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The raven came at dawn, black against a sky the colour of old bone.

Aemond had not slept. Aemma had seen to that.

She was a few moons old and already ruled their chamber with a fist no larger than a plum. Lucerys said she was sweet-tempered. Aemond had yet to see proof. She slept in brief, grudging spells, woke as if betrayed, and seized his finger with the solemn rage of a queen taking tribute.

He sat by the fire with her tucked against his chest, one hand spread across her back. Her breath warmed the hollow of his throat. Her hair, fine and pale, clung in soft wisps to her head.

“You are not starved,” he told her. “You are not cold. You are not abandoned. There is no cause for complaint.”

Aemma made a furious little sound into his collar.

“Yes,” he said. “A poor defence.”

Lucerys slept at last, curled on his side beneath the coverlet, dark hair loose over his cheek. They had been wed less than a year and a half. Some mornings Aemond still looked upon him and felt the strangeness of it.

He had long ago learned that wanting a thing hard enough could make it dangerous. Yet there was something sharp in having Lucerys in his bed, in his keeping, in the chamber that smelled of salt, smoke, milk, and them.

Mine, some base part of him thought.

Aemond did not indulge such thoughts.

He merely had them often.

Lucerys breathed softly in sleep, his lips parted, one hand curled beneath his cheek. The coverlet had slipped from one shoulder. Moon-pale linen clung loose at his throat, and below it the pale warmth of his skin—fair as milk, with the faint flush of blood just beneath—caught the low firelight. He looked too soft in that hour. Too unguarded. A lord should not look so easily touched. A husband, perhaps. Aemond permitted that distinction only because no one else was there to hear it.

Lucerys shifted, and a dark curl slid over his mouth.

Aemond wanted to move it away.

A knock sounded.

Aemond turned his head.

“My prince,” the guard said from beyond the door. “A raven from King’s Landing. Marked urgent.”

Lucerys stirred.

Aemond rose before he could wake fully, Aemma clasped close. “Bring it.”

The message was brief.

A bastard of Hull had claimed Seasmoke.

For one moment, the chamber went still.

Even Aemma quieted.

Aemond read it again.

Seasmoke.

Laenor Velaryon’s dragon. Pale and swift, a ghost of old grief. Lucerys spoken of him rarely, and never without care. His father’s dragon, if law and memory mattered more than blood.

Claimed by a bastard.

Aemond folded the parchment.

Lucerys sat up, blinking sleep from his eyes. “What is it?”

His voice was rough with sleep. Aemond hated, briefly and without conviction, that even then it drew his eye. Lucerys’s hair fell in wild curls about his face; his cheek was marked from the pillow; his mouth was soft and swollen from rest.

He looked nothing like a lord. He looked like something stolen from a bedchamber painting, all shadowed curls, warm skin, sleep-soft mouth. Aemond resented the raven for finding him so. He resented the dawn. He resented anything with eyes.

He did not answer quickly enough.

“Aemond.”

He handed him the letter.

Lucerys read. His mouth parted. Something passed across his face before he mastered it. Pain. Wonder. Aemond disliked it at once.

“Seasmoke,” Lucerys said.

Aemma began to fuss again. Aemond held her more tightly.

“Yes,” he said. “So it claims.”

Lucerys looked up sharply. “Dragons do not suffer false claims.”

“No. Men do.”

The words left him colder than he intended. Lucerys’s brow drew together.

“They have taken him to King’s Landing,” he said, reading farther. “For questioning.”

“As they should.”

“He is a boy.”

“He is a bastard who has mounted a dragon long bound to House Velaryon.”

Lucerys’s eyes narrowed. “Seasmoke was not chained in our yard.”

“No. He was merely left to fly masterless until any fisher’s son might climb upon him.”

“That is not how claiming works, and you know it.”

Aemond did know it. This worsened his temper.

He knew too well. Vhagar had not been given to him. He had claimed her beneath darkness and grief, and for it had lost an eye. He had paid in blood for what this boy had taken with applause and royal notice. No, not applause. Not yet. But it would come. Men loved such tales. A lowborn boy, silver-haired perhaps, bold enough perhaps, rising upon pale wings.

Songs would be made.

Aemond had received no songs.

Aemma made a little sound, her fist opening against his tunic. He lowered his gaze to her pale head.

“You hear your mother?” he murmured. “All reason leaves him before breakfast.”

Lucerys’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Do not enlist my daughter against me.”

“She has sense.”

“She cannot hold up her own head.”

“Neither can half your council.”

