The people dragged in by the guards were trembling.
The woman clutched her two children tightly, as though her frail body could shield them from the horror of bloodshed and death that filled the air.
The older one was a boy, perhaps ten or so. His wide eyes brimmed with tears, and he bit his lower lip hard, afraid to let out a sound.
The younger one was a girl, around six or seven. She buried her face deep in her mother's arms, showing only a head of dry, tangled hair and small shoulders that trembled without pause.
The woman herself was as pale as paper, her gaze unfocused.
The moment Cheese's eyes fell on them, they froze.
His miserable face, smeared with snot, tears, and blood, suddenly went rigid.
He understood. He understood everything.
This wasn't a simple punishment or an attempt to silence him. It was a carefully planned scheme to crush everything he cherished in this world right before his eyes...
"No... no... Please, Your Highness! I beg you!" Cheese let out a heartrending wail.
He struggled with all his might, trying to crawl toward Aemond, but Cole stopped him.
His forehead slammed against the cold, damp stone floor with a series of dull thuds. "It was me! It was all my fault!"
"I don't know what I did to offend you! Kill me! Tear me limb from limb! Please, spare them!"
"They don't know anything! They're innocent! Please!"
Aemond simply watched him, his expression utterly unchanged.
Only when Cheese had battered his forehead until it was a bloody mess and his voice had grown so hoarse he could barely speak did Aemond slowly open his mouth.
"Your life," he paused, his gaze sweeping over the three trembling figures, "is not worth the same as theirs."
"I'll give you the right to choose," Aemond said, as though inviting discussion.
"So go on. Pick one."
He raised his hand and pointed at the two children huddled close to their mother.
"Between them," he said, his voice echoing softly through the dungeon, "choose one."
"No!" The woman screamed, wrapping both arms tightly around her children.
The boy finally burst into tears, while the girl was so frightened she couldn't even cry. She only trembled violently.
"Choose," Aemond said, his voice utterly flat.
Behind him, the Hightower guards silently placed their hands on their sword hilts.
Several guards stepped forward and roughly, but efficiently, pulled the woman away from her children.
She screamed and struggled, but they held her fast.
The two children were left alone in the middle of the empty space, bewildered and helpless.
"Pick one," Aemond repeated, his eyes fixed on Cheese's ashen face. "Or I'll decide for you, and have them both slaughtered."
The guards slowly drew their swords a few inches from their scabbards.
Cheese collapsed on the floor, his whole body trembling.
He looked up at Aemond's cold, merciless face, then at his wife, held by the guards and weeping as if on the verge of fainting. Finally, his gaze fell on the two children before him, the continuation of his bloodline.
The boy's eyes looked just like his, while the girl had her mother's nose...
His world spun and crumbled around him.
This was more cruel than killing his own father with his bare hands.
"Ah... ah..." A strange, rasping sound came from his throat. His gaze was unfocused, and his mind was clearly on the brink of collapse.
Under Aemond's increasingly impatient stare, his wife's desperate cries, and the pressure of the guards' gleaming blades,
his trembling, bloodstained finger finally moved.
It moved with excruciating slowness, as though weighed down by a thousand pounds, and pointed at the smaller girl, who was still trembling.
The moment he pointed, Cheese seemed to have every bone pulled from his body. He crumpled completely, reduced to broken sobs.
Aemond looked at the finger pointing at the girl, his expression giving no hint of surprise.
He even nodded slightly, as though approving of Cheese's choice.
Then he strode toward the girl in the middle of the empty space.
He stopped in front of the younger child.
The girl raised her tear-streaked face and looked fearfully at the silver-haired, purple-eyed prince before her.
Aemond bent down slightly and leaned close to her ear.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered, then turned his gaze toward Cheese, who was crumpled on the floor.
"Your father," he enunciated each word clearly,
"wants you dead."
Before the words had even faded, he turned toward the guard standing behind the boy and smiled.
There was something almost cathartic in that smile.
The guard behind the boy didn't hesitate. He had already received the prince's orders in advance.
The sword flashed upward, cutting through the dim air.
"Pfft."
It wasn't the heavy sound of a blow, but the quick slice of a blade through flesh, sinew, and bone.
The boy didn't even have time to cry out.
Terror had not yet given way to pain in the eyes so like his father's when his head left his neck. It traced a brief arc through the air, then rolled across the floor.
His headless body stood rigid for a moment before blood gushed from it and it slowly toppled forward.
The woman's scream caught in her throat, turning into silent, violent spasms of suffocation.
The girl, whom her father had chosen to die, stared blankly at her brother's fallen body, her little mouth agape, utterly stunned.
And Cheese...
He looked as though he'd been struck by lightning. His whole body jerked violently, and his eyes, previously unfocused and despairing, widened to their limit, blood vessels spreading across them in an instant.
He opened his mouth but couldn't make a sound. The veins in his neck bulged grotesquely.
After several seconds of deathly silence, an inhuman shriek, torn from the deepest part of his soul, finally burst from his throat:
"Ah!!!"
The scream was no human sound. It held unbearable pain, disbelieving horror, and the frenzied despair of someone utterly toyed with.
He pointed at Aemond, his finger shaking violently, and stammered, "You... you... you said... you promised... you promised..."
Aemond slowly straightened.
"I told you to choose. That doesn't mean I'd follow your choice..."
The cold tension in his expression eased a little.
He didn't look at Cheese, who was screaming in collapse, or at the mother and daughter sobbing together.
His eyes met those of Ser Criston Cole.
Cole gave a slight nod and stepped forward, his face expressionless.
Cheese was still shrieking, using the last of his strength to question and curse Aemond.
The sword flashed again.
Clean. Swift. Precise.
Cheese's head, filled with endless pain and bewilderment, flew from his shoulders.
Only the woman's muffled sobs and the girl's finally unleashed wailing remained in the dungeon.
Aemond turned away, no longer looking at the bloody hell behind him.
The fire had burned in his heart and left not emptiness, but a cold, settled calm.
These threats had been dealt with. He started toward the dungeon exit.
"Your Highness?" Terra followed behind him and asked cautiously. "What should we do with the rest?"
At that moment, Garvin Hightower, who had been silently watching, came forward.
He looked at his nephew's calm profile, then at the carnage in the dungeon, his brow deeply furrowed.
He didn't know when or where, or how, Blood and Cheese had so grievously offended Aemond.
Not enough to warrant such a brutal revenge—one that seemed crueler than necessary.
But whatever the case, the matter needed to be taken care of.
"Leave it to me," Garvin said steadily. "I'll handle it."
Aemond didn't turn around. He simply nodded, giving his approval.
He had only returned to the ones who created them the nightmares that should have befallen Helaena, exactly as they were.
Curse me if you must, hate me if you will. Let it all fall on me...
Before you continue