The Green Knight

by notanotherrwriterr

Summary:

Aerion recalls the words his uncle had spoken to him then — remembers, too, the way he had said them again years later, those knowing mismatched eyes fixed on him as Aerion donned his armour before stepping onto that field at Ashford.

“Your fire, it is not yours alone. When you breathe, you make dragons of us all, nephew.”

He thinks of them again now, where the frontier of mud and earth encroaches, ever threatening to drag him down and bind his body within its dark, fevered tomb. Though why the words rise from his memory in this moment, he cannot say.

Aerion gets caught attempting to Mulan it up.

Chapter 1

The whole plan was hardly difficult to enact.

Opportunity had been everything and Aerion had enough of a window to start with that nobody would miss his presence for some time. Locked away in his rooms in Summerhall due to premature heat sickness. At least that was what they thought.

It bought him at least four days, five if he’s lucky before his guards figure it out. Then there’s the day it would take for them to notify his grandsire from the Red Keep. An extra day or two in addition to that to track down his father on the front lines to make him aware.

That gave him more than a week to catch up to the conscripted troops gathering at Ashford meadow.

Venya his loyal and fierce mare, despite not being battle-worn, at least had the temperament to withstand almost any obstacle in her way. That and her endurance was a match for any Dothraki Khal’s seed. She would get him there before the army marched north for the Crownlands.

And there was the matter of his armour. He could hardly turn up in his own, intricate in its blackened and spiked design, with his personal three-headed dragon sigil. All those in his family that could hold a sword were at the frontlines. That left Aerion’s options limited and he couldn’t exactly help himself to a common castle guard’s armour - lest he want to bleed out immediately from the first rebel who manages to sneak a blade through his plates and to stab him in the jugular.

By some miracle of the gods, who must favour his plan, he manages to find something. Daeron’s old armour from when he was one and seven. Just before he shot up like a reed and his shoulders broadened out to resemble a stature more similar to their father. It had been shortly after his knighthood and he’d chosen to keep a simple black armour, although the silver had started to show in places due to the ages.

It provided Aerion with the necessary anonymity without having to sacrifice efficiency. Common enough so someone would not look twice and think him highborn but sophisticated enough that most would guess he was a knight of renown or perhaps the son from some vassal state.

What Aerion does not care to draw attention to is the fact that as a man grown he wears and perfectly fits the armour of his brother from when he was still on the cusp of manhood. Aerion need not take any more hits to his pride.

Had his father and uncle not been so adamant that a battlefield was the last place for a Prince of the Blood and a Targaryen Omega, then Aerion would not have needed to go to all this fucking bother. But in their infinite wisdom, despite Aerion’s years of training with steel and wood, had pressed upon him that Aerion’s duty during wartime was not that of the sword and shield. To give his blood and sweat and fire for his King.

No — instead what was expected of him was the duty of silk and comfort. To sit and rot away in his chambers while the rage and fire in his body festered. His duty was his womb, to keep himself sweet and pretty and present himself on his back with his legs spread ripe to fuck for the first lord who accepted his dowry. For the highest bidder that his uncle sells him off to.

Anyone who has fought in a war knew what risks it carried and despite how lines of succession and heirs were protected as best they could, things did not always go to plan. And despite that the way his family had bred like rabbits it was impressed upon Aerion how important he was to the preservation of his family line. Especially when war was known for not leaving the branches of any noble houses unscathed.

So that’s all he was, a broodmare who was shut away in a tower like some pathetic damsel. Moons went by as he waited, guards posted at his door at every hour, there when he woke in the morrow. Always a pace behind him like pesky unwanted shadows. He was no better than a prisoner and they his captors.

When word finally reached him from his father it was with no tales of glory of war, nor expressing any remorse of his wrongful treatment of his only omega son. Instead it was brief, cutting and final. It notified Aerion of his betrothal to an alpha prince of House Martell. Seems the king wished to gift the loyalists for all their years of fealty. And his father didn’t fail to mention how the promise of Aerion’s maidenhead fetched them enough Dornish ships to double their navy.

Aerion had the letter, pale yellow flame licking up the parchment to dust and nipping at his fingertips. That evening he finally committed to his plan.

“Lykiri.” Aerion murmurs as Venya snorts her displeasure at his commands to slow her pace, she doesn’t halt right away, dancing back and forth while fighting for control to lunge them back into a canter. Aerion reaches out to rub her neck in an effort to soothe his fierce companion taking in the quiet forest clearing before them.

The clearing opens like a quiet breath in the middle of the trees, ringed by towering oak and pine. In the dwindling light Aerion can just about make out the oaks with their thick, gnarled branches spread wide, their heavy leaves forming a deep green canopy at the edges, while the pines rise taller and straighter, their dark needles whispering softly as the wind moves through them.

In the clearing itself, there is an open patch of ground, soft emerald grass and scatterings of delicate wildflowers. The air feels lighter here, carrying the earthy richness of oak and the sharp, resinous scent of pine.

Around the perimeter, the trees lean inward—oaks broad and ancient, pines tall and watchful—as if guarding the space. Their shadows stretch toward the centre, but never quite claim it, leaving the clearing suspended between light and the quiet, enclosing forest.

It’s likely the last sight of peace and beauty he will see for a while.

“Not a bad place to stop for the night, hm?” Aerion murmurs to his steed, giving her a final pat as dusk continues to press in on them.

Aerion does his best to settle on his bed roll. Quietly cursing as he catches the pressure of a sharp rock or unyielding root. A far cry from the comfort he’s used to, he eventually gets comfortable enough to settle, his gaze doesn’t drift to the stars above. Instead his eyes find the crackling camp-fire beside him. His attention locked on the interwoven flames, who do battle and dance together like warring demons of marigold.

It lulls him to sleep eventually and he falls into slumber unaffected by dreams.

On the morrow he rises, early and as fresh-faced as he can be after waking with the scathing refrain of the fucking songbirds. He and Venya continue to move west, only half a day’s ride ahead of them to Ashford.

Aerion passes through the quaint, pallid hamlets of the Reach, where the fields of hay and wheat roll on in endless, tired waves beneath a pale grey sky. Peasant women bend low over their backbreaking work, hands roughened by soil and season, giving him little more than a passing glance as he moves along the dirt track. They are plainly used to men in steel and leather riding these roads, knowing that disregard is the best strategy to secure their own welfare.

Each village he crosses wears the same quiet exhaustion. Mud-caked cottages huddle together as if for warmth. Chickens scatter at his approach, and dogs lift their heads only long enough to decide he is not worth the effort of barking at. Those that catch sight of him watch, measure, and return to their work.

And the men—there are so few of them. In every settlement, the able-bodied are absent, gone to one place: war. What remains are the very young, the very old, and those with bodies too injured or broken to be of use elsewhere. Boys with too-large eyes pause in their games seeming to stare at him accusingly. Bent washerwomen linger in doorways with their wicker baskets, face carved by age and toil, yet something in their dull gazes seems to sharpen for a moment, as if uncovering a buried secret.

Occasionally, a figure like a harbinger, twisted limb or hollow stare limps past, marked by whatever battle or misfortune sent him back instead of forward. As if bidding that Aerion do the same while the choice is still his to make.

There is a stillness to it all, Aerion decides. Not of peace, but of some unlikely endurance—an understanding etched into the land itself that life here is not lived so much as survived. Aerion’s not seen the likes since his brief glances of Flea Bottom. He did not recall on his last trip to Ashford, its lands and holdings having been so eroded by deprivation. The lands ravaged of resources and coppers to feed ever hungry bellies and tons of steel.

On the outskirts of Ashford, where his grandsire’s westerly forces had gathered under Targaryen banners to make camp, Aerion pauses at filth-ridden trench, dismounting from his steed.

Aerion can hardly turn up at camp as he is; the smouldering ambered scent sweetened by lilac would turn heads long before he ever broke through the tree line—too refined, too deliberate. The dried herbs in his pouch will be enough to dull it, to smooth the edges of its presence, but not erase it. The rest must be managed through more creative means.

He looks down at the slick, brown-black slurry of mud with distaste. It sits bulging from where stagnant water has sat too long, wet leaves and insects turned to pulp and gods know what else. Things have quietly come apart within it, been consumed and suffocated by it.

The surface quivers faintly, disturbed by slow pockets of air, decayed earth breathing raggedly. The smell that rises is thick, sour and rotting, cloying at the back of his throat — signalling something wrong beneath.

Yet it waits for him still.

Aerion kneels.

His helm will hide the violet of his eyes.

His hair, silvery and moon-spun, kept short since boyhood—still too proud, too visible. Too Valyrian. He has never cut it away entirely like others of his blood who learned survival over legacy. Perhaps they were wiser. Or perhaps they simply broke easier.

A dragon does not file down its horns to assimilate with vipers.

The thought comes without comfort now, however. A mistake, to not have shaved it maybe. One he may yet come to regret. It does little good for him to waste thought over it now. 

He lowers his hands into the mud.

It parts around his fingers with a viscous reluctance, thick as spoiled paste, studded with grit and softened fragments of things long dead. It coats his skin instantly—cold, greasy, clinging—as though it means to keep him. When he drags it free, it stretches in thin, stringing strands before breaking with a faint, wet pull.

He smears it across his brother’s old armour.

It spreads in uneven layers, filling the seams, clogging the engravings, dulling the steel beneath a skin of filth. What little shine the armour did have dies quickly, swallowed whole, replaced by something lifeless and matte. He works it deeper, pressing it in until the metal seems less worn than unearthed—like something dragged from a shallow grave and dressed again in the same soil that tried to claim it.

The smell follows, rising with each movement. Sour. Damp. Lingering.

Behind him, the forest seems to watch in condemnation, his silent witness and accomplice. 

He pauses only a moment before turning to what cannot be so easily hidden.

His hair.

