Chapter Text
The white cloak weighed heavier than it ought that morning.
It did not make Dunk cleverer. It did not make him smaller, either, though some men seemed to wish it would. He was still Duncan. Too tall, too honest, too slow to duck when the world swung at him sideways.
And now he was sworn to guard a prince who hated him.
That was the jest of it. The realm had bound fire to flesh and called it order.
Dunk thought of Aerion as he had last seen him upon the field. White hair, bright as frost in morning sun; violet eyes burning fierce in a face spattered red. A beautiful face, if one cared for sharp edges and vicious lines. Some did. Many, if whispers were to be believed. Aerion wore his anger like a crown and his pride like a suit of plate.
By every law Dunk had ever known, the princeling should have been sent away in chains. Shipped across the ocean with little more than his name and his temper for company. Exile was the kinder word for it. A cooling-off. A lesson in humility.
King Daeron had chosen a different punishment in mind.
Prince Aerion would not be cast out. No headsman’s block awaited him, no lonely ship bound east to carry him beyond the Narrow Sea where disgraced humans faded into rumor. He was to remain at Summerhall, beneath his father’s eye.
He would never walk alone again.
A sworn brother of the Kingsguard would attend Aerion at all hours, chosen not for honeyed tongue or noble lineage, but for truth. A knight whose loyalty could not be bought with smiles or threats. A man meant to stand as a shield and witness both.
Ser Duncan the Tall.
Dunk had stood there blinking like an ox struck between the eyes, certain he’d misheard. He had not. The White Sword had been brought forth. The vows spoken. The cloak set upon him.
It was a punishment for Aerion, plainly enough. Yet Dunk felt the edge of that judgment keenly himself. Whether the king meant it or not, it punished him as well.
“You will do your duty,” King Daeron had commanded. “You will remember the vows you swore beneath the Seven. You will be Aerion’s shield where he has none, Aerion’s restraint where he will not restrain himself. You will stand at his back in the hall and yard alike. You will answer insolence with silence, provocation with patience.”
King Daeron’s eyes had settled on Dunk then, sharp as any spearpoint. “You are a large man, Ser Duncan. Be larger still in your forbearance. A dragon’s blood runs hot. It falls to you to see it does not set my realm ablaze.”
A pause, heavy as a headsman’s axe.
“You will keep my grandson from further disgrace.”
Keep him from disgrace.
Aye, and how? By clapping a hand over the prince’s mouth each time he chose to be cruel? By dragging him bodily from feasts like some drunken squire? The thought made Dunk wince. Aerion would sooner bite off his own tongue than be handled so.
The truth of it sat ill in Dunk’s belly.
He had stood accused before the realm, had faced death in the form of seven mounted knights, and somehow came out the other side with a white cloak about his shoulders. That should have been a triumph enough for any hedge knight born in Flea Bottom’s shadow. Yet the taste of it was not sweet.
Dunk had won his life and lost his peace.
Aerion Targaryen was no man’s lesson. He was wildfire in silk and silver, quick to spark and quicker still to spread. A jeweled dagger that would be sheathed at Dunk’s hip. Dunk wondered if the king truly believed him capable of the task, or if he had simply chosen the largest man in the room and hoped size might suffice where sense had failed.
All Dunk had said was, “As you command, Your Grace.”
Because that was the vow.
Because Dunk always did what he said he would, even when it led him straight into the dragon’s mouth.
The outer hall was cool at dawn, though the sun had begun its slow climb above Summerhall. Dunk stood beneath a narrow slit of the castle window, its stone embrasure carved with twisting vines and faded dragons. Through it he could see only a pale shard of sky.
Three days.
Three days since the king’s words had fallen like a smith’s hammer upon an anvil. Three days since Ser Duncan the Tall had been named Prince Aerion’s sworn protector. Three days since half the realm had begun to look at him with pity, and the other half with poorly disguised relief.
This morning would be Dunk’s first true day as Aerion’s sworn shield.
