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He touched you. The dragon hisses inside his skull.
Aerion stares across the field at Ser Duncan and feels the fire uncoil inside his ribs.
Show him, the voice says. Show them all what you are.
The hedge knight comes at him like a boulder rolling downhill—graceless, inevitable, common. Aerion clutches his lance and feels the familiar thrill of the charge singing through his blood, copper-bright and burning. This is what he was born for. This is what dragons do.
They burn the unworthy from the world.
His lance strikes true, lifting the big man from his saddle but not off his horse. Aerion’s mace is already drawn, and he wheels his destrier hard, mud spraying beneath iron-shod hooves, riding back to finish the job.
He drives his mace as hard as he can into Duncan’s helmet. The impact shudders up his arm, rattles his teeth, and he smiles behind his helm even as momentum carries him into the mud alongside his prey.
Kill him, the voice screams. Kill him.
Aerion uses the command to push his legs upright. His mace swings in vicious arcs, each blow ringing against armor, against flesh, until they are both sprawling in churned earth that stinks of horse and iron.
But the hedge knight does not weaken.
They roll together through the muck, grappling like animals, and Aerion feels cold mud seeping through the gaps in his armor, slick against the linen beneath. His shield comes up hard, the edge catching Duncan across the jaw with a crack he feels in his own wrist.
The grip loosens. They roll again.
But then Duncan is on top of him, and the hedge knight’s hands close around his helm, and lift.
The second his head hits the ground, mud jumps into his helmet, caking each strain of ——
Cool fingers brush through his hair. The crackle of the hearth fire is the only sound in the room. Orange light dances across the stone walls of Summerhall, casting shadows that twist and writhe like living things.
His mother’s lap is soft beneath his cheek. She smells of rosewater and the faint iron tang that clings to all who embrace Targaryens.
“If I’m a dragon, why don’t I have wings?” The question burns in him like the embers he watches spark and die.
She laughs—full of fondness just for him.
“Because you are special, my love. The gods saw what you would become, and they were afraid. So they clipped your wings before you were born, to keep you tethered to the earth with the rest of us.” She makes a gesture with her fingers, shaping them like scissors and snipping at his shoulder blades.
He giggles at the contact, rolling out of her touch. “That’s not fair.”
“No.” Her lips press against his forehead. “But you are still my little dragon, wings or no.”
"What if I don't want to be tethered?" He twists to look up at her, and her face shifts in a blur that he can’t read.
"Then you must find someone strong enough to hold you down." She taps his nose. "Otherwise, you will never see us again."
His head slams into the ground again. Stars burst behind his eyes, his vision clouds ——
The smoke rose black against a white winter sky, and something else rose with it. It coiled into the empty space his mother left behind.
The maesters tell his father that his madness was sown in his mother’s womb, but Aerion knows better.
It was sown in his mother’s funeral pyre.
His teeth crack together so hard he tastes blood—copper flooding his mouth, thick against his tongue.
He finds his dagger. Thank the gods, he finds his dagger. His fingers close around the hilt and drive the blade into Duncan’s thigh with all the strength he has.
The hedge knight screams, and suddenly Aerion is rolling him over, straddling his chest, raising the dagger for the killing blow.
The throat. Rip it out with your teeth and end this.
Duncan’s hand comes up and catches the blade.
Catches it.
Steel bites through leather and into the meat of his palm, but the baseborn bastard will not let go. Blood pours down his wrist in dark rivulets, but still he holds, and Aerion cannot force the blade down that final inch.
Something hits him. A horse. A rider. One of the other knights in the melee. Aerion goes tumbling, his dagger spinning away into the chaos, and by the time he finds his feet again, the hedge knight is crawling toward his sword.
Aerion lunges for him, but Duncan has already closed his bloody fingers around the hilt as they grapple. The hedge knight twists, wrenches, and something in Aerion’s arm gives way with a wet pop.
The pain is blinding. Obliterating. Worse than ——
— splinters stab into his small fingers as he squeezes the wood railing of the training yard.
