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"Will you take Egg to squire?" Those were not hard words to say, nor was it a hard thing to ask—ale had loosened Daeron's tongue and quelled his shame long ago, and there was a special kind of pride sown into princes in the cradle that blinded them to their people's refusal. There would be no such thing as kings otherwise.
The dragon slayer stood before him, solemn and sulken all over, for he had learned that lesson already amidst fire and blood in Lord Ashford's tourney grounds. Ser Duncan the Tall, shrunken and wounded, loomed over him as the Wall looms over the North, and his demeanor was just as cold. There was little he kept hidden under the ice.
"I told your father. He's not my concern." There was love and anger there, as there often is with grief—he had seen it plenty when the body burned in the pyre. In the faces of Baelor's son and Baelor's nephew, in his friends, his people, those sworn to protect him. He had seen it in the mirror, too, and in Maekar Targaryen most of all. How queer, thought Daeron, that one might preach shame and have little of it themselves. You were not meant to be my uncle's concern, either. A different man might have told Ser Duncan that, but Daeron had not come to Lord Lyonel's tent to shun him further. Gods know my father has done a good job of it already.
"You know, my brother wasn't always such a little monster." The words dripped out before he could stop them. Mayhaps he did not wish to do so. Mayhaps there were things Daeron the Drunken wished for Ser Duncan the Tall to hear.
"Egg is no monster. He's just a boy." Duncan said. As dense of mind as he is of body.
"I didn't mean Egg." Daeron's laugh scratched against his throat, bitter all over, spewing like fire. "… But no doubt we'll make a man of him, too."
There is no such thing as a creature born evil, Daeron was sure of it when he thought of Aerion, the little brother he had helped raise into the vile thing he was now—half-man, half-mad, and cruel all over.
"Perhaps the seeds of madness are sown in the womb, as the maesters say. But Aerion was quite the glad child once." Daeron's eyes turned distant, as he glanced back ages past and wondered where it all had gone astray. Wondered, most of all, if he could have made a difference had his eyes been on Aerion and not the bottom of the bottle. "He liked… fishing."
No man is born evil, but I'm sure to have been born broken. The dreams were the proof of it. The curse. Daeron had never known good men to be cursed. He looked at the giant knight in front of him, saw how his eyes shone with doubts, regrets, hope. There was understanding there, he saw. An agreement sealed not with ink and paper but with a meeting of the hearts. Daeron no longer thought Ser Duncan to be so stupid.
They have not done a good job of making a man of me, either.
Daeron drank all he could after the hedge knight left, in hopes that, when night came—for he had learned it always must—he dreamt of nothing but calmness and the swift sound of the nearby river he had been told the name of but forgotten. Maybe in my dream I'll remember. Maybe in my dream it'll be a name as sweet as song. He emptied his cup and poured himself another, thinking hope could taste better than Arbor gold.
When night came, however, Daeron dreamt of scales. The beast in it was large, though near a hatchling when compared to the dragon that had been his uncle. Her scales—for Daeron knew it was a she-dragon with the certainty reserved for dreams and young loves alone—were the color of molten gold, as if the light of the sun had been reborn a dragon. She was beautiful. She was perhaps the most innocent and gorgeous thing he had ever known. He felt like crying at the site of her, felt like gouging his eyes out for they were not worthy of such image.
He stood beside the beast—though he ought to call her angel—and stared in awe when she stretched her wings as a cat might stretch its paws. Daeron understood why, then, when his house called its banners, men followed them to war.
She crawled on the ground, lurching forward on her wings and upper arms, trekking a path Daeron could not see. There was no blood, no wound, and yet the creature limped, and its breaths were full of ache, sickness, and worst of all, longing. It could not fly, Daeron knew, and it could not walk, so it dragged itself through mud and dirt and grass, as it whimpered and moaned for no one to hear. No one but Daeron.
He woke up thirstier than he had ever been in years. His throat burned, his chest heaved, and somewhere deep inside him, he knew something had shattered that could never be mended. The scar on his cheek itched, and his hand came off bloody when he reached for it. He had opened the sutures in his sleep. Would that it had been the only thing I opened.
The bed was soaked with stains. Sweat and wine stains and retch stains and stains of pointless desire. He did not think Lord Ashford would mind their going. His family had ruined things for them enough.
Daeron glanced at the window and saw sunlight bursting through the twilight, the scorching rays reaching like tendrils into the sky, coloring it shades of orange and yellow and gold.
Night was over. For now, at least, respite.
As gold engulfed the world, Daeron Targaryen thought she had never looked quite as pretty or half as sad as she had in that dream.