Chapter Text
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Daeron woke with the taste of smoke in his mouth, as if he had been breathing a fire that did not belong to any hearth.
For a long moment he lay still in the dim, listening to the tent breathe around him, canvas shifting with the night wind, distant horses stamping and snorting like they were troubled by their own dreams. His head throbbed in the familiar way that usually promised nothing more than shame and sour wine. This was different. This pain had teeth.
He closed his eyes again, because he did not want to see it, and because closing his eyes never stopped it.
A dragon lay dead across the meadow, vast and black, its wings spread in a ruinous fan that blotted out the dawn. It should have been magnificent. It should have been glorious. It was only heavy, only final, the way a crown becomes heavy when it is placed on the wrong head.
Under the dragon’s wing, a man lived.
Daeron saw the man’s hands first, big hands, scarred and clumsy, curled in the grass as if he had tried to dig himself out of fate. The man’s hair was light with sweat and dirt. His mouth was split. One eye was swelling shut. He should have been dead. He was not.
Ser Duncan the Tall breathed.
And somewhere near the dragon’s skull, a prince lay broken, bright blood spilling into trampled green, while the crowd roared as if they were watching a puppet show.
Daeron had watched it all twice in the space of one heartbeat, because dreams did not understand mercy. Then he had jolted awake, lungs heaving, hands shaking, and the world had snapped back into the stale ordinary stink of his own weakness.
He sat up slowly and pressed his palms to his eyes until sparks danced behind his lids. He was still drunk enough to be miserable and sober enough to remember.
That was the cruelest place to be.
Someone outside the tent laughed, loud and careless. Someone else answered with a jeer. The tourney grounds of Ashford did not sleep so much as doze, always ready to wake for blood or song. Daeron could hear a lute somewhere, and the sound made him want to throw something at the musician’s head.
He groped for the wineskin beside his cot out of habit, fingers closing around leather. The first pull brought a thin comfort, the second brought disgust, and the third stopped halfway to his mouth.
The dream sat on his tongue like ash.
He lowered the skin and stared at it as if it had betrayed him personally. In the old days, before he had learned the easy rhythm of self destruction, he would have called what he saw a dragon dream and believed the gods meant something by it. Now he mostly called it a headache and drank until it went away.
It was not going away.
Daeron swung his legs off the cot, bare feet sinking into cold grass. The chill sharpened him in an unpleasant way, like a slap from a woman who had every right. He fumbled for his boots, knocked one over, cursed softly, then laughed once under his breath because it was ridiculous for a prince of House Targaryen to lose a boot in his own tent.
Ridiculous was not the worst thing a prince could be.
He dressed without calling for a servant, because he did not want witnesses to his trembling hands. The world loved a drunken prince as long as he stayed entertaining. The world did not love a drunken prince who looked afraid.
When he pushed out into the night, the air hit him clean and wet, carrying the smells of horse sweat and damp earth, cooking fat cooling in abandoned pans, and the faint, sharp edge of the river. Torches guttered in iron brackets. Shadows moved between tents, soldiers and squires and whores and fools who thought tomorrow belonged to them.
Daeron’s stomach rolled.
Tomorrow belonged to the dead dragon.
He drew his cloak tighter and started walking with purpose, because purpose was armor and he had very little else. He knew where Dunk was being held. Everyone did. The hedge knight who dared to strike a prince of the blood had become the only story worth telling, and the tourney grounds hummed with it like an infection.
As Daeron walked, he tried to arrange the night into something he could control.
Facts, he told himself. Start with facts.
Dunk had struck Aerion in front of witnesses, because Aerion had hurt the Dornish girl. That much was true, and truth had never saved anyone at court. Aerion would demand vengeance, because Aerion always demanded, and because Aerion believed the world was made to kneel beneath him.
Then there was Egg.
Daeron’s throat tightened at the thought, the smallest of them, stubborn as a stone in a shoe. Egg had run off to play at being a stableboy and a squire, and Daeron had been too lazy, too tired, too wrapped in wine and pity to drag him back. When Dunk had been arrested, Egg had done what Daeron had not, he had acted.
In the dream, Dunk lived.
In the dream, someone else died for him.
