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When the girl called Nettles disappeared into the blood-soaked dawn, the smallfolk would later tell of the screams of Caraxes. The raw grief that shattered every window in Jonquil’s Tower.
It was sorrow, well and true. But it held no candle to the noise Vhagar made when her master heard tell of his uncle’s revenge.
Helaena Targaryen had learned early the importance of care. The vitality of gentleness and caution.
She was meticulous with her insects, punctual for her lessons. She cut her threads the perfect length and kept her eyes towards the floor when spoken to. She learned to tell of her dreams in whispers for speaking them aloud brought only the heavy gaze of judgment. The heavier presence of fear.
This all made sense to Helaena, even when others couldn’t understand. They dreamt, but only she truly saw.
She loved Aemond the most of her brothers, of her family, for it was he alone that understood her care. He didn’t question her rituals. His love was unconditional, absolute. He indulged Helaena her habits, her patterns. He loved her the more for them. What else could she do in return but to love him with her whole heart?
It was why, when Aemond came to her at night, she was careful with the spy holes she knew existed in her room. Would move furniture to obscure the hidden view, learned the patterns of the servants and the corners to best hide in. It was why, when Aegon came to perform his husbandly duties, she ensured he only ever spilt between her thighs, onto the pale blue of her bedsheets.
Helaena was not Rhaenyra; in many ways, she was her sister’s opposite. Yielding and reserved instead of graceful and assured. A queen by marriage instead of by right. But more careful, more careful by far. (Her dreams were not always a curse.) It was why no one questioned who might have fathered Helaena’s children, the babes who were undoubtedly Targaryen. She would give the realm its heirs, she would care for her subjects, but her body and heart would be her choice to give. That conviction, at least, she was assured in.
Unfortunately, this she inherited from her uncle.
Aemond was not with Helaena that night. He was not in the Red Keep at all. The night that Prince Jaehaerys died, his father was at the Dragonpit.
It was a messenger, one of the Queen’s men, who delivered the news, and while Helaena screamed atop Aegon’s Hill, the screeches of Vhagar tore the city from sleep and shook the Dragonpit to its foundations.
Aemond was not aware that he had cut the messanger down in front of him, blood pooling across the pale sand of the arena while Vhagar’s screams masked his own. A great chasms tearing through his chest blinded him to all else. He had forgotten what it was to lose vision.
Castle servants whispered of what was said when Aemond entered the Red Keep, a storm on his heels and the Stranger in his eye. They spoke of the way his voice echoed throughout the holdfast made from blood.
I will see him burn for this! Daemon and Rhaenyra and all their children. They will suffer for this crime. I will have a blood price. I will see Helaena avenged.
He went to his mother, herself a broken shade, trembling and pale beside the fire, demanding the truth of what happened.
He had taken no milk of the poppy, when the first stitches closed the wound across his face. He leaned into the pain. What good was it, unless he could remember the sting?
Alicent’s voice was shattered, barely more than a whisper.
“No. Aemond, no. I cannot speak of it. You could not bear the knowledge. Do not ask—”
He grabbed at her madly, seeing from her horrified expression the way he must have looked himself.
I pressed into the pain. You taught me how.
“You see the truth of it, mother. Now tell me. Tell me what happened to my son.”
Castle servants could attest to Aegon’s inattentiveness and mistreatment of his wife. For the duration of their marriage, he did not seek her out aside from the insistence of Queen Alicent, made no secret of his brothel visits, openly disparaged her at court.
The same could not be said of his younger brother.
Aemond would sit with Helaena at night, talking about nature and history and the world's mysteries. On his travels, Aemond would find new insects for her collection and, even when he brought back a copy, Helaena would only smile and graciously thank him, her kisses never anything but sweet. A gentler touch he had never known.
It was not surprising, when the Prince guarded Helaena’s door during her labours. Nor that he was one of the first to hold each of her children.
