Chapter Text
The idea was stupid.
Aerion lies beneath a couple of blankets. Bruised. Naked, maybe. Dunk tries not to think about that. He tries to think of forcing out a few more words. Of how to open his mouth, move his lips, shape the sounds. Dunk has forgotten how to speak. Speaking hurts.
The idea was horribly stupid.
Looking at Aerion hurts too. Dunk did this to him. Dark marks on pale skin. Split lips. A thin, mangled body. Aerion deserved it, but now he can’t get out of bed, and Dunk did this to him.
“I… didn’t know,” the alpha says with difficulty. “If I had… If I had known, I… I would never have…”
Aerion lies there with his eyes closed. You could think he’s asleep. But Dunk sees how fast he’s breathing. Sees how Aerion flinches at the sound of his voice. Sees the crease between his brows. The prince frowns deeper and deeper with every word. The words are awkward. Wooden. They get stuck in his throat.
The stupidest idea in the world.
But Dunk couldn’t do otherwise.
“I would never have raised a hand against you if I had… known. Who you are. I didn’t know.”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t have thought of it. He should have, really. But thinking – that was never quite his strength, as Ser Arlan always said. And he was right. Always right. Probably right even not to knight him. Now Dunk sees it. Now he agrees. The shame makes him want to punch the wall, to sink into the ground, to scream, to be hit again. Hard. Much harder than in that fight. Dunk deserved it.
Knights are supposed to protect omegas.
Knights are not supposed to grind them into the dirt, knock out their teeth, cut them and beat, beat, beat them into a bloody mess.
“You know nothing,” Aerion hisses.
His eyes are closed. His voice is weak and angry. He shakes his head against the pillows. The prince doesn’t even turn toward Dunk. As if he isn’t there. As if Aerion is speaking to himself.
“No, I… I understood. That’s why I want to… apologize,” Dunk barely moves his swollen lips. “I scented it when…”
When he knocked Aerion to the ground, straddled him and beat him with everything he had. It smelled of blood. Of dirt. Of fear. And – wrong. When Aerion whispered that he yielded, and Dunk leaned closer, closer, closer, to hear the words. The scent was wrong. It pierced him like a spear under the ribs. It frightened him more than the whole fight before that.
The scent of an omega.
Dunk beat an omega.
An omega is dying on this bed. There isn’t a single unbroken place left on him. It hurts him to breathe. Dunk is to blame.
Aerion finally turns his face. Fixes him with a feverish stare. His eyes are violet. Threaded with red veins. Dark bruises beneath them.
“You. Know. Nothing,” Aerion stresses every word. “Nothing. Do you understand?”
It sounds like an order.
It reaches Dunk. That it is an order. Aerion is ordering him to know nothing. Dunk nods at once. Pain shoots through his neck, and the alpha doesn’t even know what hurts there. What struck it. Everything hurts. But looking at Aerion – that is worse. His eyes are two embers in the darkness of the chamber. Smoldering. Almost burning with a hatred Dunk feels against his skin.
“I won’t tell. Anyone. I didn’t tell, and I won’t,” the alpha assures him. “I just… I wanted to apologize. To you. I wouldn’t have… Truly. That’s all.”
His own voice betrays him. It’s hoarse, and that isn’t normal. Dunk catches omega's scent – and that isn’t normal either. Aerion must be masking it somehow. Probably wearing someone else’s clothes. Some alpha’s. To smell like an alpha. It worked well enough. Dunk believed it too. So what if the prince is short, and thin, and light as straw. While Aerion walked around with that proud air and broke people’s fingers, Dunk never once thought something didn’t add up. Omegas are usually different. Completely different.
But the prince lay beneath him, yielding, and the sweet scent filled his lungs. Now it does too. Probably because Aerion is bare to the waist. Pale skin gleaming with sweat. His eyes – violet and cruel. Narrowed with contempt. If Aerion could move, he would be knocking Dunk’s teeth out right now. It’s written all over him.
Dunk would let him.
Not all of them. But a couple, at least. For fairness. Because you don’t beat omegas. Because Dunk deserved it. Because he can barely breathe with the lump in his throat. Shame. Or it’s the omega’s scent. It grows harder to tell with every second. His hands tremble slightly.
