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fleursbending · 1 year

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𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮, 𝐌𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫. | Neteyam Sully

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : green is all you see, and for once it's not because you live in the midst of the damn jungle. it's because envy and greed consume you. what's the root cause of it? neteyam and your supposed friend who is trying to definitely charm him.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭 : “This—” [points at their chest] “—this belongs to you. Always.”

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 : neteyam sully x fem!omaticaya reader.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 : requested, yes | no. hellooo idk where this came from, but here we are at least another request done! just wanted to put a lil something out because the songcords are some chonky mfs and taking some time! so hope you enjoy. this is loosely based on "my heart it beats for you" - grentperez (filo represent!)

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 : jealousy, flirting w/o clear consent?, neteyam is so boyfie/bbg here, protective!nete, ur friend is an asshat, hurt/comfort, established relationship, cussing, fluff yippee!

𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 : olo’eyktan - clan leader, yaymak - foolish/ignorant, tsamsiyu - warrior, oeyä - my (possessive), hawnu - protect/shelter, muntxate - wife/mate.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 : 2.5k words !

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 : @pandorainmymind @eywas-heir @spicycloudsalad @missdreamofendless @prty-poisxn @scarlettwitch-4 @23victoria @avidreader3107 @purplehyacinthss-deactivated202 @itssiaaax @neteyamoa @tsireyasgf @nijirozzz @useryourbut @yua-himari @sweetheartlizzie07 @grierpilots @reneehillary69 @fruitsalad1 @forasgaard @iwaslikeblah @dumb-fawkin-bitch @theicemav @narutoboi @azaleaniath @goosemothersblog

𝐉𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐄 𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇, especially if you have to witness the cause of such erratic inner turmoil.

She hadn't meant to wander this close to the training grounds, and truthfully she had no clue how her little detour brought her here.

Alas, perhaps she'd gravitated here for a reason. After all, Neteyam was training some warriors-to-be, and maybe now she could catch a glimpse of him in action without disrupting the lesson.

She missed him, the consistent need of kissing him like the ocean does to the tide as it retreats back to shore. It held her heart in a monumental lock, Neteyam had infiltrated her thoughts once again. To be fair, she could not be blamed for this - they'd barely been around each other the past few days.

Jake had become even sterner, prepping his son for when he'd take the mantle of Olo'ekytan as it is handed down to him. It had Neteyam wishing he could talk back, just simply out of spite. To demand some room, freedom to spend more time with you. But the only thing keeping him grounded and sane was the fact that perhaps once this is all over, and he has secured his place as the leader of the clan - maybe then things would settle. He'd get to be around you more, even if it is through lingering touches and a fuse charged to his heart due to the yearning glances from across two ends of a place in their home in the midst of the forest.

His desire to cross the finish line had increased by tenfold at the mere thoughts flittering in his brimming mind. To start a family with you, live his life to the fullest with you…that was all he's yearned for.

But now she's cursing herself, feet stomping onto the forest ground with uncertainty brewing deep in her bones. ___ did not know whether or not to be pissed beyond belief or let her heart sink into the doubts already sneering at her.

Because through the thick branches, she stood behind to peer into the training grounds, the sight before her was certainly something to behold.

Training my ass! Speaking of ass, is she pressing hers into- what the actual fuck?

Her heart drummed in her ears, and suddenly fury fills her veins until she feels ashamed. Is this what has been going on all this time? How could her friend act on the attractions that she seemed to very obviously have? Neteyam was spoken for.

___ best friend stood a good few metres away from where she had unintentionally hidden, pressed too closely to Neteyam as he tries to readjust her stance and the way she grips her bow.

That coniving little… ___ had already taught the ins and outs of how to control her bow and how to aim it. They did this months ago. She wanted to give her friend the benefit of the doubt, maybe she just needed some touching up? But why wouldn't she have just gone to you?

Such questions fizzle out as her eyes cut to your own, unnerving and edging on callousness. Oh, so this definitely was purposeful.

She knows more than anyone else that her boyfriend is capable of holding his own, but sometimes - he is just a little dense. Especially around the ladies of the clan, and the fact that every female (even males) wants a piece of him.

Not even just to be the Tsahik of the future Olo'ekytan, but because he inherited the beauty of his mother - the roughness of his father. He also had a very protective demeanor, never hesitating to be vocal about his genuine adoration for you - or back you up when a situation demanded of it.

It lights a fuse in the back of your mind then, a raging insistent thought that you'd try to tone down the moment you realised that you were each other's, person. That hopefully nothing was going to come of the way of that.

But your supposed friend is definitely coming in the way of you acting civil right now.

Maybe you just weren't good enough for him, never able to live up to everything Neteyam is known for and will come to be.

Jake had told Neteyam that he could begin to train other like-minded Na'vi - the people of the Omaticaya that wanted to become warriors. Saying in the same sentence how his dear friend Tsu'tey used to do the same.

It instilled him with great pride and honor, which he was undeniably blinded by in this current moment as your friends' fingertips graze his arm in a very flirtatious manner.

Disdain clawed at your skin then, making you want to scratch at your arms. Did she willingly sign up for these lessons? Yaymak, she's taking up the time of true soon-to-be warriors who await more proper training.

She lets out a loud and very obnoxious giggle, and Neteyam doesn't acknowledge a thing - still too focused on the lesson. The fuse imploded then.

All the doubts came gushing in at once, searing to your skin as envy wilts around your conscience. Green is all you see, and for once it's not because you live in the midst of the damn jungle. It's because envy and greed consume you. Betrayal too, towards the friend you lost and your lover who was too focused on living up to the legacy of two influential men of the clan.