The white cloak had scarcely settled upon him before Dunk was told that he wouldn’t be presented to the prince at once. His Grace had decreed that Aerion should be given time to “settle.” As if the prince were a shaken cask of summerwine, to be left untouched lest he burst and stain the walls red.
Dunk had not protested the delay. He had bowed, murmured his thanks, and withdrawn before anyone could look too closely at the relief plain upon his face. A reprieve was a reprieve, no matter how brief. He had faced seven knights beneath the sun and felt less dread than he did at the thought of standing alone with Aerion Targaryen.
But alas, the day had come.
I've done it now, Dunk mused grimly. What do I know of princes?
He had not been present when Aerion heard the decree. For that alone Dunk gave thanks. The castle had buzzed like a kicked hive ever since. A groom swore the prince had dashed a goblet against the wall so hard that the plaster split. A kitchen boy insisted Aerion had shouted until the roosters crowed in fright. A serving woman had claimed she heard crashing behind closed doors.
Rumors grew long legs here. Dunk knew that well enough. Yet every telling painted the same picture.
Aerion enraged, humiliated, caged.
Dunk rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, fingers catching in the short hairs there. This will end poorly. For him. For me. Mayhaps for anyone standing too close.
The sun crept higher. Servants began to pass through the hall in soft streams of motion: linen aprons and wool skirts, copper trays held steady in practiced hands. The air filled with the scent of biscuits and woodsmoke drifting up from the kitchens below. Life went on, heedless of royal displeasure.
Then bootsteps sounded upon the stone. Dunk turned toward the noise.
Ser Willem approached, grey at the temples and grave of face, his mail whispering beneath a dark surcoat. There was something almost apologetic in his look, though he carried himself as any knight should.
“Ser Duncan,” he greeted, stopping a pace away. “The prince has awoken. Your watch begins.”
Dunk's mouth became dry. “So soon?”
Ser Willem nodded. There was a flicker of pity in his eyes. It was quick as a candle guttering in a draft, and just as swiftly snuffed. “Gods keep you, Brother.”
“Thank you, ser.”
Dunk pushed himself off the wall, sensing every eye that turned his way. A pair of young squires whispered behind their hands; an older serving woman made the sign of the Seven over her breast, as though Dunk were marching off to war rather than up a tower stair.
Word traveled fast. They all knew what task he had been given.
As they walked, Ser Willem fell into step beside him. “If it is any comfort,” the knight said quietly, “His Grace chose you for a reason.”
Dunk huffed. “Aye. Because I am too stubborn to run.”
“That as well.” Willem’s mouth twitched with humor. “But also because you are honest. Princes have little enough of that about them.”
They turned down a narrow passage lined with dragon-carved pillars. The air grew warmer, scented with incense and perfumed oils. Aerion’s wing of the keep lay ahead, guarded by silent men in black and red.
Dunk’s stomach tightened further with every step.
Three days of glances in passing halls. Three days of trying to avoid Aerion’s fury. And now this. His first watch. No courtly distance, no crowd of lords to soften the prince’s temper. Only the two of them, bound by a command neither had chosen.
You should have spoken up, a small voice whispered. You should have told the king you were no gaoler.
Ser Willem stopped outside a set of carved doors banded in dark metal. Aerion’s chambers. He clapped Dunk once upon the arm in a solid thump. “You are Kingsguard now,” he said. “If you can face seven knights on a field of lances, you can face one prince in his cups.”
Dunk scratched at the back of his neck. “I’d sooner face the seven again. At least death would come quick.”
A ghost of a smile touched Willem’s face. “Courage, Ser Duncan.”
“Courage I have, aye. It’s sense that I lack.”
Then he pushed the doors open and warmth spilled out to meet him.
Prince Aerion’s bedchamber was more grand than Dunk could have imagined.
Dusk poured through tall arched windows, turning the air to pale gold. Rich carpets from the east softened the floor, their reds and blacks worked with twisting dragons. Satin hangings stirred with the breeze and whispered along carved pillars of dark wood. A brazier smoked near the hearth. There was the scent of myrrh and spiced flowers.