Even in the dim light, it catches what little there is—pale as bone, bright as something that does not belong in places like this. Too clean. Too alive. It betrays him more surely than any sigil or steel.

Aerion’s jaw tightens.

There is no careful way to do this.

He drives his hand back into the mire and drags it through his hair.

The pale strands do not resist, the mud easily catching them, weighing them down, matting silver into dull, lifeless clumps. He works it in harder, grinding filth into the roots until the colour is gone, swallowed beneath brown-black grime. The smell clings close—rot and damp earth, thick in his breath.

Aerion does his best not retch, but it can’t be helped. He’ll grow use to the smell, at least he hopes. 

Still it’s not enough.

He gathers more and smears it across his face.

Cold. Wet. It drags across his soft pillowy skin, filling every line, dulling every edge. Grit grinds between his teeth as some slips too close to his mouth. He does not stop until there is nothing clean left—only a rough, uneven mask of mud.

Only his eyes remain.

Too bright. Like spitting fire. 

He pulls the helm down over them.

And just like that, nothing of Prince Aerion Brightflame remains.

 

_______

 

“Who the fuck are you?”

The voice comes out gruff, rough as nails — demanding in the way it barks and threatens like its owner has a knife to his throat, coaxing that Aerion better have an answer. But he is not held under a blade — so Aerion only meets this baleful character with equal measure of animosity and spite.

Aerion had made it to the fringes of the camp, which in its entirety stretched across the low ridge of Ashford like a second, broken horizon, its lines of tents sagging beneath the weight of damp night air. Specks of crowded inky black covered the once emerald, verdant meadows — like a swarming infestation of beetles pillaging the land.

Scattered every mile, the three-headed dragon banners in their grim majesty whip in the wind. The dragons twist in the wind, their shapes folding and reforming. Red against black, once a sight that would have had Aerion holding his head high, now has him dipping his chin to his chest.

Smoke drifted through everything, clinging low to the ground, rising from cook fires. Beyond, Aerion could just about make the dim glow of forges where armorers hammered out dents that would not matter long. The smoke dulled the sharpness of the camp, softened its edges into something almost indistinct. Aerion found that preferable — for there were details here that did not invite close inspection.

Aerion had left Venya with a smithy on the western fringe of the camp after discovering she had thrown a shoe. The blacksmith was a portly man, his face smeared so thick with soot it seemed to have replaced his brow entirely. What hair he might once have had there had long since been burned away by the forge, leaving the skin bare and faintly reddened.

He paid Aerion little mind, only a grunt of acknowledgement at his request, revealing a stretch of bare, pink gums where his front teeth ought to have been, his attention consumed once again by the persistence of his endless, fiery labour.

One foot in front of the other, Aerion had walked, the ground clinging to his boots as he went. Just mud — mud and ash. It shifted underfoot with a quiet, wet reluctance — an ever-persistent attempt to claim him, mayhaps.

A line of horses stamped and shifted at the edge of the camp, their tack clinking softly. One let out a sharp, almost human cry as it lurched. Animals meant for slaughter grew restless in their cages, birds struggled and shed feathers in sudden flurries of panic, and the camp dogs prowled and barked low for scraps, hunger and agitation sharpening every sound. Every creature in the camp seemed to sense it, on edge with the violence that drew closer.

The men were just as restless as the animals, only they were better at hiding it.

They moved through the camp in uneven currents. Some sat near the fires, hunched close, their voices low and brittle, breaking off or continuing without concern as he passed. Others occupied themselves with quieter tasks — sharpening blades, checking straps, repeating small, controlled motions that gave the appearance of readiness.

Around the larger fires there was a strained sort of mirth. Men spoke of past campaigns with laughter that rang hollow or too sharp, drinking whatever ale they could scavenge to keep their spirits from thinning further. Some swayed too deep into it, voices growing louder until even their humour felt forced.

Beyond the light, Aerion caught sight of a man with his cock in his hand relieving himself without care, pissing into the churned mud. He spotted more than a few bent over as they dry-heaved — some from excess, others from fear that sat too heavy in their bellies to hold.

Aerion was at this moment thankful for the mud he’d coated himself in, masking the stench of it all. Also grateful that it meant no one looked twice at him, allowing him to move through the camp quietly, observing where he must, blurring in with the smoke and ash. Not once did a head rise in curiosity or suspicion at catching a foreign scent that had no place being in a war camp.

Aerion had made it at least a mile without managing to fall into any trouble, and he actually started to believe that he might make it to the front lines without incurring issue. But Aerion had never been good at keeping himself out of bother, often inviting it. Maekar would always comment that, if it were not for his Valyrian colouring, the man was convinced that Aerion and the rest of his siblings would have turned his hair white long before the ravages of time.

“Not another fuckin’ mute.” Comes that gruff voice once more when Aerion does not answer. “I swear we’ve got more than enough fuckin’ rats here — city watch been busy with their forced conscriptions, I see. An army of dishonourable thieves, murderers and sodomites — so much for the decency and gallantry of the King’s army, eh?” There is a chuff of twisted amusement. “What kind of rat are you, boy?”

Aerion curses the gods inwardly. It’s unlike him to be so distracted by his surroundings that he finds himself surrounded without explicitly allowing it to happen. But he’d found himself so hypervigilant to fucking everything that his focus had not been honed onto the correct target.

The smaller enclosed camp that he’d stumbled upon was unremarkable — a solitary tent that would be overcrowded for the number of bodies that Aerion quickly counted with but a cast of the eye.

The man before him sneers with crooked, yellowing teeth. Like Aerion, his face is streaked with mud, but the coating is not as thick, allowing him to make out a thin silver scar that starts from the outer corner of his eye, then thickens as it sweeps down to his jaw. It looks old, the stitched seam of his skin stark and grotesque in its crude, uneven pattern — such work done by an unpractised or hurried hand.

Then comes a soothing, unhurried cadence that has Aerion’s head snapping to his left as his grip tightens on the hilt of his dagger — like a coiled serpent ready to strike. “Club, leave the pup alone.”

Aerion bares his teeth reflexively at the condescension dripping from his tone.

Undeterred by his soft-voiced companion, the snaggle-toothed brute continues. “I have been forced to bear the sight and sound of you lot pissing, shitting and wanking for days.” Raising his voice so it carries to the rest of the miscreants stationed at this sordid camp. “Only fair a man knows another man’s business if I have to entertain more of the same. Or will I need to cut it out of you while you sleep?”

The gums above Aerion’s canine teeth itch. He’d love nothing more than to take a hearty chunk out of this foul thing’s throat. But Aerion hardly wants to run the risk of disease that such an act would bring him.

It’s not like Aerion to ponder his actions when it comes to violence — he just does. Like the currents of Blackwater, he answers to no will but his own, and it is on that act on impulse, yes — but Aerion is not stupid. He’s well aware of another larger figure imposing, pressing in on his back to take advantage of his blind spot. He needs to act carefully now.

Aerion need not worry about the men outside of the three whose attention he’s unfortunately caught, at least. The rest remain lazing on their laurels, too fucking ale-drunk and spineless to make any move to help their campmates.

“Well lad, what’s your name?” the brute tries again impatiently, the grip he has on his axe flexing. Leaning forward, the man seems to take more of a fighting stance while also still appearing relaxed. That has Aerion tensing even more — he recognises the signs of a seasoned warrior like the back of his hand. The reaction doesn’t go unnoticed and is answered with a giddy, crooked-toothed grin.

Aerion sizes the man up.

He’s only half a head taller than him, but his body is most certainly broader — built for strength but not sacrificing speed in how compact it looks. Aerion imagines, unlike his companions, the brute likely hides clean lines and planes of muscle under his leather and chains. He’s also the only one that keeps his hair short, common colouring buzzed close to his head, with muddy dark eyes to match — yet there’s a sharpness of a predator to them. On closer inspection, Aerion catches the bronzed hue of the man’s complexion that cannot be explained by dirt — could it be the colouring of a Dornish bastard, or ancestry from the Free Cities?

The man feints a lunge forward that has Aerion backing up. “Dumb as well, is it?”

“Stay back.” Aerion spits at the rogue, the steel of his dagger gleaming in the firelight, inviting some poor victim to plunge itself into and snuff out.

That only gets him a broader grin. “So it speaks, does it?”

“Keep your voice down,” snaps the man’s spindly companion. Unlike the brute, the man does not reach for his weapon. His pale, misty eyes that watch Aerion seem to bulge bug-like out of his head, and when he speaks his teeth seem too big for him, only accented by the greasy strands of raven hair that frame his face. Those eyes are cutting, like the rest of him — sharp jaw and jutting cheekbones, skin stretched too thin over his bones that Aerion wouldn’t be surprised if it snapped under the tension. “Else one of the daisy boys will catch you.”

There’s a moment of uneasy silence filled only by the rasp of whetstone on steel carried steadily through the air. Aerion’s eyes dart around for a moment until he catches sight of a far-off command pavilion where one of the White Swords is currently stationed. There’ll be few of them here, only present in their duty of rallying the troops north. Still, if even one recognises Aerion, he’s most definitely done for.

The brute takes equal displeasure at the sight of pure snow-white robes, lips curling into a sneer. “White robes — no better than the shit stain left by their mothers on the birthing bed,” he comments to Aerion while he slips his axe back into his belt. “If you are going to survive this, boy, best to avoid those ones — and don’t count on them to sneeze on you if you’re on fire.”

Aerion does not lower his weapon even as the brute seems to have calmed. It’s now that Aerion gets a proper look at the man at his back, and at seeing his hulking presence, he curses himself a second time for his stupidity.

“Easy, lad,” the soft-spoken man soothes at Aerion’s shock, his unblinking pale orbs bulging from his gaunt face like they were being pushed outward from within, too large for the hollow sockets that barely hold them. “No need to lose your wits. This here is Catch from the King’s own Flea Bottom.”

