Chapter Text
They had arrived approximately five days ago, a large envoy of black and red heraldry that sliced through the morning mist of Ashford Meadow like a fresh wound.
The smallfolk had gathered in droves, pointing and whispering and craning their necks to catch a glimpse of silver hair and purple eyes, as though the Targaryens might burst into flame if not observed from the proper angle.
The Meadow was, for lack of any other description, a masterpiece of pageantry currently drowning in a sea of ale, wood smoke, and horse piss. Where once the tall grass had bowed to the wind, there was now only the churned muck of ten thousand hoof prints and the relentless, rhythmic thrum of hammers meeting tent pegs. Pavilions of every conceivable shade rose like a colorful pox across the landscape, their silk flanks snapping in the breeze. And through it all, like a conquering general who refused to yield the field, the stench of the latrine trenches reigned supreme.
A far cry from the grand halls of the Red Keep, or the wailing walls of Dragonstone.
After five days of torrential rain and ten thousand hooves, the “Pride of the Reach” had achieved the consistency of a thick, black pea soup; and it smelled considerably worse.
At the center of the muck, the Targaryen dragons sat in their silk pavilions or up at their residency in the keep, lowly steaming in the humidity of a dying summer.
For five straight days, Prince Baelor had spoken eloquently of peace and diplomacy, his voice a smooth river of reason that seemed to slide right off the armored backs of the gathered lords.
For five straight days, Prince Maekar had grunted about discipline and duty, his jaw set so tight it looked capable of snapping a sword-point.
For five straight days, the knights had polished their armor and lied to each other about their previous glories, their boasts growing taller as the level of the wine casks sank lower. By the third cup of wine, some men had personally slain entire armies. By the fifth, they had done so while wounded, outnumbered, and possibly on fire.
And, quite frankly, Alysanne Targaryen was sick of all of them.
Her father, the promised king, Prince Baelor Breakspear, had wanted her to “keep up appearances,” which in practice meant smiling politely while men twice her age attempted to impress her with stories she could disprove by simple arithmetic. He had cited the necessity of royal presence to steady the tempers of the Marcher lords, as though her mere existence might somehow prevent them from behaving like particularly well-dressed children.
“Especially you,” he had added, in that calm, reasonable tone of his that made refusal feel both futile and vaguely disappointing. “There will be many young ladies watching you.”
Indeed there were.
Alysanne had seen them. Clusters of noble daughters hovering at the edges of gatherings, whispering behind embroidered sleeves, casting careful glances in her direction. She was meant to be an example. A symbol. A paragon of grace, composure, and royal dignity.
And thus here she was, in the arse-end of nowhere.
Unfortunately, she was not quite appearing as her father would have approved.
“My Lady, stay your feet!” came a yell, his voice cracking with the strain of a long chase.
The shout broke the stagnant afternoon air, followed by the distinctive shlop-clank-shlop of two Kingsguard trying to maintain their dignity while sprinting through six inches of black sludge. They looked like armored ducks, their white surcoats splattered with the Reach’s finest filth.
Alysanne, however, was moving like a cat through a pantry. She had traded her dignity for a squire’s grease-stained leather jerkin and breeches that she’d liberated from a baggage wain three hours ago. Her hair was tucked into a cap so salt-crusted it could have seasoned a side of beef, but her eyes, that sharp, startling Valyrian violet, were dancing.
“Make way! Make way for the—” one guard started to bellow, before realizing that announcing a Targaryen princess was currently sprinting through the muck in stolen breeches was likely a one-way ticket to a permanent posting on the Wall. He settled for a frustrated, “Out of the path, you lot!”
Alysanne didn’t bother with paths. She ducked under a low-hanging rotisserie where a half-charred pig turned over a sputtering pit, the heat searing her cheek for a fleeting second. She vaulted a low stack of cedar crates, sent by some optimistic merchant from Oldtown, and landed light-footed in a puddle that sent a spray of black grit onto the hem of a passing septon’s robes.
“Seven save us!” the man gasped, but Alysanne was already gone.
The market stalls were a labyrinth of wet canvas and desperate commerce. She wove through a cluster of Tyroshi mercenaries haggling over the price of whetstones, their forked beards dyed in neon greens and deep purples that looked garish even in the grey Ashford light. She slid between two massive Northern pack-ponies, their shaggy coats steaming and smelling of wet dog, and felt the hot breath of one against her neck.
Every few strides, she caught a glimpse of her pursuers. They were losing ground. Heavy plate was a marvel on the battlefield, but in the Ashford “pea soup,” it was an anchor. Ser Roland was currently ankle-deep in a particularly treacherous patch of sludge near the horse-leeches, his face a mask of purple-veined fury as he tried to pry his greave loose without toppling over.
Alysanne let out a sharp, breathless laugh. She pivoted, her boots finding a rare patch of solid root-work, and leapt over a drainage trench that was currently more of a moat. With a final, desperate burst of speed, she vanished into the shadow of a small cluster of gnarled oaks and birches that huddled at the meadow’s edge.
The transition was instantaneous. The roar of the Ashford camp - the thrum of the hammers, the lowing of distressed oxen, and the incessant shouting of men - was suddenly muffled by a thick canopy of sodden leaves.
She threw a desperate glance back over her shoulder, squinting through the lattice of saltbush and briar to see if the shimmer of steel was gaining. The green-and-gold canopy blurred; there was only the wind and the snapping of dry twigs.
For a heartbeat, she thought she was in the clear.
Then she turned her head back and ran full-tilt into a stone wall.
Only it wasn’t stone.
It was brown wool and boiled leather that smelled of wood smoke and old horse. The impact recoiled through her entire frame, knocking the wind from her lungs in a sharp, pathetic wheeze. She felt herself falling backward, her heels skidding in the mulch, but a hand the size of a dinner plate shot out and clamped around her upper arm.
She looked up, and up, and further up still.
By the time she reached his face, she was quite certain she’d climbed a hill.
The man, if he was a man at all, seemed to be assembled from parts that had no business fitting together so well. Shoulders like a cart axle, neck like a tree trunk, and a face that looked as though some patient god had carved it from oak and then decided to leave the tool marks in place. His brow furrowed, not in anger, but in mild, almost puzzled concern.
He opened his mouth to say more but the sound of snapping branches behind her stole her breath.
“Don’t!” she hissed, panic surging. Before he could draw another breath to speak, she lunged upward, standing on her tiptoes to slam her palm over his mouth. “Not a word! If you value your life, be silent.”
