Chapter Text
The ground beneath the feet still exhaled the day’s heat, but the night was already settling upon the earth like muddy powder in a glass of water. Dunk sat on the concrete ledge of a roadside convenience store, his back pressed against the rough, dusty wall. In his hands, he held a crumpled paper bag containing two cheap turkey sandwiches that smelled more of chemicals and loneliness than of food.
He was used to it. Used to the lousy food filling the void in his stomach, and used to sitting under the stars. The stars, presumably, were used to him too.
Above his head, the abyss gaped open. In the city, the stars looked fake, like cheap rhinestones carelessly scattered over black velvet. But here, on the shoulder of the world, they shone with a merciless clarity, as befits clumps of matter heated to whiteness. Perhaps they could grant wishes, or perhaps they simply mocked the naivety of creatures whose entire lives lasted less than a blink of their cosmic eye.
Duncan was twenty-four, and his entire fortune consisted of three years of wandering, the bitterness in his throat after Ser Arlan’s funeral, and a car that was twice his age. He had run away from the orphanage, but can one truly run away from orphanhood? He hadn't expected anyone to care for him, yet Ser Arlan had taken him under his wing, softened him, given him hope, and then, just as suddenly, released him onto the empty road. Fine. Maybe not entirely empty. He had just enough money to live, just enough work not to complain of idleness, and no relationships to break a heart that passionately wished, at least once, to be broken.
Dunk looked up, to where the nebulas spiraled like bruises on the body of the sky.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice lost in the wind that smelled of gasoline and dry grass. “Let everything be different. Make it good.”
Although he wasn't exactly feeling bad. He felt nothing.
The stars did not blink. They watched indifferently, like spectators in an amphitheater watching a gladiator who has already dropped his sword.
It was worth a try, but it seemed he would be going into this battle alone again. Dunk rose heavily, straightening his numb legs. The Dodge waited for him — loyal, peeling, with doors eternally unlocked. Why the hell bother with locks when driving this machine was a dark art, and no car thief could master it in the time it took Dunk to make metaphorical wagers with the heavens?
He opened the door. The metal’s creak sounded like the sigh of an old friend. Dunk collapsed onto the seat, inhaling the familiar scent of cracked vinyl and Arlan’s ingrained tobacco, and in that very moment, reality fractured.
“Don’t twitch,” a hissing voice from the darkness of the back seat sounded like the tearing of silk. “I don’t want to get dirty with your brains.”
The cold steel of a barrel nuzzled his nape, kissing the skin with frost. Dunk froze on the exhale. He felt every pore on his body respond to that cold, felt his own body, huge and awkward in the cramped cabin, turn into a single vibration of fear rippling from his neck to his fingertips.
His eyelids fluttered. In the periphery of his vision, in the rectangle of the rearview mirror, a face flashed, sharp, marmoreal, snatched from the gloom by the scattered light of streetlamps. This was no robber. This was a natural disaster in the shape of a youth with lupine eyes set in a face distorted by rage. All the sounds of the world fell silent, lurking in anticipation of the climax; inside the cabin, there was only ragged breathing and the rustle of fabric.
“Start the car smoothly and drive. We have no time,” the whisper commanded again, ringing with tension.
“We could have just asked,” came a voice that was distinctly childish, slightly petulant, contrasting with the metal of the gun.
“Oh, ask then. Go ahead.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Then get the fuck out of the car. I’ll tell parents you've been sewn into a beautiful lampshade.”
“Parents value me more than you, so you can get out and shoot yourself in mouth. I’ll be fine by myself.”
Dunk took a breath. Oxygen saturated his blood. His heart was still beating against his ribs, but the sacred terror of fate began to shift into something absurd. He slanted his eyes toward the mirror: next to the "disaster" sat a child, a small copy of the Intruder, with the same bright, beautiful eyes full of righteous indignation at the absurdity of the scene.
The smell of vinyl and tobacco was joined by another scent—the salty smell of skin, like a sea shell warmed by the sun. A light scent, almost ozone, with notes of jasmine, and mixed with it, a barely perceptible creamy smell, childish and innocent.
“Actually,” Dunk said quietly, fumbling for the key in the ignition, “I really could give you a ride.”
The blow of the pistol butt landed on the crown of his head, painful, but not lethal. The Intruder didn’t swing in earnest; rather, he struck him as one would a negligent servant. One day his kindness and naivety would kill him; Ser Arlan often said this. They lived in a world where there was no place for tenderness, for it is a world of feelings incompatible with survival.