The door closed behind Dunk with a weighty thud that seemed to vanish into the heavy drapes and thick rugs. For a moment he simply took it all in, feeling very large and very plain amidst such finery.
Then there was the prince.
Aerion lounged upon a chaise drawn close to the window. One long leg was stretched out, while the other bent lazily at the knee. He looked freshly risen from sleep. A robe of deep crimson silk hung loose about him, open at the throat and slipping from one shoulder. Morning light haloed the lines of his body in gold.
Servants clustered around him like startled birds.
One poured pale arbor wine into a slender goblet; another set a food tray upon a low table. A third girl nervously adjusted the fall of Aerion’s sleeve.
Their anxiety was plain.
Dunk saw it in the way their eyes darted, never lingering too long upon the princeling’s face. One girl – a slight thing with dark hair coiled into a loose knot – kept worrying her lower lip as she moved.
Aerion noticed their unease as well. Dunk could tell.
The prince let one servant hold a goblet poised midair longer than necessary, watching her hand tremble before taking it at last. Another he dismissed with a swat of his fingers, only to call her back a heartbeat later. It was a game to him.
Dunk felt a slow heat gather beneath his collar.
Aerion still did not look up.
He knew the door had been loud enough. Oak and iron had a voice of their own, and that door had spoken plainly. Aerion must have heard him enter; the man missed little. Yet he went on sipping his wine and picking delicately at a fig, as though Dunk were no more than another carved pillar set there for ornament.
Dunk was not certain whether to feel relieved or insulted.
He took up his place near the door, hands clasped behind his back, boots planted firm upon the eastern carpet. Stand. Watch. Endure. That was the shape of his life now. He studied a tapestry depicting Aegon the Conqueror astride Balerion, though he felt the prince’s presence as keenly as a blade at his throat.
Dunk spared him another glance.
Aerion’s fingers were long and pale against the dark skin of a fig. He tore it open, the crimson flesh glistening wetly before he lifted it to his mouth. Juice dripped onto the table. He did not hurry. And then -
“Leave us,” Aerion suddenly snapped.
The servants fled as though released from a spell. Slippers whispered across expensive rugs. The dark-haired girl paused just long enough to gather an empty dish, her eyes darting toward Dunk. There was something like gratitude there . . . or sadness. Perhaps both. Then she slipped out into the hall, and the chamber doors closed with a soft click that sounded far too final.
Silence followed.
Aerion leaned over the low table now. A trencher of honeyed oatbread lay before him, its crust brushed with butter so thick it glistened. Beside it sat a shallow dish of soft white cheese, dusted with cracked pepper and drizzled with oil. There were more figs split open to show their dark hearts, silver ribbons of smoked eel, and a bowl of black cherries so ripe they bled juice across the silver plate. A flagon of wine rested within easy reach.
The smell of butter and fruit filled the chamber. Dunk’s stomach growled. He had eaten little that morning: a bowl of oatmeal and a heel of bread that was swallowed in two bites.
“So,” Aerion began, “they have finally sent my hound to watch me.”
Dunk inclined his head politely. “I am here by the king’s command, my prince.”
My prince. The title made Dunk want to vomit.
“Yes, yes, the king’s command. A tedious refrain.” Aerion tore a hunk of bread and dragged it through a dish of honey. “Does it please you? Standing there like a great wall, pretending you are more than a peasant?”
For the first time since Dunk had walked in, Aerion finally looked up.
Those eyes were purple, as all Targaryen eyes were said to be, yet no two were ever quite the same. Aerion’s were not the soft lavender of spring violets crushed beneath a maiden’s hand. Nor were they the pale lilac of dusk falling over the Blackwater.
His were darker. Richer. The bruised hue of a ripe plum. The gleam of amethyst set in a crown of yellow gold. The royal purple dye of Tyrosh and Volantis, worth its weight in silver and bought with blood and shellfish.
Dunk did not waver and kept his face still. That, at least, he had learned.
“I serve as I am sworn.”
