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~ 1 ~
Lucerys woke up in chains.
It had been nighttime when his ship had been boarded. Lucerys had been perched on the prow of his vessel, enjoying the silence of a sleeping crew—bar the soft steps of the men on the night watch. Luke waited for a flush of familiar feathers every night, for the return of the birds he had trained to fly to the edges of the world and back: messages from his spies, bringing him hopeful news from the North, from the Red Keep, from Essos. He wanted to hear of his surviving brothers.
Lucerys was also granted the privacy to vomit off the side of the ship in peace at the endless churning of the waves below him, keeping him unstable on his feet—a fate that had only worsened now that he walked with a cane. He was lucky to even be alive, after falling from such a height. Arrax’s corpse had cushioned his fall, but he had been wounded—gravely—and only survived with the help of the fishermen who had found him, confused and near death. It had been years since then and much had changed.
He had heard footsteps behind him, and before he could turn, everything had gone dark.
He woke docked in Blackwater Bay, being nudged off a small rowboat, into a cavern, into the cellars of the Red Keep. He asked his uncle’s men about his crew, and what fate had fallen upon them, but he was ignored and brought straight to his old bedroom.
It wasn’t as he remembered: his windows were barred, his desk and closet were barren. He was unchained and left to wait with only the crackling fire for company. The room had been prepared for a while.
A few hours later, the door slammed open, cracking across the stone walls, and in stormed a man with a familiar gait, hair swaying around him.
Aemond’s eye was on him, darting—taking Lucerys in fully. He moved slowly as if Luke were the predator—claws out, ready to pounce. It made Lucerys relax his hold on the table.
He was almost Aemond’s height now. It had not been so many years since he had last glimpsed his uncle—three? Four? Lucerys’ memory was still recovering—chasing him through a storm, but the war had taken a toll on the boy. Now, a man. His remaining eye was lined in black, cheeks gaunt and the sallow grey of a corpse. The scar Lucerys had left him still peeked through his eyepatch but had been overtaken by a larger, fresher wound slicing up his face—as if someone had tried to take the same eye again but had not aimed as well as Luke had. It pulled the corner of his mouth into a fleshy grimace of raised and pink scars. It had not healed as well as the first.
It was a shock to see him up close like this. So different. And yet, Lucerys felt that same spike of recognition, a jump of his heart up to his throat. Someone from before.
“It really is you,” Aemond’s voice was deeper now. He took in Lucerys’ face, his shifted weight. “I thought Corlys found a fake.”
“Do you think people in Driftmark, in the Keep, would not remember my face?”
Aemond’s smile was taunting and showed a glimpse of teeth.
“Every boy and bastard in Harrenhal looked like you. Even some of the women.”
Lucerys backed away from the insult, pushing through the pain of his leg. Once, he would have jumped at a chance to fight for his mother’s honour, but he had learned to be more strategic in his years as a commoner with a limp.
“No one else in the Seven Kingdoms looks like you, Aemond ‘One-Eye’ Targaryen. The Kinslayer.”
Aemond’s grin only widened, and his eye gleamed with self-satisfaction. Familiar again. Lucerys kept inching away, while Aemond crept closer still.
“King Aemond the First, now.”
“Enjoy it while you can. Your support is dwindling.”
Aemond cocked his head to the side. He wore the Conqueror’s crown, and its red gem shimmered in the glow of the fireplace like a drop of blood.
“You’re trying to take my throne. A far worse offence than last time, when you were stealing my brother’s throne.”
“It’s my mother’s throne.”
“And the cunt is dead. Your bastard brothers are dead. Daemon’s spawn are missing. Dead. Even my sister’s children. It’s my throne now, nephew.”
Lucerys scoffed, despite his senses telling him that it was dangerous to provoke a wild beast.
“Inconvenient then, that you didn’t kill me properly. Much of the realm now supports my claim over yours.”
“Very true, nephew,” said Aemond, agreeably.
“We have no dragons now, but Rhaena does, and she will come. Best kill me quick, then.”
“Ah, but I know Rhaena. She will not attack so long as your safety is not guaranteed—not with her tiny dragon, and her husband fearing for her safety. Come now, nephew. It needs not come to that. We have seen enough war, the people are tired. Killing you will not solve my issue now.”
Lucerys mulled over Aemond’s words. They seemed gentle, but Lucerys saw a request beneath them. There was a familiar tension in his uncle’s body—a low vibration, a little dance of glee. Lucerys sighed before Aemond even opened his mouth.
“I want you to put out your eye. It would do wonders for peace with the crown.”
Lucerys started his pacing again, letting his leg drag a bit. It shot a bolt of pain through his back, and he winced. He braced himself against the fireplace to catch his breath.
“Is the debt not paid,” said Luke through gritted teeth. “You nearly killed me.”
“But I did not.”
“I am also injured for life,” pointed out Lucerys. Aemond gestured up at his face, his newest scar—a son for a son. It disfigured his uncle quite completely, on that side. Lucerys' heartbeat sped up, like it would for any trapped animal who only saw one way out of its misery. “What are you waiting for? I cannot run, as you see. Plunge your dagger into my eye and be done with it.”
Aemond let out a sigh, exasperated and patient as if Lucerys had told him an unfunny but endearing joke. He was moving, closer, until he was finally in Lucery’s space.
“No, nephew. As easy as it would be for me to take it now, I want you to gift it to me. As a symbol that you recognise my rule as your rightful king. Had I been blinded in battle, perhaps I would have taken both. But as King… after a war won, I have the space to be generous.”
Aemond’s hand shot up and grasped Luke’s jaw, startling the boy. The leather gloves dug in—a rough scrape of fabric when the grip tightened on his cheeks. Aemond’s eye was on him, wide and pupil unmoving, blacking the purple of his gaze to charcoal.
