—and what a ludicrous understatement that word is for whatever has occurred. As it happens, Tyrion Lannister answers the question for him, his voice high with alarm, though he does an admirable job of pretending otherwise.

“Ah, Viserion,” Tyrion all but squeaks. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

Jon cringes and begins to fight to his feet. It is, on further thought, perhaps not the wisest of decisions, but he simply must see it with his own eyes.

The dragon? What in the hells is that dragon doing up here, when it should be down there destroying wights?!

Sure enough, crouched amongst the shattered remains of the trebuchet Jon only minutes ago left Tyrion beside, is the white dragon.

Mouth agape, Jon’s eyes rove over the beast, taking in the leathery wings draping over the destroyed timbers, creamy colored but for the brilliant edging of gold that veritably glitters in the torchlight. Great armored spikes jut from its head and neck, and its teeth are like spears of polished obsidian, the longest easily the length and width of his forearm. A long, whipping tail knocks debris from the Wall with its violent back and forth lashing, it too lined with a row of sharp spikes. Most striking of all are the glowing eyes of molten-gold.

In short, every inch of the dragon is death incarnate.

And without a doubt, it is the single most beautiful, terrible thing he’s ever seen in his life.

I was only partially right before. ‘Magnificent’ really, really doesn’t do them justice, Lord Tyrion, he thinks, more awed than ever as the gold eyes catch and center on his own. A high chirp comes from the creature as its head tilts inquisitively.

And then, quite suddenly, he realizes that it is also now advancing on him—fast.

“Fuck!” he swears, trance breaking just in time, and dodges backward, not tripping over the splintered debris only by the grace of the gods as he scrambles to get out of the way. Right. Now.

“Blow the horn! Blow the horn!” he calls to the men behind the dragon, trying to keep ahead of the creature’s approach. He tries to duck and hide behind the warming shed, but the creature simply ambles up and over the room, making the entire structure creak ominously and the cowering occupants shriek inside. Jon blanches and dashes for the next obstacle.

“You want us to what, Milord?!” comes one stunned response.

“But the dragon’ll come after us then!” another wails.

“I said blow the damn horn, you cravens!” he shouts, furious with their cowardice but not exactly able to blame them for it as he himself plays a harrowing game of chase with the object of their fear.

Thankfully, there is at least one other man on the Wall whose wits haven’t entirely fled.

“Do as he says, you fools! You have to catch the attention of the Queen!” Tyrion Lannister yells, explaining what Jon is too preoccupied with the chore of keeping from becoming a dragon’s chew toy to communicate. Jon is so glad for the man’s assistance, he could kiss the Lannister dwarf.

There is much loud arguing of the merits of such a plan, and Jon curses as he tries to calculate the odds of his surviving a trip down the great switchback stair with the blasted creature following hot on his heels. Its focus is firmly fixed on him for now, but he doesn’t know if the creature will take flight to harry him down the zigzagging stairway.

In the best case scenario—actually, no.There is no best case scenario for this unmitigated disaster.

In one scenario though, the beast will leave him be and instead turn its attention to the dozens of other potential targets lining the top of the Wall.

In another, the dragon will follow him down—and eat him before he can reach the bottom.

And in the final case, the dragon will follow him down, burn Castle Black to ash as it chases him, and then it will eat him.

Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Oh thank the gods!

He nearly collapses in relief as the horn blasts, loud and clear and unmistakable for the Targaryen’s to hear. If he can just survive a few more minutes, the King and Queen will surely return and see their rogue dragon, an easily discernible pale shape bounding about on top of the Wall, and come to subdue the creature.

Just a few minutes.

But as he leaps over a pothole in the ice where the heaviest part of the trebuchet must have landed as it fell, a memory comes to him with horrifying clarity.

“He does as he pleases, for the most part, and really no one can do anything about it,” he remembers Tyrion saying of the white dragon only a few hours earlier. As well as, “He doesn’t abide by commands—not even the Queen’s.”

Oh shit.

Chapter Text

When Aegon was ten years old, the man who he’d always known as his father had sat him down and proceeded to tear Aegon’s peaceful, wonderful existence to shreds. In the span of a scant few minutes, he went from being Young Griff, the humbly raised, but doted upon son of a mercenary named Griff, to feeling the crushing weight of a shattered dynasty upon his shoulders. Shoulders that now belonged to Prince Aegon VI Targaryen, the only surviving child of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Princess Elia Martell.

His mother’s words were Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken; words that Aegon strove to make his own as the magnitude of his responsibility threatened to do more than merely bend him. There were days when he thought it would crush him as surely as Gregor Clegane once smashed the head of a child unfortunate enough to have been chosen as Aegon’s own double.

Sixish more years of drudgery had followed that world-rending revelation. Between his lessons with Septa Lemore and Ser Rolly, and the continued stability of his life with his ‘father’, Aegon had eventually regained his feet and his confidence while settling into his new identity. Those years helped tremendously in that most of his life stayed the same in spite of such an enormous mental and emotional upheaval, and when the time came, Aegon was ready to step into his new role. Or at least, as ready as any sixteen year old is ready to don a crown and lead a bloody revolution to take back his ancestral throne.

In hindsight, he doesn’t delude himself by pretending that he had any idea of what he was doing. Look at how easily he’d been duped by Tyrion Lannister, after all. A single evening of goading, and the Lannister dwarf had successfully led him by the nose away from his original mission. All so that he could reach Daenerys first…and proceed to undermine Aegon and turn him and his story into the laughingstock of his aunt’s court. It still boggles his mind to think of the damage one little malcontent could wreck on all his plans.

When they’d finally met once again, he’d wanted to strangle that smirking little imp.

Nevertheless, aside from that and a few other…hiccups in his good judgment, the next couple of years had been the most thrilling of his life. Arriving on the shores of Westeros; taking the Stormlands; the realm rallying around him as he’d marched on King’s Landing, his heart pounding almost nonstop.

It had been as amazing as it was terrifying.

But nothing—nothing—compares to flying on dragonback.

And this?

This is what he was meant to do.

Normally combat on dragonback is something that he finds...less than satisfying. The flying part is still undeniably exhilarating, of course. It’s the ease of raining fire and death down on the enemy that makes him leery. It is in his blood, passed down to him from the Dragonlords of Old Valyria, but it strikes him as a dangerous thing to get too attached to. Taking lives shouldn’t be so easy.

It’s one thing for a simple warrior to immerse himself in the joy of battle and the thrill of killing his enemies. It’s somewhat of a slippery slope for a King to do so. Especially, a Targaryen King.

Knowing where to draw the line between being thought of as another fire-obsessed Mad King, and being seen as too soft, or too weak, is a delicate balancing act. A touch too far one way, and he risks losing his supporters to fear. A few steps too many in the other direction, and he risks losing his supporters to disrespect. Either direction can lead to insurrection—something many of his predecessors forgot, to their own detriment, but which he does not intend to.

Depending on the circumstance, Dany can be both his greatest allay, and most arduous adversary in the struggle to exhibit an image to their people that is both strong and sound. Daenerys learned the hard way in Meereen of the folly of being too soft, but sometimes that lesson prompts her to go too far in the opposite direction. One of their nastiest fights upon being wed and trying to rule together, was about how harshly Daenerys demanded that certain houses who played major roles in the War of the Usurper be dealt with. Houses Baratheon, Arryn, Lannister and Stark were already sundered by the time they arrived—it was downright uncanny, if Aegon is being perfectly honest—but Daenerys believed such betrayal should be punished further.

How she could accept Tyrion Lannister as an adviser, but want to execute someone like, say, Sansa Stark, is a mystery to him. Between the two, not only did House Lannister play a far more vile role in the destruction of House Targaryen, but Sansa Stark hadn’t been born until years after the rebellion. Tyrion was a child himself, and the gods knew Aegon was not, is not, an advocate of the murder of children for their parent’s crimes, but at least Tyrion was alive during the rebellion. After much antagonism and even more screaming, Daenerys had at last conceded to the injustice of such an action, even if Aegon had been forced to employ the example of his slain mother and sister, something that has always rankles him. Now, with Jon Snow in the picture, Aegon is doubly glad he won their argument.

Tempering the jaundiced mindset formed by Daenerys’ experiences in Meereen is an ongoing battle, but one for which he has great hope. Daenerys is a good Queen, both compassionate and kind to the small folk, but with a spine of pure Valyrian steel. She is not weak. She is not fundamentally unjust. She has simply been deeply wounded in her soul, with no one to turn to as a child but a brother who was, to all reports, nearly as deranged as Aegon’s grandfather.

The case of Jon Snow, he thinks, is an excellent turning point for her. Nevermind Aegon’s own intentions towards the man, the fact that Daenerys was able to look past the bastard-Stark’s lineage and deal fairly with him gives Aegon great hope for her in the future. Admittedly, her judgment was undeniably affected from the moment the word ‘betrayal’ came into play—Aegon well knows her feelings about that word. All the same, he doesn’t believe it outright tainted her assessment of the situation. The sudden stirring of empathy merely…softened the shell around her heart so that she could listen without prejudice.

At least that’s what he’s hoping happened.

Regardless, the end result is something that he is most satisfied with, whatever Daenerys’ motivations might have been at the time. Not only is his prospective paramour safe to pursue once again, but the part of the court that has traveled with them has now seen a highly public, and not so insubstantial, reversal of their Queen’s early hardline stance of death-for-the-usurpers—and-their-familes.

A few more incidents like this, and Aegon might even be able to stop cringing internally when thinking of how he and she look on dragonback burning their enemies to death.

As a matter of fact, the situation with the White Walkers and their army of wights can even be seen as a boon, in that regard. He knows better than to say such a thing aloud, naturally, but it cannot be denied that against the Others and their servants, none of the usual drawbacks of using the dragons in combat exist.

Having seen them up close, Aegon feels no compunction about slaughtering the lot of them, and the men who rode with him will spread the tale of the monstrous slave-masters of the dead throughout the army. No man innocent of any crime but having been conscripted by the wrong side will be slain by dragonfire here. Nor will there will be grieving wives and children, hysterical because the bodies of their husbands and fathers are indistinguishable from the hundreds of other charred bones.

The wights do not scream as the flesh melts from their very bones, and the piteous moans of men burned alive but still clinging to some awful semblance of life do not torment his ears as he passes over the battlefield. Vengeance may fester in the minds of the White Walkers, but he finds that rather palatable compared to the hatred he’s seen in the eyes of women and children widowed and orphaned by the war.

For once, no one will have reason to look upon the dragons as anything but saviors. In this battle, the dragons protect the living from inhuman creatures who seek to slay and enslave all life.

He and Daenerys couldn’t ask for a better way to show off the power of the dragons without maligning their own reputations in the process.

Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

His head whips around as the familiar sound reaches him over the crackle of the burning forest—whoops—and he sees Drogon wheel about further ahead of him as well.

Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It is the horn that they heard earlier just before the torch was thrown from the Wall to signal that the Others had been sighted. Obviously, the horn is blown upon the enemy being seen, but Aegon does not know the significance of the number of times the alarm is sounded. The haze of heat and smoke only makes it harder to see while the sheer brightness of the surrounding blaze throws the landscape into sharp relief, washing out details and making his eyes water as he squints against the light. He sees nothing, and still the horn blows.

Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Uuuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooo—

He shakes his head slowly. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Daenerys on Drogon’s back flies as close as she can while allowing both dragons to keep their space. Between two sets of massive wings beating constantly to stay hovering like this, neither of them can actually hear the other, but they have become somewhat adept at reading lips, provided the messages are short and succinct—and very well enunciated.

“OTHERS?” she asks, brow furrowed.

He gives an exaggerated shrug in response, letting her see that he has as little idea of the meaning as she herself. “GO BACK?” He gestures to the Wall, frowning. Perhaps some of the wights or White Walkers slipped around them as they went straight for the obvious targets, and now the Wall is besieged? Surely one of them would have seen something, if not Drogon or Rhaegal, then at least—

Viserion.

He begins twisting in the saddle frantically as he tries to catch sight of the white dragon, praying that the creature is just hovering behind Rhaegal somewhere. Much as he dislikes when one of Daenerys’ children sneaks up behind him—you’d had to have lived under a rock not to hear what happened to his cousin Quentyn—right now, he thinks he might weep for joy if he turns to find Viserion’s jaws half an inch away from his face. But when he does, he has no such luck.

Dear gods, where is he?

Now quite alarmed, he waves his arms and, when he has Dany’s attention, he makes a show of looking about before he yells, “VISERION?”

Daenerys’ eyes go wide as she too realizes that her rogue child is in fact missing, and he can see the moment she starts to suspect the same thing as he. She is visibly rattled as she urges Drogon to whip around, heading back southward in the direction of the Wall.

Please let me be wrong, he begs whatever gods may be listening.

If the gods are kind, Viserion has just landed somewhere in the fiery chaos and is perhaps eating some of the freshly charred wights. Disgusting as that would be, the alternative is a disaster the likes of which Aegon does not even want to contemplate.

But, once again, as they put the obscuring light of the blaze behind them, he sees that his hopes are for naught.

For clearly visible even at such a distance, upon the Wall looms a familiar shape, the cream and gold of his scales making the dragon stand out against the darkness like a pale flag. A pale flag that is also clearly on the move.

Daenerys reaches Viserion first as a consequence of Drogon’s larger size, and he can see her immediately take action to distract her child from where he nudges at a pile of debris from a downed structure curiously. Behind the dragon, Aegon can see the destruction he has wrought, pieces of the wooden constructs that line the Wall laying in ruins, the long arm of a crane hanging precariously over the edge here, the smashed leftovers of a wooden lean-to shelter there.

Daenerys face as she and Drogon try to drive Viserion off the Wall is not merely upset, but on the verge of grief stricken. Once again, her smallest child is the culprit of terrorizing their allies.

Out of the wreckage Viserion is so interested in, a man slowly emerges. He scoots cautiously out from under the mess on his back, one arm laying limp in his lap as he steadies himself with the other. His dark hair, a riot of curls and wood splinters, is blood-chillingly familiar, but Aegon finds himself staring disbelievingly all the same. It is only when the man turns gingerly on his side as he crawls to his feet and Aegon can see his bloodied face, that it strikes home that Viserion’s prey is none other than Aegon’s own bastard-wolf, Jon Snow.

He drags a hand over his face in despair. Somewhere the gods are laughing at me. It really is the only explanation.

Meanwhile, Viserion himself has seen his prey leave the safety of the rubble and he ducks under his brother’s hovering presence to give chase with a screech. His quarry takes one look at the dragon as it barrels after him and does what any sane-minded person would—he runs. He forgets his hurts and he runs for his life.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Aegon chants and spurs Rhaegal forward with a shouted Valyrian command. Viserion chases after the fleeing figure with a single minded glee, his chirps and screeches joyful—much like a cat enjoying the wild pursuit of a clever, tasty mouse, he reckons queasily. When Aegon and Rhaegal insert themselves between Viserion and Jon Snow, the angry hiss they receive is a marked difference from the reception Daenerys earned when she did the same. But then, Aegon is not his mother, and Rhaegal is not his twice-again-larger brother, Drogon.

“Snow!” he bellows, keeping an eye on the fidgety white dragon. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Snow halt in his tracks, and so he waves him over. “Come here!”

The other man doesn’t move a muscle, and when Aegon glances sideways at him, he can see the look of incredulity that Snow pins him with. ‘Are you crazy?!’ it practically screams.

“Rhaegal will not attack you,” he assures the dark-haired man shortly, watching Viserion’s ominously waving head and tail closely for a sign that the dragon is about to shove past them or take to the air. Drogon flies nearby, but Aegon gestures for Daenerys to wait. Viserion is too occupied with going after Jon Snow to heed his mother. Snow has to be removed from the picture before Daenerys can get her rogue child under control.

Thankfully, Snow stops dithering and sidles closer, watching Rhaegal warily the whole time, but when the green does not turn on him, he grows bolder and is soon close enough for Aegon to reach a hand down to him.

“Now get on,” he says, offering his gloved hand for Snow to grab hold of.

“What?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Aegon snaps as Viserion perks up alarmingly at the sound of Snow’s voice. “Come on, there’s room in the saddle behind me.”

“Have you lost your mind?! I’m not—”

With every moment, the dragon grows more restive and the noises he makes more irritable. It is only a matter of time, and Aegon needs Snow to be safely out of the way when that time comes. Hence, when Snow stubbornly remains rooted where he is, Aegon thinks he can be excused for his sudden loss of temper.

“Viserion is fixated on you, you great idiot,” he snarls. “So long as you’re available to chase, he’s obviously not going to pay any attention to Daenerys. Now get up here before I drag you up by your fucking hair.”

Snow blinks wide-eyed up at him but does wordlessly put his gloved hand in Aegon’s at last. Aegon rewards his compliance—fucking finally!—by dragging him up. But not behind him as originally promised. No, instead he pulls him straight up and over his own lap. Snow yelps indignantly as he tries to right himself on his good arm, the other hanging limply over Rhaegal’s hide, but Aegon has a good grip on his leather cuirass which he uses to press him down into the saddle.

Feeling the pressure on his back, Snow turns his head and nails Aegon with one of the dirtiest looks he’s ever seen. “I thought you said there was room in the saddle—behind you,” the man growls as he wiggles uncomfortably, the front ridge of the saddle undoubtedly squashing him.

“That was before you fought me every step of the way,” Aegon quips back with a sharp smile. “Now stay still.”

Viserion’s tail is whipping furiously by now and it is patently obvious to Aegon that the dragon is about to lose his patience at last. Aegon—Rhaegal—has stolen Viserion’s ‘toy’, and the dragon is plainly unhappy about it as he cocks his giant head to observe Snow laying across Rhaegal’s back.

“Hold on tight,” he says to Snow in an undertone as he locks eyes with Daenerys. Snow swears softly and loops his good arm around Aegon’s leg. He’s perfectly secure, wedged as he is between Aegon’s belly and the raised edge of the saddle, but just to add to the man’s comfort—Suuure, that’s the only reason—Aegon throws his own leg over one of Snow’s thighs and under the other before wedging his foot into one of the straps that leads around Rhaegal’s chest.

When Aegon yells the Valyrian command for ‘fly’ to Rhaegal, Viserion picks up on it immediately and lunges forward.

But so does Daenerys on Drogon.

Drogon knocks into Viserion’s side hard, roaring loud enough to rattle Aegon’s teeth and makes Jon Snow duck his head into Aegon’s calf. With Viserion distracted, Rhaegal takes to the air unmolested, gaining great height over the other two dragons with ease until Aegon orders him to hold. From their lofty vantage point a hundred or more feet above Drogon and Viserion, he tries to assess whether Daenerys will need his help in corralling the white dragon, but quickly sees that she does not.

Whether it is the fact that Jon Snow is no where in sight or simply Drogon having sufficiently impressed his smaller sibling with the seriousness of his fury, the cream and gold dragon appears to be rapidly calming down. His vocalizations no longer sound as spirited as before, at least. Actually, if Aegon had to put a label to them, he’d almost call them...mournful.

He shakes his head and sighs, exasperated.

Nothing worse than a dragon that is bored out of its skull. Though why he couldn’t take that boredom out on the hoards of wights instead of harassing my paramour, I don’t know.

Speaking of his paramour—Future paramour, he has to remind himself, future—his leg is starting to go numb from the grip Jon Snow has on it.

“Ease up,” he says, tugging on Snow’s leathers to let him know that it is he who is being addressed, not Rhaegal. “I promise you’re not going to fall, but I can’t feel my leg.”

Snow’s death grip loosens slightly and Aegon has to stop himself from rubbing the man’s back soothingly. He’s pushing it as it is, what with his—less than wise, he admits—spur of the moment decision to be vindictive earlier. Now, not only has he probably riled Snow up with what could be taken as an insult to his masculinity, he’s also got one of the man’s hips digging into his crotch. They’re as goddamn sharp as he remembers, and he’s actually grateful, because otherwise he’s not altogether certain he could keep from embarrassing himself without that bit of pain keeping his libido in check.

Probably shouldn’t think about that right now.

He clears his throat uncomfortably and hopes that Snow can’t tell. “I’m going to take us down, okay?”

The dark-haired man’s only reply is a jerky nod. Aegon suspects that his eyes are closed tight.

Finding himself inanely discomfited by Snow’s proximity to his, as of late, misbehaving cock, Aegon suddenly feels compelled to fill the silence rather than allow his thoughts to run wild on their own. Nothing but trouble lay in that direction.

“You don’t have to worry,” he tells him instead. “Daenerys will get Viserion under control. She’ll have to chain him at the nest, but once he’s bribed with enough sheep, he’ll be happy to stay there even without the chains.”

“Nest?” Snow asks quizzically, his voice muffled.