Swords flash in the sun in front of him. Valarr moves like the wind, each strike flowing into the next with a grace that makes Aerion’s chest ache with wanting. The golden streak in his dark hair catches the sunlight like a banner.
I want to be him, Aerion thinks, his knuckles now white on the wooden rails. I want to be exactly like him.
Everything about Valarr is perfect. His stance. His footwork. The way the master-at-arms nods approval instead of shouting corrections. The way the other boys watch him with envy instead of fear.
No one watches Aerion like that. No one ——
He staggers, tries to raise his guard, but the hedge knight is already rising, already swinging again. His arm goes numb. He cannot feel his fingers as the next blow arrives, his body curls——
—in his mother’s lap, he tells her about Valarr. About wanting to be perfect. About wanting to be seen.
She laughs—that beautiful laugh he will spend the rest of his life trying to hear again—and kisses his brow.
“You will be better than all of them, my little one.”
She is wrong.
Valarr is everything Aerion should have been. He has his father’s quiet strength and their grandfather’s wisdom. He has never heard voices in the dark.
Valarr is simply good.
And Aerion hates him for it.
Steel crashes against steel.
The hedge knight is strong. Aerion knew he would be strong—he saw it in the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his arms, the way he plants his feet like oak roots in the mud—but knowing and feeling are different things. Each blow drives him backward. Each parry sends shocks of pain through his wounded shoulder, white-hot and nauseating.
Aerion goes down hard from the sheer force of it.
Dragons do not fall.
He rises. Faster than he should be able to rise, faster than any man has a right to rise with his wounds. His blade comes up in a perfect thrust—the thrust his master-at-arms has drilled into him a thousand times—and punches through the hedge knight’s breastplate and into the meat of his chest.
Yes.
YES.
But before he can savor the victory, a horse comes out of nowhere and strikes him full in the side. Aerion goes down again, breath driven from his lungs, ribs screaming, and as he falls, he does the only thing he can think to do.
He throws his sword.
The blade spins end over end and buries itself in Duncan’s knee, the slender double-edged steel sliding between the plates of his armor with terrible precision.
The hedge knight drops.
Now. Finish him now.
Aerion scrambles across the mud and drives his fist into Duncan’s helm. His knuckles split against the steel, blood and wet earth mingling on his gauntlets, and the pain feels like victory. He wrenches his sword free from the knight’s knee—the man’s scream is delicious—and raises it high.
He brings the blade down into Duncan’s helm.
Not through the visor—the angle is wrong—but into the steel itself, where it catches and sticks. Aerion twists the blade, feels it bite into flesh beneath the metal, and hears the hedge knight scream in a way that makes everything worthwhile.
Die. Just die. Why won’t you DIE?
Duncan’s hands close around his sword arm.
And wet mud ——
-the streams of Summerhall, water cold enough to ache.
Daeron sits beside him on the bank, gangly and laughing, his sandy hair escaping its tie. A fishing line cuts into Aerion’s small fingers, but he does not mind. The sun is warm on the back of his neck.
“You’re holding it wrong,” Daeron says, reaching over to adjust Aerion’s grip. His hands are gentle. Patient. “Like this. See?”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
Daeron laughs—bright and careless.
“Here.” He shifts closer, shoulder warm against Aerion’s. “Let me show you again.”
They sit like that for hours, tangled lines and easy silence. When Daeron finally catches something—a small silver fish that flashes in the sunlight—he whoops with triumph and nearly tumbles into the stream. Aerion grabs the back of his tunic, hauling him back, and they collapse together in a heap of laughter and ——
Duncan’s counterstroke takes him across the ribs and sends him spinning into the mud. Aerion tries to rise, but his arm hangs wrong, will not respond, and his movements have grown sluggish and strange.
He scrambles backward, raising his good hand, parrying desperately as the hedge knight limps toward him. But there is no strength left. Each blow drives his guard lower, each impact sends fresh waves of agony. He sees ——
On the field, Valarr raises his lance to salute the crowd. His eyes pass over the Targaryen pavilion, over Aerion, without pause.