“You may live here, afterwards. Driftmark already has a bastard. There need not be another war.”
Lucerys reached behind him. Searching, until his fingers found the metal of the fireplace poker. Lucerys slashed up. His weapon connected with Aemond’s chest, sending the man stumbling back with a grunt, the embers of the fireplace showering down against his cloak—but not catching fire. Aemond’s face contorted in fury. Lucerys swung again, aiming at Aemond's crown.
Aemond ducked the hit and slammed into Luke. The air left his body in a rush, and the poker clattered onto the ground. The surge of terror he felt had no time to settle, before Aemond’s fist slammed into his stomach, sending him crumbling to the ground. Lucerys caught himself on his hands before his face could hit the floor—the metal rod was still within reach, and Lucerys noticed that it had the Hightower crest etched into it. Lucerys grasped for the weapon, but Aemond kicked it into the corner of the room.
Aemond’s boot came down on his right hand.
There was a crack before Lucerys even felt the pain. Then, a cry—a sound between panic and horror. Lucerys tugged at his hand, trying to free it. Aemond dug his heel in hard. His boot was lined with metal.
Lucerys felt another scream build in his mouth, blood rushing into his head.
Aemond removed his foot.
Lucerys yanked his hand into his chest, cradling it, sucking in short sharp breaths. He needn’t check to see if his fingers were broken. His eyes did not leave Aemond’s face—and when the man stepped close again, Lucerys scrambled backwards, trying to shuffle with only one good leg and his non-dominant hand for balance. Aemond’s pupil seemed wider than before, and the corner of his mouth seemed to twitch in a certain rush—as if he were holding himself back from a more consuming feeling.
“I’ll let you reconsider. I can be persuasive if I need to be.”
In a billow of robes, Aemond turned and left.
Lucerys slumped to the floor, hissing when his fingers came into contact with the cool cobblestone. After a few deep breaths, he inspected the damage. Where his ring finger should have been was empty space, and Lucerys reflexively rotated his hand to check if it was missing on the other side too.
It was, of course. Severed at the bone. The other injured finger dangled at a crooked angle, already turning purple. Both were gushing blood down onto Lucerys’ coat. The pain was replacing the shock, finally—a rush of nauseated agony, but not strong enough to chase away the terror. Lucerys had not been certain he would survive this encounter, but now that he had, his body urged him to find an escape.
Any plan he could think of involved the use of two good hands and legs.
~ 2 ~
Lucerys startled awake when Aemond next stormed into his chambers. The guards permanently posted outside his doors slammed them shut, leaving only his uncle in the room with him. He was still in his royal garb. Working late by candlelight, perhaps, and stopping to pay him a visit before sleep.
Lucerys was going to remark on it, but he thought better for once and pushed himself out of bed. The cold rush of a draft made him shiver—he wasn’t wearing his shift, having discarded it in the night to enjoy the softer linen sheets on his skin instead. Lucerys searched for it, not remembering where he had tossed it in his overheating.
Aemond made a noise of impatience. Lucerys relented and resigned himself to the chill. He slid out of bed, ignored the shot of pain up his leg and back, and kept his eye on Aemond’s dagger. Lucerys tried to keep his heart steady, but he felt it stutter when Aemond eyed the fading bruises on his back and chest from the time of his capture. The fresher bandages and splint on his finger.
Amputation of his middle finger had been considered. Aemond had thrown a fit, and sent for a new maester, one that was less accustomed to treating wartime injuries—too willing to sacrifice esthetics for efficiency. The new man was dragged in from the nearest Sept, and he had assured the King that his nephew’s hand would heal in time. His ring finger was lost—the stump packed into gauze to protect the torn flesh.
“How is it?”
“Fine.”
“Fine, your grace.”
Lucerys kept Aemond’s gaze, mouth twisting into a scowl that trembled at the edges.
“I’m afraid not, Aemond.”
There was only a slight flash of danger as a warning. In a swipe, the back of Aemond’s gloved hand connected with Luke’s face, sending him sprawling onto the table behind him. Lucerys had been ready, and fell correctly, on his uninjured hand. Aemond stepped closer, and Lucerys’ arm shot up to protect his face.
Aemond stalled his second hit, but his fingers twitched—betraying how much will he was mustering to keep himself from going again. Lucerys peeked up at him, watching as the anger slowly subsided.
“I received a letter from Corlys. The pleading was as I expected after I sent him the finger,” said Aemond. Lucerys straightened at the mention of his family. “You are to write to him, telling him to bend the knee.”
“Aemond—”
“When your allies fall in line one by one, perhaps then you will not be so stubborn yourself.”
Aemond pulled some papers from inside his robes, slapping them on the table. He had brought a letter kit, and set to heating the wax. Lucerys watched, astounded.
“Did you not hear me? I am not telling my family to surrender. They will not, so long as I am alive.”
“Then I will kill them,” Aemond’s voice was calm, almost pleasant. That, more than anything, sent a chill down Lucerys’ back. “Sit, if you wish to have them spared.”
Luke obeyed instinctively, slotting into the desk chair under Aemond’s scrutiny. He would have liked to not be barechested, but this would have to do. The boy huffed a laugh as he pulled the blank paper towards him with his splinted hand, and grasped the quill with the other.
He tried to dip the goose feather into the inkwell, but it slipped through his fingers, splashing ink onto the paper in dark rivulets. Luke bit the inside of his cheek and tried again, but barely made it through the first scribble before Aemond slammed a hand onto the table.
“Is this funny, to you?”
Luke shot Aemond a glare. His own frustration at the situation overflowed, and his words came out gloating and distinctly irreverent.
