Chapter Text
The banners on the horizon were black against a burning sky. At first, Aerion had mistaken them for storm clouds rolling in from the east, heavy and inevitable. But storm clouds did not march in formation, and they did not bear the crowned stag of House Baratheon stitched bold and defiant in gold.
The castle erupted into panic as realization spread. Servants fled through corridors clutching what they could carry; knights scrambled half-armored into the yard; steel clashed in sharp, frantic bursts. Somewhere below, a horn wailed—long and desperate, not the clean call of ceremony but the ragged cry of alarm.
“Hide in the strong room,” Maekar Targaryen commanded his sons, voice iron-hard. Or those who remained. Daeron was deep in his cups, muttering bitterly about dragons with knives in their backs; Egg bristled with boyish fury, insisting he could take up a blade; and Aerion, jaw tight with frustration, seized them both and dragged them along because apparently he was the only one willing to obey their father without argument.
Storm’s End had risen against the Iron Throne. Lyonel Baratheon had declared himself in open rebellion against Aerion’s father and king.
They waited in the strong room for what felt like hours, the air thick and stale. Aerion paced until his boots scuffed dust from the floor, his pulse hammering too fast beneath his skin. Even through stone walls he could smell smoke riding the wind—sharp, bitter, unmistakable. For once, he wished he had listened to Egg that perhaps they should have fought beside their father instead of hiding like children. But it would be fine. It had to be fine. Their father was the Anvil. He had crushed rebellion before, and he would do so again.
Behind him, the heavy oak door creaked open, the sound loud in the suffocating quiet of the strong room. It was followed by the unmistakable echo of armored steps—slow, weighty, familiar enough that Aerion’s breath caught for an entirely different reason. He turned at once, relief unfurling through his chest before he could stop it. “Ser Duncan.”
And there he stood, filling the doorway as though he had been carved for it. His sworn sword. His shadow. His—
Duncan the Tall seemed larger than the room itself, broad shoulders brushing the frame, armor hastily fastened and buckled wrong at the shoulder as it so often was. He had never quite fit courtly polish; there was always something slightly crooked about him, something endearingly imperfect. This was the man who flushed scarlet when Aerion’s teasing cut too close to truth, the man who had remained steadfast at his side for two years after Ashford when others whispered and watched. The man who had bent his towering frame in the dark to press trembling, reverent kisses into the hollow beneath Aerion’s jaw when the candles burned low and the world beyond the chamber ceased to exist.
Aerion had sensed something was wrong but whatever chaos raged beyond these walls could not touch him if Duncan stood between him and it, right?.
He crossed the room without hesitation, boots scraping stone. “Are you hurt?” Aerion asked, breathless, his hands already reaching, fingers curling around the cold steel of Dunk’s gauntlet as if to reassure himself that he was real, that he had come. “You came back to me. How is my father—”
The question faltered.
Dunk would not meet his eyes.
It was a small thing, at first. A subtle tilt of the head. A gaze fixed somewhere over Aerion’s shoulder instead of on his face. But in two years, Aerion had learned every line of him. He had memorized the way Duncan looked at him in private, soft and almost reverent, and the way he forced himself into knightly composure in public, but this was different. It was wrong.
Across the room, Daeron gave a sudden, sharp laugh, the sound brittle and unsteady. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. “You chose the knife,” he said, almost conversationally, as though commenting on the weather.
Aerion frowned, confusion pricking at him. “What are you—”
He stopped when the strong room’s doors groaned open from behind Duncan.
Beyond Duncan’s towering frame came the thunder of boots striking stone in disciplined rhythm. Armor clattered. Voices barked orders and through the widening gap poured the black and gold of Baratheon men, flooding the room like a river breaching its banks.
Aerion’s breath escaped him in a thin, fragile sound, disbelief hollowing out his chest as realization began its slow, terrible climb.
“…Duncan?”
It was not accusation, not even anger.
Only confusion. Only hurt.
“Baelor died for you.”
The words tore out of Aerion before he could stop them, raw and shaking. His jaw trembled as he stepped back, the memory of Ashford flashing like lightning behind his eyes, of Baelor Targaryen falling, of blood on bright armor, of sacrifice given in Duncan’s name. All of it for honor. For the belief that some vows meant more than crowns.
