The day after the events, Casterly Rock awakened in a strange silence, almost solemn.
The millennia-old fortress, carved into the golden rock overlooking the Sunset Sea, had known the days after battle, the dawns of mourning and the mornings of victory. But never had it seemed so cautious. Servants moved with unusual care, as if every sound risked breaking something invisible. Doors were opened more gently, voices kept to a respectful murmur.
Even the sea seemed to hold its breath.
Rhaella Targaryen stood alone near a tall window looking out over the ocean. The sea wind lifted the pale curtains slightly, bringing with it the smell of salt and damp stone. She had spent a night almost without sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw again the golden light rising in the great hall, still felt that emotional wave crossing her heart with an intensity she had never known.
She was queen.
She was mother.
And for the first time, those two roles were entering into open conflict.
What had happened went beyond politics. Beyond even the Crown. The Maester of the Rock had spoken of ancient chronicles, of Valyria, of bonds stronger than laws. But that morning, Rhaella did not need books to understand. She felt it in her chest, like a heavy and inevitable certainty.
Behind her, the room was occupied, but silent.
Joanna Lannister sat, visibly tired, but attentive. She had spent the night watching her daughter, unable to close her eyes for more than a few moments. Cersei rested against her, awake, calm in an almost troubling way. The child was not sleeping, not crying. She was watching.
And what she was watching was Aemon.
Rhaella slowly turned from the window, her gaze settling on the children. A part of her still hoped to be wrong. Hoped that all of this was only a coincidence amplified by the fear and emotion of the day before.
But what she saw left no room for doubt.
Aemon sat on a thick rug, a few steps from Joanna. He rolled a small wooden figurine between his fingers, without real enthusiasm. He was not really playing. He did not seem distracted either. He was simply… present.
Since the moment he had been placed in the room, he had not stopped moving closer to Cersei, slowly, almost imperceptibly. When a nurse had led him farther away, he had come back on his own. When Rhaegar had tried to pull him toward the window to show him the ships in the distance, he had followed a few steps… then returned.
Rhaegar, precisely, watched the scene with a surprising seriousness for his age.
— You always come back here, he remarked softly.
Aemon shrugged.
— I dunno… I like it here.
It was not an explanation. It was an observation.
Rhaegar looked at Cersei. The child, as soon as Aemon was within reach, seemed to soothe completely. Her breathing became regular. Her small hands relaxed. When he moved too far away, her face tightened almost at once.
— She does it too, Rhaegar murmured.
Joanna held her daughter a little tighter. She too had noticed. Since morning, every attempt to move Aemon or Cersei had produced the same result. It was not spectacular. Not violent. But constant.
Rhaella watched all of this without intervening.
Ser Barristan Selmy, leaning against the wall, followed the scene with a grave look. He had seen men change in contact with danger. He had seen fear, loyalty, madness. But what he saw here was none of that. It was silent. Natural. And deeply unsettling.
Aemon did not seem dependent.
Cersei neither.
But together, they formed something stable. Like two pieces that did not seek to fit together… but that simply refused to be separated.
Rhaella felt her heart tighten.
She understood then that the bond was not only emotional.
It was structural.
Rhaella remained silent for a long while longer.
She watched her sons, then Cersei, then Aemon again. She was not an impulsive woman. Every decision she made weighed heavily, and this one more than all the others. Testing this bond was not trivial. But continuing to ignore it would be worse still.
She inhaled slowly, then stepped forward.
— Aemon.
The child lifted his head at once. His gaze settled on her with trust.
Rhaella knelt to be at his height. She gently placed a hand on his shoulder, as if to anchor him, as if to make sure he was truly there.
— My heart… tell me something.
Aemon nodded.
— If we had to leave today…
— If we left Casterly Rock…
— And Cersei stayed here…
She deliberately left the sentence unfinished.
At first, there was nothing.
Aemon frowned slightly, as if he were trying to grasp an idea too big for him. Then, suddenly, something happened.
It was not sadness.
It was not fear.
A dull anger rose in him, brutal, unexpected, almost violent. His heart began to beat faster. An unpleasant heat flooded his chest, as if someone were trying to tear something from him that was part of him.
His hands clenched.
— No, he said.
His voice was harder than usual. Deeper.
— I don't want to.
At that exact instant, Cersei stirred in Joanna's arms. Her tiny fingers clenched against the fabric of the dress, her face contracted, and a sharp cry escaped her throat.
Joanna went pale.
— Cersei… she murmured, rocking her.
Rhaegar sprang to his feet and instinctively placed himself between Aemon and Cersei, as if he were trying to understand, to protect.
— Mother… he breathed.
— Stop… it hurts them.
Ser Barristan lifted his head, his gaze suddenly sharp. What he was seeing was no longer a hypothesis. It was an immediate, symmetrical, uncontrollable reaction.
Rhaella felt her breath catch.
She immediately placed a hand over Aemon's.
— It's alright… she murmured.
— It's alright.
Aemon inhaled deeply. The anger dissipated slowly, like a wave retreating. Almost at once, Cersei calmed too, her crying dying away to leave a fragile calm.
Silence fell again in the room.
No one spoke.
But no one doubted anymore.
Aemon did not understand everything.
He did not understand the maester's words.
Nor the ancient chronicles.
Nor Valyria.