“I cannot write with my left hand.”
Aemond’s face went white. His eye darted to the damaged hand—bandaged, swollen, unusable because of his own temper.
“You shall try,” he insisted.
“They will think you are forging it, uncle. The handwriting will be too different.”
Aemond weighed the words, and whatever plan he had tonight to dismantle Lucerys’ claim crumbled. Aemond pressed his fingers to his face, covering his good eye, his good side, leaving only the distorted, mangled, scarred flesh visible. His teeth were grit in frustration that verged on fury. Lucerys felt his blood sing at the reaction, and a familiar urge to wiggle further under Aemond’s skin joined in on the choir.
“Can I go back to bed, now?”
Aemond snatched up the melted wax and poured it down Luke’s back.
The boy jumped, mouth open in an aborted scream as the boiling liquid seared his skin, dripping down in a line of fire. It cooled fast, and Luke only had the time to grasp the edge of the table, before Aemond snatched up the sealing stamp and pressed it into Luke’s back, leaving the Velaryon crest embossed into the wax.
Luke let his head drop into his good hand. Both the fading pain and growing shock paralysed him. It curled in his throat, a hot sludge of humiliation, threatening tears far more than his broken fingers had.
“I would say that you are not worthy of the Velaryon crest, but I suppose a house of traitors many times over is the perfect place for you.”
Aemond’s voice was cool, furious. Something shook at the edge of it, however—Aemond was always twisted in his fury.
Lucerys looked up and flinched away from the letter opener that hovered near his face. Aemond grabbed a lock of Luke’s hair and swiped it off. The blade nicked the corner of Lucerys’ ear, and this pain—sharper, acute and focused into a small area—broke him out of his stupor.
“I’ll convince Corlys if I have to,” said Aemond. The man was towering over Luke now, his long blond hair swaying in between them. The golden strands curled at the ends and slowly started to blur around the edges. Lucerys wiped at his face, at his eyes, trying to chase away any further embarrassment.
Aemond smirked, his crown slightly off-centre from slapping Luke about. The royal robes of the day were tight on his frame, open at the front. Luke’s eyes darted down to where his uncle kept his sword at his belt, and something else caught the boy’s eyes.
The front of Aemond’s breeches was tented, barely concealing an obvious hard-on.
Lucerys lowered his eyes, mind reeling.
Aemond said nothing, nor did he move to cover himself up. Eventually, Lucerys managed enough bravado to peer back up at his uncle, trying not to tremble.
A broken sword hand was of no use to Lucerys in a fight. With an injured leg and painful back, he could not run. Aemond was missing an eye, it was true—but he did not need both to be the stronger of the two.
Aemond’s face was almost endeared, a bit awed, as if Lucerys had taught him something new—something useful, that could be actioned as the solution to many of his problems. Lucerys recoiled and tried to crush the rising panic, even as Aemond leaned it and pressed his thin lips to Luke’s forehead.
“I’ll be back in the morrow, nephew.”
~ 3 ~
And morrow, he returned, and Lucerys had not slept the night—contemplating all the ways he could escape this situation. His mind had screamed at him to run, to kill, to throw himself out of the barred window. He settled on acceptance of his fate. For now.
Aemond did wait a moment before Lucerys shook his head at the silent request. No eye would be gifted today, not even knowing the impending revenge. Not unless Aemond took it himself.
Aemond shrugged and stepped into Luke’s space. Aemond had not worn gloves today, and the warm skin of his palm almost burned where it landed on Luke’s hip, where the ends of Luke’s shift were tucked in.
The rustle of linen on his skin made his hair stand on end. His breeches and small clothes were removed next. Aemond’s movements were slowing, increasingly uncertain. Waiting for Lucerys to lash out. Luke almost felt ashamed of his own passivity, but the confusion on Aemond’s face was worth the humiliation.
“You won’t pay your debt. You won’t bow to the crown, or call off your army,” hissed Aemond. The man was searching the bedding now, flipping over the pillows. Looking for concealed weapons. “But you will do this?”
Lucerys laid back on his bed, eyes on Aemond. He felt calmer now that Aemond was not. With his inspection finished, Aemond shook his head and climbed on top of Lucerys.
“Tell me, Aemond. If I had given you my eye, and accepted to live under your roof… Do you plan to refrain from this, when I am fully in your power?”
“You need only give me your eye and name me your king,” assured Aemond.
His hand clasped around Luke’s calf, fingers digging into the flesh of his uninjured leg; it did not hurt. Aemond’s body was taut like a bowstring, eye wide and nostrils flaring, looking on the brink of another emotional outburst, or past the ignition point entirely. His other hand was on the pillow next to Luke’s head. The tendons in it twitched, making his entire arm tremble.
“I don’t believe you anymore,” said Luke. Aemond’s frown pulled at his damaged side, but he recomposed himself after cowing down his irritation.
“You think highly of yourself, boy.”
“You are cursed with an extremely expressive face, uncle. I can read it correctly, as I still have eyes.”
Aemond huffed in amusement and Lucerys indulged him with a smile, self-deprecating, placating. Aemond's hands moved up the length of Lucerys’ leg, drawing a warm line across his body. The touch was uncertain, still, like he had not expected to get this far. He looked fully unable to stop regardless.
Lucerys kept talking a little through it as if it were his tenth time in bed with his lover instead of his first with his one-eyed, mutilated uncle who despised him. To retain a sense of strange camaraderie, to feel like he was a participant. Like he had any say at all.
Aemond allowed the chatter. Seemed emboldened by it. Lucerys hoped it would keep the man gentle, less willing to inflict the horrific injuries Lucerys had imagined all night instead of sleeping. The approach paid off, to Luke’s relief. Aemond used the oil that Luke provided—more interested in his degradation than his pain for today.
