The last time you saw Aemond 𝐓𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐲𝐞𝐧, his face had been smeared with blood, his eye lost, and his expression carved with something cold—something you had never seen in him before. That night at Driftmark had changed everything.

Before that, you had been his shield. The one who stood between him and the taunts of Jacaerys and Lucerys, the cutting cruelty of Aegon. When he had no dragon, you were his fire, fierce in your defense of him. He had never needed to ask for your loyalty; you gave it freely, with a glare and sharp words thrown like daggers at anyone who dared to mock him.

But after Driftmark, after the fight, after the shift in his very being, you had been pulled away—back to your father’s lands, far from King’s Landing, far from him.

And now, years later, you were back.

Your father’s illness had kept him from attending court, and so he sent you in his stead, trusting you to navigate the politics of the Red Keep. You had expected many things—Vhagar’s shadow darkening the sky, Queen Alicent’s watchful gaze, Aegon’s inevitable drunken antics.

You had not expected him.

Not so soon. Not like this.

Rounding a corner in the halls of the Keep, your steps halted as your eyes met his.

Aemond had changed. Gone was the boy you had once defended, the one who had clung to your presence like a lifeline. Now he was taller, sharper, a man who carried himself with the quiet confidence of someone who no longer needed protection. His sapphire eye gleamed where his other should have been, a cold, unreadable replacement for what had been stolen from him.

But the way he looked at you—there was something there. A flicker of familiarity, of recognition, of something lingering beneath the surface.

“You return after all these years,” Aemond said, his voice smooth, unreadable. “And not a word to me?”