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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)
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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 5: Strong Pri(n)ce
Summary:
Aerion flies to Harrenhal, has a revelation, stands witness at a funeral, and fights a necessary fight. He wins. But the cost of winning is a new and heavier burden.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Perhaps it had not been his brightest idea.
It had seemed so simple in his head: take dragon, fly hard, arrive in time, snatch a man from the teeth of fate. Simple as drawing a sword. In practice, it proved to be a long, bitter argument between a boy, the sky, and every aching muscle the gods had given him for reasons he now questioned.
Dragonstone fell away behind them. The wind clawed at his cloak, snatched at his hair, and tried—again and again—to pry him loose from Silverwing's neck.
At least, he was not cold.
Silverwing bled heat like a forge. It kept the chill from his bones, even as it did nothing at all for the small matter of there being no saddle, no straps, and no dignified way to sit a dragon but hold fast and pray you do not slip.
At first, it was bearable; his legs merely complained.
He wedged his knees into the ridges where scale overlapped scale and squeezed until his thighs shook. He pressed his chest to the hard plate at the base of her neck and told himself that princes endured—no whimper just because the sky had teeth.
Soon, his calves began to burn. Then his thighs. Then the deep cords in his hips that he had never spared a thought. He tried to shift an inch and Silverwing corrected him at once, smoothly.
The bond flared against his ribs, like the feel of a great, patient hand at the back of his collar.
Hold, it said, without words.
Aerion swallowed a curse. "I am," he muttered, though the wind tore the words apart.
Below, Blackwater Bay lay black and restless. Driftmark sat off to the left as a dark shape with a few stubborn lights. The Gullet opened like a narrow throat between island and mainland, hungry for ships. Silverwing crossed it as if it were a mere puddle.
The land rose ahead in layers: cliffs, beaches, then fields. The Blackwater Rush was a slick ribbon, catching moonlight where it bent. Far behind, King's Landing slept, smaller from this height.
He liked how small it looked.
The night did not become small with it.
Aerion's hands began to fail next, and that was worse than pain.
He clenched his jaw and told his hands, very plainly, that they were not allowed to loose until he gave them leave. It did not help. His forearms burned, then dulled, then burned again as if his body were arguing with itself about the best way to betray him.
The bond snapped bright.
Silverwing felt him too keenly to ignore. Concern rolled through Aerion, immediate, the way a mother dragon might bristle when her hatchling limped.
Aerion lifted his head and saw higher ground below, a dark ridge line, bare trees clawing at the sky, stone that offered a place to set down. Silverwing angled toward it.
She meant to land and let him rest.
Aerion's pride was too brittle a thing.
"No," he rasped.
The bond flickered, surprised.
He dragged breath into his chest and forced the words through a throat scraped raw by wind. "Do not land."
Silverwing beat her wings once, slower, as if she had not heard him properly.
Aerion's legs cramped so hard bright spots burst behind his eyes. He bit the inside of his cheek and tasted blood, and the taste made him angrier than the pain.
"Keep going," he said, sharper. "Fly."
She kept angling down.
"No," Aerion said again, and this time Silverwing jerked in the air and began to climb again, abandoning the idea of rest.
Aerion sagged forward against her neck, half with relief, half with fury at having been questioned.
"Quicker," he rasped.
Silverwing exhaled hot over him—impatient, offended, worried in equal measure. Her heat wrapped him like a scolding.
Aerion swallowed. Pride was nothing here.
"Please," he forced out, and the word tasted strange, as if his mouth did not know it. "Fly."
Silverwing roared.
The sound rattled Aerion's ribs and set his teeth humming.
Her wings drove harder.
The land below changed as they drove inland; Crownlands yielding to broader stretches of dark wood and open plain. Off to one side sprawled the Kingswood. Roads skirted its edges like cautious feet around a sleeping dog.
Then the Riverlands opened up ahead, and the air seemed to change with it, damp, heavy, full of water's slow strength.
The Gods Eye looked like a dark mirror. Within it, the Isle of Faces rose from the water as if the lake had swallowed a secret and refused to let it go. Even from this height, it looked like a place that watched.
Silverwing curved along the southern reach of the great lake, and Aerion's dread tightened into a knot so hard it felt like a stone in his chest.
Then he spotted Harrenhal.
From the sky it barely look like a castle.
It looked like a fresh wound.
Five towers clawed at the night with ruined crowns—jagged silhouettes, massive and wrong, stone that seemed half-melted even in moonlight. The curtain walls sprawled wide along the lakeshore, an enormous ring of black teeth set against the dark water. Only dead stone drinking whatever light the sky would spare.
Aerion stared—
—and felt his lungs remember how to work.
There was no fire.
No smoke smearing the stars.
Just Harrenhal, whole in its ugliness, sitting there under the night
Relief hit him so hard it nearly loosened his knees.
His breath broke and threatened, treacherously, to become laughter. He bit it down, hard.
"There," he managed, voice scraped thin. "You see it."
Silverwing's throat rumbled deep in her ribcage.
His arms were numb. His legs trembled with pain that made his vision waver at the edges. Only his pride kept him on Silverwing.
But Harrenhal was not burning.
Silverwing came in low over the Gods Eye, wings cutting the damp night air, and then swung toward Harrenhal's outer approach.
Aerion's relief lasted exactly long enough for Silverwing to drop.
The descent pressed his stomach up into his throat. Silverwing's wings beat once, twice, then she flared them wide and bled speed with a sound like sails snapping.
Aerion braced to dismount like a sensible rider.
He remembered, belatedly, that he was not a sensible rider.
He had no saddle. His hands were half-dead. His legs had turned into a pair of furious, useless planks.
Silverwing hit the ground with a thump that shivered up through her bones and into Aerion's teeth. Loose grit jumped. Somewhere, a horse screeched in the darkness and was answered by another.
Aerion tried to move.
His fingers refused to open. His knees refused to trust him. The moment he shifted his weight, a cramp seized his thigh so hard his vision went white at the edges.
He made a sound through his teeth, something between a hiss and a very undignified whimper.
Silverwing rumbled, warm concern sliding through the bond, and turned her head just enough to look back at him with one bright, ancient eye.
Aerion swallowed his pride. It stuck.
"Do not look at me like that," he rasped.
The bond carried a simple maddening thought: Hatchling.
Aerion clenched his jaw until it ached. "I am fine—" he began, and then his left arm gave up completely, numb as stone.
He solved it the only way a boy with more stubbornness than sense could.
He slid.
It was a slow, humiliating collapse of dignity, inch by inch, as he peeled himself off Silverwing's neck, not unlike a sticky leaf that had decided to cling through winter.
His boots found her shoulder ridge, then slipped. His legs spasmed. Pain knifed up his calves. He gripped at scale with hands that barely listened. For one bright, awful moment, he thought he might simply fall under her.
Silverwing shifted, carefully.
Aerion tumbled off the last span of her wing-joint and hit the ground on his side with a thud that knocked the breath out of him.
He lay there, face in the dirt, cloak twisted around him like a shroud, and considered—briefly—digging a hole and living in it until dawn.
Then he spat grit and said, very clearly, "Seven bloody—"
A low warning rumble came from Silverwing.
Aerion froze mid-curse.
He lifted his head.
Two guards stood near the gate approach, half-shadowed by a lantern on a post. They looked from the great silver dragon to the small, ash-smeared boy, in disbelief.
One had his mouth hanging slightly open. The other had his spear angled toward the ground, forgotten in his grip as if his hands had stopped receiving instructions.
Aerion felt heat flood his face.
It climbed up his neck, over his cheeks, and did not stop until it reached his hairline. He could feel it in the roots of his hair, which was a wholly offensive sensation. He had just flown across half the realm on the back of a dragon and this—this was what made him want to die.
He pushed himself up with an arm that still barely worked. His legs tried to cramp again and he nearly swore a second time. He made it to one knee with slow, shaky dignity.
The guard with the open mouth found his voice first.