The relief was contaminated by a growing feeling—Lucerys waited for the situation to flip. It left him shaken, that Aemond was not an uncontrolled brute, willing to fuck him to death at the first opportunity. Luke considered it a mercy. He had no other choice. The gleam in Aemond’s eye told him the truth: that his uncle knew fully well that he did not have to be violent, to be efficient. That Aemond was just taking what he wanted—which, for today, was this.
Some pain was inescapable—the burn of entry, the bruising discomfort of Aemond's thrusts speeding up—and then there was the rest of it to contend with.
Lucerys tried. He crushed down the burn in his chest, refusing to name it and bring it into existence. He kept his eyes fixed on the canopy above, all words and coaxing gone from him after a while—void of any pain or thought entirely, bar the awareness of the stretch and the warm body above him. Aemond’s soft grunting. Losing himself with each thrust. Using him. Touching his face.
It was fine, Lucerys told himself during.
It was fine.
After, he told himself that his sisters would come soon, and it was better if Aemond didn’t break his limbs or gouge out his eyes in the meantime. It would be hard to take over the Iron Throne with a body more broken than his already was. He still had pieces to lose.
Aemond even pulled him close when he was done, letting Lucerys suffocate in a warm embrace, trying not to drown in it.
This was fine.
~ 4 ~
Sex became Aemond’s violence of choice, and all other ways of torturing Lucerys into giving up his eye seemed to have evaporated from his mind. It was the one thing, the only thing, that Lucerys had to emotionally prepare himself for. He slept easier, convinced himself that Aemond was not going to lose his temper and gut him in his sleep. Not so long as Aemond got this.
The downside was that Aemond came more often now, almost every other evening—and Lucerys cursed himself for getting accustomed to it too.
He need only roll onto his stomach and close his eyes, letting Aemond have his way. Sometimes, Aemond wanted Luke to cum, and would take him in hand, pump long fingers in and out of him, and Luke let him have that, too. The worst by far was when Aemond wanted him on his back. Lucerys could only stare at the ceiling for so long before his uncle got frustrated.
“Who are you thinking about?”
“No one,” said Lucerys, in barely a whisper. Aemond grasped Luke’s face—pretty, reddened—and turned it, so that he was facing Aemond’s—half monstrous, half scarred.
“You should think about me. Of what I am doing to you. Don’t forget what situation you find yourself in.”
Aemond probably had intended to come off as taunting, but his words were too whiny. Too sincere.
“Unfortunately, my memory works perfectly,” spat Lucerys. “How can I forget when you crawl into my bed night after night?”
Aemond thrust harder, and it didn’t feel terrible. Luke’s head fell back, and Aemond smiled down at him. He had gotten consistently good at bringing Lucerys to climax, to the burst of body-numbing pleasure that would melt Luke into a puddle, too tired and boneless to do anything but accept Aemond’s kisses afterwards, his gentle caresses. Aemond always lingered too long, wanting to give the illusion that he spent the night—he held Lucerys close against his chest—feeling the uneven, fast trot of Luke’s heart against his own slumbering one.
It didn’t leave Lucerys the space to scream or cry or break something, afterwards, to get the feeling off of him. When he wiggled or tried to escape his uncle’s hold, Aemond only pulled him closer, tighter. Aemond’s face was always tired, but content, having settled into a routine that suited him wonderfully.
Rule the kingdom. Threaten the Velaryons. Demand Luke’s eye. Fuck him instead. Try night after night to lull Lucerys into sleep.
When Lucerys had been a child, he had thought, naively, that his uncle would grow up to be a man of more sophisticated tastes than this. Spending nights in the library or training field, perhaps, to sharpen his mind on a hobby more high-brow than rape.
It was disappointing, how normal Aemond had become once he had someone beneath him.
Before Lucerys could ever doze off, Aemond slipped away. The lifting of the weight sprawled over him came first as a relief, then as another disappointment. If only Aemond would fall asleep first. Close his one eye.
Then Lucerys could gaze down at that mangled face for once, take in the man’s features when truly at peace. Keep him that way, forever. Lucerys could kill the king.
How would he do it? Could he bring himself to do it?
Lucerys was not the only one to wonder. Aemond did not risk it, arriving at his senses—at some clarity, amidst his lover’s delusions—after the deed was done.
Aemond did not come every night, and on those nights Lucerys practised writing with his left hand. His good hand was still broken, the recovery of his remaining fingers taking longer due to his worsening health—his inability to sleep deeply in the place he used to call home.
Lucerys could get his vowels down now. It was not like writing words or expressing his thoughts. It was more like tracing unknown glyphs, trying to copy them from memory—letter by letter, stroke by stroke.
It was infuriating, but Lucerys had patience and a plan.
Aemond let him read his grandfather’s letters—Alyn was searching for news on Luke’s half-brothers, Baela was pregnant, Rhaena was begging Lucerys to write to them—a taunting reminder that Luke could end the war without bloodshed. The stalemate dragged on. Lucerys mulled the situation over every night he was alone.
It was paramount that he get information out to Corlys soon, to contact his allies, his family. He needed to know that they were all safe. If his sisters and brothers were safe. If Viserys’ corpse had been found yet. He needed to plot his way out, to sneak letters out to his spies.
He had been so absorbed in his craft one night that he didn’t hear Aemond coming in.
It was later than his uncle would usually stop by, and the man was already shrugging himself out of his cloak, ready to toss it onto his usual chair. To lift his crown off his head and place it on Luke’s desk in its usual spot—the polished wood slightly scuffed from when Aemond threw it down a bit too quickly.