Aerion tore into the bread with his teeth; the crust split beneath the bite, and thick golden honey welled up where it broke. A bead clung to the prince’s lower lip. Dunk saw it. He saw, too, the flick of Aerion’s tongue as he licked it away.
“How dull,” Aerion deadpanned. “You are not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped.”
A sudden, volatile heat crept up Dunk’s neck beneath the steel of his armor. He had to bite upon his temper to keep from scowling outright. “I am not your entertainment.”
Aerion’s silver brows rose a fraction. “No?” He took another unhurried bite. “You seemed quite eager to amuse me at Ashford. All that righteous fury.”
"You broke that girl’s finger.”
“I was teaching her a lesson.”
“You call that a lesson?”
“I call it consequence,” Aerion corrected mildly. He did not raise his voice, for there was no need to. His cruelty did not shout; it purred. “Tell me. Do you dream of chains when you sleep? Or only the trenches of King's Landing and the stink of piss?”
For one reckless heartbeat, Dunk wanted to cross the space between them and bloody Aerion's damn nose. Gods knew he was large enough, strong enough. He could seize that fine robe and shake the mirth from Aerion like dust from a rug. The thought flashed dark and dangerous in Dunk’s mind . . .
. . . and died just as quickly.
Baelor died for you. Do not squander what was bought with so dear a price.
Leather creaked as Dunk’s hands curled behind his back. He drew a slow breath. “I dream of little.”
“I should think a man of your size would have grander fancies. Glory. Maidens. Perhaps a throne of your own.”
“I seek none of those things.”
“Then what do you seek? Approval?”
“I seek only to do as I am ordered. And as for my upbringing,” Dunk continued, suddenly emboldened, “I remember it well enough. Hunger teaches a man much, though it is not a lesson I would wish on any child born to wealth. You may mock where I came from if it pleases you, but I have never found shame in surviving.”
Listen to me, Dunk thought as the quiet stretched. Talking like a lordling with a mouth full of inspiring words.
The wash of morning continued to creep through the tall windows. It laid itself across Aerion’s head, until the prince seemed wrought of moonsteel and frost. In that moment he might have stepped from some singer’s tale – a dragonlord newly arrived from Valyria, proud and terrible and fair beyond reason. The old songs loved such men.
They forgot the things those men did when no harp was playing.
Dunk knew better. Beauty did not soften Aerion; it honed him to a finer edge. It was a blade polished bright enough that men mistook it for a mirror and cut themselves admiring it. Servants lowered their gazes. Knights chose their words with care.
Even sprawled half-dressed upon a chaise, silk slipping from one pale shoulder, Aerion held the chamber as if it were a chain wrapped twice about his fist.
“I am a knight of the Kingsguard,” Dunk asserted, forcing the sentence past the thickness in his throat, “and it is my desire to serve with honor. That is all I have ever truly wanted.”
He heard how plain it sounded. Blunt as a cudgel. No gilding, no pretty turns. Just the truth, laid bare and awkward between them. Dunk had never been deft with speech. Give him a shield and a steady horse and he would fare well enough.
Give him words, and he felt all thumbs.
Aerion did not look pleased.
“Serve,” the prince spat, as though the word were sour wine and he must swill it about his mouth. He leaned back into the cushions, crimson cloth pooling about his hips, and regarded Dunk with open disdain. “Such small ambition for such a large man.”
Dunk opened his mouth. Closed it. What answer was there to that? That small ambitions were safer? That big ones tended to burn?
Silence appeared the wiser course, so he held it.
“You seem ill at ease,” Aerion continued angrily. “Is it the castle? Too rich for you?” His voice was hot as scalding wax and just as suffocating. “Or is it the knowledge that every servant in the keep whispers you have been set here to imprison me?”
That struck nearer to the truth than Dunk liked. He frowned despite himself. “I am here to protect you. That is the charge given to me. I would see you safe, whether you welcome it or not.”
Aerion snatched his goblet. The wine within caught the light like rubies dissolved in glass. “A lost dog made to guard a dragon’s cage. I almost pity you.”