Daeron’s feet slowed. His mind tried to slide sideways, tried to make the image less clear. A dead dragon could mean anything. A great beast with wings so large they could cover the meadow could be a thousand metaphors. He could be wrong. He could be wrong, and that would be such a relief it made him nauseous.
He was not wrong.
The memory of the broken prince in the grass, that flash of bright blood against green, had the wrong shape for Aerion. Aerion would not lie still like that. Aerion would be screaming, even in death, furious that the world had the audacity to continue without him.
No. The prince in the dream had been still. Noble even in ruin, which was a ridiculous thought, and yet it clung.
Baelor.
Daeron’s mouth went dry.
His uncle did not deserve to die under a dragon that was not real.
He reached the guard post where Dunk was being held, a makeshift pen with men posted to look stern and important. One of the guards straightened when Daeron approached, recognition snapping through him.
“My prince,” the man said, uneasy, because nobody liked dealing with Targaryens who might change their minds.
Daeron smiled at him, because smiling was another kind of weapon. “Is the prisoner awake?”
The guard hesitated. “He has been awake, my prince. He has not slept much.”
Of course he had not. Dunk had nothing to dull fear except stubbornness, and stubbornness did not soften the edges. Daeron nodded as if that answered something, then stepped closer to the barrier.
“I wish to speak with him.”
The guard looked torn between obedience and common sense. Common sense lost. It always did with princes.
He unbarred the way and let Daeron through.
Inside, Dunk sat on the ground with his back against a post, long legs folded awkwardly, wrists bound. Even seated he looked too big for the space, like a man built for open sky and long roads, not cages. His face was bruised, his lip split, one eye darkened. When he lifted his head, his gaze was steady in a way that made Daeron’s chest ache with something complicated and unpleasant.
“So,” Dunk said, voice rough, “the prince comes to look at his handiwork.”
Daeron stopped a few paces away. He had imagined this moment a dozen different ways, each one ending in wit, in cruelty, in the familiar defense of pretending nothing mattered. Under the weight of the dream, all of it felt thin.
“It is not my handiwork,” Daeron said. “Not the part that matters.”
Dunk’s expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened. “Aye? Which part matters, then?”
Daeron swallowed. He could hear his own pulse. He could hear the night outside continuing as if this conversation was not a hinge in the world.
“The part where you die,” Daeron said quietly.
For the first time, Dunk’s composure flickered. Not fear exactly, but the wary attention of a man who had learned that madness and prophecy sometimes wore the same face.
Daeron took a breath and forced himself to keep going, because stopping meant accepting the ending.
“I accused you of kidnapping my brother,” he said. “That was a lie. I did it because it was easier than admitting the truth, that Egg ran from us because we are unbearable.”
Dunk stared at him. “Egg is your brother.”
“Yes,” Daeron said, and felt the word cut. “And I have been a poor one.”
Silence stretched. Somewhere outside, a horse whinnied, high and nervous.
Dunk’s mouth twisted, not quite a smile. “If you came here to confess, you have chosen a fine time.”
“I came here because I dreamed,” Daeron said, and hated how it sounded, like a plea, like a performance. He made himself meet Dunk’s eyes anyway. “I have dreams. I have had them since I was a boy. I learned to drown them because they only ever showed me what I could not bear.”
Dunk’s gaze held. “And what did you see?”
Daeron’s hands curled in his cloak. He could still feel the phantom weight of the dragon’s wing, the way it covered the meadow like a shroud.
“I saw you,” he said. “Alive, in the grass, under something dead that should not have been able to die. And I saw a prince bleeding for it.”
Dunk went very still. “Which prince?”
Daeron tried to speak and found his throat locked. He forced the name out anyway, because names had power and he needed power more than he needed comfort.
“Baelor.”
Dunk’s jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, anger flashed over his face, the honest anger of a man who had been thrown into a game too large for him. “Your uncle has done nothing to me.”
“I know.” Daeron’s voice cracked on the last word and he hated himself for it. He recovered with effort, smoothing his expression into something more composed. “That is why I am here.”
Dunk’s eyes narrowed. “If you are telling the truth, why did you accuse me at all?”