The desk where the start of his letters was scribbled, barely legible.
But Aemond saw, and his face fell.
“It seems like you can function with one hand after all, nephew.”
“Aemond—”
“You did not tell me, that you were learning again. You conniving bastard. You were never going to.”
Instinctively, Lucerys tucked his left hand away, sheer panic blazing through him at the thought of losing it. Aemond reached into his coat. Lucerys gasped, threw his damaged hand out, body ready to sacrifice a piece of itself to protect the whole.
He need not worry, as Aemond flipped the knife and stuck it into his face instead.
Lucerys froze.
The blade stuck out of his cheek, glinting silver and white and red in the corner of his vision. Blood dripped down his jaw, into his mouth—Lucerys could not move, could not spit it out, lest he slice his tongue on the blade too. He could taste the metal of it, ready to kiss the back of his throat.
Aemond was frozen too, a mask of shock across his face. He had not planned his violence, but his expression morphed into a wide, self-satisfied smirk. He slipped the blade out of Luke’s face, rejoicing in the shaky, wet gurgle that escaped his mouth. Aemond cupped his face, admiring his handiwork. Smearing Luke’s blood across his mouth and lips.
“Do you know that this is how marriages happen in our house?”
Aemond’s voice was mocking, but not all the way. Lucerys felt his cheek, trying not to prod the wound with his tongue, but too curious, too morbidly fascinated at the hole to avoid it completely. His tongue could feel the sliced edge of his flesh and his fingers came back soaked in blood. Luke let it trickle out of his mouth in a gentle stream so that he could speak without choking. He was too scared to spit.
“I have seen one. I would have to cut yours too.” The words were carefully measured so as not to tug on the skin. Lucerys ignored the pain, the burn, lest he register his situation and scream, tearing the hole wider than necessary.
Aemond tapped the soaked blade to his eyepatch, leaving a smear of fresh blood on his own face. The image was a horror, and Lucerys could only huff in amusement.
Aemond relented and lowered his weapon. Lucerys pulled at his shift with shaking arms, pressing the corner of it to his wound to stave off the bleeding. He would need to signal the guards to get the maester, to stitch his face back together.
Lucerys had known that Aemond was capable, but it was still a shock after the moments of peace.
Aemond had been unstable before the war, and the mass killings that he had perpetuated had not improved his temper, evidently. When Lucerys had heard the extent of it, he was disbelieving, despite it all, to learn that Aemond had become such a cold-blooded killer. He had once been a gentle child, who Lucerys thought had only harboured violent intentions towards the boy who took his eye—but not truly meaning it. Despite the singeing agony that Lucerys felt when his mind touched the edges of Arrax’s memory, he distinctly remembered his uncle screaming at Vhagar to stop. It was the only thing he had never forgotten.
Aemond still seemed reluctant to kill him now, even though he could. There was a world of suffering between life and death, however—and Lucerys saw his future play out, the bright details of his life as Aemond’s captive.
Aemond shifted the blade in his hand and pointed it back at Luke.
“Pain looks good on you nephew.” Aemond’s bloodlust had won out over his shock. To be refused an eye, and to instead carve up something in its region like an advancing threat? Even Lucerys could understand why Aemond was excited. “Shall I do it more, make you unrecognisable to your family? So that when they come to rescue you, they leave you in the dungeon amongst the other thieves.”
Aemond paused, pondering.
“No… They will recognise you by your eyes. That will always be the issue until you give one up.“
Luke shook his head. His uncle was looking for a fight—another reason to brutalise him. Lucerys did not want to bleed anymore.
“Please, Aemond,” Lucerys slurred. He felt a rising panic but quashed it down and kept his words soft.
“Please, your grace.”
“Let’s go back to how it was. Before tonight, it’s been nice, has it not? You can use me. I will do something you want. Tell me.”
Aemond considered his words. Lucerys could almost see the thoughts running behind Aemond’s eye, scanning through the long list of things Aemond wanted, coveted, and yearned for, that he hadn’t already taken by force. It took a while, the interminable haunting of a boy who was never satisfied.
Aemond nodded, eventually. There was still something—other than the eye—that Luke had yet to give him.
“I want you to convince me that you enjoy it.”
What could Luke do but acquiesce?
He needed to stay alive. He wanted to stay in one piece. His fall had damaged him into a now permanent agony, keeping him sleepless, irritable, and frustrated at the new hurdles. But he had adapted. The thought of yet another agony, of something else hurting forever, marking him forever—the way he had marked Aemond—left him reeling in a panic. His right hand was unusable. One side of his face was cut like meat.
His uncle was happy with the compromise, and brought in a maester who reassured Luke that his face would heal, and reassured Aemond that he would have a scar.
It hurt for a while, to speak, to cry, to groan, to call out his uncle's name—in rhythm, at the right time. But Luke managed. He kept Aemond happy and sucked the man back into that blissful space where he forgot that Lucerys was more useful to him in pieces, that he was an obstacle to his reign. Lucerys could play the part of a good lover—he had been overtly desperate in his offer, but he was committed in his delivery, especially with the motivation to stave off Aemond’s mercurial anger. There was a downside, beyond the indignity of it. Lucerys must have been convincing because Aemond now slipped into his room almost every night, so that Luke hardly knew a bed that wasn’t warm.
It made it harder to practice his writing, to exercise his healing sword hand.
But Luke was committed, and he had the patience to carry out his plan.
~ 5 ~
Being an enthusiastic whore wasn’t painless, Lucerys realised. Ignoring the unseen gash in his chest—one Lucerys didn’t know how to heal, beyond cutting Aemond’s head off—but barring that, he wished he had the space to think. And the growing pain. The constancy of it was a soreness, and Lucerys worried that it would never go away now, with Aemond’s enthusiasm.
