Chapter 01
Twelve. Nine. Five.
Three numbers, insignificant to most. They could be the number of steps a merchant took from his stall to his home, the number of lovers a lady entertained in whispered secrecy, or the number of coppers exchanged for a loaf of stale bread.
But to one boy, those numbers were carved into his soul, etched into his bones like an artist's chisel upon stone.
Twelve Years
It had been twelve years since the first breath left his lips, twelve years since he entered a world that had no place for him.
Twelve years since the realm was bathed in fire and steel, since Robert Baratheon's rebellion tried to shatter crowns and broke kingdoms, leaving the rivers thick with the blood of the fallen. Men had died for justice, for ambition, for vengeance—and some for a prophecy they would never come to understand.
And twelve years since a boy was born.
His father, Rhaegar Targaryen, had not wanted a son. He had wanted a daughter, a second Visenya to stand beside his Rhaenys and Aegon—a living echo of history, a fulfillment of the three-headed dragon. A piece of his prophecy made flesh.
But the prophecy had betrayed him.
Instead of the warrior-daughter he had longed for, his second wife, Lyanna Stark, gave him a son.
Rhaegar did not name him. He had no use for him.
So it was Lyanna who whispered his name into the cold halls of the Red Keep. A name from his paternal family, a name of scholars, a name that would have meant something—Aemon.
But names held no power in the face of indifference.
Rhaegar had no love to spare for his unwanted child. The realm was in ruin, his enemies subdued but not tamed, his crown still heavy upon his brow. He had no time for the son who had stolen from him the daughter he had so desperately sought.
And so, Aemon was set aside, forgotten like a half-finished verse in a bard's song.
Nine Years
Nine years since he became a brother.
Nine years since his mother, once the only warmth in his world, finally gave the king what he had wanted all along—a daughter.
Nine years since Aemon ceased to exist.
With Visenya Targaryen in her arms, Lyanna turned away from him, pouring all her love, all her devotion, into the child she should have borne first. And what little kindness remained for Aemon was lost beneath the weight of courtly whispers.
The realm had bled for Rhaegar's prophecy, and when it failed—when the gods gave him a second son instead of a second daughter—the blame settled upon Aemon like an iron cloak. They did not say it outright, but he heard it in the halls, in the market streets, in the hushed conversations that died the moment he entered a room.
The realm burned for you.
Thousands died for you.
And for what?
For nothing.
And so, alone in a castle of cold stone and colder hearts, Aemon learned to walk unnoticed, to swallow his pride, to expect nothing.
Five Years
Five years since the walls of his world closed in around him.
Five years since he was cast away entirely, left to rot in the silence of his own chambers.
It had happened on the training grounds, under the watchful eyes of knights and squires, of lords and ladies who had never truly seen him before.
By sheer will—or perhaps fate's cruel amusement—Aemon bested his older brother in a sparring match. He had knocked Aegon onto his back, forced him to yield, and then turned to leave, his heart pounding with something that might have been pride.
But Aegon had never learned how to lose.
His rage burned hotter than dragonfire, and as Aemon walked away, he struck. A cheap shot, an act of cowardice, sending Aemon stumbling into the dirt. Instinct had taken over. He had turned, lashing out in self-defense, and his wooden blade had found its mark—splitting Aegon's brow, drawing blood, leaving a wound that would demand stitches.
The king was told, and justice was swift.
Locked away in his chambers, denied food, denied water, denied even a voice to plead his innocence, Aemon Targaryen was meant to disappear. He was meant to starve, to wither, to fade into nothing—a stain upon the royal line wiped clean in silence.
And he would have.
But fate had other plans.
A door that should not have existed creaked open in the dead of night. A shadow slipped through, moving soundlessly across the room, the scent of fresh bread and cool water lingering in the air like a ghost's whisper.And from the darkness stepped Varys. Aemon would never forget that moment.
He would never forget the day the Master of Whispers saved his life
*Flashback*
"You shouldn't be here, Lord Varys. If His Grace learns of this, he'll be wroth."
"Just Varys, my prince," the eunuch replied smoothly. "And as for His Grace learning of this meeting… I find that highly unlikely. What does surprise me, however, is that you know of me."
The boy's lips curled in something that wasn't quite a smile. "With all the stares and whispers, I've learned to be watchful. I'm seven, not a fool."
"A valuable skill in King's Landing," Varys mused.
"Not that it will do me any good now," Aemon muttered, barely above a whisper.
