Enigmas | Aemond Targaryen

ONE

The new handmaid tried best she could, brushing out my severely tangled matted silver-gold hair, a corollary of my earlier fervent ride with Vermithor across King's Landing. A little gasp escaped my lips as the callused roughness of her fingers pressed hard against my scalp, pulling my hair. With my head unable to turn, tilt even, as it was firmly so within her irresistible iron grip, I had but to gaze long into the vanity's gilded mirror, hoping my mother might notice my misery and come to my rescue.

A ray of golden sunlight filtered through the window, the surface of the mirror which seemed like the surface of quiescent water, or of quicksilver, caught it and became ablaze as if it was engulfed in wildfire. My mother's reflection distorted, misshapen, flowing like a wave; however, light faded away as quickly as it came, and I could see her image in clarity and stillness again.

Dressed in a fine-spun gown of black velvet, encrusted with rubies at the hem, a roaring three-headed dragon of our House sewn across her breast in glimmering gold thread, my mother was every inch the Targaryen princess the realm had praised to the skies, the epitome of Valyrian beauty. A true beauty that only one of dragon's blood and seed could be. Standing beside her was her sworn shield, Ser Harwin, a big, boorish, but darkly handsome man in leather armor and gold cloak. A little mysterious smile was exchanged between the two of them, I silently observed, along with a playful smack on the man's large, thick hand on the hilt of his sword, which quickly found its revenge on my mother's heaving belly, rubbing it with a surprising tenderness quite contrary to his coarse demeanor.

And I blushed a deep red at the sight, for I was not so little and ignorant I couldn't fully grasp the underlying meaning of such gestures any more. I knew in my heart, though I often sought to deceive and convince myself otherwise, that my mother and Ser Harwin were lovers. As the ruling family of Westeros, the delicious scandals of us Targaryens were always the arterial blood of the court. Many whispered of my parents' most peculiar way of getting along, of my father Ser Laenor's ill-suited indulgence with young, comely yet lowborn swordsmen, and of my mother Crown Princess Rhaenyra's apparent affection for her dark knight. The royal court fool Mushroom, a vile little creature, once went so far as to make open japes about my little brothers Jace and Luke being "Strong Seeds" that I smashed him on the head with my golden sandal and exclaimed for the whole court to hear that my brothers were pure Targaryen-Velaryon princes with just Arryn and Baratheon coloring.

Now, besides all the injuries he had done to my family's reputation, Ser Harwin was a decent man, I knew, a fiercely loyal man who made my mother happy, that much was undeniable, he made her smile in a way my father never could, yet still I found within myself a creeping reluctance. Because no matter how, Laenor was my father, attentive or not, he was my blood, and blood was burnt into my family motto. The dragon's blood ran thicker than water, such was the saying of my ancestors, the mighty dragonlords of Old Valyria, and I believed it. Thus, in a rather childish attempt to defend my father's honor, I cleared my throat, letting out the most realistic cough I could muster.

Finally, my mother turned her eyes in my direction. In the mirror, I watched her rise from her great chair to come forward and stretch out her hands as to rescue my poor hair from my handmaid's gauche fingers. "Would you fetch me a vial of camellia oil, and some silver pins, Nellie?" She said to my handmaid and I swore the girl couldn't have fled faster.

"My little flame. Always so unruly." My mother shook her head with a little smile, her fingers carefully stroking and pulling my hair. As the handmaid delivered her needs, my mother poured out some shiny, sweet-smelling oil into her palms, and rubbed it into my hair. In no time it started to disentangle and glisten. I wasn't called by the people "the Light On the Tides" for no reason, aside from the poetic allusion to my Velaryon heritage, my very fine hair was the palest shade of silver-gold akin to moonbeam on the midnight sea, with a lit-from-within luminosity when it was smoothed out.