The car sneezed, expelled a cloud of blue smoke, and finally growled gutturally. Dunk shifted into first gear, still squinting from the pulsing pain in his skull. The stars behind the windshield still shone. Wanted a change? they seemed to ask with laugh. Here you go. Your loneliness is officially over.
He drove without haste, following where the road led. He missed turns, but slowed down for decency's sake, giving the Intruders a chance to change their minds. The ringing silence in his head was replaced by a swarm of thoughts.
They weren't going to kill him. Rob him, it seemed, neither, the Dodge looked like the last place on earth to find money. Especially with a child. Most likely, they needed the car itself, but the manual transmission had become an insurmountable barrier for their plans.
“Move the seat,” came the next command. Dunk would have been glad to obey if he could.
“I can’t. There’s no more room.”
This wasn't stubbornness. Dunk was big, sometimes ridiculously so. He had come into this world to one day not fit inside it. Doorways were low for his seven feet, clothes were short, and the Dodge’s cabin was as tight as a coffin. He understood the discomfort of the Intruder sitting behind him, leg tucked under, unable to stretch it past the driver’s seat.
Another irritated hiss. With a “hold this” directed not at Dunk, the Intruder shifted, and then from the side, right over Dunk’s elbow, a long leg in an expensive sneaker swung over, landing on the front passenger seat. Right on the upholstery Dunk had recently cleaned. By all means, make yourself at home.
The Intruder flowed forward with the grace of some kind of animal, never losing balance, and immediately turned, aiming the barrel at Dunk’s face. Dunk thought he had imagined it in the semi-darkness, but no, the eyes in the light of oncoming headlights truly shone with an impossible lilac hue. The smell of jasmine and warm, flushed skin became thicker —from proximity, from time in the enclosed space, from the dark damp spots of sweat on the collar of his t-shirt. His anger didn't smell of bitter threat, like street fighters, but of something sharp, spicy, arousing. There was no doubting the Intruder’s sex. He swept a gaze over Dunk, petulantly pursing plump lips, and after a brief glance at the gun, turned away to the window.
Young, about twenty. The child in the back about ten. Likely brothers. They didn’t resemble father and son much, and the earlier mention of parental preferences didn’t bind them by father-son blood.
“Where to?”
“Straight,” the Intruder stared at the road, muscles working in his chiseled jaw.
“I apologize, sir,” the second, smaller almost-Intruder spoke up. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We just need help, but we have no one to turn to yet.”
“Of course,” Duncan tried to sound calm, but his gaze traitorously slid from the road to the profile, as if hewn from marble by a mad sculptor.
“Maybe a motel?” the boy suggested.
“You can lie down and sleep as is,” his brother waved a hand, brushing off his words like a pesky fly.
After a short pause, the boy whispered embarrassedly that he was cramped.
“Oh,” the Intruder rolled his eyes, looking insulted by the very idea of discomfort. “Let me help a little.”
Dunk recognized the sound of the seat latch releasing a split second before the Intruder kicked the dashboard hard, sliding the seat back all the way, crushing the child into the rear bench.
The boy in the back cried out pitifully: “Aerion!”
The car dipped sharply. Dunk slammed on the brakes, sending up a cloud of dust behind them, and simultaneously lunged sideways to grab the latch lever. Time thickened. He saw everything with crystal clarity: how the Intruder, like a predatory animal for whom only instinct exists, tilted his head and slammed his forehead into Dunk’s face.
The blow struck the frontal bone, just above the temple. Pure insanity splashed in the Intruder's eyes, pupils dilating to devour the iris. Dunk, not loosening his grip, threw his weight onto him, pressing the alien torso into the seat with his massive bulk. Their heads collided again, this time by Dunk’s will. He aimed for the nose, wanting to hear a crunch, but the Intruder, dodging, offered his mouth to the blow.
Dunk had fought before. His power, which he had carried within himself as a hidden burden for so long, finally found an outlet. This fortress of muscles, visible in the shape of his skull and bull-like neck, awakened in him a vile but necessary quality, the ability not to spare himself.
His opponent twisted his shoulder, trying to free his right hand, but the gun was in his left, and it was pinned between their bodies. The Intruder’s fists weren’t heavy, but he knew the pressure points.