Oh maybe, just maybe you had to unwillingly entertain such detrimental thoughts.

There's a reason why the clan is so unbashful in their efforts of trying to claim Neteyam as their one and only mate for a lifetime.

You weren't enough in their eyes.

You'd come from a mediocre family, hunters on the bottom of the hierarchy - nothing remotely remarkable.

Nothing compared to your soon-to-be ex-friend who is inching her way closer into Neteyam's chest - whose mother is also incredibly close to Neytiri.

___ was really wishing for Eywa right about now. That the atkorinas that had danced among the sky and brushed your shoulders when you and Neteyam shared your first kiss, were not something she had hopelessly imagined.

With fists clenched, Neteyam releases the arrow. Bullseye.

"Yep, that's how I do it." He just smiles down at her respectfully, stepping back unintentionally as he reloads his bow to demonstrate it one more time.

The girl inflicting all this bitterness and resentment frowned then, before turning slightly and meeting your teary eyes once again.

She knew you were there and was still doing this? Yeah, she can rot in hell.

In an instant, she squeals, but it's still a late reaction to what he had just shown - jumping to him and giving Neteyam an audacious hug.

Great mother, she was testing your resolve. Your claim. ___ can't do this, can't bare witness to such crude manners and undeterred actions from someone she had confided in and befriended for a large part of her life.

Before you knew it, you were fumbling, feet stepping on a hollow stick.

Snap. It echoes in the now still air, missing how Neteyam had flinched and retreated from her hug immediately. His features darkened as he spat out, "Don't touch me like that. You are here to learn, so learn."

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Two heads whip towards you as ___ bolts off, not daring to take a quick glance back at where you had left your broken heart.

Neteyam is only just able to catch a glimpse of who had suddenly retreated, dread drenching him in a mere half second once everything falls into place.

It was his yawntu.

The need to please his father and live up to the great hold his uncle Tsu'tey still had on his people sputters, becoming an afterthought.

"How dare you take advantage of me like this?" He thunders at the now floundering girl.

She gapes and stutters. But nothing flows through his ears. How pathetic.

"You're her best friend!" He hissed, ears laying flat in vexation.

Once again nothing leaves her suddenly parched mouth, and it leaves him utterly cross. Neteyam decides then to drag salt across the wound.

"You are not capable of being a warrior, especially if you cannot take my lessons seriously. I suggest you head back to where you belong because I will not teach someone as lousy as you - ever - again." He glowered, snatching the practice bow out of her hands and proceeding to not only snap it in half - but throw it on the ground as well.

"Neteyam!" She desperately calls at the same time he yells out for you, running in the same direction he had seen you flee.

He doesn't bother to pivot and throw more spite at the already frightened girl who had tried to make advances on him, it was her fault they got caught in that position (literally).

The ever-so-mighty tsamiyu now feels like he is shackled to the forest floor as he calls out for you again, frowning as his feet dig into the soil beneath him once finally finds you.

There you are, winsome as you quietly sob into the palm of your hands that cover the aggrieved expression that painted your features. The waterfall cascaded down on you as you pushed yourself to sit inside the little cave that had created itself over the years right behind it.

A jolt ripples through ___ as Neteyam instinctively brings you into a hug the moment he reaches you, pressing repetitive kisses to your forehead.

You let yourself feel the wrath of your thoughts then, right at their peak - so you can come to terms with them. They can settle and move away from having you anchored down like you were currently.

A gut-wrenching sigh ebbed out of you then, whispering to Neteyam apologetically.

"I know, I know it's not your fault. I'm sorry I reacted this way."

He just shakes his head in turmoil then, features hardened at the thought of you having to witness him try to be swayed by someone who he didn't find trifling interest in. Someone who had been in your inner circle of friends.

Neteyam felt scorned, struggling to find words that can appease both of you. This is all unexplored territory to him, he'd never had to deal with someone so bold that was also trying to get with him. The eldest Sully is so unapologetically enamored, essentially soaking in all the love and devotion he has for you. There's so much of it to go around, that even his heart sometimes grapples with where to place it all.

He necessitated, tone yearning for you to see him. "I hope you know, these were never my intentions. To hurt you, for her to act so-...for it to turn out - I was trying to appease my father and it's just been-"

You cut him off, understanding and knowing all too well of the troubles and responsibilities that have been bestowed upon him and weigh heavily on his broad shoulders.

"Nete, I know. Really, it's just my mind playing games with me. It is not your fault that she decided to, well - ruin our friendship. You also did not deserve such treatment when time is already not on your side right now. I'm sorry for that."

___ doesn't meet his eyes, instead her own are downcast - allowing her hair to hang like a curtain over her blotchy face due to the tears that she had just shed.

"___." He utters with purpose, hands moving to push your damp hair back and away from your face.

You hum lowly, eyes still holding a peculiar melancholy and distant as ever.

His hand pressing to your heart is what shatters you from the reverie.

Neteyam's amber eyes are fierce, bold, and enraptured with the deepest appreciation for you.

Now he knows he holds your attention,

“This—”, he points to his chest then, vehemently and with such precision it has your heart stilling for a moment, “—this belongs to you. Always.”

A shudder breaks from your lips then, astounded and in awe that he is all yours. Shaking hands fold over his that still are motioning to his own heart.

The heart that had been ever so charmed by your delightful presence, so effortlessly whole due to the affections you bestowed upon him over the years of his childhood up til now.

You're each other's eternities, aligned with the stars and the atkorina's. ___ is sure of it now.