Gods, must the Seven above curse Aerion with another fucking giant from Flea Bottom?

“I’m Spider, at your service,” the man inclines his head slightly, but his eyes remain fixed on Aerion like he’s some unsuspecting fly, knotted, bird-boned fingers pressed to his leathers as he does. “Raised all my life in the Vale, right in the heart of the moon mountains.”

Aerion had heard tales of those from those remote, crumbling mountains — stories traded in low voices of beggars turned feral and clans that fed on more than what the land could offer. It was said they watched the roads like vultures, taking what strayed too far from safety, and that hunger had long since stripped them of softer instincts. Hollow-eyed figures that had descended too far into nature, living off scraps when they could find them, and each other when they could not.

Spider indicates then to the grinning brute. “And this blithering idiot is Club.”

“Come, boy, we don’t bite.” Club cajoles with his crooked, fanged teeth. “‘Sides, young thing like you will need allies. Everyone needs friends here. We’ve got more than enough enemies waiting for us to the north.”

Aerion swallows, his throat dry like parchment. He has little choice but to assimilate — to reject this outstretched olive branch would be a mistake. He’ll only attract the wrong kind of attention to himself if he insists on remaining alone. May as well be with these dimwitted commoners.

“I…” he begins, the taste of dust and grit from his lips now sliding down to twist in his chest. “Rivers is my name.” He keeps his words curt, not wanting them to catch onto the highborn in his inflection that he’s doing his best to hide.

Club gives a belly laugh. “Well, there’ll be over a hundred men here with the name Rivers, lad.”

“You don’t sound like a Riverlands man.” The hulking piece of wall finally speaks, his voice deeper than the caverns held beyond the Wall.

“Shut the fuck up, Catch.” Club snaps at him, something about the reaction seeming practised — this sort of exchange clearly a common occurrence.

Still, Club peers at Aerion, trying his best to get a good look at him under his helm and mud. “We’re at fuckin’ war — ain’t no reason a man can’t have a new name. Not like it’ll be recalled when we’re dead, not for men like us.”

Aerion’s grip on his dagger finally slackens, allowing his guard to drop to something more watchful. “We’ll find a name for you, lad. Can’t promise they’ll remember it when they bury you, but…”

Then he’s being ushered to the campsite, invited to enter the ring of men that sit slouched close to the fire’s heat — most with their armour half-stripped, faces hollowed by fatigue and smoke. Their gear is worn and mismatched, patched leathers beside dented mail, blades laid across knees or stuck half-clean into the dirt beside them.

Cautiously, Aerion sits in a space that seems to have opened up for him. His presence gets a few grunts of acknowledgement, but most continue their conversations or stare wistfully into the inviting flames.

“The dead will, at least,” comes Spider’s eerily soft voice as he situates himself on Aerion’s right. “That’s all that matters — dead men with no names are cursed to wander in endless purgatory.”

Of course, the first company that Aerion manages to run into just so happen to be the maddest and most callous blighters in the whole camp.

Club nudges him playfully, ignoring Aerion’s whole-body flinch. “You’ll have to excuse our Spider. S’ mind’s long been addled from the hunger.” By hunger, Aerion knows what he implies, but looking into those haunting pale orbs for longer, he can’t help but think Club speaks of other, more nefarious appetites.

“Here,” Club nudges at him again, this time with a cup of foaming, sour-smelling liquid, the slosh over the too-filled brim when he accepts it. “The ale tastes like lukewarm piss, but it’ll help fight the cold.” Club takes a loud, undignified slurp of his cup. “And we’ve a good supply since Catch’s been cut off.”

The restless lull of the camp continues as the day presses forward, the men drinking further into their cups. Conversation rises and falls in fractured bursts: half-jests, half-memories, words that might have been humour in better times but now land with a dull, uncertain edge. Aerion pays much of it little mind, opting to be a silent observer, unable to bring himself to try his own cup despite how much he loathes to admit the cold and damp seem to have set into his very bones.

He is in good company, at least, with the many that drink in silence, passing skins of something between calloused hands, swallowing something that has them grimacing, then blinking violently as if to curb the blurring at the edges of their sight. Around the edges of the fires, men shift constantly — adjusting straps, checking buckles, staring into the flames in an effort to sit with anything but their own thoughts.

“Well, boy,” Club barks, finally running out of patience with Aerion’s silence. “What’s your story, hm? And don’t lie — we’ll know.”

Aerion isn’t so stupid as not to have a story rehearsed — something believable enough that it wouldn’t taint the falsified conscription papers he presented to the marshal at the camp, but brief enough to not get caught in a web of lies should he be asked to recall.

But that’s not what this man is looking for — with his crooked nose to match his teeth, he’s scenting out the notes of scandal, of sin. Why else would an old warrior who holds little honour ask such of him? He’s looking to measure the man who will be fighting at his back, so as to know with absolute certainty if he needs to be watching for the swoop of a ‘friendly’ blade coming his way.

Yet the line of Aerion’s mouth remains thin. He’s not going to divulge his tale so easily to this peasant, no matter how many ages of sword and shield he’s lived through — which was clearly many, given the man looked older than Aerion’s own father.

Club gives a snort of amusement, seeming entertained by Aerion’s stubbornness. “Catch here,” jabbing a thumb towards the brainless half-giant man, “the golden boys dragged him away to the black cells six moons ago. He’s an awfully nasty habit of shagging everything that moves till it don’t no more. But no need to fret — he needs nearabouts a good few barrels of ale in ’im till he’s that far gone.”

“The City Watch don’t take well to hearing tales of whores fucked till their insides were on their outsides. Why, where else would they be able to stick their own swords after a hard day’s work?” Then the man leans closer into Aerion’s space like one does when sharing a jest with a companion. “And that ain’t the half of what Catch’s fucked till it’s stone cold, lad.”

Aerion’s been used to the lewd and vile talk of Red Keep training yard. Spiked barbs hurled from knight to knight between clashes of steel. Aerion’s certainly participated in such coarse speech himself without batting an eyelid. Not since he was a young boy, when his training was overseen by an old yet quick-witted half-deaf sellsword who fought in the days of the first Blackfyre Rebellion with his father and uncle has such speech been directed at him so blatantly to goad and intimidate.

The twisting sensation of a thousand wriggling snakes in his belly feast on the feelings of repulsion and thrill. Aerion’s eyes can’t help but flicker to Catch, who’s own gaze is lost in the competing flames.

“Now we’re at war and even a man who’s convicted of the worst crimes gets a second chance,” Spider muses.

Aerion’s skin prickles with unease, a stirring heat simmering low in his body like brewing wildfire, burning all in its path. The putrid scent of mud that had clung to him began to thin and fall away. In its place came the sharper stench of woodsmoke and ash, the close, living reek of men gathered together in sweat and iron. With it comes the itching unease beneath his skin, that will have him constantly fidgeting in no time. And after will come the urge to scratch himself raw — scent souring like rotting fruit and the cloying sweetness when left too long out in the sun. Aerion does not want to think of the stages that come after that.

Damn, Aerion has need of his herbs again already. And likely more of his muddy cloak.

Through the smoke and the dark Club’s gruff voice comes again like an omen. “You’ll have to forgive our Spider. He’s ever half-starved. Can’t keep down salted meat or meel, not after a life on bugs and raw eel.

Pale ghostly orbs are all Aerion can see in the dark of the man now, seems even the flame cannot illuminate his shadows. “If you catch him eyeing you in your sleep don’t be alarmed. Best not to come to him wounded neither, can’t promise he won’t finish you off with a sharp blow to the head and make a roast of your flesh for his sup.”

Around him the men broke into sudden laughter — whether at Spider’s tale or some ill-timed jest, it’s hard to tell.

“Any you?” Aerion demands, adamant to show no fear of these weaselly pests. A dragon spares no thought for the shit-eating insects that nip at its fresh kill from underneath its colossal heel.

“Now then,” Club jeers in answer like a game he was overjoyed that Aerion is instigating in. “Wouldn’t want a poor wretch like you to die of fright on your first night, would we?”

Aerion only answers him with the curl of his lip, an answering snarl begging to be released.

“Well, let’s have it then boy,” Club insists. “Or else you might find there is a limit to our hospitality.”

Were Aerion standing before him as a prince of the realm at this very moment, he would cut this vermin’s head clean from his neck, a gift to his body no doubt. “My elder half-brothers answered the call to arms,” Aerion grits out as if the words are being dragged from him by torture. “My family — they do not wish for a bastard to have chance at claiming himself glory. I’m here to prove my worth and burn any fucking man alive who stands in my way.”

“Well you’re in the right fuckin’ place for that, flame bringer. That much I can tell you.” The half-crazed giddy look in Club’s eye seems to only be amplified by the red embers that dance off the flames.

“If your family see you back alive that will be enough proof for them lad, but don’t count your blessings,” comes the soft, wandering voice of Spider, seeming to carry the weight of things yet to come.

A chilling sensation prickles at the back of Aerion’s neck, recalling the last words that Daeron spoke to him, while Aerion watched from where he was perched at the window as attendants dressed his brother in his war armour. Fire converts a place in our blood and body brother, I saw it burn through the proud red dragon’s wings till it fell, cast into a vast ocean of desert with no end. Its flesh devoured by the sun, the dried-out carcass picked at by carrion birds and scarab beetles till naught remained but its great bleached bones. The gods of old will see you punished I fear, if you go through with your plan as I know you mean to.

“I won’t be going back,” Aerion bites back sharper than Valyrian steel, banishing the memory and words from his mind.

“Such fire,” Club mocks, yet his eyes sparkle with glee and admiration, unknowing of the irony of his blasphemous statement. “With that you’ll have no trouble finding your glory in ruin, flame bringer.”