Behind him there was a scuffle—a sharp cry cut short. Aerion turned just in time to see Egg seized by a rebel twice his size. He moved without thinking, wrenching Duncan’s sword free from its sheath in one furious motion. The blade felt heavier than he expected, but anger lent him strength. He swung hard and wild, steel biting into flesh and the man staggered back with a howl, half his face laid open as blood spilled down his surcoat.
“Run!” Aerion shouted, voice breaking as he shoved Egg toward the corridor. “Go!”
Egg did not argue this time. Terror sharpened him into something swift and desperate; he slipped between grasping hands, ducked beneath a reaching arm, and bolted down the passage with startling agility. Rebels swore and gave chase. Aerion could only hope that his brother’s legs were quick enough, that the corridors were familiar enough, that he might reach Rhae or Daella before the castle swallowed him whole. The journey would be long if he fled beyond these walls, longer still if the Stormlanders hunted him, but Egg had always been stubbornly resilient. Perhaps that would be enough to keep him alive.
When Aerion turned back, breath ragged, he found Daeron standing strangely still amid the chaos. There was no struggle in him, no fight—only a tired sort of resignation, as if he had always known this was how the song would end. The noise of clashing steel and shouted orders seemed to pass around him without touching him at all.
“Run,” Aerion urged, reaching toward him. “Daeron, run!”
But Daeron did not move.
Aerion barely registered the shift behind him before the pommel of a sword crashed against the back of his skull. The world lurched sideways. Warm, rough hands seized his arms, wrenching them back as the blade slipped from his grasp and clattered across stone.
And through the ringing in his ears, he saw Daeron step closer to Duncan.
Daeron leaned in, speaking low enough that the words were swallowed by the roaring in Aerion’s ears. He could not hear what was said, but it was something that made Duncan’s shoulders stiffen.
—
Two years.
Two years of shared secrets beneath ancient oak trees where the wind carried away their laughter before it could be overheard. Two years of hands tangled in dark sheets, of breathless confessions pressed into bare skin, of whispered dreams they were never meant to have—prince and knight, crown and mud daring to imagine a world that did not exist. Duncan had promised, in that low earnest voice of his, that he would always stand between Aerion and whatever tried to harm him. He had said it like a vow, like something sacred.
When Aerion came to, the world was quiet.
For one fragile, foolish moment, he thought it had all been a nightmare.
He was lying on his own bed, the canopy above him familiar, the carved dragons on the posts unchanged. Pale light filtered through the narrow window, soft and ordinary. His head throbbed dully, but pain could belong to dreams.
He pushed himself upright, heart racing, waiting for the door to open—for Duncan to step through it sheepish and apologetic, armor crooked as ever, saying he’s late for his lessons. That everything was fine.
The door did open.
But the men who entered wore stag sigils, not dragons.
There were no Targaryen guards in the corridor. No loyal retainers. No brothers’ voices echoing distantly through the halls.
No Duncan.
The truth settled slowly and mercilessly into his bones. The castle was no longer his father’s. The banners outside the window were not red and black. The servants who came were unfamiliar.
By the time the reality finished unraveling, he understood what had changed.
He was no longer Prince Aerion of the blood of the dragon.
Stripped of command, stripped of protection, stripped of the name that had once made men kneel. Whatever he had been yesterday had burned with the dragon banners on the walls.
He had woken not as a prince.
But as Aerion of nothing.
They brought him food as though that were mercy.
A tray of roasted lamb, still steaming. Thick slices of mutton glistening with fat. Fresh bread, butter soft and golden. A goblet of watered wine set carefully at his bedside as if he were merely indisposed, not imprisoned in his own chambers.
Aerion did not touch it.
“I demand to see my father,” he said the first day, voice steady despite the ache in his skull. “Bring me King Maekar. Or my brothers. Any of them. You will not keep me blind in my own house.”
The guards did not answer. They did not bow either.
The second time he demanded it, his tone sharpened to command. “I am blood of the dragon. You will not treat me like spoils.”
Silence met him again. Silence and the scrape of boots as they withdrew, shutting the door with the same dull finality.
By the evening of the second day, the smell of roasted meat turned his stomach. The lamb sat untouched. The mutton cooled, the fat congealing pale and greasy beneath candlelight. He stared at it until something ugly twisted in his chest—some bitter recognition of what it was meant to signify.
