Chapter Text
Of all the possible parties waiting for him in the harbour, the last person Lucerys had expected was Jacaerys. Even from the passerelle he could sense his brother’s impatience, the tap of his foot against the stone in the jetty and though he couldn’t make it out from this distance, the beginnings of a frown already marring his pretty face.
For an alpha he was not particularly tall nor had he ever developed the formidable frame of their father, but when Lucerys had come down to finally embrace him, he had to admit to himself a disgruntled Jacaerys was still an imposing sight.
“You’re late,” is the first thing out of his brother’s mouth as they part.
“Only by a few days,” Luke laughs, ashamed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to come, or to make haste on this particular occasion, only that whenever he was tasked to return to King’s Landing he found himself avoidant en route, no matter the urgency.
Jace’s lips form a petulant pout, “I’d have thought in this case, you would return with more imperative.” He sniffs, “We’ve been waiting, you know. Mother especially, with bated breath. The funeral rites have been delayed for you alone, brother.” He shuffles, looking at his feet, “And for what it’s worth, I’ve missed you too.”
It’s a surprise to hear. They’d seen each other more frequently than most, only a little while ago in the free cities and under different circumstances.“I’d have thought you’d be too busy to do that,” Luke admits. He looks over the healthy sheen in Jace’s curls and fine embroidery of his collar — despite all his complaints it seemed that King’s Landing suited him well enough. “I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow.” And feels embarrassed suddenly of the scruff on his boots and the rough doublet on his back, “I’d have worn something nicer.”
He gets an elbow to the ribs for that. Then another furtive hug. When they’d last met in Lysenian pillow house, Jacaerys had been much more eager for affection. Now, Lucerys is taken under the crook of his brother’s arm and Jace gives him a playful tug to the hair. A reprimand, and a reminder of their younger days when he was not so gentle.
“I’m not king yet, but rest assured that when I am brother, you will be forced to wear a pretty dress and return my letters.”
The sun is heavy over the cobblestone in King’s Landing and Jacaerys has two smooth-gaited palfreys for waiting, so much nicer than Lucerys’ usual stots and they’re loaded with goatskins filled to the brim with dornish red to tempt him into submission. It works a treat, and he doesn’t complain about the unceremonious way he is jostled onto them though he still insists they take the long way through River Row and Jace visibly drimaces at the development.
“Do you intend to stop at every tavern until sundown?” he asks, as they enter Eel Alley, so notorious for the escapades of Viserra Targaryen the night before her death.
“Just the raucous ones,” Lucerys says. Truly, he is not so thirsty to drink as he is to avoid any acquaintance with the occupants of The Keep. “Come. You must have questions, as I do for you. And Maegor’s Strongfast is not the place to ask them.”
If he’d hazard a guess, he suspects that Jacaerys is less disapproving of their delay as he is of anyone of omega disposition frequenting such establishments — no matter how liberated he considers Lucerys. He keeps his disdain to himself mostly, though the thin line of his lips grows thinner until they are seated on the sweaty stools of a quiet alcove just shy of the growing crowds of fishmongers, and Luke orders a flagon of strong black ale.
“You’d drink less if you saw how Aegon’s turned out,” Jacaerys snaps finally, when the barmaid leaves them to their own devices. “He is nearing his twentieth nameday and already the court whispers that his womb is as dead as Balerion.”
“And I’ve a near decade on him, so I wonder what they must think of me?” Lucerys strums his fingers along the rough wood. He’d hoped they would have more to say to each other after so many months apart. His brother’s chiding comes from a place of love and worry, this he knows, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. After three years of travel from the Narrow Sea to the Summer Isles it is hard to take orders from anyone, and no amount of alpha condescension seems to be able to temper him of late.
Jace moves uncomfortably in his seat. “Do not beg me for compliments. You are aware of the effect you have on people. Hardly a day passes that I do not have a letter asking for your hand.”
It’s a wild exaggeration but Lucerys appreciates it all the same. Though offers of marriage had become less frequent to him of late, or perhaps he’d grown more dismissive of their presence, but the phenomenon Jacaerys spoke of colored most of his youth on Dragonstone after his presentation. He prefers it as it is now, the sailors on his ships are hardened by war and experience and while he may dabble in the pleasures of the flesh with alpha and beta alike, none have had the nerve to force a serious connection.