The giant froze. He was so tall she had to strain her arm just to keep his lips sealed, her fingers splayed across a jaw that felt like a granite ledge. Up close, she could see the faint stubble on his chin and the sheer, overwhelming confusion in his cerulean eyes. He didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe.
Then, she heard it. A constant splashing sound.
At first, she thought it was the steady flow of a nearby brook, but the sound was too close. Too consistent. It was hitting the mulch right between his boots – boots that, as she now noticed, were braced wide apart.
Slowly, her gaze drifted downward. Her eyes travelled past his belt, past the half-undone laces of his breeches, to the heavy, pale length of him currently held in his other hand. He hadn’t stopped. In his shock, the giant was still quite literally emptying his bladder, the stream steaming slightly in the cool forest air.
Despite the desperation of the situation, a wave of budding embarrassment washed over them both.
“Please stop doing that...” she breathed, briefly closing her eyes as though this would somehow shield her from the predicament they had both found themselves in. In response, he made a muffled hum against her palm. She slowly peeled her hand away from his lips, though she stayed perched on her tiptoes, ready to gag him again if he breathed too loud.
“I... I can’t...” He looked utterly apologetic, trying to ease out an adequate explanation. “It’s... it’s like a waterwheel, once the sluice is open-“
“I don’t need a lecture on the mechanics of it!” she snapped back.
The splashing slowed, then stopped altogether. He shifted awkwardly, fastening his laces with one hand while keeping his eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder, as though politeness demanded he look anywhere but at her.
She dropped back onto her heels, suddenly aware of how close she stood to him and shifted backward.
The giant, for he could be nothing else, finished with his laces, his movements slow and careful, as if he were afraid that any sudden gesture might knock over the forest itself. He stood a full head and shoulders taller than any man she’d ever seen in her father’s guard, a looming silhouette of brown wool that seemed to swallow the dim light of the thicket.
“I crave your pardon, lad,” he rumbled. His voice was a low, resonant bass that vibrated in Alysanne’s very marrow. “I didn’t think anyone was about. This isn’t exactly the Kingsroad.”
Alysanne stiffened, her hand instinctively flying to the salt-crusted cap tucked tight over her ears. Lad. The word sent a bolt of relief through her.
“Oh, that’s quite alright!” she chirped, pitching her voice into a rasping, adolescent crack. She began to edge around him.
“Hold on,” he blurted out, his voice dropping an octave in sheer realization. “Are you a lass?”
Alysanne stopped mid-stride, one foot hovering over a particularly treacherous puddle.
“Hm?” she asked, offering him a sharp, jagged little grin. “Oh, I hope so. Not that I have the tits to show for it!”
She gestured vaguely at the flat, grease-stained expanse of the squire’s jerkin, which did a marvelous job of making her look like a very thin plank of wood.
“But I must be off!” she added with a breezy salute, already pivoting on a heel. “Duty calls!”
She didn’t wait for another answer and vanished into the thicket.
The echoes of Alysanne’s departure had barely faded when the sound of snapping branches and heavy, wet footfalls returned with a vengeance.
Dunk hadn’t even finished the complicated mental arithmetic of what had just happened, or tucked himself away properly, when the two armoured guards burst into the clearing.
They looked significantly worse than they had five minutes ago. Ser Roland was crimson-faced and wheezing, his once pristine surcoat now wearing a thick apron of Ashford’s finest sludge. The younger guard was simply grey with exhaustion, his helmet sitting askew.
They skidded to a halt at the sight of Dunk. To them, he must have looked like a sentient oak tree that had suddenly sprouted arms.
“You!” Roland barked, clutching his side. “Giant! Have you seen a girl running through here? Small, quick, likely dressed like a common urchin?”
He looked at the guards, then at the unmistakable tracks Alysanne had left leading deeper into the gloom of the thicket. He thought of the sharp, violet eyes and the way dimples deepened in her smile.
“A girl?” Dunk rumbled, his voice steady as a rock. He slowly raised a hand the size of a shovel and pointed a thick finger in the exact opposite direction, toward a dense patch of brambles and a stagnant, mosquito-ridden creek that led back toward the horse-lines. “Aye. A slip of a thing in a salt-crusted cap. She went that way, movin’ like the Stranger was at her heels. Nearly knocked me over, she did.”
Roland didn’t even wait for a second opinion. “The creek! She’s trying to double back to the stables!”
“Seven save us, Ser, the mud is four feet deep that way,” the younger guard moaned.
“Then start wading!” Roland commanded, already lunging back into the muck in the wrong direction.
Dunk watched them depart, shaking his head.
Halfway across the field, Alysanne had lost them. She had reached the tent of the puppeteers.
It was a sagging, patchwork affair that had seen better decades, let alone better days. Its canvas was a riot of faded crimson and sun-bleached gold, held aloft by poles that leaned at precarious, drunken angles. A painted sign, currently peeling in the humidity, announced The Gallant Adventures of Florian and Jonquil, though the “Florian” had lost an eye to a mold stain and “Jonquil” was mostly obscured by a splatter of Reach mud.
Alysanne slipped behind a heavy flap of frayed tapestry, her heart still performing a hard solo against her ribs. The interior was a cramped, dim world of wooden limbs and painted faces. Hundreds of puppets hung from the crossbeams like tiny, silent spectators: knights in chipped silver paint, dragons with button eyes, and silk-clad maidens whose tresses were made of frayed hemp.
A tall, slender woman with skin the colour of polished teak and eyes that seemed to hold a weary sort of wisdom looked up. She was repairing the wing of a wooden dragon, a needle flashing in the dim light.
“Don’t say I never bring you anything,” Alysanne panted, her voice a hushed rasp of triumph.
Tanselle’s smile was a slow, flickering thing, like a candle catching in a draught.
She reached into the bag she’d been clutching like a lifeline and hauled out the prize. It emerged with a dull, heavy metallic ring - a great silver-polished case, crowned with a crest that caught the dim, filtered light of the tent. When she prised the clasp open, it revealed a set of the most pristine paint brushes Tanselle had ever seen. As a whole, it was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship.
"I’m quite sure the keep has a hundred of these," Alysanne added, wiping a smear of black sludge from her brow with her thumb. "No one will even know it's missing."
Tanselle stopped her work on the wooden dragon, the needle held mid-air.
“You actually took them?” she said with a shred of disbelief.
