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The trouble with being tall, Dunk had discovered, was that it made it much easier for jealous princes to spot you across a training yard.
It was an early morning. Dunk liked it best that time of day, before the court had fully woken and the day’s trouble had time to put on its boots. The sun slanted over King’s Landing in a thin wash of gold, catching on helms and spearpoints and the damp sheen of trampled grass. Dew clung to the yard where the squires had not yet scuffed it away.
Dunk was supposed to be instructing Ser Addam.
The young knight was newly sworn and green behind the eyes, though he did his best to hide it under confidence and an easy grin. He had a quick step and a decent arm besides, and when Dunk struck him the man laughed instead of sulking.
That alone made Dunk like him more than half the knights at court.
“Again,” Dunk instructed, raising a blunted practice sword. “Don’t swing like you’re chopping wood. A sword’s not an axe.”
Ser Addam grinned and came at him. Their swords met with a dull ring, then slid, and clanged again. Dunk let Addam press, felt his strength, then turned his wrist and sent the man’s blade skittering wide.
“Seven Hells,” Addam panted, smiling. “You make it look easy.”
“It ain’t easy,” Dunk said, and gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder. “It’s habit. And lots of bruises.”
The blow was light enough, but it rocked the younger knight back a half-step all the same. Ser Addam rolled his shoulder where Dunk had struck him, testing the joint with a small grunt, though the smile never quite left his face.
His attention drifted then to Dunk’s cloak. It shone pale as milk in the sun.
Dunk had risen before the rest of the castle that morning to scrub the dust from it himself at the pump. Even so, it was not perfect. The hem still carried brown ghosts where yesterday’s ride had splashed mud upon it.
Addam studied it thoughtfully.
“It’s like you were born in it,” he noted.
Dunk shrugged. “I weren’t born in anything but rags, and even those had holes.”
“That makes it more impressive.”
There was a warmth in the words that had little to do with cloaks or morning drills.
His eyes traveled over Dunk in a way that made the big knight suddenly aware of himself: the sweat dampening his tunic, the size of his hands wrapped about the practice sword, the clumsy fall of his hair across his brow.
The way a man might look at a strong horse before deciding he liked the look of it.
“I have never known a Kingsguard who would spar for fun,” Addam continued. “I took you for a man of stone when first I saw you standing in the hall. I know now that is not true.”
Dunk wiped the sheen from his brow with the back of a wrist. “Stone does not sweat so much.”
“Nor does it blush.”
He blinked. “I am not blushing.”
It was a sure way to make it worse.
Dunk knew his ears betrayed him worse than the rest of his face ever did. They burned like coals whenever a lady praised him, or when Egg used to tease him, or whenever someone spoke too kindly of his sword arm.
Ser Addam’s smile widened.
“You are as red as summer apples, ser.”
Dunk cleared his throat roughly and bent to retrieve the knight’s fallen blade from the grass. “It’s the heat.”
“The morning is cool today.”
“Aye, well. I run warm.”
Addam laughed softer this time. He stepped a little closer as Dunk handed back the sword, close enough that Dunk could see a dusting of freckles across the knight’s nose. “You are a wonder, Ser Duncan. A hedge knight raised to the Kingsguard. Songs will be sung of that.”
“Songs?” Dunk said awkwardly. “Best not waste good singing on the likes of me.”
“I doubt the singers would agree.”
Dunk stared at him, and found he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands.
When men looked at him this way, it usually meant they wanted something simple. A second bout, advice on their stance, a word with the master-at-arms. Dunk understood those looks well enough.
This one felt different.
Dunk tried to be stern.
“Guard up,” he commanded, changing the subject more gruffly than he meant. “You are letting your right side hang open. A man with sense would–”
“A man with sense,” Addam cut in lightly, lifting his practice blade again, “would ask you to show him.”
“Show you?”
“Slowly.”
He blinked. “Slowly?”
“Aye.” Addam stepped closer than was needed for training; Dunk could smell the clean soap on him under the sweat. “So I can watch your hands.”
Dunk flushed harder. He shifted back half a step, caught his heel on a rut in the churned earth, and Addam’s eyes sparkled at the clumsiness.
