Chapter Text
When Dunk left the council tent, the air grew colder. Not because the weather had changed, but because his fate had been given a new name, and names carried weight in places like that. The kind of weight that settled on your shoulders and did not leave even when you tried to shrug it off the Trial of Seven.
Outside, the usual chaos of a tourney ruled. Smoke clung to clothes and hair, horses stamped and snorted in the mud, and men shouted and laughed too loudly, as if noise itself could keep fear from creeping in.
But Dunk walked as if he had a stone in his stomach, heavy and unmoving. He could still hear the lords behind the tent, voices soft and certain, discussing his life as if it were something that could be traded or discarded, as if it were not his at all.
Egg was nearby, leaning against a post, his cloak pulled up as if it could hide what he was: a child in a field full of adults ready to enjoy blood as entertainment.
He was awake, too awake, but his eyes trembled the way children’s eyes tremble when they try to look brave. "What did they say?" he asked, trying to keep his voice flat, and Dunk almost felt hurt hearing how much Egg wanted to sound calm and could not quite manage it.
Dunk wanted to lie, to say something that would not make Egg go pale, not a… lie.
But Egg was not the kind of boy you could lie to without him seeing straight through you. "Aerion asked for a Trial of Seven," Dunk said, his voice lower than he intended, as if he could hide behind his cloak and disappear into the crowd.
Egg stood still for a moment. Then his mind began to race again, the way it always did when he was afraid, faster and faster until it became difficult to tell whether it was courage or panic.
"Seven against seven," he murmured, as if repeating it could make it less real, as if words could blunt steel.
"Then you need six men," he added quickly, clenching his gloved hands, because a list seemed manageable, while seven lances pointed at Dunk did not.
When Egg looked at him, waiting for names, Dunk felt his stomach tighten again.
He had none he could truly count on, not the way an heir could count on banners and sworn swords.
Before he could speak, a white cloak approached and closed a hand around Dunk’s arm with the careful grip one might use on a sack of flour, firm enough to control him without making it obvious.
"Ser Duncan, come with us, and you too, my prince. Your presence is required." Egg took half a step forward, ready to fight on instinct, but Dunk stopped him with a look.
The camp was full of eyes, and those eyes had already heard the voice, the story was spreading fast and sharp. Dunk knew what men did when they had a story to tell.
As they were led away, Egg spoke again, and this time he was not angry. He was just a child who did not know who to blame.
"Is it my fault?" he asked without looking at Dunk, and Dunk felt the wound beneath that question immediately. Egg had come with him. Egg was a Targaryen. Egg was only a boy.
Dunk moved closer and set a hand on Egg’s shoulder, not to be sweet, just to keep him steady, to keep him from shaking apart in public. “No,” he said, forcing the word to be solid. “It’s Aerion’s fault he did it"
They stopped in front of a big wooden door before either of them realized.
The guard opened it slightly, bowed, and left them there like they were being delivered, not escorted.
Inside was Baelor Breakspear, without armor or helm, and still carrying that quiet authority that made you straighten your back even when you didn’t want to. Behind him stood Maekar, hard as stone, sharp-eyed, jaw tight, the kind of man who looked like he’d been born already angry.
Dunk straightened automatically, the old habit of respect coming out of him before thought. “My prince.”
Baelor looked at Egg and recognized him at once. No surprise, no hesitation, only that soft certainty that made the world feel briefly less dangerous. “Aegon,” he said gently.
Egg stiffened and bowed awkwardly, pride and fear tangled together. Then, looking at Maekar, he blurted the word in High Valyrian, more intimate than the common tongue, more desperate too, like the language itself could pull him closer to safety. “Kepus.”
Maekar’s eyes hardened. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Baelor lifted a hand, tired but firm. “Not now.”
Then he turned to Dunk, and the tone changed, steadier, heavier. “Aerion asked for a Trial of Seven. Ser Duncan, you need six men.” Dunk nodded, breathing tighter, because hearing it said out loud made it settle into his bones. “I will fight at your side it is the right thing to do” Baelor added calmly like it was a simple choice, like it did not turn Dunk’s stomach to ice.
Dunk stared. “My prince no, you are the heir.” It came out as something close to pleading, because the thought of Baelor risking his life for a hedge knight felt wrong in the way storms felt wrong, powerful and inevitable and aimed at the wrong house.