It staved off further brutality—perhaps this was how his aunt Alys had survived his uncle? He would ask her if he could find her. He needed to know how she had convinced Aemond to forget her. To abandon his seat at Harrenhal.
The throne being dangled in front of his face, perhaps? Aemond was a simple man.
What kept Aemond satisfied enough to never go after another: mistress or whore? To never spare Lucerys one evening, one moment, away from the man. The worst part was that Lucerys’ performance could have convinced himself if the sick feeling afterwards had not grown with time.
There was another returning feeling too, when Aemond held him tight, and Lucerys hated it. When Aemond wanted Luke’s lips against his, when he wanted Lucerys to pleasure him with his mouth, when he pleasured Lucerys with his mouth, when he was too gentle with Luke’s curls, when he was too rough on Luke’s insides. Sweet kisses peppered across Luke’s face and back, in the crook of the knee of his wounded leg almost like an apology.
The mind made sense of everything, and Lucerys fell back into his previous numbness. He got used to it—as if Aemond had not nearly killed him again. As if the attack had never happened. Sometimes he even asked Aemond about his day, afterwards. Aemond spoke of the realm, of the inconvenience of having to launch his ships off the isle of Tarth, of the ongoing headache the Velaryons posed to the commerce of King’s Landing, of the price of Essosi silk—he wished to remodel some rooms, to make space for future guests. Lucerys would commiserate, sharing his opinion of Alyn and the new ship he never shut up about, stories of his time as a commoner, offering plausible solutions to Aemond’s woes that were not the ones his uncle truly wanted. Mostly, Lucerys offered comfort and held Aemond close when he looked like he needed it.
It only took a moon or two—perhaps a little longer, and Aemond was lulled back into it too. The Keep’s staff, having scurried about in panic for a while after cleaning up the mess of blood in the room—slipped back into step, the well-oiled machine keeping Lucerys locked in his room, under orders not to let anyone in or out. Lucerys knew which guard was the least experienced, and asked one day for the Dowager Queen. She appeared in his doorway, white-faced.
“Lucerys? You’re alive?” asked Alicent.
“I survived the fall.”
“I know that!” she snapped, looking at wit’s end already and they had not even spoken. She had never really liked him. The woman bundled her cloaks closer to her chest, leaning in. “I would have thought…”
“Aemond didn’t kill me,” confirmed Lucerys. “Does everyone think that Aemond’s men are guarding a corpse?”
“No one knows for sure, with him,” she muttered. She looked a little guilty, then. The distress marring Queen Alicent’s face only increased when she finally took in Luke’s injuries. Her cheeks went red.
“He wasn’t aiming for the eye,” assured Lucerys. “He just stuck it into my face.”
Alicent nodded, looking a bit green now.
“It’s healing well.”
“Thank you, your majesty.”
Alicent looked away again, at the corner of a bedsheet. Tears beaded in her eyes, and they looked ready to spill over. Maybe Lucerys looked too much like his own mother.
“I have also heard rumours that…”
The boy smiled in her direction.
“That he violates me on the daily? Alas, those are true, Queen Alicent.”
Alicent flinched. Had not expected him to tell her the truth so readily, perhaps. Lucerys didn’t much care anymore—if shame could kill him, he would have died long ago. Alicent looked furious, suddenly. She was only covering up her frustration and humiliation, Lucerys knew, because Aemond was the same. Lucerys didn’t know if he should despise the woman or pity her. He tried to think of what his mother would say.
“Helaena was good. I’m sure you did your best, Your Majesty, but war makes men cruel.”
Alicent straightened, an invisible burden lifted from her shoulders when Lucerys did not lash out at her. Luke did not punish her further, even though they both knew he was entitled to it. Lucerys was suddenly tired.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But it changes women too.”
Alicent shifted from foot to foot, seemingly done with the conversation. But unable to leave. Lucerys decided to take his chance.
“Queen Alicent?” She looked up when called, her large green eyes still shiny with tears. “My days here are long, as my family isn’t going to launch an attack on King’s Landing soon, it seems. Your son mutilated my hand, and I am still having trouble with my remaining fingers. Could you send me your maester, perhaps? His one has grown afraid of lingering for too long. It's patently unhelpful for my condition.”
Alicent considered and opened her mouth to speak. She was cut off by a loud cough.
Lucerys turned to face the King. Not too fast, lest the sudden wave of nausea pull him under. Aemond’s eye was blown wide, in an incandescent rage that sent a chill down Lucerys’ spine.
“Mother, leave.”
She did, scurrying away, head down and avoiding Lucerys’ pleading eyes.
“Aemond—”
“I violate you every night,” repeated Aemond. Lucerys blinked. That was not what he had expected his uncle to comment on first. Or at all.
“Yes?”
Aemond slunk further into the room, face stormy and unreadable. Lucerys reflexively stepped forward, ready to remove Aemond’s cloak and start disrobing himself, but he stalled, his fear winning out. Aemond glanced back at Luke.
“You… You were pretending this entire time?”
Lucerys’ mouth fell open, as astonished as he would have been had Aemond decided to talk backwards.
“You asked me to!”
Aemond paced, from the window to the desk, to the fireplace.
“I did.” Aemond sighed, grabbing the poker to stoke the fire. It crackled warmly, sending a shower of sparks onto Aemond’s trousers. He did not flinch.