That made him laugh. Aemond kept his face still, as though he had not wanted it. As though the sound had not warmed some low, treacherous place in him.

Lucerys shook his head, the curl still clinging near his lips.

Aemond gave in and brushed it aside with the back of one finger.

Lucerys stilled.

It was nothing, just a practical gesture. Hair should not obscure a man’s face while he read urgent news. Aemond could have said so, had Lucerys mocked him.

Lucerys did not mock him. He only looked at him, softened by dawn.

By midday, the whole castle knew.

Lucerys wrote to his mother at once.

Aemond watched from the far side of the solar while Aemma slept on his shoulder. Her breath warmed his neck. She smelled of milk and clean linen. He had meant to leave her in the nursery an hour ago, but the nurse had reached for her, and Aemma had made a noise of protest, and Aemond had found, to his displeasure, that he agreed with her.

Lucerys bent over the desk, his hand swift. The sun caught on the rings he wore. One was Aemond’s gift. A slender thing of black steel set with pearl. Lucerys wore it more often than Aemond admitted to noticing.

Aemond noticed everything.

The ring against the quill. The ink smudge near Lucerys’s thumb. The curve of his neck where his hair had been pushed aside. The way his waist bent when he leaned closer to the page. The way his mouth tightened when he searched for a kinder word than the one first offered to him.

He was too beautiful when he thought himself unseen. It was indecent. Worse, it was careless. He sat there in morning light, dark curls loose down his back, dressed in sea-green silk with one shoulder slipping lower than it ought, and expected Aemond to speak sensibly of bastards and dragons.

Unreasonable creature.

“Do you mean to plead for him?” Aemond asked.

Lucerys did not look up. “I mean to ask what has happened.”

“You know what has happened.”

“Qybor.”

“He mounted Seasmoke.”

Lucerys set his quill down. “You are very cross for a man who does not know him.”

“I know enough.”

“You do?”

“I know what he is.”

Lucerys leaned back.

Aemond regretted watching the movement. The silk shifted. His throat caught the light. There was a small mark near his collarbone, half hidden, left by Aemond’s mouth two nights before. It pleased him to see it still there.

This was not the time.

“And what is that?” Lucerys asked.

Aemond shifted Aemma higher, as if to shield her from folly. “Convenient.”

Lucerys stared at him.

Aemond went on. “A bastard of Hull appears, lays claim to a dragon, is dragged before the Queen, and we are meant to look upon this as wonder. No. Men will make use of him. If they cannot prove him Laenor’s get, they will call him Laenor’s get. If they cannot believe it, they will say they do. It is an old trick.”

Lucerys’s voice softened. “You think I do not know old tricks?”

Aemond regretted it then. Not visibly. He had not survived childhood by flinching.

Lucerys turned back to the letter. His lashes lowered. He had his mother’s face at certain angles, though softened by something that was wholly his own.

“He claimed a dragon,” Lucerys said. “Whatever else he is, he has courage.”

“Or hunger.”

“Those are often kin.”

Aemond looked down at Aemma. Her eyes had opened, dark and unfixed. She regarded him gravely.

“You see?” he told her. “He is determined to admire the wretch.”

Lucerys made a sound that might have been a laugh. “I hear you.”

“I did not whisper.”

“No. You never do when you think yourself subtle.”

Aemond’s eye lifted.

Lucerys smiled into his letter.

Aemma yawned.

“Yes,” Aemond murmured to her. “I remain unconvinced as well.”

Three days later, another raven came.

The boy had been questioned. Rhaenyra had declared him Addam Velaryon, trueborn son of Laenor, legitimized before court and gods alike. He was to be brought to Driftmark to serve under Lucerys and learn the duties of his new name.

Lucerys read the message standing by the window.

Aemond stood behind him, arms folded. “Absurd.”

The word struck the glass and died there. Lucerys did not turn at once. The light fell over him in pale bars, catching in the loose dark curls at his nape and along the fine line of his throat. He had risen late, harried by Aemma’s poor sleep, and had not yet fastened the last ties of his doublet. The open collar showed a sliver of warm skin and the shadowed hollow beneath his jaw.

Aemond looked away.

Then looked back, because discipline had limits and his were presently occupied elsewhere.

He is trying to undo me, Aemond thought.

He stopped the thought. It was heading somewhere inadvisable.

“It is done.”

“Plainly.”

“My mother would not do this without cause.”

“Your mother has made a shield of him.”

Lucerys turned. “Perhaps. And perhaps he needs one.”

“He has Seasmoke. That seems shield enough.”

“Do you begrudge him the dragon?”