Maekar cut in, venomous. “Finally someone else remembers.” His eyes pinned Dunk like a blade. “You’re not worth my brother, hedge knight.”
Dunk lowered his gaze, not because he was afraid of Maekar’s anger, though he was, but because some part of him believed it too, because being lowborn meant learning early how to shrink. “No, ser.”
Baelor did not move from his decision. “I will do it.” And that ended the conversation the way certain choices ended all other arguments.
Later that night, Dunk went back under the elm with Egg beside him, the camp still buzzing, still alive.
Egg eventually fell asleep, because children’s bodies betray them no matter how hard they try to stay awake.
Dunk did not he stayed up thinking about the tourney, about how he had already lost his joust before everything exploded, about how he was still just a hedge knight who had done something foolish.
Under that staring was the fact that Baelor had chosen him, chosen to stand with him, and Dunk could not decide if it felt like mercy or a blade at his throat.
When the Targaryen messenger arrived late, Dunk’s first thought was that Aerion had finally decided to make things simple and have him killed before the Trial.
But the man said Baelor was summoning him, and Dunk stood up at once, because if a prince calls you, you go, even when your legs do not want to move. “Yes, ser.”
Baelor’s tent smelled of wax and wine, warm in a way that made Dunk feel dirty for stepping inside. Baelor sat while Maekar stood like sitting would mean losing control.
Dunk could feel something simmering in the space between them, the kind of tension that was not born tonight. It had been there long before Dunk ever entered their story.
At some point Maekar snapped, sharp as a thrown knife. “What the fuck are you staring at?”
“Nothing, my prince,” Dunk answered automatically, because deference was muscle memory.
Maekar gave a harsh, ugly laugh. “So you’re fucking tall and a fucking liar.”
“Maekar, please, brother,” Baelor said, and Dunk heard the strain under the calm, the effort it took Baelor to keep Maekar from tearing the room apart with words alone.
Maekar growled back, Baelor murmured something in High Valyrian, low and private, trying to pull his brother back from the edge. Dunk stayed silent because it was not his place, not really. Except it was, because tomorrow Baelor would be in the ring for him, and Maekar’s anger kept circling back to that fact like a wolf to blood.
It felt like the beginning of the end.
Maekar’s rage and Baelor’s calm mixed with Dunk’s uncertainty, everything hanging for a heartbeat before it tipped into something else.
The rest of the night unfolded without a plan, without anyone admitting what they needed, with tomorrow pressing down so hard that want and fear blurred together.
Dunk ended up beneath them, clinging to warmth like it was the only honest thing left, not understanding what that night would leave inside him later, only understanding that for a little while he was not alone with the thought of dying.
The next day, the Trial of Seven began. Iron and mud and shouting, and then the mistake, the single instant you cannot pull back once it happens. Maekar’s mace struck Baelor’s head.
Baelor collapsed, and Dunk brought down Aerion in that same chaos. But at what price?
Had the trial really been won if the heir lay broken because he had chosen to defend a hedge knight? They carried Baelor to the maester.
Dunk waited outside, bleeding, obedient even in pain, because his prince was inside and Dunk did not deserve to occupy space beside that suffering.
Maekar approached him from behind. "Move."
"I just want to know that he is well, my prince."
"Well?" Maekar spat, and panic hid inside the venom. "After I smashed his head."
Dunk lowered his gaze, because there was nothing to say that would not sound like betrayal or weakness. When he tried to move toward the tent, Maekar shoved him.
Dunk hit the ground hard and did not protest, did not curse in return, because a part of him believed he deserved it, believed he had dragged Baelor into all of this, believed an heir should never have been placed in that position for him.
He dragged himself away from the noise until his legs gave out beneath the old elm, the only place that felt like it belonged to him.
The world around him became distant, the cheers fading into something dull and far away, like a dream already slipping from his reach.
He slumped against the rough trunk, breath ragged, armor heavy, hands trembling as he tried to steady himself.
The fever did not come suddenly. It crept patiently, first the cold, then the heat, then that floating weakness that made the ground feel uncertain beneath him.
He pressed a hand to his side and felt a wet warmth; above him the elm leaves moved in the wind, whispering as if nothing terrible had happened.
And beneath that tree Dunk understood only three things.
He did not know how deep his wounds were.
He did not know if Baelor would live or die because of what had happened in that ring.
And he did not know that something inside him had already begun to change quietly and without mercy.