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It’s so quiet, you think, hazily surveying the space, so still.
Not the soft, peaceful quiet that had once settled over in the late hours of the night, when Baelon would finally drift to sleep and the candles would be allowed to burn low, but something hollowed out—wrong in a way that seems to press in on all sides.
The hearth has long since gone cold, left unlit for days now, but the faint scent of ash lingers beneath sweeter traces of lavender oil and milk that cling stubbornly to the air, as though the room itself has not quite let go of him.
His toys remain scattered where they were left. His favorite catches your eye: a small wooden dragon tipped onto its side near a leg of the bed, one wing splintered from rough handling that had once drawn a tired laugh from you. The coverlet on his bed is still half-tossed back, rumpled in that familiar way that speaks of restlessness, of small limbs kicking free in the night.
Nothing has been touched, just as you’d ordered. It sits exactly as it was—preserved, almost reverently—like pieces of him just waiting to be resumed.
You stand near the edge of it all, unmoving.
You hardly remember coming here, only that the bed you had been lying in felt too large, too empty, and that sleep would not come no matter how deeply you longed for it. At some point, your feet had found the cold stone floor, your body moving without instruction, drawn down quiet passageways and through half-lit corridors until you stood here now—barefoot and disheveled, your hair unbound and falling loose around your shoulders.
The thin shift clings to you where the night air has cooled your skin, though you barely feel it.
In your hands, his blanket is gathered in a loose, trembling grip—bunched and wrinkled where your fingers have twisted into it—and you lift it without thinking, pressing it to your face as though it might anchor you. His scent lingers there, faint but unmistakable—warmth, milk, something soft and so distinctly his that you’d know it in your bones.
For a moment, the world seems to narrow to that alone.
You breathe in once, twice—slow and shallow, savoring what’s left—and your fingers tighten around the fabric without meaning to, pulling it closer like you may somehow drag him with it.
The scent is fading.
You can feel it, even now, slipping through your grasp no matter how tightly you try to hold on. It had been stronger before—when you’d first lifted it, when the air hadn’t yet touched it—and the thought settles somewhere deep in your chest, unwelcome but immovable. You lower it only slightly, just enough to peek down at it, your gaze unfocused as it drifts over the worn edge where his small hands had once clutched and dragged it through corridors far grander than anything he had cared to notice.
He never slept through the night.
The thought comes without warning, though quiet and certain all the same, and your breath catches faintly in your throat.
It had always been the same: restless stirring, the soft rustle of sheets, and then his voice, small and insistent, calling for you through the dark until you came. You’d learned the rhythm of it, the timing, your body waking before your mind ever fully surfaced, already reaching for him before your eyes had even opened. Sometimes he would already be halfway from the bed by the time you arrived, blanket clutched in his fist, pearlescent hair tousled and eyes heavy with sleep.
You had laughed, once, at how little patience he had for solitude. You’d never once minded it—you had always come when he called.
But he hadn’t called that night.
That thought settles differently than the ones before—heavier, sharper—slipping between the others like a blade. Your fingers still where they clutch the blanket, your breath faltering as your gaze drifts, unfocused, toward the bed. There had been no rustle of sheets, no soft voice breaking through the quiet, no small insistence tugging you from sleep.
Nothing.
The absence of it presses in now, suffocating, as though the silence itself had been trying to tell you something and you had simply… lain there. You remember waking, the way your eyes had opened to darkness and the way your body had shifted beneath the covers as if searching for something it couldn’t name.
You’d listened then, hadn’t you? Waited for just a moment, for the sound you’d come to expect.
It never came.
Your grip tightens, fabric twisting further beneath your fingers as something in your chest pulls taut, drawn thin with the weight of it.
You had always come when he’d called—every time, without fail. The path to his nursery had been carved into you, your steps known and certain even in the deepest hours of the night. You had known the sound of his voice half-asleep, known the shape of his small figure waiting at the edge of the bed, known the way he would reach for you without hesitation, trusting you to be there as you always had been.
The certainty of it had been absolute—unchallenged and unbroken.
Until it wasn’t.
Now, standing here in the quiet he would never again disturb, it feels as though the room itself holds its breath around you, waiting for something that won’t come. The coverlet remains half-tossed, the pillow still bears the faintest impression where his head had rested, and for a fleeting, treacherous moment, it almost feels as though he might stir—that the silence might break, that his voice might rise from the dark just beyond your hearing.
Of course, it doesn’t.
What does come, however, is so slight you almost miss it.