He'd orbit around you as long as you wished for him to. A shield and a protector for this lifetime and the ones that followed. Neteyam liked to believe that if there was another life, you'd fall right into place beside one another. That your love would just shift and begin again.

If only he knew you thought the exact same thing, especially now as you just appreciate Neteyam for all that he is and who he'll come to be. He has big shoes to fill, but you know he'll be just fine.

"As does mine. Always." You whisper with consolation, delicate and saccharine.

His heart squeezes, hands darting away from yours to cup your face as he let his head dip into yours.

It was a movement that was second-hand nature to him now, a daily occurrence of sorts.

Neteyam breathes you in, letting your aura wrap around his being.

Your arms capture him in return, fingers trailing down the divots that line his spine as he allows himself to melt into your hold. Tension fusing into ease.

"You're not mad at me?" He questions, mindlessly playing with a strand of your still-damp hair.

"I'm not mad at you, oeyä hawnu."

His heart flutters then, a light blush dusting his cheeks. He shyly whines into the nape of your neck, your response is to giggle in return.

"You know what calling me that, does to me! I guess it's time to once again show my affection to you in front of all the people!"

You squeal his name as he suddenly lifts you up, throwing over you his shoulder as he wades out into the real world and across the water, away from your little bubble.

Bursts of laughter mingle with the bustling sounds of nature as he makes his way back to your home base.

Neteyam will gladly let everyone know how devoted he is to you, to make sure they know that he isn't kidding around when he said you'd be his future muntxate.

In his heart and soul, he knew you were the only person Pandora made for him in the eyes of Eywa. That's how it always will be, is the thought that springs to both of your minds in that very moment. The great mother wishes then she could give you a sign then, but she rectifies herself then.

Your heart beats when with each other speaks enough.

𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒃𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 ━━━ 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑

⤷ feedback and reblogs are always much appreciated ! feel free to ask through my inbox if you would like to join my taglist. ♡ // a/n: i tried using ___ instead of y/n cos i was getting tired of it lmk if that's ok. also LMAOO i imagined the waterfall as the hsm2 scene, the pool iyky!

#junie's library 📚✧.*#— junie & the prompts ☆ﾐ #neteyam x y/n #neteyam sully x reader #neteyam sully #neteyam #avatar the way of water #atwow x reader #atwow #avatar imagine #avatar x reader #avatar fanfiction #avatar #james cameron avatar #missing neteyam hours !#i missed writing for him #avatar 2 #neteyam fluff

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 months

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Napoleonville [Chapter 10: The House Of Saint Honoratus of Amiens] [Series Finale]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, drinking, drugs, weddings, Willis Warning, infidelity, kids, parenthood, Rice-A-Roni.

Word Count: 6k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @targaryenbarbie @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @bungalowbear @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon @wickedfrsgrl

Thank you so much for loving this strange, sexy, sweet story. I hope you enjoy the finale. 🥰🧁

Your bare feet in warm grass, your hands around the ropes of the tree swing, no sounds except the ancient psalms of the earth: cicadas, mourning doves, goldfinches, bumble bees, bullfrogs, wind in the leaves of the dogwoods and southern live oaks. The adolescent alligator is at one end of the front yard, sunbathing up by the mouth of the gravel driveway; in the opposite corner are several nutria nibbling on cattails. The sky is a calm, cloudless blue. It’s hot, mid-80s, even when 5:00 p.m. comes and goes; but the breeze is cool as it evaporates the sweat from your temples, your palms, the nape of your neck. It’s as close as Louisiana ever gets to Heaven. It’s a good day for a wedding.

You remember thinking that it was the end of the world when you found out you were pregnant almost exactly eleven years ago, and then again when you realized you would have to divorce Willis, and so you have lived through enough moments like this—these quiet, infinitesimal apocalypses—to know that there will be a future beyond Aemond marrying Christabel. The sun will rise tomorrow, and then it will set, the lightning bugs will appear and the stars will tell myths in the night sky, and the phone will ring as orders come in for the bakery, and Cadi will be back in her bedroom playing her Nintendo, and life will roll on like currents through the bayou: slow, opaque, inevitable. The world isn’t ending, you know that. It’s just full of beautiful things that aren’t for you.

Out on Route 401, a Plymouth Gran Fury zooms by the house, squeals to a halt, and then reverses until Willis can take another look, squinting through his tinted windows. He turns down the driveway and steps out into golden July daylight. He doesn’t pay any attention to the gator as he strides past her. He belongs here, in a place that is old and strange and savage and full of beasts. You have carved out a home for yourself in the swamplands; Willis was born with veins like the roots of a mangrove tree and ancient silt instead of marrow in his bones.

“Hey, sugar,” he says, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair. The wind ruffles the dark curls of his mullet, the bumble bees flee as he tramples clovers. “Ain’t ya supposed to be at the weddin’?”

“I’m sick.” A lie. “But Cadi’s fine, she’s with Amir. She was so excited she actually wore one of the sundresses my mom bought her and had Amir braid a dogwood flower into her hair to match his. You should have seen it. You would’ve been so proud.”

“I’m always proud of her,” Willis says, smiling. And then: “Ya don’t look sick.”

“I am.”

“Ya got one of your headaches?”

You pause. You don’t, but this is a convenient excuse. “Yeah.”

Willis stalls, his hands on his belt. His pistol is there; you remember how he used it in the bayou, how he helped save your life. But he wasn’t the one who jumped into the water. Aemond was willing to risk his body for me, but not his soul. What kind of sense does that make? “Ya had me scared for a minute there,” Willis says.

