Chapter Text
Princess Baella Targaryen, the most beloved daughter of Prince Baelor, did not appreciate being stranded in a rundown tavern in the middle of nowhere.
Still, that was exactly where she was right now.
And the worst part was that it was all her fault.
Well, mostly her fault.
It was true that she had begged and pleaded with her father and uncle to let her join Daeron on his trip to Ashford, but she had never expected her cousin to escape the guards and drown himself in wine the moment they reached the nearest inn.
"Daeron," she said, poking him with a finger. "Are you alive in there?"
He didn't reply, so she poked him harder. That got a strained groan out of him, but he remained face down on the table.
She grabbed the bucket of water that she had requested from a stable boy earlier for this exact purpose and threw half of it on Daeron. He didn't move.
If he wasn't more sober, at least he was cleaner.
She sat on the bench next to him and grabbed his face with both hands, getting the dirty blond hair out of his eyes.
"Wake up," she pleaded. "I need to speak with you. It matters."
His violet eyes finally opened and looked at her, but she wasn't sure that he was actually paying attention to her.
"I've been having dreams," she whispered, trying very hard to keep her voice from breaking. "Like the ones you get sometimes. I hate them."
The dreams had been tormenting her for a few weeks now, but she hadn't dared to tell a soul.
She wouldn't even know what to say. She barely understood them herself, sometimes. They were a mess of frightful images that haunted her long after she'd woken up and left her unable to shake the feeling that something horrible was about to happen.
That was why she had followed Daeron to this godsforsaken place. She had hoped to speak with him away from all the prying ears of the court, in the hope that he'd help her.
And yet, now that she had the chance, he was more ale than man.
"Tell me what to do."
Daeron blinked slowly.
"You dyed your hair."
She could feel her patience slowly leaving her body.
"Yes, I did. I often do that. It's water, coal, and black walnuts. I'll gladly give you the recipe later, if you're interested. But that's not the matter at hand. Did you hear what I said?" she asked, shaking him slightly, trying to force some sense into him.
"If you don't sleep, you won't dream."
She let out a deep sigh.
"Thank you, Daeron. That was truly brilliant. I'll tell Father he ought to name you Hand one day."
He slumped onto the table again, and she stood up.
"I know you don't want to go, but it's Egg's dream to see a tourney. I'll fetch a horse and take him to Ashford," she said, looking around, searching for Egg. The kid had been miserable when he learned that Daeron had no intention to join the lists, and since then had taken the annoying habit of disappearing into dark corners. Whether it was to mourn his opportunity to be a squire or the loss of his silky white hair, she didn't know.
She was looking for him under the nearby tables when she heard Daeron calling her nickname.
"Ella."
"What is it?" she asked, crawling out from under a table.
Daeron had straightened, and his voice sounded steadier than she'd heard him in a long time.
"They get worse when I'm alone," he said, rubbing his temples. "The dreams. That's why I try to always have company at night."
"I thought it was because you feared the dark," she said with a mocking smile.
"I wish that were it," he said with a crooked grin. "I've tried everything else. Potions, poppy, every bitter draught the maesters ever brewed. None of it helps. Once the dreams begin, there is no driving them off. You can only try to avoid them, either by not sleeping, or by making yourself so weary you dream nothing at all."
It was awful advice, but she knew he'd given it to her with the best intentions. She almost felt bad for throwing the bucket at him earlier.
"Are you telling me to take a lover?"
Daeron's grin widened.
"I never said you had to stop at one."
She let out a laugh despite herself and shook her head.
"Will you keep this to yourself? I had told no one, and I'd rather it stays that way."
Daeron looked at her more seriously then, though the wine had not quite left his eyes.
"I'll not speak of it."
That, more than the advise itself, eased something in her chest.
"Thank you Daeron. If your father asks, I don't know where you are."
He nodded, satisfied, and closed his eyes again.
"That's the best service you could do for me. The second best, if you're feeling generous, is to take the boy with you."
"That's what I said. Do try to keep pace," she said, ruffling Daeron's hair.
Ella resumed her search for Egg. She looked all around. The stables, the kitchen, the fields around the inn, and nothing.
This was worse than any of her dreams.
Where was Egg?
***
"I almost went mad looking for you!"
