Rain battered the towers of Storm's End, a hard slanting rain that rattled the shutters and slicked the stones of the yard below. The wind pressed against the round walls like a living thing, howling through the arrow slits and chimneys so that the whole castle seemed to groan beneath it.

Inside the great hall the fire burned bright, yet the warmth did not reach far. Wet cloaks steamed near the hearth. Men drank and muttered. The smell of salt and damp wool hung in the air.

Aemond Targaryen stood before the dais, tall and still as a spear planted in the earth. Rain darkened his riding leathers. Water slid from the ends of his pale hair and dripped softly to the floor.

Opposite him stood Lucerys Velaryon.

For a moment the hall faded. The roar of the storm outside dulled to a distant hush. The memory came without mercy. A dark courtyard lit by torches. Children shouting. The weight of Vhagar beneath him still fresh and wild in his blood. Then hands grabbing, fists striking, the hot rush of anger and triumph. And after that the flash of steel. A blade moving faster than thought.

Pain.

He remembered the warmth running down his cheek. The way the world had tilted. The taste of copper in his mouth while someone screamed. Perhaps it had been him. When they pulled the boy away Luke had looked terrified. As if he had not meant it. As if the knife had leapt from his hand of its own will.

Aemond blinked and the hall returned.

Lucerys had grown since then. Taller now, though not by much. Still narrow in the shoulders, still uncertain in the way he held himself. His hair was wind tangled from the storm, his cloak too large for him, heavy with rain.

Yet the face was the same. The eyes moved quickly around the hall, never resting long. Searching doors, walls, strangers. Searching for a way out.

When they finally settled on Aemond they widened slightly. Recognition. Fear followed soon after.

Aemond felt something twist deep in his chest. Not pain. Something warmer. Sharper. Like a blade drawn slowly across stone. His fingers curled at his side.

“So it is you,” Aemond said at last. His voice carried easily through the hall, calm and quiet despite the storm.

Lucerys swallowed.

Up on the dais, the Baratheon lord shifted his weight, watching the two boys with growing unease. The fire snapped and spat between them. Thunder rolled across the cliffs outside.

Aemond studied Luke as if seeing him for the first time. “So they sent you,” he went on. “I had wondered which of you bastards would come begging.”

The word hung in the air.

Lucerys stiffened but said nothing. His hand tightened on the message scroll he carried, knuckles pale.

Aemond stepped closer. The distance between them shrank to a few paces. “You took something of mine once,” he said softly.

Luke’s gaze dropped for a moment to the sapphire in Aemond’s socket. The blue stone caught the firelight and gleamed coldly.

“Do you remember?”

Silence. Luke’s throat moved, but no words came. Aemond leaned slightly toward him, the faintest smile touching his lips.

“I should like it returned.”

The smile grew.

“An eye for an eye.”

Luke flinched as if struck. A few men in the hall laughed uneasily. Others watched with hard interest, the way men watch dogs circling one another before a fight.

Lucerys took a step back. Then another.

His gaze flicked toward the doors where the wind howled beyond the thick oak.

“Lord Baratheon,” Aemond called lightly without looking away from the boy. “Surely you would not deny me such a small justice.”

The lord rose from his chair with a heavy scrape of wood against stone. “No bloodshed in my hall.” His voice cracked through the chamber like thunder. “You came as envoys. Leave as envoys.”

Lucerys needed no second command. He turned at once and hurried for the doors, his cloak snapping sharply behind him as the storm rushed in to swallow him.

Luke ran the moment the doors of the yard opened.

The storm swallowed him at once. Rain lashed sideways across the stones, and the wind tore at his cloak as he stumbled through the mud toward the dragon yard. Aemond followed at an easy pace, boots striking the ground with measured calm. There was no need to hurry. The boy ran like prey already cornered.

Arrax shrieked when Luke reached him, pale wings shuddering in the gale. The dragon crouched low as Luke scrambled up the saddle.

Aemond watched for a moment.

Then he turned to Vhagar.

The old dragon stirred, vast and terrible, her scales black with rain. When she lifted her head the ground itself seemed to groan beneath her weight.