Aemond smiled. It was not a kind expression. “Why should I?”

Lucerys held his gaze for too long.

The old memory stood between them. It needed no summoning. A hall lit by torches. Blood. Sand under Aemond’s boots. Vhagar newly his, vast as war. Lucerys small and white-faced, knife in hand. Pain like lightning. His mother’s voice. His own blood running hot down his cheek.

It had been an accident. A childish fight gone monstrous. So they had all agreed.

Aemond had accepted that answer in the way one accepts a blade beneath the ribs because pulling it free would kill him quicker.

And now another boy had taken another dragon, and all the realm bent itself toward making him comfortable.

Aemond’s mouth tightened.

Lucerys looked away first. “He will be here in two days.”

“Then I shall order rooms prepared.”

“I have already done so.”

“Fine rooms, no doubt.”

“Would you have me put him in the stables?”

“He is accustomed to low places.”

Lucerys’s brows lifted. “Qybor.”

Aemond's chest tightened.

“I would not presume to instruct the Lord of the Tides in hospitality.”

“You do that each day.”

“And yet you persist in error.”

Lucerys crossed the room and stopped before him. He had not tied his hair back. It fell about his face in dark waves, softer than any man had a right to look while opposing Aemond in his own solar. Aemond could smell him when he came near. Salt. Ink. Sleep. The faint sweetness of the oil he used because the sea winds tangled his curls into knots.

Aemond’s hand twitched with the foolish want to catch one curl around his finger.

He clasped his hands behind his back instead.

“What troubles you?” Lucerys asked.

“Nothing.”

“Lie better.”

Aemond bent toward him. The space between them shrank. He could feel the warmth of Lucerys's skin, could see the individual lashes that framed his dark eyes. “I am troubled by a stranger being laid into your house with your mother’s blessing and a stolen name on his back.”

“Our house,” Lucerys said.

The correction struck him in the chest with unreasonable force.

Aemond refused to soften.

“Seasmoke chose him.” Lucerys continued.

“Then Seasmoke has poor taste.”

Lucerys’s face changed. The jest had struck too near something living.

“He was my father’s,” Lucerys said.

“I know.”

“I remember him. Not well. I was very young. But I remember white wings over the water. I remember my father laughing when Seasmoke dove low over the bay.” He looked past Aemond, to some place beyond the walls. “I had thought never to see him so close again.”

Aemond said nothing.

Lucerys missed a ghost, and Addam of Hull had ridden in upon its back.

Aemond’s hand tightened at his side.

A mean thought came to him then.

You look at ghosts more softly than you look at me.

He bit it back. He was not so pathetic as that.

He did not beg for gentleness.

He merely noticed when it was spent elsewhere.

Lucerys looked back at him, eyes dark and wet with memory. Beautiful, damn him. Beautiful in sorrow, in temper, in half-dressed morning disarray. Beautiful enough to make Aemond cruel because wanting him still felt too much like kneeling.

Aemma, in the cradle near the hearth, chose that moment to wake and wail as if the slight were hers.

Aemond crossed to her at once and lifted her up.

“Yes,” he said into her soft hair. “You are correct. This house has lost all judgment.”

Lucerys sighed. “You will frighten her with your muttering.”

“She fears nothing. She is mine.”

“She is also mine.”

“She has your appetite for trouble.”

“And your patience for being denied.”

Aemma cried harder.

Aemond held her out a little and looked at her face. Her cheeks had flushed pink. Her small mouth opened in outrage. She looked, he thought, very like Lucerys when denied a second cup of spiced wine.

“You must not take his part in all things,” he told her.

Aemma screamed. She had opinions, this tiny creature, and she was not afraid to voice them.

“Like your mother,” Aemond muttered. “Exactly like your mother.”

Addam Velaryon arrived in rain.

Driftmark received him beneath a low sky, the sea black and restless beyond the cliffs. Seasmoke circled once above the harbor, pale wings cutting through mist.

Lucerys had dressed for receiving him. Sea-blue velvet. Pearls at his throat. His cloak pinned with the seahorse. Dark hair braided back from his face, though the rain had already coaxed loose curls about his temples. He looked every inch the Lord of the Tides, and every inch the boy who had once looked up at white wings over black water in wonder.

Aemond stood close enough that their sleeves nearly touched.

Addam was younger than Aemond had expected. Not a boy entire. Young, yes, but near enough grown to be dangerous. He was tall in the way of sailors, lean and weather-made, with silver hair braided back from a face too comely for Aemond’s liking. He bowed too low when he came before Lucerys.