The reply did nothing for Dunk’s temper, nor for the strange tightness that had taken up residence beneath his ribs. “My duty is not mine to choose,” he replied gravely. “Aye, but it is mine to carry. A knight does not set down his burden simply because it grows heavy, y'know.”
“And that is precisely what makes you so very easy to use.”
Aerion reached for a bowl of cherries next. The fruit was dark and glossy as fresh-spilled blood. He selected one, rolling it between two fingers before raising it to his lips. The juice welled and ran, staining his mouth in a vivid smear. It looked as though he had fed on something living.
Dunk caught himself staring. He held a breath and fixed his gaze upon the carved leg of the chaise.
Aerion noticed.
“You avoid my eyes now,” he snarked. “Do I frighten you, Hedge Knight?”
“I am no hedge knight.” Dunk forced himself to meet that violet stare again, though it felt like stepping into deep water. “And no, you do not frighten me. I simply . . . I know my place. I was not made for satin rooms or wicked jabs. But I will not fail in what has been asked of me.”
He heard how rustic the words sounded in that chamber of gauze and gold. Let them be so. Dunk had never pretended to be otherwise.
“Such earnestness,” Aerion taunted, reclining more comfortably against the cushions. “It almost wounds me.”
Dunk felt the edge beneath the jest as surely as if it had nicked his skin. “You think me to be simple. Maybe I am. But even a simple man can see when cruelty is meant to provoke, and I will not rise to it.”
“No?”
“No.”
“And if I wished you to?”
“I would endure,” Dunk replied.
Endure.
Endure until what? Until he breaks you, or you break him?
Dunk had endured starvation, blows, mockery. He had endured rain that soaked him to the bone and summers that scorched him red. This was something else. A different sort of trial, fought not with steel but with scowls and insults and the space between breaths.
The cherry pit clicked against the silver dish as Aerion dropped it. For one foolish moment, Dunk thought the conversation at an end.
He should have known better.
Fire did not burn out so easily.
“Endure,” Aerion repeated when the cherries were gone. “Yes, I think you will need that talent, Hedge Knight. You and I shall test it thoroughly.”
Part of Dunk longed to answer that.
The words gathered in his chest like a summer storm rolling in from Blackwater Bay. He could have told the prince what gutters truly were. Could have spoken of nights spent half-starved beneath broken carts, of fists and boots and cold rain seeping through threadbare wool. He could have told him that soft sheets did not make a man noble, nor purple eyes make him a dragon.
Evil was evil, whether wrapped in rags or cloth-of-gold.
Another part of him saw again a helm split open on the Redgrass Field, and a prince with dark eyes falling upon the earth. He remembered blood soaking into the dust.
A Kingsguard does not answer insult with insult.
“As you say,” Dunk relented.
Impatience sharpened the elegant line of Aerion’s jaw. He had expected insults. He had expected Dunk to flare and stumble and bare his throat.
Dunk did not take the bait.
A small win, but Dunk felt it all the same; a stubborn satisfaction, like planting one’s boots in mud and refusing to be shoved aside.
Aerion could not make him dance so easily.
“Enough of this.” Aerion pushed the tray aside sharply, clearly frustrated. His lips were twisted into a snarl. He rose from the chaise, and Dunk watched as the robe split open further at his throat. “Leave me. I would dress without an audience.”
Dunk did not move.
Aerion halted. One brow rose, incredulous. “Did you not hear me?”
“Aye,” Dunk said. For a fleeting instant, doubt crept in. The king had spoken of constant watch. At all hours. Had he meant this close? This unyielding? “But I am to remain with you at all hours. I . . . think.”
He hated the uncertainty in that last word. A knight ought not to think when he could know.
The prince regarded him for a long time.
Aerion’s tongue slowly rolled along the inside of his cheek. It stayed there a second, before flicking out to wet his lower lip. The gesture made Dunk’s skin prickle. Dragon-like, he thought. A creature testing the air before it breathed flame.
“Gods, you are stupid,” Aerion muttered at last. “Very well. Stay if you must.” He turned away with a dismissive flick of the hand. “I have nothing you have not seen before. Flea Bottom must have been educational, I should think.”