Because I am a coward, Daeron thought. Because I am tired. Because it is easier to be the drunk in the corner than the brother who stands between blades.
He said, “Because I thought it would end quickly. I thought Aerion would have his satisfaction and you would be punished and I would be able to drink and forget. Then Egg spoke. Then the whole meadow decided you were a story.”
“And now you think you can change it,” Dunk said, not mocking, just blunt, the way big men often were.
Daeron exhaled slowly. “I do not know if I can. I only know I cannot watch it happen without moving.”
Dunk looked at him for a long time. The torchlight caught in the bruises on his cheekbone, in the stubborn set of his mouth. “What are you asking of me, my prince?”
Daeron almost laughed again, because the answer was absurd and frightening and, for the first time in years, clean.
“I am asking you to let me fix what I broke,” he said. “I will retract the accusation in front of witnesses. I will tell them you did not steal Egg, that Egg chose you. And if Aerion insists on the trial anyway, because he will, then I will make sure Baelor does not have to step into it.”
Dunk’s brows drew together. “How?”
Daeron’s pulse beat hard against his ribs. The idea had landed in him like a stone dropped into a well, heavy and inevitable.
He said it anyway.
“I will be your seventh.”
Dunk blinked, once, slow. “You are drunk.”
“Usually,” Daeron agreed, and there was the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. “Tonight I am terrified, which is sobering in its own way.”
“You would fight your own blood,” Dunk said, voice low.
“I would fight my own lies,” Daeron corrected. “If Aerion wants seven, then he can have seven, but not the seven he expects.”
Dunk’s gaze searched Daeron’s face, as if looking for the trick, the cruelty, the easy end of a joke. Daeron did not give him one. He stood there in the damp night with his heart in his throat and let himself be seen, which felt more dangerous than any blade.
Finally, Dunk said, “If you do this, they will not forgive you.”
Daeron’s laugh came out thin. “They have never forgiven me anything. They have only tolerated me when I was convenient.”
Dunk’s eyes softened in a way that surprised Daeron, just slightly, as if the hedge knight recognized that kind of loneliness. Then Dunk’s mouth firmed again, because softness did not keep a man alive.
“What about Egg,” Dunk asked.
Daeron’s chest tightened at the name. “Egg will be furious,” he said, and a reluctant warmth threaded through the fear. “Egg is always furious when someone else takes a risk. He thinks it is his job to do all the brave things himself.”
That, at least, made Dunk’s mouth twitch. “Aye. That sounds like him.”
Daeron stepped closer to the barrier, lowering his voice so the guards outside would not hear more than they already had. “Listen to me, ser. When I retract my accusation, do not argue. Do not refuse. Let them see the truth plainly. If Aerion demands the trial anyway, and he will, you must gather your men. You must get to seven.”
Dunk stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am,” Daeron said. “And if I am not, then I am still your seventh, because a fool with a lance is better than no man at all.”
Dunk’s gaze held, and something in the air between them shifted, not trust yet, not affection, but the first small click of two lives aligning toward the same end.
“All right,” Dunk said at last, voice rougher than before. “If you stand with me, I will not throw it back in your face. But you do not get to die for pride either.”
Daeron’s throat tightened. The dream had shown him death hovering close, but it had not shown him this, someone telling him he did not get to throw himself away.
He managed, “I will do my best to disappoint you.”
Dunk snorted, a sound that was almost laughter, and Daeron felt absurdly grateful for it.
Outside, the tourney grounds shifted and murmured, the meadow waiting for dawn as if dawn was a hungry thing. Daeron turned toward that waiting, toward the place where his uncle would have stepped forward and died if Daeron did nothing.
He adjusted his cloak like a man preparing for court, and for once, it was not an act.
“I will speak at first light,” he said. “Try to rest, ser. We may need you alive.”
Dunk’s eyes followed him as he left. “My prince,” Dunk called softly.
Daeron paused.
Dunk hesitated, then said, “Daeron.”
The name, spoken without mockery, without the oily sweetness of court, landed in Daeron’s chest like a promise he had not earned yet.
He did not trust himself to answer with anything clever. He only nodded once and walked back into the night, carrying the weight of a dead dragon that did not have to be real, if he was brave enough to make the world change course.
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