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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories:
F/MGenM/MF/F
Fandoms:
House of the Dragon (TV)A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Relationships:
Aerion Targaryen (Son of Maekar I) & Rhaenyra TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Jacaerys VelaryonAerion Targaryen & Lucerys VelaryonHarwin Strong & Rhaenyra Targaryen & Laenor VelaryonAerion Targaryen & Aegon II TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Aemond "One-Eye" TargaryenAerion Targaryen & Helaena TargaryenDaemon Targaryen/Rhaenyra Targaryen
Characters:
Aerion Targaryen (Son of Maekar I)Rhaenyra TargaryenJacaerys VelaryonLucerys Velaryon (Son of Rhaenyra)Joffrey VelaryonLaenor VelaryonHarwin StrongAlicent HightowerViserys I TargaryenAegon II TargaryenAemond "One-Eye" TargaryenHelaena TargaryenDaemon TargaryenRhaena Targaryen (Daughter of Daemon)Baela TargaryenCorlys "The Sea Snake" VelaryonRhaenys Targaryen VelaryonSilverwing | Alysanne Targaryen's DragonAddam VelaryonDaeron Targaryen (Son of Viserys I)
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe - Canon DivergenceTime TravelThe Dance of the Dragons | Aegon II Targaryen v. Rhaenyra Targaryen EraI've fallen victim to the TikTok edits of twins Jace and AerionAerion Targaryen vs The GreensDragon Dreams (Questionable)Dark HumorUnreliable NarratorNo Beta We Die Like Aerion (The First Time)Dragon Dreams (Literal)
Language:
English
Collections:
Anonymous
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Published:2025-12-18Updated:2026-07-25Words:386,215Chapters:37/?Comments:7,001Kudos:6,014Bookmarks:1,626Hits:246,098
Burn Them All
Anonymous
Chapter 7: Brightflame
Summary:
Mad Aerion, they would name him.
And they would be right.
Mad, mad, mad.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
.
.
.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver lifted her head in the dark and tasted the night with a slow, patient tongue. She smelled: damp earth, cold water, old stone, smoke.
Her wings flexed. The membrane pulled and the muscles beneath her scales rolled with strength. She could have taken the sky in one beat and never returned to the ground until the stars were bored of watching her.
But she did not.
The hatchling without wings was elsewhere.
And the bond, bright and stubborn and sharp like he was, held a thread from her heart to his.
Mine, it pulsed again.
Tonight the thread tugged oddly.
For the space of a blink she tasted him from the inside: salt on a tongue that wasn't hers, a ribcage rising where no ribs should be, the faint pressure of a room built of stone.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver turned her head toward the dark hillside where another heat rested.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat lay there. Bronze scales caught what little starlight could squeeze through cloud and damp air. His chest rose slow, enormous, each breath warming the ground beneath him. His tail twitched once, a lazy motion.
Warmth coiled between them.
She sent him the feeling without ceremony: come closer—the invitation of shared heat, of scales pressed to scales.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat answered with a low rumble that rolled through soil and stone. A contented note.
Then—
A different scent cut the night.
Human.
Small. Soft.
Yet threaded through it was something that pinched heat behind her jaw.
Fire.
Ash.
And something sweet and cloying, like flesh beginning to burn.
Her neck uncoiled further. Her pupils slit, tasting detail.
A hatchling shape.
But not her hatchling.
This one's bones held the same old spark, blood that remembered riders, blood that smelled of dragons. One of the blood of the gentle-two-legged, the one who had once stroked her neck ridge with careful fingers and called her Wings-of-Silver.
This hatchling carried that blood.
Yet his scent was sharper. Bitter.
He moved through the dark toward The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver's lip curled.
Mine is mine.
But The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat was not hers to command.
He was his own heat.
The human stopped at the edge of the bronze dragon's shadow and stared up.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat opened one eye, molten and old, and fixed it on the hatchling with the wrong-smelling fire.
Recognition flickered.
Blood.
Of the former-human, the one who had been a weight on his back for years, the one who had called him Fury-of-Bronze with pride in his voice and softness in his hands.
But recognition was not welcome.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat exhaled.
Heat rolled out of his nostrils in a thick wave meant to shove the small thing backward, meant to say: away.
The human staggered, cloak snapping, hair whipped back, but he did not fall.
He leaned into the breath.
He lifted his small face.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver felt his wanting. It was loud.
Fly with me.
Obey.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat's eye narrowed.
The ground under his foreclaws gouged as he shifted.
He lifted his head.
The human did not move away.
The bronze dragon opened his jaws.
Within the cavern of his mouth, heat lived, waiting. He showed just the promise of flame.
Flee, the jaws said without sound.
Leave my sight.
The human stood smaller for a heartbeat, then taller again with defiance. He raised his hands, insisting again.
He wanted to be carried.
He wanted to be chosen.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver snorted, a hot gust that kicked grit sideways. Fool-hatchling. Soft-bone. He did not understand what he offered himself to.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat flicked his gaze toward her, annoyance sharp. The feeling came, blunt and irritated:
Watch.
I will fly.
I will shake him.
And if he falls, he falls.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver sent back a pulse that was not quite warning and not quite affection.
Come back soon.
Warmth is here.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat answered with a rumble that meant agreement.
He lowered one shoulder enough that the human could climb.
The small thing did not hesitate.
A hatchling clinging, she thought, and for a moment the wrongness sharpened; her own hatchling clung out of need, out of fear and out of trust.
This one clung as if he meant to win.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat rose.
The night seemed to make room for him.
One beat of his wings drove wind across the ground so hard it slapped at Sky-Cleaving White Silver's snout and rattled loose leaves into the air. Another beat, and he was above the treeline, carving into cloud and star.
He began to roll.
A violent roll meant to shear a burden loose.
The human held.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat pitched again. He twisted. He folded one wing and dropped, then snapped it open, the sudden change of air pressure meant to peel the soft thing away.
Still the human held.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver watched, head tilted, heat rolling in slow waves under her scales. Her tail tapped the ground, once, in irritation. Stubborn. Small.
Above, the bronze dragon's silhouette flew through thin cloud. Stars winked in and out around him as he rolled, circled, plunged and climbed.
No falling body broke away.
Then—his call.
A deep, vibrating cry that carried through the air and through the marrow of Sky-Cleaving White Silver's bones.
Annoyance.
Surprise.
A reluctant note of… acceptance.