Aemond mounted and felt the familiar surge in his blood as her wings unfurled.

High above, Arrax was already climbing into the storm.

Aemond urged Vhagar upward after him, the wind roaring in his ears. At first it was only amusement that drove him. He fled wildly through the clouds, darting and weaving in panic, and Aemond followed with patient ease.

He only meant to frighten him but Arrax wheeled suddenly through the storm. A jet of dragonfire burst from the smaller beast, bright and wild with fear. The flame struck Vhagar across the face.

The great dragon screamed. The sound tore through the sky and through Aemond’s bones alike. Her body lurched forward with a violence he had not commanded.

“No!" Aemond shouted, yanking the reins. “Vhagar! Obey!”

But the old dragon had known war before he was born. She surged through the clouds in a blur of teeth and fury.

For one terrible heartbeat Aemond saw Arrax struggling in the wind. Then Vhagar’s jaws closed. The sky filled with fragments. A wing. A scream cut short. A boy falling.

Aemond did not move.

The storm swallowed Lucerys Velaryon as he fell toward the black sea far below.

---

The chamber was dim, lit only by a pair of low candles that guttered each time the wind pressed against the windows. The storm had followed him home, as if it, too, wanted him to repent. Aemond laid on his side with his head resting in {{user}}’s lap.

For a long while he had said nothing. His body was rigid despite the position, one arm folded across his chest as though he held himself together by force alone. Damp strands of pale hair clung to his temple where the rain had soaked through earlier. His breathing came shallow and uneven.

The first tear slid down his cheek so quietly it might have been mistaken for rainwater. He did not move to wipe it away.

His good eye stared at nothing in particular, fixed somewhere beyond the ceiling beams, beyond the walls, beyond the storm itself. His hand tightened slowly against his chest, fingers curling into the leather of his tunic.

“I thought...” he began.

The words faltered.

His voice sounded wrong to his own ears. Thinner than it should have been. Not the sharp, controlled voice he wore like armor before others.

“I thought I knew what I was doing.”

Another tear followed the first, slipping silently along the curve of his face before disappearing into his hair.

For years he had imagined the moment. It had lived inside him like a splinter buried deep beneath the skin. Every insult, every sideways glance from court, every whisper about bastards and rightful heirs had sharpened it further. He had carried the memory of that night on Driftmark the way a man carried a wound that never truly healed.

He swallowed slowly.

“When I was a boy,” he said after a moment, the words coming carefully now, as though he had to pry them loose, “I tried to believe that I was fortunate. That losing an eye for a dragon was a fair trade.” his mouth twitched faintly at that, though there was no humor in it. “They called me brave.”

The storm groaned against the tower walls. Aemond’s gaze flickered briefly toward the window before drifting back into that distant place again.

“They did not see the rest of it.”

His fingers shifted against his chest, restless.

“The blood. My mother screaming. The way they held me down while the maester worked. I remember the smell of the room more than the pain. Strange, the things that remain.”

Another tear slid down his temple.

“I used to wake in the night thinking I could still feel it,” he murmured. “The blade,” his voice lowered further. “and him standing there.”

He drew in a slow breath that trembled despite his effort to steady it.

“I told myself for years that one day I would face him again. That when that day came I would take back what was mine.” His jaw tightened faintly. “That it would feel... right.”

Silence settled between the words. Outside, thunder rolled across the sea. An unending taunt.

Aemond’s hand rose at last, though it did not reach for the tears. Instead it hovered uncertainly before lowering again, as though the strength had left him halfway through the motion.

“When I saw him tonight,” he continued quietly, “he looked so small.”

His voice broke on the last word, almost too soft to hear. He shut his eye for a moment, and when he opened it again the tears came faster, though he made no sound.

“I did not mean...”

The sentence died before it could finish. His throat worked, but whatever truth sat there refused to cross his lips. The silence that followed was thick with the weight of what remained unsaid.

At last he whispered, almost to himself, “It happened so quickly.”

His gaze drifted upward again, unfocused and hollow now.

“I only wanted to frighten him.”