“How is Aegon?” he asks distractedly, keen to shift the subject off himself. “When I had left he was quite well-formed? Does he have any serious contenders?”
His brother coughs and Lucerys realises he has stumbled from one sensitive topic to another.
“When did you last see him?” Jacaerys does his best to sound as noncommittal as possible but the twitch of his mouth betrays him once more.
“He must have been seven and ten,” Luke calculates though his memory is hazy. “He was comely if I recall, though something of a terror. I’m surprised some soft-hearted lord hasn’t taken him to wife yet, despite your insinuations that he drinks like a fish.”
The barmaid brings their ale and Jacaerys shushes Luke with a glance. They watch her leave in silence and only when she is clear of the curtain does Jace take a swig and sigh. “His reputation has not improved. I fear he is beyond redemption.”
Lucerys cannot help but perk up at that, “The old mothballs at court despise seeing an omega unfettered by propriety. He smiles cheerfully at Jace’s peevish expression, “This I’ve always known,” and raises his glass in mock salute at the words, “You cannot fault him for not following in his mother’s footsteps.”
His brother rolls his eyes and his hands clasp the ale primly as he takes a swig. “Where you were— are — free-spirited, Aegon has made it his mission to shirk decency altogether.” He shoots a hardened look at Lucerys. “You think I say this to pass judgement on him but he has none of your wealth or inheritance. He must marry and marry well if he wishes to maintain his position in life.”
“Are Hightower coffers running dry?”
A smidgen of what may be glee flits across his brother’s face, but it is gone just as quickly as it had emerged. “Alicent has found that sowing seeds of discord amongst the higher lords is not as profitable an enterprise as she may have thought.” Jace sniffs with dignity, “It’s rather more dire than I may have made it out to be in my letters.”
The alcove in which they break bread is at the very back wing of the tavern with only a singular tallow candle to light the contours of Jacaerys’ face. He leans closer to Luke looking grim as the light casts an unflattering pall across his furrow in his forehead. “So much so that Otto Hightower had proposed that Larys Strong marry Helaena.”
“And?” Lucerys asks.
“And… she had accepted.” Jacaerys fiddles with the drink in his hand, “I would not wish ill on our kin, but it is a mercy for her that our uncle now lies with the silent sisters.”
Lucerys nods, processing this new information. “He would have made for a most unkind husband.”
The rowdy occupants of the tavern around them grow louder as their drink gets stronger. There’s more Luke would like to say but doesn’t feel that he has the right to say it. He’s been so absent from their lives that their faces form a hazy blur in his memory. Here in the centre of the heat, the boiling core of King’s Landing, he’s starting to remember things he’d rather remain lost.
“And what of the other Hightowers?”
“I wonder which one you refer to specifically.”
“They are one and the same to me.”
“Lucerys, come now—”Jacaerys had more to say, Lucerys is sure of it, but the tavern grew louder with each flagon poured and the tension between them, which had momentarily softened under the veil of brotherhood, began to settle once more—thick and unspoken. He watched his brother retreat behind a familiar mask of responsibility, mouth taut, brow darkened by what he refused to say aloud.
Outside, King’s Landing pulsed with the life he remembered and the rot he had forgotten. The cobbled streets sweated under the weight of sun and sin and the air was thick with the breath of too many people pressed too closely together. The gold cloaks moved like phantoms between crowds, and everywhere, it seemed, the eyes on him lingered just a touch too long.
Lucerys hated that he could still feel them—the eyes of the court. Even here. Even now.
They left the tavern by the back door, Jace unusually quiet as they mounted. Lucerys had not the heart to jest with him again. He knew that heaviness in his brother’s silence well; it came like a second shadow, trailing the scent of old grief and duty. But the ale was warm in his belly and the sun had softened at last into the kind of gold that turned stone streets into fire.
As they approached the Red Keep, Lucerys found his fingers tightening on the reins. The walls loomed larger than he remembered, and with each step, the years peeled away like petals, revealing the thorn beneath.