Aegon nods before remembering that Snow can’t see him do so. “Uh, yes. Their handlers chose a clearing in the woods when we first arrived and set it up as an impromptu nest for the dragons. They’ll have chains ready there for Viserion when they hear he’s...gotten himself in trouble. Again.”

He refrains from mentioning the fact that blasting their chains apart with their fiery breath is a trick all three dragons learned long ago. Just because they can do it, doesn’t always mean that they will, especially as Dany will likely set Drogon to watch his errant brother.

“He does this sort of thing a lot?”

The question makes him wince, and he’s glad that Snow isn’t looking at him to see it. “Not...exactly,” he answers hesitantly. “I’ve never seen him chase someone around like that.”

It’s not even a lie. Usually Viserion just kills the poor sods unfortunate enough to have caught his attention.

“Any idea what he found so interesting about you? Wait, hold that thought. We’re about to land.”

Snow tenses back up on his lap—I really wish he wouldn’t do that—at Aegon’s words, and he can feel the heat of a shaky exhale against his leg. Or that.

Rather than allow Rhaegal to return to their shared ‘nest’ area and run the risk of exposing Snow to Viserion, Aegon has instead prompted his dragon to head a little west of Castle Black, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes on foot. The distance will allow Daenerys time to get Viserion settled, as well as allow Aegon time to assess how well Jon Snow has come through his encounter with that asinine dragon.

The arm is concerning, but a broken arm or dislocated shoulder is practically a love-tap compared to what Viserion is capable of doing to a human. Men who have been burned by dragonfire, for instance…

Well, there’s a reason why battle-hardened veterans lose their lunch when confronted with the victims of a dragon’s breath, and it has nothing to do with a weak constitution. Place two men side by side, one having been burned by normal flames, the other having suffered through dragonfire, and there is simply no comparison. Dragonfire clings to the flesh like flaming oil, burning away clothes and turning metal armor into the most macabre of torture devises by transforming it into little more than a glowing hot second skin that cannot be removed unless someone tries when it is still molten. Which is a cruelty in and of itself, for as often as not, the cooked flesh pulls away with the metal, only leading to new and as yet unexplored agonies.

Burning is bad enough, but dragonfire burns so abominably hot, that what should normally take minutes of being exposed to the flame, instead occurs in mere moments. And yet, a dragon’s fire only...crisps the outside layer. It does not incinerate a body whole, and thus a man can live on in that hideous agony for days, if no one will give him mercy. Aegon hears that his cousin lingered for several days, even though he was so badly burned that his very eyes...ruptured from the heat. And what possessed his men to put him through that unnecessary agony, when it must have been clear that he was never going to live, Aegon cannot even fathom.

So, yes, in comparison, that Aegon cannot smell charred flesh nor hair, and that Snow’s only apparent wound is his limp arm… It is damn near a miracle.

There’s a feeling of stomach-turning weightlessness as, gliding in a tight spiral, Rhaegal descends gracefully to the ground, his leathery green and bronze wings billowing in the cool night air. Despite his own familiarity with the sensation, Aegon can still sympathize when he feel’s Snow’s fingers dig into his leg once again and he can feel the other man’s heart thundering against his thigh. He just really hopes the dark-eyed man isn’t about to...redecorate the saddle—and Aegon’s leg along with it—by upchucking his dinner. He really would love to return to the castle not covered in vomit.

“Take care you don’t bite your tongue,” he warns as Rhaegal’s claws are about to touch the earth. Another peril of flying, neither take off nor landing are particularly gentle affairs on dragonback, and Aegon himself has sworn a slurring blue streak after the jolting impact of landing has left his mouth bloody. Snow has no such issues, though Rhaegal’s rough landing does bounce them both in the saddle, Snow more so than himself thanks to the straps holding him secure in his seat. By the small ‘oof’ he gives, his diaphragm seems not to have escaped so easily.

“Give me a moment and I’ll get us down,” Aegon murmurs as he unstraps himself from the saddle.

“Go ahead, take your time, Your Grace,” Snow grumbles in an undertone that sound suspiciously sullen, and Aegon has to bite his lip to keep from grinning.

Ah, there you are.

As much as he could come to enjoy Snow clinging to him, he’s pretty sure he likes his bite more. It would have been a shame if flying had done more than temporarily defang him.

And besides, attractive or not, ‘docile’ just somehow doesn’t fit Jon Snow like indignant mouthing off does.

Still, while the temptation is great, Aegon refrains from deliberately dragging out the process of undoing the straps of the saddle. Instead, he quickly frees himself while unwinding his leg from where he has snaked it around Snow’s own and helps the man to slide down Rhaegal’s side until he stands wobbly on his own two feet. Once down, Snow’s hand immediately flies to support the opposite elbow with a pronounced grimace, and Aegon decides then to take a look at it himself.

“Let me,” he offers as he swings down himself, but Snow grimaces again and starts to shake his head.

“It’s noth—” he begins to say before his teeth abruptly click shut and he backpedals away with an alarmed look over Aegon’s shoulder. A gust of furnace-hot air blows across Aegon’s back before he can do more than raise a brow at the other man’s sudden retreat, and he turns to see Rhaegal’s head hovering just behind him. His long serpentine neck stretches out and he gives another pointed huff against Aegon’s back.

Spoiled creature, he thinks fondly as he obliges the dragon’s not-so subtle hints and strokes a hand over the sensitive ridge over Rhaegal’s eye, right where hardened scales give way to velvet-soft skin around his eyes.

“Rhaegal is no Viserion. Not since I bonded him, at least.” Aegon tells Snow and observes at the edge of his vision the man’s undisguised amazement as the great bronze eyes closes and the dragon gives a rumbling sound of pleasure that could nearly be mistaken for a cat’s purr—if a cat could purr loud enough to make the ground it lay upon rattle.

A giant, fire-breathing lizard with the personality and mannerisms of a cat, he thinks, smiling.

“Not since you bonded him, you said,” Snow notes shrewdly, though he cannot fully vanish the look of utter fascination on his face as his eyes sweep over the creature. “Does that mean that he once was like the other?”

Aegon’s mouth purses unhappily at the reminder, but he can see no reason to lie or gloss over the truth. It isn’t as if the story of his cousin’s horrific end is a secret. “Yes, actually,” he confirms, his voice a little bitter. “It was Rhaegal who burned Prince Quentyn Martell when he tried to tame Viserion with a whip.”

Rhaegal can be a trickster even when he is on his best behavior, and Aegon has the near permanent bruises to prove it, but what he got up to before Aegon bonded him was far from mere mischief. His cousins and uncle have never forgiven Daenerys for that incident, for all that she could hardly be blamed for his cousin’s foolhardy actions. It is not as if Daenerys invited the man to try his luck at taming the dragons. And by all accounts, the only reason he was there in the first place was because he was attempting to steal the dragons.

That Aegon now rides Rhaegal, Quentyn’s killer, remains a sore spot between he and his Dornish relatives, much as Aegon marrying Daenerys ended any facade of cordiality between he and Arianne.

Not that there was much of that between us to begin with. She decided that I was an imposter before she even set foot in the Stormlands, and only mockingly acknowledged me as her cousin once it became clear that I had a good chance of winning the Iron Throne.

Bile burns his throat, as it often does when he thinks of Arianne and her contemptuous way of addressing him as ‘cousin’ as if what she really means to say is ‘fraud’. “So good to see you again, my dear...cousin,” she’ll say with that mocking twist to her lips and laughter in her voice. Gods, sometimes he wishes he’d never met that woman.

Moving on, thank you.

“But that was before,” Aegon continues on briskly after swallowing down that wretched burning sensation, ready for this topic to be over. “Once I properly bonded and trained Rhaegal, he improved greatly.”

He gives Rhaegal one last pat before the dragon figures out that they are staying awhile and shifts about to make himself comfortable, his head disappearing under the curve of one of his bronze-gilded wings. The dragons do not care for the cold, and he and Dany noted earlier the way the three of them were huddled unusually close together. Not touching per say, but still near enough to radiate warmth between one another. Viserion had been in the midst of scratching idly at the ground, likely contemplating digging an indention to nestle into. He seems to have an affinity with being...confined as he sleeps; not unlike a cat forcing itself into a too small space to bed down in.

“Unfortunately, a rider is essential in the taming of a dragon, and Viserion does not yet have one,” he sighs, still watching Rhaegal as the dragon heaves one huge breath before he settles at last. “And no dragon will consent to share a rider with another dragon, so it isn’t as if Daenerys or I could take on the role for training him.”

Aegon shrugs helplessly and turns back around to face Snow with a grin. “Now, I believe you were about tell me some ridiculous falsehood about being ‘fine’?”

Snow huffs. “I’ll get a maester to look at it back at the castle,” he says and indeed starts as if to walk around Rhaegal, back the castle. Aegon blocks him with his arm.

“Or, instead of being stubborn and hurting yourself further on the way back, you could let me look at it now,” he suggests.

Jon Snow’s immediate and unthinking snort makes it plain what he thinks of that idea even before he opens his mouth.

“I’m fine, and I’d just as soon have a maester do it, Your Grace. I wouldn’t want to bother you with something so small,” Snow replies, voice amused but firm, clearly thinking Aegon’s offer just a ploy to strip him of his clothes again.

That’s just a side benefit.

Snow tries once again to go around him, but Aegon finds that he is far from ready to end their little encounter.

“Not so fast, Lord Snow,” he chuckles and snags a handful of the man’s tunic where it is exposed past the leather armor. Snow stiffens in response.

“I’m fine,” the gray-eyed man says between clenched teeth.

Temper, temper.

“You’re not moving like you’re fine,” Aegon says suspiciously and then pokes right between Snow’s tense shoulders without warning. He’s rewarded with a strangled noise of surprised pain, and he rolls his eyes at the man’s obstinance.

“Honestly,” he sighs, tugging at the leather. “Take this off and let me tend to your back.”

“What would a King know of tending wounds?” Jon Snow groans frustratedly, and Aegon’s sure he doesn’t mean to sound quite so openly contemptuous.

“I’ll have you know, that I in fact had a very humble upbringing,” he retorts with a secretive smile, hands ignoring Snow’s protests and setting about removing the man’s armor.

“Humble? You?” Snow repeats disbelieving and then gasps as his injured arm is jostled by the removal of the stiff armor. He hisses between his teeth when Aegon’s fingers prod along the arm in search of the injury.

“Shocking, I know,” Aegon chuckles even as he finds it is strangely difficult to take offense to Jon Snow’s unrepentantly insulting tone and words.

If any other man kept taking shots at him like this, he doubts it would go over so well, but with Jon Snow, it’s just another part of the allure, and not to mention just plain fun. No one fences with him like this these days but Dany, even his Golden Company comrades having begun to distance themselves and act more...proper around him since his coronation. Whereas Snow does attempt to remain decorous, but only until Aegon can nettle him into losing his temper. Then all bets are off.

“Wait, don’t do th—ah! Shoulder,” Snow snarls when Aegon less than gently pulls his tunic off his injured side. Despite his venomous look, he requires no further prompting to finish shedding the tunic, and once it is gone, Aegon can see that the shoulder joint is indeed painfully swollen. When he lays his fingers on it, the skin there is hot.

After a minute of observation and further prodding, he grimaces slightly. “Well, it’s not quite dislocated, at least,” he declares. “But I imagine it’ll hurt for a while anyway.”

Snow stares at him nonplussed. “You don’t say.”

Cheeky little—

“Turn around,” Aegon commands with a saccharine smile, to which the dark-haired man scowls in response, and Aegon must suppress a full on grin until the man complies and it cannot be seen.

This is his second time seeing Jon Snow’s half naked body up close in not even as many days, an accomplishment for which he takes a moment to mentally pat himself on the back. Earlier in the hall doesn’t count in his opinion, not with the way Snow looked like he was once again bracing himself for someone to call for him to be executed—again.

And damn Jon Connington’s increasing inability to control his temper, anyway. It’s grown steadily worse over the past two years, but his foster father remains stubbornly silent on the reason for such a foul turn of his temper. He’s never been the sort of man who could be described as...jovial, but after they began their conquest of Westeros, Jon Connington went from a stern man dedicated to his cause, to a man who overreacts to the smallest provocations and sinks all too often into morose slumps for weeks and months at a time. He supposes that it could just be that Westeros is full of bad memories for Lord Connington, but Aegon has a nagging feeling that there is more to it than that.

All the same though, Aegon could do without many of his Lord Hand’s outbursts, especially in the vicinity of his Queen. Gods know Daenerys still hasn’t forgiven the man for his blow up when she confessed her barren condition.

Similarly, one thing is for absolute certain. Jon Connington is going to have a meltdown of epic proportions when he figures out that Aegon is intent on repeating his father’s one—in Lord Connington’s mind—folly and bedding a northern wolf.

Why in the seven hells am I thinking about that now? He asks himself incredulously when he catches his thoughts wandering away from rather more immediate concerns that ought to be holding his attention—like the fact that the beautiful man he desires is once again standing striped to the waist in front of him.

Maybe I should start fearing for my own mental soundness, he thinks and thereafter wastes no more time in rectifying the egregious situation. Namely by once again grabbing Jon Snow by the hips under the pretense of maneuvering him so that Aegon can better see his injured back...but really just because he finds that he much enjoys his startled jump as well as the swiftly following grumble that the action earns him.

Though barely a day has passed since their first such encounter, he is surprised to note how much more lively Snow has become in that short time. It is suddenly less like calming a skittish horse, and more like taming a wild, angry stallion. He’s even sorely tempted to make an innuendo about ‘riding’ just to see Snow’s flustered reaction. But he also hopes to someday have children, and this new side of Jon Snow seems likely to...damage that ability if such a thing were to leave Aegon’s lips in his presence. Oh well, there are other ways—more enjoyable, too—to wring that delightful blush from the Northern bastard.

Such as when he slides his palms up the twin plains of Snow’s back, all while making a show of searching out his hurts.

“I imagine you’ve got a couple splinters in your back from crawling around under all that wood,” Aegon explains with exaggerated innocence as Snow’s breath hitches and his bare skin shudders under Aegon’s hands.

Of course he doubts that there actually are any—Snow was wearing leather armor over his tunic—but it is as good a pretense as any. Although what Snow does seem to have in abundance is extensive bruising. His back, only yesterday a pale canvas interrupted only by pink and silver scars, has since developed dark blossoms of color that will probably show as dark purple in the daylight a few hours from now. And, right between his shoulder blades, precisely where Aegon poked him earlier, in fact, is a particularly nasty one nearly the size of a dinner plate.

Oops.

Realizing just how painful Snow’s wounds must truly be, Aegon loops his arm around the slender waist and ushers his reluctant companion to Rhaegal’s side where a series of sewn leather pouches form an unobtrusive saddlebag of sorts. He still vividly remembers the first time they tried out what became the first of many attempts at upgrading the saddles for the dragons. Aegon in particular had wanted to carry enough supplies of food, clothing and medicinal provisions so as to be covered if he should ever have to fly out on Rhaegal on his own for a few days. A feat that the bare simplicity of the original harnesses—which consisted only of the saddle itself and the straps that kept it attached to Rhaegal’s back—just could not support.

Tyrion Lannister had been of great help in designing the new saddles, the man a veritable ocean of knowledge about dragons after a self-proclaimed lifelong obsession with them. By the time Rhaegal’s new saddle, a handsome thing of dyed black leather and bronze ornamentation to match Rhaegal’s coloring, had been complete, Aegon had been most pleased. Unfortunately, that’s where things went sideways.

Upon being saddled up the first time with the new design, Rhaegal had twisted his neck around to inspect the extra bulges that he suddenly found attached to his sides, sniffing and nipping at them experimentally. Unlike the current design, the original were exactly inline with Aegon’s desires for plenty of storage space for provisions, and thus had been rather on the bulky side.

Rhaegal had not approved.

Emphatically.

Aegon was just glad at the time that he’d not yet packed any of this things, because after less than a minute of inspecting the new harness, the dragon had apparently decided that, no, this simply will not do, and had torn the entire ensemble apart.

And then proceeded to burn the shredded remains for good measure.

After that it was a great deal of trial and error, and an even greater amount of scorched leather. But while it took time and patience, Aegon was eventually able to get Rhaegal to accept a group of small pouches sewn on either side of the harness that holds Aegon’s saddle. He cannot keep anything larger than a bit of food or a small kit of medical supplies in any of the pouches, but it is better than nothing—and ‘nothing’ is exactly the only other alternative as far as Rhaegal is concerned. They serve their purpose though, and it is from one of these many pouches he pulls a jar of fragrant salve that, Aegon knows from personal experience, is remarkably good for numbing strained muscles. It also happens to be a godsend for making living with full-body bruises, well, livable.

“Here,” he says, guiding Snow forward with a gentle hand at the small of his back. “You can lean against Rhaegal’s side—don’t look at me like that. His body heat will keep you from freezing to death half dressed like this, and I swear that he’s no danger to you while I’m right here.”

He’s becoming quite familiar with Snow’s patented ‘Someone-save-me-from-this-madman’ expression, although it seems to be losing strength and becoming more resigned with each successive use. The look he trains on Aegon now is one of only mild outward appall as Snow, begrudgingly, allows Aegon to coax him into resting against the soft expanse of leather that forms part of Rhaegal’s harness.

Of course, his assurances hardly prevent the dark-haired bastard from anxiously watching the place where Rhaegal’s head is tucked under one leathery wing, but oblivious to Snow’s leery attention, the dragon does not so much as twitch in reaction. Sometimes all of the dragons, but Rhaegal in particular, remind Aegon of nothing so much as spoiled cats; imperiously demanding attention when they desire it and then ignoring your very existence when they don’t.

Actually, the ignoring his existence bit was one of Rhaegal’s favorite ‘games’ when Aegon was first trying to train him—much to his own chagrin. Pretending not to hear Aegon’s commands, the dragon would sit on the ground like a great lump while Aegon yelled the command for ‘fly’ until he was out of breath and well beyond out of patience. Not helping Aegon’s temper at the time was the fact that these miserable failures of what one might generously call ‘training sessions’, were highly public events, attended by most, if not all, of he and Daenerys’ court.

He’s embarrassed to admit it now, but ever since he’d heard of Daenerys’ dragons, he’d deluded himself into thinking that taming one would be a relatively simple task by virtue of his blood. That is to say: accomplished simply by sternly exerting his authority, after which he would naturally be rewarded by the dragon’s unquestioningly loyalty and all would look upon him with awe.

Ah, such sweet, childish delusions.

And, like many children’s fantasies, when reality at last intruded, it hit him like a bucket of cold water to the face—followed swiftly by a metaphorical brick thrown at his head.

As it happened, instead of privately acquainting himself with Rhaegal and carefully winning the dragon’s respect and loyalty out of the public eye, as he ought to have, Aegon’s first humiliating one-on-one with Rhaegal took place under the scrutiny of more than a hundred pairs of eyes. It became quickly evident just how atrociously he’d miscalculated, but only after all those eyes had witnessed his confident swagger give way to frustration and hoarse yelling as the dragon had proceeded to ignore him completely. ‘Yes, yes, that’s cute, little gnat. Now go away,’ the dragon had seemed to say whenever the beast would deign to lift his head and give Aegon an unimpressed stare every once and a while.

Granted, despite his utter failure in the beginning, the fact that the dragon neither burned him to death, nor mauled him, did apparently cement his status as a ‘real’ Targaryen in many eyes. And the fact that Rhaegal had snapped Aegon’s whip out of the air mid-strike and returned its smoking, smoldering remains with a condescending snort before turning and presenting Aegon with his giant, scaly behind…

Well, no one ever said, just because Aegon was obviously ‘Blood of the Dragon’, that it automatically made him shoo-in as a dragon rider, right?

Who would have guessed that the process of becoming a dragon rider like the legendary ancestor after whom he was named would first serve as such a stinging blow to his ego?

Painful blow or not, the experience taught him the value of fighting fire with fire. Or in this case, obstinance with stronger obstinance. A lesson that he’ll have to put to good use if he wants to make the sight of Jon Snow naked a regular occurrence.

Take, for example, Jon Snow’s current, valiant attempt at nonchalance even as his ragged breath and the thunder of his heartbeat betray how Aegon’s actions truly affect him. “You…you were saying about your ‘humble’ upbringing?” Snow says at last, the thread of scorn in his voice plainly forced and maintained only with some difficulty, it seems.

“Hm-hm,” Aegon hums distractedly as he spreads the aromatic unguent on the wounded shoulder and across the worst of the bruising. When he reaches the bruise he unknowingly irritated with his prodding before, he leans forward to ghost featherlight kisses around the edges by way of an apology. A soft, sharp inhale and Snow’s muscles jumping under his lips are his reward, as well as the sight of trembling gloved fingers digging into the leather of Rhaegal’s harness.