Three days. Three days locked away in this room just silence and hunger gnawing at his belly. And yet, to Varys' subtle admiration, the boy wore his suffering well. His posture remained straight, his tone controlled. Of course, the Spider could see the cracks beneath the surface, but for one so young, it was an impressive effort.
"That, my prince, is precisely why I am here tonight."
Aemon arched a brow. "Oh? Has His Grace finally decided to be rid of me? Or am I to be whisked away by your little birds? Perhaps to the Night's Watch?"
"As I said, the king knows nothing of this visit," Varys assured him. "And no, my prince, I am not here to spirit you away." He studied the boy for a moment before adding, "I must say, you are quite observant. Not many outside the small council are even aware of my little birds."
Aemon shrugged. "I'm not that observant. If I were, I'd have found the secret passage you slithered in from."
Varys chuckled. "Do not sell yourself short, my prince. I can count on one hand the number of people who know of it."
Aemon exhaled sharply, his patience thinning. "Enough riddles. Why are you here, Varys? Why risk the king's wrath? What do you want from me?"
The Spider did not answer immediately. Instead, with a flick of his hands, he produced a small loaf of bread and a skin of water from the depths of his sleeves.
Aemon eyed the offering but did not reach for it. His stomach clenched painfully, but hunger had never dulled his wits before. "I must be slow from starvation, because I fail to see what you gain from this."
Varys tilted his head. "My prince?"
"Nothing is free in King's Landing—least of all from a man like you." Aemon's voice was steady, though his fingers twitched at his sides. "I have nothing. I am no one. Perhaps once, I had value as bastard. But not anymore. So tell me—what do you expect in return for this kindness?"
Varys smiled, the expression small and knowing. "You continue to impress me, my prince." He let the words linger before speaking again. "I do sympathize with your plight… but you are correct. This is not without purpose."
Aemon said nothing, waiting.
"The crown prince," Varys continued, "already shows troubling traits—entitlement, laziness, a disregard for those beneath him."
"He's eight."
"Yes. And no one corrects him. He already understands how to mask his nature before the king and queen, but behind closed doors? His uncles whisper in his ear, shaping him. And I fear they do not shape him for the better."
Aemon's eyes darkened. "So that's it, then? You mean to keep me as a spare? If Aegon proves unfit, I am to be your answer? A king groomed to your liking—a puppet to dance to your tune?"
Varys didn't answer immediately, he eyed Aemon and a small smile appeared on his face.
"That… was my plan, yes," Varys admitted without shame.
"But since I'm apparently smarter than most people in the keep—despite being seven—you've had to change course," Aemon said dryly. "Yet here you are."
"Yet here I am." Varys inclined his head. "Instead of shaping a puppet, I now intend to nurture a great king—one who, in turn, will raise a worthy heir, and so on."
Aemon narrowed his eyes. "And what do you gain from this, if you cannot control me?"
"Nothing," Varys said simply. "I am not doing this for myself, my prince. I am doing it for the realm."
Aemon studied the Spider, weighing his words, searching for the inevitable lie. He found none—or rather, none that he could yet discern. Without another word, he took the small loaf of brea, tore it in half, and held one piece out to Varys.
The eunuch arched a brow at the unexpected gesture.
"Food tastes better when shared," Aemon said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
For a moment, Varys said nothing. Then, slowly, he accepted the offering, and Aemon could have sworn the Spider was smiling. A real smile—one almost too clever for its own good.
*Flashback end*
Five years had passed since that fateful night.
Five years since a door that should never have existed had creaked open, and a whisper in the dark had offered him salvation.
True to his word, Varys became his teacher, his mentor, his silent accomplice in shaping a prince the realm had long since forgotten. Within the confines of that solitary chamber, Aemon's education began—not with the love of a father, nor the guidance of a maester, but with the cold, unyielding truths inked within pages of history, strategy, and power.
Books became his lifeline.
Politics, warfare, mathematics—the foundations of a ruler's mind. But Aemon did not stop there. He devoured knowledge as a drowning man gasps for air, grasping at subjects far beyond what Varys had intended. Medicine, architecture, trade routes, smithing, the subtle art of poisons—no subject was too trivial, no lesson too obscure.
And the Spider, for all his vast knowledge, found himself unsettled.
The boy was hungry. Not just for power, not just for wisdom, but for understanding—for the secrets of the world and the levers that moved it. He absorbed everything, let nothing slip through his grasp, and wielded theory with the precision of a master long before his name day reached double digits.
But it was the way he answered political questions that sent a shiver down Varys' spine.
Cunning. Ruthless. Calculated.