Feed the captive.
Keep him alive.
He rose abruptly, the room swaying for half a breath, and seized the platter with shaking hands. The meat hit the floor with a wet slap, scattering grease across stone. The goblet followed, wine bleeding into the rushes like something wounded.
The third day came colder.
His strength ebbed quietly, like a tide retreating from shore. His limbs felt heavier and his thoughts moved slower. When he stood, black crept at the edges of his vision, and he had to brace himself against the bedpost to remain upright. His omega body protested the neglect, instincts urging him to survive, to conserve, to endure.
He ignored them.
When they brought fresh food, he did not even look at it.
“I will see my father,” he said again, though his voice was thinner now, scraped raw from disuse. “Or you may watch me waste.”
No one answered.
By evening his lips were dry, his pulse faint and uneven beneath his skin, but his spine remained straight when the guards glanced in. There was a fever-bright defiance in his eyes that hunger had not dimmed.
They could take his title and they could take his freedom.
But they would not take his will.
That night, the dark pressed in closer than ever, heavy as stone. Aerion awoke to the lightest of touches, fingers threading through his hair, gentle and deliberate. His chest jerked, breath catching—he thought it was his father, come at last to check on him. Perhaps the gods have been so kind—but they were not.
“Aerion,” the knight whispered, voice low and urgent. “The servants said you haven’t eaten—”
Aerion’s hand shot up instinctively, a strike born of rage, hunger, and humiliation, but Duncan caught it mid-air. His grip was firm yet careful, restraining, not punishing. Aerion’s lavender eyes, sharp even in the dim candlelight, took him in fully for the first time since his awakening.
Duncan was not in the white armor, not in the cloak of the king’s sworn sword. He wore garbs fit for a lord, fine and tailored.
All Aerion felt was disgust, a hot, sharp pulse in his chest that drowned out everything else.
His omega instincts recoiled at their closeness. “Let me go, Oathbreaker!” he snapped, voice cracking with fury. His body writhed against Duncan’s hold, limbs flailing, fists slamming against the broad chest he had once sought for safety.
Duncan’s grip loosened but careful. “Please… you’re wasting away.”
“I do not need anything from you.” Aerion spat, voice sharp enough to cut stone. “What have you done to my family, traitor? My father, my brothers, my sisters?” Every word rattled out like a whip, burning with the hunger, the fear, and the betrayal that had hollowed him from within.
Duncan’s face fell, the lordly composure faltering. “…I’m sorry,” he said softly, almost too quietly.
Aerion’s features twisted, eyes narrowing, lips curling in bitter disbelief. “No. You are not. If you were, you would have been done with all this bother. You would have pushed me off this tower and spared us both this conversation.” His voice cracked, a jagged edge of anger and despair.
“Stop,” Duncan urged, hands lifting slightly in a futile attempt at restraint.
“Is it worth it?” Aerion hissed, voice rising, chest heaving. “Trading your oath for silk and gold? Betraying us for comfort?”
“All I did was for the good of the realm,” Duncan said, voice low but resolute, eyes locking on Aerion’s with a weight that demanded attention. “The realm cannot know peace while it keeps fighting wars between dragons. Fighting your families whims. I did what I had to do to save it, to save the people who would die if the line continued unchecked.”
Aerion’s chest heaved, every word like a blade to his heart. It left him staring, torn between fury and disbelief, between love and the stark realization that the man he had trusted most had chosen another path—one that left him to rot in a cage of stone and betrayal.
“Get out. I do not want to see your face,” he went on, voice raw and splintering despite his effort to keep it steady. “I do not want to hear your voice.”
He dragged in a breath that felt like broken glass in his lungs.
“I do not want your apologies. I do not want your pity.” His fingers twisted in the sheets, knuckles stark and bloodless. “Do not stand there and look at me as though I am something fragile you have the right to mourn.”
His hands trembled, curling into fists at his sides, nails digging into palms until the pain was the only thing he could feel. The tears came suddenly, hot and bitter, tracing lines down his cheeks he did not bother to wipe away. Rage and sorrow tangled in his throat, a suffocating knot of betrayal he could not untangle.