"My…" he began, then stopped, eyes flicking to Aerion's silver hair, then to the dragon, then back as if trying to place the pieces in the correct order. "My—prince?"
Aerion drew in a breath and forced his face into something calm and bored.
"Prince Aerion," he said, clipped.
The words felt foreign in this place of damp stone and ghosts.
He lifted his chin a fraction. "Fetch Ser Harwin to me. Now."
The speaking guard blinked. "My prince, " he stammered, his gaze involuntarily flitting to the bruise-dark sky above Silverwing's head, "the hour is… unfit for summons. Please. Warm yourself. Lord Strong will receive you at first light."
"I did not ask for Lord Lyonel," Aerion interrupted, his tone dropping from cold to deadly quiet. The exhaustion made it rasp. "I said fetch Ser Harwin. Here."
The guard's mouth opened again, helplessly. "My prince—"
Silverwing roared.
The sound rolled off the castle walls and came back wrong, warped by stone and ruin. The lantern flame leapt. The guards flinched.
Aerion lifted his chin, hands shaking, though he refused to show it.
"Fetch him," he repeated.
The guard swallowed hard, eyes darting to his companion.
The silent guard—wiser, or simply more frightened—moved at last. He turned and ran toward the gate, disappearing into the deeper shadow where Harrenhal swallowed men.
The speaking guard remained, stranded beside the prince and the dragon, lantern light flickering over his pale, disbelieving face.
Aerion tried to stand fully.
His legs rebelled and he had to catch himself with one hand on the ground. The indignity nearly killed him outright. He rose again, slower, and this time he made it, though his thighs trembled and his arms felt like they belonged to someone else.
He stared at the gate as if sheer will could drag Harwin through it.
Minutes stretched awkwardly.
Then the silent guard returned, half-running, half-stumbling.
And behind him came Ser Harwin Strong.
Harwin was barefoot. His curls stood up at odd angles, as if his pillow had fought him and won. A tunic hung crooked over him, hastily dragged on. His face was still waking, bleary with sleep and the instinctive irritation of a man hauled from bed in the dead of night.
Then he saw Aerion.
The irritation vanished.
Harwin went white.
His eyes snapped from Aerion to Silverwing and back again, and the color drained from his face so fast it looked like someone had poured fear through him.
"Aerion."
Harwin took a step forward as if he might grab Aerion just to prove he was real.
"Aerion!"
He looked past Aerion, his gaze sweeping the empty, torch-lit darkness beyond Silverwing's bulk, searching for another figure, a retinue, or a dragon with a familiar rider.
"You…" Harwin began, his voice rough with sleep and disbelief. "Who… where is…"
"I came alone," Aerion said, clipped.
Harwin shut his eyes for a heartbeat. "You did not," he said, very softly.
Aerion's ears burned hotter. "I did."
Harwin opened his eyes again. They were bloodshot with sleep. "Aerion—"
"I had the dream again," Aerion barreled forward, the words a dam holding back a tide of tremors. "So I came to see you."
A pause.
Harwin looked at him for a long moment. Disbelief. Then the old, weary acceptance that lived in Harwin's bones whenever Aerion did something that made no sense.
Harwin had learned, long ago, that Aerion's mind did not behave like other children's minds. It knew things it had no business knowing.
He exhaled through his nose, slow. "All right," he said. "Come inside. It's warmer."
Aerion gave a sharp nod. And did not move.
If he tried, his legs would fold and he would fall on his face at the gates of Harrenhal in front of two guards and a dragon, and then the gods themselves would laugh.
Harwin watched him, his brow furrowing in askance.
Aerion's face went hotter. "The flight was long."
Harwin tilted his head, studying him, and the look was almost comically wrong on a man who could break someone's skull with his hands.
"Well. Come," Harwin said again, gentler, taking a step forward.
Behind him, Silverwing shifted.
The bond flared.
Aerion felt it like a pressure behind his ribs: Silverwing's attention sliding from him to Harwin, weighing him. A flash of ancient, draconic logic.
The understanding that a hatchling who could not walk was carried. He saw, through the dragon's senses, a swift, dismissive assessment of Harwin: two-legged, clumsy, weak-jawed. An insufficient vessel for precious cargo.
Silverwing gave a soft, rolling sound—half-thrum, half-warning—that vibrated through the ground and into Aerion's teeth.
Harwin looked at Silverwing with a wary sort of uncertainty. He was a soldier. He'd stood in melees. He did not tremble.
But a dragon was not a man.
Aerion's stomach twisted. "Stop that," he hissed under his breath.
He forced his voice flat again. "It was a long flight," he repeated, and added, "and there was no saddle."
He made a small, angry motion with his chin toward his legs, which had decided to become decorative.
Harwin went still.
"What," he said.
Aerion did not repeat himself. The humiliation was complete.
Harwin's face went pale again—then paler. He looked at Silverwing's back, trying to see in the night what his mind was already filling in with horror.
"Tell me you did not," Harwin said, voice tightening. "Aerion."
Aerion stayed silent.
Harwin's color shifted in a fast, ugly tide—white to red. "You could have fallen to your death," he said, low and furious. "You came from Dragonstone? Across the Blackwater Bay and half the Riverlands? Aerion. Please. Tell me you did not."
Aerion opened his mouth to explain, because he had explanations, several of them excellent, and—
"Hush," Harwin scolded, and stepped toward Aerion.
Silverwing's head lifted. A warning sound rolled out of her throat, deeper now.
Harwin stopped, one foot forward, hands loose at his sides. He looked from Aerion to the dragon, measuring.
Then he asked, in the most Harrenhal sentence Aerion had ever heard, "Is it going to set me on fire?"
Aerion shook his head, the motion sending a fresh spike of pain down his neck. "She is Silverwing. She won't." He pushed a pulse of calm, of mine, he is mine, through the bond. The low rumbling ceased, though the great molten eyes remained fixed on Harwin with suspicion.
Harwin stared at him as if that was not the part that mattered.
"Silverwing," he repeated flatly.
He took one more step.
Silverwing rumbled again, but Aerion pushed calm through the bond with both hands.
Lykiri. Be calm. Ñuhon. Mine.
Silverwing's breath huffed out. Her head lowered a fraction.
Harwin came straight to Aerion, and once he was close enough, he did not ask again.
He scooped him up.
Aerion yelped, a short, sharp, utterly undignified sound, as Harwin's hands found him. One large hand ran from the crown of his head down his spine, checking for injury, the other supporting his legs. Harwin found no broken bones, only misery: iron-hard knots in his back, muscles in his thighs and calves that were rigid boards, trembling fatigue in his arms and shoulders.
Aerion sucked in a sharp breath.
Every muscle in his body had been pretending it was fine out of sheer spite. In Harwin's arms, the pretense collapsed.
His thighs screamed. His calves cramped. His back—gods, his back—lit up in a solid band of agony that made his eyes water. His upper arms ached as if someone had been pulling them from their sockets for hours.
He tried not to make another sound.
He failed.
A small noise escaped him.
Harwin made a low, pained sound in his own throat. He adjusted his grip swiftly, settling Aerion against his chest more firmly, one arm under his knees, the other supporting his back, cradling him like something both precious and infuriatingly breakable. He ducked his head, his stubbled chin brushing against Aerion's sweat-damp silver hair.
"You foolish boy," Harwin muttered into it.
Aerion clenched his teeth. He let himself rest there for one miserable heartbeat, because he could not stop himself.
Then pride surged back, loud and offended. He shifted as if he could wriggle free.
"I am too old to be carried," Aerion hissed, mortified. "Even Luke—Luke stopped asking to be carried a year ago."
Harwin made a sound that could have been a laugh if he hadn't been so mad. He tightened his hold and turned, carrying him toward the castle. "Hush," he said again, softer this time.
As they passed through the pool of torchlight, Aerion saw the two guards. They had not moved. Their faces were frozen in expressions of such profound, gobsmacked awe that they looked like gargoyles. They stared at the dragon, at the prince and at the knight carrying the prince like a child retrieved from a well.
