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Aegon does not favor hunts.
Aside from the hours upon hours in the carriages, the smell of horseshit in every corner of the camp, and the likelihood of stepping into said horseshit thinking it was mud, hunts are simply a bore.
Sitting and waiting for a boar or a bun to pop out of the bushes is just about as interesting as waiting for the clouds to shift in the sky, and truthfully, he always ends up doing more of the latter than anything else.
He didn’t care for Jacaerys’ nameday as it is, but in combination of just about the worst activity his father could think of to celebrate a grandson, he resents the day even more.
Aegon’s only solace is that despite hating it, he is not awful at it. He is no Sunfyre to claim a bear with burns without a hassle, but in combination of his brothers and their determination to prove, they are far from shabby when it comes to the hunt itself.
Daeron is good at reconnaissance, ghostly in presence with footsteps as tender as his age. He found them a good spotted deer to impress with. Aemond is not fearful no longer to take first strike, the length of his sword points and leading the bleeding stag to Aegon, who put in the final strike, a gash to deep for the wounded to survive.
The servants cheer for them, and for a moment, Aegon thrives at the success of it all, but as the servants tie the stag’s legs together to carry it back to camp, he feels eyes on his back.
From the bushes, a spark of white fawn peeks, eyes red and bloodshot, the very image of sickness and fragility.
Aegon takes one step closer and it disappears, fearful.
Aemond is already ahead with the servants, leading the way to back as they held the slain deer, but Daeron also seems to have noticed the young fawn, running up ahead towards where it skipped away to. His younger brother turns to him. “Brother, shouldn’t we—"
“No,” Aegon says. He won’t let the gods mock him today, with backhanded signs. A baby deer with no crown is no sign of pride. Not unless it survives to gain its horns and wins against those who want to pick it apart. “We’re moving back to camp.”
—
They present their kills in front of father and Jacaerys.
It is not meant to be a gifting ceremony, but it is presented as such. Aegon suspects that father designed it as such on purpose. He knows better than to expect him, Aemond and Daeron to give Jacaerys anything that will be sincere, if anything at all.
They toss the slain stag and are praised for it, but they were not the only ones presenting deer.
Daemon one ups them with a grotesque display of a doe with a slain open belly, and a fawn to boot. As Jacaerys’ adoptive father, he receives plenty of acknowledgement for bringing the best kills to the table, but Aegon only rolls his eyes.
He didn’t do it for Jacaerys, he did it so the blood on his hands will speak of his power and strength. If it wasn’t so, he wouldn’t have huffed and laughed at the boar the Strong boys have brought over themselves.
The moment they finish with presenting the soon to be butchered carcasses, there is a switch to a true gifting ceremony, the women of the family now presenting the prince their gifts.
It goes just about as one would expect it to go. Rhaenyra gives her gift first — a new saddle for Vermax, ambers bejeweling it all over. It is meant without a doubt to be the favorite gift of the evening, and for a while, it is.
Aegon’s own mother is not without her pettiness, presenting Jacaerys with a tapestry woven to symbolize House Targaryen and House Velaryon, their colors ugly and mismatched together. Baela and Rhaena present a well-crafted long sword and sheath that he doubts Jacaerys can utilize much. The sword looks too heavy for him still; ironically enough, the strength of his arms wasn’t up to par.
Not much of a bone-breaker, despite it all.
There is nothing entertaining about hunts, he’ll stand by that — but that had brought out a chuckle.
It is short lived, however. Helaena is one of the last to give Jacaerys her present, and she comes forward carefully, uncomfortable by the eyes of all watching her. The dark greens of her dress clung desperately to her body, the form-fitting style never her favorite, having no place to hide. The billowing sleeves were lined with gold, gems embellished to its ends as they were at her collar.
She must’ve hated it.
Helaena brings out a small banner, an embroidery work made by herself. It is not the colors of any of their houses, no.