Without recognition.
But they find someone else.
Aerion follows his cousin’s gaze to the far edge of the stands, where Daeron sits slumped against a wooden post, a wineskin dangling from loose fingers. Even from here, Aerion can see the glassy sheen of his brother’s eyes, the way his head lolls slightly to one side.
Drunk before midday. Again.
Valarr’s expression shifts. Something soft and pained flickers across his perfect features.
Look at them, the dragon winces, but for once, there is no cruelty in its voice. Only cold and hollow. Look at what they have.
Aerion watches as Valarr guides his horse toward the edge of the field, as he removes his helm and leans down to speak to Daeron. He cannot hear the words, but he can read the shape of them in the gentle curve of Valarr’s mouth, in the way his gauntleted hand reaches out to steady Daeron’s swaying form.
Tender. Careful. Like handling something precious and breakable.
Daeron looks up at him with eyes that hold too much—love and shame, an expression that Aerion recognizes because he sees it in his own reflection. The haunted look of a man who dreams things he cannot escape.
Dreams of fire and ruin. He drinks to silence them, the same way Aerion rages to silence his.
And Valarr—perfect, golden, good Valarr—cannot save him.
All that goodness. All that gentle strength. And still Daeron reaches for the wine instead of Valarr’s hand.
He fails him, the dragon whispers, and there is vicious satisfaction in the words. Every night, he fails him. All his love, all his devotion, and still Daeron drowns.
The final strike comes in a diagonal slash that opens his thigh to the bone.
Aerion feels his leg give out beneath him, feels himself falling, and then he is lying in the mud looking up at a gray sky that offers nothing.
The world swims in and out of focus. He can hear his father’s voice, but it seems very far away. Everything seems very far away.
The pain is everywhere now. In his back, his ribs, his arm, his leg. He can feel his life draining out through a dozen wounds, can feel the cold creeping in at the edges of his vision like frost spreading across a window pane.
Not like this. Not to HIM.
But he cannot rise. He cannot even move. He can only lie there and watch as Ser Duncan the Tall sits down heavily in the blood-churned earth, spitting crimson with every breath.
The hedge knight is dying too then. Aerion can see it in the way he sways, the way his hands shake, the way his eyes have gone glassy and distant.
Small comfort.
But comfort nonetheless.
When Aerion finally focuses his eyes, the hedge knight has slumped sideways in the mud, unmoving. The rise and fall of his chest has stalled.
Dead, Aerion thinks, and feels something savage surge through his broken body.
“He’s dead,” he roars to the pavilion. His voice sounds more like the dragon’s than his own—cracked and raw and triumphant. “It’s over.”
Aerion begins to drag himself toward the pavilion. Toward safety. Every movement is agony, but he is alive.
Alive.
The dragon has survived.
“Wait! Wait!”
Aegon’s voice. His little brother, shrieking like a newborn.
Aerion stops and looks back at the field.
Ser Duncan the Tall is not dead.
The hedge knight is rising. Impossibly, inexorably rising. Blood leaks from countless wounds, dark against the ground. His leg can barely support his weight. His hand is cut to ribbons, one eye swollen shut, and his chest has a hole in it, and still, he is rising.
The crowd erupts. They are screaming—all of them, highborn and low, screaming for the hedge knight like he is some kind of hero. Like he is the dragon, and Aerion is the monster.
Duncan raises his sword.
Aerion stares at him across the ruined field. The man should be dead. By all rights, he should be dead ten times over. But there he stands, swaying and waiting.
He closes his eyes and draws a long, shuddering breath.
Then, with hands that tremble, he pulls his dented helm back down over his face. He picks up his sword with his good hand. He straightens his spine, though the effort costs him more than he can afford to give.
He is everything you are not, the dragon says without any emotion.
