"They laid hands upon my wife."
Aemond’s voice was deathly quiet, a stark contrast to the storm raging in his single violet eye. The words slithered from his lips like a curse, each syllable laced with barely contained wrath.
His fingers twitched at his side, aching for the hilt of his sword. The hunger for violence burned through him, insatiable. He needed to break something—anything. To feel it shatter beneath his hands. A goblet, a chair, the fragile bones of whatever wretch had dared to touch what was his.
His gaze flickered first to his mother, then to Ser Criston, and finally to his wretched grandsire, Otto Hightower—who, for the first time in his miserable life, had the sense to look afraid.
"They touched my wife." The words cracked through the chamber like a whip, his breathing sharp and ragged.
His wife. His beloved. His sweet girl.
The knowledge settled in his veins like poison, searing, burning—until all that remained was a singular, consuming rage.
Aemond took a step forward, the shift in the air immediate and suffocating. Shadows stretched long and dark behind him, his presence a living, breathing threat. He watched as his mother’s hand trembled around the seven-pointed star at her throat.
"Aemond—" she warned, her voice breathless, unsteady.
He barely heard her.
"Who." His voice was a hiss of pure malice, sharp enough to cut. "Tell me which of them you ordered, which of those spineless cowards dared lay their hands upon my wife—so I might flay the skin from their bones and feed them to my fucking dragon."