Great Hall
The Great Hall of High Tide had never been so crowded, yet so deathly silent.
Massive hearths crackled along the walls, stretching and twisting the shadows of the gathered nobles into monstrous shapes.
The air reeked of cold sea-spray, pungent medicinal salves, and the stifled breathing of a house on the brink of war.
King Viserys I sat high upon the Driftwood Throne, his complexion the color of old wax.
The Valyrian steel crown rested heavily on his brow, and his deep-crimson velvet robes could not hide the way his body sagged, his left hand white-knuckled on the armrest.
The Kingsguard flanked him like stone statues.
Below, the battle lines were already drawn.
On the left, Princess Rhaenyra stood foremost.
She had exchanged her blood-stained nightgown for stark black, her silver-gold hair pulled tight against her skull.
Her tear-tracks had dried to ice, and her violet eyes were frozen over, yet a furnace raged behind them.
Beside her stood Prince Daemon Targaryen in black-and-red leathers, his hand resting casually on Dark Sister.
He swept the room with a predatory stare that seemed to welcome the drama to come.
Behind them loomed Lord Corlys Velaryon, staff planted firmly, straight as a mast. His grey-blue eyes were fixed on the King.
With him stood his wife, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was.
Her gaze flicked restlessly through her own party.
On a day when such calamity had struck, her son Laenor, husband to Rhaenyra and father to the injured boy, was nowhere to be seen.
'Where has that son of mine slipped off to now?' she fretted inwardly.
The thought of his carousing made her sick at heart.
She glanced toward Rhaenyra and Daemon. She had never liked her willful, tradition-trampling Rhaenyra.
The Princess had cuckolded Laenor not once, but thrice.
Grandsons Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey were all born of her adultery with Ser Harwin Strong.
The evidence was plain: Rhaenyra and Laenor bore the blood of Old Valyria, yet the boys had brown hair, brown eyes, and pug noses.
Though Rhaenys loved the children, and Corlys cared nothing for their bastardy so long as they bore his name, she loathed Daemon and Rhaenyra with every breath.
Daemon, her cousin, had wed her daughter Laena against her wishes.
And now, at Laena's very funeral, that bastard Daemon sported with his niece.
Meanwhile, Laenor looked the other way.
'Seven save us, what a house we have become,' Rhaenys thought bitterly.
She turned to her grandchildren.
Lucerys, Joffrey, Baela, and Rhaena stood scrubbed and changed, though terror still clung to them like a second skin.
Lucerys was white-faced, his eyes darting anywhere but at the dais.
Opposite them, on the right, stood Queen Alicent.
She wore the deep green velvet of House Hightower, pearls binding her brown hair.
Her chin was lifted to preserve royal dignity, though her trembling frame betrayed her.
Her father, Hand of the King Otto Hightower, stood a pace behind, hands tucked into his sleeves, his face a mask of calm calculation.
Aegon and Helaena waited just behind her. Aegon rubbed his still-aching cheek impatiently, while Helaena twisted her skirt, lifting anxious eyes to the center of the hall.
The center had been cleared like an arena.
Aemond stood alone in the eye of the storm.
His face was poulticed; the cut beneath his left eye had stopped bleeding, but the swelling left his features crooked.
His damp silver hair had been hurriedly dried, a few strands plastered to his brow.
He wore only a linen shirt and leather breeches, the cleanest garments he could find in haste.
The King had bidden him stand barefoot on the cold stone.
Yet Aemond's back was straight, his violet eyes meeting every stare without flinching, hate, judgment, pity, calculation.
King Viserys drew a breath that sounded like a sigh in the hush.
"This night… a tragedy befell Driftmark."
His gaze swept past Rhaenyra in anguish, then settled on Aemond.
"My blood... my children... hurting one another. May the Seven have mercy."
He paused, gathering strength.
"Jacaerys... my eldest grandson... he..."
"He lost an eye, Father," Rhaenyra cut in, her voice cold and clear, every word striking like a hailstone.
"And the dagger that pierced his eye..."
"Your Grace!" Queen Alicent stepped forward.