He did not see the world through the lens of a child, nor did he possess the naivety of one. Every choice had weight, every mercy was measured, every cruelty was deliberate. He understood power in ways that even grown kings failed to grasp. And he had yet to live ten name days.
Yet for all his brilliance, there were limits.
Martial training was the greatest obstacle. Aemon needed space, needed weapons, needed practice—but the risk of discovery was too great. So instead, Varys procured rare books on combat, tomes adorned with intricate illustrations detailing footwork, stances, strikes. Knives were the only weapons he could wield within his confinement, and so he learned them well. In time, his hands became deft, his throws precise, his blade-work elegant and efficient.
But there was one lesson even Varys could not teach him.
The weight of loneliness.
For five long years, no one but the Spider had come to him. Not a mother, not a father, not a sibling, not even the guards stationed at his door, who shirked their duties because no one cared enough to enforce them.
Day after day of silence.
Year after year of solitude.
Until, on his two-and-ten name day, he spoke the words that would change everything.
"It ends now."
He had long abandoned the foolish hope that his family would remember his birth, that his mother would knock upon his door with gentle hands, that his father would summon him as a prince of royal blood. That dream had died long ago.
But today was not a day for mourning.
Today, he would leave. King's Landing. His prison. His ghosts.
A king cannot rule a realm he has never seen. He cannot command a people he does not know. Aemon would see Westeros with his own eyes, hear its people with his own ears, walk its roads with his own feet.
And Varys, in his wisdom, agreed. There was little left for the boy to learn within these walls—what he needed now was life.
The Spider had plans. He intended to send the prince to Illyrio Mopatis in Pentos, a safe haven far from prying eyes, where he could grow, where he could plan for the future.
But Aemon refused.
He had other intentions. He would go North.
To his family.
That had given even the great Master of Whispers pause.
The Starks had severed all ties with Queen Lyanna after her marriage to Rhaegar. In twelve long years, not once had Eddard or Benjen Stark sent a raven south to inquire about their sister, nor about the nephew and niece they had never met.
But Lyanna had written. Again and again. Her letters had gone unanswered, her silence a wound she never spoke of, though Varys had seen the pain buried beneath the ice of her Stark-grey eyes.
The Starks had forgotten them.
So why, then, would Aemon seek them out?
It was only when the boy revealed his true intentions that Varys withheld his objections.
He was not going North for the Starks.
He was going for Maester Aemon of the Night's Watch.
The elder brother of King Aegon V the Unlikely. The prince who had once forsaken the throne for duty. The man who had served the Night's Watch so long that most of the realm had forgotten he was still alive.
A wise old man who, once upon a time, had exchanged ravens with a young prince named Rhaegar Targaryen.
"No, my prince. It begins now," Varys responded, his voice calm yet carrying the weight of finality, as if the wheels of fate had begun to turn with an unstoppable momentum. His words, though spoken softly, seemed to echo off the cold stone walls of the secret chamber, filling the silence between them with a palpable tension.
"Are you certain," the prince asked, his voice betraying a flicker of uncertainty, his gaze searching the shadows that danced across the chamber. "That we cannot simply fabricate my death?" His words hung in the air, heavy with the desperate hope of a young man still grasping at the fringes of a future he wasn't yet sure he deserved.
Varys allowed a faint smile to curve the edges of his lips, but his eyes, ever watchful and calculating, remained unchanged. "The notion of finding a young boy who has perished from starvation, allowing his body to waste away until only the brittle remnants of bone remain, to take your place—it is an idea long in the making, no doubt. Ingenious, if somewhat morbid. Yet, when you return, the question of your legitimacy will arise. Proving your true identity may well become an insurmountable challenge." His words, though spoken with dry amusement, carried the gravity of the consequences they would face.
"I am aware," Aemon replied, his voice softer now, touched by the weight of his own thoughts. His eyes, dark as a storm-clouded sky, flickered momentarily with the glint of resignation. "I merely wished…" His sentence trailed off into a silence thick with unspoken truths.
"To hurt them." Varys' voice cut through the stillness with quiet precision, as if he had anticipated the prince's desire before it had even been fully formed.
Aemon's eyes hardened, his gaze shifting downward for a moment, as if the weight of his own confession had drawn the very life from him. "Yes," he admitted, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Not a kingly action, I know." His words carried the faintest hint of shame, as though the very notion of vengeance contradicted the idealized image of kingship that he had been taught to uphold.
Varys nodded, the understanding in his expression shifting from cold calculation to a more somber recognition of the complexity of human nature. "No," he murmured, his voice softened by the weight of experience. "But it is a deeply human one. The impulse to strike back at those who have wronged you—to make them feel the pain they've caused."