Lucerys absorbed the situation. Aemond couldn’t truly think that… Had he believed that Lucerys’ act of the wife-whore had become sincere over time? Lucerys had thought that Aemond would be a bit more cynical about this, but perhaps Luke was the naive one this time. He knew Aemond as he was, and he knew that his uncle was as cruel and petulant as he was sincere and delusional. It was a baffling clash—Lucerys was flattered by it, perhaps. But he was mostly afraid at the reminder that Aemond’s grasp on his own sanity hovered dangerously close to instability.
“Did you want me to want it?”
Aemond pushed the poker into the flame with a bit more force than necessary, refusing to turn back.
“You were plotting. With my mother.”
“I was plotting nothing. I just wanted the opinion of another maester. For my hand. It still hurts, look.”
Lucerys demonstrated by trying to close his hand into a fist, but winced when the damaged tendon twitched in protest. Aemond did not turn around.
“Those I chose are not good enough? Do you think I want your hand to rot and fall off? You think I don’t care?”
“I think that you are not invested in which parts I retain, so long as my eyes don’t fall out of my head prematurely,” said Luke, honestly. Aemond looked back at him with a sneer.
“I should have cut off all your fingers, you ungrateful bastard. You only took one of my eyes, but you still blinded me to what you are.”
Lucerys felt a thrill of fear go up his spine, the underlying ache in his hand and back flaring up in warning.
“I cannot hurt you. I have not tried, since my first day in captivity,” Lucerys tried to smile placatingly. The gesture tugged at his face. “Aemond, why don’t we—”
“You do hurt me,” Aemond pulled the poker from the fire. Its blunted tip curved and glowed red-hot from the coals, casting a dim spot of light into the room. “Your existence challenges my rule. You disrespect the mercy I have been granting you. You won’t bend the knee in exchange for your life. You won’t pay your debt to keep your life. And you collude with my mother behind my back.”
“Then kill me,” said Lucerys, playing his go-to hand. What he was gambling for this time, he was not sure, but he did not wish to find out. “If my presence makes you so miserable. That was on the table from the start.”
Aemond’s face tightened, a hard mess of scars and Targaryen arrogance. His good eye looked Lucerys up and down, and the boy had to stop himself from bursting into nervous laughter. Aemond was transparent. He would not kill Luke. He had never wanted to kill Luke. The memory of the knife, however, kept Lucerys sober. He had to de-escalate Aemond from this episode. After the moons passed, Lucerys was learning his uncle’s rhythm.
Nevertheless, Lucerys worried that he would miscalculate one day too soon, and end up the corpse everyone thought him—an utter waste of his second chance at life, robbed by Aemond yet again.
That time would not be now, he insisted to himself. Today, there was a way out. Lucerys would always find a way out.
“I could,” said Aemond, finally. “But I won’t. I will instead remind everyone that you are mine. I will remind you of who you are.”
Aemond lifted the poker and pointed it at Lucerys’ face. Luke watched, frozen, as Aemond stepped forward, and it dawned on Lucerys what Aemond was going to do. His stomach lurched, jumping up into his throat. His body was poised to run—pointlessly, as Lucerys could barely walk right. Aemond’s body was poised to chase. To swing widely at Luke in his fury.
Lucerys did not think that Aemond wanted to kill him, but what Aemond intended did not matter. Lucerys was only alive because he was lucky.
“My shoulder,” gasped Luke. “I want it on my shoulder.”
Aemond was startled into a pause. His hold on the poker tightened, and he swayed backwards. Ever suspicious, as if Lucerys was going to fight him off again. And win. As if Lucerys even could.
“Your shoulder?”
Lucerys nodded furiously, pulling up his right sleeve. His heart beat in a loud rush, strumming, drowning out most of his thoughts. Luke knew that he was a bear in a trap now. When given a choice of gnawing off his leg to stay alive, to avoid Aemond’s own fate, Lucerys had to think quickly lest the trap snap shut completely.
Lucerys motioned at the Hightower crest at the end of the poker. His heart screamed at him to run, to escape the pain, the horror, the degradation of it. He kept his voice as still as he could—but it came out as a slight trill—as if negotiating a peace treaty he knew would not be in his favour.
“In the tradition of the Seven, a husband cloaks his wife by passing his cloak onto her shoulders. You cut my face in the marriage rights of my house. Now let’s do yours, uncle.”
The words hit Aemond like a gust, and he laughed as a reflex. It was dark, the gloating of a man who had already won. His eye narrowed into a glare—he had not missed the veiled insult, but it seemed to amuse him nevertheless. It wasn’t hatred all the way.
“Now, Luke. Don’t be cute.”
Aemond pressed the poker into Luke’s offered shoulder.
It was instinctive: Luke flinched away, but Aemond followed, keeping contact between metal and flesh. In a second, there was cooked meat, and Lucerys felt it shock its way through his entire body. It was so cold—it was dragonfire, it was ice—piercing him through the back.
A scream tore itself from Luke’s throat—Aemond did not flinch. There was a low sizzle in the room, the smell of char. But the pain was all Lucerys knew.
Aemond removed the poker and threw it back into the fire. He grabbed Luke’s arm to stabilise him, taking in his masterpiece. Luke could not see it, and it made him panic. He choked on his breathing, sucked in air in between sobs—too fast and wet and deep. He wasn’t sure if any air was going in at all.
“It’s perfect,” Aemond sounded awed. He tugged Luke to the edge of the bed, making him sit, ignoring the boy’s whimpering at the pull on his injured body. “One day I will have your eye, as well. But this really complements the one on your face.”
Lucerys nodded, slumping on the bed, desperately trying not to vomit.
Don’t roll onto your back, Luke pleaded with himself. Don’t move it hurts don’t move don’t move—
Lucerys buried his face into his pillow, heaving onto the sheet. His entire body felt hot now, not just his shoulder. It was a throbbing pain, spreading over his limbs and back and neck like venom, like being boiled alive, except the water wasn’t hot enough to kill him fast, leaving him twitching, suffocating, and completely helpless. He did not know yet how he was going to survive this.