Ella had Egg by the ear, ignoring the boy's attempts to explain himself. She had eventually found him, two days later, at the outer edges of the camp surrounding Ashford Meadow. But it had taken her a great deal of time and effort, so she wasn't planning on letting him go anytime soon.
She only did because the tallest man she had ever seen appeared next to them.
"Egg? Who is this? What did you do? Did you steal something?" the man said with a worried look.
Egg took advantage of Ella's distraction to release himself from her grasp.
"This is my sister, Ella." Egg said easily.
She gave him an odd look, but the boy just gave her one of his own, the sort that said please play along.
The man seemed as confused as she was.
"You said you were an orphan."
"I never said I lacked for a sister," Egg replied with such audacity that Ella smiled despite herself. "Ella, this is Ser Duncan the Tall."
She eyed the man with renewed interest.
"I never heard of him."
"Aye, no one would ever doubt you two were kin," Duncan said with a weary sigh.
"I may have said much the same when first I met him," Egg said. "But he's a true knight, Ella. And he's taken me for his squire."
"Has he now?" she asked, turning back to Duncan. The big man nodded.
"Please don't take me home. Not yet. Ser Duncan says I have what it takes. He says I might stay on as his squire even after the tourney!"
The boy looked so proud, so bright with joy, that Ella could scarcely remember ever seeing him quite this pleased. She ran a hand over his shaven head.
"You have a gift for frightening me half to death, that's what you have."
She knew her family hadn't arrived at the tourney yet, so the decision on what to do with him fell to her. She had only just met Ser Duncan, but he seemed the honorable sort. And truth be told, she did not quite have the heart to crush Egg's happiness.
"Very well. You can be ser Duncan's squire, if he'll have you."
The look on Egg's face was worth every mile she had ridden to find him.
That still left the matter of herself. The sensible thing would be to find one of the noble pavilions, present herself to someone she knew, and wait there until her family arrived. But they would ask questions, far too many questions, and she was in no mood to answer them.
"Ella can camp with us, can't she, ser?" Egg asked.
Duncan went speechless for a few moments. By the time he found words again, he had turned a shade redder.
"I do not… know if that would be proper, because… well… she…"
Egg threw his arms round her legs and did his best to look small and pitiful.
"Please, ser. Look at her. She's got nowhere to go. How could we leave her to fend for herself? Isn't it a knight's duty to protect the weak?"
Something in Dunk's face changed at once, and he nodded.
"Yes. Of course. She may stay with us, if she does not find our company too tiresome."
It was almost sweet, and Ella smiled to put him at ease.
"Oh, do not trouble yourself, ser. I'm no delicate maiden. And it will only be until I find some accommodations of my own."
They made their way through the camp toward a nearby stream, to water the horses. Dunk went ahead, and Ella lingered behind on purpose so she could speak with Egg alone.
"An orphan?" she whispered dryly in his ear. "Truly? Uncle Maekar may not know why, but I'd wager he feels as though someone is sticking a knife in his back."
Egg ignored that.
"Are we not a little thinly clad for this weather?" he asked instead, eyeing her dress as if it were the true matter at hand.
It was a loose summer gown, cut lower than anything Ella had ever worn before, and far too revealing for the cloudy chill of Ashford.
"You ungrateful little wretch. I'll have you know I had to part with my earrings and necklace to get this horse and come find you," she said, pulling lightly on the reins. "And the seller would not be content with that, oh no—he also wanted my dress as part of the bargain. So I was forced to find some girls at the edge of the camp and buy this one from them, so I would not have to ride about in nothing but my cloak."
"That sounds as though he just wanted to see you without the dress."
She considered it for a second.
"Well. When you put it so, it does sound suspicious."
"Blue was always your color," Egg nodded with all the wisdom of his nine years. "It always suited you better than black."
"It's meant to be purple," she said with a sigh. "I suppose it is a bit faded. But do not think for one moment that you've managed to distract me. I want to hear everything. How you got here, who this Ser Duncan is, and how in seven hells you came to be a squire."
That was all it took. Egg launched into the tale at once.
As they walked beside the stream, he told her everything: how he had made his way to Ashford in the back of a cart, dusty and sore and certain all the while that the whole thing would be a grand adventure. He told her how he had met Dunk, how he had first taken him for just another oaf in need of saving, and how that same oaf had turned out to be a true knight after all, though still very much in need of saving in other respects.