“I want you to leave me be!” Aerion’s voice tore out of him, ragged and jagged, like claws scraping stone. He shook, hands clenching into fists until his nails bit into his palms, and every word dripped with venom and grief. “Leave me to this… this nothing! Let me rot here, alone, let me drown in the ruins of all you’ve stolen from me!”
His breath came in ragged pulls, each one breaking against the sobs that tore up from his chest.
“May fire devour you, Oathbreaker,” he spat, the words splintering on grief. “May every shadow you cast, every sorrow you sowed, find its way back to you. You are the bane of all I have loved, the ruin of my soul.”
His lavender eyes blazed through a veil of tears, fixed on the man who had once been his harbor, his mirror, his very heartbeat—and was now the architect of a betrayal so profound it left him trembling between terror and rage.
Those ocean-blue eyes gentled, heavy with something Aerion refused to name. Slowly, Duncan let his hands fall to his sides. He left a careful distance between them—no sudden movement, no reaching touch, nothing that might ignite the storm further.
“I know,” he said at last, the words low and rough with restraint. “I know you hate me.”
Aerion’s chest rose and fell in shuddering, uneven pulls, each breath scraping raw against his ribs. Tears blurred his vision, but they did nothing to cool the fury pounding beneath his skin—a relentless, merciless drum. He wanted to turn away. To spit. To scream until his throat bled. To make Duncan feel even a fraction of the ruin he carried.
“…Then why are you still here?” he demanded, the question fracturing as it left him.
Duncan’s gaze shiftedto the untouched tray at his bedside. To the thin wrists. To the hollowness carving shadows beneath lavender eyes that had once burned so brightly.
“Because I hope…” His voice faltered. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing like the motion hurt. “…I hope you’ll eat.”
For a moment there was only silence.
Then Aerion laughed.
It was not loud. Not wild. It was worse—thin and hollow, a sound with no warmth in it, no life. It scraped along the walls and came back emptier.
“Eat?” he echoed, something breaking in the word. “You think I care about food now?”
Duncan did not look away from the evidence of his failure—the sharp lines of bone, the tremor in Aerion’s hands, the way anger was the only thing keeping him upright.
“I do not care if you never look at me without hatred again.” He said, steady in a way that felt almost cruel.
His jaw tightened, but he did not move closer.
“I only care that you eat.”
And for a moment, fleeting and fragile, Aerion felt the sharp sting of longing, twisted into the raw wound of betrayal.
“Get out.” Aerion’s voice had lost its edge, quieter now, hollow and brittle as he turned to face the window. Beyond the glass, the sky stretched empty and indifferent, pale and endless. “I will not take anything from an oathbreaker.”
Duncan said nothing. He did not argue. He did not plead. He only set the tray down carefully on the table beside Aerion’s bed and stepped back, the faint scrape of his boots against stone the only sound. Then he left, the door closing softly behind him.
Aerion stared at the food. The lamb had cooled, the mutton hardened at the edges. Wine pooled in its goblet, stagnant and meaningless. He did not move to touch it. Did not eat. Did not even look at it again. Hunger gnawed at him, sharp and unrelenting, but the bitterness in his chest overrode all instinct.
He lay back against the bed, staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours, and let the emptiness of both the room and his own heart press down on him, cold and absolute.
But it was not the end.
Just when he thought the darkness would claim him forever on the fourth day, when every fiber of his body longed for sleep he would never wake from, strong hands gripped him under his arms and lifted him from the bed.
He stumbled, feeble, his limbs trembling as though they no longer belonged to him, until he was seated where his family had once dined. The hall was familiar and yet alien; the red of the Targaryen banners had vanished, swallowed entirely by the glare of gold, polished and blinding, as if the world itself had shifted.
He slid onto a chair at the far end of the table, farthest from the warmth of memory and closest to the emptiness of reality. Across from him, Lyonel Baratheon already ate, the metallic scrape of knife against plate loud and sharp in the silence, while the rest of the rebels filled the remaining seats. And Duncan sat with them, a shadow at the edge of the table, silent, watching, impossibly still, eyes tracking every pale tremor of Aerion’s form.
“I heard you haven’t touched your food,” Lyonel said, voice casual, almost amused, as he speared another piece of meat. “It’s really good.”