Something clicked slowly into place in Dunk’s head.
People said strange things when they were eager to impress a better fighter, of course. He had heard plenty of flattery in his life, most of it from boys who thought praise might soften a beating. But this was different.
This knight did not favor women.
Dunk had met men who liked other men before, here and there along the roads. Not many, and rarely this openly.
Once there had been a pair of Dornish knights who shared a tent and never seemed troubled by the talk it stirred among the other riders. Another time, years ago at a harvest fair, he had seen two sellswords slip off behind a stable together.
Those men were quiet about their affections. Careful.
Ser Addam clearly was not.
“Well,” Dunk muttered, trying very hard to look anywhere but at the knight’s face, “best mind you’re watching the blade too, ser. Hands won’t help you much if the sword knocks your teeth out.”
“If the sword knocks my teeth out, then I suppose I shall deserve it. Still, I have seen many knights swing a sword. I have not seen many who make it look the way you do.”
That was enough of that.
Dunk opened his mouth to scold him proper. The lad was getting too familiar by half, and if he did not learn better now he would end up with his nose broken by some knight less patient. It was not fitting to speak so freely with a Kingsguard, and certainly not to stand so close while doing it.
Before the words could come, Dunk felt it.
A shift in the air.
It was a strange thing, and hard to name. A man who had spent years on the road learned to notice such feelings. It was the prickle that came before a fight broke out in a crowded inn. The hush that fell when a dangerous man stepped into a room. The feeling one got when someone was watching them in secret.
Dunk looked up.
On the gallery above the yard, half in shadow, stood Prince Aerion Targaryen.
He wore dark riding leathers today. A long cloak of black silk hung from both shoulders, thrown back carelessly so the light struck the leather beneath and set it glimmering like wet stone. The sun set the white of his hair ablaze.
Aerion was watching.
The princeling’s face was smooth as carved ivory, composed and beautiful in the way a statue might be. But Dunk knew him too well to trust the stillness of it.
The anger beneath showed in smaller things.
How the line of Aerion’s jaw had set hard, how his fingers curled against the stone railing, how his eyes flicked once to Ser Addam and sharpened there like a needle.
Dunk’s stomach dropped.
Oh.
Oh no.
He glanced back at Addam at once, hoping that the man would take the hint and excuse himself with haste. A sudden memory of duty. A lost glove. A pressing need to be anywhere else in the world.
Addam was only pleased with himself.
“You have gone quiet. Have I struck you dumb?”
“No,” Dunk muttered. “I’m . . . I’m thinking.”
“Thinking about my form?”
Dunk’s eyes darted up again, helplessly.
Aerion was no longer in the gallery.
Dunk did not see him come down. One moment the prince was above, and the next he was simply there, crossing the yard with that lazy, dangerous grace – a cat that decided the mouse had played long enough.
Men noticed. Of course they did.
A Targaryen prince did not walk through a training yard without the world bending around him. Blades slowed. Voices dipped. Even the horses in the stable-yard seemed to hush, as if they, too, knew better than to snort at a dragon.
He stopped a few paces away from them.
“My prince,” Dunk said at once. He dipped his chin.
Aerion did not greet him. Instead, he rested one hand against the hilt of the riding dagger at his hip, and surveyed Ser Addam slowly.
From the polished steel of the helm, Aerion’s eyes drifted down the line of Addam’s shoulders, to the set of mail beneath the training surcoat. It paused a moment on the sword belt at the knight’s waist, then continued over the mud-spattered greaves.
Then his eyes rose again.
Helm. Shoulders. Sword. Boots.
Aerion pursed his lips, as though the sight before him had failed to meet whatever standard he carried in his mind.
“And who,” Aerion said, “may you be?”
Ser Addam cleared his throat and bowed. He was sensible enough to do that much, though the bow was shallower than Dunk would have liked.
“Ser Addam of–”
“Spare me the rest. I find long names tedious, and long explanations worse. Tell me instead what sort of man thinks it wise to paw at a Kingsguard.”
Dunk went rigid at Aerion’s words.
In public?