He spoke of the horses he tended to and their moods, of armor straps and saddles and the thousand small labors that made up a squire's day, and all the things Ser Duncan had been teaching him—some practical, some accidental, and some learned only because Dunk was forever stumbling into situations he didn't know how to get out of.
There was such pride in him as he spoke, and such honest delight, that Ella could not help but soften as she listened. He had frightened her half to death, yes, but he was happy. Truly happy. She was not sure she had ever seen him look quite so bright. The great fear that had driven her all across the road to Ashford had begun at last to loosen its grip.
Dunk, who could hear enough of the tale from where he walked ahead, kept turning around to protest whenever Egg improved a detail too boldly.
"I never said that."
"You did. And then you just stared at her like a statue."
"I did not."
"He did!" Egg said, looking up at Ella. "And all I wanted was to see a puppet show, not die of shame watching him try to talk to her!"
Ella laughed at Egg's outburst.
"Do not fret, Egg. We'll teach Ser Duncan how to properly talk to ladies. He'll have Tanselle wrapped around his finger when we're done with him."
But there were other things that needed teaching first. Egg and Ella, between them, tried to explain all the things Dunk did not know of tourneys beyond the lists themselves: which lords fought first, why some men would never be matched against one another, and basically everything a hedge knight who meant to fight among highborn fools should know if he wished to survive.
Dunk took it with surprising good humor for so large a man.
They went to sell Ella's horse to get a little more money for Dunk's armor. He refused at first, but she said she had little use for a horse now, and that he should consider it Egg's squire dowry. She also told him to get a good price for the animal. She had exchanged one of her favorite dresses for it, after all.
The rest of the day passed in a way that felt oddly easy, as if the three of them had been together for far longer than a few short hours. By sunset they were already teasing one another like old companions.
And they were very, very hungry.
She could see it in the boy's eyes, and feel it in her own temper. They had very little time before she sent their "poor orphans" disguise to the seven hells their and started offering titles to the woman selling roasted hazelnuts just for a handful of them.
Thankfully, it did not come to that, because the gods sent the Fossoway boy their way, who told them of a very nice place where food was plentiful, the wine strong, and no one much cared who they were as long as they smiled, nodded, and stayed out of the way.
***
The Baratheon tent was everything a tired hedge knight and his two hungry companions might hope for, and more.
It was loud, crowded, brightly lit, and rich with the smell of roasted meat.
To Ser Duncan the Tall, it looked very near to paradise.
"Move, before the good pieces are gone," he said, urging them towards one of the tables.
Ella and Egg exchanged a complicit glance before obeying. They had seen finer feasts, but there was a particular charm to stolen pleasures, and a free supper tasted all the sweeter after a day of walking in the rain.
Dunk found them places at one of the benches, after shifting two squires with his knees and apologizing so earnestly that neither took offense. Platters came and went in a merry procession—beef and capon and lamb swimming in their juices, loaves still warm, trenchers of onions and carrots swimming in butter, and enough wine to drown even Daeron ten times over.
Dunk fell to with both hands. Egg, though determined to be cautious, ate with almost equal fervor. Even Ella, who had been reared in courts, had a second helping of capon and was glad that no one she knew was around to notice it.
For a little while there was no danger in the world. No one paid them the least mind. Around them a pair of Baratheon men were arguing whether a boar was cleverer than a goat. It was glorious.
Then the men across from them shifted to make room for someone, and Ella got a look past them.
At the high table, under the crowned stag banners, Lord Lyonel Baratheon sat among his bannermen with his chair tipped back on two legs and a cup in hand, laughing at something one of his men had said.
He was dark of hair and broad of shoulder, all easy grace and heedless strength. The golden cloak on his shoulders was fit for a king, and she would know. As a little girl, she had spent enough hours playing in the solar of the current one. Yet the men of her own family would never have worn such a merry color. Lyonel looked warmer than the princes and great lords she had grown up among, but no less splendid for it.
It wasn't just that he was handsome, though he was certainly that. Ella had seen handsome men all her life. She had been born among them. She had danced with them, smiled at them, listened to them speak far too well of themselves while servants brought more wine. Handsome men had ceased to surprise her years ago.