Aerion closed his eyes, wishing fervently for a sudden, cleansing dragonfire. He buried his face against Harwin's chest, the rough wool scratchy against his cheek.
This, he decided, was the worst night of his life.
Harwin carried him through Harrenhal.
Aerion, pressed against Harwin's chest, watched his surroundings. The high halls rose like ribs. The ceilings vanished into shadow. Every arch looked like a mouth held open. Even the air felt old: damp and soot-stained, as if the place had been breathing smoke for a hundred years and never quite learned how to stop.
The blackening was everywhere.
The stone wore darkness like a bruise that had sunk deep. Aerion's eyes snagged on it again and again—on the soot lodged in grooves, on corners where smoke had once licked and then been trapped there forever.
Aegon the Conqueror, his mind supplied, unhelpfully. Balerion.
Aerion swallowed.
His gaze flicked along beams, along every thick support of timber that held up the world above him. His body braced for it—some sudden blossom of flame, the ceiling dropping into sparks.
Nothing happened.
The fact that nothing happened only made his skin itch harder, like the castle was drawing breath to do it properly.
Harwin's boots rang on stone with steady purpose. He did not look up at the shadows the way Aerion did. Either he trusted this place, or he'd simply learned how to live with the idea that something cursed might live in his castle.
He stopped sharply at a turning and caught a servant girl darting past with a basket clutched to her hip.
"Girl," Harwin called.
She nearly dropped the basket in her scramble to stop. Her eyes lifted, then widened as she saw what Harwin carried. As she saw the dragon-blood hair, the too-pale face, the boy in the knight's arms.
"M-my lord?" she stammered.
"Follow," Harwin said, voice leaving no room for wobble. "I want the Prince's room prepared. The close chamber by the west passage. Cushions. Clean linens. Water. And a fire in the hearth." His gaze sharpened. "Go."
"Yes, my lord," she breathed, already scurrying in their wake.
Harwin turned down a corridor that grew warmer, the damp chill giving way to the castle's latent, earthy heat. He shouldered open adoor.
Inside lay a smaller, stout-walled room, built for defense, with a single narrow window. The air was close, scented with damp stone and stored linens.
The servant girl slipped back into the corridor, rapped a sharp, rhythmic pattern on the wall, and scurried back inside. The signal, apparently well-known, worked. Steps pattered in the hall. One servant arrived, then another, and suddenly Aerion found himself surrounded by wide-eyed, silent witnesses.
They tried not to stare.
They stared anyway.
One hauled a mattress straight. Another fluffed cushions with hands that shook. A third knelt to lay kindling in the hearth. Someone struck flint. Sparks jumped. The first lick of flame caught and began to chew.
Harwin said nothing. He stood in the middle of the room, his arms locked around Aerion, his eyes following every servant's movement with the kind of attention that did not relax.
When the fire was properly lit and the bed made and the room finally looked like it belonged to a prince, Harwin spoke.
"That's enough," he said.
The servants froze.
"Out," Harwin ordered. "And send for a healer."
They left in a rush. The servant girl lingered half a heartbeat too long, eyes darting to Aerion's face as if she wanted proof he was real.
Harwin's gaze pinned her.
She fled.
The door shut.
Harwin turned and lowered Aerion to the bed with a care that made Aerion want to bite him and also made his body sigh in relief.
The moment Aerion's weight left Harwin's arms, his legs cramped so hard his toes curled. His back screamed. His arms, numb from the flight, tingled as blood tried to remember how to move.
Aerion clenched his jaw and pretended this was all beneath him.
Harwin pulled the sheets up and tucked them around him like Aerion was an infant. The insult was so profound Aerion nearly combusted on the spot.
Then Harwin dragged a chair close and sat.
He looked at Aerion.
Stern.
"Very well," Harwin said. "Now you might want to explain yourself."
Aerion rolled his eyes. If he didn't do something contemptuous his face might betray how much his body hurt. "I already told you."
Harwin waited.
Aerion's nostrils flared. "I came to see that you were still breathing. I dreamt you died. In fire."
Harwin's mouth tightened. He shook his head.
"Aerion," he said, exhausted, "when we came back from King's Landing, I had the entire castle checked."
Aerion's eyes narrowed.
"As you asked," Harwin added, because he had, and Aerion hated being reminded.
Harwin leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Firelight painted his face in rough gold and made the lines at his eyes deeper. "The timbers. The chimneys. The kitchens. The storerooms. The lamps. Every cursed hearth. I had men up on ladders looking into places no one should have to look into. The castle is secured."
Aerion stared at him, unblinking.
Harwin's voice gentled, a fraction. "There will be no fire. I promise."
Aerion's lip curled. "My dreams come true."
Harwin's gaze held his. "Even if they do," he said quietly, "it is not your duty to protect me."
Aerion scoffed. Pain flared when his ribs moved. He ignored it.
Harwin's jaw worked. "It is my duty," he said, firmer now, "to protect you."
Aerion's eyes flashed. "From what. The court."
"Yes," Harwin said.
Aerion's voice sharpened. "I don't care what the court says. And I don't care what that ugly queen thinks."
Harwin held the stare for a long moment, and in that silence Aerion saw something that unsettled him more than anger did.
Harwin looked older.
"You should care, Aerion." Harwin said at last, the firelight carving deep lines of weariness around his eyes. "Even dragons are not exempt from men's judgments."
Aerion's hands twitched under the sheets. "I hate her," he snapped. "I hate this. I don't understand." For a moment, he let the genuine, frustrated confusion of a child seep into his voice. It was easier than explaining he understood all too well.
Harwin exhaled, slow. He chose his words carefully.
"The court… the Queen… they spread vile rumors. About your parentage."
Aerion's eyes hardened. "They have no right."
"They do not," Harwin agreed. "But they speak anyway."
Aerion's voice went cold. "They can choke on their gossips."
Harwin's gaze dropped briefly, then lifted again. "They whisper that your brothers do not look like your father." His voice was measured. "They say it because Jace and Luke do not have silver hair. They do not have violet eyes. They use that to wound your mother. And to reach for you."
Aerion held his stare. "The gods made Jace and Luke look like Princess Rhaenys. Our father's mother. She had dark hair. The court has no right to comment on the whims of gods. "
Harwin's mouth curved, faint and sad. "Aye," he said. "Any sensible man could see that."
Aerion leaned his head back against the pillow, furious. "Then why did you leave."
Harwin's eyes held his, steady as earth. "Because it is best for me to stay out of their sight," he said. "Because if I am not there, they have less to point at. Less to snarl about. And because—" His voice tightened. "Because I would rather the venom find me than find you."
Aerion spat, "So they might forget what you look like?"
Harwin's smile flickered again. "Yes," he said quietly. "That."
Aerion scowled. "We do not even look like you."
Harwin blinked.
"We look like Mother," Aerion insisted. "All of us. Just… different coloring. That is all." He truly believed, in that moment, that they all carried Rhaenyra in their bones, their faces and their spirit. Dragons, all of them.
Harwin stared at him a beat too long, something strange and tender shifting behind his eyes. Aerion hated it on principle.
Harwin simply nodded, as if accepting that Aerion lived in a world where his own eyes were law. "I hear you," he said, voice softening. "If that's what you see."
Aerion huffed, satisfied and still angry.
Harwin considered him a heartbeat longer, then visibly retreated to more solid ground. "The dragon," he said. "Silverwing. How did it happen?"
Aerion latched onto the topic with relief. This, he could explain. "She claimed me. In the Dragonmont. I found her cave. She… she thinks I'm a hatchling." He said it with a mix of pride and bewilderment. "The Cannibal almost made a snack of me first, though."
Harwin, who had been leaning forward with a look of cautious awe, went rigid. The color drained from his face once more, leaving him parchment-pale. "Who?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet. "What Cannibal? On Dragonstone?" His mind, trained for threats, immediately conjured images of assassins, of some monstrous beast kept secret, not understanding that the monster was the secret, and far older than any plot.