He had not been entirely honest in his indifference, though Jacaerys did not have to know the extent of it. Lucerys thought about Aemond more often than he should like though it must have been now eight years past that they had spoken. They’d shared no correspondence either, not a word, apart from the passing referencing in his brother’s letters. It had suited him fine, for the most part. What was there to be said? When last he’d looked upon Aemond, the boy had been eleven—cold, spare of build, with a scowl that looked too large for his thin face and an arrogance that flared bright and brittle as a blade unsheathed too often. His voice had cracked halfway through a toast. His hair was a little too short, as though shorn off his head in punishment. He’d worn his resentment to all like a cloak. Lucerys had found him unremarkable at best. Boring, at worst. He had declined their union formally with a letter barely longer than a verse.
He did not expect to think of him at all now.
But the gods—cruel as they were—had other plans.
It was Jacaerys who suggested they take the detour through the training yard. “There’s a tourney in Corlys’ honor,” he explained. “The knights are restless. A good show might put the court in higher spirits.”
Lucerys didn’t much care about the jousts, but the yard offered a quicker route through the stone maze of the Keep. And so, unthinking, he followed.
They heard the clash before they saw it—the sharp ring of metal against armor, followed by a roar from the small crowd gathered around the spectacle. The sound split the air like a whip, and Jace urged his mount forward with a grin. “Just in time, I think,” he called over his shoulder.
Lucerys pulled his palfrey beside him, peering over the heads of the assembled squires, some of whom turned at the sight of his face and whispered to each other behind their hands. And there, in the center of it all, atop a black destrier the color of storm clouds, was the man who should have remained a boy.
Aemond.
Lucerys’s breath stuttered in his throat. He might not have recognized him at all, if not for the long braid of moon-pale hair whipping behind him and the gleam of that sapphire eye—eerily still amid the thunder of hooves.
Gone was the thin, petulant youth he remembered. The boy he had dismissed so easily.In his place stood something carved from fire and fury. Aemond moved like a predator—lithe and lethal, each motion a calculated promise. His armor was black chased in Hightower green, high at the collar and fitted like it had been forged onto him by a smith who had known desire. The sword he bore struck with brutal precision, and when it shattered against his opponent’s shield, the gathering erupted like a tide breaking against rocks.
Lucerys could only stare.
His heart fluttered, then twisted—something sharp blooming in his chest. He felt as though he were watching a dream he had once had and then forgotten about entirely. How strange, to feel something like regret for a rejection he had always thought just. For a boy he had never wanted.
And yet, there it was—that flicker of envy, absurd and undignified, for the way Aemond carried himself now. For the admiration in the eyes of the men around him. For the way he turned his destrier with the ease of someone who knew he belonged at the center of every gaze. And when Aemond removed his helmet, hair damp with sweat and falling loose from the braid, Lucerys felt the air rush out of him all at once.
He was beautiful.
Frighteningly so.
That long, solemn face had matured into something regal—almost cruel in its perfection. The scar, long healed, only sharpened the planes of his cheekbone. His good eye was a pale, smoldering violet. The sapphire in his other socket glinted like a piece of sky captured in frost.
There was no question now of who, between them, had miscalculated. Lucerys sat motionless atop his mount, lost in the strange, bitter pleasure of watching the boy he’d once pitied become a man that made his mouth go dry.
“I see you’ve noticed,” Jacaerys said quietly, with a note of amusement Lucerys wished he could swat away like a fly. “Not quite the runt anymore.”
“No,” Lucerys said, his voice low. “He’s not.”
Aemond had dismounted now, and the surrounding men clapped his shoulders, murmuring praises he didn’t seem to hear. He was looking elsewhere, across the yard, the helmet tucked under his arm.
Their eyes met and Lucerys felt it in his chest like a blow. Aemond did not smile, nor did he scowl. There was no trace of anger on his face. No disdain. Only a long, considering look. As though he were trying to solve a puzzle he couldn’t quite place. As though Lucerys were a letter received in the wrong season. He inclined his head, once. The gesture was cool and courteous.
Lucerys felt heat rise in his cheeks—absurd, given the armor and the audience and the distance between them.
“He doesn’t look surprised to see me,” he murmured.
“No,” Jace said, voice unreadable. “He wouldn’t be.”