He strikes his sword against his breastplate twice. He does not know why he does it. A salute, perhaps. An acknowledgment. Or simply the gesture of a man too proud to go quietly as well.
Aerion moves ——
—-through the parting Ashford crowd like a flame through dry grass—ready to burn everything to the ground in moments. The common folk press back against merchant stalls, trampling each other’s feet in their haste to clear his path.
Look at them, the dragon murmurs. Crawling in the mud like the worms they are.
However, someone does block his path.
Tall as a tower. Shoulders broad as a hall door. His face is rough-hewn stone, all hard planes and honest angles. Common blue eyes stare at Aerion without the proper deference.
“Boy.” The word drops from Aerion’s lips easily, despite it being clear that this man is older than him. “Stop gaping. See to my horse.”
The giant blinks. “I’m not a stable boy, m’lord.”
Something about his voice—the stubborn dignity in it, the refusal to cringe—makes the dragon writhe.
“Not clever enough?” Aerion’s lips curl back from his sharp teeth.
The man’s jaw tightens, but he offers nothing that might feed the dragon’s hunger. No flash of temper. No satisfying flinch.
Aerion sighs, making a show of his disappointment. “Well, if you can’t manage horses, then fetch me some wine.”
“M’lord pardons.” The giant shifts his weight, planting his feet like a man preparing to hold ground. “I’m no serving man, either. I have the honor to be a knight.”
Honor. The word sounds different in his rough accent. Heavier.
Crush it, the dragon snarls. Show him what his honor is worth.
Aerion lets his gaze travel slowly down the man’s frame, then back up again—taking in the dented pauldrons, the fraying leather straps, the mud caked on boots that have walked too many roads. He steps closer, near enough to see the individual beads of sweat on the giant’s brow, and feels his own eyes glinting with the dragon’s anticipation.
“Oh.” He lets the syllable hang in the air. “Well.” Another pause, long enough to see if the man’s hands curl into fists. “Knighthood has fallen on sad days.”
He does not wait for a reply. There is nothing here for him—no sport in prey that will not run, no satisfaction in a man who meets insult with ——
Duncan catches his first strike and turns it aside. The counterstroke is slow, clumsy, weakened—but it lands. Aerion goes down into the mud again, and this time the hedge knight comes down with him, his full weight driving Aerion into the earth.
He feels his shield being torn away. Tries to hold onto it, tries to keep that last defense, but his grip is too weak, and his wounded arm is pinned beneath the hedge knight’s knee.
Duncan raises the shield above his head.
Aerion ——
—Brightflame!”
He rides forward, and the crowd’s applause washes over him. Polite. Restrained.
They do not know how to love a dragon, the voice surfaces. But they will learn to fear one.
He guides his horse toward the royal pavilion, where his uncle sits. Baelor’s face is arranged in that expression of patient nobility that he has never been able to read.
Aerion pulls his horse to a stop and removes his helm.
And smiles.
Not the sharp smile, the one that cuts with dragon teeth. This one comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere younger—the boy who used to believe that if he was just good enough, just worthy enough, his uncle might look at him the way he looks at Valarr.
Baelor inclines his head.
Nothing more.
Aerion pushes his helm down sharply.
You see? The dragon’s whisper curls through the hollow of his chest. You see what you are to them? A nuisance to be tolerated. A mad dog they cannot yet put down.
Aerion’s jaw tightens, and he lets the dragon control the reins.
Valarr waits at the edge of the field. His different colored eyes track Aerion’s approach without welcome or warmth.
This is who he loves more than anything, the dragon snarls. Both of them love him more than you.
Aerion pulls his horse in front of Valarr’s tent, and his cousin is already on his feet.
“Cousin.” The word comes out heavy, a mask pulled hastily over the wound beneath. He feels the dragon tighten in anticipation of blood being spilt.
The smile he offers this time is stilted. He will not be vulnerable again, but he will also not challenge his cousin today. Not yet. Not until he knows that any hope for Daeron is truly gone.
“Not to worry. I won’t embarrass you today.”