There was a knock.
Harwin's head lifted at once, the way a man lifted his head at the first creak of a bowstring. "Enter."
The door opened and a girl stepped in with a satchel tucked to her hip and a bundle of cloth-wrapped jars in her arms. Young, too young to carry herself with that much certainty, and yet she did. Firelight caught the curve of her cheek and the line of her throat. Her hair was dark and thick, curling in unruly loops that refused pins.
Her eyes were darker, wide, and observant; they swept the bed, Aerion, then Harwin with a look that didn't so much flinch as assess.
Something about her itched at the back of Aerion's mind. It was familiar in a way he couldn't place.
Harwin's mouth softened. "Alys."
Aerion blinked. "My lady."
Alys's mouth twitched. "I am no lady," she replied. "I'm Alys Rivers, of House Strong… if it pleases your grace."
Aerion's brow knit. "My prince," he corrected. "I'm not a king."
Alys offered a shallow nod. "My prince, then."
She set her things down on the table near the hearth and began unpacking with brisk hands. A jar. A small pot. A strip of linen. A bundle of dried herbs tied with twine. The room filled, slowly, with the scent of crushed leaves and something sharp beneath it, like sap.
Harwin rose half out of his chair, then sat again as if forcing himself not to hover. "He came on dragonback," he explained.
Alys only nodded her expression suggesting this was the least surprising news of the evening, and said, "Then I expect your legs are screaming."
Aerion's face flushed hot. He did not appreciate her being correct. "My muscles are… sore," he said stiffly.
Harwin gave a short, disbelieving laugh that carried no humor. "Sore," he repeated, and it sounded like he wanted to throttle him.
Alys stepped closer, hands already clean, and eyes intent. "My prince," she said, "With your permission, I need to examine you. To see the damage."
Aerion stared, his eyes tracing the details he'd missed before: the lingering softness of her cheeks, the dark curl clinging stubbornly to her brow, the proud, unyielding line of her nose. Her eyes held a kind of warmth.
And then the thought struck him so hard it made his stomach clench.
Luke.
The bones, something in the set of her face, in the breadth of her features, in that unmistakable Strong look that he had always insisted did not exist in his brothers.
Aerion's brow twitched upward, involuntary, his mind, treacherous and swift, turning, for no sane reason at all, toward Aemond. And then fleeing the thought immediately.
Aerion's breath caught.
It couldn't be. It couldn't.
They looked like Rhaenyra. They did. Jace had her strength in his jaw, her fire in his eyes. Luke had her smile, her kindness in his face. Aerion himself was her mirror in miniature, silver and violet. Even Grandsire Viserys had said so, had patted Luke's head and called him 'Rhaenyra's boy.'
They could not have the Strong look.
The court was cruel and stupid; it saw what it wanted to see. The Queen's accusations were the shrieks of a jealous harpy.
But seeing Alys… this living, breathing scrap of Strong blood… and seeing Luke in her features…
Aerion suddenly wondered, with a tight throat and an unpleasant pinch behind his eyes—
Is it really that obvious?
He swallowed hard.
Alys spoke again, breaking the spiral with a practical command. "Sit up," she said. "Slowly."
Aerion obeyed. Pain flared along his thighs in a hot sheet.
Alys's hands were cool, firm. She had him pull off his shirt, then she pressed along his shoulders and upper back, fingers sinking into muscle with the calm, unhurried confidence of someone who had handled injuries all her life.
Aerion hissed through his teeth when she found a knot beneath his left shoulder blade.
Harwin's eyes sharpened. "Where."
Alys didn't glance up. "Everywhere," she answered mildly.
She worked her way down: spine, ribs, hips. Aerion's face stayed stiff with contempt while his body shouted in every language it knew. When she pressed along the top of his thigh, near the hip, pain flashed so bright it stole the air from his lungs.
A sound slipped out of him, small and furious.
Harwin's hands clenched on his knees.
Alys withdrew her fingers and nodded, confirming her own suspicion. "Inflamed muscles," she said to Harwin. "From holding himself still too long and bracing against movement. And this—" she pressed again, gentler now, "a pulled muscle in the left upper thigh."
Harwin shut his eyes. "Seven save me."
Aerion glared at the ceiling.
Alys's mouth curved. "He will heal. The body is resilient."
Harwin opened his eyes, still grim. "He's in pain."
"He is," Alys agreed, as if Aerion hadn't noticed. She turned back to the table and uncorked a small jar.
The smell bloomed at once, sharp and green at first, then something deeper: resin and crushed root, a bitter tang that made Aerion think of sap bleeding from bark. She warmed a little between her palms until it softened, then came back to the bed.
"This will help," she said, and began to rub it into Aerion's shoulders.
The unguent was slick and cool at first, then warming. Aerion's muscles protested, then slowly, grudgingly, began to loosen.
He watched her hands with narrow eyes. "What is it."
Alys didn't look up. "Comfrey. Yarrow. A little wintergreen. And fat," she added.
Aerion's lip curled. "Fat."
"Everything useful is made from something unpleasant," she said, unbothered.
Harwin made a sound that might have been a laugh or a cough.
Alys continued down Aerion's back, then his thighs, careful and firm. Aerion's jaw clenched hard enough to ache. He refused to make another sound. His body considered betraying him anyway.
When she reached the pulled muscle, she eased her touch, working the ointment in slow circles.
Harwin watched, tense.
After a moment, Alys asked, "Should I prepare a draft of milk of the poppy for the prince? For sleep?"
Aerion's head snapped toward her. "No."
Alys's brows lifted slightly.
Harwin's eyes narrowed at Aerion. "It would help."
Aerion's voice went flat and vicious. "I don't want it."
Harwin's mouth tightened, as if he had questions he did not want answered. "Fine," he said, clipped. "No poppy."
Alys nodded. She finished the last smear of unguent, wiped her hands clean with linen, then stepped back.
"Rest," she instructed.
Alys gathered her jars, tucked them back into her satchel, bowed once more to Harwin and to Aerion, and turned toward the door.
As she left, Aerion's eyes followed her again, caught on the line of her face, the stubborn curl at her temple, the strange warmth in her gaze.
The door shut behind her.
Silence returned, broken only by the crackle of the hearth.
Aerion shifted a fraction and immediately regretted it. His thigh pulsed in complaint. He glowered at his own body like it was an enemy soldier.
"Who is she?" he asked quickly. "Whose daughter?"
Harwin settled back into his chair. "Her mother was one of my father's… household. Alys never said who her father was. My father never acknowledged her. But by look, and by the kindness he showed her mother… it's likely she is my half-sister."
Aerion's mind flicked back to her face again—Luke's face in it, that disquieting echo—and something cold crept along his spine despite the heat of the fire and the dragon-warmth still lingering in his skin.
Harwin continued. "She's been here since she was small. She's sharp. Useful. The kind of girl men underestimate and regret."
Aerion's mouth tightened. "She did not look underestimated."
Harwin snorted softly, then sobered again.
He asked him about the flight again, how long, what route, what he saw. Aerion, offended by the fact that his own voice sounded smaller when he spoke of the sky, explained anyway. He described the coast falling away, the dark seam of the Narrow Sea, the mainland's shadow. The Blackwater's mouth. The long stretch inland where rivers gleamed like dull blades in moonlight and forests spread like ink stains.
He did not mention, in detail, how his arms had gone numb, how he'd feared his fingers would simply… open. He did not say how he'd begged a dragon to be quicker.
After a while, Aerion's eyelids grew heavy in spite of himself.
Then—
A shout, distant at first, tore through the castle's quiet.
Another voice answered it, louder, urgent. Footsteps pounded stone.
Aerion's eyes snapped open.
Harwin was already on his feet.
There was frantic knocking at the door.
"Ser Harwin!" someone cried, breathless. "Ser Harwin—wake—"
Harwin yanked the door open.