“Aerion!” the boy screamed again, whether from pain in his crushed legs or fear for his brother.
Dunk lunged further, bearing down on the other’s knees, occupying all the space in the cabin, displacing the air. But in this chaos, he momentarily loosened the pressure on the armed hand. They weren’t touching faces, but Dunk almost physically felt the heat of a strange, mad smile on his cheek. To hell with it.
Lever. Jerk. A moan under his shoulder. The dull thud of metal on the floor mat.
The gun fell. Both froze, breathing heavily, mixing the smells of sweat, cheap sandwich, and expensive jasmine. Gears in their heads ground, shifting to a new tempo. Dunk’s hand didn’t tremble, though his heart beat in his throat, it slid down into the darkness between the other’s knees, to the floor. Seeking fingers fanned out, groping the carpet in search of cold steel.
And he thought he touched metal a moment before a sneaker heel came crashing down on his hand with a sickening crunch.
He would throw him out of the car. By God, he would throw him out, and let his heart ache later for refusing the needy — this Intruder would be cast back to the stars that sent him.
Dunk’s fingers clawed at the ankle of the attacking leg, but the Intruder’s arm had already snaked under his chin, locking the hold. A chokehold. Of course, now he wanted to strangle him—this evening couldn't get any more delightful unless a knife was presented to his throat.
The lock of arms closed tight, but Dunk’s neck was too thick and strong for him. Rising above the seat, he yanked the Intruder toward himself, hoping to pull him out into the light, where he could swing just once, but with certainty.
But the scoundrel hooked his leg onto the dashboard, and his torso, though small, turned out to be as strong as steel cable. They froze halfway, entwined in an embrace so tight, so desperate, as if they were not fighting for life, but meeting after a century of separation.
A thick cocktail of smells hit his nose: salt, cloying jasmine, the musky bitterness of his own sweat, and that damn tobacco of Arlan’s ingrained in the upholstery. Breathing faltered for both: for the Intruder from exertion, for Dunk from the blocked artery. For the Intruder, it was like trying to hold a rampaging stallion with bare hands; for Dunk, like getting his head stuck in a fence. Folly, a humiliating and lethal folly.
“We can talk,” Duncan’s voice failed him, breaking into a wheeze.
“I think I can manage,” the Intruder hissed. The arm lock slid a little higher on the damp skin. Oh, he knew that in strangulation, oxygen is secondary, stopping the blood is what matters. Dunk’s vision blurred; flickering dots thickened from the periphery to the center, and the realization of the end hammered a frantic pulse in his ears.
Acting on instinct, Dunk clasped his hands in a lock behind the other’s back and squeezed. Had the Intruder been slightly larger, this might not have worked, but he was half the width, his ribs flexible and yielding, and he bore the pressure far worse. Dunk heard the other’s breath hitch, turning into a raspy whistle. The inhale was ragged, incomplete—that surely hurt.
“Aerion!” came a cry from the back, full of childish despair.
Two seconds that felt like eternity. And the lock on Dunk’s neck finally loosened. The air had never tasted so delicious, so cold and sharp, Dunk felt as if he were truly inhaling for the first time in his life. He unclamped his bear hug. The Intruder collapsed back onto the seat, gasping for air, wincing in pain.
They pulled apart, raising hands in a gesture of truce. Eye to eye.
A bright red trail ran from the Intruder's nose to his lips.
He looked frighteningly calm. He merely ran a bloody red tongue over his teeth with irritation, assessing the damage, or perhaps gathering the metallic taste he couldn’t swallow.
“You loosened one of my teeth.”
“You threatened me with a gun,” Dunk parried, though the Intruder didn’t look convinced that the presence of a weapon was sufficient cause for damaging his enamel.
Duncan flinched when the Intruder turned away, but he merely froze, pointing a warning finger at his tightly shut mouth, then opened the door and spat bloody saliva. One knee was raised, he had likely found the gun on the floor but sat too close to the dashboard, pinned by the seat, to quickly lean down and use it.
“I don’t know what to expect from you. You’re stupid, huge, and driving us who knows where.”
“We don’t know where we need to go ourselves,” the boy from the back seat moved closer to the center, poking his head through the gap between the front seats. “I apologize again, sir. We are in a bit of trouble.”
