THE 7TH MOON [Aemond Targaryen]

Eleven - Fearsome Boy.

"Aemond."

Silence.

"Aemond look at me!"

"I wondered when you'd finally find me again..." It should have been six years ago. "Took you long enough."

"Listen to me."

"What? Are you not busy galavanting about with Aegon? Do not think I didn't see you both." Bitterness invaded his tongue.

"That is none of your business."

"It is all of my business my betrothed." He smirked. "Every inch of it."

Laenora fell into an uncomfortable silence, her eyes flickered between Aemond's stiff figure and the way his fingertips flipped the pages of his book, his eye didn't even grace her for a single moment. How had he affected her so much yet made her feel so terribly unseen?

"What is it Laenora?

"I shall marry you."

"As if there was little choice in the matter." He flicked his pages, still not sparing her as much as a gaze. "That sword you were so terribly fond of in the courtyard with your bastards waits there for you." He motioned, "Take it as a wedding gift."

He noticed.

The Princess fumbled the smile upon her lips, trying to hide it as best to her abilities but Aemond had already seen it, and he too harboured a secret smile of his own. Even in the midst of his own battle against Cole he'd seen her from a million miles away and noticed the look on her face when she'd lifted the blade, it was the way she'd used to look at him. She was utterly insufferable and so he knew when his father declared their engagement he'd have to get it for her, it was what any good husband would do, what any man would do; or so he told himself.

The Targaryen watched further as his betrothed walked to her sword, where it waited sheathed upon the top of his fireplace.

"How did you get it?"

The weapon fell upon her palm, it's sheath upon the ground. It fit her better than before, connected with her further than it once did, almost on a subconscious level. The blade was hers and hers alone. Laenora's smile unveiled itself as the sapphire in it's hilt glinted up at her once more.

"I have my ways."

She sat herself comfortably upon the armchair across from Aemond's and laid the sword across her lap. He watched her every move, noticing that when she wasn't glaring at him or his family or making rude remarks that she often looked like the girl she used to be, the one he shared a cradle with. The one he'd yearned for.

"I am... an object?" She mumbled, her fingertips caressing the blade.

"What?"

"You called me an object."

"When?" He huffed.

It was clear the man was impatient with his niece, or at least that was what he wanted her to believe, and yet the more he spoke to her the more time he gained in her presence. And so his words began to spill.

"A night ago, during our dance."

"You remember then?"

"Clearly. But an object?

"Yes, my object."

"Yours?"

"I do not speak in riddles niece."

"Yet your tongue still twists them."

"And yet you still sit here before me as my betrothed. As my object... I may not have chosen this life for us but it does not make you any less mine. Any more questions?"