Aerion felt the words like stones falling into his chest. His head ached, sharp and thudding, and for a moment it seemed as though his skull had no weight at all. He floated, unmoored, disconnected from the floor beneath him, from the table before him, from the gold and the banners and the men who now claimed his home. Hunger and fury and despair tangled in a dizzying, nauseating coil, and he pressed his hands to his temples, trying to force the world to make sense again but it did not.
Lyonel set down his fork with a careful clink and regarded Aerion with an expression that was almost… earnest, though it was difficult to tell behind the smug mask of victory. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “But it had to be done. Good men will keep dying for the house of the Dragon. And we are not alone in this thought. All the houses… they have said the same.”
Aerion’s lips curved in a bitter, hollow chuckle. “Traitors shall burn,” he muttered, the words sharp as the edge of a blade, carrying through the hall like smoke.
“There are no more dragons to burn us, Aerion,” Lyonel replied, calm, almost gentle, as if stating a fact might make it easier to swallow.
He could not show Aerion his father. “Maekar Targaryen had died honorably in battle”, Lyonel said. Words that struck like steel and yet… left Aerion with nothing but weightless grief. His eyes lifted at the name, even through weakness, even through the haze of hunger and despair. “Your sisters, are protected by the families they married to.”
But Daeron—his brother—was more delirious than ever, muttering nonsense beneath the heat of fever and fright. Lyonel said his sword had silenced him, pressed cold against his throat to enforce stillness. Aerion’s heart clenched in spite of himself. He had little love for Daeron, but they were brothers. They had been brothers. That bond did not vanish even under chains and fire.
“We have found Aegon. He was on his way to Tarth and Maester Aemon was of course at the Citadel,” Lyonel said, voice low, eyes steady on Aerion. “And if you would like them to live, you will have to listen. And eat.”
The words were simple, merciless, and impossible. Aerion’s stomach roiled with hunger and fury, his body weak and trembling. Yet beneath the ache, a spark of stubborn resolve flared. To survive. To see them. To see if the world still held some shred of what had once been his. The table stretched before him, gold and banners blazing, and for the first time since capture, he felt the faintest tug of necessity beneath the veil of despair.
Lyonel’s voice cut through the haze again, calm but insistent. “Eat.”
Before Aerion could react, Duncan was at his side, tall and unyielding, slipping a spoon into his hand and guiding it toward the warm soup. Aerion jerked back instinctively, shoving him away with what little strength he had left, defiance flashing in his lavender eyes. Lyonel laughed lightly at the display, amused by the stubbornness of a prince reduced to this.
And yet—his hands shook. The soup dribbled down his chin, a shameful, humiliating mess, but still, he ate. One spoonful. Then another. Each bite felt like grief he tries to swallow.
“See?” Lyonel said, a note of mock satisfaction in his tone, watching Aerion with sharp, calculating eyes. “Lord Duncan, he will be fine.”
Aerion’s brows knitted together, sharp and incredulous. “Lord?”
“Yes,” Lyonel replied smoothly, lips curling with faint amusement. “Lord Duncan of Summerhall.”
Duncan said nothing, only adjusted his stance, still close enough that Aerion could feel the heat of him.
"Yes, Daeron would be king after Father, so I will get Summerhall and we’ll spend our days there, far from court."
“Really?”
“Mm. There you can have me till I’m hoarse.”
Aerion found himself not caring about Summerhall or stolen plans. His chest heaved with hunger and fury, and all he could think of were the faces he had loved, the family he had lost. “So my brothers,” he demanded, voice cracking with desperation, “where are they?”
Lyonel’s expression softened, though the hard edge never left his voice. “They are safe. You have my word.”
“Your words mean nothing to me, traitor.” Aerion spat, bitterness curling with every syllable. Rage and weakness tangled in him, shaking his frame.
Lyonel bit his lip, considering, then spoke again, quieter this time, as if weighing each word. “I plan to send Aemon to the Wall. He will be a fine maester there, and safe. And Aegon… to Qarth. He will live well, supported. They will not want for anything, but…”
He paused, letting the weight settle in the room. Aerion’s eyes narrowed, suspicion flaring.
“…only if you go with Lord Duncan.”
The words struck him harder than any sword, sharper than the cold stone beneath his fingers. Aerion’s hands trembled in his lap, gripping the edge of the table as if it could anchor him against the storm inside his chest.