“Of course I did!” replied Alysanne brightly, “And... and it’s not stealing if it’s for a better cause,” She countered, setting the case down on a crate of marionettes. The case looked absurdly out of place among the chipped paint and frayed strings of the puppet theatre: a lion among mice. “Besides, my cousins have enough silver on their heads as it is. They can spare a bit for the stage.”
Tanselle reached out, her long, slender fingers tracing the curves of the silver casing.
“They’ll be amazing for the show.” She turned the case slowly, watching the way the dim lantern light caught the polished surface, turning the silver into a mirror of liquid smoke. “When I’m done with using these... the children will think anything I paint has stepped out of the songs.” She looked up at Alysanne, her dark eyes wide with a mixture of awe and dawning worry. “But it’s too fine, Alys. It’s a piece of the sun. People will talk.”
“Quite honestly, I think they won’t. You’re so talented, they’ll never spot a difference. They’ll be too busy watching the way your dragons soar and your knights bleed.”
A shout bubbled up from somewhere in the distance. Ser Roland was certainly not far away.
“Godsdamnit, I’ll have to run,” Alysanne huffed. She took a half-step away before remembering something. “Oh! The Baratheon feast, you’re still coming?”
“The Baratheon feast,” Tanselle repeated, the words sounding heavy and out of place in the cramped, sawdust-scented tent. “I don’t know Alys, look at this place. Look at me. Lord Lyonel doesn’t invite mummers to sit at his boards unless they’re juggling for his amusement or dodging the bones he throws from his plate.”
“I’m not asking you to juggle, Tanselle. I’m asking you to come,” Alysanne said. She stepped closer, the grease-stained leather of her jerkin creaking. “You said you wanted to see a real Baratheon bash in the flesh. Well, here’s your chance.”
Alysanne poked out her bottom lip as though she had been personally offended. “Please? Pretty please with extra peaches on the top?”
Tanselle paused for half a beat and then groaned her compliance. Alysanne clapped her hands together excitedly.
“Perfect! Oh, Tanselle, that’ll be so much fun!”
“Over here! Check the mummers’ rows!”
“The back flap,” Tanselle whispered, her dark eyes large. She shoved the stolen case of paintbrushes into a basket of moth-eaten velvet capes. “Go, Alys. Before they tear this tent to ribbons looking for you.”
Alysanne didn’t nod; she was already moving. She dived through the rear of the tent, the frayed tapestry scratching at her cheeks, and stumbled out into the lengthening shadows of the wagon-row. But the mud was a traitor. Her boot skidded, sending her sprawling into a heap of discarded hay and stable-sweepings.
She scrambled up, gasping, only to find the clearing hemmed in. To her left, the younger guard was emerging from the muck, dripping and furious. To her right, the heavy tread of Ser Roland heralded his approach.
Alysanne stood her ground in the centre of the lane, the breath hitching in her chest.
“Enough,” she breathed, the word barely a ghost of a sound.
She reached up. Her fingers, stained with the grit of the road, hooked under the rim of the cap. With a single, fluid motion, she ripped it free.
“Oh for the love of the Seven, girl!” Ser Roland moaned exasperatedly. “Put that grubby thing back on, we won’t be escorting you back home where everyone will know who you are! What would your father say? Where’s your house pride?”
House pride. Roland wasn’t wrong, it meant much to her, even if Alysanne did not possess the familiar features of a traditional Targaryen, thanks in due part to her grandfather who had settled on bedding a Dornish woman and thus secured a differentiation in the line that not only affected her father, but his children too. Her mother, of the Stormlands Dondarrions, had bequeathed her with fair skin and dollish features. Therefor, not only was she lithe and porcelain-skinned, her hair was as dark an old chestnut save for a streak of glimmering silver through the front’s left side. Her brother, Valarr, possessed a similar trait, except his was on the opposing side of his head.
Her eyes, as per years of preserving the bloodline would garner, were a strange yet striking shade of violet. Echoing the same feature as the rest of her siblings.
“On the contrary, Ser,” she began, her voice no longer a squire’s rasp but a bell-clear tone that carried the effortless weight of a lifetime in court. She reached up with a slender finger, delicately picking a stray strand of hair that had flown unceremoniously into her mouth during her tirade, “I shall be walking with my head held high. Now shall we go? I suspect my father will want a word.”
They led her back towards the Targaryen pavilion. Being flanked by two guards in the striking white surcoats of the King was bound to draw attention, but it was Alysanne herself who held the gaze of the camp. The jerkin and the muddy breeches remained, but the girl inside them had changed. With her hair unbound - the shimmering strip of a pale-gold banner that caught every flicker of the rising campfires - she looked much less like a runaway now.
The whispers followed them like the wake of a ship. Knights paused mid-jest, flagons of ale frozen at their lips; camp followers peered out from their wagons, squinting at the radiant, silver-and-chestnut-haired creature marching between two mud-caked soldiers.
Alysanne remained undeterred. She kept her chin tilted at an angle that suggested the dirt on her face was a deliberate fashion choice rather than a by-product of a ditch.
One figure stood out like a watchtower above the low-slung tents of the commoners.
Dunk. The pissing giant.
He was nearly a full head taller than any man in the crowd, his massive shoulders silhouetted against the dying amber light of the sunset. He was standing near a wagon, looking every bit the bewildered oak tree he had been in the thicket, his large, weathered hands hanging loosely at his sides.
Alysanne didn’t break her stride, nor did she lower her chin. But as she drew level with him, she slowed her pace just a fraction. The guards were too busy trying to look dignified to notice, but Alysanne caught Dunk’s eye: those honest, wide eyes that had looked at her without a shred of recognition only an hour ago.
She could visibly see the cogs of his brain working upon his face, the rise of crimson reaching the high points of his cheeks and ears. His lips parted just slightly as he put to and to together.
A Targaryen princess had only gone and seen his entire manhood on full display. Seven fu-
She offered him a quick, conspiratorial wink, the corner of her mouth twitching into a fleeting smile.
Dunk froze. He didn’t smile back; instead, his face went remarkably blank, his brow furrowing in a look of profound, slow-motion confusion. Slowly he looked over his shoulder. He checked the empty space behind him, then scanned the cluster of washerwomen and stable boys nearby, certain that a Princess of the Blood must surely be signalling someone of vastly more importance than a fellow with a hole in his boot.
By the time he turned his head back, Alysanne was already gone, the guards ushering her toward the mouth of the black-and-red pavilion.