Lucerys forced himself to look away.
That night, alone in the chambers assigned to him, he sat by the window and let the city hum beneath him. The breeze smelled of horse sweat and lavender, of the sea pressing up against the gates of the city. He thought of Aemond. Of his silence. Of his stillness. Of how little he had seemed to care that Lucerys had returned.
He had not come to King’s Landing looking for romance. Certainly not for Aemond. He had expected stiffness, maybe indifference. An awkward reunion followed by polite avoidance. He had not been prepared for this strange ache at the base of his throat. Perhaps he had been wrong to turn him away all those years ago. Perhaps he had mistaken youth for weakness, and quiet for blandness. Clearly, Aemond had been made to shine in the darkness he’d been given, and Lucerys had been too foolish to see it.
But he saw it now.
And though it shamed him to admit it, something in him stirred with the desire to undo that old dismissal. To trace that scarred cheek with his fingers and see what it would take to make that mouth soften.
Aemond might not want him now. That much was clear but Lucerys was a Velaryon. He had never lost anything without a fight. And if there was even the smallest chance, then he’d see what the dragon thought of being pursued.
Morning in King’s Landing arrived like a tide, slow and inescapable, filling every alleyway and court with light too gold to be real. The city breathed beneath a veil of smoke and heat, a thousand hearths and cookfires stirring the air with the scent of rosemary. From the window of his chambers, Lucerys could see the Keep spreading out in sandstone and shadow, its towers rising like fingers into the already warming sky.
The bells of the Sept rang in the distance, a deep, sonorous knell that vibrated against his ribs. Below, the courtyards began to stir—squires fetching water, maids shaking out linens, merchants rolling their carts through the gate with the creaking urgency of men hoping to earn their copper before the day grew too hot to bargain.
Lucerys watched it all with something like reverence and a touch of melancholy. He had never loved this city, not truly, not in the way that Jacaerys had grown to respect its ancient sprawl and layered power. But now, after so long in the wind-tossed courts of the Stepstones and the quiet elegance of the Summer Isles, there was a kind of splendor to King's Landing he had not known how to see before. It was a city made of contradictions: grand and squalid, holy and debauched, brimming with both the perfume of wealth and the rot of ambition. A place where dragons had danced and bled.
And somewhere within it, now, was Aemond.
Lucerys had not slept well. The sheets felt too clean, the air too thick, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw that unreadable expression staring back at him from across the training yard.
He had not expected to be so shaken. The memories of the boy he had once dismissed were stubborn things but wholly unimpressive. But Aemond was no longer that boy. He moved like a man who had nothing to prove and everything to lose, and Lucerys could not stop thinking about him. He could not stop wondering what it would feel like to reach across that distance and tell him of his regret.
It was, perhaps, a foolish thing to want but Lucerys had always had a little foolishness in him, and he had not come this far to be so careful.
He dressed with care that morning, though he told himself he was not trying too hard. It would be too obvious to wear an omega gown, he reasoned, so he chose a tunic of dark velvet green that brought out the softness of his eyes, embroidered with subtle silver threads around the cuffs and collar. His boots were polished. His hair, always unruly, had been coaxed into loose waves that hung just shy of his shoulders. He smelled faintly of sandalwood and lemon balm and the effect, he hoped, was one of relaxed elegance. He would not beg for attention, but if Aemond were to glance at him and hesitate for a heartbeat longer than usual, that would be enough.
Jacaerys had gone early to council, leaving Lucerys to wander. He did not yet have a place in the morning’s politics, and in truth, he was grateful for it. His heart would not have borne the weight of diplomacy with the memory of Aemond’s steady, silent gaze still coiling around his ribs.
Instead, he allowed himself to walk.
The Red Keep was a labyrinth he had not tread in years, its halls made of chill stone and murmuring shadows. Every corner whispered of the happy past he had spent here—of childhood games played under carved windows, of arguments in corridors that now seemed far too narrow for such passions. He passed knights and stewards and lords who greeted him with measured deference, but he barely heard them.
He was looking for Aemond almost on some sort of instinct and did not have to look long.