It is a white banner, creating a picture of a white hart with sewn on gold thread. The white hart the hunting party has searched for the entire day long.
The ground underneath Aegon sinks as Jacaerys’ eyes widen, much like many others in the crowd. Aemond glances at him, and Daeron tries to reach for his wrist, but Aegon snaps his hand away from it.
He can see Alicent glaring daggers at Jacaerys as he takes Helaena’s hands in gratitude, as well as the sheer joy in his father’s eyes when he approves with a hearty laughter, for once praising his second daughter as if she’s his first.
Helaena quickly tears her hands away from Jacaerys, and leaves for her seat after a short bow of curtsey, rushing away, avoiding the eyes of the lords and ladies around her.
It does not help her, nor does it help him. The eyes of the of the high lords of Westeros glint in mockery and whisper in pity. It rages within him, and he bites his lips shut, hands fisted. He is a laughing stock, an unfortunate being, a sinner hated by gods.
Meant to have nothing and nobody, never quite knowing why.
The celebrations continue, but the music falls on deaf ears.
—
Later on, he enters their shared tent with blood hot in his veins.
“Helaena!” he calls her. She has busied herself with sorting through some of her embroidery materials, and it only spikes his nerves further to see her retiring to something so mundane.
“Yes?” she asks innocently. She looks back at him with her head, slightly taken aback, but entirely unassuming, if her eyes are anything to go by. She only realizes there is an issue when she takes him in. “Something the matter?”
Aegon is truly flabbergasted. Even their mother was shocked, how could she not tell?
“That gift,” he strains his words. “That gift is the matter. Do you take me as a fool?” he asks her, coming closer.
“The stag embroidery?” she asks him, coming up from her place. “What about it?”
“What about it,” he mocks. “You gave him a white hart at a hunt. How about you call Jacaerys king and kiss his feet? You —” he bites his lips, trying not to erupt. “My own sister supporting the bastard ascending the throne. My own wife.”
Helaena blinks, his waves of anger seem to be missing her entirely. “You do not wish to ascend the throne yourself.”
“Nor do I wish to be mocked by the lordlings that see me as a first son that is as good as a ghost!” he yells back. “Skipped over by everyone already! you think I needed you added?!”
Helaena’s face falls into a frown, and she sighs. Setting away her personal effects, she walks over to him.
“The white hart was father’s idea. I did not know what to make myself, and he told me it would be symbolic. By the time the idea left his mouth, it wasn’t a suggestion, it was an ill plea,” Helaena explains. Aegon can’t decide if it’s better or worse, the image of his rotting father begging for Helaena to bend to the bastard. “He tries to quell the winds, but he only makes more storms.”
“He thinks shaming me will make it better for the bitch’s son.” Aegon says spitefully, venom spewing out and into the air. Helaena frowns, and takes his hands.
“A stag embroidery made with rabbit’s wool will not change anything. Father means well, but I know that in days few people will just as easily see it as a jab at Jacaerys’ legitimacy.”
“It is a gift from sweet-princess Helaena,” he tells her bitterly, it’s obvious, so obvious. “Who would dare to think it’s anything but kind?”
Her fingers curls on top of his own, pressing gently as a weary, empathetic sadness washes over her from head to toe. Aegon could never ignore how he has been painted in their marriage, nor how she was pitied for being made to stand by his side. His frustrations were apparent beforehand, she knew it just as well.
“Bannermen will find offenses when it is to their benefit. I’m no better than you if I’m still dutiful to you all the same,” Helaena offers, but she also knows this isn’t much better. “They can think of me as they will, however. I completed a duty for father today, but beyond it, I know where I must stand.”
A defeated exhale escapes him.
“Only ever duty on your mind,” Aegon says. He’s her obligation, just as she is his. Their mother has shaped Helaena into the face of The Mother of the Faith, and she bore the role as she did their children. If he escapes by sinning, she is trapped by virtue. “Mayhaps they all know it is the only reason you are kind.”
