In the godswood, King Viserys I, having just finished speaking, was seized by a violent fit of coughing, his whole body shaking with the effort. Alicent quickly patted his back, but the king waved a hand and forced himself to utter the final words:
"I declare you... husband and wife."
Then the nobles of the Red Keep applauded.
Aemond lowered his head and kissed Helaena on the lips. When he lifted his gaze, Helaena's face was flushed, but a spark flickered in her violet eyes.
At that moment, the High Septon stepped forward, a smile fixed upon his face. "With the blessing of the Seven Gods," he intoned, "may the Father grant you justice, the Mother grant you mercy, the Maiden grant you purity, and the Warrior grant you courage..."
He recited the standard wedding benediction, but Aemond and Helaena's attention was clearly elsewhere. Their hands were still clasped together, blood dried, binding them as one.
After the blessing, the High Septon produced a vial of holy oil from his robes and prepared to anoint the symbolic seven-pointed star upon the brows of the newlyweds.
Aemond waved his hand and said coldly, "That will not be necessary. This is a wedding of House Targaryen. The Seven are merely witnesses—they do not preside over me."
The atmosphere froze instantly. The High Septon's hand halted in mid-air, the smile on his face utterly congealed.
"Your Grace," Viserias said weakly, "let it be."
The High Septon drew a deep breath, forcing a smile more hideous than tears, bowed stiffly to the king, and withdrew into the crowd.
Aemond ignored him. Without hesitation, he bit his right middle finger, drawing blood. Then, with his bloody finger, he traced an ancient symbol upon Helaena's brow—a glyph of old Valyrian, meaning "fire."
Helaena bit her own finger and traced another symbol—"blood"—upon Aemond's brow.
Then their brows touched, and their blood mingled.
After a long moment, they slowly turned to face Viserys I.
At that moment, every onlooker felt an inexplicable chill. This seemed not the beauty of love, but something almost unholy—a bond of blood and fire. Small wonder the old texts describing Valyria said all the dragonlord families were mad, and perhaps only the mad could truly command dragons...
"Now," Viserys's voice was so faint it was barely audible, "the wedding is complete. May you..."
The final words caught in his throat. The king's head lolled weakly, and he slipped once more into semi-consciousness.
"His Grace is weary," Alicent announced, lifting her head to survey the assembly. "The wedding ceremony is concluded. We thank you for witnessing."
The noble crowd began to relax, murmuring amongst themselves as they prepared to depart. But many still gazed at Aemond and Helaena, at the still-drying blood sigils upon their brows.
What manner of wedding was this?
A Targaryen wedding.
---
The mornings of King's Landing always carried the salt tang of Blackwater Bay, but the royal apartments of the Red Keep were filled with the scent of roses and lavender. Sunlight streamed through the balcony's great stained-glass window, casting upon the floor the shimmering images of the Seven—the Warrior's sword, the Father's scales, the Maiden's smile.
Helaena Targaryen awoke to find herself curled in warm embrace.
She lifted her gaze slightly, studying the sleeping profile of Aemond, who had wed her but yesterday. Morning light painted his pale skin with a soft golden hue; his violet eye was closed.
Helaena did not move, simply watched in silence. Rarely could she study Aemond so closely, in the vulnerability of sleep. When he was awake, he was always like a naked blade—sharp, vigilant, ready to strike an enemy. But asleep, he looked like a boy of sixteen, almost fragile.
Her gaze fell upon his left hand. The wound on his palm from the wedding was scabbed over, the dark red crust vivid in the morning light. Helaena glanced unconsciously at her own hand—the same wound, the same scab.
She reached out, her fingertips hovering over his wound, and in the end did not touch it. She feared waking him.
But Aemond woke anyway.
That violet eye opened, without the confusion of ordinary men upon waking, instantly clear and focused. He turned to Helaena.
"Good morning." His voice was rough with sleep.
"Good morning." Helaena smiled, her long silver-gold hair spread across the pillow like flowing moonlight. "Did I wake you?"
"No." Aemond reached out, stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers, a rare gentleness in the motion. "I should have been up by now."
He said this as if to rise, but did not move, merely continued gazing at her.
Helaena's face was beautiful in the morning light. She did not have Rhaenyra's breathtaking beauty, nor her mother Alicent's youthful brightness. But she possessed a unique temperament, a kind of unshakeable calm, like deep water—crystalline clear, yet capable of reflecting all that lay within.
"What are you looking at?" Helaena asked, amusement in her eyes.
"At you," Aemond replied simply, his fingers winding through a strand of her hair. "My fire."
Helaena blushed, the color spreading from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. She pulled the silk sheet up to cover half her face, leaving only her eyes visible. "Why do you speak so today..."
"Truthfully?" Aemond finished for her, a genuine smile touching the corner of his lips. "Because I dreamed last night."
"What did you dream of?"
"Many things." Aemond's gaze grew distant for a moment. "I dreamed of childhood. Aegon. Jacaerys. Lucerys... Pushing me in the mud." His voice was calm, but Helaena sensed a suffocating cold within it. "I still remember that pink dread... They said I did not deserve a dragon, that I was fit only to ride a pig."
Aemond fell silent.
"They mocked me. How dared they... How dared they."
Helaena squeezed his hand.
She remembered these things. She remembered Aemond as a child, hiding in his room and weeping, remembered the anger and humiliation in his eyes. She remembered running to complain to her mother, remembered Queen Alicent punishing Aegon—but in the end, she could only watch as Rhaenyra's face softened and she gently scolded the Velaryon boys.
"That day, I hid in my room and wept bitterly," Aemond continued, his tone calm, as if speaking of someone else. "But I still remember that you were the one who comforted me, who spoke up for me. You were the only one. The one who never looked down on me."
He turned to Helaena, a complex emotion flickering in his violet eye.
"Do not worry," he said suddenly, smiling—a smile that turned slightly cold. "The strong are dead. I have settled that account. As for Aegon..." Aemond paused. "He is my brother. I will not hate him for it. It was not he who did it—it was those three baseborn brutes."
Helaena shivered slightly. She remembered the carnage of the Gullet, the scene where Lothron tore Joffrey apart, the public execution of Jacaerys at the King's Landing gates, and Lucerys, fallen into the sea, his fate unknown. And the heads of those two boys still hung upon the gates of the Red Keep, slowly rotting in the wind.
Aemond felt her tremor at once.
"Forgive me," he said, drawing her close. "I should not have spoken of this."
"No." Helaena pressed her face to his chest, listening to the beat of his heart. "You need not apologize to me. I simply... I simply wish you would suffer less. Every time you return with some new wound, I..."
She did not finish, but Aemond understood.
"There are things I alone must do," he whispered into her hair, heavily, like an oath. "If I do not do them, no one can. To wield the sword, a Targaryen needs a hand—even if that hand is covered in blood."
He took Helaena's face in both hands and made her meet his eye.
"Let them curse and revile me. I will do what must be done. But I promise you, I will do everything in my power to return alive. Every time."
"Do you swear it?" Helaena asked softly, tears glistening in her eyes.
"I swear it by my blood," Aemond said. "Let the blood oath between us be my bond."
Helaena held him tightly. She could smell the faint scent of blood upon him—not the smell of a wound, but something deeper, something dissolved into his very blood. Once, that scent had troubled her. Now, it had become a kind of comfort.
It was the smell of Aemond.
Real, powerful, dangerous—yet for her, the only place of peace.