Thin, with a shaved head, but an absolutely charming child with huge eyes and a genuinely guilty look. His eyes also cast violet, but a darker, softer shade, cold like night irises flowers. He turned briefly, scanning the road behind in search of other cars, perhaps houses or stores.
“We got into the first car we found,” he explained.
The Intruder opposite grumbled: “Into an ugly one.”
Dunk wanted to object but only winced, keeping his attention on the child.
“Maybe a motel?” the little one repeated.
“Do you need a phone?”
“Better not call right now,” the boy answered quickly, but immediately corrected himself: “Only for tonight. Maybe we can call from a landline at the motel.”
Dunk himself lived in a motel. He could take them there, but finding a vacant room at the height of the season was no easy task. If, of course, they had money at all. They probably preferred ordering a taxi, rather catching rides with a gun to the temple. His kindness would surely kill him one day, and judging by appearances, with particular cruelty.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t want resistance at a moment when these two might need help.
“Duncan,” he introduced himself. “Dunk, for short.”
The boy smiled—brightly and openly:
“Egg.”
Well, with that shiny shaved head, the nickname fit perfectly.
The Intruder remained silent, staring gloomily at his feet.
“I’ll call myself ‘Your Majesty,’ will you address me as such?” His smile was still bloody, but that didn’t seem to bother him. On the contrary, the cruelty of his mimicry only emphasized this strange, distorted grandeur.
“If you sit quietly, I’ll think about it,” Duncan frowned, replaying their short but furious struggle in his head. “Aerion?”
The Intruder didn’t answer. Just threw a cold, assessing glance in his direction. Once, twice. And then his face suddenly smoothed out. The tension vanished, eyebrows raised, eyes lost their animalistic snarl. A nearly divine transformation: from the Stranger bringing death to the purest image of the Mother.
Dunk felt uneasy: he was beautiful and seemed mad, but, mostly, it was the beauty that frightened Dunk. Where Dunk had grown up, beautiful people were rare, and alas, he knew too little, almost nothing, about the character of beautiful people who know they are beautiful; and he knew absolutely nothing about how to relate to beautiful omega boys who can suddenly seem innocent while despising your very existence in their souls.
Ser Arlan said beauty is dangerous. It distracts. It lowers vigilance. It is the best camouflage. “It’s easier for the beautiful to deceive, Dunk, because on the outside, they are a model of virtue created by the Seven.”
Dunk recoiled slightly. His shyness could be mistaken for dull detachment, but it was in this shyness, as Tanselle once told him, that his own rough charm lay.
“What will the noble knight do?” Aerion’s voice dropped to a whisper, but in the tight, soundproofed cabin of the Dodge, every word fell heavy as a stone; there was no need to speak loudly to be heard. “Will he keep me hostage now, knowing my little secret?”
Knowing the demon's name gives you power over him, Dunk remembered.
He shook his head. The dramatic, heavy line of eyelids opposite him trembled.
“Good.”
The Intruder turned to the window and ran his tongue over his teeth again. Dunk saw it in the smooth, hypnotic movement of muscles under tightly closed lips.
“We are very tired, sir,” Egg intervened quietly.
“I understand.”
The car moved again, cutting through the darkness with its headlights. And the stars above laughed in Dunk’s face, now brighter and more distinct in the gloom that had finally descended upon the world.
Ser Arlan would have laughed at him. In truth, he never denied himself that pleasure. "Lunk," he called him, thick as a castle wall. Though Dunk didn't consider himself stupid. Naive, yes, though where exactly the line lay between naivety and stupidity, he couldn't say for sure. Perhaps it lay where faith in people ends and the instinct for self-preservation begins.
Here is this pair in his car. Here he is driving them to his motel, surely won't find them a room, and of course, will allow them to stay the night in his. And he won't see the morning. In a couple of days, the smell will start; the motel owner, that wonderful elderly lady with powdered cheeks, will call the police, and they will find Dunk corrupted by the merciless, moist process of decomposition. Yes, that is exactly how it will be.
Dunk watched the road, but his entire attention, like a magnetized compass needle, was fixed on the Intruder to his side. He had moved the seat back to its original position but hadn't bent down for the gun. The weapon lay somewhere in the dark, at his feet. A misty expression of thoughtfulness wandered on Aerion’s face, or perhaps the boredom of a predator waiting for prey to lose focus.