As the heavy, silken folds of the Targaryen pavilion loomed ahead, a mountain of black cloth embroidered with three-headed dragons that seemed to breathe in the wind, the guards straightened their backs, trying desperately to look like they hadn't just been outwitted by a young woman.
The knight at the entrance, armoured in scales of charcoal steel, stepped forward, his eyes widening as they landed on Alysanne’s face.
“The Princess,” he breathed, his hand going to his heart.
“The very same,” Alysanne sighed, stopping before the tent flap. She glanced down at her filthy hands and then at the shimmering silk of the entrance.
A word, quite predictably so, was an understatement.
The interior of the pavilion was a cavern of stifling luxury, draped in the heavy, sun-warmed scent of myrrh and the metallic tang of oiled plate.
Prince Baelor (Breakspear to the common folk, and a wall of silent frustration to his daughter) did not look like a man who had spent his afternoon enjoying the tourney air. He stood by a large desk laden with untouched fruit, his shadow stretched long and jagged against the black silk walls by the flicker of a dozen beeswax candles. He looked less like the chivalrous Hand of the King and more like a man trying to solve a riddle that didn’t want to be solved.
“What did you take?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Alysanne replied. She stood in the centre of the Myrish rug, her hair still tangled with bits of leaf and dried Ashford muck, looking like a common thief caught in a counting-house.
“Alysanne—”
“Nothing,” she repeated, her jaw set in that particular Targaryen line that mirrored his own, though hers was tainted by the added touch her mother, Jena’s, features. A soft spot when it came to the lecturing of his daughter.
Baelor let out a long, slow breath, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Ser Roland found you fleeing a mummers’ tent. A den of actors and cutpurses. You, a Princess of the Blood, sprinting through the mud like a base-born pickpocket. I will ask you once more: what was in the bag you were seen carrying? The guards say it had the ring of steel.”
"I was merely exploring the commons, Father. Is it a crime to see the people we supposedly rule? To see how they live when they aren’t bowing?”
“It is a risk to the Crown,” Baelor countered, stepping closer. The light caught the silver in his dark hair, a reminder of the weight he carried. “You look like something a dog wouldn’t claim. You will wash. You will dress. And you are to stay in your room all eve.”
This was going to be a problem.
Alysanne drew herself up, the mud on her face cracking as she scowled. “I am twenty and a half summers, you cannot just—”
“I can and I have,” Baelor interrupted, his voice steeling. “If one more word of your ‘adventures’ reaches my ears, Alysanne, I shall have no choice but to send you back to Dragonstone under a heavy guard. Do I make myself clear?”
A beat passed them by. Baelor stared wearily back at her. The only sound in the pavilion was the hiss of a candle wick consuming itself and the distant, muffled cheer of a drunken knight somewhere in the commons.
Baelor stared wearily back at her, his dark, violet eyes tracing the smudge of grease on her cheek.
Alysanne held his stare, unwavered. She could see the faint lines around his eyes, the silver at his temples that seemed more prominent in the flickering light.
“Perfectly, Father,” she muttered.
The words felt like a lie, even as they left her lips. She wasn’t staying in that room. She was a dragon, and dragons didn’t sit in silken cages waiting for the moon to tell them when they could fly.
Baelor sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders in a slow, heavy slump. He gestured vaguely toward the rear of the pavilion, where a partition of heavy velvet separated another wing from the main hall.
“Go. Wash. Have the servants bring you something that doesn’t smell of stable-run. I have maps to study and a King to appease.”
Alysanne gave a stiff, formal curtsey that looked absurd in her muddy breeches and retreated out into the corridor.
She breathed hard, feeling alone for little more than a second before she could feel eyes boring into her.
There, leaned against a structural pole with an air of calculated nonchalance, was Aerion.
He looked every bit the Brightflame: his attire a blinding display of crimson silk and silver thread that made Alysanne’s clothes look doubly horrid. He didn’t look up as she approached; he was buffing a signet ring against his tunic, his pale, sharp features twisted into a smirk that suggested he had tasted something particularly sweet.
He had clearly been standing there for some time, his head tilted just so, catching every weary word Baelor had uttered.
“When are you going to learn to behave?” Aerion asked, his voice a low, melodic drawl that set Alysanne’s teeth on edge.
He finally looked up, his lilac eyes shimmering with a predatory sort of amusement. He didn’t move from the pole, but the way he lounged, one leg crossed over the other, silver-thread boots buffed to a mirror shine, made the narrow corridor feel suddenly, suffocatingly small.
“I’ve had enough lectures for one day, Aerion,” Alysanne snapped, trying to brush past him. The grease on her squire’s jerkin felt like a brand under his scrutiny. “Step aside.”
Instead of moving, Aerion reached out, his fingers snagging the silver-gold lock of her hair. He didn’t pull, but the possessive nature of the gesture was enough to irk her.
“You forget your place, cousin,” he purred. “And your future. After the final tilt of this tourney, Father and Uncle Baelor intend to formally announce our betrothal. In a few moon’s turns, you won’t be answering to Baelor’s weary sighs. You’ll be answering to me.”
Alysanne reached over and promptly pulled the strands from his fingers.
“Oh piss off, Aerion,” she quipped, shouldering past him to her quarters.
The interior of her private quarters was a sanctuary of more flickering candles and the scent of lavender-steeped water. Alysanne didn’t waste a moment on the silk gowns laid out by her handmaidens; those were for the princess who was meant to sit at her father’s side, not the woman who was about to scale a fence or run across a field.
She had moved with a frantic, focused energy, scrubbing the muck from her face until her skin stung before opting for her attire of choice. She didn’t reach for the Dondarrion purple or the Targaryen black. Instead, she pulled a deep, forest-green kirtle from the bottom of her cedar chest: a garment far too plain for a princess, but perfect for a night of disappearing into the crowd.
“Twenty and a half summers,” she muttered irritably under her breath, tugging the laces of her bodice tight. “I shall do what I like, regardless of station.”
She sat before the bronze mirror, her silver-and-chestnut hair still damp and unruly. She didn’t braid it into the elaborate coils required for court. Instead, she swept it back, pinning it with a simple wooden comb she’d bought from a traveling merchant three days ago.
When she was quite pleased with her appearance, she grabbed a hooded cloak of dark wool, throwing it over her shoulders to mask the shimmer of her hair.
The vent at the base of the tent was her only exit.