But this one did, because his laughter carried across the tent like thunder over summer hills, and she found herself laughing too just by hearing the sound, even if she hadn't heard the jest.
Then he lifted one hand and spoke.
"I had a thought," he said, looking at no one in particular, yet making it plain enough that every person there ought to listen. And they did. The whole pavilion fell into a thick silence, broken only by Dunk choosing that precise moment to pour himself more wine.
That was what undid her.
Not that Lyonel Baratheon could command. She had seen men command all her life. Her father could silence a hall with less than a glance when he chose, and Prince Maekar had a way of making words sound like hammer blows even when he spoke softly.
Ella knew what power looked like when it was real. She knew how it sounded, and how dangerously attractive it could be.
And Lyonel had it. He could take hold of a room as easily as another man might take hold of reins, and then let it all go loose again before the tension curdled.
The laughter was one thing. The smile, the broad shoulders, the careless charm — all of that had drawn her eye. But this… this was different. This was familiar in the most dangerous way. It stirred something in her that had nothing to do with girlish fancies and everything to do with recognition.
He knew how to be obeyed.
The thought came to her hot and sudden, and it made her pulse faster. Beneath the grin and the ease, there was the hard, unspoken promise that if the moment required it, he would expect men to listen and they would.
He finished his speech with some jest about offering a hundred gold coins to whichever lucky wretch first managed to put him in the dirt, and as the tent burst back into noise and laughter, the realization came over her all at once.
"I like him," she said under her breath.
Egg heard her.
He followed her gaze down the length of the table, saw exactly who she was looking at, and his heart sank like a stone dropped in deep water.
"Oh, no," he said. "You have terrible taste in men. You only like the ones who mean trouble."
"No I don't," she replied, offended.
Egg gave her one knowing look, and she knew what he was thinking of.
"That was once, at Summerhall. It doesn't count."
"It seems to have counted for Aerion. It's all he ever speaks of."
She let out an offended gasp.
"He speaks of that? The bastard. I'm going to break his teeth."
"Please do," said Egg. "But before that happens, please stop looking at the high table the way Ser Duncan looks at a leg of lamb."
Dunk looked up from his plate. "What?"
Ella tried to suppress a smile. She only looked down into her cup and toyed with it innocently.
"Do not fret your little bald head, Egg," she said. "I do not mean to speak to Lord Baratheon."
"Good."
She rose.
Egg went pale. "What are you doing?"
"I said I was not going to speak to him." Ella smoothed her skirts. "but how about I show him how we dance in Dorne?"
He made a desperate grab for her dress, but Ella was already out of reach, light as a cat and twice as quick.
She was quicker than she looked, and she looked very quick indeed. She slipped between a pair of benches and crossed the tent to the musicians' corner.
"Do you know any Dornish songs?" she asked.
The drummer grinned through his beard and nodded.
"Well?" Ella said. "What are you waiting for? Lord Baratheon looks half asleep. Play something with a proper beat."
The musicians laughed, thinking her bold or drunk or both, and struck up something faster.
That was all the invitation she needed. She stepped up onto the table and began to clap the rhythm.
She had learned the dance from her grandmother, Myriah Martell, who had brought more than a Dornish bride's beauty to court. Myriah had brought heat and music and bright silks into dark corridors, and taught her granddaughter that there was no sense in having feet if one only meant to stand upon them.
Now she lifted her hands and let the sound of the drums take her.
The tent roared in approval.
She moved down the table with quick, sure steps, clapping to the beat, turning her hips with the music, graceful as a ribbon on the wind and smiling at those who cheered her on. All the while she was careful not to step in any man's plate, which, under the circumstances, was rather saintly of her.
At the high table they were watching openly now. She could feel the eyes on her.
Lyonel Baratheon's among them.
Ella reached the high table at last. Lyonel sat there watching her with bright amusement, but she had meant what she told Egg.
She was not going to speak to him.
Men like Lord Lyonel were too accustomed to being approached. Better, she thought, to remind him that wanting was more thrilling than having.
So instead of stopping before Lyonel, she sat herself upon the table before the man to his right. Clearly another storm lord by the look of him, black-haired and broad as an oaken door, though not so splendid as Lyonel.
"Would my lord care for a dance?" she asked with her sweetest smile.