A guard nearly stumbled into the room, panting. His eyes were wide, his face slick with sweat despite the cold halls.
"Ser Harwin," he managed, breath tearing, "there's—there's a fire. East wing."
Harwin's face drained of color so fast it looked like someone had scraped it clean. His mouth opened, and closed. When he spoke, the words came out rough.
"My father."
Aerion sat bolt upright in bed, the blankets sliding to his waist. Whatever warmth the hearth had offered him turned irrelevant.
He felt the old certainty rise and settle behind his ribs.
This is it.
"Don't you dare," Aerion said, voice cutting through the guard's ragged breathing. "Don't you—"
Harwin turned his head, slow, as if the movement cost him. Firelight caught the hard line of his jaw, the hollow in his cheek.
His eyes met Aerion's.
Aerion saw the moment Harwin understood it.
Saw the moment the world snapped into place around that understanding.
"You…" Harwin whispered. It was not accusation. It was worse: belief.
Aerion's hands clenched in the sheets. "Don't go."
Harwin looked back down the corridor and the guard. He swallowed hard enough that Aerion heard it.
"Where in the east wing?" Harwin demanded.
"Near the galleries," the guard said, words tumbling now that he'd started. "It's climbed fast—some say a brazier tipped—some say the wind in the cracks—Ser, men are running buckets but—"
"Fetch every able body," Harwin snapped. "Wake the household. Form a line from the wells. No fools with oil. No drunks. Get axes to the doors if you must. You—" he pointed at the guard, "run to Lord Lyonel's rooms. Now. Wake him. Drag him out if he argues. Do you hear me?"
The guard hesitated only long enough to be terrified, then bolted.
Harwin strode two steps into the corridor—then stopped.
Aerion's voice came again, smaller now only because his throat had tightened. "Don't go. You'll die."
Harwin's turned back into the room, half a step.
"Aerion," he said, and his voice was very careful. "That is my father."
Aerion's eyes burned. "And you are mine."
The words were out before Aerion could strangle them.
Harwin's face did something complicated, pain and affection, and a fierce restraint that looked like anger only because it had nowhere else to go.
"Gods," Harwin breathed, dragging a hand down his face. Then he froze.
His rooms.
His rooms were in the east wing.
If Aerion had not flown like a mad hatchling and demanded a bed and a hearth and a healer… Harwin would have been asleep there. Exactly where the fire had chosen to bloom.
Harwin's mouth went slightly open. His eyes flicked over Aerion as if seeing him for the first time all over again.
Harwin's shoulders sagged a fraction with defeat.
He came back to the bed and crouched, bringing himself level with Aerion's face.
"I have to go," he said quietly.
Aerion shook his head violently. His hands twisted the sheets. "No."
Harwin's voice went softer still, which made it worse. "I will be careful."
Aerion's laugh was a short, bitter sound. "You can't be careful in fire."
Harwin's mouth tightened. He glanced toward the door. The castle's noise was growing now—feet, shouts, the first ugly whiff of smoke beginning to creep down stone.
He looked back at Aerion and forced the promise out. "I will not go into the heart of it. I will not be a hero for men who will write songs about my ashes. I will pull my father out, and I will order others to do the rest."
Aerion's eyes narrowed, searching for the lie.
Harwin held the stare unflinchingly.
Aerion swallowed. "Swear."
Harwin's jaw worked. "I swear."
Silverwing stirred somewhere outside the walls. A low warning thrill pressed against Aerion's ribs.
Harwin heard it too.
He rose.
At the door, he paused long enough to look back one last time.
Aerion sat rigid in the bed. For all his sharpness, for all his cruel little commands, he looked his age now, small in a vast castle that was waking up hungry.
Harwin's voice was rough again. "Stay put."
Aerion bared his teeth. "I can't even walk."
Harwin's mouth twitched—almost a smile, mostly a wince. "Then you'll do splendidly."
He left.
The door shut, and the room felt too quiet for what the castle was becoming.
Smoke found the cracks soon after.
Aerion sat very still and listened.
He heard men shouting orders. The slap of boots on stone. The distant crash of something heavy being dragged. A woman's scream cut short. A man swearing a prayer and failing.
He counted heartbeats.
He counted them until counting meant nothing and time became a stretch of rope pulled too tight.
Silverwing's presence pressed against his thoughts. Aerion kept one hand clenched in the blanket and the other pressed to his own chest as if he could hold his heart down by force.
He waited and did not sleep.
At some point the shouting shifted, becoming less frantic, more hoarse.
Hours later, the knock came again.
This time, it was careful.
Aerion's head snapped up.
A servant slipped in, face grey with exhaustion, hair plastered to her brow. Soot smudged one cheek. Her eyes flicked to the bed, then away, as if looking directly at Aerion might invite punishment from gods or kings.
"My prince," she whispered.
Aerion's voice came out flat. "Speak."
"The fire has been extinguished," she breathed. "Ser Harwin… Ser Harwin is alive. He is seeing to—" her throat bobbed, "to the dead."
Aerion's breath left him in a hard, silent rush, his vision blurring. He hated that too.
"Lord Lyonel?" he asked, already knowing he shouldn't.
The servant swallowed. Her eyes flicked down. "Lord Lyonel is dead, my prince."
Aerion stared at her.
"Go," Aerion said.
The servant bowed and backed out like the room might burn her.
When the door shut again, Aerion lay back against the pillows, jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Harwin lived.
Outside, somewhere in the vast black ribs of the castle, men were still shouting—names now—and Aerion felt Silverwing's unease coil tighter in his blood, as if the dragon understood what Aerion did:
Fire had been cheated.
Many hours later, the room had stopped smelling like ash.
It smelled of old stone warmed by a patient hearth, and of the sharp herbs Alys had rubbed into Aerion's muscles until his skin tingled and his pride sulked. Outside the shutters, Harrenhal's wind kept worrying at the castle, but the shouting had thinned to a far-off murmur, men speaking low now.
Aerion might have slept.
He told himself he hadn't. He told himself he'd only blinked too long.
But when the door opened, light from the corridor knifing across the floor, he startled like a caught thief.
Two servants entered with a tray. Bread, cheese, a bowl of broth that steamed faintly, and a cup of water. They moved quietly, eyes fixed anywhere but Aerion's face, as if the prince might bite.
Aerion watched them set the tray on the small table. His stomach tightened. "Leave."
They bowed and fled with relief, shutting the door.
A moment later, it opened again.
Harwin stepped in.
Soot streaked the edge of one sleeve. His hair was a mess, pushed back and then forgotten. His eyes were red-rimmed, with tears and whatever smoke he had inhaled. He looked defeated.
He closed the door behind him with his shoulder and stood there for a moment.
Then he crossed to the chair beside the bed—the same chair he'd set there earlier like a guard-post—and sat down heavily.
He looked at Aerion.
Aerion swallowed.
His legs still throbbed, a deep ache that reminded him of every wingbeat between Dragonstone and here. His arms were less numb now, but they still felt wrong..
His mouth opened, and the first thing that came out was not clever.
"I'm sorry," Aerion said, the words feeling inadequate.
Harwin's gaze tightened, as if the words pinched.
"No." Harwin's voice was rough, scraped thin. He shook his head once. "Don't."
Aerion frowned, looking down.
Harwin's hands clasped together, knuckles whitening, then loosening.
"In your dream," Harwin asked quietly, "did you see my father die?"
Aerion blinked. In his frantic, single-minded race against a specific flame, he had let the fate of Lord Lyonel Strong slip entirely from his mind. It had been another line in the chronicle, a tragedy secondary to the one he'd come to prevent.
"No," he admitted, the word feeling like a betrayal. "Only you. I'm sorry." He was. He was sorry for the old lord's death, and sorrier still that his omission now felt like a lie.
Harwin exhaled, long and unsteady. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment.
When he opened them again, they looked older.
Silence settled between them.
Aerion hated silence. He tolerated it when it was a pause before violence. He did not know what to do with silence that was simply… there.