He glanced around the training yard. A squire who had been gathering practice shields had suddenly found them very interesting. Two men at the far rail leaned on their spears with elaborate casualness. No one was looking their way.
No one ever pretended well.
Addam’s cheeks colored. “I was sparring with Ser Duncan,” he explained carefully. “If I gave offense, my prince, it was not meant so.”
“You offend me by breathing, ser.” His eyes traveled down Addam again, long enough to make the inspection insulting. “Some men are born with the tragic belief that their attentions are welcome everywhere.”
“I meant no disrespect, truly. Ser Duncan was instructing me. Nothing more.”
Aerion’s brows rose a fraction.
“Was he?” The princeling’s tongue swiped his lower lip as if the thought amused him. “From where I stood, it seemed less like instruction and more like admiration.”
Dunk felt the heat rising up the back of his neck.
“Aerion,” he warned quietly. “This isn’t–”
Aerion did not look at him. His attention stayed on Addam, sharp and cruel and interested in the same way a boy might watch an insect before deciding how to pull off its legs.
“I am curious, ser. Did you imagine Ser Duncan might belong to you for the asking?”
Addam stiffened.
“N-No. I imagined nothing of the sort.”
“Mm. I should hope not. It would be a very disappointing imagination.”
Dunk wished, not for the first time, that the ground would simply open up and swallow the lot of them.
Gods above. Why won’t he just leave it be?
“Of course not, my prince,” Addam hurried. “A man who has spent his life among green boys knows when he stands before someone greater than himself. Ser Duncan has earned his cloak and the honor that comes with it. I only thought he should know that.”
Addam meant it kindly, that much was plain. The lad had the earnest look of a man who believed compliments were harmless things.
The dragon prince did not believe in such a thing.
Dunk cleared his throat. “That is . . . well,” he said, trying for easy and landing somewhere near miserable. “You flatter me, ser.”
Aerion had not looked at Dunk once since arriving in the yard. All that cold, careful attention had been fixed upon Ser Addam, as though Dunk were little more than a piece of furniture standing inconveniently nearby.
Now those violet eyes were on him.
Dunk saw the displeasure ripple across Aerion’s face. He had the sinking feeling that he had said precisely the wrong thing.
Thankfully, Aerion decided not to murder him. Not today at least.
“You are new,” Aerion turned to Addam again. “That explains the ignorance well enough. Only a very new knight would mistake a white cloak for an invitation.”
“I–”
“Most men learn that lesson earlier, though I suppose not all are quick studies.”
Addam seemed confused now. Foolishly, he smiled again, trying to charm his way out. “I spoke out of admiration for his skill, and perhaps a touch too freely besides. If my words sounded forward, that fault is mine alone. I did not presume upon the honor of his cloak.”
Dunk watched Aerion’s eyes flash: bright and attentive in a way that was almost worse than open anger.
“Ser Duncan enjoys smashing men to the ground when they irritate him,” he scoffed. “He enjoys dragging them through the mud until their pride leaks out into the dirt. If he enjoyed your company, you would be lying flat on your back wondering where your breath had gone.”
Dunk gaped. “That’s not true.”
Aerion’s gaze slid to him again. It was not calm this time.
It felt like a hand closing around Dunk’s throat.
“Oh?” Aerion said at last, very softly.
Dunk’s mouth opened. No words came. He could feel half the yard leaning in.
“If you are that fond of him, then perhaps you should both go somewhere quieter,” Aerion continued. The words were colored with frustration. “Somewhere the yard would not trouble you with witnesses, and admiration might be expressed more comfortably.”
Addam cleared his throat. He was no longer smiling.
“I fear there has been some misunderstanding. I would not presume to invite Ser Duncan anywhere, quiet or otherwise.”
Dunk’s stomach twisted. He stepped forward, trying to wedge himself between disaster and the green knight.
“That is enough.”
Aerion’s hand shot out and closed around Dunk’s arm.
It wasn’t gentle, though not painful either. Aerion knew how to use his strength when he wanted, which was frightening in its own way. Dunk felt the intent in it.
Possession. Command.