A shift of air gives him away more than anything else—the faint scrape of wood against stone as the door gives way, slow and careful, like whoever stands beyond it knows better than to break the quiet outright. It doesn’t startle you—nothing does, not anymore.
Still, you don’t turn.
You know it’s him.
There is a particular stillness that follows in his wake, something measured and deliberate—the absence of unnecessary movement. It settles at your back now and, for a long moment, neither of you speaks. The silence stretches, familiar in a way that feels different from the one that had come before—no less heavy, but no longer empty.
“You should be resting,” Aemond’s voice is low when it finally breaks through, even, not worn thin by sleepless nights the way yours has been. It settles into the space between you, measured and controlled, as if he has chosen each word carefully and found none of them sufficient.
They reach you, but they don’t settle or take hold in any meaningful way. Instead, they pass through you as everything else has: dulled at the edges, softened into something distant and indistinct. Your gaze stays fixed ahead, unfocused as it lingers on the bed, on the shallow impression left behind, as though looking long enough might coax it into something more—something real and breathing and whole.
Rest.
The word feels foreign to you now, hollow in a way you can’t quite put words to. You’d tried to, hadn’t you? Closed your eyes, stilled your body, willed yourself into it as though it were something that could be commanded. But each time, the quiet had stretched too wide and too deep, until it swallowed you whole and the absence of him pressed in from all sides, leaving no room for anything else.
Slowly, your fingers loosen their hold on the blanket—only slightly, not enough to let it fall—and you lower it from your face. The air feels colder without it, sharper somehow.
You still don’t turn, unable to bring yourself to.
“You shouldn’t be here,” your voice is quieter than his had been, though not softer. It comes out rough, worn thin from disuse. The words linger between you, fragile and brittle and nearly palpable in the air, but lacking any real force behind them.
Not a command, but not quite a plea.
You can feel Aemond shift behind you, like something in him stills further at your words rather than recoiling from them. It’s not in offense, not quite, but rather… expected, as if he had known you would say it—like he’d been waiting for it, unable to find anything within himself to argue otherwise.
“You weren’t in our chambers,” his voice is quieter this time, yet still measured—each word placed carefully between you, “I thought, perhaps…”
He doesn’t continue, doesn’t need to—just lets his words trail off with a sigh instead.
I thought I’d find you here.
Your fingers still against the silky fabric of the blanket.
“I can’t sleep,” you answer, the truth of it thin and distant even to your own ears. It feels like something you’re simply meant to say rather than something you believe—a plaintive explanation meant to soothe everyone but you.
“You should’ve woken me,” his words land heavier than they really ought to and for a moment, you scarcely breathe. Then, your fingers tighten once more around the blanket, fabric twisting beneath your grip as something fragile finally seems to give way beneath your ribs.
“I woke,” your voice shakes now, nothing more than a feeble whisper, “I did wake.”
“Then why—” he stops himself, though the question lingers anyway.
Your gaze drifts at last, though not to Aemond. It settles instead on the edge of the little bed beside you, on the place where the coverlet still dips slightly inward, like the shape of him might still be found there if only you look hard enough.
“I heard—I heard you and Grandsire last night,” the words leave you before you can stop them—flat and certain, little more than a breath pressed from your lungs, “They didn’t come for him, did they?”
The silence that follows feels far louder than anything that could possibly fill it. Whatever he had been about to say, whatever careful, practiced response he may have offered, dies on his tongue.
But he doesn’t deny it—can’t, even as deeply as it pains him.
Your breath catches in the silence, shoulders jolting just enough that you feel it when something heavy settles in your chest, as cold and discomforting as a river stone.
“They were here for me,” his admission comes at last, as low and even as the rest of his words have been, though edged with something else now—something pulled tight, not defensive but not gentle either, “but they failed.”
All at once, the room seems to tilt. Everything feels… wrong, like the world itself has been misaligned somehow. Your brows furrow as your lips pull into a frown, your grip on the blanket tightening further as something sharp rises within you.
A sound leaves you then—soft and breathy and unexpected enough to startle even you. It’s not a laugh, not nearly full enough to be that, but it’s close enough.
“They didn’t fail,” the words fall easily from your lips, carried on the tail end of the bitter noise that had escaped you and barbed at the edges. Slowly, like the movement belongs to someone else entirely, you turn your head—not enough to face him, but just enough that his presence becomes a touch more real as he’s caught in your periphery. “They merely found something else.”
