Chapter Text
Wildfire had been a terrible idea.
It hurt far more than Aerion had expected. Not glorious, not dragon-like in any way that mattered. Though, truth be told, Aerion had suspected as much.
It burned down his throat and spread into his chest and belly until it felt as though his insides had been turned to coals. He remembered that much with perfect clarity. The heat. The choking. It was excruciatingly painful.
Then something slammed into him hard enough to knock the thought from his head.
Aerion staggered. His boots slipped in the churned mud. Another blow came at once, jarring his arm from wrist to shoulder, and for one stupid, bewildered instant all he could think was that this was bad too. Different from wildfire, but no better. Someone was hitting him.
Noise rushed in around him all at once. Steel. Shouting. The press and roar of the field. He dragged in a sharp breath that hurt in a completely different way from the fire he remembered. Dust filled his mouth. His hand still held a sword. His body moved before his mind had caught up, lifting the blade, turning half aside, just enough to stop the next strike from landing where it meant to.
Ser Duncan the Tall?
Aerion stared at him.
The hedge knight stood in front of him, huge and rough and breathing hard, his sword raised again, his face set in effort and confusion and the heat of battle. He was real. He was here. Aerion knew that face. Knew that size. Knew that strength. He should not have been seeing any of it.
Another hit came. Aerion caught it badly and stumbled back a pace, then another. His arm shook. He gave ground without meaning to, only because some part of him understood before the rest did that he needed space. Duncan followed at first, then slowed, perhaps thrown by the lack of proper resistance, perhaps by the look on Aerion’s face.
Aerion managed three steps back, maybe four. Enough to breathe. Enough to look.
He looked at Duncan first.
Then he looked past him.
To find his uncle.
Baelor was still on his feet. Still fighting. And not anywhere near his father.
Aerion’s gaze moved at once, searching, frantic now in a way his body still was not. There. Maekar, farther off, engaged with one of Duncan’s men.
Good.
Good. They were both still fine.
Aerion forgot Duncan entirely for a moment.
He looked down and raised his hands a little, as though he did not quite understand them. One still gripped the sword. Mud streaked his skin. Blood marked his knuckles. His fingers trembled faintly, whether from battle or from something else he could not have said. He stared at them.
This moment.
He knew this moment.
This was the moment. The one that would kill his uncle by his father’s hand in the attempt to save him. The one that would leave the shape of that death sitting in Maekar for the rest of his life. The one before everything had gone wrong.
Aerion lifted his head and looked at Baelor again. Then at Maekar. Then back at his own hands.
Slowly, almost without seeming to know he was doing it, he turned, looking for nothing at all, until his back faced Duncan.
Around him the battle still carried on, though less cleanly now, as men nearby began to falter at the sight.
Aerion only stood there in the middle of Ashford Field with his back to the man who had been trying to strike him down, looking from one side of the field to the other, taking it in as though the noise and the blood and the dust had all become something distant and strange.
He was back.
Here.
Behind him Duncan’s voice came again, harsher now, no longer only confused.
“Yield, Prince Aerion. Yield.”
Aerion turned then.
He looked at Duncan as if he did not understand him at first. Mud streaked his face. His chest rose and fell too fast. There was something dazed in his expression, something distant and wrong, as though part of him were still elsewhere.
Yield?
The word landed somewhere deep and ugly inside him.
His eyes moved past Duncan again, across the field.
Uncle, still on his feet.
Father, still away from him.
Yield, and Uncle would live.
Yield, and Father would never have to strike that blow. Never have to carry it afterward for the rest of his life.
Yield, and this would all stop.
But yield, and still they would look on me with disappointment.
His gaze shifted back to Duncan.
Yield, and the hedge knight would have his victory.
Yield, and this man would have his innocence for something he had in fact done.
Yield, and Aerion would be saying with his own body that none of it had mattered. Not the blow Duncan struck. Not the insult. Not the puppeteer mocking dragons before a royal household as if that were some harmless jest. Not the punishment Aerion had given for it.
Yield, and all of it would be made into his wrong alone.
His mouth tightened. He looked away again.
Baelor. Maekar.
Yield, and Uncle would have what he wanted.
Yield, and Father would be spared.
Yield, and all of this could end here.
But yield, and he would betray himself.
Yield, and he would say they were right and he was wrong.
But yield, and he would condemn himself to live under that.
His eyes came back to Duncan, but he no longer really saw him. He saw only the shape of it.
Yield, and Uncle lives.
Yield, and Father would not lose his brother for me.
But yield, and you condemn yourself.
Yield, and you betray yourself.
Yield, and you must go on living.
Yield, and you would save them all.
But yield would give them the story they all wanted.
And yield would destroy me.
But yield would let me live again.
But I do not want to yield.
Aerion shut his eyes for one brief moment.
He was so tired.
“Enough!” Duncan shouted.
That great voice cut across the field, rough with strain and confusion and something like anger. “That’s enough, Prince Aerion!”
Enough?
Aerion looked at him.
Enough indeed.
He had thought, perhaps, that he understood what men like his father and uncle wanted from him. Thought he had acted as a prince should. Thought he had defended what ought to be defended.
Unfortunately, it seemed he had thought wrongly again.
The gods had given him another chance to stand here, in this moment, before the ruin had happened. They had brought him back to this place for something. For him to mend what had once been broken.
And now, at last, he thought he understood what needed fixing.
Unfortunately, he could not defeat Duncan.
Unfortunately, he could not yield.
He could not give them that. Not again.
But if he had failed them once, then let this be the last thing he gave them. Let it be quick. Let it be simple. Let it end.
Let his uncle live, and let this hedge knight have the victory his uncle had fought for and died for. Let him spare his father the pain.
He drew in one long breath.
Then let it out.
A great sigh left him, as though something inside him had at last gone still. His shoulders sagged a little.
His fingers loosened.
The sword slipped from his hand and fell into the mud.
Then Aerion stepped forward.
His steps were quick, but light. He could feel the change around him without looking for it. The field had not gone silent, but the noise had shifted. Thinned. Something in it had perhaps gone uncertain.
Duncan stared at him.
“Aerion?”
Aerion kept coming.
Duncan’s confusion showed plainly now. His sword was still in his hand, but he did not strike. “What are you doing?”
Aerion closed the last of the distance between them in only a few steps.
When he stopped before him, he had to lift his face. He looked up at the giant hedge knight for barely a second.
Then he looked down.
With both hands, he caught Duncan’s sword hand and raised it.
A very light smile touched his mouth.
“Here, Ser Duncan,” he said softly. “This is where my heart is.”
Then with all his body, he drove it in.
For one impossible instant the whole field seemed to hold.
Then it broke. Shouts rose at once, sharp and disordered. Someone cried out. Steel shifted. Men lurched forward without yet understanding what they had seen.
Duncan made a sound that did not seem to belong to him at all, half protest, half horror, and caught Aerion as he fell. His own sword dropped forgotten into the mud.
From one side Maekar was already running.
From the other, Baelor came forward too.
Aerion closed his eyes, hoping that this would be it. That he had given them what they wanted. That he had spared them from him.