Alysanne dropped to her knees, the fine silk of her rug scratching against her palms. She peered through the narrow opening. Outside, the camp was a riot of noise—distant lutes, the roar of a hundred fires, and the unmistakable, boisterous laughter of the Stormlands men.
She exhaled, making herself as small as possible, and began to wiggle through the gap. The canvas scraped against her shoulders, and for a terrifying second, the hem of her cloak snagged on a tent peg. She froze, her heart thundering against the ground, waiting for the shout of a guard.
It never came.
With one final, undignified shove, she tumbled out into the cool night air and scrambled to her feet, pulling her hood low over her face, and vanished into the shadows of the royal row.
Tanselle was waiting near the edge of the mummers’ wagons, her tall silhouette unmistakable against the glow of a nearby brazier.
“You’re late,” Tanselle whispered as Alysanne drifted out of the dark, her eyes wide with a mix of relief and nerves. “I thought your father had chained you to the bedpost.”
“He tried,” Alysanne replied, a breathless, jagged grin cutting through the shadows. “But he forgot that us dragons have scales. They’re very slippery. Shall we?”
If the Targaryen quarters were a sanctuary of hushed whispers, this was a riot of roasting meat, spilled ale, and the thunderous stomping of boots on heavy timber floorboards.
Alysanne and Tanselle slipped through the entrance, immediately swallowed by a wall of heat and sound. Overhead, the yellow silk of the ceiling vibrated with every roar of laughter, held aloft by massive poles wrapped in stag-pelt and garlanded with early spring wildflowers.
“Look at the size of it,” Tanselle whispered, her hand instinctively tightening on Alysanne’s sleeve. The moment they had stepped over the threshold, Alysanne had thrown off her hood.
The centre of the tent had been cleared for dancing, though “dancing” was perhaps too graceful a word for what was happening. Men in heavy doublets and women in bright, swirling kirtles were caught in a frantic, spiraling reel, their shadows dancing like giants against the yellow walls. A troupe of fiddlers perched on a dais of upturned crates, sawing away at their instruments with a joyful desperation that made the very air seem to hum.
Around the perimeter, long trestle tables groaned under the weight of Lord Lyonel’s hospitality. There were platters of crusty bread piled high as small hills, wheels of pungent yellow cheese, and great wooden bowls overflowing with various fruits.
“Is that a whole boar?” Tanselle pointed toward a side table where a massive beast sat on a bed of cracked wheat, a crabapple wedged in its grinning maw.
“The Baratheons don’t believe in portions,” Alysanne laughed. She felt a strange, electric thrill at being just another face in the crowd.
“Grab us a seat,” she leaned in to whisper against Tanselle’s ear, her voice barely audible over a particularly rowdy fiddle solo. “I’ll fetch some drinks. If anyone asks, you’re with the master of horse.”
Tanselle gave a quick, nervous nod and vanished toward a relatively empty bench near the back, looking small and overwhelmed in the face of so much Baratheon bluster. Alysanne, meanwhile, veered toward a long table draped in heavy yellow cloth that groaned under the weight of condensation-beaded pitchers and dark, earthen flagons of Arbor gold and Stormlands ale.
And there, looming over the wine-service like a mountain of misplaced modesty, was a familiar back.
Dunk was stood there, his massive shoulders hunched as if trying to occupy less space than the laws of physics allowed.
Alysanne felt a bubble of genuine delight rise in her chest. She crept up behind him, her soft boots silent on the rushes, and reached up on her tiptoes. With a light, teasing finger, she tapped the hollow of his left shoulder.
Predictably, the giant flinched, his head whipping around to the left with the speed of a startled destrier.
By the time his gaze found nothing but empty air, Alysanne had already ducked behind the broad expanse of his back, appearing on his right side with a smile.
“Well, I certainly did not expect to see you here, giant,” she started jovially.
Dunk winced in response. “Do ya have to call me that?”
Then, as if a lightning bolt had struck the top of his head, his eyes went wide. The realization crashed down on him all at once. He began to stammer, his large hands fumbling with the air as he tried to figure out where to put them.
“I… I am sorry, Your Grace,” he began, his knees buckling in the start of a deep, clumsy bow that threatened to upend a tray of venison pasties. “I didn’t know. I mean, in the woods, I was… I didn’t mean to… I’m a slow learner, m’lady, and I-”
Alysanne reached out, her small, pale hand come to rest on his massive forearm as if she were shooing away the notion. Both of them gazed at the contact.
Alysanne plucked her hand away swiftly after. “Oh, don’t you start with the pleasantries,” she quipped, “Bowing is rather bothersome, I find, hurts one’s neck to keep receiving such. Please, rise.”
Dunk swallowed hard, the corded muscles of his throat working with a heavy, visible gulp. Slowly, agonizingly so, as if he expected the sky to crack open for his impertinence, he began to rise from his bow.
Alysanne had thought him tall in the frantic, blurred introduction in the forest, but here, this close, on the same level with the glow of a dozen sconces at his back, the scale of him was truly staggering. He didn’t just stand; he seemed to unfurl, rising and rising until he had blotted out a significant portion of the tent.
She found herself stepping back instinctively just to maintain a sense of perspective. Her chin tilted upward, then further still, until the muscles in her neck began to protest with a sharp, familiar pinch. Looking down at him had been a strain, but looking up was an anatomical challenge. At five-and-ten in stature, Alysanne was not a small girl, yet standing before Duncan made her feel as though she were standing at the foot of a watchtower.
Then, she shoved one of the cups of pear brandy into his hand, forcing him to accept it before it spilled down his surcoat.
“So what do they call you?” she prompted, her eyes dancing with an amused curiosity.
“Dunk,” he said. He held the cup with two fingers as if it were a delicate eggshell that might shatter under the slightest pressure of his grip.
“Dunk?” she repeated, her nose crinkling good-naturedly. “Like Duncan?”
“S’pose so, aye. But just Dunk, mostly,” he explained, his voice a low rumble that she could almost feel in the floorboards beneath her boots. “The old man called me Dunk. Some call me Lunk.” He paused, looking down at his own enormous feet in the rushes. “Usually when I’ve done somethin’ thick.”
Alysanne took a long, thoughtful sip of her brandy, her violet eyes never leaving his face. “Well, ‘Dunk’ sounds like the noise a stone makes when it hits a well. I think I prefer Duncan. It sounds more like a name and less like a mishap.”
"Duncan," he repeated it experimentally. He’d spent his life as Dunk, a name as short and blunt as a club, but coming from her, the extra syllables felt like a promotion. "I... I suppose it does sound a bit more sturdy. The old man, the knight I served, he was a man of few words."