“My lord.”

Lucerys stepped forward and took him by the shoulders before the bow had finished. “Rise. You are kin now.”

Kin.

Aemond felt his jaw set.

Addam looked startled. Then grateful. The gratitude was worse. Open. Earnest. Ugly in its nakedness.

“I am honoured,” Addam said. “The Queen said I was to serve under you.”

“And so you shall.” Lucerys smiled. “You must be tired.”

Aemond watched the smile land.

There. Addam’s face changed. 

Men were so predictable. Give them one warm look from Lucerys Velaryon and they began building shrines inside themselves.

“No, my lord,” Addam said.

“You are soaked through.”

“I have been wetter.”

Lucerys laughed.

Aemond hated him.

At supper, Addam sat near Lucerys.

Near enough that candlelight caught on Addam’s silver hair when he bent his head to listen. Near enough that Lucerys’s voice lowered into the warm, intent tone he used when he cared to draw someone out.

Aemond ate little.

Aemma slept in a cradle by the hearth. Each time the nursemaid shifted, Aemond’s eye cut to her. Each time Addam laughed, it cut back.

He had an easy laugh. Too easy. Men who had known hunger should not laugh so freely beneath another man’s roof.

Lucerys asked him of Hull. Addam answered. Lucerys asked of the claiming. Addam looked down at his hands.

“I did not mean to,” Addam said. “He had come low over the smoke-houses three days running. Everyone fled indoors when his shadow crossed. I stayed.”

“Why?” Lucerys asked.

Addam gave a small, rueful smile. “I thought if he meant to burn me, running would only tire me first.”

Lucerys laughed again.

Aemond set his cup down.

Addam went on. “He watched me. I watched him. On the third day, he landed on the shore beyond the nets. I went to him.”

“That was brave,” Lucerys said.

“It was foolish.”

“Those are often kin.”

Aemond looked at Lucerys.

Lucerys, damn him, did not notice. His eyes were fixed upon Addam, bright with interest, mouth softened around the shape of a smile.

Aemond had kissed that mouth bruised. He had felt it laugh against his throat. Heard it speak his name in darkness like a confession. And still here he sat, put aside by a sailor’s tale and a dragon’s shadow.

Not put aside.

He corrected himself at once.

He was not a neglected wife in some singer’s lament.

He was, however, growing less pleased with the conversation.

“Seasmoke climbed fast,” Addam said. “So fast I thought my bones would shake apart. Then the sea fell below us, and there was only wind.”

Lucerys’s expression softened. “He always liked to climb.”

Aemond’s hand closed around his knife.

There it was again. That softness for the ghost.

“You knew him, my prince?” Addam asked.

Lucerys glanced at him. “I did. A little. When I was small.”

Addam looked at Lucerys, rapt as a squire hearing of war. Aemond imagined, briefly, what that look would become with a blade set beneath the boy’s chin. He reached for his cup instead.

“He is gentle, in his way.” Addam said.

“All dragons are gentle until they are not,” Aemond interrupted.

The words came out flat, cold. He heard them and did not regret them. Addam straightened. “Yes, my prince.”

Lucerys said nothing, but his look reproached him.

Good, Aemond thought. Look at me.

He did not like the thought. It was too needy. Too much like the boy he had been, standing in the shadows of the Red Keep, watching his father love someone else.

The next days were worse.

Lucerys showed Addam Driftmark.

Aemond saw them in the yard at dawn, Lucerys pointing toward the shipyards while Addam listened with his hands clasped behind his back. The morning wind pulled Lucerys’s cloak tight against him and set his curls dancing at his cheek. Addam watched his face as much as the ships. Aemond stood at an upper window and noticed this because it was sensible to notice possible disloyalty.

He saw them at the harbour, Addam leaning close over a tide chart as Lucerys explained currents and safe channels. Their heads bent together, dark and silver, almost touching. Lucerys’s finger traced inked lines across the parchment. Addam followed with the obedient focus of a hound.

Always too close.

He saw them from the terrace, walking the sea wall together, Lucerys laughing at something Addam said. The sound carried upward on the wind and struck Aemond in the chest.

He did not move.

A prince did not hurry down steps because his husband laughed with another man. A prince did not bristle because some legitimised bastard had purple eyes and the sense to look at Lucerys as though he were made of light.

Aemond was neither fool nor child.

He remained where he was and watched until they disappeared beneath the arch.

Dark and silver.

Salt and smoke.