But he understood this.
He understood that the idea of leaving without Cersei hurt him. Not in his head. Not in his heart. Everywhere at once. As if something in him refused that possibility with absolute certainty.
He lifted his eyes toward her.
Cersei was already looking at him.
There was nothing conscious in that exchange. No thought. No intention. Only a silent, instinctive recognition.
Rhaella slowly rose.
What she had just seen confirmed everything the maester had explained… and more still. The bond was not passive. It reacted. It resisted. It almost punished any attempt at separation.
She closed her eyes for an instant.
When she opened them, there was in her gaze a painful resignation, but also a new clarity.
She turned to Joanna.
— This bond… she said softly,
— is not something that can be ignored.
Joanna nodded slowly. She was no longer afraid. Not really. What she felt now looked more like a kind of calm fatality.
— I see it, she answered simply.
— And I feel it.
Rhaella inhaled deeply.
— Then we must act with intelligence.
— Without forcing.
— Without breaking.
She looked at Aemon, then Rhaegar.
— The children are still too young to understand what binds them.
— But they must not be separated unnecessarily.
She paused.
— Come to King's Landing with us, Joanna.
— When the children are older, Aemon can spend time here, at the Rock.
— He will return with you.
— And later… he will spend a few years at Tywin's side.
A silence.
— As a cupbearer, she concluded.
Rhaegar nodded, serious.
— That way… they'll be together, he said simply.
Joanna lowered her eyes to Cersei, now perfectly calm. Then she raised her head.
— If that protects our children… then I accept.
The servants knew what had happened the day before.
Impossible to ignore.
The light in the great hall had been seen by all. The maester's words had circulated quickly, repeated in the kitchens, the corridors, the narrow stairways reserved for the household. The words were known: aura bond, ancient phenomenon, Valyria.
But knowing a word did not mean believing it.
In the next room, two nurses exchanged hesitant looks while watching the children.
— Maesters do like to complicate things, one murmured.
— Yes… the other answered. Children sometimes do that. They get attached.
The older nurse, the one who had seen several Lannisters born, remained silent. She watched the reactions. The timing. The almost troubling precision with which the crying began and stopped.
— It might be a coincidence, she said at last.
But her voice lacked conviction.
When, a little later, a maid tried to take Aemon to play in another room, the effect was immediate. The child froze, a visible discomfort on his face. And Cersei, barely separated from him, burst into tears.
The maid stepped back at once.
— Well… she breathed. Maybe the maesters didn't make everything up.
No one answered.
They were not convinced.
But they were no longer skeptical either.
So, without official order, without proclamation, an implicit rule settled in.
That the young prince, his brother… and the little lioness should never be too far from one another.
Without truly believing it.
Without understanding.
But because sometimes, it is better not to contradict what one cannot explain.
Daylight was beginning to decline when fatigue finally made itself felt.
The sun sank slowly toward the horizon, casting on the stone walls of Casterly Rock an orange glow, soft and soothing. The room, which had been inhabited all day by the same presences, by the same silences heavy with meaning, now seemed calmer. Almost serene.
Aemon had spent the whole day there.
With his mother.
With Rhaegar.
With Cersei.
There had been nothing extraordinary in appearance. No light. No visible phenomenon. Only that constant, natural closeness, requiring no effort. He had played a little, listened to his mother speak softly, followed his brother in small games of no importance. And always, without even thinking about it, he had stayed within reach of Cersei.
As if that was how things were meant to be.
When night began to fall, a nurse finally approached Rhaella.
— Your Grace… it is time for the prince to go to bed.
Aemon lifted his head.
He did not want to.
Not because he was not tired — he was — but because it meant leaving the room. Leaving Cersei. He hesitated, a slight frown betraying his unease.
Then he lifted his eyes to her.
Cersei was watching him.
Calm, but attentive.
Aemon inhaled softly. He knew, without knowing how, that he would see her again the next day. That certainty soothed the reluctance rising in him. Slowly, he stood and went over to her.
Under the silent gaze of the adults, he placed the tips of his fingers on Cersei's cheek.
A light gesture.
Delicate.
Then, with all the simplicity of a child, he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
Aemon began to move away, but after only a few steps…
Cersei, at once, began to cry.
A clear, sudden cry, charged with raw emotion. Joanna instinctively tightened her arms around her, surprised by the intensity of the reaction.
Aemon stepped back one pace.
Then he turned around.
He looked at her.
Two seconds.
No more.
But it was enough.
The crying stopped almost instantly. Cersei calmed, her breathing steadied, her eyes still fixed on Aemon as he finally walked away, guided by the nurse.
In the room, no one spoke.
But everyone understood.
They understood that the bond did not demand constant proximity.
That it forbade neither sleep, nor routines, nor the simple gestures of life.
What was impossible — and dangerous — was not physical separation.
It was forced separation.
The imposed rupture.
The leaving without the will or understanding of one or the other.
Rhaella felt a tension finally leave her chest.
Joanna too.
If Aemon could sleep.
If Cersei could remain calm.
Then the bond, however absolute it was, was not a prison.
Ser Barristan inclined his head slightly, as if he had just witnessed the last confirmation he needed.
In the soothed silence of the room, a certainty imposed itself on everyone:
They were bound.
But the world would not have to stop for them.