Their eyes met. Dunk’s were the colour of sea glass, wide and startlingly guileless. Alysanne, for all her royal breeding and practiced wit, found herself momentarily without a word to fill the space. She was used to being looked at, as a prize, a political piece, or a daughter to be managed, but she wasn’t used to being seen.
It was incredibly endearing, and somehow validating.
Would it be so dramatic to say that Dunk looked at her as if she were a visage he didn’t quite have the vocabulary to describe?
The gaze was broken only when a drunk Stormlander stumbled into Dunk’s back, rebounding off him like a ship hitting a quay. Dunk buckled slightly, the brandy in his cup sloshing perilously close to the rim. His hands, large enough to crush apples but currently attempting the delicacy of a courtier, faltered. The pear brandy, caught in a violent slosh, vaulted over the rim of the cup in a shimmering, amber arc.
It landed squarely across the front of Alysanne’s dark wool cloak and the kirtle beneath, the sweet, sticky liquid soaking into the fabric with ruthless efficiency.
His eyes went wider than they had been in the thicket, his face draining of all colour before flushing a shade of red that rivalled the Targaryen banners.
“Oh! Seven save me, I... I’m a fool,” he stammered. Alysanne was already attempting to stem his panic.
“Not to worry, it’s absolutely-“
“I... I’m so sorry.”
“Honestly, I’m completely-“
“I’m a lunk. A thick-headed, clumsy lunk. What did I tell ya?”
He looked as though he expected the ground to open up and swallow him whole, or perhaps for a dragon to swoop through the yellow silk ceiling and incinerate him for his sacrilege.
Alysanne looked down at the dark, spreading stain on her chest. She felt the cool dampness seep through to her skin as the scent of fermented pears rising up to meet her. For a moment, she remained still, and Dunk’s breath hitched in his throat, certain he had finally crossed the line into a dungeon cell.
“Please don’t fret! It’s just a bit of brandy, not dragonfire,” she laughed, wiping a stray droplet from the edge of her cloak with a thumb. “And honestly, after the day I’ve had, a little spilled drink is the least of my worries.” She sucked the taste of pear brandy from her thumb. “Mm, that’s actually really nice.”
Dunk still looked unsure, his face the colour of a rather bright beetroot.
“Don’t look so tragic. You’ll have the whole tent thinking you’ve just stepped on my toes, and I’d rather they think we’re having a grand time. You’re here for the tourney, are you not?”
“The tourney? Aye,” he rumbled, his voice finally finding its footing, though it remained hushed. “I’ve come to tilt.”
Alysanne cocked her head, her violet eyes narrowing with a renewed interest. She leaned back against the edge of the trestle table, the damp wool of her cloak clinging to her, but she seemed entirely unbothered by it.
“Ah, so you’re a knight?” she prompted, her voice lilting with a hint of a challenge. “Of whom do you swear your liege?”
Dunk looked down at her, his throat working as he searched for the right words.
“I’m a hedge knight,” he said, and this time his voice was steady, even if it was quiet. “My sword is my own.”
“Well, if you are to enter the lists, you must have a title. Here, I shall give you a name.” She paused, lowering her cup and pushing off from the table.
For what felt like a full thirty seconds, she looked him over with her lips pursed. Her eyes studied everything about him; from the scuffs upon his shoes, all the way up and up and up some more, to the top of his head.
“Ser Duncan the Tall,” she declared, the name tasting just right. “It’s simple. It’s honest. And it’s a fact no man in this tent can dispute without looking like a fool.”
Dunk felt the name settle over his shoulders like a heavy, fur-lined cloak: unexpectedly warm and surprisingly comfortable.
A slow, tentative smile began to spread across his face, reaching his eyes and crinkling the corners.
“Ser Duncan the Tall,” he repeated. He gave a single nod, as if confirming the fit of a new helm. “Aye. I... I think I like the sound of that. It’s better than ‘Lunk,’ at any rate.”
“Oh, I quite agree,” replied Alysanne, downing the rest of her drink with surprising finesse. Without missing a beat, she turned back to the table, her hands moving deftly to snag a fresh flagon of wine for herself and another for Tanselle. “Though I am expected elsewhere, Ser Duncan. So I suppose I must make myself scarce.”
She began to back away into the shifting golden haze of the crowd, her cloak swirling around her ankles. She paused, however, her boots catching in the rushes as she looked back over her shoulder at the massive, bewildered man she’d just dubbed a knight of the realm.
“I hope to see you dancing later,” she called out over the roar of a nearby toast, her eyes sparkling with a challenge. “Lyonel loves a good dance, and he’s not a man who takes ‘no’ for an answer from a guest.”
Dunk stood frozen, the half-empty cup of brandy looking like a toy in his hand. “I reckon we’ll see how the night pans out. It was… it was nice talking with you, Princess.” He raised his cup awkwardly.
Alysanne stopped in her tracks, her jaw setting in that familiar, stubborn line even as a small, secret smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Just Alys,” she corrected him softly, the words carrying through the noise like a promise.
She didn’t wait for a response. With a final smile, she turned and disappeared into the thick of the Baratheon feast, leaving Duncan the Tall standing alone by the cider barrels, feeling very much like a man who had just seen a dragon and lived to tell the tale.
Alysanne moved through the press of bodies, her two fresh cups of ale held high to avoid the swinging elbows of a group of knights roaring out a chorus of The Bear and the Maiden Fair.
She reached the corner where she’d left the puppeteer, but the bench was occupied by a pair of squires arguing over a plate of ribs. Tanselle was gone.
Alysanne scanned the room, her violet eyes darting between the swirling dancers and the crowded tables. A girl as tall and striking as Tanselle shouldn’t have been hard to spot, even in this madness.
“Ser! A moment,” Alysanne prompted, pitched loud enough to be heard over the fiddles. “A tall girl was seated here. Dark hair, skin like polished cedar. A mummer. Did you see where she went?”
The Fossoway blinked at her, swaying slightly on his heels. He didn’t seem to recognize her. Or if he did, he was far too deep in his cups to care.
“The tall one?” he barked with a wet laugh. “The one who looks like she could pluck the stars if she stood on her toes? Aye, I saw her.”
“Where?”
He gestured vaguely toward the main exit of the tent with a sloshing flagon. “Left. Half a glass ago, maybe less. She looked a bit put out, or perhaps just remembered she had better places to be than a Baratheon bash. She was in a hurry, she was.”
