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[breeding]

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[provoke]

"My Prince" or "Your Highness", if you'll insist on titles, but you've earned the privilege of calling me by my given name.

No, I think I prefer hearing you speak my name and freely.

[ aemond keeps his voice level as he says so, but some of the fondness in him bleeds out all the same. the quiet surprise in his voice, the mellowing of his posture, the pleased half-smile aemond tries to hide unsuccessfully.

but he does have the eyepatch worn for now. a new eye needs breaking in so he can get familiar with the weight of it. even if it were the same size and shape as his sapphire, a diamond has qualities unique to itself. the space where his eye once was is soft tissue covered over only by scarred skin; aemond knows he would feel the stone every moment that he's awake. ]

I brought you something. It's... slightly used, but you might appreciate what it offers.

[ a ledger, or a notebook as they call it here. it's a slim volume of perhaps fifty leaves, bound with wire, the front cover a plain matte red. inside is a legend for high valyrian writing. ]

We are often at the mercy of others and their searching eyes. There is a handful few here who would be able to read this, and fewer with any skill. [ himself, daemon, perhaps rhaenyra. ] This could offer some privacy, if you would like it.

[breeding]

Aemond it is, then.

[ Because he can see that half-smile (can even see the diamond sitting in Aemond's eye socket, a perk of x-ray vision), something that pleases him in turn.

His smile only shifts when he sees what Aemond's brought to offer him, his eyebrows rising in surprise as he carefully opens the cover and takes in the text inside. The fact of the matter is that he's never been particularly studious — being Clockwork Orange-ed as a child will do that to you — and his first impression of it is less to do with potential secrecy as it is the way a child will come up with a cipher, but there's nothing in his expression to denote that distinction. He's charmed, either way. ]

What's this language, again?

[ He's only been caught up on the current political climate, after all, rather than some of the larger lore. ]

And you're fluent?

[provoke]

High Valyrian. The language of my forebears.

[ he makes a point to say my instead of ours, to make clear that this is not a shared knowledge between himself and his mother. yet another failing of his father's, that his wife is possessed of such intelligence and he had not sought to make use of it, or teach her of their ways. ]

I am highly fluent in both spoken and written form; only Daemon or Rhaenyra would compare, though Jacaerys is passable and Baela I have not had the opportunity to engage yet. Aegon cannot read it, to my dismay and always; he has the mind for it but not the taste.

We could, if needed, leave each other letters for each other. We would be the only ones to know how to read them, even if wandering eyes should see what we've written down.

It's a big of a learning curve, I'll admit, but I'm happy to share what I know of it.

[breeding]

[ It's been a long time since he's really had to study anything — he'd gone through schooling as a boy, alongside repeated tests of his physical abilities — and were the circumstances not what they are (e.g. were he not suspicious of this place, of most of the people within it), he'd likely rebuff the offer, say he doesn't see the point in it. But given the way things do stand, he thinks, shrugs, and says, ]

Alright, I'll bite.

[ Though there's no guarantee of exactly how good of a student he'll be. He's always chafed at authority, but this isn't— that, exactly. It's something shared, right? Something for them to do together.

He looks down at the notebook again, leafing through a couple of pages. ]

How long'd it take you to get the hang of it?