“What? When?”

“When I thought ya were goin’ to end up with that Rockefeller boy.”

“Aemond?” you say, like it’s so shocking. “No. Absolutely not. It’s impossible.”

“And why’s that?”

You stare into the trees so Willis can’t see the tears welling up in your eyes, the tension in your throat as embers kindle there, pulsing with heat that could char flesh to the bone. “He can’t marry someone like me.”

“I could,” Willis replies, grinning. You glare at him until he recants. “Alright, alright, oublie ça. Pardonne-moi.”

“Why would you be afraid of me and Aemond being together?”

“An oil tycoon? A millionaire? He would never stay here for long. In a town like Napoleonville? Soon as he was done getting’ those rigs up and runnin’, he’d go jettin’ off to some other corner of the world, and he’d take you with him. And Cadi too. I wouldn’t be able to fight that. What’s a parish sheriff to a Targaryen? Who would listen to me? Cadi would be gone and I’d never get her back. It would kill me. It would rip the heart right outta my chest.”

You look up at Willis from where you sit on the tree swing, the soles of your feet colored with soil and grass. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“No?” he asks, perhaps suspicious, perhaps hopeful.

“No,” you promise. “Cadi loves you. Cadi needs you to be in her life. I would never try to take her away from you, Willis.”

He nods; he seems to believe you. And something relaxes in him, like there’s been a tension in the lines of his spine and shoulders that you didn’t notice for years. “I’m sorry about your petit ami.”

“Yeah. Me too.” It comes out like a whisper, brittle and frail. “I’m sorry about Lake Verret.”

“They might be able to fix it. Talk around town is they got some kind of desalination”—he says this with each syllable enunciated distinctly, like he’s put great effort into memorizing it—“process that can take the salt back outta the water. And if that don’t work…” He shrugs with a sly smile. “I’ll survive somehow. The world’s a big place. There’s always another lake.”

You consider him, and you remember—like a dream from the night before that just returned to you—how Willis can be unexpectedly deep, randomly tender. “They should put that on bumper stickers.”

He chuckles and waves as he heads back to his car. “I’ll pick Cadi up on Tuesday. Back to the usual schedule.”

“Sure.” Back to real life. Back to before I met Aemond. And you find yourself wishing that you could forget what it had felt like to be with him; the absence he left feels so much heavier than the nonspecific longing that existed before. Willis’ Plymouth Gran Fury rolls out of the driveway, and you stay precisely where you are on the tree swing, absentmindedly pushing yourself back and forth with your tiptoes and trying to believe that tomorrow this will feel easier, and then even easier the day after that, and eventually it will cease to be anything but a vague recollection, a relic in a rarely-opened drawer, a whisper, an echo. One day, you will stop missing Aemond. One day, you will stop wondering whether a sliver of his life would have been better than none at all.

Inside what Cadi calls the Fall-Down House, the phone rings. You ignore it; if it’s an order for the bakery, they can leave a message. But then it rings again, and again, and you have to answer it. What if your mother had a heart attack? What if Cadi and Amir were in a car accident? You hurry to the kitchen and grab the phone, pink to match the little Panasonic boombox that is presently silent.

“Hello?”

“Hiiiiiii,” Amir says, slow and something else too. Disoriented? Evasive?

Your forehead wrinkles with confusion. “Where are you calling from?” There are definitely no phonelines running to the Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens, a tiny brick-and-stucco edifice built in the 1830s.

“I’m at a McDonald’s up the road. I’ve paid them $5 to let me use the phone.” And then, because he knows it’s the first place your mind will go: “Cadi’s fine. She’s eating Chicken McNuggets. Everyone’s fine.”

“Okay…?”

“I think you should come over here.”

“What, to the chapel?!”

“Yeah.” He’s talking to someone; you can hear an indistinct tangle of voices through the hand he undoubtedly has clasped over the transmitter.

I can’t see Aemond. I can’t see Christabel. There is a lurching in your guts; you are a fish that swallowed a hook. “I thought we agreed that I wasn’t going to go to the wedding.” I can’t handle it. It might kill me.

“Yes, we did, but now…um…I think you will want to make an appearance.”

“Amir, what happened?”

There is more muffled conversation on the other end of the line. “Look,” he tells you. “Things, uh…things are…occurring. And I think it would be better to explain in person.”

“Did you drop the cake?”

“No,” he says, defensive. “The cake is perfect, thank you for your concern. Not a single frosting wildflower was mutilated in the delivery.”

“Then why—?”

“Do you trust me?” Amir asks.

The answer is obvious. Of course. More than anyone. “You know I do.”

“Then go get in your car.”

You glance at the clock on the wall. “Okay, but you know it’s going to take me like 40 minutes to drive to Belle River.”

“That’s fine.” He confers with someone else. “Yeah, that’s good actually, that will work.”

“Great,” you say uncertainly.

“See you soon!” Then Amir hangs up, leaving you alone in the creaks and groans of your ailing house.

You take Route 70 around Lake Verret, gliding past fields of soybeans and sugarcane, paddocks of cattle and horses, marshes of cordgrass occupied by blue herons and white egrets and prowling alligators, stirring awake as the sun begins its descent into the west. More than once, you notice that your Chevy Celebrity’s odometer reports you are travelling well below the speed limit. You aren’t in any hurry to reach the chapel; you don’t want to carry the weight of what you will see there, Christabel in her wedding dress, Aemond in his suit, Alicent anxiously fidgeting and gnawing at her fingernails, Viserys parading around triumphantly. You can’t imagine that there is anything less than torturous for you there. You don’t remember what you’re wearing until you reach Belle River, a small, old town full of double-wide trailers and jetties that run far out into the lake: a simple cotton sundress you threw on this morning without much thought, modest but white and therefore forbidden for a wedding guest. The sky is turning from a sun-drenched cerulean blue to something more soft, more muted, as dusk lurks just a few hours away. The radio is playing Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.

The Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens was built by a man in extremis. An acclaimed mason by trade, he had been born in France and settled in the New World in Louisiana when it was still in the possession of Napoleon. The mason had a wife and children—some people say 5, others say 8 or 10, though details always seem to grow more elaborate in the retelling, don’t they?—and he loved them dearly. But tragedy struck when every single member of the family, except for the mason himself, fell ill with tuberculosis. When healers of the earth failed to offer sufficient remedies, the mason appealed to a higher power. He built the chapel to implore Honoratus of Amiens, his wife’s favorite saint—she was a baker and a florist, both professions that Honoratus presides over—to intercede with the Almighty on their behalf. This effort proved futile, and as each member of the family died, the mason interred them in a brick vault beneath the altar where they would spend eternity together. Perhaps this makes for a peculiar wedding venue, yet for over a century couples rich and poor, religious and secular have traveled to the chapel to exchange their vows. Perhaps there are few things more romantic than loving someone in the face of total futility: illness, distance, unrequitedness, prohibitions, death.

The chapel sits in a clearing surrounded by live oak trees, massive, hundreds of years old, hanging with Spanish moss, blotting out the sunlight as aisles cascade through gaps in the leaves. As you park in the grass—joining an army of Lexuses, Audis, limousines, Porsches, Ferraris, Cadillacs, Aston Martins, Alfa Romeos, and Amir’s blue Ford Escort—you observe that there are perhaps fifty guests in formal attire milling aimlessly around the building. You peer down at your white sundress, frowning. Well, I can’t go naked. The faux pas will have to be forgiven. You step out of your Chevy Celebrity and make your way across the clearing towards the chapel.

There is a long table set up in the shade with a tower of champagne glasses, an ice sculpture of a dragon, and the banana bread cake you and Amir baked for the wedding. Grim-faced servants in black suits are cutting slices and handing them out to guests on green china plates. You recognize Aegon’s wife Stephanie chatting with a flock of young women in extravagant gowns, golds and emeralds and sapphires. Helaena is among them, wearing a shimmering blue-green color like the scales of her chameleon Dreamfyre. Evidently, the Targaryens’ exotic pets have been left at the mansion for this excursion.

“Well,” the princess of Monaco says sardonically as she takes a bite, the white cream cheese frosting covered with a kaleidoscope of wildflowers. “At least the cake is good. What is this, banana? Whoever heard of a banana wedding cake? I mean, it’s delicious, but still. I knew that Christabel girl was daft. Did you see her positively absurd dress? It looks like children doodled all over it…”

Is it over? you think as you weave through the crowd, largely unnoticed. Is the ceremony done already? Why would Aemond want to see me? To try to convince me to be his mistress one last time? To show me what I’m missing by severing ties with him?

But no: something else has happened. Viserys and Christabel’s father the marquess are embroiled in a heated argument; a nun and two priests are trying to haul them apart.

“You’re dead to me, Viserys!” the marquess roars. “And you’ll be dead to everyone back home once I tell them what you’ve done!”

“I did my part! This has nothing to do with me! Wait…wait…we can figure something else out! Wait! Wait! You can have Daeron!”

Wedding guests are gawking and snapping photos with their polaroid cameras. Upon hearing his name, Daeron glances over towards his father wearily. Alicent’s youngest son is kneeling beside where she has collapsed to the grass, patting her encouragingly on the shoulder as she sobs into a green cloth handkerchief. Criston is there too, trying to soothe her with sympathetic murmurs and a flute of pink champagne glittering with bubbles of carbonation.

“How did this happen?” she wails, peering up at Criston with her vast, dark, glassy eyes. The gold rings on her fingers clang and glint; they match the single hoop earring that Criston wears. Alicent’s gown is purple like royalty, but Criston is dressed in a suit of pale pink; it’s the exact same one Daeron has on. Groomsmen? you wonder. “He knows better than this! We raised him better than this!”

You think, stunned and petrified: Aemond, what the hell did you do?

As you approach the chapel, you note that it appears empty inside; you don’t spot anyone in the pews. Somewhere, a boombox is thundering Higher Love. At the entrance of the building, Christabel is sitting on the brick walkway in her wedding dress. It’s the one you told her to choose: elegant and timeless, long train and short flowing sleeves, silk wildflowers sewn into the white lace. Her bouquet is lying forgotten on the ground beside her. Her lips are a deep, lovely pink; her eyeshadow is gold. She’s smoking, something you’ve never seen her do before. There is a half-crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter in her left hand, a single lit cigarette in her right.

“Um, hi, Christabel,” you say. And then, something equally brainless: “Is everything okay?”

“I should have known.�� She’s staring out at the crowd, not at you. Her large blue eyes are dull, vacant.

“You should have known what?” Your heart is in your throat; blood pounds in your ears like the hooves of a racehorse.

“That he didn’t care,” she says listlessly. “I could tell that he didn’t. I could feel it. But I didn’t want it to be true, so I told myself it wasn’t. Isn’t that interesting? How we can lie to ourselves? Not that it was entirely my error. Other people meddled plenty. ‘Oh no, Christabel.’ ‘He’s just emotionally stunted, Christabel.’ ‘He’s busy with work, Christabel.’ What man is too busy with work to handle a five-minute phone call? It’s not like he was on the moon. He could have made time if he wanted to. I bet he made lots of time for you.”