Aemond stood in the shadow of the archway with Aemma in his arms and watched them again that afternoon. He had not sought them out. He had merely taken the child for air and happened upon a clear view of the lower yard, where Lucerys stood with Addam beside a model of a new hull.

“He stands too close,” Aemond told her.

Aemma blinked.

“Yes. I see you agree.”

Below, Lucerys touched Addam’s sleeve to draw his attention to something on the water.

Aemond went still.

It was nothing. A guiding touch, brief, careless.

Lucerys touched many people. Sailors, servants, lords, children. He had a way of making men believe they had been seen. It was one of the reasons Driftmark loved him.

Aemond had never objected to Driftmark loving him.

Driftmark did not have purple eyes and Seasmoke.

Lucerys smiled again. Addam dipped his head, listening, silver hair slipping forward over one shoulder. The sight was handsome enough to be offensive. Aemond could not decide whether the gods had meant to mock him or test him.

Perhaps both.

Aemma began chewing on the edge of his collar.

“You must not take this calmly,” he said to her. “There are standards to uphold.”

She drooled on him.

“A poor show.”

Lucerys looked up then, as if he had felt Aemond’s gaze hook into his skin. Across the yard, through rain-hazed air and drifting gull-cries, his face changed. The smile he gave him faded into something smaller and more private.

There. That was better.

Aemond did not smile back. He was not so easily soothed.

That evening, Lucerys came to their chamber smelling of rain.

Aemond sat by the window, sharpening a dagger with slow strokes. Aemma slept in the cradle, one fist raised beside her head as though she had fallen in battle. The chamber was dim, lit by fire and three candles guttering in the salt wind that slipped through the shutters. Outside, the sea worried at the rocks below. Inside, Aemond worried at the blade.

There was order in it. Steel, oil, stone. A clean edge made cleaner. A task that answered touch with sense.

Unlike husbands.

Lucerys drew off his gloves by the door. His hair had come loose from its braid, dark curls damp from rain and clinging to his temples, his cheeks, the long line of his throat. His cloak was wet at the shoulders. His mouth was pink from the cold. He looked wind-tossed and bright-eyed, like some sea-spirit dragged laughing from a storm.

Aemond did not look long.

He looked exactly long enough to know he ought to stop.

“Addam learns quickly,” Lucerys said.

The whetstone dragged once down the blade.

“Most men do when raised far above their station.”

Lucerys, who had been undressing for bed, stopped with one sleeve half drawn off. One bare shoulder showed in the candlelight, smooth and warm against the pale linen bunched at his elbow. “Must you?”

Aemond kept his eye on the dagger. “I was praising him.”

“No, you were sharpening your teeth.”

“They require little sharpening.”

Lucerys’s mouth twitched.

That was worse than a rebuke. Aemond preferred rebuke. This little almost-smile, this private amusement, slipped beneath armour like a fine knife.

Lucerys finished drawing off the sleeve and let the outer garment fall to the chair. Beneath it, his shirt hung loose at the throat, damp where the rain had touched him. The fire caught on the hollow of his collarbone. Aemond had put his mouth there often enough to know the exact place where Lucerys’s breath would hitch.

A useless recollection.

Aemond set his jaw.

Lucerys came to him, bare feet soundless on the floor. “He is alone here.”

“He has a dragon. A name. A place at your table. He suffers greatly.”

“He had none of those a moon ago.”

“And now he has all. A tale fit for singers. Shall I summon one?”

Lucerys stopped before him. “My favour too?”

Aemond heard the trap and stepped into it anyway. “Plainly.”

Lucerys studied him. Rain still clung to his lashes. It made his eyes look darker, more dangerous. “You have been watching.”

“I watch many things.”

“You watch him.”

“I distrust him.”

“You watch me with him.”

Aemond set the whetstone down. “You flatter yourself.”

“I need not.” Lucerys's smile widened. “You do it for me badly enough.”

Aemond rose.

He did it slowly, because if he moved too quickly it would confess something. Anger, perhaps. Desire, more likely. Lucerys stood close enough that Aemond could smell the rain in his hair and beneath it the familiar warmth of his skin. There were men who called Lucerys slight. They were fools. There was nothing slight in the way he held a room, or held Aemond’s stare.

Lucerys should have retreated. He did not. His dark eyes held Aemond's with infuriating steadiness. The firelight caught the gold flecks in his irises, the small, knowing curve of his mouth.

“You are jealous,” Lucerys said.

The word struck like steel on stone.

Aemond smiled without warmth. “Of a bastard of Hull?”

“Of Addam.”

“I do not trouble myself with his name.”

“You know it well enough to avoid it.”