Aerion does not reply. Instead, he lets his mind sink back into the flames, imagining them grow in height and breadth until they consume the entire camp in a curtain of gold and helpless cries, until he is the only one who remains.

Still, the thought does little to stave off the fire burning bright and furious at his core.

 

_______

 

The orders for the troops to move out of Ashford are given on the morrow. And through the days of endless marching, Aerion finds himself falling oddly into routine.

Despite their queer ways, Aerion remains with his strange companions, not for the company but more so as an additional layer of camouflage and misdirection. They are useful in other ways as well: crude sentinels against approaching danger, predators that may draw near, stalking close at catching the whiff of a honeyed scent that has no place in an army barrack. The unwelcoming reception they receive is enough to send them on their way with no plans to come back.

Most of their company marches on foot, with a small handful like Aerion on their own sturdy steeds.

Club had watched Aerion prepare his saddle that morning, envy clear in his tone as he remarked: “You have a horse — pretty little thing, like you.”

“What.” The man had feigned innocence when Aerion had bared his teeth at him, all decorum slipping in one foul swoop. “Can tell you’re pretty even under all the mud you bathe in, boy.”

Venya snorts out a sharp vicious purr. It’s almost reptilian, sensing Aerion’s shifting temper. She tests the bit between her teeth, as if trying to dislodge it so she can use her jaw for another task. Aerion does not move to soothe her — too busy trying to not give in to the urge to ram his knife through the man’s only unmarred cheek.

A dust-tanned hand reaches out to stroke along Venya’s neck, clubbed fingers tangling in her knotted hair, normally kept in perfect, pampered condition. “Easy there, girl.” He hums, the deep husk of his voice smooth like molasses. 

Venya has never been as simple to respond well to the touch of even the most experienced stable hand. There’d been a time when Maekar, after Aerion’s uncle gifted her to Aerion when he was three and one, had said she was too highly strung to be broken in. That either Aerion had need let her spend her days wild in the Stormlands with her herd or put her to the axe. His father had been wrong in his assumption, and much to his sire’s surprise, and many a bruise and cracked rib and nearly broken leg — Aerion had managed to claim her. She is not like other fickle beasts who bend to whip and apple, and she certainly won’t bow to some rough-speaking likely half-Dornishman.

Venya rears slightly at the alien touch, making a high-pitched noise halfway between a squeal and growl, twisting snarling pants that sound out intermittently as she stomps her hooves. Aerion watches as the corded muscles of his tanned forearms flex; he seems to be speaking to Venya in some low raspy-sounding nonsense or long-forgotten language of the East.

To Aerion’s utter surprise, Venya’s wiliness seems to taper — at least to the point where she’s not about to forcefully body check the man into the mud and trample his body with her hooves. Her acceptance of this stranger's touch is a feat that very few can accomplish without risking a broken spine. Club catches Aerion’s vexed gaze.

“I have my ways with the temperamental ones,” he boasts, making a show of sweeping his leering gaze down Aerion’s body, the action feeling like it’s adding another layer of grime.

Aerion’s posture stiffens, as if he’s just been struck by thunder. He’s sure if it weren’t for the herbs, the man would smell his scent sour. “You forget yourself,” he hisses before he can think to take back the polished fashion of the words.

“Keep an eye on it, boy,” Club warns his. His tone does not change; he still speaks as if to soothe a spooked horse. “See them.” He whistles lowly, head jerking to a group of men that prepare to move out just the camp over. He continues to stroke Venya, so to any observer it would seem he is just aiding Aerion in readying his horse. “The Bracken boys haven’t eaten since they left Stone Hedge. They just might make a pretty meal out of your pretty horse if you ain’t careful.” With that, the man takes his leave, trekking back through the mud to clean out his camp.

The brute had only walked a few paces till Aerion calls out after him, in his pride unable to stop himself. “Call me that again and I’ll geld you to match Spider’s steed.”

Aerion turns his attention back to the leather straps of his saddle, checking his sword. But not before he catches the lit fire of suspicion in Club’s gaze, darkening to something more testing and ponderous.

 

_______

 

On the third day of marching over endless rolling hills, as they start to give way to dense woodland, the steep terrain getting more tricky for the horses to manoeuvre — it occurs to Aerion that he has no idea where they are going.

“Where are we headed?” Aerion questions the group.

“Fuck knows.” Club retorts.

Aerion bites his tongue in time for Catch to offer some insight. “Sully swears he heard the commander say we’re making for Bronzegate, to join Breakspear’s men.”

Aerion just about keeps his seat, unprepared upon hearing his uncle’s moniker.

They’d not seen any sign of civilisation in days. Likely they still have two valleys to cross through the Grassy Vale, therefore at least four days as the crow flies before they see sight of the Wendwater.

Unthinkingly Aerion presses a hand to his lower belly. He’ll need to forage for herbs at the next stop and opportunity he gets to be alone. They’d been working well so far but his stocks run low.

The itching sensation had returned and pesters him nightly when it’s at its worst. The heat in his belly comes and goes with the sudden wash of scents that come and go in waves. He’s even starting to notice currents of scent threatening to wash over him, when Club or Catch are close. The persistent stench of salted sweat and the unmistakable smell of unwashed spunk. The reeking musk of alpha, that temporarily leaves Aerion breathless and his mind flattening into a haze.

What’s worse is how it makes the fire in his belly tremble, licking up the sides of womb and shifting till he can feel it flutter between his legs and he’s wringing them together like it will quell the sensation. When all rationality threatens to leave him and the temptation to start frantically rubbing himself against the firm leather of his saddle.

Then in the next moment reality snaps back into place. And all he can smell is horse and iron and men that have shit themselves at the fear of oncoming war.

It’s good. It grounds him, reminds him what he’s here for.

Aerion knows he needs to trigger his moon blood soon — if only for a reprieve from this warring heat in his body. Around so many Highborn alphas all his life, you would think his body would be used to this. But it seems even he has his limits.

Hiding the scent of blood may be hard; the camp is often filled with pockets of its scent. Mayhaps all will be well.

Till then, he’s sure he will rely on his loathsome companion of earthy muck. Pray to the Seven he never has to touch mud again once this whole campaign is over.

And so it will be so when he sets sail across the Narrow Sea to Lys. Spending his days under lemon light and fresh salty air — no one looks twice at an omega sellsword in the Free Cities.

 

_______

 

The constant riding and marching is dull. Made duller still when they cross into the Stormlands and are met with endless grey skies. Spider seems to take it in his stride, clearly something in the miserable weather makes him feel as if at home.

Aerion turns his gaze up to the vast open sky. Buzzards circle them constantly, lying in wait for the next man that succumbs to illness or starvation, or is slain at their own cowardly hand.

The men occupy themselves with tales of exaggerated heroism or inflated war stories. Almost always they return to anecdotes of their most memorable and debaucherous fucks.

Aerion rarely participates. Till he can’t help it.

“What cause is it you fight for?” Truly bewildered by the motivation of these men to take up arms for his Grandsire. Other than any choice in the matter being completely removed, it’s clear from their talk they share no love for their King. Any loyalty to House Targaryen is only due to his family’s malevolence.

Spider speaks from atop of his horse. “It ain’t treason to say, lad. Nothing will change for those of us depending on who sits at the very top. There’ll be a good deal of shuffling in the middle though — there always is.” 

"Ain’t men like us who get to sit in some glittering hall with bellies always full and a pretty wench always at hand to warm our cocks. But there’s opportunity in it all the same. Homes and estates left empty, or poorly defended, while their prissy scoin knightly sons are gutted by rebels.”

“Here, here.” Club agrees wholeheartedly.

Aerion frowns; such motivations are lost on him. “Riches, that’s what you fight for?” How pathetically unimaginable of them.

Club gives a leer, and he swigs a drink of gods know what from his skin. “That and the opportunity to live another day to wet our cocks.”

 

_______

 

Aerion is roused suddenly from a dream of coarse sand and the sensation of scorpions crawling over his skin, pincer-sharp and visceral. The scream of his youngest brother ringing in his ear. 

There’s a sharp flare of pain to his ribs, accompanied by a persistent and irritating voice. “Boy — boy!”

Aerion’s eyes snap open. He’s already reached for his knife.

“Get up,” Club barks, not batting an eyelid at the blade now poking at his belly nor Aerion’s morose temper. Used to it by now.

Aerion’s hackles flare. “Did you just kick me?” he asks, voice low and threatening.

Club ignores him. “We’ve been ordered to scout.”

That douses Aerion’s growing fury. “The King’s army?”

Club shakes his head in denial. “We’re reaching close to enemy lines now. The Stormlands are crawling with rebels, they say.”

They track west beyond the flanks of the marching troops, leaving behind the steady churn of boots and hooves.

They make their way through a thick swarm of silver birch forest, dense and restless, with pale trunks packed so close they seem to lean into one another for support. Their bark catches what little light there is, thin strips of silvery-white bark peeling like skin to expose the bone beneath.

Aerion has not eaten in two days. He can feel the hunger pulsing in his head, how the chill sticks to his limbs no matter how close he wraps his body round the campfire. It’s different to the times he’d refuse meals in Summerhall or the Red Keep, always having a steady supply of sustenance offered by maids, left to rot at the table or outside his rooms till he was ready to break his fast.

That awful hunger that sits low in his belly, like an unwanted babe, he finds he quite likes it. It settles in him like a strange kind of comfort, gnaws and nips as it curls and unfurls like a restless nesting hatchling.

Yet a different kind of hunger spreads as Aerion catches sight of the intermittent smoke of a suddenly doused fire not far in the distance.

“Well, well, what do we have here,” Club remarks with ease in his step and tone, as they ambush the traitorous swine.

“Rebel scum.” A man of few words, yet Catch spits insult at their feet in anger.

They put up quite a fight. Aerion’s brain feels slowed, yet his reactions remain lightning-fast. It’s like his half-starved brain is savouring the anticipation before a meal.