Dunk stood there like a great fool, trapped between the prince’s fingers and the prince’s temper. Aerion addressed Addam again with princely ease, as if he hadn’t just grabbed a Kingsguard like a disobedient squire.
“I have grown bored,” Aerion said. “Run along and practice your swordwork. Try not to stab yourself.”
Addam’s jaw worked. Pride warred with sense in his eyes.
At last, he bowed again, stiffer this time. “Of course,” he said, and then to Dunk, softer, “Ser.”
Dunk could only nod. His arm was still in Aerion’s grip.
Addam backed away. When he was a safe distance, he turned and strode off with too much stiffness in his shoulders. Only then did Aerion tug Dunk forward. Dunk stumbled a step, caught himself, and hissed under a breath.
“Seven hells, Aerion–”
Aerion did not slow. He drew Dunk across the yard like he meant to haul him into the godswood by the scruff. The watching men snapped their gazes away one by one, suddenly fascinated.
Dunk tried to keep his dignity. It was difficult when being dragged like a sack of grain.
“You are making a scene,” Dunk muttered, leaning closer, teeth clenched. “If you wanted to speak, you could have – could have spoken like I’m a normal man.”
“Normal men do not make me wait.”
Aerion did not stop dragging him until the yard was behind them and the noise of steel was swallowed by stone. They cut through an archway and into one of Summerhall’s lesser corridors.
He kept Dunk’s arm in a tight hold the whole way.
Dunk had felt that grip many times now.
He had felt it in darkness when Aerion wanted him close. He had felt it when Aerion wanted him still. He had felt it when Aerion was pleased enough to be gentle and proud enough not to admit it. And he had felt it when Aerion’s temper came alive, bright and ugly as wildfire.
This was the wildfire kind.
“You’ll pull my arm out if you keep that up!” Dunk protested. “I’m not a dog on a leash, you know.”
"No." Aerion didn’t look back. “Dogs are far quieter.”
Dunk stumbled a half-step when Aerion turned sharply, and then found himself shoved into a narrow recess between two tapestried pillars; an alcove where the torchlight fell thin and the corridor could not see them straight on.
The princeling crowded Dunk at once.
His eyes were ablaze. They flicked over Dunk in a quick pass.
To Dunk’s mouth. Dunk’s throat. The damp line at his hair where sweat had dried. It was the look Aerion gave a thing he owned and suspected had been handled by someone else.
“You were enjoying yourself,” Aerion accused.
“What? I was training,” he insisted. “Something you have complained I don’t do enough of, when I am not–” He cut himself off, because the when I’m not in your bed wanted to leap out, and the corridor was still a corridor.
Aerion’s smile showed the edge of teeth. “Training. Is that what you call it now?”
“Aye, training. The man is new and full of himself.”
“And full of you, if he had his way.”
“You are being unreasonable.”
“Did he touch you?”
“No! No, he did not.”
Aerion offered a short, humorless breath. “Speak plainly. I would sooner hear an ugly truth from you than a pretty lie meant to soothe me.”
“I swear it. I would never let him touch me.” Once again Dunk was stuck between embarrassment and stubborn honesty. “Because I do not . . . Because I am not for just anyone.”
Aerion stared at him a long moment, expression tight, and Dunk could almost see the prince deciding whether he believed him. The prince’s nostrils flared with an offended inhale.
Suddenly Aerion’s hand rose and settled firmly against the center of Dunk’s chest.
It wasn’t a shove. Just the flat press of his palm against armor, ringed fingers spreading as if to test the breadth of him.
Dunk felt himself go stupid with it.
“And whose are you?” Aerion demanded lowly.
Dunk’s throat worked. He should have lied. He should have said something careful and proper and safe. Something about the crown, or the Kingsguard, or duty.
He found himself truth-telling like a fool.
“You know . . .”
“Say it.”
Dunk frowned. He hated when Aerion did this: cornered him with those eyes and that voice until the truth came spilling out whether Dunk meant it to or not.
“Yours,” he said, hoarse. “That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”
Aerion smiled redly. “I only want to hear the truth. Even if it comes from your hideous mouth.”
“You will choke on the truth if you keep demanding it. It’s not meant for princes.”