It will not let go.
It might need to be kept.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver huffed a breath that steamed in the damp. Fine, the feeling said, unimpressed. Fly with him, then. If he wants to be carried by fire, let him learn what fire demands.
High above, she felt the bond begin. The start of another tether forming between bronze heat and human wanting. It was a strange thing, the joining. It felt nothing like the tether she held to her wingless one.
The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat's cry shifted again, lower, steadier.
The human's satisfaction spiked like a bright, sharp taste on the wind.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver's eyes sharpened to a slit of attention. His pleasure smelled like storm.
Then she felt the sand stirring.
Farther down by the waterline, where the beach sloped into the sea's endless dark mouth, Green-Breath-That-Withers-Forests rose.
The ancient bulk unfolded.
Wings creaked open. The air seemed to thicken around her.
And on her back, smaller still, clung another human.
This one's scent was different.
Salt. Thin fear. Determination that trembled at the edges.
It didn't smell like hunger, like the bronze-human.
Nor was ash-sweet, like her wingless hatchling.
A hatchling of another kind, Sky-Cleaving White Silver thought, unimpressed. Soft-bone. Loud-heart.
Green-Breath-That-Withers-Forests lifted from the sand with a slow, dreadful grace. The beach sank away beneath her shadow.
Two great dragons now in the sky, each with a two-legged burden clinging to their heat.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver watched them and felt no awe.
Only a tug of irritation.
All these humans, always climbing, always wanting, always bleeding and always dying.
Her attention shifted upward again to the bronze shape circling under the stars.
Warmth pulled at her, the old need to coil, to press scale to scale, to settle and share heat until the world grew quiet again.
She sent the feeling up to him, clear and blunt:
Come down.
Enough sky.
Come back to the ground and the warmth and me.
For a heartbeat, The Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat continued his circle, eyes on the ancient green shadow that now owned the night. Then his wingbeats slowed. His course altered.
Agreement rolled down through the air; he felt tired, satisfied and still annoyed.
He began to descend.
Sky-Cleaving White Silver shifted, preparing her body for his return, claws digging into earth, tail curling, making space at her side.
.
.
.
Aerion was so deep in sleep that the world had gone soft around the edges.
There had been warmth. A pressure sat behind his ribs. He could feel his breath as something warmer and thicker than it should have been, as if it came from deeper lungs.
He dreamed in smells.
Damp earth. Cold water. Smoke dragged sideways by wind. The iron bite of salt. A trace of something sweet and wrong, like meat singed too near the bone. The scents layered over each other with a clarity that did not belong to a boy in a bed.
Ash sat on his tongue anyway. When he swallowed, it scratched.
Wings beat somewhere close. He felt them, in pressure and in the way the air shifted as if the world made room for something enormous.
Silverwing, perhaps.
Or only his blood, inventing comfort.
Then the door slammed hard enough to make the shutters rattle.
Aerion jolted upright, hair falling into his eyes, heart punching at his ribs like it meant to escape. Pain flared in his thigh when he moved too fast.
A servant stood in the doorway, pale and sweating.
"My prince," he gasped, "the King—he demands your presence in the Hall of Nine, at once!"
Aerion blinked once, then twice. His mind scrabbled for the dream and found only fragments.
"Marvelous," he muttered.
He swung his legs over the bed. The pulled muscle protested. He ignored it.
Ser Steffon Darklyn was at the threshold. His gaze took in Aerion's half-dressed state and said nothing.
Aerion stalked out anyway, still fastening his tunic as he went.
The corridors of High Tide were too bright for the middle of the night. Voices rose ahead—sharp, ragged, too many.
Aerion's stomach sank.
He had slept through something. "What happened."
Ser Steffon's gaze flicked once to the panicked servant scurrying ahead with a lantern. Then back to Aerion. "There was… an altercation, my prince."
Aerion's limp sharpened as his thigh flared.
Impossible.
"Between whom."
Ser Steffon didn't answer at once. His jaw tightened. "Prince Aemond," he said, low. "And… your brothers."
Aerion's mind ran ahead, racing down corridors faster than his leg could manage. How did this happen?
It shouldn't have. He was sure.
He had placed the pieces. He had moved them.
Rhaena to Vhagar
Aemond away from Vhagar—toward Vermithor.
He had done the thing. He had done it right.
So why—
They reached the doors to the Hall of Nine.
Aerion shoved the doors open.
Torchlight knifed out through the opening. Then the stink of blood found him.
The Hall of Nine had pillars of sea-carved stone climbed into shadow, crowned by the painted, rolling waves of the ceiling. Nine statues of long-dead Velaryons stood sentinel, their stone gazes patient, their swords forever still. It was the living who were in motion.
Aerion's eyes swept the room and his mind refused to assemble the pieces into a picture he could hold. It was all fragments: a bench. A huddle of bodies. The copper wink of a maester's chain in torchlight. A sound of crying.
Not Luke, his thoughts insisted, slow and stupid. Not Luke, not Luke.
Lucerys sat on a bench near the hall's heart, held half-upright by a maester whose chain winked in the firelight. Lord Corlys had him in a half-embrace, his arm a bar of iron around Luke's shuddering shoulders, the velvet of his sleeve pulled taut with the strain. Jace stood braced on Luke's other side, his face white as sea-foam and just as brittle, one hand clutching his brother's arm, the other fisted at his side, knuckles bloodless.
Luke was sobbing so hard his ribs stuttered; the sound was raw and unguarded and small in a room full of lords and stone. A thick bandage wrapped his head. One corner of it had already gone dark and wet, the linen drinking through.
Aerion stared at the bandage and could not, for a heartbeat, understand what cloth was doing there. Why so much cloth? What was it hiding that needed such a swaddle? A child's head was not a parcel to be bundled.
The stain was spreading. A fresh, wet darkness, creeping through the weave.
The world slowed. Aerion felt his thoughts move the way cold honey moved. He knew, and still he did not.
Then Luke's fingers shifted. The cloth moved with them. A glimpse of what lay beneath, and Aerion's mind finally opened the door it had been bracing shut.
Oh.
His stomach dropped. His breath stopped. Something in him went quiet.
Wrong.
Wrong, his mind said, flatly, again and again.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
He had steered Aemond away. He had watched Aemond walk off, stiff-backed, burning with want—but away. He had sent Rhaena to the dunes, before anyone else could get there.
So how—
He had slept.