"Aemond is wounded, too! Look at his face! It was a fight, an accident! All the children were involved! You can't blame only my son!"
"Involved?" Prince Daemon gave a soft laugh, utterly without warmth.
"Your Grace, there is a difference between joining a scuffle and driving a dagger into an eye."
"Prince Daemon is right." Lord Corlys struck the butt of his staff on the floor.
"Your Grace, every child present, including my own grandchildren, names Prince Aemond as the one who held the blade. Are the testimonies of five children not enough to establish the truth?"
"They were coached to lie!" Alicent turned on the children behind Rhaenyra, her eyes blazing as they landed on Lucerys.
"Lucerys! Look into my eyes! Do you dare swear it before the Seven and the King? Swear that you saw Aemond plunge the dagger into your brother's eye? Swear it by your mother's name!"
Racked with guilt, Lucerys trembled, his lips quivering.
Seeing his reaction, Alicent felt surer than ever.
She watched her son Aemond, standing alone, and her instinct to shield him roared to life like a lioness.
Rhaenyra reached out to steady Lucerys's shaking shoulder, her gaze clashing with Alicent's in mid-air.
"Enough!"
Viserys raised his voice from the throne, only to be racked by a tearing cough.
He bent double, face purpling, while a Kingsguard hastily proffered a silk handkerchief.
When he pulled it away, the cloth was stained crimson.
When the fit subsided, the hall lay dead silent.
The King lifted his head, weariness and pain in his eyes.
"Aemond. You say... You did not do it. Yet the other children say you did. Whom should I believe?"
Aemond stepped forward. The cold stone under his bare feet shot straight to his skull, sharpening his mind.
"Father," he said, his voice unnervingly steady for a youth of twelve.
"I never touched that dagger. Lucerys drew it first. During the fight, he lost his balance. Jacaerys happened to lunge right then. Lucerys, dagger in hand, struck his own brother."
"Liar!"
Lucerys sprang up, shrieking through a rush of tears.
"I didn't stab him! The truth is, you pushed me! Then you tripped my brother! He fell onto my dagger by accident! All of it, caused by you!"
Before the words had faded, the hall erupted.
Aemond's lips curled slightly. The witless boy had blurted out exactly what he'd hoped.
Admitting the dagger was his proved Aemond hadn't wielded it.
Alicent's and Otto's eyes shifted, sensing the opening.
Opposite them, Rhaenyra showed no expression, while Daemon and Corlys looked graver.
Lucerys realized his slip and floundered, panic-stricken.
"Then why is there no blood on your hands?" Aemond shot back, seizing the momentum.
"Lucerys. You say you held the dagger. Blinding a man would spatter blood. Why are your hands clean now?"
Every gaze fixed on Lucerys's hands. The boy instinctively hid them behind his back.
Daemon narrowed his eyes, reassessing his nephew.
Corlys lifted a brow almost imperceptibly.
"I... I wiped it off..." Lucerys stammered.
"When? And with what?" Aemond pressed, turning his gaze toward the Rogue Prince.
"Or did someone wipe it for you?"
Realizing the trap, Prince Daemon's smile vanished.
He cut in sharply: "Boy, what are you implying?"
"Uncle, I'm simply raising questions," Aemond gave no ground.
"Whose dagger was it? What sigil did it bear? Who gave it? Why would a ten-year-old carry a blade to the Dragonpit?"
"It's my dagger!" Lucerys cried, desperate to defend himself.
"Grandfather Corlys gave it to me for my naming day! It bears the Seahorse crest! I carry it because... because I like it!"
"So," Aemond faced the King, his voice ringing through the hall.
"A Velaryon dagger, in a Velaryon boy's hand, wounded the Velaryon heir. And I, a Targaryen, unarmed and scarred, am called the culprit."
He spread his hands. "Father, where is the logic? Where is the justice?"
Aemond had seized the initiative.
He knew that simply denying the accusation was a losing battle; the only way to break the deadlock was to turn the questions back on his accusers.
He would never accept the charge of kinslaying.
An eye for an eye, perhaps, but never that.
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A/N:
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