“Uh.” You try to decide what to say. “I broke up with him, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t want to be his mistress. I didn’t think that was fair to you.” Or me, obviously, but right now doesn’t seem to be the opportune time to voice my own grievances.

“Next time, I’m going to choose who I marry,” Christabel insists, puffing on her cigarette. “He has to talk to me. He has to like me.”

Aemond called it off? What did he say? What is he going to do now? “Christabel…do you know where Aemond is? Or Amir and Cadi?”

“Alicent is so upset,” she says instead. “Poor woman. She’s sweet, in her own way. But I don’t want to end up like her.” Christabel holds up the pack of Marlboros and the lighter. “She feels guilty, I think. She gave me these. She had them in her purse, she has so many neurotic little habits, doesn’t she? It’s not very ladylike to smoke, but it’s not ladylike to get left at the altar either, so fuck it.”

You ask, afraid to know the answer: “Do you hate me? I didn’t know Aemond was engaged when I met him. And then…” Why lie now? What’s the point? “Then I was in love with him and it was kind of…too late to try not to be. But I’m sorry.”

“I don’t hate you,” Christabel replies immediately. “I know he would never be allowed to marry…someone like you. Your options were limited.”

You don’t know if this is meant to be an insult or not. “Thanks.”

“I don’t think I ever loved him either,” Christabel realizes, exhaling smoke. “I think I idolized him. I think I loved my fantasy of what our marriage would be like. But I didn’t love Aemond. I didn’t even know Aemond. You did, I suspect. Good luck with him. He’s a bit…complex.”

“I’m sorry,” you say again, rather compulsively. You aren’t sure what she expects from you. Abruptly, from wherever it’s coming from, Higher Love is cut off. “So, is Aemond, like…around, or…?”

“I don’t regret the sex part.”

“Okay.” You examine the crowd in the clearing again. You still don’t see Aemond.

“That went well,” Christabel muses. “I’m glad my first time is over and done with. I was terrified it would hurt like hell. And so few people know, so it’s almost like it never happened, right?”

“Right,” you say obediently.

“I think I’ll have a new rule. I won’t marry anyone unless he likes me and we sleep together first. Life is too long to spend it with the wrong person, don’t you agree?”

“I totally do.”

“He’s waiting for you inside,” Christabel says, flicking ashes towards the gaping doorway of the chapel.

“Really?” you peer into the shadows; there is indeed a solitary figure standing at the altar. “So…what exactly is happening…?”

“Go,” Christabel urges, and takes a drag on her cigarette. You leave her and cross through the doorway into the chapel.

The light is dim and gentle; fading sunbeams slant in through the glass of the cathedral-style windows. The mason’s inspiration was Gothic architecture, imposing, cavernous. Two candlelit iron chandeliers hang from the high ceiling; the floor is made of tiles of black and white marble. Small stone sculptures of angels watch over their realm like benevolent gargoyles. There is a single stained glass window above the altar: circular like a ring, red and gold like the sun.

He’s waiting for you in a pale pink suit, long disheveled hair, thin mustache with flecks of white powder in it, mischievous smirk. “Hey cake lady,” Aegon says.

“Um. I’m not marrying you.”

“No, you’re definitely not.” Aegon offers you his hand and you take it with some hesitation. “I’m here to be your guide. Just like on the Oregon Trail.”

“What…?”

“Let’s go.” He pulls you out of the chapel, past where Christabel is still sitting at the entranceway, and across the clearing towards the trees. When you look to the crowd, Otto is elbowing his way through disgruntled guests towards a limousine, already idling.

Viserys bellows at him: “Where the hell are you going?!”

“Back to Kiribati!” Otto shouts back, not breaking his stride. He vanishes into the limo.

“Hurry,” Aegon says. He leads you into the forest, a thick canopy of verdant leaves and Spanish moss and the narrow rays of sunshine that tumble down through the gaps.

“Aegon, I don’t think we should be in the woods, it could be dangerous—”

“No, this part is fine. We already checked.”

“Who’s ‘we’?!” You’re wearing flip flops that catch on gnarled roots; the shrieking of cicadas grows loud. One of them buzzes towards Aegon and he screams as he backhands it away.

“You good?” Amir’s voice calls from farther within the trees.

“Yeah. I’m fine. We made it.”

You turn to Aegon. “What’s going on—?”

Suddenly, there is booming music that startles you: “Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth! They say in Heaven, love comes first, we’ll make Heaven a place on Earth! Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth!”

“Aegon, what is that?”

“Uh, I think it’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth.”

“Yes, okay, but why?”

“Ask that guy.” You round a thicket and there under a colossal southern live oak tree, surrounded by hundred-year-old branches that twist down to the earth, is Aemond; but he’s not looking at you. He and Cadi are lighting the last of the candles. She picks them up, he ignites the wick with the same lighter he uses to smoke his Marlboros, and then Cadi places them back on the ground or on top of a branch. Amir is standing by the large black boombox, the same one Aegon always listens to by the Targaryens’ pool. Amir grins craftily, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose. His suit is orange, the single dogwood flower in his hair white.

“Did we get them all?” Aemond asks Cadi.

“Yeah, I think so. Wait, no, there’s one over there!” Cadi darts to it and Aemond lights the candle, then spins around and sees you. He smiles. “Hi, Cupcake.”

