Chapter 3: The Breaking
The seven years that followed my birth were a study in the slow unraveling of a family. My first memory of true loss was not of a person, but of a hope. The pale, stony egg placed in my cradle, shimmering with swirls of gold and silver, never so much as cracked. For three years it remained there, a cold, beautiful failure. I'd lay my small hand on its shell, feeling nothing but a dormant rock, a constant, silent reminder that my connection to my heritage was imperfect. They took it away eventually. The shame was my father's, but the failure felt like my own.
The first real fracture came when I was three. Uncle Daemon, a whirlwind of charm and chaos, was finally cast out. The official reason was "grievous insults" toward his brother, the heir. I remember the shouting echoing through the halls, the slammed door, and the palpable void his departure left. Rhaenyra was desolate. He was her favorite, the one who brought excitement and dangerous ideas. His exile was the first thread pulled from the tapestry of our family.
Then, the Old King, Jaehaerys, died. I was five. The world held its breath. The weight of the crown descended upon my father's head, and with it, a gravity that seemed to stoop his shoulders. He was now King Viserys I, the first of his name. We moved from the comfortable halls of the Prince of Dragonstone to the oppressive grandeur of the Red Keep's royal apartments. Everything became heavier, more formal. My father became less Aba and more Your Grace.
For two years, a fragile peace held. We mourned the Old King. My father learned to rule. And then, my mother, Aemma, was gone.
It was a brutal, bloody thing. The Maesters called it "childbed fever." I called it a slaughterhouse. My father's desperate desire for a son had killed her. The news was delivered to us by a stone-faced maester. Rhaenyra wept openly, her whole body shaking with sobs. I did not. A coldness settled in my chest, a hard, icy knot where my love for my father had been. He had chosen a ghost—a son who never drew breath—over the warm, loving woman who was his wife and our mother. I could not forgive him.
He tried to reach me. He'd come to my chambers, his eyes red-rimmed, and try to speak of dragons or history. I would just stare at him, my silence a louder accusation than any scream. The distance between us grew into a chasm.
And then, with a speed that felt like a desecration, came Alicent Hightower.
She was my sister's friend. She was our father's frequent companion in his grief, offering solace from the pages of a book. And then, less than a year after my mother's body was cold in the crypt, she was his queen.
The announcement was made in the throne room. I stood beside Rhaenyra, our matching silver-gold hair like banners of defiance. I saw the green dress Alicent wore—the color of the Hightower, the color of ambition. I saw the way her father, Otto, stood just behind the throne, a faint smile on his lips.
My father looked happy. He looked relieved. The guilt was being washed away by a new, younger wife. It made me sick.
The feast that night was a mockery. The laughter was too loud, the music too cheerful. I watched Alicent sitting in my mother's chair, wearing my mother's crown. I saw my father place a hand over hers.
Rhaenyra leaned close to me, her voice a low, furious whisper. "He forgets her so easily."
I didn't answer. I just watched.
Later, when the new Queen approached us, her smile hesitant and brittle, she spoke. "Aemon, I hope we shall be friends. I know I can never replace your lady mother, but I—"
I didn't let her finish. I looked up, meeting her eyes with a chill that belied my seven years.
"You sit in her chair," I said, my voice flat and clear. "You wear her crown. But you will never have her title. You are not my mother. You are the woman who married my father before my mother's memory was cold. Do not speak to me of friendship."
The silence that fell around us was absolute. My father's face went pale with shock and then red with anger. Alicent recoiled as if struck, her eyes glistening with wounded tears—tears I knew were for my father's benefit, not from any true hurt I could inflict.
That was the moment the break became final. Not a loud, fiery argument, but a cold, public vow of enmity from a son to his father's new wife. I turned and walked away, Rhaenyra falling into step beside me, her shoulder brushing mine in solidarity.
We were alone now, just us two against the new order. The King, the Queen, and the green shadows of the Hightowers that now loomed over every corridor. Our house was divided. And I, though just a boy of seven, had just drawn the first, silent line in the sand.