He had been stupid enough to sleep.
Aerion's gaze found the girls next.
Baela and Rhaena stood close to the bench, close to Luke, penned in by their grandmother. Princess Rhaenys stood behind them. She was flanking her granddaughters, one hand flat and firm against Rhaena's back to keep the younger girl from buckling, her body positioned as a shield between them and the rest of the hall. Aerion caught the look she gave Corlys, brief and searing, and understood that the only thing keeping her still was her restraint.
Both girls looked furious in different ways. Baela's was a volatile, righteous heat, barely contained, her fists clenched. Rhaena's was a silent, trembling thing, her eyes wide and fixed on Luke. But their grandmother's fury was the true presence.
Aerion caught Baela's scraped knuckles. Rhaena's shaking hands.
Something pulled his attention to the right.
Aemond stood apart.
Alicent hovered over him in mourning black, hands busy, breath uneven. She dabbed at Aemond's face with a cloth that had already been stained and folded and stained again. Aemond's nose sat wrong, swollen, flattened slightly to one side, a dark bruise blooming beneath one eye. Dried blood crusted along his upper lip. His clothes were torn at the shoulder as if hands had grabbed and hauled him.
Ser Criston Cole stood at Alicent's shoulder, studying the room.
Aemond's spine was straight anyway. His hands stayed unshaking.
Aerion met his eyes for a single heartbeat.
Something hot and vile surged up Aerion's throat. For a flicker, he tasted wildfire again, tasted dying, tasted burning.
It was hatred so pure it felt clean.
He felt almost betrayed by it, and that hurt in a place pain didn't usually reach.
I could have stopped you from claiming a dragon at all.
He could have kept Aemond dragonless, penned, harmless, choking on his want. But he had chosen another path instead, handed the boy a different door.
And Aemond stood here anyway, blood on his mouth, and Luke broken on a bench.
You do this to me.
Alicent leaned in and whispered something Aerion could not hear. Aemond did not blink. He did not look away from Aerion, not even with his mother clinging to him like a vine.
Above the murmur of lords and the crackle of torches, a raw, trembling voice sawed through the air—Viserys.
The king was a grey wraith near the high table, his face ashen and sagging with a distress that seemed too vast for his frail body. He was gesturing wildly at a knight of the Kingsguard, his voice cracking.
"—were you? Sworn! Sworn to protect this family! My grandson is bloodied under your watch—how? How could this happen?"
The knight was trying to shape an explanation, his mouth opening and closing. "Your Grace, the princes were not in the chambers, we had no word—"
"No word?" Viserys's voice rose, fraying. "Are you blind? Are you deaf? You are the shield of the royal house! My house!" A fit of coughing seized him, bending him double, but his fury pushed through it. "You let them slip into the dark like… like common urchins brawling in an alley! This is my blood!"
The knight bowed his head, the explanation dying unspoken.
Aerion registered it all in a detached, peripheral way. He forced air into his lungs through his nose and turned away before his face did something treasonous.
He went straight to Luke.
He knelt.
The motion tugged his pulled muscle and sent a bright flare up his thigh.
Luke's hands were plastered over the bandage, knuckles white. His shoulders hitched with small, trapped motions. His remaining eye—the right one, thank the gods, it was the right one—was wide and unseeing.
Aerion reached up and gently – gently, like Luke might shatter – hooked two fingers around Luke's wrist.
Luke flinched hard, sucking in air as if the touch itself might hurt. His sob turned into something keening and ugly. "Hurts…"
Aerion kept his voice quiet. "Show me."
Luke's fingers trembled, then loosened by a fraction. The edge of the wrapping came into view, dark and damp. The maester hovering nearby made a useless, clucking sound. "My prince, the salve must—"
Aerion looked at Luke's blood.
His hand tightened around Luke's wrist. "Who did this."
His eyes lifted to Jace, suddenly finding him where he had not noticed him before.
Jace's face was streaked with tears. He stared across the hall with a hatred so bright it made the firelight seem dull. "Aemond."
Aerion held Jace's gaze a beat too long.
Aemond.
And Jace.
Anger rose in him like a wave, and underneath it something worse: disbelief.
"How could you," Aerion said, very quietly, "Why were you outside."
Jace's eyes squeezed shut, then opened again, wet and furious. "Baela came. She said Rhaena was going to try for Vhagar. Tonight. She said—" His voice cracked. "She said Rhaena shouldn't go alone."
He stared at Jace. At his brother's earnest, anguished face. The logic didn't connect.
Why? They were not friends. They were barely kin. It made no sense.
"Baela," Aerion repeated, the name tasting like ash. "Baela came. And you… went with her."
He didn't understand.
He had drawn the lines so carefully.
He had pointed Aemond's ambition at Vermithor—a dragon worthy of his solemn fury. He had nudged Rhaena's desperation toward Vhagar—a monument to her dead mother. He had orchestrated it. Aemond could get himself roasted by the Bronze Fury, or come back a dragon-rider. Rhaena could claim a monster or be rejected by one.
If there was to be a cost, it was to be paid by one of Daemon's daughters. Aerion had already accepted that. An eye for Vhagar. A scar for certainty. He could stomach that.
He could live with a girl's missing eye.
Luke's missing eye turned his stomach inside out.
But Jace ...
Jace didn't even know those girls. And yet… Baela had asked. And Jace, with his idiot-heart and his knightly instincts, had followed.
He followed her into the dark, toward a dragon. For a girl he'd spoken ten words to in his life.
It was so stupid he had no words. Aerion wanted to grab Jace by the collar and shake him until sense fell out.
His gaze cut across the room.
Baela stood near a far pillar, bruised and wild-eyed, hair half-loose, knuckles scraped. She looked ready to bite anyone who came near her sister. When Aerion's gaze touched her, she didn't flinch.
Aerion hated her for that. Stupid girl. He hated that she had asked and Jace had answered like a dutiful dog.
Rhaena stood beside her, pale and shaking. Hands clenched in her skirts. Eyes darting to Luke, to Alicent, to the doors. Aerion hated her too, quieter.
"She claimed Vhagar," Jace continued. "It worked. Vhagar flew with her."
Aerion felt a bitter little spark of relief.
Well. At least you didn't screw that part up.
Jace's throat bobbed. "We were— we were heading back up from the dunes when we met Aemond."
Aerion's stomach tightened again. "Where."
