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Daeron had told him, this hedge knight who was to fight his brother, about his dream. Ser Duncan had listened to it, to his visions of the tall man himself, and the death of a dragon.
The Stranger was to come for one of them, a Targaryen, in just a few hours, Daeron could feel it. Perhaps it would be for Daeron himself.
As the two of them spoke, his little brother remained inside the tent, as Daeron had asked of him. Young Aegon was a good lad and thankfully obedient when he needed to be; it lingered weighty in Daeron’s chest, what Egg had said earlier before them, something Daeron had known for years yet which still managed to wound them both.
Their brother was indeed a monster.
Perhaps Ser Duncan should know it, all.
Something that not even dear Egg knew.
“I had a twin, once, as you may know,” Daeron started, his eyes going past the man, into the night. Into nothing.
“I have heard of it,” Ser Duncan replied, his words quiet.
“She did not live long, my sister. We both were only five-and-ten when she passed away.”
Daeron drew a deep breath and let himself recall her, his sister’s fair face, her voice, always so calm and as sweet as honey. Her unique kindness.
“Father named her Daena, after my lady mother. She took after her, as I too do, she had sandy blonde hair rather than silver and her face was so much like hers. I loved her dearly. We all did.”
Daena had been indeed pretty the way Mother was, and Dyanna used to say she was to be even more beautiful than herself. In time, as a woman grown. Only that Daena would never reach her six-and-ten nameday.
“She was not bold, like our mother. My sister was shy and polite, always affectionate and kind to all of us, to me and her little siblings. She deserved not her fate, Ser Duncan. My Daena should have been a happy young woman. She would have been too an excellent mother, eventually, if the gods had allowed it, not that they have the best fucking plans for us all.”
The hedge knight nodded, simply letting Daeron go on. Daeron wondered briefly about the man, of whom he really knew so little. Had he too known loss, as he himself had? That of a beloved sister, a mother gone before her time?
Had he lost love, as Daeron once did…?
“Daena was like me, ser. She too dreamed of dead dragons. It is perhaps the price some of us are to pay for what our ancestors dared to do, to master those beasts and use them as they did, to sow death and destruction.”
A curse of madness, begotten from madness, that one. Never a gift.
“She used to tell me of it, just as I told her. Mine were odd dreams, which came true in the future. Daena sometimes dreamed of vile happenings of the past. It haunted her, for years it did, a particular dream about a princess, a dragonrider unlike herself, and of her children that she had loved, murdered one by one after the other, a babe and two children. Her visions were dreadful, they used to gave me nightmares before my own visions grew even more harrowing themselves.”
Daena had told their parents about the dreams back then, just as Daeron himself had done. He could tell, even as a boy, that Maekar and Dyanna did not believe in the truth in them, however much they could cherish the twins, their first daughter and son.
It was but a children’s game, for the lord and lady of Summerhall. Only that.
They had worried, in any case, when Daena had told them, of the recurring dream that never was to left her.
The princess’ fate, an innocent girl who had ended her own life, crushed by the cruelty of her pain and despair.
“The boy I was wished to marry her one day, you see. And how could I not? She was my twin, my other half.”
Daeron laughed, shortly, remembering. That was certainly never going to happen.
“Alas, Daena only loved me as a brother, and not precisely in the one way Targaryen women do their brother-husband. Her heart happened to belong to our pretty cousin, valiant Valarr. Perhaps the king would have allow it, that wish of hers. I am certain that Father and my uncle would have been content, had things turned out quite differently, of course.”
Daeron sighed, before letting it out.
“My brother Aerion… he was a year younger than we were, and already terrible as he could be. The gods were unkind, that he had to want her.”
Daena had told him, how he treated her, yet Daeron suspected that shame made her not speak all of it. Apparently, their younger brother would sometimes corner her in the castle’s deserted corridors, she had told him, to tease her. How often and unpleasantly Aerion had begun to pester her, convinced that if Daena was to wed a Targaryen, it had to be him alone.