It is no insult this time. Not an insult to her, at the very least.
Helaena draws circles into his palms consistently until she halts. Hesitation crops up, but she eventually leads his hands to her hips. “Perhaps they’ll have other ways to think me kind if for once, you won’t walk out so sullen.”
She speaks so softly it’s practically a whisper. At first, he questions her with his eyes; has it not been for her fingers moving in jitters against the ends of his sleeves, he might have taken her at face value. Something in him stirs, a shift of warmth at the belly, and he decides to test the waters.
Aegon’s hands grow slightly firmer on her waist. Her eyelashes flutter at the hardened touch, a soft utter leaving her. Aegon is pent up already, days of looking at nothing but gravel and skies catching up to him. Her tight dress did not help the matter, not for either of them.
Her dislike for the uncomfortable fabric has suddenly become a much more sympathetic plight, but Aegon will admit; he’s far from princely to offer her to disrobe in a courtly, gentler manner.
He leans his forehead against hers. “Dying to get out of your dress, aren’t you?” he taunts as her warm breath grows more erratic, grabs her by the roundness of her ass. She sighs, cheeks growing rosy. “Did you look to give me a reason to rip it off?”
Helaena’s hand reaches the side of his neck, the edge of her fingers on his nape. “Will you?” she taunts back, surprisingly determined to keep eye contact today. Aegon is surprised, but not displeased. He licks his lips, and tilts his head to reach her own ones; kissing her hard once, twice, thrice, all hot-breathed confirmations.
Aegon’s hands leave her waist and slide up to the collar of her dress, grabbing it from two sides, before forcing the fabric apart, letting her whimper into his mouth as cold air reaches her back. Billowing sleeves slide off of her, and the dress’ torso is now hanging off as another layer of her skirt.
He snakes his hands around her upper body, glad to realize he ripped at her small clothes too. He breaks the kiss, letting himself look at his work. He smirks at round tits and perked nipples. “Better?”
“Rip it all off,” she says, whispering voice growing so brave. He hums, a sweet flutter working through his body and straight to his cock. Better, indeed, but best, when she finds even more confidence. “Coward.”
A tease is all he needs to get him down for love and war. Aegon is more than willing to tease her virtue and grace until they come out and off of her in ripples.
He takes her by the small of her back, forcefully filling the gap between them by bringing her closer. Aegon smashes their lips together one more time, before smirking manically and starting to kiss swiftly down her throat, not sparing any bites that he could weave in between. She gasps at each one, and especially when he reaches the nub of her breast.
Aegon grabs skin to the side of her breast and brings his mouth to suck hard on the nipple. She cries out at that. She’s holding onto him tightly; she has to, if she wants to keep arching into his ministrations the way she did. He can imagine her cunt slicking up for him already. Sweet, sweet Helaena, so kind for her parched brother.
No matter if they took up the roles they were given or not, they were already abominations of the Faith. He wants to make her sing like a whore.
Her hand comes up to his hair, pulling on silver locks, and there’s shifting behind her skirts that tells him she is needs more. He licks up the flushed breast he worked on, and moves his hands to where the last remnants of her dress clung to. Aegon looks up at her. “Say my name and I’ll take it off.”
She squirms when she hears a slight rip being made to the top. “Aegon,” she says in soft pant. He clicks his tongue, holding onto her waist. The dress is clinging for dear life on her hips, their round frame, but only a little bit more and she’ll be free.
“Louder!” he tells her, and she shivers, holding onto his head for both proximity and comfort.
“Aegon, please,” she says, trying to weasel out of it herself, her hand reaching to touch herself even above the fabric. His whore, he thinks, smacking her clothed ass for more. “Husband, please!” she tries again, wetness pulling at her eyes. He breathes in her sweat and tremors and eats them up, but nothing is more filling than affirmative words. His wife.
He tears away at her garments with one long rip that reaches his ears like melody.