If Dunk clenched his teeth any harder, they might splinter. He watched as Aerion moved to a carved screen where fresh garments awaited: layers of fine linen, dark breeches stitched with thread-of-silver, a doublet worked with tiny dragons. He shrugged out of the robe with ease.
Dunk only had meant to make certain the prince took up no hidden blade or scrap of spiteful mischief. That was his charge.
Watch the hands. Watch the doors. Watch the man.
Instead, his eyes betrayed him.
They lingered.
Aerion’s robe slipped from his shoulders. Sun from the tall arched windows struck his skin and turned it luminous, smooth as milkglass. There were no old burns or scars or roughened patches from toil.
It was a royal’s body. Untouched by hunger or hard winters.
Dunk’s gaze traced the line of collarbone before he could stop himself. The elegant hollow at Aerion’s throat. The narrow waist above –
Heat crept up Dunk’s neck.
Gods, spare me.
Dunk spun around so quickly his white cloak whispered against the rushes. He stared at the chamber wall, upon the dragons carved there in dark oak. Their long bodies coiled through painted clouds, scales picked out in flakes of gold leaf. The eyes were chips of garnet.
Best to look at dragons made of wood, he mused, than the living one behind him.
Hunger, Dunk understood. He had known the belly-gnawing sort since boyhood, when he’d gone to sleep with naught but rainwater in his gut and woken to the same.
Lust, too, he understood in its plain and common way. Dunk was no septon. He had been a squire in camps, had seen men and women steal behind wagons or into hedgerows for a tumble. In Flea Bottom there had been no doors thick enough to keep out all sound; he had learned early on what bodies did when pressed close together.
Nakedness had never been a marvel to him. Flesh was flesh. Muscle and bone and blood.
So why, then, did his chest feel bound in iron bands?
Why did shame settle stubborn in his cheeks, as if he were some green boy glimpsing his first washerwoman at the river?
If Egg could see him now, Dunk was sure he would crow like a cock at dawn and never let him hear the end of it.
“Ser,” the boy would say, all solemn-faced and wicked-eyed, “why are you so red?”
The thought might have drawn a humored scoff on another day. Now it only made him square his shoulders.
And then Dunk heard a mocking snort.
“What’s this?” came Aerion’s drawl from behind him. “Our gallant knight grows modest? I had thought the gutters would have cured a man of such shyness.”
“I–” Dunk started, before falling short on what to say. He remained quiet for a few awkward, bumbling seconds before spitting out, “I give you what privacy I may, my prince.”
“You insist you must watch me at all hours, yet now you grant me privacy. How do you plan to reconcile the two? Guard me through a keyhole?”
Dunk exhaled slowly and willed the heat from his cheeks to fade. Let him mock. Words are wind. Still, he felt the prince’s gaze on his back like sunlight through glass.
“I guard you as I am able,” Dunk replied. “That is all.”
“A riddle worthy of a septon.”
There came the soft clink of a buckle being drawn tight. The muted scrape of leather sliding through a belt loop. Dunk imagined slender fingers moving deftly at the task, and cursed himself for imagining anything at all.
Aerion soon spoke again, almost idly, as if remarking upon the turn of the weather.
“You may turn now, unless the wall has proven to be more interesting.”
Dunk hesitated.
With other men, a command was a command. With Aerion, every word carried a hook. Was this leave to face him, or some fresh sport? Aerion took a queer pleasure in setting snares of courtesy and watching men step blithely into them.
In the end Dunk turned, as careful as a man approaching a restless destrier.
Aerion’s robe was gone; in its place dark breeches clung close to lean legs, and a fine obsidian doublet lay open at the throat. He was fastening the last of its small pearl buttons. Light poured through the gauze-draped windows behind him, striking his cropped white hair so that it gleamed like beaten silver. It limned his cheekbones and the proud bridge of his nose.
A wondrous face, Dunk hated to admit.