“You know what they said, all Westeros does. That my sister was troubled in the head and died by her own hand, a sad, mad day of tragedy for our House. My father never wanted to hear a different tale, and I know my mother also believed that her girl had chosen to end her life that way. I do not blame them. I know how hard it was for me to see her dead; I just cannot imagine their pain. It is so against nature, for parents to lit the pyre of their own child.”
He knew that one day the memory of her would fade from his mind, and how deeply that certainty hurt Daeron.
Something had died within him too on the day his twin had turned to ashes.
“But I know, my good ser, what really happened.”
“What is that you mean?” Before him, Ser Duncan now stood puzzled. “The streets of King’s Landing whispered of the dragon princess that had used a knife against herself, I remember it well. Had she not died that way…?”
No, of course not. Daena had dreamed of death, but she wanted to live. To know and enjoy love, and fun, to lead a peaceful, safe existance, and even to grow old, in time.
Daeron shook his head. The knight’s blue eyes were large as he watched Daeron, wide as if he had begun to understand.
“I eavesdropped what the maester said to my father. Daena indeed passed of a slit throat, but she also had marks on her body, stab wounds in her belly. And blood down her thighs, that too. She did not died a maiden, my poor sweet sister. No one ever dared to say it again, after that day, as well, how the dagger she supposedly took to do her deed was one that belonged to our brother.”
“Aerion?!”
“Of course I mean Aerion, who fucking else? My lord father chose not to think that of his son, his perfect, flawless boy that he shall adore until his dying day. However, I do not lie to myself as he does, no matter how much easier that might be for all of us. I knew both my siblings well, Ser Duncan. He indeed wanted her, whilst she wanted him not. I know she denied him, that damned night, and his rage did the rest. Aerion was not yet a man grown but he was already a monster, one taller and stronger than Daena. He slew her for rejecting him, but first he took her maidenhood by force.”
Daeron shuddered and looked away, before lowering his words into a mutter, one left to the wind.
“Or mayhaps he had her afterwards, once his knife had already made her stop fighting. And breathing, may the Others take him. But he undoubtedly left her bedchamber with her blood on his hands and cock.”
Before him, and through the wetness that had made its way into Daeron’s eyes, the tall knight shifted in his place, apparently knowing not what to say.
And what else was there to say? His brother Aerion had never admitted what had really occurred that day, only that he had found her, bloodied and dead as she was. Their younger siblings did not need to know, and only Daeron carried that notion within him, weighty as a thousand rocks even now, many years later.
“My sister did not deserve that, what he did to her. Aerion lied, you know, just as he lied about Egg’s cat, which he also killed just because he could. He possesses no morals or compassion, and we all know what it is said about the kinslayer.”
“Egg is a good boy. He does not deserve what has been done to him, either.”
“You are certainly right, ser. Aerion is what he is, and not even we his own family are safe from him. Hopefully we shall be at some point in the future, if the Seven Above were just as to fucking rid us of him somehow.”
Daeron wiped his face, the sweat that bothered him and also some stray tear that had willed to leave his eye, borne from his raw resentment and loss. He straightened his posture and glanced back at the man, before mouthing it. His heart’s desire. A request.
And with it, Daeron gave a forced, false smile, for he felt nothing resembling joy at that moment.
“So, Ser Duncan. If you could do me a kindness, and it really is a dragon what you must slay at the trial, make certain it is my brother Aerion whom you kill, if that please you. I would like to meet again my sweet twin, for certain, see her again myself if I must. But mayhaps not this soon, not on the morrow, if such could be.”
Ser Duncan seemed to approve of that sentiment of his, and of Daeron’s wish, even if the knight uttered it not.
Soon they were parting ways, and it was left to the gods to decide whether that wish of is would come true, for Daeron knew that the dream itself was to be fulfilled, some way or another.
He would not mind seeing, this time, the burning pyre of a different sibling.