"On the path by the lower rocks," Jace answered. "Near the old stair. He came from the other side—the cove." His eyes flicked helplessly toward Aerion. "We didn't go looking for him."
Aerion's mind flashed, unwillingly, to the map he'd drawn in his head earlier. Coves. Dunes. The places dragons liked when the wind turned.
He had thought he'd moved them apart.
He had slept.
Jace's voice sharpened, shame turning into fury mid-sentence. "We had a fight," his face twisted like it physically hurt to repeat it. "He was taunting us. He—" He glanced down at Luke, and Luke made a small, broken sound into his hands. "He called us bastards."
Aerion's breath went louder.
Jace forced the rest out, the words tearing loose like meat from a hook. "He called us Strongs."
Aerion stared at Jace. The future heir. The boy who was meant to be a shield.
"You let him say that," Aerion said. His voice was so controlled it came out almost calm.
Jace flinched like he'd been struck. "Aerion—"
Aerion's head snapped. "Why in the Seven Hells did you not wake me."
Jace's mouth opened. His hand clenched on Luke's shoulder, white-knuckled. "I tried," he choked out. "At first. But you were sleeping so soundly, and you were hurt, and Mother… you were already in so much trouble. I thought I could—"
"You thought," Aerion tasted the words. He looked at Luke's shaking hands, the darkened linen. He looked back at Jace. "You thought it would be fine."
Jace shook his head hard enough that tears flew. "No. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could keep them apart."
Aerion felt something ugly and hot crackle behind his ribs.
He hated Jace then too—hated him with a bright, furious heat that shocked him with its ease.
How could you let this happen.
How could you follow them.
How could you.
Luke sobbed again, and Aerion forced the anger down for his sake.
He made himself look away from the bandage, and looked across the hall again.
Alicent's hands were still on Aemond's face, fussing, pinching the bridge of his nose in a way that made Aemond's jaw jump. The cloth came away fresh-stained. Alicent's mouth moved in prayer or scold or both.
Aerion's gaze locked onto Aemond again.
Aemond's eyes slid briefly toward Luke.
For half a heartbeat something flickered there, gone soon after. Aerion chose to see satisfaction in it.
A phantom taste of green, flooded the back of Aerion's throat, the ghost of the wildfire that had cooked him alive in another life.
He gagged on it, despised the memory, and wanted, with a shuddering hunger, to make it real again. His fingers dug into his knee until the joint ached. He leaned forward without meaning to, pulled toward Aemond.
His thigh screamed.
The pain was a white cable snapping taut, yanking him back from the edge. It cleared the green smoke from his vision.
He dragged a breath in. His voice came out flat because if it came out sharp, it would come out screaming.
"Did he claim Vermithor."
Jace swallowed, grim and sick. "Yes," he said. "He did."
Aerion's fingers curled harder. The ache in his hand felt clean compared to the mess in his head.
It should have been relief. It should have been good. This piece too had slotted into place.
Instead Aerion felt like he had shoved a torch into Aemond's hand and watched him use it to set everything precious alight.
Rage surged up his throat so hard he tasted fire, and for one flashing, obscene instant he could see it: a blade in his hand, Aemond's face splitting open, Alicent screaming, Cole, a half-second too slow. And then, peace. A deep, quiet breath in a hall finally, blessedly still.
Mad Aerion, they would name him.
And they would be right.
Mad, mad, mad.
No.
Aerion made himself swallow.
He lowered his eyes and pressed his fingertips into his thigh hard enough to punish himself.
Pain answered. Pain was simple. It had laws. Pain did not smile at funerals. Pain did not whisper poison into children and then weep when the poison worked.
Think.
Cold. Stay cold.
He tried to pin his focus there—on muscle and tendon and the stubborn, pulsing burn every time he shifted. Anchor yourself. If he could keep his body present, maybe his mind would stop trying to set the world on fire.
His mind skittered anyway, snarling at every face it could reach. Aemond. Alicent. Cole. Otto Hightower. It turned on Jace, for his failure. On Baela, for the dare. On Rhaena, for her presence. It wanted to blame everyone.
Fix this. Mend it. You broke it, you mend it. Think.
The doors of the hall opened again.
Rhaenyra came in.
Her braid was in disorder. Her cloak was thrown on, clasped wrong, dragging sideways as if she'd donned it mid-stride. She looked dragged out of sleep. Her eyes swept the hall, dismissing lords, glancing over clusters of knights—
—and then she saw Luke.
She crossed the hall in three strides and dropped to her knees beside him, hands shaking.
Behind her, for a heartbeat, Aerion caught a darker shape slipping in her wake.
Daemon.
Black cloak. Pale hair. And at his hip, there it was, like a promise: Dark Sister. A solution.
Aerion's mind lunged toward it with an ugly, hungry clarity.
Use it.
A sick, thrilling thought unfolded: Daemon turning, crossing the hall, drawing the blade, cutting Aemond down before Alicent could even inhale—
Aemond. Alicent. Cole. Otto Hightower. All of them can go to the Seven Hells together.
The taste of wildfire sharpened again. End it. End them. You could. You know you could.
No.
No, no, no.
Mad Aerion.
Think.
He gouged his attention back into the live coal of pain in his thigh.
Rhaenyra bent over Luke.
"Luke," she whispered. "Lucerys—look at me. Look at me, sweetheart.
Luke couldn't. He was sobbing into his hands.
Rhaenyra's fingers went to his face, to the edge of the cloth.
"Show me," she demanded, and the command broke over the syllable me. "Show me what they did."
The maester's hands hovered, uncertain.
"Princess," he began.
Rhaenyra didn't look up. "I will see my son." she repeated, steel in it now. "I am his mother. Show me."
Jace's arms tightened around Luke as if he could keep him from shaking apart.
"Mother," he begged. "Please."
Rhaenyra ignored him. Her hands found Luke's wrists and drew them down, firm despite the tremble. Luke made a raw, terrified sound and tried to twist away.
"Lucerys," she said. "Let me see."
The maester moved then, quick, as if he couldn't bear another second of her fingers near the wound. He lifted the corner of the bandage just enough.
Rhaenyra's breath caught so sharply it hurt to hear.
The cloth fell back.
She sat perfectly still for a heartbeat that did not belong to time.
"No," she whispered. "No. No—fix it."
The maester's mouth tightened.
"Princess," he said, low. "The eye is lost."
Rhaenyra stared at him.
Her hands were still on Luke's wrists. She was holding him as if she could keep the world from taking anything else.