Aerion ignored that, as he ignored most things that didn’t please him. His hand slid up, knuckles grazing Dunk’s throat with a familiarity that was not new. Not in the least. It was the same touch that had undone Dunk in darkness more nights than he cared to count.
And endlessly possessive at that, as if Aerion had a right to check the beat of his pulse whenever the mood hit.
His thumb traced beneath Dunk’s jaw now. Dunk went very still, because his body remembered this too well. The first time, Dunk had tried to act like it meant nothing. The tenth time, he’d stopped pretending.
Aerion leaned upward on the tips of his boots. His breath warmed the corner of Dunk’s mouth.
“Say it again.”
Dunk swallowed. It felt like the whole castle had narrowed to this strip of shadow and torchlight and Aerion’s hands.
“Yours,” he repeated quietly. “Yours, Aerion – Gods be good, how many times must I say it?”
Aerion’s scowl did not soften. It sharpened. Satisfaction in a cruel shape.
“You say it so easily, ser.”
There was a dangerous look in those eyes.
No dye or velvet or banner ever held such a color. Dunk had seen gemstones in the markets once, when a merchant from Lys came to King’s Landing with a velvet tray of wonders meant for lords and ladies with heavy purses. Amethysts and star sapphires that caught the sun in shifting fires.
Aerion’s eyes reminded him of those.
They were akin to the strange brilliance that lived inside an opal: colors moving beneath the surface, never quite still, never quite the same from one moment to the next.
Dunk let out a breath that shook. “You are the one forcing it out of me.”
Aerion did not answer.
He kissed Dunk.
Hard. Greedy. Violent in the way of things done without hesitation.
Dunk’s head knocked back against the cold stone of the alcove wall with a dull crack; he felt the impact somewhere far away, as if it belonged to someone else. Aerion surged forward into the space it opened, claiming it with the same ruthless certainty he brought to every quarrel and every victory.
Aerion’s hand slid from Dunk’s chestplate and came up to the back of his neck. His fingers closed there. Blunt nails bit lightly into the sensitive skin beneath Dunk’s hairline, just sharp enough to send a shiver down his spine.
Dunk’s hands instantly flew up.
Big hands. Awkward hands. Hands more suited to sword hilts and reins than to princes.
One caught on Aerion’s shoulder. The other found his waist. Dunk held him there without thinking, palm spreading over the narrow line of it.
Aerion was lean beneath the silk and velvet. The costly fabrics did little to hide it. Dunk felt the firm line of ribs, the tight strength gathered through stomach and flank. Aerion was lighter than Dunk by far, slender and thin, yet there was nothing fragile about him.
It was the sort of strength a whip might have. Or a blade.
“We cannot,” Dunk whispered into his mouth. “This isn’t–”
Aerion made a low sound, as if the danger pleased him. “Shut up. You have always been loud when you forget yourself.”
His tongue quickly found Dunk’s lower lip, swiping, licking, and then . . .
Dunk jerked at a sudden sting.
“Ow!” he said, shrinking back. Warm iron bloomed on his tongue. “Did you–did you just bite me?”
Dunk blinked down at him, and found that the shorter man did not look sorry at all.
A bead of blood was gathering there, Dunk knew. It was no more than a crimson pinprick at first, swelling slowly where the skin had split. A jewel of sorts: a tiny ruby set into flesh. He ran his tongue over it without thinking and tasted metal.
Aerion watched that too. The prince’s lashes lowered another fraction.
It put Dunk in mind of the dragons carved upon the gates of old Valyria that singers liked to prattle on about. Great stone beasts with their heads lowered over prey, watching the last flash of movement before the flame came.
Then Aerion’s thumb rose.
He wiped at Dunk’s bloodied mouth with a firm drag.
Dunk hissed. He did not move as Aerion spread the blood; drew it across the split with careful pressure and smeared the red. His hands clenched at his sides, then lifted without permission to catch Aerion's sleeve.
“Enough,” Dunk snapped, turning his head with a grimace. “That hurts, I’ll have you know.”
Aerion’s thumb followed anyway, tracking him. There was an impatience there, but pleasure too. Pleasure in seeing Dunk flinch. Pleasure in hearing that unwilling hitch of breath.