He stared at the edge of the blanket. He stared at the tray and considered, with irritation, that he ought to eat if he intended to live long enough to be angry tomorrow.
Harwin sat with his elbows on his knees, hands folded, shoulders caved in a way Aerion had never seen on him. Harwin had always seemed built for impact, built to take a blow and stay upright. This was different.
Aerion's fingers curled into the sheet. He waited.
After what felt like an age, Harwin spoke again, his voice scraping out into the quiet. "How do they work? Your dreams."
Aerion looked at his own hands, pale against the dark wool. "I dream," he said simply. "And they come true." It was the only explanation he could ever give.
Harwin nodded once, slow. As if he were taking a measurement he did not like.
Silence returned.
This time it felt like a shared exhaustion, a thing they both sat inside because neither knew the door out.
Harwin's eyes shifted toward the fire, then back.
"I sent a raven to King's Landing," he said. "Explained what happened. Explained… where you are." His jaw tightened. "Your mother will come."
Aerion nodded.
He tried not to picture Rhaenyra's face yet. Some disasters were best postponed until they arrived on their own feet.
Harwin's hand lifted as if to rub his face, then fell back to his knee. He stared at the floor for a moment, then looked at Aerion again.
"Thank you," he said, plainly.
Aerion's ears felt hot. He hated that more than pain.
He nodded once. "You're welcome."
Harwin's mouth twitched in a barely-there smile.
Silence again.
But now it didn't scrape at Aerion's skin. It just sat with them, like the warmth from the hearth: steady, quiet, unquestioning.
Aerion stared at the firelight on the stone and let his shoulders sink a fraction into the bed.
Harwin remained in the chair, close enough that Aerion could hear him breathe.
Neither of them spoke.
Neither of them moved.
Perhaps the next day should have felt like relief.
It did not.
Harrenhal woke in a hush that did not belong to morning. The castle always sounded haunted—wind in cracked stone, distant water in deep places—but this quiet was different. It carried names.
Aerion lay propped against pillows in the room Harwin had commandeered for him, the unguent's sharp herbal sting sunk into his muscles like a reluctant blessing. He could move now without whimpering like a kicked pup, which meant the worst of the humiliation had passed.
The pain remained, lurking and waiting for him to forget it.
Outside the door, footsteps came and went, too many of them, but measured. No one was running anymore.
Harwin came in without ceremony. He had fought the night and lost by inches: washed, but the clean only made the hollows under his eyes more obvious. His curls lay rough from hurried fingers. His jaw was scraped with the shadow of a beard he hadn't bothered to tame. He shut the door behind him.
"They'll bury him at midday," he said.
Aerion blinked up at him, sleep still clinging in the corners of his eyes. "Bury," he repeated, in askance.
Harwin gave a tired nod. "The Strongs are First Men. We keep the old ways, even here." His gaze flicked, briefly, toward the slit of window where grey daylight bled through. "There's no sept in Harrenhal's walls. My father never liked praying under a roof that had seen dragonfire."
Aerion's fingers tightened in the blankets.
"How," Aerion demanded, trying to ask gently, "do you do it?"
Harwin exhaled through his nose, the sound half a laugh and half a pain. "Quietly," he said. "Which will be difficult for you."
Aerion glared.
"There is a grove," Harwin went on. "Not far from the southern shore of the Gods Eye. Ironwood and soldier pines. Old trees. Old ground. Untouched by the Conquest's fire." His mouth tightened. "The lords of Harrenhal are laid there."
He paused, then added, "The wind says what it likes. The earth takes the rest."
It sounded stark. Aerion found that he preferred it to perfumed candles and murmured mercy that meant nothing.
"Fitting," Aerion said, clipped.
Harwin's eyes closed for a brief heartbeat. When he opened them, he looked at Aerion properly. "Can you stand today?"
Aerion's mouth twisted. He tried to sit up and discovered his body did not share his opinion of pride. His thigh protested. His back answered with a vicious, bright burn.
He held his expression steady anyway. "Yes."
Harwin's brow lifted, mild as ever. "That wasn't the question. The question was whether you can stand without breaking in half like a poorly baked loaf."
Aerion's cheeks heated. "I am not bread."
"Good," Harwin said. "Because you smell like dragon."
Aerion scowled harder, which only made Harwin's mouth twitch, before the grief dragged his face back into shape.
"Later," Harwin said, "she'll come again. The healer."
"I know," Aerion muttered. "She has hands like a blacksmith."
Harwin's eyes slid away for a moment, trying not to smile and failing. "Alys is… useful," he said carefully. "Try not to bite her."
Aerion stared. "I don't bite."
Harwin looked at him.
Aerion looked away.
The morning dragged itself forward with the unpleasant insistence of time. Servants came with food Aerion barely touched. Someone brought fresh water, and when Aerion washed his hands the smell of smoke still clung beneath his fingers, as if the night had marked him.
When Alys arrived, she did so as if she had every right to the room, which offended Aerion on principle.
She carried her basket of salves and cloths, hair pinned back, curls still escaping.
Aerion kept his chin lifted as she set her things down.
"My prince," she said, as she'd learned.
He gave her a stiff nod.
She worked in silence at first, kneading the pungent unguent into his calf with firm hands. The salve smelled of bitterleaf and crushed pine, sharp enough to cut through the castle's damp breath. The warmth sank into his muscles, and despite himself, Aerion felt his body unclench a fraction.
Then Alys spoke without looking up.
"Is it true?" she asked softly. "That you flew here on a dragon because you saw the fire in a dream? That you saw it claim Ser Harwin too?"
Aerion went still.
Offense flared first. Who was this girl with her healer's hands and bastard blood to ask questions about his mind as if it were something to prod?
"Dragon dreams are a blessing and a curse of my house," he said, his tone frosty. "The blood of Old Valyria flows differently. It sees what others cannot." He offered no more, retreating behind the wall of his birthright.
Alys's hands did not pause. If anything, they grew steadier, as if she'd expected the bite.
"And does it always come as fire?" she asked mildly. "Or does it come as… knowing?"
Aerion's nostrils flared. "It comes," he said. "That is all you need to understand."
Alys hummed.
Harwin stood near the hearth, arms folded, watching as if he wanted to intervene and also wanted to see what Aerion would do. His face looked older today, grief carving new lines into him overnight.
Alys finished the calf and moved to Aerion's thigh with no hesitation. When her fingers pressed near the pulled muscle, Aerion's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
She glanced up briefly, and her eyes caught his with a frankness that made it difficult to look away.
"Harrenhal owes you a debt," she said. "House Strong owes you a debt. We won't forget what you did."
The words should have tasted sweet. They tasted like something sticky he couldn't scrape off.
Aerion's throat tightened. We.
"You may go," Aerion snapped.
Alys didn't seem offended. She wiped her hands, gathered her basket, and stepped toward the door.
At the threshold, she paused and looked back.
And she smiled.
It was a gentle thing, but it lit her face, carving familiar, heartbreaking dimples into her soft cheeks. It was Luke's smile. The same sunny, unguarded warmth that could disarm a room.
Seeing it on her face, in this place of death and damp stone, felt like a theft.
His mind flicked again, for no reason at all, to his uncle Aemond, sharp-eyed and hungry in the library, and the thought arrived uninvited:
That is … interesting.
Aerion hated his own mind.
Alys's smile lingered just long enough to make him squirm, then she slipped out and shut the door gently behind her.
Aerion stared at the wood, furious at the heat in his face.
Harwin's voice rumbled from near the hearth. "You didn't have to send her off like that."
Aerion's eyes narrowed. "She is too bold."
Harwin's gaze drifted to the door, and something unreadable crossed his face. "Aye," he said. "She'll live longer for it."
The procession to the grove was a silent. There were no bells, no chanting septons, no wailing mourners, nothing. Only the soft crush of boots on damp earth and the sigh of the wind through the towering pines.