His body sings at finally getting to move — to fight, as it was bred to.

Aerion doesn’t even bother to reach for his weapon when a man attacks him. His body moves on finely honed instinct that needs little more than to be let loose like a feral dog. The man tackles Aerion onto his back into the slippery mud, but Aerion, having predicted the move, uses the momentum and the man’s overcompensation to send him head over heels into the muck.

They wrestle for a moment, Aerion struggling to find purchase on the man’s armour or leathers thanks to the infernal slippery mud that seems to infiltrate every little crevice.

Momentarily the rebel gains the advantage, shoving Aerion’s face into the mud in an attempt to suffocate him, his grip on Aerion’s hair punishing during their grapple when he’d lost his fucking helm. Here in the viscous black paste he chokes, that earth that is so longing to claim him whole since he stole it as his disguise.

For a moment, Aerion’s heart beats rabbit-fast, mind racing as he fights against the weakening sensation in his limbs. The stinging feel of soiled paste, coating the nostrils and into his mouth, threatening to asphyxiate his lungs. For a moment, Aerion’s memory flashes back to an altogether different time that he found himself grappling for his life and honour in the mud. Yet the unyielding hold that held him down had yielded. But he can hardly count on the disgustingly honourable mercy of lowly hedge knights now.

Was this the desert grave Daeron spoke of to him? A great sea of putrid tar in the fucking arse end of nowhere?

Aerion manages to hook his legs round one of his legs, shoving all his remaining strength to send the degenerate off balance. It works and Aerion can’t afford to waste the advantage. Knocking the man’s skull hard into a protruding rock, spitting dirt and blood at his face.

He’s not sure how much time passes, but someone eventually drags him up to his feet. When Aerion’s senses finally return to him, he’s greeted by the sight of two dead rebels — one with his face bashed in, but what Aerion does not know, and the other on his front — Club’s axe buried into his skull, brain matter and bone fragments splattered around.

There is still one left alive, currently quivering like a mewling lamb for slaughter — the weight of Catch’s boot pressing down on his septum. Even through this thick cloying scent of blood and wet soil — Aerion can scent the acrid stench of piss.

Spider is straddling atop one rebel — still living if the flaying and spasming of the man’s legs are anything to go by — while Spider shoves his face down into the mud. A twisted, humorous mirror of Aerion’s earlier precarious position — it has a demented giggle bubbling out of Aerion’s throat.

Club and Catch seem to be arguing — at first Aerion is not sure what about. On a closer listen they seem to be debating who gets the honour of finishing off the last rebel.

“Wait,” Catch barks before Club can step in to act out his violence. Beady eyes finding Aerion, Catch continues. “Let the boy have a turn.”

Club doesn’t put up a fight, in fact seems quite taken with the idea. “The boy wants fire — so we best bring fire for our Flame here.”

“No,” Catch tuts again before Club can make for the wood-fire. If Aerion weren’t still catching his breath, he’s sure he’d feel astonishment at hearing the half-giant talk so much. “The pathetic whore-scum do not deserve to die by blade or flame. Here.” In his hand he reaches out for Aerion, dropping a hefty-sized rock slightly bigger than his own palm.

Before he can think, Aerion finds himself dropping mindlessly to his knees — movements led by some uncontrollable force as he raises his weapon high.

At the first hit of the rock against the side of the man’s skull, he gives a yelp. Then a cry when Aerion does it for a second time. A few more hits and the rebel has ceased making any noise at all. Only the sound of rock battering against skin and bone, pummelling it apart, everything endlessly soft and sticky.

Aerion only stops when exhaustion takes over, only to find the man’s face unrecognisable, his head clean open to reveal his battered brain.

“You ask us what we fight for, boy?” comes Club’s voice, permeating between the blood and butchery. “There are few sights more beautiful than this.”

For a moment Aerion wishes his uncle and father were here. So he could finally show them, so they can finally see. Look, Kepus, I can exact righteous vengeance on behalf of the realm, just like you and uncle. Just like the songs that praise the Hammer and the Anvil.

Waves roll, rising high until they crest and break — fragmented, triumphant, spent. Aerion sways with it, turning his face up to the sky devoid of its colour. But he doesn’t see it, doesn’t marvel at the world in her creation. He looks beyond, sees beyond.

This feels different — or it should have. It should be something he can grasp, something within reach. Yet it eludes him.

The ringing in Aerion’s ears reaches fever pitch. He twitches — frowning at the spasm. At first, he hears the rustle of the wind moving through branches and leaves in greeting. The snap of twigs and the sound of clinking metal and the movement of heavy objects, the crackling of dying fire trying to fight its own end.

It’s here where no birds chirp, where even the forest seems to swallow sound whole. Aerion cannot hear his own breath, though his chest rises and falls beneath the weight of chain and alloy. The world feels emptied out — stripped of everything but him and the earth beneath his feet.

Then, quite suddenly, it comes.

A deafening crunch.

Aerion's body locks.

It’s the instinct of prey, sharper than any reason.

Aerion knows better than to turn as the sound continues — becomes more fluid then accompanied by the sloppy audible squelch of someone biting, tearing and chewing heartily into a sodden, fibrous mass that resists then collapses with every tear.

Distantly, some rational thought tries to break through. This is fucking madness, is the first fully formed thought, then Aerion feels the sensation of laughter bubbling up in his chest, birthing from his throat unbidden.

Where am I? Where the fuck am I? he asks himself, and he continues to laugh up towards the sky. Prince of the fucking mud, Prince of pariahs and filth.

Someone drags him to his feet. A thud sounding as his weapon drops, still sticky with blood. “Come now, boy,” comes Club’s voice as he drags Aerion away. “Leave Spider to his treats.”

Aerion’s throat feels dry, mouth parched. All he tastes is bitter mineral and lingering stale must. The dry itching of flaking soil, the clinging grip of grit. He rubs at his fingertips, catching the sight of rusty brown under his fingernails — should mud smell like metal?

Club pays him little mind, ever impassive and apathetic. “Don’t go soft on us now.”

“I won’t,” Aerion insists, despite his voice sounding far away. Across the narrow sea, amongst the luscious oasis, the taste of honeysuckle on his tongue. Aerion shakes his head — banishing his wild thoughts. He won’t succumb to hysteria.

“Good then,” Club says shortly. “Wouldn’t do us any fucking favours if you left your wits back there in the mud.”

Spider is in high spirits on their way back after they’ve reunited with the horses. Aerion’s convinced he’s imagining things, but he’s sure the man’s cheeks appear fuller, his grey pallor for once seems flushed of colour. Aerion on the other hand feels like someone has scooped out his insides — hollowed him out to make something new.

Spider looks to the sky above in awe, seeing things that the rest of them cannot. “To think — there was a time where dragons flew above us, heralding the way.”

“Such a strange thing,” he muses with a fit of childish laughter, crazed with sated bloodlust and that caged within.

Were Aerion not half fucking delirious he would cut the man’s throat.

Club for once does not seem in good humour about Spider’s ravings. “Give gratitude to your gods and mine, Spider, that we no longer have to brace for fire and fury coming unbidden from the skies.”

Aerion’s laughter comes too easy now, like madness unchecked running wild and erratic. “Are you so fearful of dragons, Ser?” he mocks.

Club does not see the humour in it. Instead looking to the skies as if the dragon he should be fearing would strike from above and not directly next to him. “S’not the dragons we should’ve been a fear of, boy, but the mad cunts that rode them.”

The demented smile that Aerion gives stretches at his cheeks — like his skin pulls too taut at the movement. “Better pray to your gods then that you never cross swords with one of those mad cunts. Lest you want to keep your head abreast of your shoulders.”

Aerion’s laughter carries through the forest, bouncing off rock and tree. Up into the sky he laughs as he leans back on Venya when they reach steeper pastures. Blood rushing to his head to the point he could slip too far off and split his skull on the forest floor — with laughter still in his eyes as he bled out.

 

_______

 

“Off for a scrub?”

The camp is eerily quiet, all the more so now that the rush that filled Aerion with heat has faded, leaving him light, as though he were floating on clouds. The crash back to earth had proved unpleasant — so too the unbearable fucking itch of mud.

At last, he gave in to the craving to be clean, if only for a moment before donning his muddy veneer once more.

Aerion doesn’t halt in his steps. “I’d let you watch if only for the pleasure of seeing you drop dead when all your blood goes to your cock.”

An answering chuckle, then: “You’re a tease, lad.”

In the low light of dusk, Club won’t be able to pick up the way in which Aerion’s violet eyes cut into him — which is a pity.

But even in the dwindling light, Aerion can see the way Club leers like a randy dog ready to mount. He sits with his legs splayed obscenely wide in bravado, whetstone and sword alike forgotten at his side. Club makes no effort to hide his half-hardening cock in his leathers.

“Pretty prideful thing like you, no reason you need to be seeing to yourself alone.”

Club slaps his thigh jovially. “Come now, come sit on my prick — I’ll warm your tight little body through your hole.”

That does give him pause, making no effort to mask his disgust. “You’re repulsive.” Aerion sneers at him.

Curiously, the baseborn fiend had not joined those from the nearby camps who trekked to the village in search of companionship — wanted or otherwise. Many of the men, always the same ones, went out in packs each evening in search of such bedsport; the camp offered them little enough of it, unless a man had particular leanings.

The wretches who cross their paths, unable to flee those hungry, callous fellows fast enough — men stripped of pretence by blood and strife. These men seem to crave some semblance of brutality, and would exact it even upon a willing whore.

Club leans forward, and Aerion sees the dangerous glint in his eye — the look of a hunter fixed on its prey. This, it seems, is how and what Club likes to hunt. “Doesn’t have to be my cock, pretty thing. You’d settle well for my fingers.” He ogles Aerion, his lecherous gaze sucking up all it can. “Tight little arse like yours, I’m half of mind if it would accept the stretch? What’s certain at least—it’s always the proud ones that beg the most for a good hard fuck.”