Ser Arlan said: never get involved with Omegas. Never. They will eat your insides, eat them along with the shit and the bile, and you’ll only be glad to be devoured. Duncan considered this a manifestation of Ser Arlan being a deeply non-family man, avoiding attachments like the plague. He had sheltered Dunk, but likely because his soul retained remnants of knightly nobility.
“Women drive men mad and start wars,” the old man would say, spitting tobacco. “But these sensual boys... they’ll weave a wonderful scarf from your guts, wrap it around their necks, and wear it as a trophy.”
Dunk had met them in his life, but none of them looked like they dreamed of a gut-scarf. They were people just like everyone else; their sex didn't make them saints or demons.
“Because you haven't been chosen as a victim yet. Too young,” Arlan grumbled. But what could the old man know, if his own nature was deaf to the charms of these creatures? “But your sex... it will make you even stupider than you already are.”
The motel greeted them with the sickly buzzing of neon signs. The light flickered like a nervous tic, painting the dusty asphalt a poisonous pink. Dunk stopped and wondered how they would leave the car. Would the Intruder lunge for the gun? His silence was far more unnerving than the hissing and threats.
“Are we here?” Egg asked.
Receiving a nod, he politely thanked him and got out first, approaching the driver's door.
“Sir, could you help us here too? I am very sorry to trouble you.”
The boy was so meek and polite that Dunk nodded without thinking.
Now they had to get out. Him and the Intruder. They looked at each other point-blank. Pulled the door handles in sync. The click of the lock sounded like a gunshot. Of course, Dunk should have thought that due to his size, he needed a head start to keep up with Aerion’s movements. The Intruder dove under the seat with the fluidity of mercury and straightened up with the gun in hand. He smiled solemnly, almost affectionately, but seemed to have no intention of threatening, he simply tucked the weapon into the waistband of his jeans, covering it with his shirt.
He kept his distance. Exactly four paces. Unreachable.
Egg sighed heavily, a sound too adult for his years, and stood between them. He was half his brother's height, and his brother barely reached Dunk’s chest. Dunk was always too easy a target.
“Lead the way,” the Intruder ordered.
They followed him. When Dunk entered the reception, he heard a vicious hiss behind him: “Not a word about us.”
Of course, there were no rooms. The owner, a kind lady resembling a sweet bun, informed him with a smile that due to the festival, all eight studios were occupied. Duncan thanked her and stepped out into the stifling night to the waiting pair.
“No rooms. I can put you up in mine, or we can drive further...”
“Where will our noble knight sleep?” Aerion interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t imagine the room is a two-bedroom suite.”
“There’s a sofa and a bed inside. You can take the bed, I’ll take the sofa. It’s closer to the kitchen.”
Egg looked guilty again, as if he personally had burned down every hotel in the town.
“I’m afraid we have no alternatives. We need to sleep at least a couple of hours. In the morning, I very much hope we can make a call.”
His brother said nothing. He studied the dilapidated facade of the motel with an expression of squeamish skepticism, as if facing a pile of manure rather than a temporary refuge.
When they traveled with Ser Arlan, their rooms always smelled of cheap tobacco and old leather. Now, Dunk’s room smelled only of microwaved food and dust. The scent of sterile loneliness. Not exactly cozy, but it would do for a night.
Dunk opened the door with his key. Aerion remained standing aside, ignoring Dunk’s gallant gesture to let him pass. He preferred to control the rear.
A small studio: adjoining kitchen and living area, an alcove for the bed, a separate bathroom. Dunk sacrificed one of his t-shirts to Egg, on the boy, it looked like a nightgown or a toga. He watched as the child climbed into bed, took a deep breath, and almost instantly went still, falling into sleep.
Aerion didn’t go to the bathroom. He didn’t even look that way. He sat at the small kitchen table and hadn’t risen since entering the room. Before him stood a bowl of walnuts in their shells. Dunk suddenly thought they must be hungry.
Keeping his distance, Dunk went to the fridge. He knew it was empty—just a jar with leftover broth and the light of the bulb. Sandwitches were purely destroyed and left in the car.
“There’s chicken broth,” he offered to the Intruder. The other didn’t even flinch. “To Your Majesty, I, unfortunately, can offer nothing else.”
“You already know my name.”
“I thought the first form of address was preferred.”
“When it is pronounced so dismissively, I no longer like it.”
“The tone would be less dismissive if I didn’t expect a shot in the back of the head every two minutes.”