Despite this though, the dark-haired man steadfastly refuses to turn his head to meet Aegon’s eyes like the last time they were in a similar position. Whatever emotions swirl in those dark eyes, Snow is determined not to let Aegon see them. But in this, Snow has made a grave miscalculation of just how such stubbornness will be received.

He’d no doubt be greatly aggravated if he realized that, in addition to making the chase just that much more interesting, Aegon actually finds the man’s headstrong nature attractive in and of itself. Thus, while Snow probably thinks that he’s being suitably standoffish, in truth he’s just digging himself an inescapable pit for Aegon’s enjoyment.

No need to inform him of that though, Aegon decides with a hidden smile. It’s more fun if he thinks his pretty pouting does anything but make me want to finish stripping him right here and now and bed him on the hard ground, if need be.

“I didn’t grow up in a palace or a castle,” Aegon continues his story, voice perfectly composed, causal even, as if his lips occasionally interrupting the work of his hands is the most natural thing in the world. “I was raised among fisherfolk, learning to fish and cook and wash my own clothes. I may be a King now, but my childhood was as modest as could be.”

A slight exaggeration, maybe, for he doesn’t make mention of any of the things or people he had growing up that no normal fisherman’s child would have enjoyed. Certainly no other child among the simple fisherfolk of the Rhoyne had their own master at arms, a septa, as well as a near maester as tutors. Nor did they have the opportunity to stay in the house of one of the Free Cities’ most powerful magisters on occasion as a child, being plied with candied ginger and stories of said magister’s youthful adventures.

But those details are hardly important to this conversation and so Aegon freely glosses over them. Snow doesn’t seem to realize, too caught up in trying to remain unaffected to spot any oddities in Aegon’s tale.

“And this is how they taught you to tend a wound?” Snow replies tightly, only obliquely addressing the kisses still being pressed between his shoulders, resolute in projecting only his—feigned—indifference. He has evidently decided that two can play that game, though his casual act is ruined by the breathless quality of his voice.

Aegon laughs aloud then, no matter that in doing so, he is effectively forfeiting their little battle of wills almost as soon as it has started. However much stock Snow seems apparently to put into these contests, he does not mind losing on this particular battlefield, not when there is another, far more thrilling, that he plans to indulge in soon.

“No,” he concedes, smiling. “But I’m enjoying it all the same. Aren’t you?”

That finally earns him an end to Snow’s refusal to look at him, and suddenly his gaze is met by hostile gray eyes over a pale, naked shoulder.

Now this is interesting, he muses, curiously observing that, while very much still present, the wariness of before is overshadowed largely by a chord of smoldering challenge in Jon Snow’s dark eyes. And he realizes then, staring into those icy eyes, that Snow is honestly well and truly angry.

For the first time, Aegon feels a twinge of doubt as to how…receptive to his advances Jon Snow really is.

Unfortunately though, before he can devise a way to address the other man’s ire, much less fix it, Rhaegal’s head suddenly rears up, startling them both. Snow jumps like a cat with a trodden tail and stumbles backward straight into Aegon’s arms in his haste to distance himself from the dragon, but Rhaegal stares heedless back in the direction of Castle Black. They must be about to have company.

And indeed, it doesn’t take but another handful of heartbeats before Aegon too can hear the sounds of several horses coming crashing towards them at great speed. Whereas Snow seems to shake himself out of a daze and quickly looks aghast at the situation he finds himself in.

I’m not sure whether to be offended or not, Aegon frowns, but has no time to call the bastard on it, for just as Snow wrenches himself from Aegon’s arms, their company bursts into the clearing. Luckily though, when Rhaegal hisses, the sounds come no closer, the horsemen wisely remaining on the other side of the dragon with their horses whinnying nervously at their proximity to the large predator.

“Your Grace!” comes the voice of Ser Rolly. “We saw the dragons fighting, are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, Ser,” Aegon yells back, watching with a displeased frown as Jon Snow once again redresses, never once looking in his direction.

“You’re certain, Your Grace?” Duck says skeptically, and Aegon rolls his eyes.

“Quite certain, Duck.”

There is silence for but a moment. “I only ask because I dragged Haldon along just in case you were maybe...not so certain.”

He snorts at the implication. Hide a tiny scratch of a sword wound one time and they never let you live it down.

“Good,” he says back instead. “He can take a look at Lord Snow then.”

Snow’s head whips around and Aegon can see him desperately trying to control his furious scowl.

Aegon scowls back, but explains nonetheless.

“Haldon is a maester—” Sort of. “—and he ought to be able to do something about that arm of yours, so try to be a little grateful, Lord Snow.”

The angry expression on Snow’s face melts away with a wince as he looks away, appearing almost shamefaced.

“My apologies,” Snow says quietly, his subdued voice making Aegon raise a brow interestedly. “You saved my life up there and I haven’t even thanked you for it.” He licks his lips and faces Aegon only for a moment before bowing his head. “So, thank you. For protecting me from the other dragon…as well as tending to my wounds, thank you, Your Grace.”

He can tell that it almost physically pains him to bring up and then thank Aegon for ‘tending his wounds’, but Snow’s words are still sincere, and so Aegon graciously nods in response.

“You are welcome,” he says, hoping his voice isn’t as...biting as it sounds to his ears, though by the miniscule furrow of Snow’s brows as he stares at his feet, it doubtless is, and Aegon berates himself for his lack of discipline.

So what if he doesn’t want to sleep with you? Get over it and start acting like a King rather than a bitter, rejected suitor!

Easier said than done, especially with his kind of temper, and so he takes a moment to close his eyes and just breathe and calm himself. Only when he feels a little more like a sensible human being—and thus less like a rampaging dragon—does he open them and allow himself to speak again.

“I should take Rhaegal back to the nest,” he says with passable steadiness. “The Queen no doubt has Drogon keeping Viserion under control. I’m sure he won’t be a problem anymore.” Grimacing, he realizes that he’s starting to babble and firmly stops himself.

He should apologize himself for forcing his obviously unwanted attentions on the other man, but Aegon isn’t sure of his...ability to put such a thing to words at this moment. At least, not words that wouldn’t just make things worse. The rage is still upon him, the flames banked for now, but the embers yet glowing with heat, just waiting for a bit of breeze to stoke them back into a blistering inferno.

Later, he promises himself. I’ll apologize later.

Snow nods slowly, wariness back in full force once again, and quietly excuses himself. As for Aegon himself, he gives Snow a tight smile that feels more like a snarl on his face, and immediately lets it fall away once the man disappears around Rhaegal’s bulk. After a moment, he walks up to Rhaegal and, with a pitiful moan that is utterly unbefitting of a king, proceeds to knock his head against the dragon’s hard scales. Repeatedly.

Gods, what an ass he’s made of himself. So damn certain that Snow just needed seducing, Aegon has apparently blinded himself to the fact that the man has been genuinely uninterested this entire time!

It is now manifestly clear that he has somehow woefully misinterpreted Snow’s reticence for the man simply being inexperienced and shy. What he mistook for a mutual attraction between them, he now recognizes as having been nothing but another of his delusions. He saw what he wanted to see, and all but molested a man who likely felt that he could not outright refuse as a result. He wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

How could I be so disgustingly blind? I’ve been acting like some… some revolting lecher who refuses to take a hint!

A puff of hot air stirs his hair, and when he reluctantly opens his eyes, it is to the sight of Rhaegal peering curiously at him, no doubt wondering why his silly human is using him in lieu of a brick wall, and Aegon dredges up a feeble excuse for a smile as he reaches out and rubs the dragon’s snout. The Green presses back for but a moment before he pulls away, seemingly satisfied with the condition of his bonded enough to go back to ignoring him as before. The action is so quintessentially Rhaegal, that Aegon has no choice but to chuckle.

“You’re right, my friend,” he says wistfully. “Nothing to do but get up and get over it, is there?”

And it is true. There can be no reconciliation for this, surely, but that doesn’t mean that he can stay here wallowing in his own mortification. He is the Dragon King, no matter what heinous mistakes of judgment he is prone to. Even one as humiliating as this does not excuse him from presenting a strong, collected front to the world.

That said, if he doesn’t see Jon Snow again for another ten years, it will still be ten years too soon for the sake of his own pride.

Nevertheless, gathering up the slaughtered remains of his pride and dignity, Aegon makes himself stand up straight and contrives his face into an expression of disciplined regality. The mask feels brittle, like clay fired too hot in a kiln until the lightest of touches can make it crumble into dust. But rather than a kiln, it is his own temper, ‘Blood of the Dragon’, as Daenerys calls it, that threatens to wreck havoc on his entirely too false impassivity. Unfortunately, this brittle, cracked mask is all he can manage for now, and he can hardly delay any longer without it drawing further attention. And so, drawing a shaky breath, he steels himself and launches himself up neatly onto Rhaegal’s back.

While he pretends to not see the four figures milling about a small distance away, he absolutely does not fumble with the straps as he buckles them around his waist, nor do his fingers feel like clumsy sausages on the clasps. It is the cold, he tells himself. The cold has made the leather stiff, and the metal of the clasps icy to the touch and hard to keep hold of. It certainly isn’t because he is distracted by his self-recriminations and the feel of his dinner trying to make a triumphant return up his esophagus.

I am the Dragon King, he reminds himself firmly. I will not be undone by the rejection of some...bastard of the North. There are better prospects out there who don’t come with nearly the baggage of a former Night’s Watchman—nevermind that he’s Eddard Stark’s bastard son to boot! Honestly, I ought to be glad that I avoided the inevitable mess taking him as my lover would turn into.

He snorts as one such scenario pops into his mind, unbidden, but no less vivid for it.

That’s right. Jon Connington would probably expire on the spot if he ever caught wind of even a hint of such a scandal, he thinks wryly before he sighs and shakes his head. It’s sad that he cannot even convince himself to be thankful for the fiasco that Snow’s rejection has spared him, because gods, does he still want him, however foolish that desire is.

“Aegon?” someone says not five feet away, and he just barely stops himself from startling. So lost in his own thoughts, he only now realizes that while his mind was occupied elsewhere, one of his two present Kingsguard has braved approaching the dragon.

“Aegon?” Rolly repeats softly while looking apprehensively up at him from the ground. “Are you truly alright?”

“Yes,” Aegon asserts stiffly. “I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt.”

Ser Rolly Duckfield, first of his Kingsguard, frowns, looking wholly dissatisfied with his answer. “That’s not what I was asking, milord. You seem...rattled, Aegon,” he replies, his red brows drawn together and his voice quiet. No one besides the two of them are privy to this conversation. “Does something need done about Snow?”

Aegon shakes his head with a soft smile. “No. He’s done nothing wrong. Just a misunderstanding, Ser.”

Duck chews his lip, obviously still disquieted and yearning to do something to help, which Aegon does appreciate, even if in this instance, there’s nothing particularly helpful he can do.

“I mean it,” he stresses, seeing Duck’s hesitation. “I don’t want to hear about Lord Snow being harassed—” Any further. “—so see him back to Castle Black peacefully and then leave him be.”

Finally Duck gives an exaggerated sigh and he wears a much beleaguered expression, as if what Aegon is asking is some great, terrible sacrifice on his part.

“As you command, Your Grace,” the man says with a flourishing bow.

“Good,” Aegon says tartly back, though a small smile tugs his lips. “Now be gone with the horses so Rhaegal can takeoff without frightening them into hobbling themselves.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Rolly grins and spins on his heel to return to the horses and their riders. Aegon gives them just enough of his attention to see all four mount up, Jon Snow climbing up gingerly behind Haldon, and turn their mounts back toward the castle. He allows them a couple minutes head start, and then he too makes the return journey, though, flying on dragonback, he’s sure to beat them there.

Sure enough, he passes over them within short order, long before they can even reach the castle, and he lands Rhaegal alongside a watchful Drogon and a subdued, but nonetheless well-chained, Viserion.

Hmm.

As he undoes the straps, hands moving of their own accord though motions that have long been consigned to muscle memory, he glances curiously at the cream-and-gold dragon. By the time he is finished, he is staring outright. If he didn’t know better, he’d say that damn troublemaking dragon was sulking, and he is hit with a sudden rush of relief that he bonded with Rhaegal.

For Rhaegal may be a handful and a trickster besides, but it is Viserion who redefines the meaning of the term ‘problem child’. The things that dragon has gotten up to in the last year will be tales of caution told for decades by their allies and enemies alike, and it is nearly unconscionable that there is almost nothing that Aegon can do about it other than damage control—

And, dammit, he knew he was forgetting something! He’d asked Snow about what might have set Viserion off, but had then, like an idiot, gotten so wrapped up in making eyes at the man and mooning over his pique of temper, that he’d forgotten to follow through. And what a lovely conversation that could turn out to be now. ‘Excuse me, Lord Snow. I know you only just escaped my undesired attentions a couple of minutes ago, but now I’d like to interrogate you about the other dragon whose unwanted attention you also just escaped.’

Ugh. No thank you.

Although, now that he thinks on it, Tyrion Lannister was probably up there as well, the man always eager to see the dragons in whatever capacity he can. Between those two uncomfortable possibilities, Aegon would much rather seek out the one who he hasn’t fondled, kissed, and just plain pissed off—all in the span of a few days. Thus, the Lannister dwarf’s serrated tongue and merciless wit it will have to be.

“Husband,” Daenerys’ tired voice says.

His head whips around and he sees her ducking under Drogon’s head, reaching up to scratch his chin absentmindedly as she goes.

“Dany, I didn’t realize you were there. How is Viserion?”

She shrugs, looking over at the cream-and-gold dragon helplessly. “He’s not trying to escape the chains, at least, but he is still acting...oddly. I’ve never really seen anything like it.”

Oddly, indeed. As per his usual, Viserion is hunkered down in a newly dug pit, a mess of dirt and rocks scattered in a wide radius from where the dragon excavated it himself with claws and fire. According to Daenerys, while trapped inside one of the great pyramids of Meereen, Viserion tunneled straight into the bricks to make himself a cave to sleep in and, since then, the dragon has continued that odd tradition in every area that they stop in. The Dragonpit in King’s Landing came preequipped with plenty such tunnels and caves, some of Viserion’s predecessors having apparently shared his same predilection for imitating a burrowing worm.

And yet, as he observes the dragon closely now, that is the only similarity to the dragon’s usual behavior to be seen. For rather than the pale colored dragon’s typically good temper—when he isn’t eating someone he shouldn’t be—Viserion is indeed engaged in, as he initially thought, a deep sulk.

Un-Fucking-Believable.

“Any idea as to what sparked it?”

Dany shakes her head in negative.

“There was the incident with the moose... But that was weeks ago,” she says, and they both share a cringe at the reminder.

The moose. Seven help him, he’d almost successfully repressed the memory of that godsdamned creature.

“No,” he frowns. “You’re right, the moose was close to a month ago and Viserion’s been perfectly normal since.”

Daenerys sighs. “The man Viserion was chasing... How is he?”

“Fine,” Aegon says while unconsciously pulling a face. Daenerys notices immediately.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he swiftly denies—too swiftly, for his wife raises one of her eyebrows inquisitively and looks at him expectantly.

“It’s not important, Dany, really,” he insists and, seeing her continued interest, decides to move the conversation along himself.

“We need to decide what to do about Viserion,” he says to redirect her attention, and it does the trick nicely, for now Aegon’s issues with Viserion’s rescued ‘toy’ are the furthest thing from her mind.

“What are you saying?” she asks sharply as her whole body goes tense.

“He needs a rider, Dany,” he says emphatically, approaching to take both her hands in his.

Aegon waits til she meets his eyes, amethyst to indigo, and carries on. “He’s too wild unbonded like this. Drogon is bonded to you, and by your own admission, Rhaegal calmed significantly when I bonded him. Viserion needs that too. Because this isn’t safe—for other people or him. Someday, someone is going to take it in their head to put down the ‘mad dragon’.”

Daenerys bites her lip. “We were going to wait for a child. Viserion is meant to be for our heir so the next heir to the Iron Throne would be a dragon rider,” she says miserably, and her choice of words makes him duck his head with a sigh of his own.

A child.

Their heir.

Not their child.

Shortly after their marriage, Daenerys, an air of brittle pride about her that just dared him to condemn her, had informed Aegon of her condition. He’d felt instantly cheated, as if the Seven had looked upon all he had accomplished and would accomplish and had decided to humble him. Nonetheless, he did have the sense to know that was not the time to make an issue of it, not with Daenerys so on the edge, her hostility simply masking her humiliation over having to confess the whole dreadful business.

Even with his own sense of having had something personally stolen from him, he could feel sympathy for her loss. Her confession obviously cost her a great deal of pride, for all that she hides it even now behind a wall of indifference, and he was content to leave the discussion of a solution to another day, after she’d had time to hide the painful emotional scars she’d been forced to share.

Jon Connington, unfortunately, had not been so understanding.

Always somewhat contemptuous of all women, Lord Connington is a man who considers marriage to be useful in only two instances, each depending on the other. One: the securing of political alliances, a condition that Daenerys, with her incontestable Targaryen lineage, substantial army, and, of course, dragons, more than qualified for. The second—and final—instance Jon Connington has always presented as a valid reason for marriage is for the acquisition of heirs, something Daenerys was rendered incapable of after the heinous murder of her unborn son by a witch.

Despite Aegon’s attempts to silence him, he’d raged and accused her of purposefully misleading them by hiding her “affliction” until she had safely ensnared Aegon and the position of Queen. When the man proceeded to callously speak of what noble woman Aegon should take as his mistress to breed the necessary Targaryen heir and spare, Aegon had been forced to remind his foster father of his place—loudly. Their relationship has not really recovered since, their interactions now cool and distant as Aegon tries to impress on the man that, while he is like a father to him, that does not allow his Hand to act and speak with impunity—certainly not to his Queen.

He and Daenerys’ relationship however only strengthened after his open support and lack of judgment for her. She has since agreed that legitimizing his children from a—discreet—arrangement with a woman of a proper pedigree to be the best solution. Whether they will fake a pregnancy by sending Daenerys and a pregnant mistress to Dragonstone until the child’s birth is something that they still debate on, but Aegon makes sure that his wife knows that it is her decision, one he will support either way she decides.

As of yet though, they have made no serious attempts to even procure said mistress, much less gotten around to producing said child.

“We obviously can’t wait that long,” he shakes his head, equally unhappy, for it is his dream as well for his son to become a dragon rider. But to allow things to go on as they are is to risk losing all the dragons, not just Viserion. “When we return to King’s Landing, we should vet those of Valyrian descent and try to find him a rider.”

“But how will we find someone we can trust?” she hisses. “Allowing Viserion to fall into the hands of someone who we can’t trust would be disastrous. Daemon Blackfyre rallied support for a rebellion over a sword. What ideas will a having a dragon put in someone’s head?”

“We’ll be careful,” he assures her as unwaveringly as he can while strangling the urge to flinch at the name ‘Blackfyre’. He curses the day he heard that damnable theory about his own origins. “If we have to,” he carries on regardless, “we’ll invite their family to court as leverage. Whatever it takes, we’ll ensure that whoever bonds Viserion will stay loyal.”

Daenerys still looks dejected by the idea of giving away another of her children, and he doesn’t fool himself into thinking that the topic is by any means resolved, but so long as she is at least thinking about it, he is satisfied. For now.

Dredging up a dim smile, he presses a kiss to her temple before offering her his arm. “Nothing we can do now, though. And I don’t know about you, but I’m in desperate need of something hot to drink. What do you say we head in?”

Daenerys gives him a weak smile and loops her arm through his. “Yes, that sounds like a good idea.”

With one last lingering look at the unhappy Viserion, bracketed in by both his brothers as he is, they turnabout and walk towards the castle in silence. Only, when they reach the grounds, it becomes apparent that his Kingsguard, and by extension Jon Snow, have caught up at last, if only just. Stable boys lead the horses away as Ser Rolly and Ser Garrett Rowan, an addition to his Kingsguard as of two years past, fall into loose formation around them along with two of Daenerys’ Unsullied.

Across the way, Haldon sends one of the boys scurrying away while he himself hovers behind Jon Snow, who, Aegon nearly scowls to see, is swiftly set upon by the obnoxiously pretty steward who defended him so passionately before. The man must ask after Snow’s health, for Snow immediately appears to carelessly wave off the other man’s inquiry, ignorant of Haldon’s patronizing eye roll behind him. The pretty steward sees it though, and frowns reproachfully at Jon Snow for a moment before he says something else that has Snow’s attention sharpening instantly. Aegon observes the intense expression in Snow’s dark eyes as he draws close to hear what the other man has to say, one hand resting on the steward’s shoulder.

