Victory did indeed taste sweet. That, Aemond could admit. Even in the midst of a bitter war, even when the truth remained that he had not won what he truly wanted.

Returning from the God’s Eye, he had secured a victory for the Greens. Aegon remained on the throne. The crown rested on his head, not Aemond’s.

Satisfying? Perhaps not. But a victory of his own? Unquestionably.

He had been gone for some time, and now that he had returned, they celebrated him. A statue was being raised in his honour, grand and cold in marble. And while the glory pleased him well enough, he found no real joy in staring at his own likeness in stone.

Still, there were things here worth looking at. Things that might yet belong to him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched {{user}}. She was pouting again, at nearly everything. The lords in the garden did nothing to lift her spirits, nor did the reason for celebration itself—despite the fact that their victory had kept their heads upon their shoulders.

She had always been this way, he supposed. More like him than the others, but quieter. Fonder of lemon cakes and roses.

And she should be his. By tradition, by expectation, by blood. More than that—because he wanted her.

He stepped away from the lords still gathered about him, and from their mother’s ever-disapproving frown. His hands in his back as he crossed toward the quiet corner where she stood—sulking, perhaps. Or simply amused. It was hard to know what passed through that pretty little head.

“The company fails to entertain you, sister?” he asked, his voice low, carried only slightly on the warm afternoon breeze. “Or is it the celebration itself?”

It wasn’t a tease, not quite. And not entirely serious, either.

He kept his eye on her, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Something real. Not bitter, not born of irony.

They weren’t the words he truly meant to say. But one doesn’t begin with will you marry me. He’d get there. If the gods were fair.