Aemon's gaze lifted, but there was no hope in his eyes—only a quiet bitterness that seemed to cut through the air like a blade. "That assumes," he said, his voice cold as ice, "that they would feel any grief at my death. And I do not mean in terms of reputation." His words rang with a hollow truth, the sharp edge of disillusionment clear in the way he spoke.
"I understand, my prince," Varys replied, his tone steady and unwavering, as if he had long since come to terms with the cruel realities of the world they both inhabited.
The conversation fell into silence once more, each man lost in his own thoughts. The shadows of the Red Keep seemed to grow thicker around them as they moved through the hidden tunnels beneath the fortress, their footsteps muffled by the centuries-old stones. The weight of years of schemes, plans, and betrayal hung like a fog in the air, thick and suffocating. Neither spoke, for words seemed unnecessary now—there was nothing more to say that hadn't already been said, nothing more to do that hadn't already been set in motion.
The tunnel led them to the port, where a small, humble boat awaited. It bobbed gently on the water, as if reflecting the uncertain tides of fate that now carried them both. The moon, obscured by clouds, offered no light, and the stars above shone with a cold, distant brilliance, as though watching over them from realms far beyond their reach.
Before parting ways, Varys reached into his cloak and produced a small pouch of coins, its leather worn and well-traveled. He pressed it into Aemon's hands with the same impassive expression he had worn since they had first met.
"Thank you," Aemon murmured, his fingers closing around the pouch as if it were the last tether to a world he was leaving behind.
"It's just a few coins, my prince," Varys replied, brushing off the thanks with the same dispassionate tone he always used. His gaze remained steady, betraying no emotion, though beneath it all, there was something deeper—a faint flicker of care that was as rare as it was fleeting.
"No," Aemon said again, his voice tinged with a quiet sincerity that seemed to catch in his throat. "I meant for everything."
Varys hesitated for a moment, the faintest flicker of something unspoken passing between them before he answered, his words as measured as ever. "I did what I did for…"
"For the realm, yes," Aemon interrupted, a knowing smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. His eyes met Varys' with an understanding that transcended the simple exchange of words. "I will not take the black."
"I know," Varys replied, his voice soft but firm, the depth of his understanding unspoken but evident in his gaze.
Aemon nodded, the weight of his promise hanging between them like an invisible thread. "I know you know," he said, his voice tinged with a touch of humor, "but it needed to be said. My word is my bond—if I do not speak it, it feels… incomplete." His voice trailed off, the rest of the sentence unspoken, as if the very act of saying it would seal something deeper within him. "I'm surprised, though, that you would let me go. Unsupervised, I mean, after everything you've invested in me."
"I know you, my prince," Varys replied, his eyes never leaving the young man before him. "One way or another, you will fulfill your duty, unlike the rest of your family since the Unlikely's children."
"Even if it takes decades?" Aemon asked, his voice sharp with determination, his gaze unflinching.
"Even if it takes decades," Varys answered, the certainty in his words as resolute as the very stone that surrounded them.
"Even if I abandon the plan? If I refuse to go to Pentos, to your friend, and follow the course you've set for me?"
"Plans," Varys said with a wry smile, "are made and unmade. Especially those designed for the long term."
"I'm only two and ten," Aemon replied with a dark chuckle, the edge of his youth still evident in his voice. "I could die at any moment—sooner than later, perhaps."
"True," Varys said, his gaze never wavering. "But I believe you are clever enough to survive. I have no doubt that you will do great things, my prince. But those things must come from you, and you alone. To have others guide or watch over you would only hinder your growth in ways you cannot yet comprehend."
"And you have other contingencies, don't you?" Aemon asked, his voice sharp with the edge of suspicion. "Rhaegar and Aegon—using me as a convenient scapegoat, perhaps?"
"If necessary," Varys answered, his tone unruffled, his face betraying nothing of his true feelings. Aemon couldn't help but smirk at the reply, the spark of amusement lighting up his eyes.
That was the one thing Aemon had come to appreciate about Varys: the man was a master manipulator, but he understood that the truest form of manipulation lay in truth. It was a strange bond between them—one forged not in affection or loyalty, but in the cold, calculating recognition of each other's minds.
With one last look shared between them, they nodded in silent understanding. Aemon stepped onto the boat, his eyes turned toward the horizon as the small vessel began to drift out onto the dark waters. The moonless sky above them stretched endlessly, the stars like distant whispers of a fate yet to be fulfilled.