The Fossoway shrugged, already turning back to his companions.
A flicker of worry gnawed at her, Tanselle was bold, but she was a mummer in a camp full of high-born tempers. Still, Alysanne sighed, forcing the tension from her shoulders. Nerves, she surmised. The Baratheon pavilion was enough to overwhelm anyone who wasn’t born to the roar of the storm, and Tanselle likely felt the weight of a hundred noble stares more keenly than Alysanne did.
She’d find her tomorrow at the puppet show and apologize for the brandy-soaked delay.
She turned to set the two cups down on a nearby table, intending to slip back toward the royal row before her father’s guards did a final headcount. But before her fingers could leave the wood, a voice like a crack of thunder rolled over the music and the shouting.
“Alysanne! You think you can skulk in the shadows of my own tent and not pay the toll?”
The Princess stiffened. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. Lord Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm himself, was standing atop a bench three tables away, a massive flagon in one hand and a half-eaten turkey leg in the other. He was a whirlwind of black hair and boisterous energy, his yellow doublet strained across his chest as he laughed, beckoning her over with a wide, sweeping motion that nearly upended a candle-brazier.
The knights around him turned, their eyes following his gaze. The anonymity she had enjoyed while talking to Dunk vanished in an instant.
“Come here, girl!” Lyonel roared, his grin splitting his face.
Alysanne felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She looked at the cups she’d just set down, then back at the exit, and finally at the Laughing Storm. There was no escaping Lyonel once he’d spotted his prey; he’d likely jump the tables and carry her over his shoulder if she tried to run.
Lyonel had very little patience for the “Targaryen brood,” as he often called them over a flagon of strong ale. To him, the King’s kin were often a collection of silver-haired peacocks—too preoccupied with their ancient genealogies and the divine right of their blood to notice the world was made of iron and sweat. He found Aerion’s posturing nauseating and Maekar’s relentless gloom exhausting, but Alysanne was a different breed of dragon entirely.
Perhaps it was the Dondarrion blood flowing through her. Or that stubborn, sun-baked Dornish iron that tempered the volatile Valyrian flame. Lyonel had always felt a kinship with the Stormlands’ neighbours to the south; they were a people who understood that a person’s worth was measured in their grit, not their titles.
“I was merely checking the quality of your vintage, Lord Lyonel,” she called back, her voice carrying with a clear confidence that made the surrounding knights cheer. “I find it... sufficient. Though a bit prone to spilling.”
She cast one last glance toward the shadows where Dunk had been standing, but the giant was already obscured by the shifting crowd, if it were possible.
She began to weave her way toward the centre of the chaos. Lyonel collapsed back into his chair at her arrival, the helm on his head, adorned with large antlers, was ever so slightly askew.
When his eyes caught hers, the mirth sharpened into a delighted glint. He rose, the heavy links of his golden chain clinking against his chest, and reached across the board.
His hand was a gauntlet of warm skin as it closed around hers. He didn’t just bow; he pulled her knuckles to his lips with a flourish that drew the eyes of every man within twenty paces.
“The jewel of the Red Keep, wandering the mud of the Meadow,” Lyonel murmured, his voice a low regail that cut through the surrounding din. He didn’t let go of her hand, his thumb tracing the line of her wrist. “Tell me, my dear. Does your father know that his prize falcon has flown the mew, or am I to expect the Kingsguard to come crashing through my silk walls at any moment?”
Alysanne leaned in, the heat of the torches reflected in the dark centres of her eyes. A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. “My father is currently debating the finer points of Ashford law with a goblet of wine. He believes I am tucked away behind three locked doors and a septa’s prayers.” She tilted her head, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “So, of course not.”
Lyonel threw his head back, a short, sharp bark of a laugh escaping him. He looked her up and down.
“Naughty girl,” he chuckled, his grin widening to show a flash of white teeth. He kicked a stool toward her with a heavy boot. “Sit. If you’re to be a rebel for the night, you might as well drink like one. Servers! Fetch more wine, there’s a royal in our presence!”
The atmosphere shifted from a private conspiracy to a public spectacle as Lyonel signalled for the "giant" he had spotted lingering by the tuns to join them. Dunk approached with the wary, heavy-footed grace of a man walking into a snare, his height drawing a sudden, hushed ripple through the nearby tables. Lyonel, never one for subtlety, had wasted no time in testing the mettle of this mountain in hedge knight’s wool, demanding to know what tribute or grand tale the man had brought to the Baratheon board, joking that if the man had come empty-handed, he might leave with a Baratheon’s head under his arm.
Dunk, towering even over the Lord of Storm's End, had offered a response that was startling in its simplicity: he had merely come for his supper. The honesty of it, stripped of courtly fawning, had struck Lyonel like a punch to the gut, sending him into a fit of uproarious, rib-shaking laughter that seemed to seal Dunk’s safety for the night.
From there, the evening dissolved into a blur of rhythmic debauchery and joy. The fiddlers redoubled their pace, the music transforming into a swift, stomping beat that pulsed through the tent. Men and women blurred into a sea of spinning wool and flashing silk as the dancing began in earnest: a sprawling, sweaty reel where the high-born and the sellswords collided. Alysanne found herself swept into the centre of it as she was spun from one pair of hands to the next.
Make no mistake, a girl of such highborn standing still knew how to make merry of a good time.
And she was certainly not the only one.
When Lyonel Baratheon began his pantomime of lassoing an invisible rope towards Dunk, the giant didn’t recoil. Instead, he let out a short, surprised bark of a laugh, as he allowed himself to be “caught” by the phantom line. The crowd erupted, a wall of cheering knights and squires and strumpets hammering their flagons against the trestles as he came shuffling towards the floor.
“Don’t just stand there like a castle wall, man!” Lyonel bellowed, his voice a joyful thunderclaps as he clapped Dunk on the shoulder - a blow that would have felled a smaller man but only made the hedge knight grin. “Show the Princess that a man of the woods has more than just mud upon his boots! Move!”
Alysanne looked up at him, her face flushed a brilliant rose from the heat and the drink, her violet eyes bright with a daring, liquid light.
Dunk didn’t wait to be asked twice. With a surprisingly nimble skip for a man of his girth, he stepped into the circle. He reached down, his hand, warm and calloused, engulfing Alysanne’s as he swung her into the first turn of the reel. The height difference was comical, yet they moved with an infectious energy that drew the entire tent into their orbit.