Dunk wondered what madness had led them here.
Once he had thought Prince Aerion Targaryen the worst sort of man ever to draw breath. Proud, wicked, arrogant besides. The kind of silver-haired princeling the smallfolk spat after when his back was turned.
Dunk remembered that day well enough. The mockery. The cold delight Aerion had taken in tormenting a puppet girl. He’d hated him.
The strange thing was that Aerion had despised him just as fiercely. It had been mutual in those days.
Just two men circling each other with the hostility of dogs that know they ought not share the same road. Dunk had found the prince insufferably proud, too fine-boned and sharp-tongued for his liking. Aerion, in turn, had seemed to view Dunk as little more than a walking inconvenience. A clumsy hedge knight who took up far too much air for a man of such humble birth.
Now here they were.
“Hurt, does it?” Aerion murmured. “Good. Mayhaps you will remember who put it there.”
He let his thumb pause. For a heartbeat Dunk thought it was done.
Then Aerion brought the pressure back. It was not with the soft pad of his thumb this time, but with the edge of a fingernail.
He pressed the nail into the cut.
Dunk’s whole body reacted. His head jerked back with a rough sound he could not swallow. His shoulders scraped stone. The grip on Aerion’s sleeve tightened until his knuckles went pale.
“Get off!” Dunk rasped. “Have you lost your mind?!”
Aerion’s gaze flicked up to meet his, violet and bright, and there was a calmness in it. Almost domestic, in its own twisted way. As if this was simply how Aerion handled what was his.
“I am only reminding you of your place,” Aerion drawled, “as you are forever in need of it.”
“Place?” Dunk echoed. His voice shook despite his best efforts, and the challenge in it rang weaker than originally meant. “And what place is that meant to be?”
Aerion only hummed and leaned in until their lips brushed.
Then his mouth sealed over the wound and sucked.
A humiliating groan escaped Dunk before it could be stopped.
The knight had known pain all his life. Blisters and bruises, blades that bit, fists, the ache in his bones after hard days. Pain was meant to harden a man, meant to teach him caution.
Aerion’s pain did not teach caution.
It felt like being claimed. Like being pulled under freezing water. Like something shameful loosening in Dunk’s chest, making him forget his vows and his sense and everything that mattered beyond the man’s mouth.
It was the way Aerion chose exactly how much to give and exactly how much to take.
A lover’s cruelty.
Dunk’s thoughts scattered as Aerion’s tongue swept the split in circles that made him groan. There was an ache as the cut opened a fraction under that attention. It hurt.
By the gods, it hurt.
So why was it pleasurable?
Because Aerion made it feel like attention. Because Aerion could hurt him and still treat him like something precious in the same breath. Because Dunk had never known anyone who could make pain feel like a touch meant only for him.
So yes, it hurt. But it was pain directed at Dunk. Shaped for him. Made singular.
And to a man who had so often been invisible, even cruelty could glitter when it came wrapped in the terrible privilege of being seen.
After what felt like an eternity, Aerion’s lips left the split at last with one final tug. Dunk had the sense to look at him. There was a smudge of red upon the princeling’s mouth.
My blood.
It gleamed there against Aerion’s lower lip, bright as fresh paint, and for a moment Dunk could only stare like the dullard half the court believed him to be.
“Aerion . . . ” Dunk panted, chest still tight. “You – you are bloody mad.”
“Such ugly honesty,” Aerion said, slow and pleased, as if Dunk had just handed him a gift. His fingers pinched Dunk’s chin and angled his face downward, like a man adjusting some prized object so the light might strike it better. “You say that as though you don’t come seeking it.”
Dunk’s face went hotter, which felt impossible. His lip stung where Aerion had worried it open, and his pulse hammered hard enough that the princeling could likely count the beats if he cared to look.
“I don’t seek madness,” Dunk muttered thickly. “I seek peace, most days.”
“Funny. You always seem to find me instead.”
Dunk would have argued. He would have said something magnificently foolish and blunt and true in the unfortunate way of honest men. He might have, if the corridor had not chosen that moment to betray them.
