The Darkness We Hide

Chapter 19

"Shouldn't the maester be doing this?" Alys winced slightly as Aemond started to clean up her hand.

"I'm not letting that imbecile near you. Look at the shit job he did the first time." He scoffed to himself as started to thread through the tear. Then he glanced up at her, but she was already looking right at him. "Are you ever going to explain the whole...magic thing?"

"Which part?" She asked and his eye dropped back down and he went back to threading.

"Well, for starters..." He reached down into his pocket and pulled out the scroll he'd found earlier. "Explain this."

She recognized it instantly, but she felt more annoyed. That was a private conversation between her and her mother. "When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me how she would write to my grandmother all the time after she passed and would take the scroll, seal it, and throw it into a fire. She said she'd see my grandmother in her dreams and she'd answer.

"So when my mother and brother passed, I saw them both but..." She trailed off quietly and he glanced back up when he was near the end.

"But?" He said softly.

"It wasn't a dream."

"A vision, perhaps?" He smirked and her breathing stopped instantly, and she tensed up. Then he sucked at his teeth and rolled his eye. "You really think after this week alone you're going to frighten me off?"

The corner of her mouth twitched momentarily into a small smile before her face went back to a frown. "Yes, visions. I started having them that night on Driftmark...I...I saw memories and I saw..."

"You saw us, didn't you?" He asked casually as he looked down and finished the last bit of stitching. She narrowed her eyes down at him with a curious look in them.

"Several, actually."

He gently wrapped her hand once more, but once he was done he placed his hand over hers and looked up at her with a small twinkle in his eye. "How about this time you tell me instead of hurting yourself to show me?"

"Most of them have already happened." She pursed her lips together.

"And the ones that haven't?"

"Just one...it...it had my mother in it." She saw the concerned look on his face. The same one Ros gave her when she told her six years ago. The look that reminded her that her mother was dead. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's not impossible. I know it's not."

"Alys..." Aemond gave her hand a gentle squeeze, but she snatched her hand away and stood, pacing over towards the fireplace.

"I know what I saw, Aemond. I saw your mother walking towards her, calling her name and your mother looked happier than I'd ever seen her. I saw...I saw you with our son." She felt herself tearing up when she turned away from him, fidgeting with her fingers. She needed her ring back. She needed to make that vision real. She needed her mother.

Aemond felt his heart stop. Their son? A child? With Alys? And she wanted that?

"My mother used magic that night to protect me...and I've been trying to learn it ever since that day. Lord Corlys told me where to go and even..." She held Aemond's wedding ring up and his eye widened, shifting from his bare hand and the ring. She turned her head back with a smirk. "...teaching me a couple tricks of his own."

He walked towards her and as he reached for his ring, she turned to face him. He glanced at her hand, noticing her usual ring was missing as well. "You're not wearing yours."