Aemond stepped closer. “Mind yourself.”

“I am. That is why I say it.”

“He looks at you too long.”

Lucerys blinked. His lashes swept down, then up. “Ah.”

“Do not ‘ah’ at me.”

“He looks at me because I am teaching him.”

“He laughs too readily.”

“Would you prefer he weep?”

Aemond's jaw tightened. “I would prefer he remember his place.”

“And where is that?”

“Not at your shoulder.”

Lucerys’s face softened.

Aemond hated that most of all.

Tenderness was an insult when one wished to be feared. It took all his sharp edges and named them hurt. It looked upon his pride and saw the bruise beneath. Lucerys did that with intolerable ease. He had always done it. Even before the wedding, before Aemma, before this room and this bed and the ring upon his hand, Lucerys had possessed the dreadful habit of looking at Aemond as though he could be understood.

“Aemond,” he said.

“No.”

“You are not being replaced.”

The chamber went very quiet.

Aemond’s throat tightened before he could stop it. Foolish words. Childish words. Beneath him. He had not said them. He would never have said them.

Yet Lucerys had heard them all the same.

“I did not fear such a thing,” Aemond said.

“Of course not.”

“You mistake contempt for fear.”

“I mistake nothing.”

Lucerys’s mouth curved then, slight and wicked. The little beast knew exactly what he was doing. He had heard the truth hidden under Aemond’s teeth and had the gall to be pleased by it.

“You think this amusing?” Aemond asked.

“A little.”

“You are bold tonight.”

“I am often bold.”

“You are often troublesome.”

Lucerys stepped nearer. “And yet you married me.”

Aemond caught his wrist, not hard, but firmly enough to feel the pulse beneath his thumb. It beat quick. Not afraid, then. Or not only afraid.

“I married you,” Aemond said, “because I am a man of grim duty.”

Lucerys’s smile widened. “Is that what it was?”

“Yes.”

“Duty put me in your bed?”

“Among other things.”

“Duty left that mark on my shoulder?”

Aemond’s eye dropped before he could stop it.

The mark was still there, faint beneath the collar of Lucerys’s shirt. A dark bloom made by Aemond’s mouth and teeth, set high enough that only a careless shirt might reveal it. Lucerys had chosen that shirt.

Mischievous wretch.

Aemond’s grip tightened a little. “You should cover yourself.”

“Should I?”

“You are the Lord of the Tides.”

“I thought I was your husband.”

“That is no excuse for disorder.”

“No? I had thought you rather liked disorder when it suited you.”

Aemond bent closer. “Careful.”

Lucerys looked up at him through wet lashes, mouth still curved. “There you are.”

“Where?”

“Sharpening your teeth.”

Aemond should have stepped away. He should have returned to the dagger, to the clean scrape of stone and steel, to anything but the warm pulse beneath his fingers and the dark gleam of amusement in Lucerys’s eyes.

Instead he said, “He wears a false name. He rides a dragon that stirs old ghosts in you. He has Valyrian eyes and silver hair. Men like that become beloved quickly.”

“And you think I am so easily led?”

“I think you are kind.”

Lucerys stilled.

Aemond almost cursed. That had come too near praise.

Lucerys stepped closer until their chests nearly touched. “You think kindness is weakness.”

“I think it is often mistaken for an open gate.”

“And you stand guard?”

“Yes.”

The answer left him bare.

Lucerys looked at him for a long moment. Then that wicked light returned, smaller now, hidden beneath softness. “Then stand guard. But do not bite everyone who approaches the door.”

“I make no such promise.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” Lucerys lifted his free hand and set it against Aemond’s chest, over his heart. “You are not half so hard to read as you wish to be.”

Aemond went still beneath the touch.

Liar, he thought. I am stone. I am steel. I am Vhagar’s rider and my mother’s son.

Lucerys’s thumb moved once over his shirt.

Aemond forgot every word of it.

Aemma woke with a cry.

Aemond released Lucerys and turned at once. “She objects to your command.”

“She is hungry.”

Aemond lifted her from the cradle. Her small face had gone red with outrage, and one fist struck weakly at his collar. “You hear how he reduces your principles to appetite?”

Aemma cried into his chest.

Lucerys laughed softly, coming near. “Give her to me.”

Aemond looked down at the babe. Then at Lucerys. “She prefers me.”

“She prefers milk.”

“Base creature,” he told Aemma, and surrendered her.

Lucerys took her and settled into the chair by the fire. He loosened his shirt enough to feed her, head bending over their daughter. The fire painted his cheek in gold. His hair slipped forward, shadowing his face. Aemma’s tiny hand pressed to his skin, claiming him with more ease than any lord, prince, or dragon ever could.