None saw how gently he cradled them all. His pride in Jaehaerys was nothing but an uncle’s affection. He comforted Jaehaera as many did, stopping her tears with ease. On Maelor’s first night of life, Aemond brought him to the window to watch the stars.
If any suspected his affections ran deeper, or that the relation may be more than what it was, they knew it would be treasonous to voice them.
Helaena couldn’t look at him.
He was the only one she trusted in all the world and she could not look at him. She could not hold her children, or even walk on her own.
If he had been there, if he had defended her—
But he hadn’t. And she was ruined because of his actions. Because he was his mother’s son, and memory was easier carried than guilt.
He should have felt shame, but there was nothing in him but rage, and it made a cold pit of where his heart had been.
They apprehended Blood, at the very least.
It was a hollow victory.
Aemond took upon the torturer’s role himself. He did not give the mercenary a quick death, nor an easy one. Every inch of skin flayed, every broken bone, it was but one more coin of penance for the grief brought to his sweet Helaena.
(Aemond took it upon himself to handle Jaehaerys’ body. He was the one that brought his son’s head back, kissed his brow where none could see. His brave, bold son. He would have been a king like no other, for he alone was blessed with Helaena Targaryen as a mother. Instead, Aemond watch as his head was sewn back, the line of stitches horizontal instead of vertical and Aemond wanted to weep over what he had passed down.)
Aemond was glad to leave the stifling walls of the Red Keep, and his voice grew hoarse with mad cries when he and Aegon felled Rhaenys.
They’ll burn. I’ll live long enough to watch them all burn.
But he returned home and still could not rouse Helaena from her anguish. He could not get her to eat, or look at their remaining children. She had been rendered mute, lame. She had once laughed high and bright, atop Dreamfyre, alive and free.
Guilt ate at him, and it was easier to live in denial than face what their family had brought her to.
Aemond took up Aegon’s crown and lived a fantasy where he was the king. Where he had struck his half-sister and her supporters down and ruled with Helaena at his side, the queen she always should have been, gentle and kind, made to temper the worst of him.
But his Jaehaerys was dead, and with him had died the laughter that had once brightened their father’s halls.
He had promised Jaehaerys that he would take him dragonriding. His son had been so excited to fly with him.
Aemond threw himself into strategy and war. It was easy to bring death, it was just to turn violence onto those who had brought it to him.
But could not bring his son back, and Aemond learned what it was to truly hate.
He visited Helaena only briefly before departing for the riverlands.
His words to her were whispered so none could know of the tenderness he was capable of.
She had teased him for it, once.
(Only for her. He could be anything, if only for her.)
“My love. Won’t you turn your gaze to me once more?” But her lilac eyes had grown pale, as if the end of Jaehaerys’ life had stifled her own.
He held her hand, kissing over the veins that glowed against her pale skin, her sickened pallor. The bones of her knuckles prominent in a way they had never been before. She was wasting away in front of him, and Aemond was powerless. Still a boy, angry tears and what he did not have.
“I cannot bring him back, but I will make them regret the day the thought came to them. I will bring you Rhaenyra’s crown and you may take it from her head. I will bring Daemon to you and have him beg your forgiveness before I kill him. I will give you the knife.”
I will give you my vengeance. You deserve it more than I.
His sister remained unmoved, her lips moving voicelessly around words. More of her dreams that he had no mind nor ability to discern. She was almost a stranger to him.
Aemond moved his hands across her cheeks, tidying away tatted and unwashed hair.
“I will return to you. I will always return to you. I will take you to Dragonstone and there we will teach Jaehaera and Maelor how to laugh once more.”
She did not respond to his words. It was like she was already dead.
He could bear no more, and all but ran from the room and Helaena, whose gaze was cast towards the setting sun.
He did not bid farewell to Jaehaera.
Their only daughter who was adrift, bereft of her twin, ignored by her mother. Soon to be forsaken by her father.
Aemond remembered how small she had been. He remembered when the maesters said that she would not live to see the week’s end.