For a long moment, Aemond says nothing before finally shifting again. It’s a small movement, something so slight you might not have even noticed it before, but you feel it now. The careful distance he had kept fractures, as though something inside him has given way to instinct rather than thought.
Leather whispers softly against fabric as he takes a step, throat bobbing as he swallows.
“You think I don’t know that?” he asks, strained. He exhales sharply through his nose, jaw clenched before settling. “I know what they took, he was my—” the words catch, tasting like glass in his mouth, “do not mistake me for—”
He stops, hands clenching at his sides. You can almost hear the way his mind races as he desperately tries to find words that do not exist, that aren’t enough.
“They—they were sent for me, yes,” he says, more firmly this time as though trying to set an anchor, “Daemon’s doing, we think—a blow meant to answer the business at Storm’s End. That was the… intent.”
Your fingers tighten around the blanket, the seam you had sewn so carefully when your belly had been big and round digs into your thumb.
“And yet,” you murmur, quieter now, though no less cutting for it, “you’re here and he’s—h-he’s…”
The word—the one that’s been hanging just out of reach—won’t come. You can’t let it.
You can’t let it be real.
“I know,” he whispers, voice strained as if he fears the enormity of it as well. “It wasn’t meant to—that wasn’t… it wasn’t meant to happen,” he tries again, more urgently now, as though saying it differently might make it matter, “they weren’t meant to touch him.”
“They did.”
Something flickers across his face—shame, perhaps, or guilt or desperation but altogether too quick to name. It stays, though, lingering in the way his shoulders tighten and the way he lifts a hand again without thought before stopping it, leaving it suspended in the space between you.
“I would’ve stopped it,” he says, rougher and stripped of his earlier polish. “Had I known, had I been—” he cuts himself off with a sharp breath, jaw clenching hard enough that you can hear the grind of his teeth, “they should’ve taken me, I would rather that instead—a thousand times over.”
His words seem to echo between you, though they had been spoken so softly. Neither of you rushes to fill the silence afterwards until Aemond finally continues, speaking more quietly than he has before, as though some force has finally been drained from him.
“Come back to bed.”
It doesn’t come as a command, nor a request, but something in between and fragile in a way that feels wholly unfamiliar on him.
“You need to rest,” he adds after a beat, although there’s no real insistence behind it—no expectation that you’ll listen. “You cannot—” He stops, breath catching faintly, and when he tries again, the words come slower, “you cannot stay here.”
Your gaze drifts back to the bed, to the shallow impression still there—a space that will not fill.
“I can’t leave him,” you say, no bitterness to your words now, only a quiet heaviness.
Silence settles between you again.
He doesn’t argue.
You can feel it, though—that moment where he might have, where he would have once, where he would’ve found some way to persuade you, to guide you, to move you—
And the moment passes, just as quickly as it came.
Something in your chest stutters in response to the seemingly immovable silence and when you attempt to draw in another breath, it catches meanly in your throat. For a second, it’s as if everything hangs suspended in midair, and then… it breaks.
It’s not some loud, sudden, ugly thing—not the kind of sound that tears itself free in a single breath and leaves nothing behind. It comes slowly at first—a tremor beneath your ribs, a hitch in your lungs that doesn’t want to settle, no matter how you try to steady it.
Your shoulders tighten, your grip on the silk blanket you still tightly clutch falters, and the next breath you draw comes thinner, sharper than the last.
Your vision blurs and you don’t move—still as a statue—but the tears come anyway. They’re slow at first, slipping free and trailing warm against your cheeks. You press the blanket closer again without thinking, as though it may provide some anchor, some way to hold you together where something inside you has finally begun to give way.
Behind you, Aemond halts, stopped completely as though caught in some space between action and restraint, no longer sure which to choose. For a moment, it feels as if he may cross the distance anyway, like he might reach for you, might—
He doesn’t.
Another breath shudders out of you now, less controlled than the last, and this time you can’t stop it. Grief builds in you—relentless—until a sob fills the room in a way nothing else has—uneven, broken, pulled from somewhere too deep to be contained.
Still, you don’t look at him—rooted to the spot.
Again, the whisper of fabric on leather comes and, at the door, he pauses.
You know he does without seeing it, without needing to—something in you still attuned to him in ways you cannot sever, no matter how much you may wish to.
For an instant, it feels as if he might say something—anything—that might reach you where you stand. But there’s nothing left to offer that hasn’t already failed, nothing more to be said.
The door opens, and closes, and you are alone again. The room settles around you, silence swallowing the last of his presence as though he’d never been there at all.