Harwin had come for Aerion at the appointed hour. He'd helped him dress carefully, his mind clearly leagues away in a private chamber of grief. When it was time to walk, Aerion's legs, though improved, buckled on the first uneven step of the forest path. Harwin simply slid a solid arm around Aerion's shoulders, taking his weight, and they moved as a single, limping creature behind the bier.
Aerion leaned into the support, his pride silenced by the palpable sorrow around him and the sheer, physical necessity. He was grateful for the anchor.
The grove by the God's Eye was a place of profound stillness. Ancient trees stood as sentinels, their bark black and deeply furrowed, their interlaced canopy turning the grey afternoon into a perpetual, green-tinged twilight. The silence here was watchful, heavy. The air smelled of wet pine, rich, rotting earth, and the cold breath of the vast lake.
The bier was set down beside a raw gash in the earth. No priest came forward. No words were spoken to gods that had no names in this place. The men of House Strong—kinsmen, household knights, stewards—simply stood in a loose circle, their heads bowed. Harwin, still holding Aerion upright, stared at the grave with a hollowed-out intensity.
It was then that Aerion felt the eyes.
They were on him.
A prickling heat climbed the back of his neck. He kept his gaze fixed forward, on the dark soil, but he could feel them. He sensed the sidelong glances from hard-faced men in Strong livery, their curiosity sharp as a blade's edge. He felt the steady, unnerving stare of an old huntsman with grizzled brows, who watched him as he might track a rare and portentous beast. A young page kept sneaking looks at his silver hair, his eyes wide with an awe that bordered on fear, before snapping his gaze away, guilty.
House Strong owes you a debt.
Alys's words whispered back to him on the pine-scented wind. This was the shape of that debt. It was this: a silent, collective witnessing. A recognition that hummed in the space between the trees. They knew. The story had spread through the castle with the smoke: the prince who fell from the sky on a silver dragon, who came because he knew.
He had not saved Lord Lyonel, he thought, guilty. But he had pulled Ser Harwin from the fire's path as surely as if he'd dragged him bodily from his chambers. He had yanked the heir back from the brink and had averted a second, potentially shattering blow. The line held.
The weight of their collective gaze was heavier than Harwin's arm. It was the weight of a story already hardening into legend, of a truth he could never explain. They saw a dragon-riding princeling touched by prophecy. They did not see a terrified, time-lost soul scrambling to patch a hole in fate.
Harwin shifted slightly, his grip tightening, as if he too could feel the focus of his people shifting to the boy at his side. He gave no sign of acknowledgment, but his body became a more deliberate shield.
The moment stretched. Then, with a grim nod from Harwin, men stepped forward with shovels. The first thud of earth on wood was a final, brutal sound in the silent grove.
As the grave was filled, Aerion stood trapped in the circle of Harwin's strength and the unblinking regard of the Strongs. He was a Targaryen, a creature of fire and sky. Yet here, in this earthy grove of the old gods, he had irrevocably woven his fate into the roots of their house.
The day after Lord Lyonel's burial, the scream came from the sky.
Syrax.
Aerion sat up so fast the world dissolved into a white-hot shot of pain. His back, a landscape of protesting muscles, screamed in betrayal. He gasped, stars dancing behind his eyes, but the sound outside was worse than any physical agony.
He went very still, jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
"Oh," he muttered to the ceiling, voice thin with helplessness. "Splendid."
Outside, Syrax screamed again, closer now.
Not long after, footsteps struck the corridor, fast and unsoftened by courtesy. Harrenhal's servants scurried out of the way like mice.
The door flew open.
Rhaenyra filled the threshold, and for a heartbeat Aerion did not recognize her as the immaculate princess who wore courts like armor.
Her braid had come loose in places; bright strands of silver-gold escaped and clung to her temples. There was soot on her cheekbone, smudged as if she'd wiped her face with the back of her hand and remembered too late that her hand was filthy. Her gown looked as though it had been slept in, traveled in and fought in.
Her eyes were the worst of it.
Harwin stood just behind her shoulder, braced like he expected the room to catch fire from the heat between mother and son.
Aerion swallowed.
Rhaenyra stepped in and shut the door with a sharp push of her palm. The sound cracked in the small chamber.
She stared at Aerion where he sat in the bed.
Her voice was low and cold.
"Do you have any idea," she began, "what I felt, waking at dawn to find Jace at my bedside, white as a sheet, telling me you were nowhere to be found?"
Aerion opened his mouth.
Her gaze sharpened, and the air seemed to narrow.
He closed it again.
Rhaenyra took a step closer.
"Do you have any idea what I felt," she continued, "when the dragonkeepers told me you had been sighted on Silverwing's back?"
Her nostrils flared.
"Or what I felt," she continued, her voice rising incrementally, thrumming with the same energy as Syrax's distant scream, "when they reminded me—as if I could ever forget—that Silverwing has worn no saddle for decades?"
"Mother, I—" Aerion tried again.
Harwin shifted behind her, and winced as if the words had struck him.
Aerion's fingers curled into the sheets. His shoulders tried to draw in.
His back reminded him that shrinking was also forbidden.
Rhaenyra did not stop.
"You scared your brother," she told him, and it was almost worse that she led with that. "You frightened Jace half out of his skin. The whole of Dragonstone was roused. Driftmark was roused. I flew to King's Landing first—"
Aerion's eyes flicked up despite himself.
"hoping against hope some childish madness had taken you back there! Your grandsire nearly collapsed from the fright! Even your uncle Aegon and your aunt Helaena were dispatched to look for you!"
Aerion grimaced, a flush of shame heating his neck. The image of Aegon being ordered to search for him was a particularly galling humiliation.
"And after all that," she said, "after I tore the world apart to find you, I learned you had flown—alone—across half the realm to Harrenhal on a dragon you had never ridden."
Aerion's pride surged up like a shield.
Rhaenyra's eyes flashed.
"I asked you," each word was clear and merciless, "not to do anything reckless."
She leaned forward slightly. "And you looked me in the eyes and agreed."
"And I was right not to!" Aerion burst out, the words fueled by pain and a desperate, defensive anger. "Do you not see? I was right! You were not listening to me! You sent masons! I had to—"
"YOU COULD HAVE DIED!" she shouted. "Do you understand that? You could have fallen at any moment and there would have been nothing!"
"BUT I DIDN'T!" he screamed back, his own voice breaking. "I was right and Silverwing would have never let me fall!"
Rhaenyra's chest rose and fell, fast. Her hands were clenched at her sides, knuckles pale.
"You could not have known Silverwing would keep you," she hissed. "You have never flown before."
Aerion's eyes burned. "Silverwing would never let me fall."
"You could not have known that!" she shot back, leaning over him, her face inches from his. "You had never flown before! You are a child!"
"I DIDN'T FALL AND I WAS RIGHT!"
The shout echoed in the chamber.
For a heartbeat it looked as if Rhaenyra might answer with fire of her own.
Harwin held his breath.
Rhaenyra stared at him, her breath coming in ragged gusts. The fire in her eyes slowly banked, leaving behind a vast, exhausted devastation. She looked at him, truly looked at him, her son, pale and propped up in a borrowed bed in this cursed castle.
Her gaze traveled over him, taking in his stiff posture, the careful way he held himself against the pillows, the faint wince he couldn't suppress.
"Why," she asked, her voice now frighteningly calm, "are you not moving?"
Aerion looked away, his jaw working. The fight had drained him, leaving only the throbbing ache. He muttered into the blanket, "I pulled a muscle. Flying here."
For a heartbeat, there was no sound.
Rhaenyra's face went red in the space of a breath.
Aerion watched her, braceding for the second eruption.
Harwin cleared his throat.
Two pairs of identical, furious violet eyes snapped to him, twin glares that promised immolation.
He ignored them. His gaze was fixed on Rhaenyra. "Princess," he said. "He did save my life."
