Archive of Our Own

"He's as bad as they come, if not worse,” he whispered, eyes glancing about as if waiting for an anvil to strike him down. “Everyone says so. They say he drinks the blood of the innocent.”

He shook his head. “That’s not right.”

“They’re Targaryens!” Spit flew from his mouth, and Dunk barely had time to swerve before it splattered near his face. “Incestuous aliens who burned our lands and our people. Do you think that, since Queen Visenya’s time and even before, no one in her family practiced dark sorcery? Maegor was born from that; who’s to say that Aerion isn’t as well?”

Aerion didn't return alone; something followed him home, and his family bore the consequences.