Dunk curls them into fists.
“You really are stupid,” Aerion drawls.
His voice is a little lower than usual. A little rougher. And he doesn’t look at Dunk again. Only upward, at the ceiling, into the dark.
The air in the room could be cut with a knife. Dunk can’t breathe it. It burns the lungs from within. The scent – faint, sweet and sharp, like spices from Dorne. Dunk swallows. He suddenly realizes he’s been staring at the prince for five minutes. The prince is bare to the waist, and Dunk is staring at him. At every bruise. Every inch of pale skin.
Dunk drops his gaze to the floor.
He truly is unworthy of being a knight.
“If that’s all,” Aerion hisses, almost like a snake, “then why the hell are you still standing here?”
He would knock out his teeth and break his bones. But the prince barely has the strength to lift a hand. Toward the door. The gesture – even so weak – lands like an order. Or a slap.
“Get out.”
Dunk gets out. He smashes his forehead against the beam above the door, fumbles the door open, and gets out. Feeling that gaze on his back. It cuts. It’s under his skin. Everything feels heavy, and wrong, and his hands are still trembling.
Dunk leans his hand against the cold wall. He was only standing there and talking, but now he needs to catch his breath, as after a fight. Maybe it’s even good that his mind is slow (from blood loss? from not being able to sleep?). Dunk doesn’t really want to think. He is—if he’s honest—afraid to understand what all of this means. Usually things were simpler with omegas. At least breathing was easier.
“He’ll slit your throat,” a mocking voice suddenly says. “As soon as he can walk. He’ll definitely slit your throat.”
Dunk looks up at Daeron. He is in black clothes. They are all in black today. But thinking about that is almost unbearable.
“Did you dream that?” Dunk asks.
“No,” Daeron smirks and takes a sip from a flask of something foul-smelling. “You don’t need dreams for that. Just a little experience.”
The wound in Dunk's side suddenly flares with pain. Alpha draws in a breath through clenched teeth. And then he understands. Daeron’s scent. Moderately heavy, musky, fairly… neutral. Usually Aerion smelled like his brother. That must mean the prince’s clothes are hanging in his brother’s wardrobe. Omega’s clothes. To smell like a non-omega’s.
They are all hiding it here as a family. That’s even clever. It makes sense for brothers to have similar scents. And no one would suspect anything. Not after the way Aerion behaves.
“Though I’ve never seen him as happy as before this fight,” Daeron leans against the wall. Takes a few more swigs from the flask. “The Trial of the Seven. One against a crowd of alphas. I thought Father would skin him for ideas like that. But ho-ow happy Aerion was. He could have burst from happiness right there. Spared us all.”
“He…”
Dunk breaks off.
It just feels wrong to laugh at Aerion like that.
“He fought well,” Dunk finally says.
Daeron answers with a snort. He looks out the window. At the black-and-red sunset. Standing by the wall of black stone. Everything here has turned black after the fight. Black seeps into the soul and cuts through the veins.
“Because he’s not normal. ‘Fought well’… You know. Once he beat a guard very well. Tied him up as a target, shot him with a crossbow about ten times, and cut off his head. And another one… The other suffered longer. Aerion cut out his eyes and tore out his tongue. I don’t know what the man saw. Something he wasn’t supposed to see,” Daeron shakes the flask. Drinks again. “And when he was little, he smothered a maester with a pillow. Aerion said the man died on his own. But we all knew he smothered him. Because the maester found out. Or so Aerion thought.”
Daeron tilts his head. Studies Dunk almost sympathetically.
“So why did you come to him?”
“To apologize. For hitting him, even though he is, well…” The sweet scent tightens his throat. “Him.”
Daeron laughs. A hoarse, barking laugh. He doubles over and laughs so hard that, it seems, another couple of vessels burst in his eyes. It doesn’t sound cheerful. Not at all.
“He’ll cut you into pieces,” Daeron pats Dunk on the shoulder and disappears into the darkness of the corridor. “But at least you were entertaining. More entertaining than that maester.”
It doesn’t feel like a compliment to Dunk.
“And Father is calling you!” Daeron shouts from around the corner.
Even better.
Even blacker.