“I heard you two are quite close…” Lyonel’s tone was casual, almost conversational. “…You will not marry, no. It would complicate succession, don’t you think?”
Not a wife, not a consort. He’ll be Aerion of nothing that could not bear a legitimate heir, nothing that could give rise to a dragon who might challenge Lyonel’s line.
“Go with Lord Duncan,” Lyonel Baratheon grinned, “And… keep him happy as his prize, and you’ll want for nothing more for yourself, or for your siblings.”
Aerion’s jaw clenched, his stomach twisting at the words. He did not believe it. He would never believe it. Lyonel’s promise was a cage gilded with gold, a lie wrapped in convenience. He would always want the traitor’s heads, always crave their blood, always demand justice for the betrayal that had shattered everything. That hunger for retribution was stitched into him as tightly as the dragon’s blood that ran through his veins.
Yet even as defiance roared inside him, a quieter, reluctant thought whispered that perhaps this was the only thing he could do.
He had always been terrible, casting Egg’s cat into the well in a fit of childish cruelty, hurting Aemon with sharp words and sharper weapons, making Daella and Rhae cry with whims and anger he could never temper.
Perhaps this… this compromise, this act of obedience to the man he loved yet hated the most, was a way to ensure that they would want for nothing.
He swallowed, bitter and raw, knowing that even in the cage of Lyonel’s making, he could still protect those he cared for—though it would cost him everything else.
—
Thus they departed for Summerhall, the carriage rattling over roads that had once known the rhythm of home. Now every turn of the wheel felt foreign, as though even the earth had shifted beneath Lyonel’s shadow.
Smoke lingered in the air from the city they left behind, clinging to their clothes, their hair, their lungs. By the gates of King’s Landing, the world narrowed to a single, merciless sight.
Two heads crowned iron spikes, swaying gently in the morning wind.
They turned slightly with each passing gust, as if nodding to some unseen rhythm like grotesque sentinels against the paling sky.
Aerion’s stomach folded in on itself. His breath snagged halfway to his lungs and would not move. The world seemed to tilt, to blur at the edges, until there was nothing but that dreadful tableau. He caught the edge of the carriage with trembling fingers to keep from collapsing, nails biting into polished wood.
His father first.
The Anvil. Now reduced to slack flesh and vacant eyes, mouth parted as if caught mid-command. There was nothing left only rot.
And beside him—
Daeron.
Sweet, foolish Daeron, who had laughed too loudly and dreamed too much. Death had stolen him and left something small and ruined in its place. The wind stirred his hair as though he might yet stir with it, as though he might blink and complain of the cold.
He did not.
Aerion stared until his vision burned, as though memorizing the horror would somehow keep it from fading into nightmare. If he looked away, it would mean this was real. That this was the last shape his father and brother would ever wear in his memory.
Duncan’s hand lifted, hesitant, hovering before daring to close the distance. His voice was low, careful, like one approaching a wounded creature.
“Aerion—”
Aerion flinched as if struck.
“Do not touch me.” The words were hoarse, torn from a throat scraped raw by grief. Tears tracked silently down his hollowed cheeks, but he did not wipe them away. He would not give himself that comfort.
The carriage rolled on.
The spikes grew smaller behind them.
Neither spoke.
It would be the last time Aerion saw his father. The last time he saw his brother. Not laid to rest with honor. Not shrouded in silk. But left for crows and gawking strangers.
The gates swallowed them whole.
Still, the question clawed its way out of him.
“Was any of it real?”
He did not look at Duncan when he asked it. He could not. His gaze remained fixed on his shaking hands, as though they belonged to someone else.
The kisses in the dark, the whispered promises, the hands pressed together beneath oak leaves—was it ever love, or just lies to make a fool of him?
Duncan’s breath caught. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, as if any answer would splinter what little remained between them.
The silence that followed was worse than any denial.
Aerion felt it spread through him like fire—slow, devouring, merciless. Because if it had not been real, then he had imagined the only warmth he had left. If it had not been real, then he had clung to smoke while the world burned around him.
Behind them, his father and brother swayed in the wind.
And before him, there was only the unbearable possibility that the love he had trusted had never truly existed at all.