He found him near the stables, inspecting a new mare that had just arrived from Oldtown. The beast was a striking thing—sleek, black, with a silver mane that mirrored the rider who stood before it. Aemond was in his riding leathers, the cut of them unforgiving and tailored with exacting care. His braid was tighter than it had been the day before, and the sheen of sweat on his brow suggested he had already been training.
Lucerys hesitated for a moment, then approached with a step he hoped appeared casual.
“I remember when you couldn’t mount a horse without help,” he said lightly, arms folded behind his back.
Aemond did not turn immediately. He ran a gloved hand down the horse’s flank, murmured something low and private into its ear, and only then glanced over his shoulder. That single sapphire eye gleamed in the sun like cut glass.
“And I remember when even Joffery could best you with a sword,” Aemond replied, voice calm.
Lucerys felt heat rise in his neck, but he smiled. “And now we both manage just fine on our own, how miraculous.”
Aemond turned then, fully, and Lucerys had to fight the instinct to step back. There was something daunting about him up close, not simply in the height or the muscle that clung to him like armor, but in the way he held himself.
“Did you come to watch me ride?” Aemond asked.
Lucerys let out a soft laugh. “If I did, would that offend you?”
“I don’t know,” Aemond said, looking him over. “Are you planning to be offended when I don’t invite you?”
That stung a little more than Lucerys expected. He tilted his head, smile still in place. “I had forgotten how charming you could be.”
“I’m sure you forget a great many things,” Aemond replied. “I imagine that comes quite easy for you.”
Lucerys took a breath. It would not do to rise to the bait so easily. He had come here with a purpose and he would not be swayed by a few barbed words.
“I came,” he said more softly, “because I wanted to see you.”
Aemond’s expression did not change. He looked at Lucerys like he might look at a particularly interesting animal—one he didn’t trust or perhaps one he didn’t like.
“And what is it you see?” Aemond asked.
Lucerys met his gaze, heart beginning to beat too fast. “A man I might have misjudged.”
Aemond’s jaw shifted slightly. His eye flicked across Lucerys’s face—taking in the eyes, the mouth, the careful tunic. He did not seem impressed by the presentation.
“I don’t need your judgment,” he said quietly. “Or your regret.”
“I never said I regretted anything,” Lucerys said, though even he could hear the false note in his voice.
“No?” Aemond stepped closer, and Lucerys realized too late how much taller he had grown. How much more he was. “For that would be beneath you, my Lord Strong.”
Lucerys felt his smile falter. “No,” he said, suddenly unsure of everything. “Just… I thought perhaps we might start over.”
Aemond was quiet for a long moment. Then, with a nod to the groom behind him, he turned back to the horse. “You’re not the first person to want something from me, Lucerys,” he said, voice measured. “And you won’t be the last. You’ll enjoy your Driftmark spoils soon enough, nephew, and linger not where you are no longer wanted.”
Lucerys stood very still.
The moment passed between them like a shadow cast by a flame, long and dark and uncertain. He left before he could say something foolish in return.
As he walked back through the twisting gardens behind the stables, the perfume of crushed lavender beneath his boots, Lucerys could not quite shake the hollow in his chest. The city around him had never looked more beautiful and yet he had never felt so thoroughly ignored. He had imagined, perhaps, that charm would be enough. That Aemond would remember the omega who once made him blush, or at least entertain the idea of something more than swords and silence.
But that boy was gone and Aemond, the one who met his gaze with stony silence was not a man who bent easily. Not to memory or to beauty.
Not even to him.
It had snowed the night before, a rare occurrence for King’s Landing, and the courtyards of the Red Keep lay powdered in silver light, as if the old gods had passed overhead in the dark and whispered a temporary hush upon the world. The garden in the east wing—the one no longer tended by the older maesters—was half-drowned in snowdrift and framed by the sleeping tangle of vines that would, in spring, burst again into ivy and rose.
Lucerys stood in the heart of that winter, one gloved hand on the twisted railing of the balustrade, watching his breath curl into the air. He wore a cloak of ash-grey velvet, heavy with fox fur around the collar, and beneath it, his doublet was embroidered with thread-of-silver and seafoam green—an echo of his house, and more importantly, of himself. He had always known how to dress, how to catch a certain kind of light and command a certain kind of gaze.