At her father's court the question would have been downright scandalous. In Lord Baratheon's tent it won her a roar of laughter.
The man grinned. "I am married."
"Even better," said Ella. "Married men grow weary of the same dish night after night, and are most grateful when offered something new."
That sent half the high table into howls. Then she felt a hand close round her wrist—large, warm, ringed in gold.
She turned her head slowly, as if only just now noticing who sat beside the married bannerman.
Lyonel Baratheon smiled up at her, lazy and golden in the candlelight, and she discovered that his smile was an even more dangerous thing up close. It was too easy, too pleased with itself, and far too handsome.
"Dance with me," he said.
And the look he gave her when he said it was enough to sweep the rest of the room from her mind.
So she did.
One song became three, three became six, and after that Ella lost count. They danced on the table, then on the rushes, then between the benches while men pounded the boards and shouted for more. Lyonel was larger than most men but light on his feet for all that, laughing whenever she spun away and catching her hand again before she could fully escape him. They clapped and stamped and turned while the whole tent shouted them on. Once she nearly slipped on spilled wine and he caught her by the waist and hauled her close, and she laughed right into his throat for the relief of it.
By the time the musicians slowed, both of them were flushed and breathless. Ella was tired, drunk, and happier than she ought to have been.
Later they sat together at the high table as the feast dwindled into the sweet disorder of any good revel nearing its end. Ella was half leaning against Lyonel's great oaken chair and half against Lyonel himself, wrapped in his golden cloak, eating grapes one by one while he told her some tale about a ship caught in a storm, but she no longer knew whether the whale had saved them from the storm or the storm had saved them from the whale.
She had lost the thread halfway through because Dunk had caught her eye from farther down the tent and given her a wink so broad and knowing that could only mean enjoy the rest of the night.
Egg stood beside him looking as if all the Seven had forsaken him.
She could imagine exactly what Dunk was telling him as he dragged the poor boy toward the flap of the tent. That his sister's trade was as honest as any other and that if a great lord wished to spend his coin on her company, he ought to count himself fortunate. That Egg was being overprotective of his sister and ought to mind his own business. Egg would be two seconds away from pulling his hair out in despair, and then finding himself unable to because, well, he didn't have any.
The thought was so funny that Ella smiled into her grapes.
Lyonel's tale drew to its close. He laughed at the end, and though Ella was no longer certain whether the whale had been villain or savior, she laughed too.
"Do you miss the sea?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No. The sea never fights fair." His smile turned crooked. "Though truth be told, many knights do not either."
"I would like to be a knight," Ella said.
He looked amused. "Would you?"
"I should have the finest armor in the realm."
"What color?"
"Black."
He nodded solemnly, as if she had spoken great wisdom.
"But plain black," she went on. "No spikes, no scales, nor little flourishes all over it. Mine would be sleek and dark and polished bright as a lake on a moonless night. I think that men who wear so many frills are overcompensating for something."
"Speak for yourself." He smiled and gestured to her.
She didn't understand it at first, because she was more used to giving orders than receiving them, but she eventually understood that he wanted his cup refilled.
"And I should have a black destrier to match. A monstrous beast with wicked eyes that could kick a man's ribs in," she continued, as she served him more wine. "And a Valyrian steel sword. I would give it some mysterious name, and it would become the pride of my house."
Lyonel's eyes glinted. "What would you call it?"
"Twilight."
He laughed.
"Do not laugh. I am serious."
"Forgive me," he said, taking a sip from his cup. "You are right. It is a splendid name. You would make a fearsome knight."
She turned to him. "Do you think I could beat you?"
"With all that? With your black armor and the black horse and Twilight?" He pretended to weigh the matter. Then he gave her a mocking smirk. "No. Not a chance."
She elbowed him in the ribs.
He only laughed harder, and she laughed too.
They were very close by then. Closer than they had any need to be. Lyonel's shoulder against hers. His cloak over both of them. She knew, with the certainty women sometimes had, that if either of them moved just an inch, the matter would be settled. His eyes dropped to her mouth.
"How's this for a bargain?" Ella said softly. "You teach me your best tricks, and I'll show you mine."
For answer, he kissed her.
And because she had intended that from the moment she sat upon the table before another man, she kissed him back and thought, with a brief flash of wicked triumph, that even if he didn't know it yet, she had won.