Before the dragon inside him can react to his decision, he turns his horse quickly and rides to the closest tent he can see.
“Come out, come out, little knight. It’s time you faced the dragon.” Any protest the dragon has is snuffed out instantly. It does not know who he has challenged, either.
It just wants to see blood.
Your cousin expects you to fail, the dragon offers. They all do.
Aerion wheels his horse away, the taste of copper blooming on his tongue where he has bitten the inside of his cheek. His hands are steady on the reins. His seat is perfect. He will be perfect—he will be better than perfect—he will make them see—
The shield comes down on his helm like a thunderclap. His vision goes ——
Black and red and gleaming.
A dragon, bright and fierce. Just as he knew they would be. Just as he knows he will be one day.
He stares at it with wonder, feels his chest constrict with a feeling he has not felt since his mother last held him.
Home.
A knight charges with a wooden lance, and the illusion fades.
Fake blood pours from the dragon’s neck before it collapses onto the ground.
Children cheer. The crowd laughs.
The voice in his head screams.
His hands are on the canvas, tearing through painted cloth. The puppeteer—a woman, dark hair, clever fingers—stumbles back. Her mouth shapes words he cannot hear.
Show them.
His fingers close around hers. Small bones shift beneath his grip.
Snap.
The sound is wet and sharp, like a green branch breaking. Her scream cuts through the roaring in his skull.
And then something hits him.
Pain explodes across his jaw. Copper floods his mouth—blood, hot and thick, pooling against his tongue. He staggers, spits, and a tooth comes with it. White enamel on dirt.
The giant looms before him.
A hand closes around Aerion’s wrist as he is thrown onto the ground.
Silence.
No whispers. No commands. No fire.
The dragon’s voice cuts off mid-scream. Sudden. Absolute. Like a candle flame pinched between wet fingers.
Just—quiet. The sound of his own heartbeat. Wind stirring the torn canvas of the puppet stage.
Guards swarm. Hands wrench the hedge knight away, and the moment contact breaks, the dragon comes roaring back—louder, furious—
BURN HIM!
He pulls his knife, and a boot meets his face. The pain shifts his control over to the dragon completely as he staggers upright.
He spits blood, and then the dragon’s tongue flicks out to taste the air. To taste —
He cannot hear anything but ringing as the shield is brought down by ——
Ser Duncan the Tall.
He is not afraid to fight Ser Duncan.
He is afraid of what will happen when the hedge knight touches him again.
Aerion lies in his chambers, staring at the silk canopy above his bed. The dragon paces restless circles through his chest, whispering plans of violence. All the ways they will make the hedge knight suffer tomorrow.
But beneath the noise, like a splinter lodged too deep to remove, Aerion cannot stop thinking about the silence.
He had not known peace like this in years. Had not known quiet since they burned his mother’s body. And for one brief, impossible instant, Ser Duncan’s touch gave him both.
It means nothing, the dragon insists. A trick. An aberration.
Something cracks—his helm or his skull, he cannot tell—and the blow knocks his helmet free. The cold hits him before the pain does. Just open air, and for one disoriented moment, he cannot remember what it feels like to exist without armor between himself and the world.
However, there is now nothing between his skin and the hedge knight’s bare fists.
The first punch snaps his head to the side. He tastes —
Salt air.
Aerion breathes deep and tastes the sea. Brine and kelp and something green. The crash of waves against rocks, distant but steady. Gulls crying overhead.
He stands in the doorway of a cottage. Small. Whitewashed walls glowing gold in the afternoon sun. His feet are bare against warm wooden planks, and he is wearing only a simple tunic, nothing like the silk and velvet that usually sheathes him.
The dragon is silent.
Completely and utterly silent.
“Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to help me with these nets?”
He turns. Ser Duncan sits on a low stone wall that borders a small garden—herbs, he notices, rosemary and thyme, and something yellow flowering in the corner. A fishing net spreads across his massive lap, and his fingers work patiently at a tangle. When he looks up at Aerion, his smile is crooked and fond and entirely without fear.