If Viserion had to decide to eat someone, why couldn’t he have chosen him? He thinks sourly, and his expression must be something to behold, for his wife begins giggling at his side almost immediately.

“You should see your face, husband,” she says shaking her head, the bells threaded through her hair ringing with the motion. “But I do believe you might ought should save your jealousy until after you’ve slept with him yourself, my dear.”

Love to, he thinks glumly. Only it seems there never will be an ‘after’, so I have no choice but to be jealous now.

“How’s that going, by the way?” she continues after barely a beat, a mischievous curl to her lips that he’s genuinely sorry he cannot reciprocate at this time. He gives her his best attempt anyway, but it feels sorely lacking in comparison.

“Oh, I’ve decided it really wasn’t such a good idea,” he says lightly in an attempt to shrug off her inquiry. Unfortunately, it rings so pathetically hollow even to his own ears, that the only way Daenerys could not hear it for herself was if she were drunk to the point of incapacitation. Bordering on alcohol poisoning. Which, for the sake of his pride, she is most regrettably not.

“Rubbish,” she declares with a dismissive flick of her hand, and oh, how Aegon wishes that he could get away with sulking like Viserion in response. “Now what actually happened?”

With an aggrieved sigh, Aegon frowns while refusing to look at her. Is it too much to ask that she ever just allow him his pride? Apparently. “It just became abundantly clear that he and I were not suited to each other,” tells her as he debates the merits of finding a snowbank to bury himself in until spring just to escape her unrelenting curiosity. A curiosity that, just as he thought, remains undaunted and unashamed in the face of his annoyance as her brows raise and she turns to look upon him fully.

“He turned you down?” she asks with surprise while he bites his tongue to avoid snarling. Snowbank. Where is a damn snowbank when he needs it?

“Yes,” he hisses resentfully through his teeth while looking about to make sure no one is close enough to overhear this humiliating conversation. Duck and Ser Garrett know to keep their distance when he and his Queen speak, and though Daenerys’ Unsullied lack such propriety, there’s nothing to be done in their case. At least they are the very souls of discretion and not given to gossip. “Is that what you want to hear? Yes, he made it plain he wasn’t interested. Are we done now?”

Oh, if only he could be so blessed.

“Hardly,” Daenerys snorts instead, and he can tell that she is highly entertained. She always has found delight in his ego being viciously knifed, their marriage having been…contentious from day one. This is far from the first time she has hassled and harangued him over an ill-fated affair, though usually he does manage to actually engage in said affair before she starts taking jabs at him. “You take things so personally sometimes, husband,” she reprimands cheerfully. “Now I’ll ask again. What did he actually say?”

“I really do hate you sometimes...wife,” he mutters to her sourly and then huffs. “And he didn’t say anything. I could just see it in his eyes.”

“In his eyes,” she repeats flatly with an unimpressed stare. He growls back.

“Yes, in his eyes. Haven’t you ever just looked someone in the eye and…known?”

Daenerys, the backstabbing bitch, just bites her lip in a futile effort to control her laughter. “With someone I already know, maybe,” she says, still giggling unabashedly. And he just loves when she finds amusement in his discomfort and he tells her so hotly.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” she apologizes with mock sincerity. “You’re right, two days and a handful of minutes here and there are certainly sufficient to know the man’s mind already. What ever was I thinking?”

He glowers at her and, mercifully, Daenerys lets it go after her last scathing remark. Just in time, as it turns out, for waiting at the base of the stairs leading up to their respective chambers are some of their men, Lord Connington included, no doubt there to report on the happenings of the night that he and Daenerys missed while flying.

“We will convene in my chambers,” Aegon decides, waving his hand to gesture the men precede them up the stairs. Only then does he see the imp as he awkwardly stands from where he has been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, the man’s smaller form having been lost amongst the heavy, trailing cloaks of the other men until now. Good, it means that Aegon will not have to seek him out to have his answers.

Once inside, one of his pages, a short lump of a boy named Leander, hurries to pour wine for all all five of them before slipping back out to wait in the hall at Aegon’s silent dismissal. Hovering, eager-to-please twelve year olds while he’s trying to conduct serious business are something that he thinks he’ll never get used to—nor does he mean to. How many times he has witnessed the way some young page or squire settles into a quiet corner, under the auspices of being ‘on hand’ should their lord need anything.

Except, within short order, their lord—and, more importantly, their lord’s guests—inevitably forget that the boy so much as exists, much less that he is lurking not ten feet away, ears perked for any little crumbs of information that may unintentionally be revealed. And plenty are the men and women who are happy to drop a few pennies into greedy little hands for any of those crumbs.

Aegon, growing up hearing so much about ‘his’ loyal spider in King’s Landing, cannot help but be hyper aware of such methods, and thus never permits any of his pages to linger, either in his rooms, or close enough outside them to overhear conversation within. The closest they are allowed to stay is standing under the gimlet eyes of Aegon’s loyal Kingsguard—for it is they alone whom he trusts implicitly.

He sips from his goblet, humming appreciatively upon finding it deliciously warm, before settling down in one of the chairs beside Daenerys and gesturing towards the one man still on his feet; Tyrion Lannister and Jon Connington having already claimed chairs for themselves.

“What were the casualties from the...commotion at the top of the Wall?” Aegon asks mildly once they are seated. It is Lord Connington who answers, as the other man is too engrossed in fidgeting anxiously to have seemingly even heard Aegon speak, and Tyrion Lannister too interested in enjoying the contents of his cup to reply.

“Mostly just simple injuries from getting knocked about in the panic,” his Hand reports gruffly. “But it seems one man of the Watch was crushed to death when a beam from one of the giant catapults fell on him, and one of our men is missing.” The red-haired lord purses his lips. “They think he may have fell off the north side of the Wall.”

A shiver of horror is shared by all in the silence that follows Lord Connington’s account. Falling to his death from dragonback in not an unfamiliar concept, but at the same time, he strangely does not fear it—and never has. The prospect of tumbling 700 hundred feet off the Wall ought not to be any different… But it is. Whatever oddity exists in his blood that allows him not to fear falling from a dragon, it does not extend to a fall of the same distance off the Wall.

“We’ll send out riders come first light to retrieve his body if so,” Aegon pronounces curtly, still discomforted, though trying not to show it openly. He clears his throat. “What else is there?” he asks, giving the last man, he does not quite recall his name, his full attention.

“Well, uh...” the man begins inauspiciously and then stalls, a gormless look on his face that makes him appear a simpleton.

“Spit it out, man,” Lord Tyrion says, rolling his eyes and folding his stunted hands over his belly as he slouches in his chair; the very image of boredom. “I’m sure I’m not the only one here who would prefer to be out chasing a northern...skirt.” He grins insolently at Aegon as he says it, and Connington’s mute fury at the very implication that Aegon might want to bed a, gods forbid, northern girl is palpable. Once again Aegon is reminded of just why he hates that damned Lannister.

“Watch your tongue, Imp,” Connington grinds out between his tightly clenched teeth before turning his irate focus on the simpleton. “Just tell them what you started telling me,” he prompts sharply.

“Ye—yes, milord,” the man swallows. “Well, you see, I was in the tunnel that leads to the other side of the Wall watching the dragons through the murder holes. My friends went to the top of the Wall, but I don’t like heights, you see, so—” An impatient growl from Lord Connington makes him stutter, but mercifully does manage to speed the tale along.

“—Right, as I was saying,” he squeaks. “I was in the tunnel to watch the dragons when the… The monsters, I guess, showed up.” Here he pales several shades and shudders, a sentiment that Aegon, having seen them up close, must wholeheartedly agree with. “And when they did,” he continues, sounding faint, “I swear before the Old gods and the New, the gate opened, milord.”

Aegon has been slouching ever so slightly since the man began speaking, the warmth of the room and his wine, coupled with a lackluster report after hours of flying after dark leaving his eyes heavy. Now though, he sits up straight and nails the other man with a stare that promises consequences if he is lying.

“Explain,” he orders sharply. “Who opened the gate? Why?”

“I don’t know, milord,” the man admits helplessly shaking his head. “The black brothers were right spooked and scrambled to get it closed, but before that, everyone was so focused on the ice demons, no one saw who opened it.”

Out in the yard, Jon Snow was alarmed by something his friend told him, he recalls, lost in his own thoughts. Was this it? The gate opening during a White Walker attack? He didn’t seem nearly shocked enough. Angry, maybe, but not shocked. Hmm…

“Is that all?” he asks the man, who promptly nods. “Very well, you may go.”

When he is gone, it is the Lannister dwarf who is the first to break the silence.

“Well then!” the imp beams around the room insolently. “Three silver stags says it was the work of snarks.”

The corner of Daenerys’ mouth tugs upward at the jest, but Lord Connington just looks a combination of pained and disgusted. Aegon agrees rather more with the latter sentiment, having himself been the target of far too many of Tyrion Lannister’s jokes to find the man funny any longer. Maybe once, but after the dozenth or so jab the man had felt at liberty to take at Aegon’s, admittedly terrible, early attempts to woo his new wife… Well, Aegon is a forgiving person, gods know, but eventually even he has his limits.

“Enough of your nonsense. This is serious, you fool!”

Of course, Aegon’s limits are still leagues farther than Jon Connington’s.

“Peace, my lord,” Aegon sighs as he once again is forced to intervene in a matter of Lord Connington’s flaring temper. “I think it would be best to ask one of the Nights Watchmen what has occurred, rather than speculating. Could you do so for me now, my lord?”

His Lord Hand startles and turns a look of consternation his way, but does stand and agree, albeit with a scowl like Aegon has just asked him to strip to his small clothes and sing an ode to Lyanna Stark. “Yes, Your Grace,” he says crossly and leaves. There, that should keep him occupied while they question Tyrion Lannister. Aegon swears the little man is like an open flame to Jon Connington’s barrel of wildfire. Let them get too close and BOOM.

“Hmm. Now that you’ve cleared the room,” the Lannister dwarf drawls while casting them a considering look. “I suspect that you have some questions for me. Let me guess; Viserion, right?”

“Yes,” Daenerys confirms. “What do you think attracted Viserion’s attention at all?”

Tyrion shrugs. “Honestly, I couldn’t say. He just sort of...showed up with no warning. Smashed a catapult right off and scared the piss out of us all, I’ll tell you that,” he snorts. “After that, he only seemed interested in Jon Snow.”

“Jon Snow?” Daenerys demands and then turns to shoot a look at Aegon that plainly says that there will be words over his less than candid ‘account’ of the incident earlier. He’s saved from having to defend himself for the time being by the imp’s next words.

“Aye,” he agrees, nodding sagely. “Didn’t seem to care a wit about the rest of us, truth be told. Just wanted to play cat and mouse with poor Lord Snow.” He chuckles then. “And Snow was so kind as to oblige by playing the part of scurrying mouse perfectly. So well, actually, I think Viserion approved of his performance; he neither burned him, nor scooped him up and ate him. High praise, from a dragon. I was much impressed.”

“But you don’t think he did anything himself to draw Viserion’s attention in the first place?” Aegon asks, mostly just to confirm what he’s already fairly certain of for his wife’s sake. Daenerys takes other people’s interactions with her dragons very seriously. Thankfully, the imp shakes his head in an unequivocal negative right away.

“No,” he denies. “I was right beside him the entire time. We were watching you on the dragons—lovely show, by the way—and Lord Snow noted the missing dragon only seconds before the beast made itself known.”

One worry down…an uncountable number to go.

“Thank you, Lord Tyrion. You’ve been most helpful,” Aegon dismisses him smoothly.

“I’m just sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Your Grace,” Lannister says as he hops down. He proceeds to tug his clothes this way and that to straighten them as he makes his way to the door.

And then, because he’s Tyrion fucking Lannister, naturally he cannot leave a room without making at least one lewd joke, a solemn duty which he fulfills now with a smarmy smirk in Aegon’s direction. “Perhaps you should question Lord Snow yourself, Your Grace. A nice...thorough interrogation while he’s bent over his own desk, yes?”

Oh what Aegon wouldn’t give to wring that little Lannister shit’s neck. Unfortunately, the man has done a thorough job of his own in ingratiating himself to Daenerys. She thinks the little shit’s funny. She has never been the object of his ‘humor’.

“Out,” Aegon orders through gritted teeth, ignoring his wife’s snickers. The offensive little man bows with a mockingly grave expression and finally does leave, thankfully without another word. Daenerys is not so gracious.

“Like I said, husband,” she sighs as if he is the one who was out of line. “You take things much too seriously.” There’s a pause then, and when Aegon glances at her sideways, Daenerys is giving him a narrow look that he’s learned to recognizes as meaning nothing good. “When were you going to mention that the man you rescued was Jon Snow—I’m assuming that is who Viserion had pinned down, correct?”

“Yes,” he confirms wearily. “And when the information became pertinent,” he says shortly by way of answer to her first question. If she were a rattle snake, he’d be hearing the ominous sound of his painful death right about now. As it is, all he gets is a pair of slitted purple eyes that he blinks guilelessly at just because he knows it will piss her off even more. She’s angry no matter what at this point, he might as well encourage the full explosion so she’ll get it out of her system rather than allowing it to sit and stew and then blow up on him later at a less...opportune time.

“Pertinent?” she hisses incredulously, and it supports his comparison to snakes so well that he nearly laughs. “Pertinent? Viserion wants to eat Eddard Stark’s bastard out of no where and you don’t think it’s pertinent to mention it?!”

“Perhaps he just picked up on some of his mother’s lingering resentment,” Aegon counters with a sneer, and when she jumps to her feet and tries to snarl an objection, he rises to his own and steamrolls right over her, this time going for where it really hurts. “In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Viserion doesn’t listen to you, one might even wonder if you had purposefully set him to get rid of ‘Eddard Stark’s bastard’ for you.” And just to twist the knife a little more, he smirks as he says, “But like I said, no one will believe that; Viserion never obeys you.”

His performance earns him an inarticulate shriek of rage as both his wife’s hands grab fistfuls of his hair to drag him savagely to his knees. He allows her that much, but blocks and catches hold of one of her hands that crooks itself into a claw and seems about to rake across his face. Allowing Daenerys to take her frustration out on him with hair pulling and rough sex is one thing. Walking around for the next week with bloody scratches advertising that his wife flew off the handle and attacked him is a whole different proposition.

After much tussling, they manage to make it the few feet to the bed, tearing one another’s clothes off along the way until, with a mightier shove than her small frame should allow, Daenerys topples him into the bed and straddles his torso before he can sit back up.

“I hate when you do that,” she declares with a glare.

He hums, pleased, and grins in the face of her annoyance. “Works every time,” he quips, and is hit solidly in the stomach by way of revenge.

“Oh, do be quiet, you infuriating man,” she replies and stuffs two of her fingers in his mouth when he makes to sass back at her. “Shush, I said.”

They end up fucking roughly on his bed soon after, and he afterward hates to admit it, but Daenerys wasn’t the only who desperately needed that after today.

By the end, his scalp is sore from his hair being pulled and her breasts and neck are covered in kiss marks and shallow indentations of his teeth. She rolls her hips several more times, her head tilted back as she rides out the last waves of orgasm, then he kisses her throat one last time and removes her from his lap so they can lay side by side. His wife turns and buries her face in his shoulder with a sigh of deep satisfaction that makes him just a little smug.

Okay, maybe more than a little. But who can blame him? Daenerys was much more experienced than him upon their wedding, he having only bedded two women before then, both times having occurred because of the lighthearted ribbing of men like Franklyn Flowers. They’d not-so subtly teased him that a woman widowed by a Dothraki Khal would scarcely be impressed by a green boy in the bedchamber and he’d stupidly fallen for it and let them set him up with a paid woman. It wasn’t his proudest moment, nor was the subsequent occasion of waking up in Storm’s End with a naked girl that he, for the life of him, couldn’t remember bedding the night before, so drunk he’d been.

The spectre of the fat, whore-mongering drunkard who had slain his father had loomed large over him that morning, awakening as he had in the Lord’s chambers of the seat of Stags; the place where Robert Baratheon should have spent his life if he hadn’t murdered his family and stolen his throne. Feeling more ill than a mere overindulgence of drink could explain, Aegon had sworn off such things afterward and made it clear to Duck and his sworn swords that if ever they caught him about to drunkenly bed a woman, they were to ignore his protests and send her away—with threats if necessary.

Hence, he’d come to his marriage bed with very little experience, and even less that he properly remembered. Daenerys had not laughed or shown displeasure with his performance...but it wasn’t difficult to tell that it was a duty for her, one that she only really enjoyed when she expertly took control. He’d improved over time though, and not only in his wife’s bed. On a few occasions, Daenerys had even encouraged him to take this woman or that man as a lover.

She had Daario Naharis—still has him, even—and had no intention of giving him up despite Aegon’s early protests as to how it looked. Instead, she’d sought to silence Aegon’s protests by making a hypocrite of him. And, to his everlasting shame and chagrin, it had worked.

After an ill-advised—read: Daenerys-advised—affair with Desmera Redwyne, the pretty 19 year old daughter of Paxter Redwyne, Aegon hardly had a leg to stand on when it came to Daenerys’ affairs—exactly like she’d planned it.

“He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” his wife murmurs sleepily but for the playful smile he can feel pressed against his skin.

“Daaany, enough of this,” he groans, his mood much improved, though he’d still rather not discuss Jon Snow with her, especially not now, of all times. He sighs. “You didn’t see him, he was genuinely offended and I’m not going to continue to...disrespect him by pressing when he’s obviously not interested. End of story.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you offended him somehow,” she snorts softly while pinching his thigh and making him yelp. “I’m just saying I think you’re overreacting—like usual. Silly man.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Dany,” he huffs and then yelps again as she pinches him. Again. “And stop doing that!”

Utterly unrepentant, Daenerys sighs contently and it isn’t long before she at least slips away into a deep sleep. Aegon is not so lucky, a state which he absolutely blames her for.

Is his wife right in thinking that Aegon is overreacting? He knows that sometimes he can become...overly attached to an idea to the point that it takes practically getting his ass kicked before he’s willing to give it up. His disastrous first attempt at taming Rhaegal comes to mind. It took being humiliated in front of dozens upon dozens of people for him to see sense in regards to his dragon.

In this instance though, he can’t tell if he’s been too attached to bedding Jon Snow to see that Snow didn’t want him, as he’d first assumed, or if Daenerys is right, and he has latched onto the his wounded pride at Snow’s rebuffing him and is now attributing more weight to said rebuff than the man intended.

Damn you, Daenerys, he glowers as he lays there in bed—wide awake, with no sign of that changing anytime soon. You make it impossible for me to sleep, and then you just fall asleep as if it nothing’s wrong.

Sometimes he swears his wife does these things on purpose.

Dawn has broken, he’s not sure how long ago, and the room is illuminated by a beam of sunlight through one of the large windows. Normally he wouldn’t be trying to sleep at this time, but with a deadly nocturnal foe like the White Walkers and their wights, the time to be awake and alert is at night, not during the day, and the whole army is attempting to reset their routines to reflect that truth. The combination of lovemaking and wine would usually put him right to sleep, but of course Daenerys just couldn’t leave well enough alone, and now he doesn’t think he could sleep if he tried.

Groaning frustratedly, he slips out of his wife’s embrace and gets up. Shivering as his bare feet touch the icy stone floor, Aegon hurries to grab a set of clothes from his truck and stuff his feet into a pair of fur-lined boots. Once dressed, he walks up to the window and observes the swarm of activity in the castle yard.

Jon Snow is still there, the annoyingly pretty black brother by his side as he engages in a heated discussion with several of the other black brothers. Aegon lays his arm across the glass and leans his forehead against it as he watches Jon Snow for several minutes, his interest not waning until the man himself disappears from his sight.

Gods, he’s in trouble with this one.

Chapter Text

Leaving Daenerys asleep in his bed, Aegon removes himself to a dreary chamber down the hall whose only saving grace is its size and the enormous window that floods the room with light. Thankfully, a mere half an hour is enough for a pair of his wheezing pages to commandeer several comfortable pieces of furniture from around the tower and turn the room into a satisfactory solar. After which, he spends the rest of the morning immersed in work as he listens to reports from his army and Lord Hand, and grills several of his commanders over the apparently missing shipments of dragonglass—shipments that should have arrived at the Wall weeks before the arrival of the army.

Already frustrated, he quickly dispatches orders for the shipments to be found posthaste, as they do not know when the White Walkers will be done licking their wounds and will decide to show back up. One of his commanders scoffs and asks why they need dragonglass when they have actual dragons, but Aegon’s silent, narrow-eyed stare quickly shuts the man up and he hastens to obey while asking no more questions. When the room empties, Aegon rubs his temples with his forefingers and sighs.

