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Egg was in his bedchamber, folding a black-and-red doublet when his father came in. It had been hours since Ser Duncan had asked to speak with him, and Egg was so restless he thought he might burst. It had taken every scrap of his princely upbringing not to pace grooves into the floor or slip down the corridors toward Lord Ashford’s solar to listen at doors like a stableboy.
He had folded and refolded the same doublet twice already; when the door opened, he nearly dropped it. It took all of his training not to leap to his feet. Instead, he smoothed the fabric carefully and laid it upon the chest at the foot of his bed. He bowed his head, as he had been taught long ago, when grief first entered his life.
“Father.”
Maekar dismissed the guard with a flick of his fingers. The door shut with a muted thud that seemed louder than it was, and the chamber felt smaller at once. Morning light spilled through the narrow windows, thin and colorless. Dust drifted in it. The air still carried a faint scent of smoke.
Maekar crossed the room slowly, stiffly, with the careful deliberation of a man whose body remembered every blow it had taken. His face was pale, worn, scraped and bruised from the trial that had taken his brother. There was something heavier about him now, something that, for all the heaviness already present, had not been there before. He did not sit.
“Ser Duncan was here,” Maekar said at last.
Egg’s heart leapt so violently he feared it must show in his face. “And?” he asked, careful, so very careful, to keep his voice level.
Maekar’s gaze lingered on him a moment too long. “He offered to take you as his squire.”
The world shifted. Egg could almost feel it - the road from Summerhall opening before him, wide and sunlit. The rhythm of hooves. The smell of leather and steel. Ser Duncan’s broad back ahead of him, steady as a wall. His eyes lit despite himself. He bit his lip hard, but the joy could not be contained entirely.
Maekar saw it. A breath left him - not quite a sigh. “But not at Summerhall.”
The light in Egg’s face stilled as he took in his father’s face.
“He means to take you on the road,” Maekar went on. “To sleep beneath hedges and in roadside inns. To eat salt beef and coarse bread. To offer service to this lord and the next, as need demands.” His jaw tightened faintly. “That is not fitting for a prince of the realm.”
“I want to serve Ser Duncan, Father.”
Maekar’s mouth twitched. “Your Ser Duncan told me a strange thing,” he said. “When I said this was not fitting.”
His gaze drifted briefly toward the window, toward the pale stretch of morning beyond.
“He said that Daeron had never slept in a ditch, and that Aerion had never eaten beef that was not thick and bloody.”
The names hung in the air. “It took me some time,” Maekar said quietly, “to understand him.”
He turned then and looked fully at his youngest son. Egg’s jaw was set too firmly, and his chin lifted too high. He was trying very hard to look like someone he had not yet grown into.
“Baelor should have stood here this morning,” Maekar said, not loudly or bitterly - simply as fact. Egg’s throat tightened.
“He would have argued with me,” Maekar continued. “He would have told me that the realm is not learned from silk cushions.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “And he would have been right.”
Silence fell. Maekar studied his youngest son - the slight shoulders, the too-thin wrists emerging from red and black sleeves, the shaved scalp that made him seem smaller still. Then he said, almost as though explanation were enough: “I told Ser Duncan you were my last son.”
Egg felt something inside him constrict - not anger, but understanding. Maekar stepped closer. Not looming, not threatening - simply near enough that Egg could see the sleepless hollows beneath his eyes and the faint pull at the bandages beneath wool. “I cannot allow this, Aegon.”
It was not a command - it was a confession. Egg saw it then, the tremor beneath the iron. “You're afraid,” he said, right to the face of the Prince of Summerhall. There was no accusation in it.
Maekar went very still. He had faced steel without flinching, faced flame without turning away, faced his brother’s pyre beneath open sky. But this, this small boy seeing him clearly, was another matter.
“Yes,” Maekar said. One word, entirely unadorned.
Egg’s breath caught. “You once told me bravery is a choice,” he said.
Maekar closed his eyes briefly. “And you would have me make it?” he asked, voice low and rough.
The words did not sound like challenge - they sounded tired. Pleading, even. Egg looked at him, really looked. Up close, he could see what distance had hidden. The bruise beneath his father’s eye had deepened overnight, turning the color of storm-clouds at dusk. A shallow cut along his cheek had cracked open again. His beard, usually precise, showed uneven where it had been trimmed without care. There were hollows beneath his eyes that no sleep would mend. He looked older, but not by years - by loss. The linen beneath his doublet shifted when he drew breath - careful, measured. The bandages at his ribs pulled, and though Maekar did not flinch, his fingers flexed faintly at his side, betraying the ache beneath the wool. Even standing still seemed an act of will. This was the man who had lifted him once into smoke and sorrow and held him as though the world were ending. And for a moment, just a moment, Egg nearly yielded.
“No, Father,” he said softly.
And then he said nothing more. The silence that followed was not surrender, it was something else. Maekar waited, perhaps expecting defiance. Argument. Pleading. Anything.
It did not come. Egg stood straight, hands folded lightly before him, the very image of princely composure. That unsettled Maekar more than protest would have.