“I was enjoying the view,” Aerion hears himself say, and his voice is light. Teasing. Free of the cruel edge that usually sharpens it.
“The view of me struggling with wet rope?”
“It’s a good view.”
Ser Duncan laughs. The sound is warm and low, and Aerion feels it in his chest like a second heartbeat.
“Come here, then. Make yourself useful, your highness.”
Aerion crosses the small yard. Grass soft beneath his feet, still damp with morning dew. When he sits, it is in Duncan’s lap, much to the man’s amusement.
“Dunk,” he says softly. “I’m so glad we—”
The second breaks something in his cheek. The sound —
—— startles him. He didn’t expect him to be back so soon.
Aerion stands at the hearth, wooden spoon in hand. He is stirring a pot. Actually stirring a pot, like a common—
“You’re burning it.”
Arms wrap around him from behind. Huge and warm, impossibly gentle. Picking him up completely before he swats fondly at him. “I am not burning it.”
“I can smell char.”
“That’s the rosemary.”
“Rosemary doesn’t smell like char, Aerion.”
He twists in Dunk’s arms to face him. Playing at outrage. “Are you impugning my cooking?”
“I’m impugning your attention span.” Dunk’s eyes crinkle at the corners. Laugh lines. The kind that comes from years of smiling. “You were staring out the window again.”
“I was watching the stars come out.”
“While the stew burned.”
“It’s not—” Aerion stops. Sniffs and winces.
Dunk laughs and reaches past him to move the pot off the fire. His body brackets Aerion against the stone hearth, warm and solid and safe, and Aerion leans into him without a single thought.
“I’ll make eggs,” Dunk says.
“You always make eggs.”
“Because you always burn dinner.”
“That’s not—” Aerion huffs. “Name one other time.”
“Last week. The fish.”
“That was –.”
“Week before. The rabbit.”
“The fire you made was too hot.”
“Three days ago.” Dunk’s voice is warm with suppressed laughter. “The soup, Aerion. You burned soup.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but Dunk kisses him instead.
Soft. Slow. Aerion melts into it. Into him. Into this impossible life where the only fire is the one crackling safe in the hearth—
The third splits his lip wide open. Blood --
—— streams through an open window, warm across his face. The sheets smell of rose and lavender. The bed is soft beneath him, feather-stuffed.
Beside him, still sleeping, is Dunk.
He looks softer in sleep. The hard lines of his face have eased, and his breath comes slow and steady.
How long has Aerion lain here, watching him sleep? Time moves differently in this place. Slower. Gentler.
Dunk stirs. His eyes flutter open—soft and warm, still hazy with sleep—and when he sees Aerion watching, he smiles.
He reaches beneath the covers, finds Aerion’s hand, their fingers interlacing. “What were you thinking about?”
Aerion is quiet for a long moment. Outside, waves whisper against the shore. The whole world is bright and golden and impossibly kind.
“I was thinking,” he says slowly, “that I never knew silence could be so loud.”
Dunk’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“For so long, there was only the voice. Every moment of every day, telling me what to do, what to think, what to be. And now there’s just...” He trails off. Gestures vaguely at the window, the light, the tangled sheets. “This.”
Dunk pulls him close. Aerion goes willingly, tucking himself against that broad chest, feeling the steady beat of Dunk’s heart beneath his ear.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He closes his eyes. Breathes in the scent of him—salt and soap and clean sweat, the particular smell of sun-warmed skin.
This is peace, he thinks.
The fourth — he doesn't feel the fourth. He knows it lands because his head moves, but there is nothing behind it. His body has started making decisions without him. He struggles to see —
—a dozen houses clustered along the shore, fishing boats pulled up on the shingle beach. Dunk walks beside him through the single muddy street, and the villagers wave as they pass.
They know him here. Not as a prince. Not as Brightflame. Just as Aerion, the strange pale man who lives in the cottage on the cliff with the big hedge knight.