Much as he is loath to admit it, he finds himself leery about utilizing the dragons again, at least until they know what caused Viserion to act so strangely. Tyrion Lannister was certain that Jon Snow did nothing to provoke the dragon, and while he may not like the man much, he does trust the Lannister’s keen eyes to not have been fooled by any odd behavior from Snow. Unfortunately, that means that they have literally no idea why Viserion went wild and ultimately got two men killed and injured dozens of others.

Another mystery heaped on his plate is that of the tunnel gate to the other side of the Wall—which was apparently opened by ghosts, because there is not a single witness that can point the finger, despite there having been several dozen men crowding in around the murder holes to watch the dragons. And, according to a scowling Jon Connington, last night was in fact not the first time such a thing occurred.

“I hadn’t thought to question it before,” Aegon admits with some irritation as his Lord Hand explains just why the courtyard of Castle Black was overrun with wights when first they arrived the night before last. As for why he didn’t realize the oddity of the situation at the time… Well, if Lord Connington was not present, Aegon would probably bang his forehead against the desk.

See, this is what happens when you let yourself go starry-eyed over some pretty bastard, he berates himself. Can’t even think straight.

“No witnesses then, either?” Aegon asks, mostly to distract himself.

“None,” Lord Connington affirms dourly. “It does narrow the suspects to men of the Watch, though.”

Giving a noncommittal hum, Aegon dismisses the man, wishing to be alone a while to think.

His stomach rumbles suddenly in the ensuing silence and he realizes that in his distraction, he has forgotten to break his fast this day. He is just about to call for a page to bring him something from the kitchens when there is a jaunty knock on the door that he well recognizes.

“Daenerys?” he calls questioningly, though he is almost certain of his visitor’s identity as he next bids them enter. “Please do come in, My lady.”

His supposition is proven correct in the next moment as indeed his silver-haired Queen enters a heartbeat later, flashing him a toothy smile below her mischievous amethyst eyes. What he does not expect, is the...addition she brings to their little tête-à-tête.

His arm trapped in what Aegon knows from experience to be Daenerys’ deceptively light hold, Jon Snow wears a vaguely consternated expression, very much as if asking himself how in the seven hells he ended up in this situation in the first place—a question that Aegon cannot help but wonder himself—and pondering how best to engineer a polite retreat without offending the Queen. Of course that’s before he catches sight of Aegon. Once he does, Snow stiffens and looks as if he is seriously debating the merits of chewing off his own arm in order to escape.

It would be amusing...if it weren’t so damn insulting.

“My lady. What a...pleasant surprise,” Aegon says from where he sits frozen in his chair. Daenerys veritably beams at him, and he can see her death grip on Snow’s arm go just a hair tighter when the dark-haired northerner seizes up and seems about to backpedal.

It is actually somewhat fascinating to see someone else getting manhandled about by a woman half their size, though it also makes him realize, most unhappily, how absurd he must look every time she does it to him. Although, he consoles himself, he always at least makes an effort to control his expressions, and thus cannot possibly look nearly as ridiculous as Snow. Certainly when his wife uses that vice grip on him, he has never resembled a child that has just been told to choose his own switch. Surely.

“Hello, husband. We’ve have been having the most fascinating talk about the—what did you call them? The free folk?” she asks, all innocence as she turns big amethyst eyes on Jon Snow, all while forcibly planting him just across from Aegon himself. He winces faintly in sympathy when those claws of hers dig into Snow’s shoulder briefly in a very clear command for him to stay put before she seats herself at Aegon’s side and takes his arm.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Snow says, sounding resigned as he shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “That is their preferred title.”

“Of course,” Daenerys says with a pleased smile that for some reason causes Aegon’s hackles to raise automatically in response. “Actually,” she purses her lips thoughtfully. “I heard a rumor that you took one of the free folk women as your bride.”

Aegon blinks, suddenly a great deal more interested in this conversation, but also fuming a little over Snow’s previous lie of omission.

Why that lying— He never said he’d been married to his wildling lover!

But Snow is already shaking his head, his eyes soft. “No, nothing so formal as that,” he says immediately and then proceeds to tell them the story of how he came to inadvertently ‘steal’ a wildling woman and what that means among the wildlings. Daenerys is enthralled, much to Aegon’s chagrin.

“And what about the other way around?” Daenerys asks. “Can a woman ‘steal’ a man—or perhaps one man ‘steal’ another?”

She casts Aegon a sly glance from the corner of her eye then, a gesture that Snow thankfully does not catch.

“It isn’t...unheard of, I suppose. But I don’t claim to be an expert, Your Grace,” Snow replies with a furrowed brow. “You won’t find many of the free folk here at Castle Black, but if you’ve an interest in their culture, truly the best people to ask would be them.”

“Yes, we’ve been told as much,” Aegon says, leaning forward in interest. “Why are there so few here, though? You permitted them passage from the other side of the Wall, that much we have heard, but reports I’ve heard regarding their relocation are vague at best.”

As he says it, he observes the way Snow bites the inside of his cheek and suddenly will not meet either of their eyes. There’s obviously something about the majority of the wildling’s—Free folk, he reminds himself—absence that makes Snow unhappy, and Aegon is curious as to what. Something personal, perhaps involving his wildling ‘wife’? Or is it the situation in general that displeases him?

For a long while, Snow sits with his lips sealed shut, and Aegon begins to believe he will have to prompt an answer. In the end, Aegon’s intervention proves unnecessary, for before he can, the man expels a harsh sigh and speaks once more. He still will not meet their eyes, though, and instead stares at the floor.

“In the aftermath of my...death,” Jon Snow begins reluctantly, his voice hesitating over that word, in particular. “There was a great deal of turmoil at the Wall. Stannis Baratheon had left his wife here, along with their daughter, and a number of their knights. Fighting broke out between the Baratheon knights and the remaining wildlings and somehow both Selyse and Shireen Baratheon were killed.” He shakes his head with a slightly haunted look. “I’m not sure of the circumstances, as I myself was still dead at the time, and no one has been exactly...forthcoming.”

Daenerys cocks her head to the side. “But you believe some of the free folk to have been responsible, and so you banished them from the Keep?”

A plausible explanation, but Jon Snow shakes his head once more and looks more uncomfortable than ever.

“No, it wasn’t that. I’m not sure if you knew, but Shireen Baratheon was infected with greyscale as a babe and was permanently scarred as a result.”

When Aegon and his wife both suck in their breath in alarm, Jon Snow nods bitterly. “You can, I’m sure, guess what happened.”

“There was an outbreak of the plague here, and you’re only now telling us this?” Daenerys hisses angrily, and even Aegon stares at the other man incredulously. Greyscale is not just some trifle of an illness. Though a lesser form of the fearsome grey plague, it is still a slow creeping death that cannot truly be treated and is also highly contagious. What was the man thinking, not telling them of this?

“It’s long ago taken care of,” Snow insists though. “We were very thorough, in part because the free folk fear the gray plague so. Everyone was checked for signs of the affliction many, many times in the months since Shireen’s death, and anyone who was infected was put down without mercy and immediately burned where they fell.”

The dark-haired man is the very picture of misery throughout his narrative, but Aegon cannot manage much sympathy in this case. Harsh though it may sound, those were exactly the right measures to take. Just look at Shireen Baratheon’s case! Yes, she survived the plague as a babe, but only to become an instrument for its spread later in her life. Part of the reason the gray plague is so virulent is because of the weeping heart sentiment that often prevents those infected with it being dealt with properly, and Aegon is glad that someone at the Wall had the sense to do what needed to be done.*(1)

“And as you said, the wildlings fear the plague so, they left the Wall?”

“Yes,” Snow nods. “Those that were still here warned off the rest of their people, and moved themselves to a camp of their own a short distance from here. The free folk didn’t quite trust us to be as...proactive as themselves when it came to dealing with the sickness. One of them told me well in advance of Shireen’s death that the plague merely ‘slept’ in her, and she ought to be killed, no matter that she’d been deemed safe since her infancy. It wasn’t an uncommon opinion among the free folk.”

“They were right,” Aegon replies severely, causing Snow’s head to snap up and stare at him in surprise. “How many did you lose because the carrier of the plague happened to be a child and no one wanted to see the inevitable outcome and prevent it.”

“Perhaps that is true,” the man says, his eyes downcast once more, though Aegon can tell that he is only conceding such because he thinks it is useless to fight over it.

His heart is far too soft for command, Aegon realizes with a jolt. Jon Snow, one of the youngest to ever ascend to the post of Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, possesses too gentle a heart for the command he assumed. In any other role, that would not be such a bad thing, but while compassion can make the difference between a good leader and a tyrant, Jon Snow’s problem is that he has too much compassion. He might be capable of making the hard choices, but doing so will always absolutely torment him, and Aegon has a feeling that Snow will likely never forgive himself for the greyscale infected men that had to be killed.

That is exactly what got Eddard Stark killed in King’s Landing according to Varys, Aegon muses to himself as he sits back in his seat to better observe the Eddard Stark’s bastard. He didn’t have the stomach to make the right decision, because he viewed it as cruel. His son at least does, although he’ll likely never forgive himself for it.

The previous good mood of the room now thoroughly ruined, Daenerys returns to the topic of Snow’s wildling woman, Ygritte, in an attempt to salvage the mood. It works for a time, and with a not-so-small dose of bitterness on his own part, Aegon must sit through hearing far more about her in the next few minutes than he can honestly say he wants to at this point. Jon Snow is still so obviously infatuated with her, that eventually Aegon is no longer able to hold back a somewhat snide comment, fueled entirely by the jealousy threatening to eat him alive. Naturally that is when Snow reveals, clenching his fists as he does, that she is already years dead, having been killed by one of the Black Brothers.

Aegon barely contains his own embarrassed cringe, and Daenerys kicks him hard in the ankle while shooting him a filthy look. He responds with one of his own, making it abundantly clear that he entirely blames her for bringing Snow here in the first place.

Becoming cognizant of the fact that he’s been jealous over a dead woman is hardly one of his proudest moments, and he is most relieved when Daenerys’ curiosity about Snow’s ‘kissed-by-fire’ lover is at last sated. Unfortunately, her interest then simply moves heedlessly on instead to the wonders and wild magics found beyond the Wall.

The dark-haired man tries once again to demure, saying that they should ask one of the free folk themselves, but Daenerys persists, even stomping on Aegon’s foot when he is inclined to take the offer as an excuse to escape Snow’s presence. When he turns his betrayed countenance on her in a silent demand as to why she is so determined to torment both he and Snow, she ignores him except to dig her nails into the flesh of his arm as he’d tries in vain to pull loose.

He gives up after that, and resigns himself to going along where she leads while trying not to put his foot in his mouth. Again.

He is...mostly successful.

It helps that before long, he finds himself forgetting his anxiety and becoming caught up in Snow’s stories of the world beyond the Wall and the strange customs and stranger abilities that run rampant there. Particularly fascinating is his tale of the various skinchangers he has met and fought—both against and beside—and Aegon’s eyes trace the scars that mar Snow’s pretty face as a result of one of those skinchangers.

He is about to ask Snow to explain more about the strange half-life that a skinchanger becomes caught in after the death of their own body, but he is interrupted by his wife very suddenly chiming in.

“That reminds me,” Daenerys cuts in as she rests her chin on the palm of her hand in a careless sort of way. He could almost believe her bored, if not for the way her eyes stare intently at the northern bastard, as if closely watching his reactions. “Missandei told me an interesting story earlier, Lord Snow. I didn’t give much credence to it at the time...”

Her voice trails off briefly and Aegon curiously takes note of how the dark-eyed man has gone tense. And is it just him, or has Daenerys heard an awful lot of ‘rumors’ and ‘stories’ about Jon Snow in a rather short amount of time? Did she set Missandei to digging up dirt on the man? He has a bad feeling about this, a sentiment that Snow appears to share as his eyes dart apprehensively between Aegon and Daenerys.

“I’m not sure what story you mean, Your Grace,” the gray-eyed man replies carefully with a furrowed brow, and Aegon wonders if he should intervene before this conversation goes sour. Likely he should, but...

But he’s curious, dammit. Curious about whatever story that the mere mention of can put such a look on Snow’s usually so solemn face.

Only, contrary to his expectations, Daenerys then gives a delicate shrug and seemingly completely dismisses the topic entirely—whatever it was.

“I suppose that’s what happens when things start falling apart though. Superstitions have a way of...getting out of hand, in such circumstances,” she muses, seemingly to herself as Aegon is still trying to figure out what in the hells is even being discussed. Superstitions? Does she mean the skinchangers and their abilities?

“As you say,” Snow agrees warily while seeming relieved to be spared further inquisition on the—apparently—uncomfortable topic.

She did that on purpose, Aegon thinks sourly as he barely resists shooting her a narrow-eyed scowl. In fact, she is doing this all on purpose, he’s sure. From dragging Jon Snow into Aegon’s solar and forcing them to interact only hours after their awkward falling out, to teasingly drawing out Aegon’s interest in the Stark-bastard with her purposely vague comments and prodding.

He refuses to fall for it though, and with that determination in mind, he decides to end this farce with all haste.

“Well,” Aegon quickly interjects in the moment of silence as he stands, Daenerys being pulled along by the iron grip she keeps on his arm. “Unfortunately, I still have a great deal of reports to handle today, but perhaps we can continue this conversation at a later time.”

Or never.

Mercifully, before his wife can voice the protest Aegon sees forming on her lips, Jon Snow jolts to his feet like a scalded cat as he emphatically agrees.

“I as well, Your Grace,” Snow says while tilting his head in a quick bow. “Please excuse me.”

The dark-eyed bastard turns smartly on his heel and is gone before Aegon can actually give him his leave. He is hardly perturbed, though, for it just means that Daenerys has no time to think up some excuse to prolong tormenting them.

“That went rather well, I think,” she hums while withdrawing her arm from his, and his immediate response is to allow the scowl he earlier held back to bloom fully on his features.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” he warns lowly, but she just rolls her eyes.

“So suspicious, my love,” she admonishes him with good humor. “You two just needed a chaperone so you could have a conversation that didn’t end with your hands on his arse.”

That earns a slight wince as he is forced to acknowledge the ring of truth to that statement. Certainly, this one did not end nearly so...charged as any of their previous assignations, and while such might seem a shame in comparison to their first one-on-one in his bedchamber, it is a vast improvement over their last such meeting.

Nonetheless, Aegon shakes his head firmly as he meets her gaze. “No more,” he insists. “Leave it be, Daenerys, I mean it. Don’t bring him back to the tower again.”

She rolls her amethyst eyes. “Oh, honestly, Aego—”

“Promise me,” he demands, cutting off whatever derisive comment she intended to make about his request. And as is always the case when he makes such an absolute demand that could be construed as an order, she at first balks and fury flashes in her eyes as she prepares to argue with him.

He is not swayed though, and repeats his demand once again. “Swear it, Daenerys,” he says with steel in his voice. “Don’t bring him again. Who I do or don’t take as my lover doesn’t concern you—not in this instance. Leave. It. Be.”

Their battle of wills continues in dead silence for several moments as their purple eyes meet and clash, angry indigo against furious amethyst.

“Fine,” she bites out venomously at last. “I swear I won’t bring him back again, My Lord.”

She spins about, one of her bell-tipped braids hitting him so perfectly in the mouth that it simply cannot be an accident, and all but storms out of his solar, the door slamming so hard that he swears he hears something out in the hall fall and break. Perhaps her sudden, violent appearance frightened one of his pages into dropping something.

That really could have gone better.

Feeling the beginnings of a headache behind his eyes, he sinks back into his chair with a groan.

“That woman is going to be the death of me,” he mutters while pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Your Grace?” someone calls timidly from the other side of the door and Aegon growls under his breath. So much for keeping his personal business away from the eager ears of his pages.

“What is it?” he snaps impatiently and is rewarded with a moment of audible sputtering.

“I—I brought you a breakfast tray, Your Grace… If you’re hungry that it. I apologize for not asking first, Your Grace.”

His temper has hardly abated, but much as he’d like to yell and send the boy scurrying, the emptiness of his stomach chooses that moment to make itself loudly known once more. So, pursing his lips unhappily, Aegon gives the boy permission to enter and set the laden tray on his desk. Once the boy removes and folds the piece of cloth protecting the food from the cold air, Aegon sees an array of freshly baked bread, steaming venison slices, and whole fruits ranging from green apples to blood oranges. An entire jar of honey and a sloshing pitcher of wine takes up half the tray.

All in all, it is a rather obscene amount of food for just one person.

Aegon looks pointedly at his trim middle. “Where exactly did you expect me to pack all this away?” he asks dryly as he takes a single piece of bread and venison and bites into them. Delicious.

The boy blushes. “My apologies, Your Grace. I saw you had guests and got enough for them too,” he stammers shyly, but Aegon sees right through him.

Thus giving yourself a convenient excuse to come in and perhaps scope out some juicy gossip, hm? He thinks scathingly as he gives the boy an unimpressed stare. Spying little rat.

Perhaps he is a bit overly harsh on his pages.

“Well, as you can see, I no longer have guests,” Aegon says instead while piling what he wants on one of the plates and pouring himself a cup of watered-wine. “There. Now take the rest back to the kitchens or find someone else to share it with. And while you’re at it, find Lord Royce and tell him I’d like to speak to him today. Tell him it isn’t urgent, though.”

“Uh, yes, Your Grace,” the boy—and what was his name?—says while blushing scarlet again. The boy is hurrying out of the room like someone suddenly lit a fire under his arse when Aegon calls out to him.

“Rolland,” he says, the name finally coming to him. With how close it is to Duck’s name, he’s surprised at his always forgetting it. “I trust I don’t need to remind you not to go spreading tales?” he asks sharply when the boy turns.

“Of course, Your Grace!” the boy says as he goes pale. “I wouldn’t—”

“I believe you,” Aegon replies, though his bland expression surely says differently, and the boy looks on the verge of fainting. Honestly, would it be too much to ask for a page with, dare he say, a pair of balls?

“You may go,” he dismisses him curtly, satisfied that his point has been thoroughly made and there will be no rumors about anything the boy might have heard of he and Daenerys’ argument. The last thing he needs is it getting back to Jon Connington that Aegon and Daenerys are fighting over Aegon having tried to seduce Jon Snow, of all people. Besides, who knows how mangled the tale would have been, with the out of context snippet of a conversation that the page could have heard. Thinking back on it, based on what he might have heard, the boy could think that Aegon was informing Daenerys that he was having an affair whether she like it or not and ordered her to cease her protests.

No, it is better to snip that little story in the bud.

Once the page is gone, looking as if the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels, Aegon sits and finishes his breakfast with nary a whiff of guilt and then yells for Ser Rolly to send Lord Yohn Royce in when he arrives. Aegon and several of the Vale Lord have quite a cordial relationship, largely due to Aegon’s handling of the Petyr Baelish situation, and he has since heard that one of Lord Royce’s sons was one of the earliest casualties of the White Walkers amongst the Nights Watchmen.

At this time though, he just needs an honest assessment of the morale of his Lords from someone not often given to flights of fancy or unseemly bootlicking. And if the subject of Lord Hardyng and his Lady wife should just happen to come up during their conversation...

Well, who is Aegon to deny Lord Royce the chance to speak candidly about his new liege lord and lady? ** (2)

Despite the downright amicable note to their last meeting—in comparison to the previous occasions, at least—it doesn’t take Aegon long to decide that he and Jon Snow should have as little contact as possible in order to ‘keep the peace’, as it were. This goal in mind, he commits himself to avoiding the man from that day on as he were infected with greyscale.

Or at least, he attempts to avoid him, however doomed his efforts are quickly proven. And it does not take him long to comprehend that Snow is doing the same—and likewise being sabotaged just as thoroughly as he himself. With both their desires in accordance for once, one might think that the task of shunning one another’s company would be rendered laughably simply.

Indeed, one might think that. Nonetheless, one would be wrong, in no small part thanks to a certain maliciously grinning woman who, like her dragons, has decided that she is bored.

Seven save him.

He first realizes his mistake later that very same day, not hours after having made up his mind. It starts with a knock on the door of his bedchamber while he is changing out of a slightly ink-splattered tunic after a several hours of writing letters of too sensitive a nature to entrust to a maester, even Haldon.

He has already scrubbed his fingers clean of ink with a special mixture that Haldon taught him to make years ago. The smell is unfortunately pungent, always smelling of some kind of syrupy sweet fruit gone bad. Thankfully, rinsing his hands in a bit of pure alcohol—another of Haldon’s little tricks—sets that to rights quickly enough, and he is rummaging in his chest for a clean tunic when a heavy hand starts banging at his door and makes him jump in spite of himself.

“Your Grace,” Duck yells through the door. “The Queen’s invited you to dine with her tonight.”