His mother had told him he was beautiful and the world had never made to contradict her.
Now standing on the edge of the world made white with snow, he heard the hesitant scrape of boots behind him.
He did not need to turn to know who it was.
Aemond had a certain way of walking, even then—careful, deliberate, as if every step might give him away. He was small, of course at eleven and wiry, all elbows and silence, a boy who grew too fast in too many directions and had not yet found how to make himself handsome in the eyes of others. His face was palid and his hair fell wrong, always a little too flat or a little too frizzy and he wore black that morning, as he always did, with his hands clenched in his sleeves like he was trying to stop them from trembling.
Lucerys turned slowly, letting the moment stretch, letting Aemond feel the full weight of his gaze. He did not smile at him.
“I thought you hated the cold,” he said at last.
“I wanted to see you,” Aemond said, and the words sounded like they cost him everything.
Lucerys blinked, lashes damp from snow. “That’s dangerous talk.”
Aemond stepped forward, just once, boots crunching faintly in the frost. “I mean it.”
Lucerys tilted his head. “I know you do.”
There was something tragic about him, standing there in his too-large coat and his too-small courage, with his one good eye fixed on Lucerys as though he were looking at the sun through a crack in a ruined sept.
Lucerys let the silence build. He could feel it, thrumming with possibility. The wind caught a strand of Aemond’s hair and dragged it across his cheek, and he reached up to tuck it away, only to freeze when Lucerys moved—not much, just a breath forward.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Lucerys said, his voice low. “You’ll catch something.”
“I don’t care,” Aemond replied, sharper than before. “I had to come.”
“And why is that?” Lucerys already knew. Of course he knew but the prideful side of him wanted to hear it.
Aemond looked at him like someone preparing to leap off a cliff. “Because I love you.”
Lucerys was silent.
It hung there between them like a sword suspended by a single hair. For a moment, neither of them moved. The snow whispered down through the air in slow, delicate spirals, as if the world itself were holding its breath.
Then Lucerys laughed. Not cruelly—at first. It came unbidden, a surprised, almost gentle sound. But it grew, sharpened it’s way through his chest like wine.
"You love me?” he repeated, with a smile like frostbite. “Gods, Aemond. Do you even know what that means?”
Aemond flinched but he stood his ground. “I do.”
Lucerys stepped forward then, one gloved finger lifting to trace the edge of Aemond’s jaw—just barely, not enough to be a touch, but enough to remind them both of what could never be.
“You’re very young,” he said, “and you’ve always been sweet, in your way. But love?” He leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. “You don’t know what love is, Aemond. You only know what it is to want. And you want too much.”
“You,” Aemond said, so quietly Lucerys almost didn’t hear it. “I want you.”
Lucerys sighed, and this time there was no humor in it, only a weary kind of disdain.
“No, you want an idea of me,” he said, stepping back. “You want something to chase, something to worship, because you think if I loved you, it would mean you were worth something.”
Aemond’s eye burned. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Lucerys replied, and now the cruelty came, smooth as silk. “You are not an alpha, not really. You’re just a boy who stole Vhagar who hopes people will think it makes him dangerous. And I—” he shook his head, voice soft and final— “I could never love someone like you.”
There it was.
The fracture and the subsequent break. For his merit, Aemond’s face did not change, not immediately, but Lucerys saw the blow land all the same. It showed in the infinitesimal way his shoulders drew back as if bracing against wind. His thin lips parted, just slightly, and then pressed into a line of steel.
“Then I’m sorry I said anything,” Aemond murmured. “It won’t happen again.”
Lucerys said nothing. He watched as Aemond turned and walked away, boots dragging in the snow like someone retreating from battle. The snow gathered in his hair and on his shoulders, making him look, for a brief and tragic instant, like a statue left out in the cold too long.
Only when he was gone did Lucerys let out a steady breath. He told himself it had been necessary. That it had been kind, in its own way. It was better to break a heart quickly than let it rot from false hope. He told himself he had done the right thing.
And yet—
When he looked down, he saw his own footprints in the snow, circling Aemond’s. A perfect constellation of proximity that had never quite become touch. He closed his eyes and let the cold bite his lashes.
It would be years before he understood what he had done.