“Hi,” you say, so shellshocked you can’t form any of your very vital questions.

“Okay, so we have the candles,” Aemond informs you as Cadi and Aegon go to join Amir. “White with wildflower patterns.” And you recall how Alicent mentioned needing to pick out candles with Christabel, and how you didn’t see any scattered around the chapel. They brought them here. They did it for me. “And we have some actual wildflowers.” He takes the boutonniere off the lapel of his white suit and tucks it into your hair behind your left ear. “And we have Heaven Is A Place On Earth.” He gestures to the boombox. “And I think those were the three things you said you wanted if you were ever going to get married again.”

I did say that. Just once, months ago, the first time he ever came over, the first time he ever touched me. “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered.” He takes both of your hands in his own. Amir lets out a little squeal and covers his mouth as his eyes begin to glisten. Aemond takes a deep breath. “So, I don’t have a speech, because this is very last-minute. I mean extremely last-minute. But you were right about everything. And I realized I couldn’t live that way. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to me, but it wouldn’t be fair to Christabel either. So I broke it off.”

“Literally at the altar,” Aegon says. “In front of everybody. It was so fucking awkward.”

“Those are not necessary details!” Aemond snaps, then looks back to you and is smiling again. “I know what I want. I’ve known it for as long as I’ve known you. But I wasn’t a strong enough person to make it happen. I’m so sorry. I should have done things differently. I can’t change the past. But everything is going to be different now.”

You gaze up at him as Belinda Carlisle sings, thinking: This can’t be real. I’m going to wake up now.

“On the night we met, you told me you’d never felt chosen,” Aemond says. “I’m choosing you. And, you know.” He nods to her. “Cadi too. And Amir. And the bakery. And dealing with Willis too, I guess. All of it. I’m choosing you and your whole life and that’s exactly where I want to be.”

You can feel the warmth in your face, beaming and hopeful and full of possibilities. Under the shade of the southern live oak, the first lightning bugs are blooming in the air like stars. “What about your family?”

“I’ll figure it out. I don’t think my father can entirely disown me…turns out I’m the only one who understands how the stock market works. But no matter what, you and Cadi are the priority. And my father will have to learn to live with that.”

“Or he can drop dead,” Aegon says. “Whichever.”

It’s possible? We can be together? Not just for a night, an afternoon, a stolen moment, but forever?

“I said I don’t have a speech.” Aemond tells you. His right eye is bright, elated, gleaming like a mirror. “I don’t have a ring either. But I’m going to get you one, if you’ll let me. So I’m asking you, Cupcake: Will you marry me?”

“Say yes, Mom!” Cadi yells, and Amir bursts out laughing.

“Say yes, cake lady!” Aegon adds. “Unlimited Cap’n Crunch Treats!”

When am I going to wake up? When is this going to end?

But it’s not a dream. It’s real. And Aemond reads the answer on your face before you can say it, and so it’s only a murmur as he kisses you, a whisper, a prayer: “Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The three of you drive from the new house all the way to San Francisco; you still call it the new house, even though you’ve owned it for a full year. The journey takes seven days, with overnight stops in Dallas, Wonderland Amusement Park in Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, and Bakersfield. Aemond sold his Audi Quattro and replaced it with a Dodge Caravan. It’s July 1989, and Tom Petty’s brand new single Runnin’ Down A Dream is strumming from the radio. It’s always temperate in San Fran, in the 60s even at the height of summer. The sky is overcast and grey. When Cadi complains that she’s cold despite the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hoodie you packed for her, Aemond gives her his Marlboro jacket.

Amir, his boyfriend, and two other roommates share a sunshine yellow Italianate townhouse in the Castro District. Aemond parks his wood-paneled Caravan on the steep, inclined street—he narrowly misses colliding with a whooshing cable car, which he blames on poor depth perception—and then helps you carry the luggage inside. There are no alligators on the front porch, but there are neighborhood cats that Amir puts out Friskies for; there are no screaming cicadas, but there are swooping seagulls and the melodies of sidewalk musicians. When Amir opens the door, he nearly tackles you with enthusiasm. He still wears his loud colors and short shorts, but he’s traded in the dogwood flowers he once wove into his hair for dahlias.

Amir’s boyfriend is named Don, but everyone calls him Donald Schwarzenegger because he looks so much like the Austrian bodybuilder turned actor. When Amir first arrived in the city, he got a job as a cake decorator for a very popular bakery, and quickly segued into handling much of their marketing as well. He’s thinking of getting a degree in advertising and trying his luck in corporate America. You very much enjoy teasing him for being a sellout; what would socialist Bayard Rustin say?

“Call your Daddy and let him know we made it safely to the West Coast,” you tell Cadi once her things are unpacked in the guest room she’ll get all to herself; you and Aemond are consigned to the living room futon. Cadi chats with Willis for a while, then says he wants to talk to you. You take the phone, slightly concerned; you hope nothing is amiss with the house. “Hello?”

“What the hell is wrong with this horse?” he demands. “That ain’t no pet. That’s a demon. It’s a goddamn Rougarou.”

“I told you not to try to touch him,” you say, amused.

“I feed him and water him, don’t I? Ain’t that the least he can do? Lettin’ me scratch his big ol’ idiot head?”

“Patches is not very well-behaved. But Cadi loves him.”

“And don’t even get me started on the dog. Ugliest fuckin’ dog I ever saw. Growls every time I show up. Shows its teeth and everythin’. I’d take twenty gators over that son of a bitch any day.”

“Vhagar is a girl,” you say. “Thanks for watching them while we’re out of town.”