Aerion snorts — how fucking banal. He’s heard more crude murmurs about him by the Kingsguard when they thought his back was turned and deaf to it. Club, evidently displeased by the lack of reaction, presses on with his goading.

“Shame you don’t bear a cunt underneath all that armour. Omega whores are well known for possessing the wettest cunts. Wilful little brat like you fancies himself hard to break. But your kind always do. Legs apart, begging for a fat dick inside your snatch. Fucked till you’re whelped, pleading for me not to leave till you feel my piss hit your guts.”

Something in Aerion’s belly curdles — thick and heavy.

The urge to lunge at the man and wrap his hands around his throat is overpowering. The need to feel the sensation of his windpipe crushing under Aerion’s grasp. To watch as his skin blotches in frantic red—face purpling from constricted blood, hands clawing for reprieve to no avail. Eyes rolling back frantically until there is only bone white. The satisfying feeling of ending this foul little creature who thought he had some power over Aerion, who thought he was superior.

The prickle of annoyance now spikes to rage. And Aerion’s sure he would have slain the man without a moment’s thought — leaving him to choke and bleed out in the mud.

Aerion would have — gods be true, he would have.

If it were not for his traitorous, pathetic body catching onto the whip of heady alpha musk—latching onto it and refusing to let go.

Aerion pants — the instant reflex to avoid breathing through his nose. He can practically feel the black of his eyes expanding.

He can feel, gods, he can feel how his body wets.

It unsettles him, how it blurs the edges between his repulsion and aversion. They do not seem to soften; instead they become slippery, harder for him to keep a firm grasp of.

Then comes the simmering heat in his belly — pulsing, threatening to build and overpower him with oozing pleasure. His palms damp with sweat, his heart beating erratically in its rhythm. His skin crawls with the queer mingling of need and disgust.

“Fuck.” The curse slips out under his breath.

Aerion knows he needs to leave, despite the heavy blow to his pride in fleeing. But to stay would risk discovery, or worse—an outcome he does not care to contemplate.

Club’s throaty laugh follows him as he makes his path toward a nearby lake. It sours Aerion’s mood further that the man takes his retreat as a victory.

But at the relief of feeling when the cool, icy black waters of the lake meet his flushed, filthy skin, Aerion can’t find the heart to care. The mud does not yield so easily from his skin—no matter how hard he scrubs.

Even as he ducks down fully, submerging himself till his lungs burn for breath, something of the grit sticks stubbornly to his skin. Still he allows himself to be suspended here, in this dark, pressing weight — perhaps with the hope it will finally wash him clean. Allow him to regain something of his nobility.

When Aerion rises again, gasping, the layer of filth is still there—embedded in him, as though it had never meant to leave. And as he drags himself away from the waters, he laments finding his body still stirring — already working to reignite its embers.

He is a creature of habit; he has no need to adapt or to be shaped. He is a creature of fire and blood — this part of his nature he cannot deny.

But how much longer can he maintain this? With this traitorous body of his, now too restless, slipping from his control.

He can hardly remember the last time he indulged in such carnal pleasure.

Aerion feels his need, so he allows himself in this moment alone to need.

Clothed back against the rough bark of a towering oak tree, Aerion slips his finger into the soaked, throbbing place between his legs.

His core constricts, skin burning hot. Nerve endings so ignited that the cool wind coming off the water cannot touch him. He fucks himself in quick, brutal thrusts, sliding in another finger when the stretch quickly doesn’t become enough. Viciously grinding into the heel of his hand to feel more of that bursting, brilliant white-hot heat.

Aerion throws his head back, baring his throat with his eyes scrunched shut. Teeth clenched in the effort to chase his pleasure and release.

His muscles and tendons clench, body growing taut like a bowstring.

Aerion, in his lucid mind, would have no desire to lay with any of the men here. Yet his mind, traitorous just like his body, can’t help but conjure the image of flesh, dirt, and sweat. His thoughts do not settle, turning and twisting within his mind’s eye, never holding their shape.

Blood drums in his ears, sweat pooling at the base of his spine. Aerion knows his body — what sparks him alight. Knows the blaze of violence, the dark allure of it, the way it coils through him like a second breath. He knows the pull of it, how easily he rises to meet it, how readily he answers it when called. When he commands it, wields it — burning through the object of his ire, breaking it like a fine-boned bird crushed between his palms. These are the things that make Aerion’s body sing.

When he sees these qualities mirrored back at him — not always is his attention caught. How quickly he can turn from disinterest to scorn, mockery to envy. But sometimes there is a quiet curiosity, and how that grows into dangerous fascination, persistent infatuation.

Aerion’s teeth sink into his lip as his hips jerk forward involuntarily — the images in his mind taking shape and colour now.

Flashes come unbidden — light copper-toned forearms, a warrior’s calloused hands made strangely tender in their restraint. The memory of textures and fragments: the cool slip of rich, inky black silk, the faint sting of orange peel clinging to the air like something half-remembered. There is peat too—like earth and woodsmoke, warm and grounding.

Aerion’s mouth falls open in a moan as he imagines the press of that touch, steady and guiding. Aerion does so enjoy the feeling of being guided, but only after he’s been handled thoroughly. He imagines that voice in his ear, calm in its weight, so even and contained in its quiet authority: like iron silk.

Aerion’s cunt clenches. He gasps weakly as his belly delights — craving to be filled. He entertains the thought of calling Club here, allowing the man to have his way with him. To fuck him rough into the grass and earth, while Aerion moans like a wanton common whore. Frantically, Aerion shoves a hand under his tunic to squeeze at one of his tits, pinching hard at his pebbled nipple. Feeling the way it sparks his body with glorious pleasure, a round his fresh slick dripping from his hole.

His memory shifts to accompany his growing pleasure and chase of ecstasy. To something more tangible, something more gratifying. Buried memories that drag themselves from the deep, dark pit that he attempted to keep shut up in.

The orange peel starts to fade to something sharper and more overpowering — just as earthy but more crisp and fresh. Pine and moss, like a forest after the rain. The conduit of his pleasure shifts to something broader and far taller—the colouring lighter.

Viscerally, Aerion feels the sensation of a slab of a hand winding into his short hair, tugging on it harshly. Aerion remembers how he writhed — into the pleasure, away from it. Perhaps to test the bounds of this and see if he would be struck for his trouble — like he secretly craved.

“Easy.” Aerion recalls that deep honeyed brogue, how it made him pant then tilt up his hips inviting to be fucked. “Aye, spread them for me.” The voice had said then, and Aerion had done just that without a moment’s thought.

The flush of humiliation at the memory mixes in with his heady pleasure, but serves to drive Aerion closer to his peak as he fucks himself in earnest. The sloppy wet sounds of his slick and skin are loud, but he cares little. Not when all he can imagine is that warm weight that dwarfs him pressing him down, Aerion’s nails digging into a strong back and clinging on while he’s fucked within an inch of his life.

“Just like that.” The words spoken as if directly into Aerion’s ear send him hurtling over the edge into gut-wrenching pleasure.

Aerion muffles a strangled cry with his fist. His cunt clenches, disappointed, around his fingers and not around what it craves.

He comes down slowly, chest heaving — body trying to find its footing once more as the sweat cools on his skin.

Aerion continues to lean back as he breathes. Around him the trees seem to stand taller—from their lofty heights of judgement.

“Fuck.” Aerion curses again, softly.

The metallic sting of regret, bitter and sharp, slaps him in the face. Aerion can’t help but let out a frustrated snarl — teeth sharp and testing. Giving into his base instincts, in a fucking wood. If his family could see him now they’d be appalled at his fall from grace.

No matter, it was out of necessity. Not something he’ll be repeating and certainly not recalling things that long dead and in the past. Aerion wipes his finger on his clothes.

He knows the herbs’ affect is waning, and the rumoured consequences of taking such remedies. But it need only last a little longer. He just needs to push through. Yet with each passing day, the risk of discovery grows, the danger more plain and inescapable. Still, he will persevere — if only to prove his family wrong, to show them how mistaken they are to doubt the dragon.

The night sky is coated thick with cloud, bloating out any light. Amongst the fox-calls and embers of dying flames, the sounds of an ever restless camp, in the marrow of the night Aerion barely sleeps, keeping his dagger clenched in a tight grip until dawn.

 

_______

 

The memory, when it comes to him, feels thin like smoke slipping through open fingers — evasive but whole and fluid.

It was there in the training yard, beyond the long shadow of the turret, amidst grit and ringing steel, where sweat darkened the dust and the air trembled with the clash of blades. There, beneath hours under an unforgiving sun, boys were hammered at like raw iron, in the hope of shaping men. And then, if they were lucky, they were forged into something harder still.

It was there that Aerion learned one of his most important lessons. Not of steel, nor swordplay, but something quieter — more cunning.

It was rare for his uncle and father to stand witness to the bouts of their sons’ training. Such matters they preferred to leave in the hands of the master-at-arms and the knights to whom Valarr and Daeron were squired.

Aerion had been at an age where he was impatient to be taken as a squire, grown on the baleful, fabled tales of his ancestral homeland, Old Valyria. He relished in the tales of blood magic and dragonlords of old, half-myth and half-malice, who called themselves upholders of purity, scholars of fire and dreams.

He learned quickly how his Valyrian features, otherworldly in their beauty, drew the eye — disbelieving admiration in the first glance, reverence in the next, his ancient blood demanding recognition.

Plenty coveted such a thing — the urge to possess him wholly, to claim what he represented, though few men could truly name what it was they hungered for. Yet they were drawn to him all the same, as to some rare jewel that stirred devotion and worship in equal measure. But as is often the way with men who hunger after long-sought treasure, desire curdled into obsession — claiming into hoarding, and admiration into a possessive need to keep and conceal.