Alysanne laughed, a breathless sound of pure elation. She had to jump slightly to keep pace with his enormous strides.
“Careful, Ser Duncan!” she shouted over the din, her grin wide and wicked. “If you step on my toes now, I might actually have to execute you!”
“I’ll try to keep them under my own, Alys!” Dunk roared back, his voice booming with a newfound, alcohol-fuelled confidence.
They spun, a blur of green and silver and brown, dodging the Laughing Storm as he danced a solo jig nearby, leaping over benches and roaring at the rafters.
The music surged into a frenetic, rib-rattling stomp, and just as Dunk was finding a heavy-footed groove, the “Storm” finally broke. With a roar that rivalled the fiddles, Lyonel didn’t so much ask for a turn as he laid claim to the territory.
The Laughing Storm scooched in with the agility of a mountain cat, his shoulder playfully bumping Dunk’s bicep to nudge him out of the inner circle.
“Step aside, Ser Giant!” Lyonel bellowed, his face flushed a triumphant crimson. “You’ve had your moment with the moonlight. Now let the Storm show her how we move in Shipbreaker Bay!”
Before Dunk could even blink, Alysanne was whisked from his grip. Lyonel caught her by the waist, lifting her nearly off her feet in an exuberant whirl that sent her green skirts flying like a bell. As she was swept away into the chaotic, spinning orbit of the Baratheon lord, Alysanne looked back over her shoulder.
She offered Dunk a small, breathless smile, one that was genuinely apologetic.
Dunk stood back, swaying slightly from the brandy and the sudden loss of momentum. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of a hand the size of a spade, a goofy, lopsided grin still plastered on his face. He didn’t mind the theft; watching Alysanne try to keep pace with the Lord of Storm’s End was a sport in itself.
Lyonel was a whirlwind of salt-and-pepper hair and yellow silk, his boots hammering the timber with the force of falling boulders. Alysanne met his energy strike for strike, her hair whipping around her face in a dark blur.
“You’re slowing down, My Lord!” she taunted over the screech of the fiddles, her voice sharp and joyous. “Is the Storm losing its wind?”
“Losing wind?” Lyonel barked a laugh, spinning her so fast the torches seemed to streak into solid lines of gold. “I’ve barely begun to howl, girl!”
Around them, the knights of the Stormlands began a rhythmic, bone-deep thud-thud-clap that echoed the motion of the dance. Dunk joined in, his massive palms meeting with a sound like a smith’s hammer, his eyes never leaving the Princess as she danced like a wildfire contained only by the yellow silk walls of the tent.
The music finally hit a crashing, discordant finale as the fiddlers pulled their bows in one last, long scream of horsehair on wood. Lyonel came to a halt with a triumphant stomp that made the nearby wine pitchers rattle, still holding Alysanne by the waist to keep her from spinning right off her feet.
“There!” Lyonel roared, his chest heaving under his yellow doublet. “A Stormlander reel to shake the dust from your Targaryen bones! Tell me, girl, does the Red Keep have anything half as honest as that?”
Alysanne leaned against him for a moment, her breath coming in ragged, laughing gasps. Her hair was a tangled halo, though she looked more radiant than she ever had in a crown.
“Honest?” she managed, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “It’s a wonder you haven’t brought the whole pavilion down, Lyonel. My father would call that a riot, not a dance.”
“Your father may be a dragon, but he hasn’t enough thunder in his blood!” Lyonel barked, finally releasing her. He turned his boisterous gaze toward the periphery, where Dunk was still standing, his large hands resting awkwardly on his belt. “And you, Ser Giant! You didn’t trample a single fellow! A miracle of the Seven!”
Dunk cleared his throat, his face still a warm, brandy-flushed bronze. “I... I tried my best, m’lord. The Princess is a very light partner. It makes it easier not to trip.”
Alysanne smoothed her dress, her eyes drifting back to Dunk with a soft, lingering amusement.
“A ‘light partner,’ is it?” she teased, her voice dropping back into that melodic register. “Is that the poet in you speaking, Ser Duncan? Or just the cider?”
“A bit of both, I suspect,” Dunk admitted, a shy but genuine grin tugging at his mouth. He looked down at her, the height difference once again making the world feel very small and quiet between them despite the surrounding roar. “Though I meant it. Truly.”
“Well,” Alysanne murmured, her hand reaching out to flick a stray bit of straw from his rough-spun sleeve. “You held your own against a Lord of the Realm. That’s more than most men in this meadow can say tonight.”
She looked back at the tent entrance, the reality of the hour finally beginning to settle in. The revelry was reaching its peak, which meant the guards would soon be changing; and her absence would be noticed.
“I should go,” she said, though she made no move to leave just yet. “’Lest I be skinned for my rule-breaking.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Dunk asked. The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it, blunt and hopeful. “At least before the lists?”
“I imagine so, I must retain a modicum of respect,” she said, before gesturing around the tent. “Contrary to popular belief.”
They both chuckled. When it died, the smile was still playing about her lips, something like intrigue glimmering in her eyes.
“Fare thee well, Ser Duncan the Tall.”
“Sleep well, m’lady. I hope your sleep is free of bed bugs and the like-... not that I’d expect you’d be havin’ many a bed bug in your type of establishment-“
“Goodnight, Ser Duncan.”
She spoke over his ramble, allowing the rest of his words to be swallowed.
And with that, she left.
Dunk’s gaze followed the sway of her hips until it was swallowed by the shifting tent flaps. He stood there, planted to the spot, the phantom weight of her hand still tingling against his palm.
A sudden, stinging slap cracked against the base of his skull.
“Oi! Steady on it!” he exclaimed automatically.
Dunk’s head had snapped forward, his teeth clicking together as he stumbled a half-step. He whirled around, one hand flying to the back of his neck, only to find himself looking down into the beaming, wolfish face of the Laughing Storm.
“What was that for?!”
Lyonel didn’t look sorry in the slightest. He was massaging his own hand as if he’d just struck a stone wall, his dark eyes sparkling with a mixture of amusement and something far more sober.
He leaned in, the smell of strong cider and roast boar thick on his breath. The jovial mask hadn’t slipped, but the warning behind it was as sharp as a jagged flint.
“A word of caution,” Lyonel warned, his thumb gesturing vaguely toward the spot where Alysanne had vanished. “I wouldn’t play with fire. Even a giant can be reduced to ash if he stands too close to a dragon’s hearth.”