Aemond turned toward the window, as courtesy demanded.

But not before he saw the gentleness of his hands, the curve of Aemma’s small body against him, the weariness at the corner of his mouth. Lucerys bowed over their daughter. His shirt slipped lower as Aemma settled, and he paid it no mind.

Aemond paid it mind.

He paid it too much mind.

His, though not as swords were his, or Vhagar’s great saddle beneath his hand. Those could be lost, stolen, broken, won back. Lucerys was worse. Lucerys had entered the blood.

Aemond looked out at the black window and saw only their reflection in the glass. Lucerys by the fire, beautiful and half undone, Aemma tucked against him like a pearl in a shell, and himself standing behind them like some tall, dark curse that had somehow been invited in and kept.

He wondered whether Addam of Hull had noticed how Lucerys smiled when pleased. How his nose wrinkled when he found something amusing but wished to hide it. How he drew his lower lip between his teeth when reading reports he disliked.

Of course he had noticed.

Men had eyes.

Aemond’s mouth twisted.

Some had two.

The next morning, Aemond found Addam alone in the yard.

Seasmoke circled above the cliffs, pale wings flashing through mist. Addam stood watching him, silver hair loose in the wind, face lifted as if in prayer. The sight would have pleased singers. A dragonrider newly made, fair as old Valyria, salt-born and silver-crowned beneath a stormy sky.

Aemond found it excessive.

He approached without sound.

Addam turned and bowed. “My prince.”

Aemond looked him over. “You stand poorly.”

Addam’s brows rose. “My prince?”

“With your weight in your heels. Any man could knock you flat.”

Addam blinked, then adjusted his stance.

“Worse,” Aemond said.

The boy tried again.

“Less worse.”

Addam’s mouth twitched, but he was wise enough not to smile.

Aemond looked toward Seasmoke. “He has accepted you.”

“I hope so.”

“Hope is for men without dragons.”

Addam lowered his gaze, taking that in as if it were instruction. “Then I will remember it.”

Aemond found that annoying. Humility sat better on him than it ought.

“You will not shame him,” Aemond said.

“No, my prince.”

“You will not shame Lucerys.”

Addam’s face changed at once. Earnest again. Fierce, even. “Never, my prince. I swear it.”

Aemond disliked that answer most of all because he believed it.

Ambition could be cut down. Insolence could be corrected. Devotion endured beatings, hunger, distance, and contempt. Aemond knew this because he had made a study of it in himself. Had he not shaped his whole body into proof? Had he not sharpened every insult into a weapon, every want into discipline? Had he not loved Lucerys first through hatred, then through marriage, then through the unbearable quiet of a sleeping babe between them?

Aemond looked at Addam and saw, not himself, but some lesser, warmer imitation.

He disliked the boy more for it.

“Prince Lucerys has shown me more honour than I deserve,” Addam said. “I know what men whisper. I know what I am.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“And what is that?”

Addam looked up. “A man given more than he expected,” he said. “And bound to prove he was not wrongly chosen.”

Aemond stared at him.

Something in his chest shifted.

“See that you do,” Aemond said.

He turned to leave.

“My prince?”

Aemond paused.

“Prince Lucerys speaks highly of you.”

Aemond’s eye narrowed. “Does he.”

“He said no man holds Driftmark steadier in a storm.”

Aemond said nothing.

“He said you are the finest sword he has ever seen.”

“That is plainly true.”

Addam looked startled, then smiled despite himself. “And,” he added, foolishly brave, “he said you look after him better than anyone.”

Aemond’s breath caught.

“He said that?”

Addam nodded. “Yes, my prince.”

Aemond looked toward the terrace. Lucerys was not there, but Aemond imagined him too easily: dark hair unbound in the sea wind, eyes bright, mouth curved with secrets he pretended not to keep.

Traitorous, lovely thing.

“He speaks too freely,” Aemond said.

“I thought it kind.”

“Of course you did.”

Addam lowered his eyes again, wisely silent.

Aemond left before the boy could make himself more tolerable.

Lucerys was waiting on the terrace with Aemma in his arms. Wind tugged at his dark hair. The babe slept against him, faithless and content. Lucerys wore a dark blue cloak clasped with silver, and the colour made his skin seem warmer, his eyes deeper. The wind had reddened his mouth.

Aemond noticed all of it with grim displeasure.

“Well?” Lucerys asked.

Aemond took Aemma from him. “He is not entirely useless.”