With keen, sharp eyes despite his youth, Aerion observed it all.

Maids who would dip their heads too quickly in his passing, as though afraid a second glance might betray them. The kitchenmaids who took care to keep back lemon cakes for him, along with the largest walnuts they could find. Commoners in the street, when he rode horseback behind his father, would slow their step and stare too long, forgetting the rhythm of their own lives until he was gone from sight. Stablehands, rough boys would fumble their words when brought near his horse — experienced hands suddenly uncertain on reins and buckles. The highborn boys were no better, plucking blossoms from the trees as though they were courtly gifts, some bold enough to try and tuck them behind his ear with trembling hands. Then when they became knights, all of them falling over one another at jousts in their scramble for his favour.

Then there were the older men, of course — their gazes always lingering longest and hardest. The lack of action only made it worse, leaving Aerion on edge, like prey made skittish by the unseen stalk of a predator.

Where such attentions followed Aerion like a shadow, so did the way his father’s hand lingered at the small of his back when he entered a room, always surveying his surroundings as though he had stepped into the most vicious, bloodsporting melee. Or how his uncle’s hawk-like gaze would sharpen, his shoulders always so stiff, fingers worrying at his heavy rings while his eyes remained fixed, unblinking — giving nothing away of his thoughts.

Aerion thought little of it; beyond the undercurrent of tension, the need to be noticed only deepened within him.

When he thinks of it, Aerion does not recall now what unimportant little wretch he caught the eye of. It could have been one of the many Hightower boys for all he remembers, or perhaps some other inconsequential boy of the Vale. All unworthy of a dragon.

Aerion had not acknowledged the boy beyond the customary greeting on the morrow of their arrival. The rest of the time, he treated him as little more than background noise — something to be endured rather than engaged.

The boy, however, did not take well to being ignored.

He would linger where Aerion might pass, quickening his speech when others were near, laughing too loudly at nothing in particular in hopes of drawing his eye. When that failed, he turned elsewhere for attention, gathering a few of the other yard-boys into his orbit — where crude jokes soon followed, sharpened just enough to carry back toward Aerion’s ears.

The remarks were not subtle. Nor were they meant to be. Whispered comparisons, half-spit insults about softness dressed in silk and blood, about pretty looks wasted behind a blade, about how some men were made more for looking at than fighting — each jest landing louder for the laughter that followed it.

The remarks were not subtle. Nor were they meant to be. And Aerion was not used to letting such insults stand unanswered.

But Aerion quickly knew he would have to be smarter, if he was to avoid the judging, punitive eyes of his father and uncle. If his actions were to go unnoticed, this time had to be different. He could not simply give in to anger — could not bite into the boy’s neck or tear at his eyes. Instead, he forced himself into restraint, in a manner of speaking.

It had been easy enough to feign anguish, to keep his simpering mask firmly in place when Daeron and Valarr came looking for him and found him huddled on the floor — arms curled around his gangly yet graceful limbs, face pressed into his bony knees. They had teased him at first, as they always did, but when faced with his despondent demeanour and glittering amethyst eyes, so full of shame and ruin, how quickly they had become vengeful and irate on his behalf.

It was there in the training yard, beyond the long shadow of the turret, amidst grit and ringing steel, that the boy learned the cost of his own tongue.

Bloodied and bruised under the measured and precise impact of blunt practice steel. Then beaten to a near pulp by never-ending fists. Any hint of jovial tone or mockery overwhelmed by tears and cries to yield.

The boy had lain where he had been left, crumpled and broken in the dust, all earlier mockery reduced to something limp and unrecognisable.

Daeron had stood nearby, still bent over himself, clutching at his bloodied nose. He had spat thickly into the dirt, clumps of blood and saliva darkening the ground, not yet bothering to stanch the bleeding. His expression hardened into something raw — righteous fury, stripped of his usual humour.

Valarr, prince and heir, had stood head held high as all eyes were on him as he walked through the yard toward his sire. Known for his reputation of honour and unmarked conduct, now with his fists still bloodied, half-curled as though he might yet return to violence, his expression set in punishing resolve rather than regret since the master-at-arms had dragged him off the boy.

Aerion might not be as big as Daeron or as strong as Valarr — but he had this. And he need not even lift a sword for it.

It was there Aerion watched—Maekar dragging Daeron away by the scruff of his neck, the prince purple-faced and raving for all the Red Keep to hear.

Nearby, Valarr stood apart with Baelor, the two locked in a low, controlled exchange. Whatever was said did not carry, but the tension of it did — the steel clench of Valarr’s jaw evident even at a distance, his attention breaking only once to glance briefly toward Aerion before snapping back to the conversation at hand.

The yard itself had begun to settle, but the aftermath lingered in posture and silence rather than sound.

And Aerion had felt elated.

It was a strange, quiet thing — but it settled warm and sharp beneath his ribs. A private satisfaction, half-formed and difficult to name. Perhaps, finally, with all these eyes on him, coveting him, he understands his power.

Aerion’s gaze lingered a fraction too long on the empty space where the boy had fallen earlier, as if tracing the shape of it in memory rather than pitying it.

So wrapped in thought was he that Aerion did not notice the presence that had come to stand at his side — radiating a stillness sharp enough to draw blood.

It is not a presence that Aerion’s nature would allow him to ignore — after all, with Baelor not only being heir to the throne but the highest-ranking alpha of their family. He braced himself before meeting his uncle’s stern gaze. As expected, it was one of clear displeasure — the only man, it seemed, who so often saw through Aerion’s schemes. Then his uncle spoke, voice low and measured, a contained heat beneath it, like fire forced to burn cold.

Aerion recalls the words his uncle had spoken to him then — remembers, too, the way he had said them again years later, those knowing mismatched eyes fixed on him as Aerion donned his armour before stepping onto that field at Ashford.

“Your fire, it is not yours alone. When you breathe, you make dragons of us all, nephew.”

He thinks of them again now, where the frontier of mud and earth encroaches, ever threatening to drag him down and bind his body within its dark, fevered tomb. Though why the words rise from his memory in this moment, he cannot say.

 

_______

 

“Inspection! Line up, you useless bunch of insufferable curs!”

At the sudden bellow of the commanding officer, the men drew tight as one, ranks folding in on themselves with hurried, uneven precision. They moved in a frantic surge, like a disturbed hive—ants scattering and swarming all at once, each driven by instinct rather than thought.

Amidst the clattering of steel and the rise of tangled voices hurriedly obeying the order, Aerion finds himself pushed near the front of the rank.

Aerion swayed where he stood, no longer so steady on his feet as he once had been. His stomach gnawed with a dull, persistent hunger, but he ignored it as best he could.

Instead, his gaze lifted to the skyline — following the slow rise and fall of the rolling hills, their shapes breaking and softening in haze in the distance. Beyond them, the Wendwater, snaking through the land before opening out toward the fjord and, further still, the Narrow Sea beyond.

Aerion felt light-headed, not entirely himself. As though his thoughts no longer sat cleanly in his skull, but drifted just beyond his grasp. The world seemed a touch distant, its edges softened, his own body slower to answer him than it ought to be.

There was a stir at the far front of the rank, a ripple of movement that passed down the line. Officers leaned toward one another in brief, clipped exchanges, settling orders. Beyond them, tall, proud war steeds, their harnesses glinting as they shifted restlessly beneath their riders, and the faint flutter of white robes catching the edge of sunlight attempting to burn through the blanket of grey cloud.

A sudden, pulsing cramp in Aerion’s belly drew his brows tight. He held himself steady through it, jaw set, breath measured. Sweat on his brow beginning to dampen his skin.

He only needed to endure the inspection — nothing more. After that, he could slip away into the chaos, shed his current company like an old skin, no longer of use. Once again he could become a solitary creature, until the moment came to be called forward, to battle.

“Sevens above,” Club muttered, awe cutting through the sound of pounding hooves as a rider tore down the line. “I’ve seen all manners of man in my time. That’s one big fucker.”

Aerion kept his gaze fixed to the muddy ground, ignoring the way pine and oak moss began to sting at his nostrils as the rider passed his section.

“Bigger than you, Catch,” Spider remarked snidely.

A weight shoved at Aerion’s back then, and he turned to give the culprit a warning hiss.

The ranks moved uneasily, no longer steady but rolling in slow, restless surges — like the sea before a storm breaks, each man adjusting, pressing, giving ground only to be pressed again. Order frayed at the edges.

Aerion felt it then, as much as he smelled it — the thickening air, heavy with musk and unwashed bodies, undercut by the sharp, metallic tang of steel and old blood. It clung to the back of his throat, cloying and unwelcome all at once.

Somewhere beyond the line, dogs began to bark in a frantic chorus. Horses tossed their heads against their reins, whites of their eyes flashing as they reared and snorted, uneasy in a way that spoke of instincts men had long since dulled.

And then, cutting through it all, came something else.

A sweetness, faint but unmistakable, threaded through the stench of sweat and iron. It did not belong. It lingered at the edge of his senses like a fragile bloom forced up through rot — delicate, incongruous.

Aerion smelled how the scents closest to him reacted instantly — becoming sharp and bitter in their confusion. Then something heavier followed, headier still, thickening the air until it felt close and cloying, the very atmosphere turning humid and stifling about him.

Someone directly next to Aerion cursed, more voices rising in questioning confusion.

Then all hell broke loose.

The line buckled. Men surged forward and sideways all at once, order collapsing into a crush of bodies and shouted half-commands. A hard shove struck Aerion from behind again and he turned on instinct.

No thought, no reach for steel — only the swift, familiar language of his fists. He drove into the man behind him with sudden force, tackling him into the mud before sense could catch up. Around them the press tightened, dragging him further in, until there was no longer any clear edge to the fight—only motion, noise, and the sharp, rising pulse of it beneath his skin.