“Is she here?” Aegon asks, finally just picking a shirt at random and pulling it over his head.

“No,” Ser Rolly answers, making Aegon quirk a brow curiously. “Missandei told me as I came upstairs to take over for Ser Denys.”

Pursing his lips, Aegon imagines that the fact that she has apparently chosen to pass this message along through his Kingsguard rather than show up herself is probably a good indication that her mistress is still thoroughly displeased with him.

Aegon sighs, hoping he’s not going to regret this. Alas, if she is still angry, ignoring a possible olive branch from her—even if she doesn’t really mean it as an olive branch—will only worsen the situation. All the same, he closes his eyes briefly and begs the gods for Daario Nahris’ absence at dinner tonight. He and Daenerys’ Tyroshi lover get along about as well as the Blackwoods and the Bracken when forced into one another’s immediate vicinity. If it weren’t for how utterly irritating the man is determined to be to him, Aegon could almost feel sympathy for the poor besotted fool who so openly pines after Daenerys and wishes her to belong only to him.

As it is though, Daario Nahris fluctuates back and forth from holding the titles of ‘The Single Most Irritating Man Aegon Has Ever Met,’ and ‘The Second Most Irritating Man Aegon Has Ever Met.’ His ranking depending largely on how much Aegon wishes to wring Tyrion Lannister’s neck on any given day. It is, thus, a toss up from day to day as to who is bestowed either title. But if Nahris knows that Aegon and Dany are fighting, no doubt he will be giving the Lannister dwarf some stiff competition for the top spot today.

Joy.

“Alright. Thank you, Duck,” he says despondently as he opens the door. His oldest Kingsguard takes one look at his face and snickers.

“You look like you’re off to your own execution, Aegon, not dinner with your wife.”

Aegon smiles tightly. “My wife who is probably fantasizing about cutting off my stones and feeding them to me at dinner,” Aegon reminds him, and the other man chuckles some more.

“And men wonder how I can so easily swear off women,” Duck says, shaking his head with a grin that Aegon returns.

“How indeed,” Aegon laughs and claps a hand on Ser Rolly’s shoulder in silent thanks for making him laugh before he has to have dinner across from where Daenerys will undoubtedly be perched on Daario Nahris’ lap.

Except, when he reaches her rooms, neither Daenerys, nor her Tyroshi are there.

Instead, Missandei awaits him, bidding him to follow her outside the tower and into the common hall.

What in the hells….? He wonders as he follows Daenerys’ servant girl through the crowds to a table where more than a dozen of the Unsullied either sit or stand guard. A group of Daenerys’ favorite guards part like water before him and he is all but herded into sitting down right across from Daenerys as she suddenly appears in his view. What he doesn’t see until it is too late, is who else the Unsullied’s tight grouping has obscured from sight.

The scene that he and Jon Snow must make as they both turn and stare wide-eyed at one another from where they have both unknowingly been maneuvered into sitting side by side, is apparently quite comical—for Daenerys.

“I hope you don’t mind having dinner outside the tower, husband?” she says, and he can see the self-satisfied turn of her smile when he turns betrayed eyes on her at the sound of her voice. “After all, the company in the tower is so...restricted. Don’t you agree?”

Oh that tricky bitch.

“Absolutely,” he replies with a smile with just a tad too many teeth to be anything but threatening. “Downright suffocating, in fact.”

She bares her own teeth in her answering smile and he knows they understand each other perfectly.

Jon Snow apparently gets the message loud and clear as well, as Aegon can see his eyes darting uneasily between them and beginning to subtly lean away from Aegon. When the full force of Daenerys’ attention falls on him in the next second, the man looks ready to bolt.

“We were discussing skinchangers last, I believe,” she says brightly, all trace of her former animosity sudden evaporated as if it were nothing but a snowflake fallen into a lit brazier. “Perhaps you could tell us more, Jon?”

‘Jon’? What the fuck? Aegon thinks, startled. When did Jon Snow become just ‘Jon’ to Daenerys?

Evidently a new development for Snow as well, as both his dark brows shoot up at the same time upon hearing the casual address. But, likely not wanting to cause any more of a scene, he declines to react further, and simply moves on as if Daenerys hadn’t addressed him with such blatant familiarity.

“What do you wish to know, Your Grace?” he says diplomatically instead.

Daenerys shrugs with an entirely fabricated nonchalance that immediately makes Aegon suspicious. “How about…how would one identify a skinchanger?”

Now why does she want to know that? He wonders, nearly missing Snow’s flinch at the question. Nearly.

As it is, Aegon’s focus is riveted to the dark-haired bastard in the next second as a suspicion of a wholly different nature suddenly takes root. Could it possibly be?

“Skinchangers often have...bonds, with the creatures that they can warg with,” Snow says as he stares at the table before him, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “Bonds that are obvious, even when they aren’t connected.”

“Obvious how?” Aegon finds himself asking, watching with fascination as Snow ducks his head further.

“I—”

“Unusual closeness?” Daenerys interjects when Snow seems to falter. “Shared memories of events one didn’t actually experience—but the other did?”

Her blunt inquiry gets a terse nod in response after several moments of tension, and her facade of polite, if frank, curiosity gives way as he sees her look at him and raise one brow in a show of smug superiority. Aegon can only stare at Jon Snow in mute wonder as the other man nearly squirms in discomfort.

“The direwolf?” Aegon marvels, the tone of his voice finally breaking Snow’s little moment of mortification so that he chances a look through the dark locks of his hair to meet Aegon’s eyes. He appears downright shocked by Aegon’s reaction, but Aegon is too enthralled to think much about it at the moment. “You mean you can become that beast out there?” Aegon asks breathlessly, pointing behind them towards the door leading out of the hall and into the yard; the last place he saw the magnificent creature prowling about on his way inside. Gods, just the idea of it!

Snow cocks his head to the side as he seems to survey Aegon’s face disbelievingly for signs of deceit or judgment.

“Yes,” he nods hesitantly then, and Aegon doesn’t think he imagines the shyness in his usually confident voice. Even when stumbling and stuttering after Aegon’s disastrous attempts to seduce him, Snow had maintained a certain level of steel in his countenance. That steel is nowhere to be found now, though, and he must wonder how people usually react to Snow’s...ability. Not well, if his initial reaction is anything to believe.

And dammit if that whisper of vulnerability in Snow’s voice isn’t making his libido perk up and take keen notice of how else this new feature manifests itself.

The bitten lip would probably make Snow look more nervous if those gray eyes weren’t alight with something bright and, dare he say, almost happy? As if he’s been most pleasantly surprised, or never more pleased to be proven wrong. Perhaps ‘happy’ is too strong a term for it, but it really is quite fetching, whatever it is, and Aegon can feel his breath catch at the sight.

Fuck, he’s still so, so in over his head.

The moment seems to stretch for an eternity until it is broken by the sound of his wife clearing her throat. Snow’s muscles jump and he turns red, as if only just noticing that they have been silently staring at one another for the gods only know how long. Aegon isn’t sure if he wants to stab her or thank her for the interruption, and settles for simply turning to scowl at her. She ignores him, her focus belonging solely to Jon Snow as she recaptures his attention.

“You see, I ask because the story I mentioned earlier today? It is something one of your former brothers told Missandei about how someone set your direwolf loose hours after you’d been killed,” she says with a meaningful raise of her eyebrows that Snow must immediately understand, for he stiffens up like a board even before Daenerys continues. “According to him, your beast hunted down and killed every single one of your attackers. And only your attackers. As if he knew exactly who to go after.”

“He’d been acting strange around those men earlier in the day, Your Grace,” Snow explains in a clipped voice. “Animals can often pick up on animosity that men can otherwise hide from one another. I just didn’t realize what he was sensing until it was too late.”

Daenerys hums as she casts a speculative look at Snow. “But the real question is; do you remember? Some of the men swear you had an...uncanny knowledge of how certain events went down after your death. Things no one told you.”

Snow goes quiet again and his eyes fall back to the table. Aegon sees him wet his lips and take a deep breath.

“I remember screams,” Jon Snow says quietly at last, his voice devoid of feeling as he stares into nothing, and Aegon feels the hair on the back of his neck begin to stand on end. “Begging. Prayers. Sobbing.” He inhales a shaky breath. “I remember Wick trying to escape into the winch cage, and Ghost cornering him inside before he could get the door closed. I remember the smell of Bowen Marsh pissing himself as Ghost’s jaws closed around his head and the sound of the bone pulverizing under his teeth.” He shudders almost imperceptibly. “I even remember the taste, though I wish I didn’t.”

Snow’s gray eyes flick up and catch first on Daenerys’, then on Aegon’s as he says, “So yes, to answer your question, I do remember,” and falls silent once more.

Clearly no one is sure what to say after such a confession, Aegon least of all, although his mind is positively overflowing with questions.

“So were you...in the direwolf—Ghost?” Aegon asks suddenly, the question bursting out without his meaning it to. Jon Snow blinks, seemingly taken aback by the inquiry. “When you were dead, I mean?”

“I...I don’t know,” the Stark-bastard says uncertainly. “I can’t tell if the memories are Ghost’s and I just...copied them when I was brought back, or if I was...there when he did it. I don’t know.”

“Incredible,” Aegon says shaking his head. “It sounds like an amazing gift. Can it be...acquired? Taught?” he asks, watching Snow’s face carefully to determine if such an inquiry is offensive or not. This is magic, he knows, and people often do not like the idea of sharing the magic that sets them apart from ordinary men. But all the same, his thoughts are suddenly consumed with the idea of being able to skinchange with a dragon. If it is possible to learn skinchanging…

Instead of offense though, Jon Snow appears bewildered by Aegon’s interest.

“I don’t believe so,” Snow answers, crushing Aegon’s hopes. “I think you have to be born with the ability.”

“Unfortunate,” Aegon sighs in disappointment before he becomes aware of Snow’s slightly incredulous expression. “What?”

“Nothing,” Snow says, and now he is the one shaking his head. “It’s just that isn’t an opinion I would expect from a Southron. Men of the Watch who came from the South are usually some of the most hostile towards the idea of skinchangers in all of the Watch.”

“Most Southron aren’t Targaryens bonded to dragons,” Daenerys laughs, and Aegon finds himself nodding in agreement as Snow’s brow furrows.

“Oh,” he says, pursing his lips as his gaze turns speculative. “Yes, I suppose you have a point.”

The conversation moves on to lighter, less personal topics after that, and flows all the smoother for it. And though there is still clear tension and thinly veiled threats traded by husband and wife, to the obvious discomfort of the third member of their trio, Daenerys keeps Jon Snow talking about his abilities and how they gradually came about over a matter of several years without his understanding what was happening.

More than an hour passes in this way, and Aegon’s dinner is more than cold by the time he remembers it and finally digs in. Despite his initial reservations, the conversation throughout dinner more than makes up for the mouthfuls of food made almost unpalatable by its temperature, although his mood is temporarily soured when he remembers that the entire encounter is a product of Daenerys’ meddling. The fact that she herself has obviously been caught in her own trap makes the realization less bitter, especially when he sees that she is now very much fascinated by the dark-eyed bastard herself.

Indeed, he might even be grateful to her...if being constantly around the man wasn’t driving him to distraction. Regrettably, he is still helplessly attracted to the man, finding himself almost ruining the most innocuous of conversations by getting caught staring at the man’s lips or unthinkingly eyeing the sharp, masculine lines of his form. Snow still always flushes when he catches him, a creeping scarlet up his neck and cheeks that makes Aegon’s attempts not to stare all the more difficult.

And when at last he finds the will to withdraw himself from their company and walk back to the tower with Daenerys at his side, it is past nightfall and Aegon’s mind is still awhirl with interest. And when, quite by chance, he catches sight of the giant albino wolf as it suddenly bolts out of the woods, kicking up a whirlwind of snow as it goes, he stops to watch it.

His eyes follow it as it slows just in time to avoid barreling into Jon Snow as he steps out of the common hall, and instead trots a tight circle around the man while leaning against him. Snow laughs and says something Aegon can’t hear, righting himself automatically before the direwolf can knock him from his feet with the enthusiastic greeting, and then he’s off, the wolf stalking along behind him, heading away from Aegon and Daenerys. The wolf suddenly looks to the side though, eerie red eyes locking instantly onto them, and when Snow’s own head turns a moment later, Aegon can’t help but wonder if Snow is looking at them through two pairs of eyes just then.

Thankfully though, contrary to what Aegon might have assumed as of late, Snow does not appear to take outright offense to the heaviness of Aegon’s eyes on him, even as he goes red in the face.

Honestly, he’s never been thrown so many mixed signals in his life, and he wryly remembers thinking that Jon Snow was going to drive him mad. How ironically sad such a prediction has come to be. Now if only he could make the second part of his vow come true as well.

Of course, something else he unfortunately remembers, is that he has yet to make good on another promise; the promise he made to apologize to Snow for his behavior. He urges himself to shake off his wife and call the man over so they can speak privately, but he loses his nerve almost as soon as the thought makes itself known. Instead he watches mutely as the man disappears from his sight and then hangs his head in defeat.

I am such a fucking coward.

After that, beyond a minor incident with a clumsy page who manages trip and send the day’s reports flying in all directions as he brings in a stack of new ones, the rest of Aegon’s night passes quietly. Daenerys heads to her own quarters once they reach the tower, and Aegon is left blessedly alone to finish his work, and consequently he is in a rather fantastic mood by the time he is finished. Further adding to his good mood, not so much as a hint of a single White Walker or wight can be found the entire night and dawn rises at the Wall more peacefully than it has in a year.

Thus it is not surprising, that when he slips out early the next day, he is greeted with smiles on all sides. In fact, the only ones notably not smiling are one or two of the Black Brothers, who seem to rather be in a state of numbness, as if they simply cannot believe their eyes and are just waiting to wake up from this unbelievable dream.

Also to be seen out and about is Jon Snow, accompanied by several other men. Including, Aegon notes somewhat sourly, that too-pretty friend of his. The man, Silk, or some such ridiculous name, sees him and jabs Snow in the ribs with his elbow, only to gesture towards Aegon with a tiny smile when Snow frowns at him.

The dark-eyed man follows his friend’s gesture and tenses slightly when he accidentally locks eyes with Aegon as a result. But then the tension seems to just...drain away as Snow’s mouth quirks up at the corner and he gives Aegon a respectful nod from across the yard. The surprise alone is enough to make Aegon’s confident steps stutter a moment, never mind the actual… Dare he call it a smile? And it is absolutely pathetic, but for a moment—just a moment—he genuinely wrestles with the thought of going over to join the younger man. Thank the gods though that sanity returns to him before he goes through with such a stupid idea.

He keeps moving.

The night may have ended on a high note, and Aegon did thoroughly enjoy spending time just talking with the Stark-bastard—maybe a little too thoroughly, in truth—but he hasn’t forgotten their misunderstanding. Or the mortification it caused both of them.

No, fascinating or not, Jon Snow is too much of a temptation to keep teasing himself with when he now knows how unwelcome his attraction is. It is bad enough that he’d been unable to restrain himself from bringing up the topic of Harrold Hardyng himself the day before when Yohn Royce had failed to do so on his own. Thankfully the man had seen nothing strange about it, and had been content to speak at length about the newest Lord of the Vale while Aegon fidgeted guiltily.

To say it felt undignified and beneath his stature to be effectively snooping into the background of Jon Snow’s little sister does not so much as scratch the surface of the depths of his embarrassment. The only saving grace is that he hadn’t been caught at it by anyone—especially Daenerys. He shudders to think how his wife would have expressed her amusement if she knew.

That said, he’d learned disappointingly little about the girl herself, as Yohn Royce’s focus when the girl had briefly come up had instead diverted swiftly into outrage at how she had come to be in the Vale in the first place. Bronze Yohn’s abhorrence for Petyr Baelish being famous throughout Westeros at this point, Aegon cannot be surprised at the vehemence of Royce’s feelings whenever the odious flesh-peddler’s spectre is raised.

He already knew that the Lords did not hold Sansa Hardyng in outright contempt for her connection to Baelish, that information having been revealed when the original investigation into Baelish’s little schemes had been underway. Nevertheless, for men like Yohn Royce, the girl’s strong attachments and monumental gains because of those attachments to Baelish had damaged her image.

She may not have been a willing accomplice in Petyr Baelish’s attempt to bring both the Vale and the North under his own thumb through her, but she hadn’t exactly been harmed by it either. She’d entered the Vale under a false, bastard name and managed to still snag the heir to the Vale as a husband and, within short order, become the Lady of the Vale when her cousin sickened and died—under her care, as rumor would have it. ***(3)

Then things had really gone sideways, according to the accounts of several Vale Lords, for Baelish had staged a grand reveal just before the bedding ceremony. His bastard, the new wife of the Lord of the Vale, was in fact Eddard Stark’s only living child—apparently Jon Snow was a creature of myth and legend around those parts—and thus the sole heir to the North as well. Suddenly, even without her marriage to Harrold Hardyng, Alayne Stone had undergone a dazzling transformation from lowly bastard into one of the most powerful women in the Seven Kingdoms.

It ruffled more than a few feathers in the North, so soon after ‘Arya Stark’ had been revealed as an imposter, and while Jon Snow might not exist as far as the Vale Lords were concerned, the North had never forgotten that Eddard Stark had another son. A son who was not under the thumb of some flesh-peddling Lannister flunky.

He actually personally remembers that time rather well. After all, that announcement had heralded the beginning of the end of Lord Connington’s grasp on his temper. From that day forward, nary a week went by without some Northern Lord or another bringing up the name Jon Snow and asking for him to be given Winterfell and the Wardenship over ‘Lady Hardyng of the Vale’.

Of course, from a purely political standpoint, the stain on the Northmen’s view of Sansa Hardyng quite works in he and Daenerys’ favor. The last thing they want is a single Lord becoming Lord of the Vale and the North, and so, unfortunate as it may be for the girl personally, it suits them just fine for her to be reviled in the North. It is simply too much power in the hands on one of their Lords for it to be acceptable, and this way, depriving the man of it does not infuriate half their goddamn kingdom.

And now that Daenerys seems to even like Jon Snow, she may actually be amiable to the suggestion for the first time—

Oh.

The contented smile on his lips falters as a thought occurs to him and he realizes suddenly with a groan that in the not-so-distance future, one of he and Daenerys’ most powerful Lords may well be a man who he has all but ravished against his will.

Why is it he cannot have just one thing go right without something else blowing up in his face as a result? It’s always something or another, and he’s becoming steadily more convinced that the gods really are trying to humble him.

Forget never having to see Jon Snow again after their mission in the North is concluded, Aegon might never again be able to go a month without having to, at the very least, correspond with the man by raven.

It’s amazing how astonishingly bad my luck can be sometimes, he thinks to himself with bemusement just before hearing an acquaintance from the Golden Company hail him.

“King Aegon!” the man calls out loudly, his voice already bearing something of slur. “Come to share a drink with us, Your Grace?”

It only takes a split second of thinking about it before he decides to be grateful for the distraction and nods back as he joins them at their fire.

“You know, I do believe that is an excellent idea. So what piss are we drinking?” he replies, smirking, and is met with a great cheer from the assembled men.

“You bastards heard him!” Franklyn Flowers says with a booming laugh. “Only the best rot-gut we have, for the King!”

A goblet of something sweet-smelling is pressed into his hands and he takes a sip—and nearly spits it out in the next moment.

“Gods!” he exclaims, coughing. “You weren’t joking about the rot-gut, were you?” He holds the goblet away from himself, reconsidering the wisdom of this particular pastime; strong drink has never really...agreed with him, and he knows it.

“Apologies, Your Grace. Shall we get you some fancy Arbor gold to wash it down with?” one of the Peake brothers says with a shit-eating grin, to which Aegon responds with an unimpressed stare before he tips back the contents of the goblet, heedless of its potency.

The men laugh, someone refills his cup, and Aegon successfully avoids Daenerys for several hours in this way, mingling with his men and soaking in the balm that is time spent amongst a group of men who have no expectations of him. Well, none beyond that he be able to hold his liquor, anyway.

They don’t always make for the most stimulating of company—especially when the booze really starts flowing—but sometimes he needs to spend a few hours doing nothing more mentally straining than trying to block out one of Franklyn Flowers’ terrible jokes about the Fossoways. Now is one of those times.

And yet, this unfortunately does not wholly spare him from others just as determined to make him focus on the one man he’d desperately like to forget at this time.

Aegon is in the midst of laughing at a rather more ribald version than he’s yet heard about one of the Golden Company’s trips to Volantis, when someone behind him clears their throat in a pointed fashion. He glances over his shoulder still grinning, but feels it abruptly die away once he recognizes the man.

