Strings of Silk / Aemond Targaryen

The Beast Beneath

CW: Offscreen story (dialogue) of sexual assault

The high morning sun fell like a blade.

I was lost in the expanse of my own bed, tossing without thinking. Beads of sweat formed at my brow as I turned. Every few minutes I broke out into fresh, unfettered sobbing and kicked at the bedpost in helpless rage.

"Marai!" Alla's footsteps were like the gentle patter of rain over the floor. She wrapped her arms around my prone figure and hugged as though to crush me. I had so much to say to her, but it felt so good that I only clung to her and cried more.

"My sweetling, what did he do to you?" Her voice was near breaking. My mother rarely angered, but there was steel here. "Did he hurt you?"

I nodded reflexively, though was not what she meant. Her eyes welled up, and the hands that stroked my hair were shaking. There was so little she could do.

"The King," my voice cracked as I shifted upright, suddenly remembering one aspect of the anguish. The sunlight glittered, eerie in its cheer. "You would have had me bed the king."

"Of course, Sweetling. If he had not interrupted." She sighed. "Is this part of it?" She tucked a strand behind my ear. "He was so taken with you, though in his cups. Don't fret. I am certain he will come for you again."

I cried harder. She cupped my face with a cool hand.

"I think he is gentler than his brother, too, for all his antics." Aegon was known for drinking and whoring, fairly standard masculine vices, and ones we were used to, but Aemond was a kinslayer, all the more cursed for being a cipher. She sighed. "I was sorry for it, to see you go with the prince. And not merely because it is an honor to lie with a king-"

"As you did." I said, my voice tightening, nearly raspy.

Her expression was baffled. "He was with Tansy, sweetling."

"But before then, when he was a very young, a prince. Before....before me."

"I don't understand where this is coming from." Her eyes clouded over.

"Did you bed him?" My voice was almost pleading.

I could see the horror dawning in her eyes. "No."

"No?" I asked, hoping desperately for some explanation, some proof I could show Prince Aemond.

"I mean I- I don't know," she said, clutching her head. She looked frantically about the room as though the memories of two decades were spiraling about her.

"You don't know?" A point of unfamiliar rage broke through my voice, raw and bestial. "He was a prince of the realm!"

She pulled her hands away and looked at me reproachfully. It took her three full breaths to speak. "I was sold at three and ten, Marai, I had never known a man. I was still playing in the mud when they dragged me here." She turned from me, and throwing her long black hair over her shoulder, she combed through it with her fingers. Her voice grew small. "I would bite, kick, maim patrons. I had so much rage then, and I supposed I would be kicked to the street or killed. But the master had no such intention."

She walked to the window, and the sunlight hit the warm tones in her black hair like a halo. "Every night, they gave me a draught, and every night I would drink it. I would wake up in such pain, with bruises and no memory of the night." She sighed. "'Twas a blessing I suppose. The 'Sleeping Maid' they called me, after the song. I have little memory of those two years, only that I came out.... quieter."

She walked back toward me in measured steps. "They did send young boys to bed me, the ones too frightened of a living woman. I heard rumors, but the older girls would always make up stories to tease me. They told me I had bed a warg once, that he had turned into a wolf inside me. After that, I never believed their tales again." Her lips twisted bitterly.