A child runs up to them. Gap-toothed, dirt-smeared, fearless.
“Ser Duncan! Will you teach me swords today?”
Dunk ruffles the boy’s hair. “After you finish your chores. And only if your ma says yes.”
The child scampers off, and Aerion feels something strange and warm bloom in his chest as he watches Dunk watch the boy go.
“You’re good with him,” Aerion says.
“He reminds me of Egg.”
The name is a blade between his ribs. Aerion looks away—
The fifth—
Frost covers the windows, and the fire burns high in the hearth. They have pushed the table aside, and Dunk is “teaching” him to dance.
“You’re leading,” Aerion protests.
“Someone has to.”
“I know how to dance. I was raised at court.”
“Aye, but you dance like you’re trying to conquer territory. Loosen up.”
Dunk spins him, clumsy and laughing, and Aerion trips over his own feet. They tumble together onto the worn rug before the hearth, Dunk doing his best to keep himself from falling on top of him.
“See?” Duncan grins down at him. “Conquest.”
“I think you planned this.”
“Me? I’m just a thick hedge knight. Don’t have the wits for planning.”
Aerion pulls him down into a kiss—
“Yield.”
There is only his breath left. Ragged and worn. The only thing that still belongs to him.
The fists stop falling.
He could still fight. The dragon is screaming for it, demanding he find one last surge of fire. But for the first time, Aerion does not want to listen. He is so tired of listening.
“I yield. I yield.”
He nods frantically, desperately, trying to make the hedge knight understand. Trying to make him stop. His dragon’s eyes—the ones his mother called beautiful—are wide with terror.
Please. Please stop. Please.
The hedge knight’s hand closes around his ankle, and suddenly Aerion is being dragged. Dragged across the field like a sack of grain, his ruined armor scraping through the mud, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
They reach the pavilion. Duncan hauls him up—up, as though he weighs nothing, just like at the cottage—and holds him before the lord’s platform. Aerion hangs there like a puppet with its strings cut or a dragon whose wings have been clipped.
Duncan’s voice is rough and broken, but loud enough for all to hear.
“Tell them.” Duncan's grip is iron on the back of his neck — warm, inescapable —
Something is pressed into his hand, wrapped in rough cloth.
“What is it?” Aerion turns the package over in his hands.
“Open it and find out.”
He pulls away the cloth. Inside is a carved wooden dragon, small enough to fit in his palm. Aerion turns the little dragon over in his hands. The wings are lopsided. The tail is too thick. It is the least impressive object he has ever been given.
“You made this?”
Duncan shrugs, embarrassed. “It’s not very good.”
“It’s perfect.” Aerion’s voice cracks on the word. “Thank you.”
Duncan's smile does something to his chest that no sword ever has.
Aerion looks up at the pavilion. All of them staring down at him with varying degrees of horror and disgust.
He has no pride left. No fire. No fury.
A heartbeat passes. Two. Three.
Ser Duncan shakes him, presses —
—honey wine to his lips.
They sit on the cliff overlooking the sea, passing a wineskin back and forth. The sun is setting, painting the waves in shades of gold and crimson.
Bright and fierce.
“Do you ever miss it?” Dunk asks.
“What?”
“The court. The luxuries. Being a prince.”
Aerion considers the question, taking a long pull from the wineskin. “Sometimes.” He passes the wine back. “But then I come home, and you’re here, and I remember why I left.”
Duncan looks at him. “And what’s that?”
“Because your voice is the only one that lives inside my head now.”
He is shaking. He does not know when he started shaking.
“I withdraw my accusation.”
The words fall into silence. The crowd has gone quiet, waiting. Watching. Bearing witness to the dragon’s humiliation.
Then Ser Duncan the Tall throws him into the mud.
Aerion lands in a heap and does not rise. Cannot rise. He lies there, staring up at the gray sky, and thinks: The dragon lost.
But he doesn't know if the dragon is the voice inside his head, or himself.