It became a grapple more than a fight — hands catching at cloth, shoulders colliding, boots slipping for purchase in churned earth that gave way beneath them. The ground was already half-mud from days of use, and for a moment Aerion was certain it would take him once more — that he would go down and be swallowed whole.

His helm, lost days earlier in the woods, left him poorly guarded. Nothing but a hooded cloth to shield him, and even that was wrenched loose in the struggle, leaving him exposed to the crush and chaos.

He caught his opponent by the front of his tunic, dragging him close, a low, feral snarl tearing from his throat — only for the man to answer with a hard blow to his face that snapped his head back and sent his thoughts scattering.

They did not remain locked long. Hands seized them both, rough and unyielding, dragging them apart before either could press the advantage. Aerion was thrown forward, down onto his hands and knees, palms sinking into the wet earth as mud smeared and clung to him.

Above it all came the furious bellow of the commanding officer, joined by others scrambling to restore order—voices sharp, overlapping, demanding sense where there was none, trying to drag the ranks back into something resembling discipline.

“What in the Seven Hells is going on here!?”

The commanding officer’s voice finally broke through the din — sharp, cutting, forcing itself over the raving confusion until it began to take hold. Slowly, order reasserted itself in fragments.

He pushed through the shifting bodies to the centre of it, taking in the aftermath with a look of open disgust on his stern face, heavy thick brows making up for the lack of hair on his head. His gaze flicked first to Aerion’s opponent, still breathing hard and half-subdued, and dismissed him with little more than a grunt of contempt.

Then his attention turned to Aerion.

For a moment, it seemed he would do the same — strip him down with a single glance and be done with it. But then he paused.

There was a faint change in him, subtle at first, as though something in the air had caught his notice. A trace of something sweet beneath the iron and mud, not yet placed, not yet understood. His gaze narrowed slightly, searching without finding the source.

Only then did he properly take in Aerion himself — the youth of him, the coiled tension still in his posture, the mud and ash streaked across his frame. Something in his expression shifted, faint but unmistakable.

“Feral little creature,” he muttered under his breath, more observation than insult.

His eyes lingered a fraction longer, noting the sharpness in Aerion’s face, the way his teeth showed when he breathed too hard — too sharp, almost wrong at first glance. Something unfilled, unshaped. Then, with a final narrowing of his gaze, he seemed to grade him in silence, as though weighing what sort of thing he had just pulled from the chaos and the mud before turning his attention elsewhere.

“Who’s is this pup?” came the demanding voice of the officer as he called out into the growing crowd of soldiers, their fickle attention looking for any sign of a skirmish breaking out once more — for weakness, for an opening. Boredom taking root deep in their weary and frustrated bodies the longer they have to wait in the mud and the wet for orders from their betters.

Aerion’s tongue worried at one of his back teeth, making a noise of twisted discomfort and fascination at finding the gum to be tender, his nerve endings sparking in fiery pain. He spat blood, no teeth. Red immediately darkened where it met the almost black, oozing sludge that sucked it up into the earth.

“Come now,” Aerion heard as he tilted his filthy face back up, baring his bloodied scarlet teeth to the world. “Who claims this vicious little beast?”

“Commanding officer.” The voice that followed was different — measured, calm. Aerion’s eyes screwed shut — his heart seemed to stop.

The crowd parted easily, a ripple of movement at the presence of authority. It seemed, even though in this place where men have forgotten their finer manners, debased to animalistic instinct — there is still something they can respond to, someone that can make them yield and remember themselves.

Another bellow echoed far and wide, seemingly reaching the ears of every man for miles. “Bow your fucking heads, the lot of you!” The command was heard and obeyed as every man in Aerion’s sight lowered his head, some even taking a knee right there in the mud.

It is here, between civility and something verging on madness, that Baelor Breakspear enters.

Armoured as a man renewed and fastened by war, he wears the fine black of his house across his broad shoulder, like a declaration rather than ornament. Its polished surface, once a shining emblem of kingly rank, is now dulled and smeared with the marks of campaign — evidence of a warrior who does not turn aside from conflict or the shadow it casts, nor flinch at the ever-present nearness of his own mortality.

Up close, Baelor’s face bore the similar weathered treatment as his armour. His skin was a warm olive tone, marked by time and wind. His well-groomed beard traced his jaw in deliberate order, the wisdom having scattered itself in threads of grey, streaking through both beard and the close-cropped buzz of his hair.

The men around seemed to stand up straighter — marked by respect for the man that now stands in front of them. Gone are their mocking tones and unfaithful musings — now that they know they stand in the presence of a dragon, they quake in awe and trepidation.

“Your Grace.”

“Ser Buckler — our new recruits keep you well occupied, I see.” Baelor noted, casting his eye over the men with the air of a seasoned warrior who has seen such sights near a thousand times.

“Aye, Your Grace. Yet I have seen better discipline in a pack of rabid dogs.”

Aerion could hear the smile in his uncle’s amused voice as he replied. “Something that will be smoothed out by your masterful hand, I have no doubt.”

“Aye. And they know little of what is coming when Ser Duncan gets a hold of ‘em.”

“Tell me,” Baelor inquired curiously, stepping further forward and more into a place where Aerion would be in his direct eyeline. “What small pebble brought the rocks crashing down?”

Fuck. Fuck.

“That would be this rabid pup,” Buckler indicated with a sharp nudge of his head, annoyance evident in his tone. “To what master the whelp answers, I know not, Your Grace.”

A wave of citrus that carried through the wind had Aerion’s fingertips curling into his thighs from where he still remained, kneeling in the mud.

Then there were sounds of armour moving with a low, grinding complaint—plates brushing, leather straining—before falling silent. A heavy step followed, mud sucking and releasing beneath iron-shod boots as they halted in front of Aerion’s bowed form.

Buckler then spoke in a low voice to Baelor, addressing him only, to intervene. “You need not bother yourself with this abominable riffraff, my prince.”

“Regardless, I would like to see this ungovernable soldier for myself.”

Buckler sighed but obeyed, giving a sharp nod to two of his men.

Aerion had no choice but to allow himself to be dragged to his feet. Yet the feral creature that had taken hold of him since donning his putrid, black armour of muck, could not help but give some struggle and small fight at the hands that held him. A sharp hiss of displeasure and threat leaving his lips before he could temper it.

He did not meet his uncle’s eyes, but he knew him well enough that they would likely be drawn into a grim frown of consideration. Ever the politician, his uncle, ever the scholar with his dusty scrolls of harvest yields and counts of coin. Humble diplomat and battle-hardened warrior in equal measure.

Baelor held out his hand for something — his wordless demand answered instantly.

Quite suddenly Aerion’s mind felt as if it were swimming — caught in thick, gloopy syrup of orange blossom, the rich aroma of oak wood smoke. He was sure his knees buckled — only remaining upright due to the strong, sure and familiar grip that was now at the back of his neck.

A damp cloth pressed against Aerion’s face, rough with water and movement, drawing across his skin in slow, deliberate strokes. Mud lifted in dark smears, dragged free from cheek and brow, leaving behind the cold sting of air against newly exposed skin. Strands of his hair were freed next, damp and clumped, as the cloth passed through them and stripped away the dirt that had caked there to reveal its true moon-spun appearance.

For a moment, Aerion saw only fragments through the blur of sensation and stinging eyes — the pressure of touch, the steadiness of it. For one moment, he imagined this must be what it feels like to be born. Ripped out of somewhere dark and familiar into the harsh, revealing light.

Aerion’s vision cleared, in time to see recognition begin to settle on the face before him. The hand slowed.

A pause.

The cloth was now still against his jaw.

Something in the air shifted and with it the pressure of the earth — as if impossibly to tilt on its axis, the very ground giving way then re-righting itself.

Aerion began to come back to his senses too, now that he was no longer enveloped by his uncle’s scent as intensely. His body for once seemed calm for the first time in weeks, as though it had forgotten its hunger.

Aerion’s gaze lifted, no doubt his violet eyes even more piercing due to the sting of the water.

Recognition came not all at once, but in pieces—the set of the mouth, the line of the jaw, the familiar weight of presence before the voice had even formed it. Baelor’s expression changed first in silence: the faint narrowing of eyes, the brief hesitation as if to say this cannot be, he cannot truly be seeing what is in front of him, marred in mud and blood.

Then understanding settled, and with it came a grim resignation. Baelor stepped back from Aerion, passing the cloth off, his mismatched eyes remaining fixed — unblinking — on his nephew’s face.

“This one is mine, I believe, Ser Buckler,” Baelor said, the fatigue of a hundred men in his voice.

“Aye, Your Grace,” Buckler acknowledged sternly, eyes wide with equal shock and disbelief as he took in the scene before him.

It was with sudden clarity and dread that Aerion found himself as Aerion Brightflame once again. Dragged out of the all-consuming earth and back into the light — from tomb to cradle. Yet Aerion was not so far gone in his own mind that he failed to notice the threatening gleam of bars closing around him like a cage. Aerion would gnaw off his own leg if they tried to imprison him once more.

The realisation hit Aerion with impact worse than a mace to the skull — disorientating and painful. So Aerion did what any respectable prince of the blood would do — bared his sharp, bloodied teeth in unapologetic defiance at his alpha all the same.

Notes:

Would y'all believe me if I said I purely started this with the intent to only write dunkaerion tent sex? But I just can't help myself but write that with the 16k word world building backdrop and characterisation gripped by the nastiness of something out of Dante's inferno. This took me a hella long time to write so the next part with likely take me some time also - and I'll likely still be editing this chapter over the next few days after I've posted it.

I'm very nervous about posting to this fandom as the stories I've read are so bloody incredible and it makes me weep as I wish I could write character dialogue that gut wrenching, genius and funny while also being so damn asoiaf accurate.

Anyway, for now:

<= Dishonour on you
Dishonour on your cow =>