“You understand,” Maekar said, though it came out more question than certainty.
“Yes, Father.” And he did - that was the cruelty of it.
Maekar stepped closer still. Close enough now that he could see the faint red line where Egg had bitten his lip too hard, close enough to notice that the boy’s hands were not entirely steady. He reached out, almost without meaning to, and adjusted the collar of Egg’s black-and-red doublet. A useless gesture - a father’s reflex.
“You are young,” Maekar said quietly. “There will be time.” The words sounded hollow even to him.
Egg nodded. “Yes, Father.”
Maekar’s hand lingered a heartbeat too long against the fabric near Egg’s shoulder. He felt how narrow it was beneath the wool; how easily it might bruise. How easily it might be broken.
“I have lost two sons to folly,” Maekar said, not looking at him now. “And one brother to honor.”
The air seemed to thin. “I will not lose another child to the road.”
Egg’s throat tightened. Maekar’s voice softened, though he did not seem aware of it. “Baelor would have let you go,” he admitted. “Your mother would have called me a coward for refusing.”
The corner of his mouth twitched faintly. “She would have been right.”
He drew a breath. “I am not Baelor,” he said then, at long last. And in that simple statement lay everything - grief, pride, limitation. He rested his hand briefly atop Egg’s head; not ceremonious, not princely - simply a father’s touch. His thumb brushed once across the bare scalp.
“I see the sense in it,” Maekar said quietly. “I do.”
Silence settled between them again - it was heavy, but not sharp.
“But I cannot.”
Egg swallowed. “I know.” That was the wound - because he did know.
Maekar let his hand fall. The moment stretched, fragile and suspended. There was something else he might have said then - something about trust, perhaps, or about returning to the question in a year’s time. He did not. Instead, he straightened, and with him rose not the father, but the Prince of Summerhall.
“This matter is ended. We leave for King’s Landing.”
Egg bowed his head. “Yes, Father.”
Maekar turned and walked to the door. He paused there, just for a breath, as though listening for something behind him. A plea, a protest, a boy refusing to yield. But none came.
The door closed softly. Egg did not move for a long while. The morning light shifted across the floor, and dust drifted in its pale beam.
He listened to his father’s footsteps recede down the corridor - steady, measured, princely, yet heavy with bodily ache. When the steps faded, the silence in Egg’s bedchamber seemed to swell. He could still see his father - the bruise beneath his eye, the cut along his cheek, the way he had stood as though even breathing required discipline. Egg pressed his fingers against the edge of the chest at the foot of his bed. His father had not forbidden him in cruelty. He had not thundered or threatened. He had stood there, ravaged and honest, and admitted fear. And that had hit very close to Egg’s heart. He closed his eyes, remembering the other fire yet again. Smaller, years ago. The tremor in his father’s chest when he had lifted him into smoke and grief. The way Maekar had held him too tightly and thought the boy would not notice.
He had noticed then, and he noticed now. For a moment, just a moment, he imagined staying. Riding east to King’s Landing. Wearing silk and red and black. Being good and safe. Being near enough that his father would never have to wonder where he was. His chest tightened. That would be easier. For his father, most of all.
Egg opened his eyes again and looked around the chamber - at the folded doublet, at the narrow bed, at the light creeping slowly across the floor.
But easier was not the same as right.
His father had said bravery was a choice, and now Egg would make that choice for him - he would go.
But he would not go with his father’s blessing, and that thought struck deeper than he had expected. He had imagined that Maekar would, in the end, put a hand to his shoulder and say that he could go. Instead, his father, ever the strongest person Egg had known, had confessed to him that he couldn’t do it.
Egg swallowed. He wished, fiercely and uselessly, that he could have both - the road and his father’s pride, the hedge-knight’s saddle and the steady warmth of Maekar’s approval. He would have chosen that, and gladly. But the world did not bend to wishes. If it did, his mother would still be there.
He stepped toward the window. The meadow beyond looked almost peaceful now, though yesterday it had burned. That, too, had hurt - and still it had been done.
He loved his father. That was the worst of it - he loved him enough to understand his fear. He loved him enough to know that staying would ease it. And he loved him enough to believe that one day, Maekar would understand why he had gone.
Egg drew in a steadying breath. “I'll come back,” he said softly. “I'll make you proud.”
He turned from the window and reached for the doublet he had folded. His hands were steady now. He pressed his palm flat against the red slash of cloth - as though feeling for a heartbeat beneath it. Then he straightened. And in the silence, in the stillness his father had mistaken for surrender, something else took root – the true resolve that had been in the blood of the Targaryens since Old Valyria, and the stubbornness of the Daynes of Starfall.
“I'm your son,” he said - to the empty room, to the dust drifting in pale light, to whatever gods listened. “Both of yours.”
The admission steadied him, and when he reached for the door, his hand did not tremble. He paused only once - just long enough to imagine his father’s face when he discovered that he was gone.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he whispered.
Then he opened the door and left to search Lord Ashford’s castle for some clothes befitting a hedge knight’s squire.