Aegon forces anything that left of her clothes away, by the toss of a hand or a stomp of his foot on them. Helaena trembles, her gentle fingers reaching her core almost instinctively. He grins widely seeing her digits getting slicked up so easily.
His breeches grow too tight to ignore. Helaena is absorbed in her own pleasure and in his mind, he hardly thinks the placements of his hands would matter to her, but the moment they’re off of her body she whimpers at the loss. Her eyes tail where they left to, and upon seeing him trying to work his bottoms’ laces, she brings her hands forward to there.
Aegon bites his lips. He wants to play.
He leaves his laces and instead takes up the thin fabric of his shirt up slightly, revealing leaner abs and hinting lines to below. Helaena takes one look at his face and her mouth shapes to form a soft ‘oh.’
Her lips are pretty. He should fuck into them.
She falls to her knees, a kneel before her king. Helaena isn’t like him; she works her way through meticulously, laces freed from knots carefully while knots within his lower belly start to form. She slides off the garments while her violet eyes look to him.
He brings a hand to her hair, bringing her face close to his now freed cock, keeping it tilted up. He likes the hazy gaze in her eyes.
Helaena doesn’t particularly like the taste of cum, but she spreads whatever leaked from him all across his length with a careful hand, coming up and down it. His hips sway with her movement as she palms him, but a soft lick is already given to his tip. He sighs, a tremor down his back.
She seems to like that response enough to do it more consistently, licks and kisses to his slit and his tip. He grips her curly hair, close to the scalp, the pattern of it soft in his palm. She hums onto his dick, and her lips part wider, taking more into her mouth.
It is so warm, he wants to live in her throat, engulfed by hot breaths and sugar-molten words.
She bobs her head and she sucks, and there are tears in her eyes he can wipe away without fear as he thrusts in, and it’s everything he lacks and everything he needs. He could do this forever, harder and harder each time, but she’ll struggle to breathe, struggle to contain him, struggle to bear him forever and ever.
Yet she’s still mine.
She’ll sin for him on her knees, on all-fours, on her back, mornings, nights and in-between. It is all a part of duty, her kindness for him to use.
Aegon pulls her off of his cock, and she breathes the world up again. Helaena heaves as he kicks off his bottoms and takes his shirt off of his head. She cannot bring herself to come up from the floor, so he lifts her up on his own.
She yelps and hold tightly to him to not fall, holding around his neck. He brings her to the makeshift bed they had gotten for their tent, and drops her on the bed, coming above her. She sighs loudly when she feels his cock aligned to her cunt, and moans out when he presses it in.
Aegon thrusts, eliciting more sighs and moans of her, but instead of holding his body, she holds his face. “Aegon,” she holds onto strands of his hair as she shudders under him.
He is deep in her core, seventh plane of heaven when she pulls him closer to her face. He heaves as his erratic thrusts slow to understand her.
“Kiss me,” she says insistently. She is not above pleading herself, even if her pleas take a different form to others. Her next utter is not as much brave as it is begging. “Coward.”
He does. He brings his lips on top of hers, tastes himself on top of them. Helaena is the spitting image of The Mother, dutiful as always, but he is sin personified, loved by none but those deep in their pleasures.
If for once, she allows herself to ask to be less than holy too — he’ll oblige, corrupt, and find home in it, too.
She cums in waves on him, and he answers with his own climax; his name on her lips and the bitterness of his seed on her tongue and within her loins. Sweet princess Helaena had just as sweet moans, and now all would know what true, pleasured kindness of hers truly sounds like.
—
A year later, Maelor is born, pale skin in contrast to the blood that painted him, light eyes bloodshot when he opens them for the first time. A weeping, somewhat sickly boy, born of cowardice, peeking at him from the hands of his mother and nurses.
He reaches forward to the cradle one day, and the boy stays put, looking at him. Against his better judgement, Aegon stays put as well, watching his son fall back asleep.
Until the day he runs off.