“Ser Marlon,” he says in greeting, dredging up a passing facsimile of a polite smile as he turns around fully to face the man. The trusted cousin and armsman in service to Lord Wyman Manderly, Marlon Manderly was sent to be an advocate for the North amongst the Southron court in King’s Landing. He also happens to be one of the men who Lord Connington turns purple at the mere sight of these days. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Your Grace, many of us couldn’t help but notice you and the Queen dining with Jon Snow last evening,” the man says with an edge of hope to the usual gravity of his deep voice. He gestures a little to his left where, Aegon almost winces, three other Northern Lords sit around their own fire, all but staring holes in the side of Aegon’s head. Fantastic.

“Yes. Yes, we did,” Aegon acknowledges unnecessarily as his mind scrambles for something to say. “The Queen and I were quite impressed by Lord Snow, in fact.”

Ser Marlon’s eyes light up. “Then—”

“A decision has not yet been made,” Aegon cuts in apologetically before the man can get too excited. The look the Manderly knight gives him after the sudden sparkle in his eyes collapses is distinctly unimpressed and even slightly reprimanding. His usual control hampered by the wine, Aegon must stop himself from visibly bristling at the insult, though he does allow his eyes to narrow until the other man ducks his head.

“Of course, Your Grace,” he says curtly. “I will take my leave then.”

Aegon inclines his head lightly and that is dismissal enough for the Manderly to return to his fellow northmen. Within short order, Aegon can all but feel the heat of four very displeased stares locked unwaveringly on the back of his head.

He heaves a frustrated sigh and tries in vain to recapture his previous ease, all while remaining hyper aware of the daggers the northmen are staring at him with. Nonetheless, he tries to block them out; engaging more fully in the conversation between the Peake brothers for another half hour—and imbibing rather more liquor than he perhaps ought to in the meantime.

But after the fourth or fifth time of having his burgeoning good mood soured by always seeing the hostile northmen and the scowls they shoot him just out of the corner of his eye, he eventually decides to admit it is a lost cause.

Ah well. He’s about worn out at this point anyway, and wouldn’t be opposed to heading for bed. Thus decided, he claps a hand on the nearest shoulder and bids his friends a loud farewell.

“Ready to stop hiding from your Queen now?” someone says teasingly as he stands, making him simply roll his eyes and laugh in response. It is no secret to these men that Aegon seeks refuge among them when he fights with his wife and they enjoy ribbing him about it.

“Goodnight, sers,” he enunciates pointedly as he waves and turns away.

Unfortunately it then becomes immediately obvious that he really should have stopped drinking awhile ago, and his first few steps are quite unsteady as he struggles past a sudden surge of dizziness. He may have had just a touch too much drink.

Once the initial bout of vertigo passes though, he is able to power through and does not have too much trouble navigating the camp. More of his men call out to him as he passes, but in the interest of keeping at least the appearance of his dignity intact, he settles for simply nodding to each call while otherwise barely acknowledging them as he hurries past. While still regrettable, it is preferable to be thought of as a bit dismissive than stopping and running the risk of showing a less than Kingly side of himself to any more of his men by being obviously just a little drunk.

He trips suddenly, on nothing that he can tell, and barely rights himself before he falls flat on his face in the dirt. Afterward he has to stop a moment to keep himself from decorating the ground in front of him with the contents of his stomach through sheer force of will.

Okay, so maybe he’s not just a little drunk, after all.

Going slower now so as to keep the world from spinning around him, Aegon starts noticing something that his previous hurry had quite glossed over and he snorts.

Who would have guessed that Northmen were such a bunch of gossiping maidens?

Whereas only a couple hours previous he was greeted warmly with loud salutations and grins everywhere he spotted a group of northerners, he has evidently since managed to somehow kill all their fathers and bed their sisters—all in the span of a matter of hours. Or so one would have to assume, based on the scowls they aim his way as he passes and the sullen muttering his ears catch.

It is so incredibly ridiculous, and suddenly he can’t help but snicker at the imagined look on their faces if he were to tell them that he almost fucked their revered bastard Stark in the man’s own bedchamber a few days ago.

If he was less drunk, it probably wouldn’t be nearly so funny.

His quiet snickering gets worse the longer he thinks about it, and he’s all but giggling by the time Duck finds him.

“You look like you’ve been having far too much fun, Your Grace,” Rolly says as he grabs the hood of Aegon’s cloak and pulls it up to cover his distinctive hair.

“I was just thinking about Jon Snow,” Aegon replies with a happy sigh as he throws one very uncoordinated arm over Ser Rolly’s shoulder and almost smacks him in the face. Luckily, Duck manages to escape the unintentional blow and catch Aegon’s arm and use it to keep him upright as he fights a smile.

“Oh really? Last I knew, you weren’t finding that matter very funny.”

“No, no, not that!” Aegon protests loudly, heedless of the other man’s attempts to shush him. “I meant I was thinking what all these Northmen would look like if they knew that I—mmmmphhh!!”

A hand suddenly slaps across his mouth. “It’s for you own good,” Duck says with his brows raised in alarm while Aegon continues to complain unintelligibly into his gloved palm. “Trust me, Aegon, you don’t want to be talking about that where all these Northmen can hear you. Because believe you me, their faces would not be all that funny while they were beating you into the ground in a blind rage. Now let’s get you back to your room before you really put your foot in your mouth.”

The man sighs long-sufferingly once more before he tries to discretely drag the King of the Seven Kingdoms bodily back to his chambers to rest without drawing anymore attention to them. A difficult job made worse by the fact that Ser Rolly’s hand does not leave his mouth until Aegon has stopped trying to complain angrily into it. And when he finally does, the man first gives him a skeptical look and says, “I just hope that you remember that you asked me to keep you from making any more bad decisions when you are drunk.”

Once his piece is said, he slowly peels his hand away and waits for the fallout that does not come. Instead, Aegon just rolls his eyes and heaves a loud sigh.

“I remember,” he mutters grudgingly, a slight pout on his mouth. When he eventually sobers up, he’s sure to be absolutely mortified by his own behavior—and that’s not even considering the public giggling—but right now he’s just enough in control of his usual mental faculties to at least vaguely remember the oaths he made all his Kingsguard swear to do just that.

Dammit.

“Well then,” Duck blinks with evident surprise. He probably thinks Aegon was too drunk to even remember, but he gets over it with credible swiftness. “Since that’s cleared up, let’s just be on our way, shall we?”

Though a comically doomed effort at first, Duck’s task becomes much easier with most of Aegon’s drunken exuberance/petulance burned out of him. Indeed, before to long, Aegon is reduced to leaning heavily on the other man just to stay on his feet, and by the time they reach the King’s Tower, he is little more than a pliant jumble of arms and legs for his first Kingsguard to navigate unsteadily up the staircase. They trip once or twice—meaning of course that Aegon trips and Duck must struggle to keep both their brains from winding up splattered on the landing below. All while swearing a blue streak, naturally.

They must make it back to his room alright, for the next thing he knows, he’s face down in a bed covered in a now comfortingly familiar fur cloak; one that had made the journey with him almost all the way from King’s Landing.

When he and Daenerys had announced their intent to travel north to help the Watch, word had traveled swiftly, and by the time that they had been ready to finally begin their journey, Wyman Manderly had sent along a pair of very fine fur cloaks for he and Daenerys. No doubt it was yet another attempt to further butter them up in the hopes of one of his most often repeated requests being granted; Jon Snow legitimized and installed in Winterfell.

Of course, the ulterior motive made the cloaks no less fine, and Aegon at least had no compunctions about donning the item when they’d moved past the Neck and the temperature had begun to drop alarmingly. Daenerys had scoffed at the offering herself, preferring to wear her white lion’s pelt instead, for she had still been in a less than tolerant state of mind over a Stark, nevermind a bastard Stark, being rewarded in any such way.

Really, the transformation of her regard for Jon Snow is actually quite stunning.

But then no one, Aegon least of all, had expected Jon Snow’s story to strike such a strong chord of empathy in Daenerys.

Not to say that her sudden, fervent desire for Aegon to take the bastard Stark as a lover makes any more sense…. Hm, he will have to delve deeper into that. But not now. Right now he can barely keep his eyes open, much less think straight. So later. Yes… Later is much better.

Unfortunately, when ‘later’ comes about, he awakens to it with a splitting headache and a taste in his mouth like something died and then putrefied in it. He gags once before someone grabs him by the back of the shirt to jerk him to the side and help him expel last night’s dinner and what must have been a half a bottle of ale that doesn’t taste nearly as good coming up as it did going down.

“Uuuuggg,” he groans miserably. “Someone kill me. And then hunt down Franklyn Flowers and kill him too. Gods, what was in that shit?” He moans as a strand of his silver hair coating in bile sticks to his cheek.

The same someone with their hand still holding him by the tunic snorts with amusement. It sounds like Duck.

“Well, by the looks of things, I’d say you had a lot of that spiced venison from last night and maybe some...carrots? Yeah, I think it’s probably carrots.”

“Shut up, Duck,” Aegon moans as he tries to asses how bad his hair has come out of the ordeal. Pretty badly, he thinks revolted as he peels it away from his face and neck. Every fucking time.

Gods, he hates the aftermath of drinking.

“Why do you let me do this?” he grouses at his Kingsguard while struggling to sit up. Duck’s hands obligingly help right him so that he sits with his feet on the floor and his head firmly in his hands.

“As I recall, Your Grace, you snuck out this morning,” comes Duck’s amused answer. “I only knew to look for you when one of your pages came running to tell me that you were wandering the camp looking like you were about to pass out.”

“Spying little rats,” Aegon mutters into his hands, to which Duck snickers. And for some strange reason that Aegon cannot focus enough to even wonder at, the sound comes from the other side of the room. Wasn’t Duck just beside him not a moment ago? Just thinking about moving that much, that fast, makes him dizzy right now.

“Well it’s thanks to one of those little rats that when you did pass out, it was at least out of the public view. Now here, take this.” Strong hands pry Aegon’s away from his skull and press a hot washcloth into one of them.

Oh, so that’s what he’s been doing. How thoughtful.

“Now I am not a nursemaid,” Duck says with a clear smirk in his voice. “But if you want some help with that, I’m sure one of those ‘little rats’ would be ecstatic to give you a sponge bath.”

No one, he decides then with a glower, should be allowed to sound that goddamn amused while his head still feels ready to split open.

So really, when he nails Duck in the face with the now slightly vomit-stained washcloth, it is truly nothing more than he deserves. And the fact that Duck’s outraged swearing makes Aegon smile at last in spite of his aching head does not make it any less true.

Once he gets cleaned up and has downed a bitter concoction from Haldon—he’s not sure he wants to know why all of his potions taste like piss—he feels a great deal better. But only until the fuzzy shapes of the...events of the morning and afternoon begin to come into focus and he grimaces. 

“Please tell me that I just hallucinated all of that,” he groans as he buries his face in his hands once more, this time in an effort to hide the mortified flush on his cheeks.

“Hm, ‘fraid not,” Rolly hums, not even bothering to hide his amusement under a veneer of sympathy, and Aegon thinks he must probably still be holding a grudge over that washcloth. He still doesn’t regret it though.

“I hate alcohol,” Aegon growls as he scrubs his hands over his face.

“It does seem to have quite the effect on you,” Rolly agrees unhelpfully before clapping a hand on Aegon’s shoulder. “But now that you’re sober once again, perhaps you’d like to know that your wife and three of your commanders called on you while you were out.”

“Oh gods, what did they want?” Aegon asks with a tired sigh as he stands and takes a moment to stretch. And oh that feels good, he thinks as what feels like every inch of his back cracks and pops with the movement. “The commanders,” he clarifies before muttering, “I’m sure I can guess what Daenerys wanted.”

“You might be surprised,” Duck says cryptically, but before Aegon can question him, he continues talking. “As for the commanders though, two of them left their reports and I put them over there—” He nods towards the desk under the window. “—but the other insisted on reporting to you personally and so Ser Garret told him you would get to him at a later time.”

“Was it important?” Aegon asks, concerned. And dammit if this isn’t yet another reason that he hates drinking! It leaves him completely indisposed and forces his men to make up excuses for him to hide the fact that he is too drunk to handle his duties. The reminder is enough to put the red flush of embarrassment back on his cheeks temporarily.

But Duck just shrugs, not looking overly bothered himself. “It was Garlan Tyrell,” he says by way of explanation and Aegon holds back a grimace.

For years Jon Connington had promised that the Tyrells would be among Aegon’s staunchest supporters in Westeros, and for years it had appeared that would indeed be the case. Abstaining from joining their forces to Robert Baratheon’s to fight the Greyjoy Rebellion and in general keeping themselves largely away from the Game afterward while Baratheon had sat fat and ignorant on his throne as the Lanniseters had gorged themselves on every scrap of power in sight. The clash between the Baratheons and Lannisters had seemed inevitable, even long before anyone knew that Cersei Lannister had cuckolded her husband and had born nothing but bastards from her own twin.

It had seemed that the Tyrells were staying far away from that conflict and would allow the two sides to devour one another without interference from them. But then they’d thrown in with the youngest Baratheon brother after he wed their daughter, and when he had died, they’d rushed to marry her to the Lannister bastard still masquerading as a stag—and shortly after that, yet another of Cersei’s bastards.

At the time, Aegon hadn’t given it much thought himself, Jon Connington’s disdain for the mercenary nature of the Tyrell’s desperation to put a crown on Margaery Tyrell’s head quite enough for him. If anything, Aegon thought he couldn’t really hold it against them past some disdain of his own. It wasn’t as if the Tyrells knew that Aegon had survived, after all. They were navigating the Game in a post-Targaryen Westeros, with the only visible hope for a Targaryen return sitting comfortably in Slaver’s Bay with no apparent intention of leaving.

The Tyrells had already been in bad straights when Aegon’s forces at last arrived at the capital, they and the Lannisters having been at each others throats for months, with Cersei and Margaery at the very center of it. But all the same, when Aegon had shown up, the Tyrells had wrapped their thorny vines protectively around their Lannister rivals and bared their fangs.

At Aegon.

No matter that Cersei Lannister was determined to bleed them for every inch of power that they could wrest from her, the Tyrells were so close to having the throne in their grasp that they could practically taste it. Suddenly a Targaryen return had not suited them, not in the least. And just like that, one of Aegon’s supposedly strongest supporters had become instead one of his greatest enemies. But roses wilt just as surely before dragonfire as anything else, and Aegon’s marriage to Daenerys, contentious though it some days still is, had brought an end to the obstinance of the Tyrells and made them deeply regret their greed.

Regrettably for him, it hadn’t taken them long after being forced from the halls of power to develop a keen interest in getting back in.

With his marriage to Daenerys, the coveted position as Queen for their prized daughter is closed to them, and Aegon will be dead before he makes that grasping girl the mother of his heir. But that hadn’t been their only loss, for neither he, nor Daenerys, had been interested in keeping a single member of the Lannister’s Kingsguard or Small Council, having both considered each of the men to be far too tainted by the corrupt association. Thus a number of Tyrells also lost their lofty positions in the capital.

This campaign deep into the North has been Aegon’s first respite from their constant attempts to ‘mend’ the Targaryen-Tyrell relationship. But even that has not completely freed him of them, for several Tyrells have attached themselves to the march alongside their soldiers, both Garlan Tyrell and his younger brother, Loras, among them.

Now fortunately—and unlike his father—Ser Garlan at least has wit enough to know that his sister will never be Queen, though Aegon knows he has hopes for any number of positions on the Small Council for himself, his father, and older brother. And the hints the man drops about his brother Loras’ suitability as a Kingsguard are nearly as relentless as the Northmen’s for Jon Snow’s Wardenship.

“I see,” Aegon says finally, pursing his mouth in displeasure. Most likely, Garlan Tyrell has nothing to say that he could not simply say to a member of the Kingsguard or write in a report. But of course, Aegon thinks scornfully, that would be a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to advocate for his family with the King.

Or, unlikely as it is, the man could actually have something of a sensitive nature to report.

Ugh.

“Tell one of the pages to track down Ser Garlan,” Aegon tells Ser Rolly reluctantly, already dreading the meeting. “I’ll be in my solar when he arrives.”

An hour later, Aegon silently congratulates himself on his foresight as he at last is able to expel Garlan Tyrell from his solar after a brief report on the—unchanged—state of supply trains from Highgarden turned into a lengthy conversation about the Small Council back in the capital.

Am I sufficiently concealing my shock? He thinks sarcastically as he gives the man one more bland smile before Ser Garrett closes the door at the end of the hall after him.

“How fortuitous that House Tyrell has so many imminently qualified men for every single open post in the capital,” he remarks to Ser Garrett when he returns. “And I’ve no doubt they could dredge up a few more if any new post were to become available,” he snorts lightly before remembering that, before he was Ser Garrett of the Kingsguard, he first wore the name Garrett Rowan of the Reach, and subsequently turns a concerned eye on the man to see if he is offended.

But while Ser Garrett is smiling wryly when he catches sight of him, it seems Aegon is not his concern. “If you want my opinion, Your Grace, the Tyrells have forgotten what it is to serve anything but their own interests.”

He shrugs then, and Aegon is reminded that Garrett’s father, Mathis Rowan, was one of the first Lords in Westeros to bend the knee to him, no matter that he was one of Mace Tyrell’s bannermen. When questioned about it, he’d simply said that his family owed their allegiance first to the King, and only after that to their Lord.

It was because of that show of loyalty, along with Ser Garrett’s own in years since, that Aegon had eventually named Mathis Rowan’s second son to his Kingsguard and made Lord Mathis himself one of his battle commanders.

“I’d say that’s probably as astute an observation as I’ve heard, Ser Garrett,” Aegon comments with a weary sigh before a sudden yawn takes him by surprise. He glances curiously at one of the windows and sees that the sun is in the midst of setting even now. Huh, he hadn’t realized it had become so late.

Mind made up, Aegon pulls the door shut behind him as he stretches. “I think I’ll head back to my chambers and have dinner there, Ser.”

“I’ll tell one of your pages,” Ser Garrett replies with a curt nod, which Aegon returns gratefully before retreating to his chambers down the hall. Once inside, his intention is at first to go collapse in one of the chairs before the fire or lay back on the bed while he waits for dinner to be brought, but then a stack of books sitting upon his trunk that hadn’t been there earlier catches his eye and he walks over to investigate.

Upon seeing their titles for himself, he gives a pleased hum and picks up the lot of them to dump them on the desk on the other side of the room. He’d entirely forgotten asking for those to be found and brought to him the other day. His little...project, has been far too neglected of late.

Ever since taking the throne, Aegon has had no choice but to marvel at the mess that Robert Baratheon had made of his Kingdom in the 15 odd years that he sat on Aegon’s throne. Even the next several years of collapse and disorder before Aegon and Daenerys finally took it back from the damnable Lannisters and Tyrells cannot compare to the wreckage the fat fool allowed to go on under his own nose.

It is enough to make him shake with suppressed rage over how Robert Baratheon, having murdered his father and allowed the rest of his family to be butchered, then couldn’t even be bothered to be a decent King on the throne that he had stolen. Instead he had allowed Lannisters to go unchecked, the weight of the crown behind their every move, and had permitted that odious little ferret of a flesh peddler to run equally amok on his Small Council, tainting everything the corrupt little man touched.

The most seemingly harmless little things had been twisted and sullied in the most, dare he say, ingenious ways. There is no denying that Petyr Baelish was probably one of the most clever men on the continent. That hadn’t prevented Aegon from having the man’s head cut off immediately when he’d shown up trying to worm his way into he and Daenerys’ good graces. The arrogant pissant actually thought he could waltz back into King’s Landing and continue business as usual, but by that time, they had already discovered just how the foul little weasel had bankrupted the Iron Throne to enrich himself. It gave Aegon great pleasure to order the man executed forthwith and see him piss himself in terror once he realized he there was no way to wiggle out of the noose he’d crafted himself.

As for Baratheon... Well Aegon just hopes he died in all the agony that being gored by a boar could possibly offer. It seems likely to take years to unravel the mess the fat oaf made of his family’s Kingdom. And while technically Aegon has other people who are more qualified to pore through the law books and ferret out—heh—Baelish’s little schemes, Aegon has been in rather desperate need of a distraction since this whole convoluted debacle with Jon Snow started.

Besides, busywork or not, Aegon truly does hate being idle. Hence, half an hour later, when Ser Garrett knocks on his door, Aegon is already up to his eyes in his little project, with several of the Westerosi law books open before him at the desk and pages and pages of loose notations scattered about both on the desk and floor.

“What is it, Ser?” he calls distractedly as he begins to gather his notes together so as to clear the desk for what he’s sure is his dinner being delivered. But that is in fact not what awaits him, and he fumbles with and drops one of the books when his Kingsguard asks if he will see, of all people, Jon Snow.