Lucerys’s smile bloomed. “High praise.”

It was. Unfortunately.

“Do not grow proud on his behalf.”

“I would not dare.”

“You already have.”

“Have I?”

“Yes.”

Lucerys leaned one hip against the stone rail. “And what of it?”

Aemond looked at him.

There was the mischief again. Small, bright, merciless. Lucerys knew him. Knew the wound and pressed near it, not to hurt, but to prove he was trusted close enough to touch. His curls blew across his face. He did not push them back. He let Aemond suffer the sight of him.

“He stands like an untrained hound,” Aemond said.

“Will you tell him so?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And I will correct it.”Aemond shifted Aemma to his other arm, using her as a shield against the warmth in Lucerys's eyes. It did not work. Aemma was small and warm and smelled of milk, but Lucerys was Lucerys, and no infant could protect him from that.

Lucerys's smile became dangerous.

“How generous.”

“It is not generosity. It is necessity. If he is to skulk about your island with a dragon, he will at least stand properly.”

“My island?”

Aemond looked at him. The wind had reddened Lucerys's cheeks. His eyes were bright with amusement. His lips were parted, just slightly, as if he were about to say something teasing. “Our island.”

Lucerys’s face softened again.

Aemond braced himself too late. That look was worse than mischief. Mischief stirred his blood. Tenderness did something more ruinous.

“You are improving,” Lucerys said.

“I have never required improvement.”

“You were glaring at Addam less today.”

“I was studying his weaknesses.”

“And did you find many?”

“Several.”

“Will you list them?”

“When I have fewer pleasant things to do.”

Lucerys glanced at Aemma asleep in Aemond’s arms. Then back up at him, lashes lowered. “Pleasant things?”

Aemond’s eye narrowed. “Do not preen.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“Perhaps a little.”

“Shameless.”

Lucerys laughed, and the sound moved through him like a blade warming in the hand. Aemond shifted Aemma carefully to one arm, then caught Lucerys by the waist with the other and drew him closer.

Only because the wind was cold.

Only because Addam stood below in the yard and might look up.

Lucerys came willingly, which made all Aemond’s reasons unnecessary. He settled against Aemond’s side as if the place had been cut for him.

Below them, Seasmoke swept over the water, pale as a blade in fog. Far beyond, Vhagar lay among the dunes like a mountain dreaming of slaughter.

“Does it still hurt?” Lucerys asked.

Aemond knew what he meant.

The eye. The memory. The boy with the knife. The new rider with the old dragon. All of it knotted together beneath his ribs.

He looked down at Aemma. She slept with her fist curled in his tunic, as if keeping him from flight.

“Yes,” he said.

Lucerys leaned into his side. “I am sorry.”

Aemond did not answer at once.

The apology was old. The wound was old. Neither had dulled enough. Perhaps they never would. Perhaps marriage did not make saints of men, nor love wash blood from memory. Perhaps it only set a warm hand over the scar and made the pain bearable without making it gone.

You took my eye, he thought. And I took your youth, your freedom, your future. We are even.

Below, Addam called to Seasmoke. The dragon answered, bright and mournful over the sea.

Aemond’s arm tightened around Lucerys before he thought better of it. His hand closed at Lucerys’s waist.

“I know,” he said at last.

Lucerys rested his head against Aemond’s shoulder.

Aemond lowered his face just enough to breathe him in. Rain. Salt. Warm skin. His. The thought came again, savage and simple, and this time he did not correct it.

Aemma stirred between them, making a cross little sound.

“Yes,” Aemond murmured to her. “Your mother remains too kind. We shall endure it.”

Lucerys laughed, warm against him.

“I heard what you told Addam,” Aemond said.

Lucerys went still for half a breath. “Which part?”

“That I hold Driftmark steady.”

“That is true.”

“That I am the finest sword you have seen.”

“That is also true.”

Aemond looked down at him. “That I look after you better than anyone.”

Lucerys’s eyes lifted. Mischief again. Softened, but not gone. “Did he tell you that?”

“He did.”

“Then perhaps Addam is useful after all.”

Aemond stared at him.

Lucerys smiled.

Aemond bent and kissed him, not gently enough for a terrace, not deeply enough for a bedchamber, but with sufficient clarity that any bastard, servant, gull, god, or dragon watching might understand the matter.

When he drew back, Lucerys’s cheeks were flushed.

“Was that for me,” Lucerys asked, “or for the yard?”

Aemond looked out over the water. “Do not ask foolish questions.”

Lucerys’s laugh brushed his throat.