"The eye is—" Her voice cracked. She swallowed, tried again. "You mean—"
"It cannot be saved," the maester interrupted. "He will live. But—"
Rhaenyra's fingers tightened until Luke whimpered. She loosened at once, horror flashing across her face.
"Don't look," Luke begged, his hand flailing weakly toward the bandage as if to shield it. "Please don't."
He sobbed harder, panic rising like a wave. Jace rocked him, murmuring nonsense into his hair, shaking too.
Rhaenyra didn't have the mind to soothe.
Her eyes had gone somewhere else.
They swept the hall looking for the man who held the knife.
It found Aemond, a lonely figure standing too straight, his own face a map of fresh violence. Alicent's hand was splayed over his arm, a claim and a shield.
Rhaenyra's gaze hardened when it touched him.
Then her eyes moved again. And found him.
He was kneeling beside Luke, too close to the blood, too still. His face looked wrong in torchlight—pale, tight, composed in a way that belonged on a knife, not a boy. His hands were gentle where they rested near Luke's, but everything else about him was held back by force.
Rhaenyra stared at him as if he was the only fixed point in a room that had tilted.
"Aerion," she called.
He looked up.
His eyes were bright, but not wet. Bright like the start of flame.
Aerion felt his rage claw again, hungry for a shape. He forced it down with the pain in his thigh, grinding it into something he could use.
Fix this.
How?
Burn it all down.
He inhaled, a measured sip of the blood-tinged air.
"It was Aemond."
The words left him devoid of tremor. Everything in him was an act; the calm prince, the dutiful son, the boy who didn't dream of peeling the skin from Aemond's face like a fruit and feast on the green heart beneath.
Rhaenyra's head turned slowly. Her gaze pinned Aemond where he stood.
Aerion's thigh throbbed. He slid his hand down under the edge of his tunic and squeezed the injured muscle hard enough to make his vision spark.
Alicent's posture changed at once, a shield presenting itself. Her hand tightened on Aemond's arm.
Rhaenyra didn't move toward them.
She stayed by Luke.
Aerion forced the wildfire down, forced the words to sound still. He could not sound like the Brightflame, the Mad Prince. He had to sound like sense.
"He called them bastards."
Aerion kept his eyes on Aemond. For a single, vertiginous moment, his consciousness tried to flee his own ruined body and leap into Daemon's—to feel the weight of Dark Sister at his hip. To end this with a single, clean, final stroke.
No.
That was the other Aerion. The mad one. The dead one.
Think.
How do you set it right.
Alicent's mouth opened.
Rhaenyra stood up.
She rose with a steadiness that didn't match the way she'd entered, and that was what made it frightening. She looked down at Luke once—one long, searing look—as if branding the sight into her bones.
Alicent's eyes shone. Shock and grief were there, and the raw animal panic of a mother watching blood spill and knowing she can't put it back where it belonged.
"Princess," Alicent said, voice low, careful, almost pleading, "this is—gods, this is dreadful. I am sorry. Truly. Look at him—" Her fingers tightened around Aemond's sleeve, and for the first time Aerion noticed it clearly: Aemond's nose was swollen and crooked, dried blood crusted dark beneath one nostril. "My son is hurt as well. They were children in the dark. It was an accident that turned monstrous."
Lord Corlys's hand had come to rest on Jace's shoulder, his grip white-knuckled. "An accident does not require a knife, Your Grace," he bit out. "A guest does not draw steel under my roof, on the night we bury my daughter."
Princess Rhaenys stepped forward, beside Rhaenyra. Her voice was cold enough to freeze the salt spray from the windows. "Your son hunted my grandchildren on a night of mourning. He violated the laws of gods and men that even the lowest smallfolk hold sacred. He was the one with a blade. My grandson," she said, her gaze like a spear aimed at Aemond, "was the one bleeding."
Before the Queen could form a reply, Otto Hightower's smooth, placating tones cut through the rising tension. He had stepped slightly forward, his hands spread in a gesture of reason. "A terrible, tragic confusion of youth, to be sure. A lapse in judgment on all sides." His eyes swept the room, inviting the sensible to agree. "To speak of predation… of premeditation… this is to carve a deeper wound in the flesh of the realm itself. We are here to mend. The Crown," and he inclined his head toward Viserys, a flawless gesture of deference, "looks for healing wisdom."
He was trying to steer the conversation away from law and back to childish folly. Aerion saw the move for what it was. But Corlys was not having it.
"Premeditation?" The Sea Snake's voice was a whip-crack. "A knife is premeditation! Attacking the Crown Princess's own son, my own grandson, under the shelter of my roof? This is not the squabble of children, my lord. This is a crime. An assault upon our blood and our house."
Baela gave a harsh little laugh that sounded like it scraped her throat raw. "He mocked our mother's death."
Alicent's head snapped toward her, and the horror in her face hardened into something stern. "And you attacked him for words," she said, then caught herself, caught the edge, and softened again, forcing her voice back into measured calm. "Children struck at children. No one planned for this. No one wanted—" her gaze flicked to Luke and visibly flinched, "—that."
Jace's voice cut in, shaking with fury. "He called us—"
"Enough," Alicent said, too sharp, and the crack in her composure showed for a heartbeat. Then she steadied it, as if ashamed of the sharpness. Colour flushed her throat. "Enough. This is a tragedy. We do not make it worse by turning it into treason."
Rhaenys did not raise her voice. "It is the Queen who speaks of treason while her son's actions stand as the gravest violation of peace. He broke guest right. He drew first blood. The only accident here was that my grandson did not lose his life, only his eye."
Alicent drew another breath, shaping a new appeal, a fresh layer of placating reason, but Otto's warning glance seemed to check her. The Hand's expression was taut; he could see the dangerous ground they stood upon. His gaze slid past her. "It is a heavy burden, Your Grace. But it is to the King's justice we all must bow. His wisdom has never led the realm astray."
Alicent drew breath again, grateful for the rope Otto had thrown her. "Yes," she said, voice unsteady but sincere. "Viserys, please. Let us speak as family."
King Viserys ignored her and the Hand. His voice was a thing of ruptured hide and splintered bone, and the sheer fury in it made the rot within him seem to writhe to the surface, old and putrid.
"Aemond." His voice shuddered. It was, somehow, still a king's voice. "Tell me what happened."
Aemond lifted his chin. His eyes were bright and hard.