Plump lips were illuminated by a smile, sharp as a shard of glass. Aerion was very pleased with himself.
“What can I do when you’re near? Fear the goat from the front, the horse from the rear, and the fool from all sides.”
“Not very polite.”
“But honest.” The Intruder grimaced, trying to crush a walnut in his palm. Failing, he struck it with his fist, a dull, bony thud. The shell cracked.
Look who's talking about intelligence.
The scent reached Dunk’s nostrils again, spicy, salty, disturbing. If Aerion didn’t wash off the road dust and sweat, this smell would saturate the entire apartment. It was... too much. Too intimate.
Dunk wanted to retreat to the sofa, to fall into sleep, but leaving this "majesty" unsupervised was tantamount to suicide. He hesitated, feeling like a clumsy giant in a china shop, and sat opposite.
“Are you hiding from someone?”
Aerion didn’t answer, merely arching his eyebrows theatrically. The conversation wasn’t sticking, and sitting in silence under the crack of breaking shells was unbearable.
In the harsh electric light of the kitchen, he was even more frighteningly beautiful. Exotic. Hair light, almost silver, soft even to the look. Not burnt by peroxide, but alive, shimmering. Dunk rarely saw beautiful people this close. He didn’t know the rules for handling them. Where to put his eyes? How to breathe so as not to betray his embarrassment? Aerion’s scent seemed to settle on the tongue, penetrating the throat, putting down roots somewhere in the gut.
He needed to say something. Just to not hear his own pulse.
“Who did you take after to get so big?” the Intruder suddenly asked, popping a walnut kernel into his mouth.
The question sounded almost mundane. Dunk had heard it a thousand times, usually with mockery or fear. But from the Omega’s lips, it sounded... strange. Flattering? Is height considered beautiful? Dunk wasn’t sure. He always just felt too big.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know my kin.”
“It’s good to be big and strong. Solves a lot of problems.”
“And creates a lot,” Dunk countered, looking at his broad palms. “People get scared. It’s hard to build relationships when you barely fit in their field of vision.”
“Not everyone appreciates size,” Aerion shrugged, looking bored. “But I like it. I love it when I can barely close my knees sitting on someone’s thighs. I can ride them like a horse, you know. Hard.”
Dunk blinked. Once, twice. He waited for the hallucination to pass. For this to turn out to be a mishearing, a trick of a tired mind. But Aerion wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even looking on him.
“Excuse me?”
“Sex,” Aerion finally raised a gaze full of lazy mockery. “You were thinking about it, weren’t you?”
“I was thinking more about wanting to live until morning.”
Aerion smiled, crunching another nut with his fist. He spoke with his mouth full, but that made him no less dangerous.
“It wouldn’t be very comfortable for us, right? From behind, you’d have to lift my hips so we... you understand, could be on the same level and you can get deeper. Lying down, it’s hard to keep the rhythm, especially if you want it fast. People always rush for the first time because of the wild need to cum. It would be better to let me ride. I’ll also be impatient.”
Every word hammered into consciousness like a red-hot nail. Dunk’s face burst into flames. These were just words, dirty, shameless words, but they mixed with the tart scent that would surely become unbearably vivid in the warmth, in the tightness, inside...
“Or maybe you are going to eat me? I can ride your face too, softer this time. Or fuck me in my mouth? On my knees I think I just of right height not to slouch”, Aerion took one more bite. “You already fucked up one of my teeth, I expect you to be not really hesitant of ruining my throat.”
“I won’t, I don’t, I’m not… I had no such plans.”
“I can smell your interest, you know?”
Dunk stood up abruptly. The chair screeched across the tiles.
“You’re wrong, and I don’t think I want to talk about this.”
Slouching slightly, as if trying to hide from those all-seeing lilac eyes, he fled the kitchen corner. Too fast, too agile for his size. Out of the corner of his eye, he managed to notice Aerion smiling, a satisfied, sated smile.
Ser Arlan was right. The appetites of these creatures were an abyss. But the most disgusting part was that Dunk’s insides responded. He had this accursed member, a true fiend of hell, a traitor leading a life of its own. At first, you barely feel it. Then it grows heavy, fills with blood, demanding its due.
Dunk felt sick from himself.
He lay on the sofa, turning to the wall. The night would pass. In the morning, everything would vanish, the child, the demon in the kitchen, and the damned stars that had granted his wish with such perverted precision.