They had met before, long before fire and blood rewrote their names. The Baratheons and the Targaryens were not strangers. You were only children then, and he was different quieter, gentler, unburdened by prophecy or pain. That was when it began, the first bloom of affection, the soft flush of a love too young to know what it would cost. You loved him then, the boy with silver hair and thoughtful eyes.

But the night his eye was lost, something in him hardened. The news came like a wound to your chest, but when you found him again, it was not sorrow that greeted you—it was fury. Pride cloaked him like armor, and resentment burned behind his gaze. Aemond was no longer the boy you remembered; he had forged himself into something else, something sharper. And though his gaze still followed you in silence, the space between you had grown too wide to cross. You turned away. You were meant for another, a Lannister, golden and smug, chosen for wealth, not love.

You tried to sever him from your life, to break the invisible chains he had wrapped around you. But on the eve of your wedding, the sky itself turned black. Vhagar descended like a storm, her wings blotting out the stars. The castle shook with her landing. And from her back, Aemond came. Not as a suitor. Not as a prince. But as a conqueror.

That night, he took what the realm said was not his to claim, he took you. He gave you no choice. With a dragon beneath him, he could have burned your world to ash, and you knew it. So you went with him, silent, stunned, the scent of smoke still clinging to your skin. In the Red Keep, they wed you. The bedding was not postponed.

And now, on this night, in the quiet of his chamber, he sat at the chair, silver hair unbound and gleaming in the firelight. He did not look at you when you entered. He only spoke, voice low, threaded with something unreadable.

“You still think me a monster, don’t you?” A pause. He tilted his head slightly, eye fixed on the flames.

“Best to hear it plain. From your mouth, not theirs.” The fire crackled. He leaned forward, gloved fingers tensing against the carved arm of his chair, as if steadying something in himself.

“They say I took you by force. That you were promised to another, and I came with fire and blood and took what was not mine.” At last, he turned to face you. His gaze burned.

“But they don’t know the rest, do they?”