He had the man’s tongue removed, and his daughter proved to be every inch his child as she grew and strengthened. She was his very best creation.
Jaehaera sobbed without sound, playing with her dolls aimlessly at the feet of her grandmother and Aemond could not face her grief, the face so like his love’s in a pain he could not help, but he meet his mother’s eyes and receive her nod of approval.
That dark need for vengeance he had inherited from her.
Barely an hour passed when he was not astride Vhagar, dracarys on his lips and fire in his veins.
Forests disappeared before him. Houses collapsed under the weight of embers.
The riverlands bled and Aemond satisfied himself at night with the thought of his uncle’s death cries
Fool that he was, he thought them safe.
Aemond thought he was numb to grief. Then, they told him of Maelor’s death.
Maelor, who was every inch Helaena’s child, smiling and carefree in a way Aemond had never been. His son who had so much life in him. His son who was but three years old.
Aemond himself sent the raven to Daeron. He gave no instruction but to make another Harrenhal of Bitterbridge.
None of it was enough.
Alys Rivers told him of strange fortunes and dark magic. She was like Helaena in that way. In her understanding of the fey, unseen forces of their world.
In every other way, she was his sister’s opposite.
Not a candle could she hold to Helaena’s beauty, to her kindness. To the sweet way she had read to their father, nor the fullness of her laugh.
(Aemond would beg Jacaerys to dance with Helaena again, if only to see her laugh once more.)
Aegon had been the one to marry Helaena, but that had never prevented Aemond from seeing her as his wife, not his brother’s. And, as expected from a husband, he would keep to his own vows and take none but her.
That was before Alys came to him with queer, wonderful songs.
I could save you and your sweetheart from your grief. I could give you back your sons.
What else could he say to her? How could he turn away the chance, however small, to save Helaena from her grief?
He lay with Alys, his mind to Helaena and the first time he had taken her, blushing and grinning with all the fire of youth. She would forgive his infidelity, once he brought their children back.
(It didn’t matter, in the end. Daemon’s sword sunk into his remaining eye with the ease which the battlement spikes did Helaena’s throat.)
Helaena would lay on him, once their lovemaking had ceased. Aemond had loved the way the sweat still clung to their bodies, their hair tangled together, the grounding presence of her weight. He had loved her, iridescent in the moonlight, her eyes analytic, combing over and picking apart every inch of him.
“Would you be mine only? Would you claim right of my womb, sire my children?”
Aemond’s blood pulsed hot, “I would give anything for you. I would give all to you.”
Her head tilted and her eyes didn’t move from his own. He was the only one who could claim that privilege. He felt then what it was to be one of her moths, wings spread wide and pined to silk pillows. A beautiful display, frozen in time.
She hummed absently, her finger tracing the line of his scar.
“That is well, for you have everything of mine.”
He had loved her his whole life. He had never stopped loving her.
Alys stood by him when he finally met his uncle again.
The older man smiled without humour, aged ten years in ten months. “You have done to the riverlands what Maegor did to Harroway.”
Helaena's empty, starved frame, Jaehaerys’ head, cleaved from his body, Maelor swallowed and torn apart by a mob. The brutality they had threatened Jaehaera with, his daughter, whose hair he had taught himself to braid, the fear that now lived in her eyes. There would never been enough bodies to make right that loss. The scales would never balance.
Aemond’s blood turned to boil, his body trembled under the weight of his rage.
”You know your crimes to be as great as his, as great as mine. Kinslayer that you are. I shall be glad to turn you to another Aegon Uncrowned, and your wyrm another Quicksilver.”
Daemon only smirked, a grim air to him. “Then shall we, nephew?”
There was no clarity, just a simple, bottomless void of anguish that had been born once he had set his eye on the carpet his son’s body lay on.
”For Helaena and our children, I will have you die screaming.”
Daemon’s grin stretched across his face like Blood’s eye sockets did when Aemond pulled them from his skull. His body would meet the same flames.
Such was the command of their House.