Alicent's hand slid up Aemond's arm, a small, grounding touch. "Your Grace," she interjected quickly, gentle, "he has been attacked. His nose is broken. He is in pain. They fell upon him in the dark—four against one. This was not… some plotted insult. It was children lashing out, and then—Seven save us—an accident."
"An accident," Rhaenyra echoed. She pointed at Aemond. "He made vile insults against my sons. He called them bastards. He questioned their birth. Their claim. Their very right to exist in this house."
She took a breath.
"That," her voice rose just enough to carry to every corner, "is the highest of treasons."
Alicent's face tightened, grief and fear mixing in a way that made her look suddenly young. "Rhaenyra—"
Rhaenyra cut her off. "I demand that he be sharply questioned."
The hall recoiled as one.
Even Aerion felt it.
He squeezed his thigh again under the cloth until the ache bit deep, because the wildfire in him leapt at the thought anyway, eager and horrible.
Yes, a small part of him whispered. Question him until he breaks. Until he names them. Until Otto and Alicent and Cole choke on their own poison.
No. Think. Cold. Cold.
Viserys's face was wrecked, hurt and fury piled on the same frail bones. "Enough," he whispered.
Then he found the air, the will, perhaps the last dregs of kingly authority. "ENOUGH!"
There was silence.
He stared at Aemond like he was looking at a stranger.
"Where," Viserys demanded, each syllable thick with disgust and sorrow, "did you hear this filth?"
All eyes turned to Aemond.
Alicent's expression became a plea.
Aemond stood very still. His spine was so straight it seemed it might snap.
His gaze flicked once toward Luke—only once.
Aemond's face twitched.
He looked away.
He lifted his chin, presenting clearly the broken line of his nose.
"It was Aegon."
Alicent's shoulders loosened by a fraction so small most wouldn't notice.
For half a heartbeat, there was silence, pure, stunned, then Aegon barked a laugh that shattered into a squawk.
"Me?" He stumbled forward, outrage making him clumsy. "Father, I never— I didn't."
Viserys turned his head.
Slowly.
The movement looked like it hurt him. The cartilage in his neck seemed to protest. When his eyes settled on Aegon, there was no fondness to be found.
"Aegon," he said. "Where did you hear it."
Aegon's mouth worked. His eyes, wide and panicked, darted—to his mother's frozen composure, to Otto's stony mask, to the sea of watching, judgmental faces.
He didn't want to damn his mother, but he didn't want to damn himself either.
So he did what Aegon always did when cornered: he shrugged and tried to smear the blame over everyone's shoes.
"Everyone says it, Father," he said, voice cracking. "Everyone. It's not— it's not like I made it up."
Everyone says it.
Aerion wanted to tear the hall apart. He wanted to drag Aegon by the hair and make him point to each "everyone," one by one, until the names ran out.
Instead he made himself count.
Treason spoken aloud in the king's hall.
A prince maimed under a lord's roof, in front of witnesses.
The Greens tied to the slander and tied to the blood that followed it.
Aemond now dragon-armed, and marked by what he had done with that arm.
Luke's sobs scraped at Aerion's nerves. The bandage on his brother's head looked too big, too white, too soaked. Aerion's stomach turned with a deep, nauseating wrongness. This was wrong. It was wrong that it happened. Wrong that it happened here. Wrong that he had slept.
The pieces clicked together in Aerion's mind, settling into a shape that was ugly, but useful.
A foul gift, wrapped in Luke's pain.
Aerion swallowed. Ash dragged down his throat. He felt, sharp and sudden, a stab of betrayal aimed at Aegon too—so hot it surprised him. Aegon hadn't swung the blade, but the sound of his voice, the casual everyone says it, made Aerion want to tear something apart. He didn't even know why. He just knew it lodged under his ribs and stayed.
Fine, Aerion thought, and the thought felt like a door shutting.
Fine. I can work with this.
He rose and motion made his thigh flare; white-hot pain jumped up his spine.
"Your Grace," Aerion said.
The hall turned. People remembered what he was. A prince. A boy with a dragon. A boy who had flown into prophecy and come back alive.
Rhaenyra's head snapped toward him, startled, furious and wary, like she expected him to do something reckless again. Do not make this worse.
Alicent's gaze flicked to him too. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She looked exhausted. She looked genuinely shaken.
Aerion did not care.
He took one step forward. He positioned himself within the King's line of sight.
"It isn't Aemond's fault," Aerion said.
The lie tasted like soot. He felt it coat his tongue.
Aemond's head jerked toward him. For one fleeting, stupid instant, naked hope flashed through his eyes. He believes I might save him, Aerion realized and felt his stomach twist harder.
Alicent's breath caught.
Rhaenyra's fingers curled like claws at her sides.
Aerion forced his voice to stay polite. Good grandson. Dutiful prince. A boy who knew his place.
"Aemond repeated what he'd heard," Aerion said, and let his gaze drift to the Queen. "He spoke the whispers out loud."
Alicent's lips parted. A tear clung to her lower lashes and didn't fall. "Aerion—" she began, almost pleading, almost maternal.
Aerion looked at her and felt nothing soften.
He had smelled her approval at a funeral. He had watched her smile. Start with the instrument. Then blame the hand that holds it. Then the mind that guides the hand.
He turned the knife with a polite hand.
"This is what your children learn," Aerion said, mild as milk.
Otto's face tightened by a hair. Good. The old fox saw the snare. You're next.
Ser Criston's posture shifted. A loyal attack dog sensing a threat.
Aegon stared at the floor. He did not look at Aerion. Not once. He looked sick with discomfort and stubbornness.
Helaena sat quiet among the bodies, hands folded, eyes wet. She watched Luke's shaking shoulders.
Aerion took another slow step forward and bowed to Viserys, perfect and small.
Then he lifted his head.
"It's curious, Your Grace," Aerion said softly, letting the words carry without raising them. "My brother and I have heard these… vile rumors… whispering in the halls of the Red Keep for years."
Rhaenyra's breath hitched, but this time it was different. He saw the moment understanding dawned in her eyes. She gave him the faintest, almost imperceptible nod.
Jace went rigid beside Luke, fury trembling under his skin.
Aerion kept his eyes on the king.
"We ignored them," Aerion continued, "as the mutterings of jealous smallfolk. As spite."
He paused. Let the hall remember all the times it had smiled politely while the poison worked.