A voice called out from the passage.
“Ser Duncan? Is everything alright?”
Aerion turned his head like a man annoyed by a fly. Dunk turned too, heart thumping.
Ser Addam stood a few paces down the corridor. He had the unfortunate expression of a man who had opened a door expecting a hallway and discovered instead a scandal. For a moment he simply looked.
First at Aerion.
Then at Dunk.
And, rather helplessly, at Aerion’s hand on Dunk’s chest, the angle of Dunk’s head, the undeniable closeness. His gaze dropped to Dunk’s mouth.
To the blood.
It hopped to Aerion’s lips where the same red had stained. The careless aftermath of a kiss.
Ser Addam’s expression rearranged itself in stages. First it was confusion, followed by recognition. His entire posture went stiff with the dreadful understanding that he had flirted with someone who belonged to a prince.
Belonged in the way people disappeared for.
Dunk found his voice first, because Dunk’s sad life had always involved speaking at the worst possible times. “Ser Addam,” he croaked, and it came out like a man clearing his throat after swallowing a hot coal. “I, um . . .”
Ser Addam nodded far too quickly. “Ser. My prince.” He nodded again, as if nodding might rewind time. “I was just walking.”
“Ah.” Aerion didn’t even try to move from Dunk; he kept their bodies pressed together, a hand smoothing downward to rest on Dunk’s torso. “That is quite convenient.”
Ser Addam swallowed so hard his throat bobbed.
“I thought,” he said, voice cracking just a touch, “I thought you were in trouble, ser. But I see now you are only being . . . disciplined.”
Dunk made a strangled sound. “Disciplined?”
Aerion’s grip tightened, as if to underline the word. Dunk’s shoulders scraped stone again.
“Aye, well. I see you are very well. Extremely well.” Ser Addam’s eyes flicked to Aerion’s mouth again and immediately fled. “Possibly the wellest I have ever seen.”
Aerion, infuriatingly, looked pleased.
“Go back to the yard then,” he commanded lazily. “Go practice your forms. Swing your sword at the air and pretend it is not full of things you do not understand.”
Ser Addam bowed. It was finally the deepest bow of his life. He backed away two steps, tripped, caught himself, and then hurried off down the corridor like a man fleeing a fire.
When Ser Addam’s footsteps faded, Dunk exhaled shakily.
“Gods above,” he muttered. “That poor fool will never look me in the eye again.”
Aerion’s shoulder lifted in the smallest shrug. “He has learned that he should keep his curiosity where it belongs.”
Dunk huffed. “And where’s that?”
“Far from you.” His grip tightened briefly as it was said, just enough to make a point. “Come.”
“Come where?”
“Don’t act the fool,” Aerion said with a roll of his eyes. He took Dunk by the wrist this time, slender fingers closing around it with surprising certainty.
And then he turned, as though the matter had been settled long ago, and began to lead him into the castle.
Dunk could have stopped him. The truth of that sat plainly between them. He was twice the prince in height, in breadth, in every honest measure of strength. One firm pull of his arm and Aerion would have been sent stumbling back like some indignant child.
Dunk only followed.
It is a curious thing, the power certain people possess. Not the power of armies or titles – though Aerion had both in abundance – but the far subtler power of fascination. Some men command loyalty. Others inspire affection.
Aerion managed, quite artfully, to provoke both resentment and devotion at once.
Ser Addam looked upon him with distaste. Half the court likely did the same. It was terribly fashionable to disapprove of beautiful princes.
But they did not know him.
Not the way Dunk did.
They did not know the sharpness of Aerion’s wit. Nor the sarcasm, which he wielded with a kind of elegant indifference. And certainly not the rare, almost accidental chivalry that appeared in the quiet spaces when no one else was watching.
They did not know his smile.
“Well,” Dunk muttered, rolling his eyes, “next time I will just tell the whole yard I am spoken for.”
“Oh, do. I should very much enjoy seeing who dares ask by whom.”
“You are never going to let this go, are you?”
Aerion’s smile showed teeth. “You had the most remarkable expression while I was scolding you. It would be a shame to forget it.”
And Dunk laughed.