“Sure thing, sugar. Although I still don’t understand why the bon a rien can’t do it.”

“Aegon isn’t always…reliable.” But he does seem to be improving. He’s cut back to mostly just booze and marijuana, because otherwise he and Sunfyre aren't allowed to stay at the new house for sleepovers. There’s a guest bedroom, but Aegon prefers the sunken conversation pit in the mauve pink living room. He likes to be where anyone can stumble across him if they wake up in the middle of the night for pancakes or ice cream. He likes to be where people are; he likes to be included. “Anyway, I gotta go. Cadi will call again tomorrow. Enjoy your fishing.”

“Will do. Maybe I’ll toss your accursed animals in as bait.” Lake Verret is still a bit too brackish for a proper freshwater lake, but that’s changing gradually with Daeron’s desalination efforts and a subaquatic plug affixed to the opening of the breached salt dome. He views it as a pioneering experiment in reversing such drilling accidents, potentially for application globally. Now there are more bass and lampreys and catfish, and less breams and gars, but life goes on in Napoleonville’s 14,000-acre lake. Daeron has replaced Aemond as Viserys’ heir apparent, and he is thriving in the role. He is bookish yet empathetic, focused but never ruthless. Furthermore, he happens to be genuinely in love with his aristocratic fiancée: Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

Aemond was right; Viserys didn’t disown him, but he did fire him, ban him from the mansion, and reduce his available funds to a modest living stipend. Fortunately, Viserys has a very limited comprehension of how money works for normal people, and he considers $200,000 per year to be “modest.” With that plus your bakery earnings and a paid-off house, you, Cadi, and Aemond will be living comfortably for the remainder of your lives. Also fortunately, no one else will enforce the no-Aemond rule at The Last Desire, so anytime Viserys is out of town—which is far more often than not—you get to visit the Targaryens at the mansion as much as you please. Cadi loves the water slide and the koi pond. She’s named the fish after Greek deities, her latest obsession: Zeus, Narcissus, Athena, Dionysus, Artemis, Apollo, Echo. Viserys will not acknowledge you, but the rest of the family is polite enough now that the drama of the broken engagement has blown over. When you finish the cookbook of Southern baked goods that you’ve been working on, Alicent had pledged to mail copies to all her friends and relatives back in the U.K. Otto has offered to take a box of them with him next time he jets off for Kiribati; the wealthy housewives marooned in paradise are always on the hunt for new reading material.

On your first night in San Francisco, Amir serves a dinner of cioppino, sourdough bread, and (not homemade) Rice-A-Roni. You provide dessert, a recipe you’re still perfecting: Saint Honoratus cake, a pastry that dates back to Paris in the 1800s. You want to be able to include it in your cookbook, along with photographs from your wedding in the chapel this past May, almost exactly a year from when you and Aemond first met. Your engagement ring has a gold band and pink diamonds arranged to resemble a rockrose, a dauntless little wildflower native to Aemond’s ancestral homeland of Greece. For over a decade you have loved that wildflowers are grown and not bought, small but tenacious, humble yet untamed. They do not wait for other hands to tell them where and how to grow. They are the architects of their own fortune.

When everyone is finished with dessert and gathers around the tv to watch The Golden Girls, Aemond says he’s going outside for a smoke break; but you know he’s trying to quit. You follow him into the small backyard and as soon as your bare feet touch the grass, he’s pushed you against the wall of the house, forced your thighs apart, slipped his hand down the front of your shorts as he watches the amazed, electrified desire rise in your face like heat from a stove. “It’s been a week, and I need you,” Aemond murmurs, his lips ghosting across your throat, his hips braced insistently against yours, and then he kisses you to stifle your moans as you bury your fingers in his hair, to swallow down the vicarious ecstasy of every wondrous thing he’s ever done to you and ever will. “I don’t even need you to get me off. I just need to see you like this.”

Trusting him, wanting him, letting him make me come.

Aemond has been accepted into UC Berkeley’s History PhD program and will start there at the end of August. He wants to write books about underrecognized heroes, extraordinary and yet unassuming people like Bayard Rustin and Bobbi Campbell and Phillis Wheatley. You’ll miss him of course, but there will be breaks for holidays and summers when he can return to Napoleonville, and you can fly out to visit him too, and there are phone calls, and postcards, and one day you’ll be able to go anywhere together—

You gasp, a shaky, starving breath, your lips grinning into Aemond’s. You’re close, you’re so close.

There is a shrill whistle from the back porch of a townhouse from the row behind Amir’s. “Get it, honey!” a man in a leopard-print robe cheers, waving the newspaper he’d been reading. You and Aemond unravel from each other, laughing hysterically.

“Okay,” you tell him, still panting. “Bad plan. We are clearly not accustomed to city life.”

“Tonight,” Aemond says, low and commanding. He returns to you, kissing the side of your face: temple, cheekbone, the curve of your jaw. His voice is dark, jagged glass; his lips are soft like kind dreams. “On the futon, on the floor, anywhere.”

You want it too, but you know the game. “No.”

He pins you to the wall again, powerful, irresistible, his hardness grinding against you through his jeans, everything about him—voice, flesh, rhythm, soul—promising you the peace only he has ever given you, proving that being at the right person’s mercy can make you free. “I’m in charge now. Let me take care of you.” And for a split second you almost beg: Just do it, Aemond, right now, please touch me again, I don’t care if a stranger sees. I want you now, I want you forever.

Instead you smile up at him, the whirls of your fingerprints skating harmlessly over his scarred left cheek as you answer: “Yes sir.”

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