“You have endured my morning.” Aerion smoothed down his doublet and shrugged carelessly. “That is more than some can boast.”
His eyes found Dunk’s again as surely as a thrown dagger found its mark.
Hatred lived there. The hot, reckless sort that flared bright and did not die quickly. Beneath that scouring surface, though, Dunk glimpsed something else: a coldness banked low and dangerous. It was not gone. Only waiting.
The prince did not look away.
Dunk felt the weight of that fury. He blinked once. Aerion’s mouth thinned in displeasure, as if even that irked him.
“Shall we scowl at one another until the supper bells ring?” Aerion taunted. “Or have you devised some more diverting manner to pass the hours, Ser? A tale of your orphanage, perhaps? I am told hedge knights gather many curious stories along the roadside.”
Hedge knight.
That damn title again. It slid between them smooth as oil, yet Dunk felt the grit beneath.
He had worn the name long enough that it should not have stung. For years he had slept beneath hedges and in stables, eaten crusts hard as stone, fought for coppers and honor in alleys. He had been proud to call himself a hedge knight to enter the tourney. It seemed to be honest work.
But that had been before the trial.
I did not endure that for nothing. I did not watch people die to be mocked as though I were still some barefoot boy chasing tourneys.
Dunk’s temper rose, though he strove to keep his face plain. He would not give Aerion the satisfaction of seeing the barb strike home. “I have no tales fit for princely ears,” he said evenly. “And I don’t scowl. I watch.”
“Ah. Like a mastiff set at a gate.”
“If I am a dog, it is because I was leashed here.”
Aerion's chin lifted a fraction higher, if such a thing were possible. Even barefoot upon a carpet from Qarth, he looked every inch the perfect princeling: imperious, sculpted, cruelly composed. “You mistake the nature of your chains, you blithering fool. It is not I who holds them.”
“No. It is the king.”
“And you think that makes you noble.”
“I think it makes me cursed.”
That made Aerion pause. He rolled his tongue again, thoughtful, as though testing the taste of Dunk’s words. “Huh,” he murmured. “You are a curious creature.”
He took a few steps toward Dunk as a cat would prey upon a mouse.
“Too proud to bend,” Aerion went on, counting upon pale fingers. “Too honest to lie with any skill. Too large to overlook.” His violet eyes slid over Dunk’s breadth of shoulder and length of limb with open appraisal. “A bloody great nuisance. A fucking plague.”
Dunk did not trouble to smooth his face this time. The frown came upon him easily, and his thick brows drew together in displeasure.
“As I said before, I was not set here for your diversion. I was set here for your safety.”
“My safety,” Aerion spat. “From who, pray tell? Shadows in the rafters? The tapestries? Or do you fear I might trip upon my own carpets?”
Dunk thought of the smallfolk he had known as a boy, in alleys rank with offal and smoke. He remembered the way men spoke when bellies were empty and taxes high. Kings and princes were not immune to hatred. Oftentimes they inspired it.
And then, unwillingly, Dunk thought of Aerion himself.
Of the fire that never seemed to cool. Of the way anger leapt to Aerion’s tongue as quick as a spark to tinder. A man could be his own worst enemy, Ser Arlan had once told Dunk, and he'd found it increasingly true.
“From whatever harm may come,” Dunk finally answered.
Aerion’s jaw flexed. An emotion sparked once more behind his eyes.
But this was not anger alone.
It flared, then stirred. A glimmer of sharpness. Curiosity, maybe. Or challenge. As if Aerion had glimpsed a puzzle he did not care to admit intrigued him. Dunk held his stare, though it felt like standing too close to a flame. There was no courtly mask upon him now, no slyness. Whatever he felt lay plain across his face.
At last Aerion looked away, adjusting the cuff at his wrist.
“Come then,” Aerion said coolly. “If you must watch, do so properly. We shall see how long your noble endurance lasts.”
Dunk inclined his head. He had faced lances lowered and swords drawn. He had stood against seven.
Yet as Dunk followed Prince Aerion toward the door, he could not shake the sense that this might prove the greater trial still.