The corridors of Castle Black were empty and looked haunted by the time sun began to set. Aemon walks out of Maester Aemon's chamber alone, moving through the now almost silent castle, as the words of the old man kept on echoing in his mind.
Wisdom and truth from someone when you are wrong rarely offers comfort to one's heart. The old man's counsel had been a mirror held to Aemon's own political naivety. He had spent one lifetime navigating through men and lords trying to mask their selfishness and need with honour of his own and shielding their craven fear disguised in respect for him. But to hear that old and clever mind lay out the truth so plainly in a single sentence, family and kin can twist their relationship for gain and the answer of it all lay in single decision that many clever Kings before him had taken. The lasting peace and surrender of your enemies both hidden and visible depends on the way you lay your punishment on just a single one of them. He had been fool not considering the depths of the treachery coming to him soon, a simple yet harsh flaw in his own character that thinks of best in everyone, forgetting his death by the hands of his kin.
Nor could he rule as she had, burning everything that doesn't kneel to him. That path will eventually lead to ruin. He would try to avoid it as much as possible, trying to deal with them with games of their own. The wind hit him on his face as he passed through the gates of the Castle Black, walking towards the canopy of long and dense trees beyond which Meleys lay resting. She looked coiled in herself against the open sky, crushed trees all around where she lay. The faint moonlight making her red scales and the silver linings between them shining like gems.
Her eyes snaps open the instant his silent footstep touches the snow in the clearing, pupils shining in molten gold. He would never be able to tell if she wakes up on smelling his body, or feels him through the strange bond that had forged between them, when they met in Riverlands for the first time, but she always knew when he was near.
Aemon stops before her great, serpentine neck and sinks onto the fresh snow, knowing a kin of his will try to kill him sooner or later. He presses his palm against her warm side, the heat slowly and steadily seeping into his joints as if she herself seem breathing strength into his blood. Meleys rumbles, a sound coming deep from her chest and vibrating through the snow. "You feel it too, don't you?" he murmurs, sharing the threats he felt coming to him in many dreams, treasons, kinslaying and undying cold.
Not long after feeling his heart, Meleys stretches her wings wide open, folding them around him, a strong, heavy and warm mantle of red hide, closing him inside her safety. The ancient and intelligent molten eyes fixed on him promising safety through them all.
"There are wars coming, Meleys," he starts softly, leaning his brow against the side of her jaw. "Thousand little of them, coming for us. I need both of us ready for the whole lot."
She snarls gently with jaws closed, a sound of displeasure at the thought of enemies coming for her rider. And she soon curves down her long neck, pressing against his stomach in a deliberate, weighted gesture feeling left out in soft pats from him for many days. He starts stroking the warm, serpentine line of her throat, and after a long moment the knot in his stomach eased.
Hours later, when the moon seem high in the sky, Aemon turns back to gates. He moves silently much like when he was a men of night's watch before. Meleys had been greedy for the attention, nearly dozing under his touch, their bonding today making her demands more absolute. Inside the King's Tower, a dreary old tower for royal guests which had few maintained chambers, that Lord Commander Mormont had asked him to stay in. He climbs to the top where a lone figure seem already there, Shiera, staring far out of the gate of Castle, where Meleys lay nestled among the trees.
Aemon moves to her side, and the sight of fur-lined cloak around her shoulders eases a tightness in his chest he hadn't known was present.
"You are not asleep, Aunt," he asks an unmasked question.
Shiera turns her head, and even in the meager moonlight, the effect was jarring. After many days of travel, it was one of the few moments of her outside her mask. And with her being more than a century old, yet appearing no more than five-and-twenty, was an eerie experience. Her beauty being one of the reason of not attending anyone without a lacquer mask, as if it was time itself that had refused to touch her skin.
A knowing, subtle smile tugs at one corner of her perfect mouth. "And let there be another chance of you getting an inconvenient knife between the ribs from one of your former sworn brothers?"
Aemon stiffens, the air inside his chest almost choking him. "You know," he whispers, the memory of the betrayal coming almost instantly.
Shiera steps close, placing her warm and firm hands on his shoulders, spinning him gently to face her. Her eyes like famous mismatched gems shining with a deep, unsettling light, with strange gleam that he'd last seen in the witch travelling with Stannis Baratheon.
"I know everything of you, nephew," she starts , her voice dropping to a soft rush. "Every glare that Lady Catelyn cast your way, every battle you fought in, every injury you suffered, every women with whom you made love and both deaths you endured." Aemon swallows hearing her voice trembling slightly, as if the memory of his suffering hurt her more than she had ever felt. "I watched it all," she continues. "For my dear half-brother believed no one should interfere with his plans. I was… powerless, a prisoner of his will. The gods granted me a second chance. As they did you."
The bitterness in her tone was retching, and it made him think of the many rumours he had heard in history lessons that had always clung around her parentage and beds. "Your brother?" he asks quietly.
Shiera's gaze shifts, looking at the moon above. "It does not matter now, he is dead."
Aemon accepts the boundary instantly. Some truths are not meant to be pulled into the light, they were better left buried deep in the cold earth.
"What did you discuss with the Maester?" she asks, stepping back toward the window, her attention already back to him.
Aemon leans against the stone frame, the cold of the wall seeping through his tunic and cloak. "I asked him for how I should treat with the treachery of the Starks and the rest of the rebels… and how to deal with my other aunt coming with dragons of her own."
Shiera's lips curves in soft smile. "Your other aunt. The ugly one, perhaps?"
He sighs, dragging a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Of all the undead and dragon worries, you fasten on that?"
Her laugh musical and utterly startling echoes in the silent night. Shiera Seastar rarely gave such beautiful sound. "Did he ask anything else?" she inquired, mischief glinting in her beautiful mismatched eye.
Aemon pauses reluctant to share the small, uncharacteristic intrusion into his number of kingly worries. "He asked, if there's anyone whom I wished to marry."
Her smirk sharpens hearing that turning predatory quickly. "I doubt you will need to search far, my dear. There's a certain Dornish woman who will try everything short of her death to make you her own."
Aemon blinks, puzzled, at her words. "What do you mean?"
Shiera only shakes her head, brushing past him towards the door of her room. "You should sleep, nephew. We leave early for Winterfell, do we not?"
He knew she'd changed the subject deliberately, the door slamming shut, before he could ask furthermore. And he knew better than to press into her when she closed a matter so firmly. "Goodnight, Aunt."
When he was gone, Shiera comes back by the window of the tower looking once more toward the vast, cold covered sweep of the forest, toward the dark, resting shape of Meleys, towards the future of unfurling blood-red dragon banner over Westeros.
She remembers the way that Dornish woman on the ship, with her viper yellow eyes and predatory smile, had looked at Aemon. The hunger, the possessive fire and that calculated ambition in them said many things.
"He will need a queen," Shiera murmurs to the cold night, her breath misting. "One who loves him enough to leash his recklessness on the battlefield… and with brain sharp enough to hold the bloody realm together when he and his council is too weak for that."