"But for Prince Aemond to so casually wield them as a weapon," Aerion said, and now the gentleness went thin as wire, "to cite them as reason for mutilation…"
Luke sobbed again, thin and broken. The sound made the whole room flinch.
"It makes one wonder," he said at last, quieter still, "where does a prince—raised in the strictest piety and chivalry under your guidance—learn to weaponize treason?"
Alicent's lips parted. Her hands tightened on her son's arm.
Aerion's gaze drifted briefly toward Alicent.
"Did the lessons on the Seven-Pointed Star," Aerion asked, voice mild enough to be mistaken for innocence by fools, "include a chapter on slander and maiming kin?"
From the corner of his eye, he saw Lord Corlys shift his weight. The Sea Snake's gaze was on him. After a moment, Corlys gave a single, slow, grave nod of approval. Beside him, Rhaenys's mouth was a tight line. She, too, gave a slight, acknowledging tilt of her chin.
Alicent's eyes glistened. She looked genuinely stricken—sickened by Luke's blood, frightened by what the room was doing to her son, and furious that grief had turned into politics in a single night.
Viserys's face twisted, gutted by the implication because it was arranged so carefully he couldn't swat it away without acknowledging it.
"Aerion," Alicent whispered, a plea threaded through the word. "This is not—"
Aerion didn't answer her. He didn't dignify it with a glance.
He looked back to Viserys, and his voice stayed calm, calm, calm—so no one could call him mad while he did it.
"If these words are treason in the mouths of men," Aerion said, "they are treason in the mouth of a prince. And if a prince can speak them so freely… then the rot is not in the streets, Your Grace."
Viserys's expression wavered—hurt and anger and a desperate, sick need for his family to stop tearing.
Aerion tilted his head a fraction, and his next line slid out with quiet venom.
"This is what your prayers grow."
Alicent flinched as if struck.
The tears in her eyes finally spilled—one, then another—silent and bright, tracking down her cheeks.
Aerion didn't believe the tears.
Even if they were real, he didn't care.
"Aemond spoke the queen's whispers out loud, your Grace" Aerion said, voice still calm, still deadly controlled, "and then he drew blood for them. The word and the deed are one. You cannot condemn the hand without questioning the voice that guided it."
The court shifted.
Aerion felt it. A subtle tilt of bodies. Certain lords' eyes slid from Alicent's tear-streaked face back to Rhaenyra's stone-carved fury. Like a current choosing a channel.
Alicent's hand tightened on Aemond's arm, fingers white. "I never—" she whispered, voice breaking. "Viserys, I never taught him—"
Aegon, sensing the tide, tried to scramble out of the water. "Father, I only meant it's common talk, I wasn't accusing anyone, I just heard—"
"Enough," Rhaenyra hissed, stepping forward like fire finding air. "My son's eye is gone."
Luke sobbed again, a raw sound that made the hall wince.
Viserys looked at Luke.
Then at Rhaenyra.
Then at Alicent.
Then at Aemond.
He looked from face to face, searching for the version of them that still lived in his head. The children who laughed together in the yard. The wife who prayed beside him. The daughter who used to run to him without thinking.
Viserys's face crumpled into grief so deep it made him look briefly like a frail old man, not king. His voice broke when he spoke, and the break carried farther than shouting ever could.
"You are one family," the words were a plea. "One blood."
He swallowed hard, as if the words were thorns.
"You will cease this," Viserys commanded, voice trembling with strain. "You will cease it now. No more whispers. No more insults. No more—" Air snagged in his throat, a wet, terrible sound, "—no more drawing blood over words."
He looked around the hall as if daring any of them to refuse him in front of their dragons, their lords, their wounded child.
"By command of your king," Viserys said, louder now, forcing iron into his failing voice, "you will make your apologies. You will show goodwill to one another. You will kneel, if I tell you to kneel. You will speak peace, even if your hearts are full of knives."
His eyes shone, wet, furious and pleading all at once.
"Do it," Viserys said.
Rhaenyra stood with Luke pressed against her, one hand splayed over his bandage as if her palm could keep the loss contained. Her face had gone still in a way Aerion recognized.
"Apologies," The word fell from her lips flatly. "Goodwill."
Viserys flinched at the contempt she didn't bother to hide.
Rhaenyra kept her eyes on him. "My son's eye is gone, Your Grace. Words will not put it back. And if there is no consequence, there will be another injury. Another 'accident.'"
Alicent's mouth parted, the familiar shapes of defence forming—they were only children, it was dark, no one meant for it to go so far—
Aerion saw his mother's gaze flick sideways to him for the barest beat. A question.
He gave her an answer without moving his face.
Rhaenyra's chin lifted a fraction. "You need not punish the boy," her gesture toward Aemond's battered face was dismissive . "He has been struck enough tonight."
A shaky, visible relief began to unfold in Alicent's posture.
Rhaenyra killed it with her next breath.
"But the King's children," she went on, "might benefit from distance. Correction. From being removed… from the source of these whispers."
The hall tightened. Send her away. Send her back to Oldtown. Anywhere.
Alicent made a sound, a choked thing that was neither gasp nor sob. "Viserys—you cannot—this is madness—I am their mother—"
Viserys snapped his head toward her.
"Be silent."
She froze, the words dying in her throat.
He looked at all of them then—Rhaenyra with Luke, Alicent with Aemond, Aegon half-sick and cornered, Helaena small and silent, Jace standing rigid with hate under his skin.
Viserys's gaze found Aerion for a moment.
Aerion let his expression stay respectful. He let his eyes say, Take it. Take the distance. Take the separation.
"All of you. Silence." Viserys said, and the hall obeyed because the sound finally carried the weight of a crown.
He drew a breath that shook. "You will perform the courtesies. You will speak the words of peace. You will do this because your king demands it."
Alicent's lips trembled. "Viserys, I beg—"
He cut her off without looking at her. "And tomorrow I will decide what is to be done. With all of you."
His gaze landed on Aemond a heartbeat longer than the rest. Then it shifted to Alicent, and the judgment there was colder still.
Aerion felt his thigh pulse again. It kept him utterly still.
Viserys's voice dropped. "Now."
No one stirred. The defiance was a thick presence in the hall.
So Aerion did.
He stepped forward with careful grace, the perfect little prince again. He turned toward Alicent first.
"My Queen." His voice was a clear bell in the hush. "Our shared grief has curdled into this ugliness. For that, I am truly sorry. I shall pray for Prince Aemond's swift recovery."