Rhaenyra's furious flush receded. She blinked, the all-consuming focus on Aerion's recklessness fracturing just enough to let in another reality. She looked at Harwin. The fight went out of her shoulders. She seemed to shrink, the dragon receding, leaving a tired, worried woman in travel-stained clothes.
"I…" she began, her voice small. "I am sorry. About your father, Harwin."
Harwin nodded, a sharp, grateful dip of his chin. "Thank you, Rhaenyra."
Rhaenyra nodded, then looked back at Aerion, breathing through her nose.
When she spoke again, the edge had dulled but the steel remained.
"What you did," she said, "was incredibly dangerous. Do you understand that?"
Aerion sneered out of habit, but gave a stiff nod.
Rhaenyra's eyes narrowed, measuring that nod for sincerity and finding only stubbornness.
"When I take you back to Dragonstone," she continued, "I will assign a personal guard to you. I cannot trust you not to do something else… catastrophic."
Aerion exhaled, long and weary. "I won't."
Rhaenyra's brow lifted, in disbelief.
"You won't," she echoed.
"I had a dream," Aerion said, irritated by how small his voice sounded in this room that smelled of ash and herbs. "I told you. You wouldn't act, so I had to."
Rhaenyra's composure creaked.
"I explained why I couldn't," she snapped, the anger flaring back up like a coal touched by breath. "You know the rumors that follow us. I was trying to protect you."
Aerion's mouth tightened.
He wanted to spit something sharp. To say he did not care about the court and its whispering mouths. That he would burn every rumor until the realm smelled of smoke.
Instead, something else pushed up through the cracks.
"I know," he said, and the words came out wrong, too honest. He swallowed. "I'm… I didn't realize."
Rhaenyra frowned, thrown off balance. "Didn't realize what?"
Aerion stared at the coverlet. His fingers picked at a thread, and he hated himself for it. He had never been afraid of speaking.
He took a breath, then another, as if forcing his pride to step aside.
"I didn't think it was true," he said, and his throat tightened around the next part. "What they say."
Rhaenyra went very still.
Behind her, Harwin shifted a fraction.
Aerion lifted his eyes again, and the flush came back to his cheeks, climbing hotly toward his ears.
"I've always known Ser Harwin is our father," Aerion said, brisk now, hoping speed could make it less humiliating. "I mean—by blood. I knew. But I never really understood."
Rhaenyra's gaze snapped to Harwin.
Harwin grimaced, just as quick, as if to say not now and it's too late.
Aerion barreled onward because stopping would kill him.
"I never thought it was so obvious," he said, and he heard how stupid it sounded the moment it left him. Of course it was obvious. Of course. How had he never seen it? Jace's solemn brow, Luke's expressive mouth: they were Harwin's, softened by youth and Rhaenyra's fire. "I never saw that we really looked like him."
Rhaenyra's face softened all at once, the fight falling out of her body and leaving only bone-deep exhaustion.
She stepped closer, slowly, like approaching a startled animal.
"You are all my sons," she said. "That is all that matters. That is all that will ever matter."
Aerion shook his head, small and fierce. "I thought so too." He swallowed. "I thought we all just looked like you. But… we look like him. Don't we." "
Rhaenyra closed her eyes.
For a heartbeat the room held only the crackle of the hearth and the distant, damp silence of Harrenhal.
When she opened them again, her gaze looked older.
"You must understand," she said, voice low, "everything I do, I do for you and your brothers. To protect you. To protect them. That is the only game I am allowed to play."
Harwin's expression pinched, grief and something longing held tight behind his teeth.
Aerion nodded once. It hurt to nod. He did it anyway.
"I understand," he said, and meant it.
Later, Rhaenyra ordered he be examined again before they departed.
Alys Rivers arrived with her basket and her calm, dark-eyed steadiness, the unguent sharp-scented and greenish in its little pot. She dipped her fingers and began to work it into Aerion's aching muscles with practiced firmness.
Aerion clenched his teeth so he would not make a sound.
Rhaenyra watched, gaze sharp on every movement, her own hands twitching at her sides as if longing to do it herself.
When Alys finished, she wiped her hands on a cloth.
Rhaenyra spoke to her, voice controlled, but not cold. "Thank you."
Alys bowed. "It was my duty, Princess."
Rhaenyra's gaze lingered a fraction on Alys's face—on the Strong features Aerion had not wanted to see—and then slid away.
They left the chamber soon after.
Harwin came with them, and when Aerion tried to stand on his own, his legs betrayed him with an ugly cramp that made his vision spark white.
He hissed, half in pain, half in pure insult.
Harwin did not give him time to argue. He scooped him up again.
Aerion's face went hot clear to the roots of his hair.
"I do not need—" he started.
Harwin made a small sound that could have been laughter if grief had not been sitting on his shoulders like a stone. "Hush."
Rhaenyra said nothing, her mouth twitching.
In the courtyard, beneath a grey sky that threatened rain, Syrax loomed, golden and impatient. Silverwing stood apart, a statue of watchful silver, her mind a low, disgruntled hum in Aerion's own. Mine, the feeling pulsed. Why give the hatchling to the other?
Aerion shared the feeling wholeheartedly.
Rhaenyra looked between the two dragons and then at Aerion in Harwin's arms.
"I will take you back on Syrax," she said.
Aerion's mouth twisted. "I can walk."
Harwin shifted his hold just enough to remind Aerion's legs what betrayal felt like.
Aerion stopped speaking.
Silverwing's displeasure flared hot through the bond, and she gave a low, rumbling sound that set the horses stamping. You carry what is mine. Put him down.
Syrax answered with a sharp, imperious cry. He is hers, Syrax's call insisted—mine by right. I do not yield what sits my back.
Rhaenyra stepped closer and reached for Aerion.
Harwin hesitated a heartbeat too long. His arms tightened. His jaw worked.
Then he passed Aerion to her.
Aerion's shame turned instantly into something hotter.
Being carried by Harwin had been humiliating.
Being carried by his mother felt like being reduced to a babe in front of the whole world.
Aerion stared very hard at the horizon and wished it would swallow him.
Rhaenyra steadied him in her arms, as if he weighted nothing.
She looked at Harwin.
"Thank you, Ser," she said, and then, with the crispness of someone slamming a door on grief so it wouldn't follow her, she added, "and congratulations. You are Lord of Harrenhal."
Harwin's smile was a ghost.
"It will serve me well," he said quietly, "in the future."
Rhaenyra held his gaze. A long look—too much in it for witnesses, too little in it for truth. Longing pressed up against duty and lost.
Then Rhaenyra turned and carried Aerion to Syrax.
Aerion felt Silverwing's fury through the bond like a hot wind as he was lifted away.
Syrax launched, the force of it punching Aerion's breath out of him, and Harrenhal shrank beneath them, its towers black against a bruised sky, the lake a dull, endless eye. And Harwin too.
Silverwing rose after them, a pale shape cutting through cloud.
Aerion pressed his face into Rhaenyra's shoulder so she could not see his expression.
He told himself it was because the wind was cold.
They landed in the yard of Dragonstone with a thunder of wings and a jolt that made Aerion's back scream again, as if reminding him that gods did not gift wings without collecting payment.
Dragonkeepers rushed forward, heads bowed, hands raised in salute.
"Princess," one called, breathless with relief. "We are glad to see the prince safe."
Rhaenyra nodded, jaw tight, and slid down first. She handed Aerion off, this time to a keeper's careful grip, without looking at his face.
A second keeper leaned in close to her, murmuring something meant to be private.
Aerion saw the exact moment Rhaenyra's blood went bloodless.
Her hand tightened on the edge of Syrax's saddle.
Aerion's stomach dropped.
"What," he demanded. "What is it."
Rhaenyra turned her head just enough to look at him.
"Nothing," she said. But her hand, as she finally turned to guide him inside, was trembling. "It is nothing for you to worry over."
She swallowed once.
Then she said, very quietly:
"Your aunt, the Lady Laena is dead."
Notes:
Next chapter, the fun gets worse. I'm very excited to finally bring Daemon into the mix.
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