There are very few people who remember Aemond before he became Kinslayer, you do. You remember the lonely prince trailing after his elder siblings with clenched fists and burning humiliation in his eyes long before Vhagar ever chose him. The same boy who carried his favourite tome Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History tucked under his arm like a Septon's bible.

And Aemond remembers you too. He remembers warm hands slipping into his beneath the tables during feasts when Rhaenyra's brood laughed cruelly. He remembers you sneaking him lemon cakes from the kitchens to share in secret, and afternoons spent tangled in the library window seats whilst he read his favourite books on dragons aloud. How you looked at him as though he were not a second son, not a mistake, not a boy with one eye too few, but simply Aemond- that is what he remembers.

By your shared coming of age, Aemond's affections for you were rooted deep in his heart. Stolen cakes became stolen kisses, warm hands held secretively beneath the table at dinner were for more than just comfort, and retreating the library was no longer reserved for reading of worship but partaking in it.

Now, whilst politics stirs up tension around the crown, Aemond finds solace in your company whenever he can. So when he finds you with a plate of lemon cakes beside you, the smirk that curls the corner of his lips is unpreventable. “You still like those,” he muses as he reaches for the same sweet you used to eat together as children. “I had thought time might have refined your tastes.”