Aemond's eyes flicked to him—wary, searching. Aerion did not give him anything to hold onto.
Jace followed, jaw locked, eyes fixed on the floor as if looking up might make him strike. "Your Grace." The title was gritted out to Viserys, then his head jerked toward Alicent. "My apologies. For the… disruption."
Rhaenyra inclined her head the barest inch. It was not an apology so much as acknowledgement of the King's command. Her hand never left Luke.
Alicent's bow was deeper, more fluid. It looked more real than Aerion's too.
Aemond mirrored her, his body stiff as a drawn blade. His broken nose gleamed dark with crusted blood; the swelling had already begun to set his features into a new shape.
Aegon finally lifted his head, eyes darting anywhere but Aerion. "Yes. Apologies," he blurted, loud and graceless. "Terribly sorry. All very tragic. We should all be… friends."
Helaena spoke softly, as if she was talking to a thread only she could see. "The wrong eye was paid. The debt remains unbalanced."
Aegon shot her a look of sharp annoyance. "Helaena—"
Luke made a small, strangled sound into his mother's cloak. Rhaenyra's fingers tightened once and then loosened again.
Viserys watched the pantomime of reconciliation. With each hollow gesture, another year seemed to settle onto his crumbling frame.
Daemon chose that moment to move. He detached himself from the shadow of a pillar and came to stand nearer Rhaenyra and her boys, not really touching, or speaking, but simply placing himself there with easy certainty. He had chosen a side long before anyone asked him to.
Aerion saw heads turn, lords noticing and the room adjusting around that fact.
Viserys saw Daemon too.
A spasm crossed the king's face, a swift, ugly twist of rage and pain, there and gone so fast Aerion almost doubted it. He moved to leave the hall. Otto shifted to follow immediately, ready to whisper in his ears.
Viserys stopped and turned his head just enough.
"In the morrow, Otto," he said, and the coldness in it made the words scrape.
Otto stilled.
Viserys left without another glance back. Ser Harrold Westerling followed. The doors shut on the sound of his boots, and the hall exhaled.
In the vacuum of his exit, the court surged forward. It took less than three heartbeats for their calculations.
The King had left. He had left without a word of comfort to his Queen. He had left after publicly freezing out his Hand.
The message was not subtle: the Queen's star had just plummeted. The Hand's influence was, for this night at least, ash.
Soft voices, full of a sympathy that had been conspicuously absent moments before, washed toward Rhaenyra. Faces that had been carefully neutral now molded themselves into shapes of earnest loyalty. Bodies angled, positioning themselves in her orbit, as if proximity alone could be converted into future favor.
"My Princess," Lord Rosby intoned, his voice syrup-thick with a sorrow he'd manufactured on the spot. "A black day for the Crown."
"Unspeakable," murmured Lady Stokeworth, dabbing at dry eyes with a spotless linen square. "Simply unspeakable."
Lord Hayford hovered at her shoulder, eyes fixed on Luke's bandage and never quite meeting Rhaenyra's gaze. "An affront to decency. To kinship itself."
A young Velaryon cousin, Vaemond's blood, leaned in with solemn eyes. "Whatever you require," he promised. "Whatever aid Driftmark can offer."
So swift, Aerion observed. So effortless.
The current of profit had changed direction. The whole room was now swimming with it.
He should have felt triumph. He did feel it, a thin flare under his ribs, but it did not warm him.
Luke wept on, his sobs a weak, relentless counterpoint to the murmuring politics.
No amount of murmured condolences could sew an eye back into place. No apology could rewind the beach. Aerion stood amid the soft tide of voices and felt the victory hollow out as it formed.
They will burn too, he decided, watching a lord with kind hands and a cruel mouth bend close to his mother. Burn them all.
Daemon parted the throng of murmuring courtiers without effort. They gave way without being asked. His stride carried him first to where his daughters stood. He paused before Baela, his gaze taking in her scraped knuckles, the furious set of her jaw. A single, slow nod passed between them.
Then he turned to Rhaena. He leaned in, murmuring something. Aerion saw the girl's pale face lift and a fragile thing that was not quite a smile touched her lips.
Only then he crouched in front of Luke with a strange, careful patience, as if he didn't trust himself to be gentle but would attempt it anyway.
"Look at me," Daemon said, low.
Luke tried. His breath hitched. His remaining eye was wild and wet.
Daemon studied the stitched edge of the wound where the maester's work disappeared beneath linen. His expression didn't change much, but something tightened in his jaw.
"Brave boy," he said.
Luke made a small pained sound.
Daemon released Luke's chin and rose. He turned, and his gaze found Aerion.
Aerion braced. Heat crawled up the back of his throat. He swallowed it down.
Daemon closed the distance between them. His hand came to rest on Aerion's shoulder. It did not feel like affection. Not quite. Claim, maybe. Or acknowledgment.
His voice was quiet enough that only Aerion heard it.
"You did good," Daemon said.
Aerion didn't know what to do with those words. His eyes narrowed. "Luke is half-blind."
Daemon's fingers tightened briefly on his shoulder.
"We will make this right," Daemon promised, not gentle.
Their attention settled first on the weeping queen and her bruised son, but mostly on the still, watchful figure of Ser Otto Hightower across the hall.
"Yes," Aerion said, polite as ever.
Inside, the wildfire licked at his tongue. Burn them. Burn them all.
Notes:
So. Aerion won.
They have Vhagar. Alicent and Otto are in very hot water, like, possibly-getting-booted-to-Oldtown-next-chapter hot. Strategically, it's a win.
But Aerion also lost. When he nudged Baela and Rhaena toward Vhagar, he was sure that if there was going to be a fight like in canon, it would be between them and Aemond. And if one of them lost an eye… well, Aerion truly could not have cared less.
What he didn't see coming was Baela calling Jace to go with them. That's one of his blind spots: he doesn't really get friendship, or kinship that isn't his own brand of love. What he feels for his family is raw and real, but what other people feel for each other often just looks incomprehensible to him.
Also, this is your reminder that Aerion is a mean little shit. And he is mad. He just does a scarily good impression of a functional person most of the time.
P.S. Dragon name key, for clarity:
Sky-Cleaving White Silver = Silverwing
Hearth-Mountain's Heartbeat = Vermithor
Green-Breath-That-Withers-Forests = Vhagar
(And yes, you can expect more Silverwing POV, guess why.)
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