Surprised to the point of speechlessness, Aegon just stares at the door for several long moments wondering what in the world has brought the man here.

“Shall I send him away, Your Grace?” Ser Garrett asks, and Aegon realizes he’s probably given the wrong impression with his silence. He clears his throat and stands.

“No, Ser Garret. Send him in.”

The door opens and, there in the flesh, stands the man who has most unintentionally bewitched Aegon since first they met. Snow shifts in the doorway, his discomfort obvious, though no less so than Aegon’s own as he thinks back to the last time they both stood in his room alone together.

I was right, he absolutely is going to drive me mad.

The tension rises and so Aegon pastes on a forced smile and invites the dark-haired man inside. “Come in,” he says brightly. “What can I help you with, Lord Snow?”

Uncertainty clear as day, Snow takes all of three steps inside and then comes no further. He looks utterly lost, but at Aegon’s prompting gesture, he licks his lips and speaks.

“I…Your men wouldn’t let my steward in to retrieve one of my missives, so I thought to come myself...” He hesitates a moment and then, with no small amount of chagrin, says, “I thought you were with your dragon?”

What in the world gave him that idea? Aegon wonders, his brow shooting up. “No. In fact, I’ve not left the tower in hours,” he informs him truthfully, to which Snow looks bewildered.

“But he said—” He cuts himself off and suddenly his confusion is replaced with outrage as he growls something under his breath that sounds strangely like…‘satin’? But that can’t be right, surely, and so Aegon just quirks his brow higher and waits for Snow to start making sense again. Snow’s dark eyes catch the look and he quickly shakes his head.

“Nevermind me, Your Grace,” he says hurriedly, his eyes darting away and landing on something to Aegon’s right; the desk he stands beside. Snow nods in that direction. “I just need my letter there and then I’ll be going.”

“Of course,” Aegon replies carefully and reaches for the rumpled parchment that has been sitting on the desk since he first took possession of the room. He’s already read the contents himself, simply out of curiosity, and found a typically bland accounting of supplies and men. Only the parting line really caught his attention, if only to wonder why the discovery of a single, unnamed corpse should be reported with such interest.

The other man lingers still by the open door, and so Aegon brings him the parchment himself, choosing not to remark on how Snow all but snatches it out of his hand.

“Thank you. Now by your leave, Your Grace...”

Do it. Do it now.

“Actually, I was hoping we could speak,” Aegon blurts out in a hurry before he can overthink it too much, wincing when Snow goes rigid in the doorway.

“Privately,” he adds once it becomes clear that Snow does not intend to move away from the open door. Snow’s response is unenthusiastic at best, but he finally does deign to close the door and follow Aegon to the other side of the room, all while looking like he’s being led to the executioner.

Alright, now I’m starting to get offended.

Hence, once he’s reasonably certain that their low voices cannot be overheard by the Kingsguard, Aegon clears his throat awkwardly and jumps in with both feet.

“I’m sorry,” he forces out, relatively painlessly, though he doesn’t delude himself by thinking the pain isn’t coming. Soon. For now, there is only Snow’s bemused face.

“I’m sorry?” the man asks in confusion after a pause, and Aegon gives a strained laugh.

“No, I am sorry,” he stresses, to which, if anything, Snow just looks more lost than ever.

Get it together! Aegon rebukes himself and opens his mouth again to speak.

“I—I acted untoward,” he makes himself say, then wants to kick himself when he recognizes that he must be more clear than that. “Earlier, I mean—this week, that is. You know, when I—” Oh, shit, is it a good idea to remind him of my ‘crime’ in the middle of an apology? “—Wait, give me a moment, I’m not saying this right…”

Gods, what a nightmare. This is exactly why he loathes apologizing; his silver tongue always abandons him to flail and stumble over his words. It’s like he’s six again, sweating and squirming under Lemore’s gaze as he tries to explain why he thought it a good idea to jump on the back of one of the Old Men of the River and try to ride it underwater so it could take him to meet The Old Man of the River.

Lemore had smiled in spite of her fury, but it hadn’t stopped her from spanking him within an inch of his life at the time. Right now, Jon Snow’s countenance shows that same sliver of humor, though he seems even less likely than Lemore had to let Aegon off without the spanking— What the everloving fuck was that? He wonders incredulously as his thoughts grind to a halt for several long heartbeats and he just turns the bizarre image over in his head, curious, but mostly just disturbed, as to where it came from.

I do believe I just broke myself.

“Your Grace…? Are you alright?” comes Snow’s hesitant voice and it startles Aegon out of the daze his overactive imagination has lured him into.

“Wh—what?” Aegon reacts without hearing him for but a moment before he gathers his wits and tries not to die of embarrassment. “I mean, yes! Yes, I’m fine. Completely fine.”

“Maybe I should...go,” the gray-eyed man says, sidling away uneasily. “I’m sure you could use your rest, Your Grace.”

Oh, fantastic, Aegon thinks drolly. Now he thinks I’m crazy.

“No, no. I’m fine,” he insists. “Really, it’s just that I’ve always been rather terrible at...this.” He waves a hand vaguely and Snow bites his lip.

“Terrible at...apologies?” he asks uncertainly and Aegon seizes on it.

“Yes!” Aegon rambles. “I can turn what ought to be the most straight-forward of apologies into disasters worse than what I was apologizing for in the first place. It’s a gift, really. Or a curse.”

“I see,” Snow says, though Aegon can tell that he really doesn’t.

“Let me try again,” he sighs wearily and locks his purple eyes to gray. “Jon Snow, I apologize for not recognizing sooner that my attention was unwanted. I apologize for kissing you without your permission. And also for—” Go on, say it. “—touching you… Also without your consent.”

Never again, he swears fervidly to himself once he is done. I will think with my head from now on—not with my cock. I’d rather be kicked in the stones than have to do that again.

His mouth opening and closing several times, Jon Snow stares at him with the most befuddled look Aegon has ever seen, like Aegon has just pulled a rug a run out from under him that Snow wasn’t even aware he’d been standing on. Eventually, his gaze drops to the floor and the blush that Aegon loves so much seems to practically suffocate the man, it becomes so dark. He mutters something quietly then, but it is so unexpected, that Aegon’s mind once again goes completely blank.

Probably sensing Aegon’s baffled expression, Snow tenses up and sputters as if he wishes desperately that he could take back his last words. “Nevermind. Just—apology accepted, Your Grace. I’m going now,” he declares, flustered, and turns as if to march straight out the door.

“Wait!” Aegon protests incredulously as he all but dashes to bodily block his path. “You can’t say something like that and then just leave! What do you mean, ‘not unwanted’? You’ve been—!” He catches himself as his voice begins to rise and takes a moment to moderate his volume to barely above a whisper. Ser Garrett and whoever else is out there have already had enough of a show.

“As I said,” he continues tightly, “You’ve been giving me the evil eye ever since I saved you from Viserion!”

“Before that, actually,” Snow utters dryly and Aegon feels his tenuous grasp on his temper begin to...slip.

“The hells did I do before then?!” he snaps back angrily. “You just claimed you were fine with it, but now you’re saying you weren’t? Ugh. Do you ever make sense for more than three seconds at a time?”

The other man makes a sound like he’s choking on his own indignation. “That isn’t what I said,” he spits. “I said that—dammit, why am I even bothering? You’re obviously not listening.”

“I’m listening,” Aegon returns sharply, his words bitten off as if each tastes fouler than the last. They do. “Why don’t you try speaking. In full sentences, please.”

And, oh, if looks could kill. Jon Snow gives him such a look of black fury then that Aegon’s sure he’ll attack him for a moment. Just a moment, but it is enough to have him draw back some and hold himself ready to defend himself at a moment’s notice. It passes quickly, and leaves Aegon to wonder at the volatility of Snow’s temper. It’s possible that Snow has a temper to match his own, an intriguing thought that gives him pause as he stares with new interest.

“You are the most impossible man, I think I’ve ever met, Jon Snow,” Aegon says with a shake of his head. He means it as a compliment—sort of—but Snow must think otherwise, for he bristles like a man deeply offended and his hands twitch as if eager to close around Aegon’s throat.

“Me?” Snow hisses with outrage. “You’re the one who expected me to sleep with you after you released me from the Watch!”

“What?!” Aegon squawks indignantly as his eyes pop wide open. “I never said that!”

“Didn’t you,” Snow scoffs contemptuously, and Aegon’s hands itch to start throwing things in a blind rage. Resisting when the rage is upon him is never easy, but this time… That Jon Snow could accuse him of such a thing while standing there with that damning look in his eyes!

His hands are shaking, he realizes after a handful of seconds and clenches them into fists to force them to stop. He has to calm down. However much he’d like to pick something up and hurl it through the window, he knows that he must calm down. Under no circumstances will Aegon be known as a man-child king who cannot even control his own temper and throws tantrums like a child. Such displays are not becoming of a king and, dammit, he is King!

Snow is watching him with wary, narrow eyes once the red haze has abated enough for Aegon to come back to himself, and, just to be sure, he lets his eyes quickly sweep the room once to ascertain whether or not he has done something to further earn that look. But no, everything appears to be in its right place; no overturned furniture or books or papers scattered, and he allows himself to relax and take a deep breath.

Now to unravel this fucking catastrophe.

Much as the accusation infuriates him, it does get him thinking, if only to refute it. After a few moment’s reflection, he confirms his own memories of the first time he tried to seduce Jon Snow, right here in this very room. Snow was only embarrassed then, he’s certain of it. The way he all but melted into Aegon’s kisses before getting cold feet and backing out was as far from disingenuous as it could get. Which is exactly why believing the man had been unwilling was so difficult to swallow earlier.

But...not that difficult, he realizes slowly. Because he did note a change; a coldness where before there had been heat and even an answering arousal.

But why did it change? He asks himself, rubbing his temple as he paces agitatedly. When did he get the ludicrous idea that I expected him to—

And then he remembers. He’d approached Snow in the common hall after he and Daenerys had released the man from the Watch, and he remembers now the way the color had drained from Snow’s already pale countenance and the man’s hollow expression. And gods, Aegon had even brought up his interest in fucking the man then as well!

Shit.

Does Snow really think Aegon is expecting sex in return?

“Gods,” he breathes, aghast. “No wonder you’ve been looking at me like I’m some sort of monster. If that is the impression I’ve given you, then I do sincerely apologize. That—that was not my intent.”

“Truly?” Snow asks tersely and Aegon responds with an immediate negative.

“Never,” he swears, “It never once crossed my mind to believe you indebted to me. Especially not that way.”

The other man nods, but there is still a shadow lurking in those already dark eyes that speaks of poisonous doubt. It is maddening and distressing in equal measure, and Aegon positively aches to erase it once and for all.

“Listen to me,” he demands then, grabbing Snow’s shoulder and holding him still so that he can look directly in his eyes, silently begging the man to hear and see and feel his sincerity. “You don’t owe me anything,” he pronounces earnestly. “I don’t expect you to repay me for allowing you to defend yourself, and I don’t expect repayment for releasing you from the Watch. I didn’t do it so you’d feel obligated.”

Wide eyed, Jon Snow nods, and though it is slow, as each agonizing second is succeeded by each more agonizing second, Aegon can see the relief creep into Snow’s eyes even as the man tries to hide it. Finally he breathes his own sigh of relief.

All this time, he’s thought I expected him to bed me as recompense for freeing him of the Nights Watch. He thinks as he lets go of Snow and steps away to allow them both their space.

Looking back it is really no wonder that Snow was so dismayed each time Aegon tried to seduce him. No, the wonder is Snow’s admission that Aegon’s advances were not entirely unwanted, even if they were resented thanks to the...misunderstanding that developed between them. As Aegon throws himself down on the bed, he begins to shake with helpless laughter at the ridiculous situation he’s somehow found himself in.

“I’ll say it again, Jon Snow,” he says laughing. “You are the most impossible man I’ve ever met.”

“The same, Your Grace,” Snow replies with a sigh.

“No really,” Aegon says laughing almost deliriously as he props himself up on his elbows to see the other man. “My conversation with Cersei Lannister didn’t go downhill that quickly. And she spat in my face and then tried to seduce me—all in the span of about fifteen minutes.”

Snow gives him a displeased frown, no doubt at the implied comparison, but Aegon ignores it and continues to snicker. He feels almost drunk, like he’s been drinking unwatered wine. It is just adrenaline, of course, and actually, he’s tempted to maybe down a few cups just to keep the feeling. It’s much more pleasant than the arresting desire to throw up that he was feeling only a few moments earlier.

He can hear Snow’s anxious shifting from one foot to the other as the man sighs before trying to explain. “It wasn’t so much an impression you gave as…” His voice hesitates. “I guess I… I just assumed.”

Aegon stares a moment and then snorts. “Hell of an assumption,” he says with a huff and pulls himself to his feet once more. Neither of them speak, and Aegon silently studies the embarrassed flush that Snow ducks his head in a futile effort to hide. And it is such a bad idea, but the sight makes fire pool in his belly once more as he slowly approaches the other man. He stops with barely a foot between them, and Snow looks up to meet his eyes, his head forced to crane slightly because of Aegon’s greater height. And it is gratifying to find that once again the desire in his gaze meets its match in Snow’s dark eyes, and so he slowly leans in.

“May I?” Aegon asks, lips an inch away from Jon Snow’s, his intent clear as he gives Snow the opportunity to turn him down if he is misreading the situation once again.

But while Snow swallows hard and his breath shudders, his gaze does not waver in the least. “Yes,” he whispers and gives the smallest of nods, nervous, still, but undaunted. “Yes.”

And so he does.

He starts slowly—the last thing he wants is to scare Snow off now—with just a chaste press of his lips to Snow’s gorgeous mouth as he gently clasps his hands around the other man’s elbows to hold him. A moment of absolute stillness comes over Jon Snow, and Aegon fears he is about to get cold feet once again, but before he can do anything about it, suddenly the dark-eyed man returns his kiss with a passion that takes his breath away. It is all he can do to not groan as Snow’s gloved hands seize him by the waist for once and pull him deeper. And when a clever tongue peeks out trace the seam of Aegon’s still sealed mouth, he doesn’t bother to hold back the sound any longer.

Finally, he thinks reverently, and allows himself to slip one of his hands down to loop around Snow’s waist, while the other reaches up to bury in that dark hair he’s coming to love so much. His control of the kiss is swiftly wrested from him, though he cannot complain, for dear gods, does Jon Snow has a talented mouth. After all of Snow’s shyness and blushing, the way Snow takes utter control of their sensuous duel of lips and tongues is the last thing Aegon expected. It is a good surprise though—the best sort, really—and before long it is Aegon who pants breathlessly as he tries to keep up.

Which is why, when his dark-eyed bastard suddenly pulls back, Aegon is at first somewhat grateful for the chance to catch his breath. But only at first, because he then he realizes that Snow isn’t coming back.

“Wait,” Snow says with audible regret as he pulls away again. He puts one of his hands on Aegon’s chest to maintain his distance while shaking his head. “Wait. I can’t.”

This again? Aegon thinks as his eyes turn skyward in despair. What sadistic god or gods did I manage to piss off so badly that they keep doing this to me?

“Decided you’re ‘not attracted to men’ again, have we?” Aegon deadpans to hide how very, very much he wants to simply gag his wolf and pretend to have not heard his protests.

It does not fool Jon Snow for a moment though, for the gray-eyed man just rolls his eyes with an amused smile.

“I can’t right now,” Snow clarifies and Aegon instantly perks up.

“When then?” he asks, maybe a little overeager, but he’s sure Snow can forgive him that.

“I really did come for my letter,” Snow explains with an apologetic shrug as he brandishes said letter. “I just received a very...testy note from the commander at Eastwatch, requesting that I hurry up and answer his last raven. Only...I never got around to reading his last, because you arrived before I had the chance to take a look at it in the morning as I’d intended.”

“And so you just left it here for, what? Three days?” Aegon inquires, amused, to which Snow ducks his head with an embarrassed flush as he mumbles something.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

Snow glowers and replies hotly. “I said, I didn’t want another confrontation—like the first time.”

“Hm. A ‘confrontation’ like, oh, I don’t know...this time?” Aegon teases and is rewarded with the sight of Jon Snow’s unimpressed stare and pursed lips. It’s tempting to kiss that look away, but, once again, Snow seems to read his mind, for he takes a quick step back while holding his letter up like a shield.

“I have to read this,” he insists, taking another step back.

“Read it here then,” Aegon replies with a careless shrug. “Hells, answer it here, and I’ll have one of my pages send the damn thing.”

“You just don’t want to risk me leaving and not coming back,” Snow remarks shrewdly and Aegon grins.

“You surely don’t think I’m going to deny that, do you?”

“No, I suppose not,” Snow acknowledges with a roll of his eyes. “Very well,” he concedes at last with sarcastic magnanimity while raising a forestalling hand. “But only if you agree to leave me in peace while I do so,” he states firmly. “That means no talking; no kissing; no touching.”

“Agreed,” Aegon says quickly, earning himself a suspicious stare from Snow. Just to mess with him, Aegon lets a suitably mischievous grin creep out slowly, as if to taunt the other man with something he doesn’t know about. It has the desired effect, for though he says nothing more as he slowly turns his back on Aegon to sit at the desk, Snow’s narrow-eyed look is completely ruined by an uncertain furrowing of his brows that betrays just how leery his is of giving his back to Aegon just now.

Oh, he’s so much fun to tease.

He crosses the room to the bed and settles down to wait, sure that the matter cannot take but a few minutes and then he’ll be able to enjoy his wolf to his heart’s content at long last. But as the minutes continue to tick by, he is mildly disappointed to see that Snow is still riveted to his damn letter.

Come on, you cannot be serious, he thinks bemusedly as he quirks a brow at the other man. It is nothing but an accounting of supplies. Surely it does not take this long to read such a simple report. He opens his mouth to say something, but further attention reveals the hand not holding the letter as it clenches vice-like on the arm of the poor chair. If the chair were sentient, it would be crying for mercy.

“What’s wrong?” he asks curiously as he leans to the side enough to see the concern etched on Snow’s face.

“A week ago, I’d have said it was nothing. Now, I’m not so sure...” He says it pensively, his mind obviously a million miles away. Then he seems to come back to the present, only the apologetic look he gives Aegon makes him want to groan.

“You have to go, don’t you?” Aegon says with a wry quirk of his lips. It really isn’t a question and Jon Snow winces just a little as he nods.

“I have to look into something,” Snow says and Aegon nods with a self-depreciating smile.

“Can’t say as I’m really surprised,” he admits sighing. With the way things have been going, he supposes that it only makes sense that they would finally smooth over their little misunderstanding, only for Snow or he to immediately be called away by duty.

He can see Snow hesitate uncertainly, but if there is one thing Aegon can understand, it is the importance of duty, so he just waves his hand towards the door wearily. “I understand. Just go.”

Another moment of hesitation, and then Snow gives a jerky nod of his own head and leaves without another word. Once he is gone, Aegon allows his eyes to roll back as he falls onto the bed with a disappointed groan.

“This is getting ridiculous,” he grumbles, laying still for only a minute before levering himself out of bed and cracking open a dull law book detailing the intricacies of all of the various tax and trade agreements that have been signed in Westeros in the last twenty years. The maester who penned it was possessed of an abnormally cramped hand, something Aegon already knew from previous experience, and within minutes the concentration necessary just to make out the words does wonders to cool his blood and make the situation in his trousers less urgent.

Its job done, he snaps the book shut and shoves it away from himself so he can balance his chin on his fist and stare broodily out the window at the darkening skyline.

There comes another knock on the door, and Aegon irritably calls for them to enter as he drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, quite sure it is one of the pages finally here with his dinner. Thus, the very last thing he expects when he turns to snap at the idiot boy for being late, is to instead find Jon Snow closing the door quickly pulling his armor over his head to dump it unceremoniously on the floor.

Aegon stares at the man in mute shock, and Snow’s lips slowly pulls into a crooked grin that is all mischief.

“I never said I had to be away for long,” the man points out, shrugging.

“You—you minx,” Aegon accuses with a breathless laugh as he slowly stands and beckons that shameless tease to him with a crooked finger, an action that Snow wisely obeys. And when he is close enough, Aegon wastes no time grabbing and spinning him so that he can trap him against the desk. “You sly, evil creature. You did that on purpose.”

Snow’s answer is hardly necessary, and Aegon does not wait for it before he leans forward to take that tantalization mouth with his own, making sure to nip at Snow’s lying tongue the moment it shows itself.

For that little bit of deception, Aegon is going to make Jon Snow scream his name for the whole army to hear—and he is going to feed someone to Rhaegal if anything interrupts them before that.