Aemond left him a short moment and returned with an armful of supplies he had taken from the maester. The door had been slammed in the old man’s face—he had been summoned by a guard at Luke’s screaming, no doubt.
“Let me,” said Aemond.
Lucerys did not have a choice in the matter. Not really.
Aemond was gentle. He dabbed ointment onto Luke’s back. It hurt almost as much as the burn at first, but the freshness of the balm quickly soothed the howling agony to a mere scream, and the slight reduction in suffering cleared Luke’s mind. Lucerys looked over his shoulder.
Aemond was focused and meticulous in his care. Admiring his mother’s crest on his nephew's body, no doubt. He met Luke’s gaze when he felt him staring. Aemond smiled, half affectionate, but full of pride.
He was finally subdued. All it took was another mutilation. Lucerys’ entire body screamed at him to run now. While Aemond was distracted.
Lucerys smiled back at Aemond through gritted teeth. The man took it as an invitation. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Luke’s mouth. It was just a peck, but it made bile rise in Luke’s throat again. He crushed it down.
“You are finally understanding, nephew.”
Lucerys did not, but he nodded, and let his head drop into the crook of his good elbow, while he let his uncle touch him—take care of him. Diligently clean up the melted mess of Luke’s flesh. Another forever hurt.
But Lucerys was alive. He had survived this. And he had done so without giving up his eye, without giving in to Aemond. Lucerys had not given up on his people. On his family. It was all that mattered.
It was going to be alright.
It was going to be worth it.
Lucerys would endure and Aemond’s head would end on a spike. Luke had an escape brewing, and he would soon be gone, with all that Aemond truly wanted. He had miscalculated this exchange, but some mistakes were bound to happen. Lucerys had planned around it. He had given up on his right hand. His right shoulder could take an injury.
His handwriting from his left hand was now legible, and he had been scattering bits of his meals on the windowsill, hoping to attract a bird he recognised—one of those native to Driftmark, discreet enough to pass for ravens, one he had once trained to pick letters up from his spy in the Red Keep on his orders. Once he had contact with Baela and Rhaena again, he would be able to put into plan an escape.
He could play the game a while longer, to wear the manipulation Aemond requested like a second skin. Luke only had to keep the peace, to crush his true feelings until Aemond was happy again. And one day, it would be over. He would get out of this nightmare, and not need to continue this life—the rest of his life—as his uncle’s concubine, to be brutalised until there was nothing left of him.
Wedded in blood, wedded in flesh. It was a shared joke—but Aemond, humourless as he was, had always enjoyed laughs when he felt in on it, and when they were at someone else’s expense. Especially since Aemond had made it first—awkward, cruel, but tinged with so much sincerity that Lucerys had an open window into his soul.
What was next?
At the rate Aemond was going, it would take years for Luke to die. Lucerys didn’t know if the thought was pure horror or the only sliver of hope he could hold onto.
Aemond’s caresses were cool on Luke’s skin, almost a relief, and Luke let himself drift off—faint from the adrenaline and pain. Lucerys would make this peace last so that more moments could be soft like this. So he could enjoy his short time left with his uncle.
Lucerys had been horrified when he had finally regained his memory, only to realise that he would never see most of his family again. There was almost no one left. For weeks, he had been grasping at any information about them, trying to figure out who he had left—who was left to him in the world. He had remembered one thing clearly: that final scream, Aemond’s horrified cry. He held onto it.
Aemond watched Luke drift off to sleep, touched that his nephew finally understood that he was safe around him. So long as he kept Aemond happy.
Aemond was happy right now, his mind calm once again. He was filled with more clarity than he had in a while.
Aemond had patience and a plan.
~ +1 ~
The sunlight shone sideways through the slanted bars on Lucerys’ windows. He could see out, and the city was beautiful on this day. It fluttered and hummed, bringing up the sounds of the bustling life below. His people too.
He could see the ocean from here, and the more he stared, every day, all day, as the ships docked and left the port, he could almost convince himself that he saw the Velaryon flags on the horizon—an armada, an entire revolt—coming to his aid.
It never came, but Lucerys had hope.
The door clicked, and Lucerys spun around. Aemond streamed in, face wide in a smile, full of happiness.
Luke’s heart fluttered between fear and relief. Aemond did not look upset. That was good. But something had happened: Aemond looked like his childhood self, bursting to tell his nephew about an exciting book that he had read. He still had his knife on him though, as he did every time, and Lucerys wondered what it would be today, and how graciously Aemond would take the refusal of his eye.
Lucerys decided to balance out the impending disappointment with something else his uncle desired, and he tugged his shirt off before Aemond could ask. Aemond’s smile widened but he shook his head.
Lucerys tossed his shirt on the bed, the freshly scarred skin on his shoulder pulling painfully. It was healing, but it was raw—it still left smudges of blood on the sheets when Aemond took him on his back. Luke crossed his arms, backing himself against the foot of the bed. A bit off-kilter at the refusal. Aemond usually appreciated the initiative. Lucerys tried to smile, tugging at the scar on his face, but he knew it was not convincing.
“I have great news for you, Lucerys.”
“What is it?”
Aemond sidled up to Lucerys, hands clasped in front of him. As if ready to show him a gift. A gift for which one of them, was the question. Aemond leaned in, and Lucerys could see the glint in his eye, and it was the one that preceded destruction.
Luke froze. Aemond’s words fell on him in a blur, numbing his entire body cold, as if he had been thrown to the bottom of Shipbreaker’s bay once again.
“I have your brothers.”
~
Fin