Chapter Text
Aerion tasted the end of his divinity in the copper sting of blood.
It was a brutal, airless awakening. Before his mind could process the pain, it realized it was drowning. His nose was a wet, pulpy sponge of clotted heat, forced shut by the impact. When he gasped, seeking air, his mouth instead filled with a metallic taste.
He spat, and a jagged, white secret clattered against the stone floor. A tooth. His tongue found the raw, screaming hole left behind in his gums.
For the first time in his nine years, Aerion felt small. The internal silence was the most terrifying part.
Before the table had met his face, the world had been a cathedral of whispers. Since he could walk, Aerion had lived within a golden weight—a constant, rhythmic thrum of ancient echoes. There were a choral of voices telling him he was not merely a boy, but a creature of eternal resonance - a prince whose blood was the same fire that had forged the Fourteen Flames, and a roar of wings that made the stone beneath his feet feel like a footstool for his kin.
Then, the strike.
The impact hadn't just broken his face; it had shattered his mind. The whispers didn't fade; they snapped like a bell hit by a hammer. In their place was the static—a high, thin scream of a void, a cold white noise that made the world feel paper-thin and terrifyingly quiet.
With a trembling hand, Aerion pushed himself up. His vision was a blurred smear of purple and red.
That was when he saw him.
The man stood with his back turned. To a child, even kenneled on the floor he was an immense mountain of common, unwashed meat.
Aerion felt the surge of a hollow realization. If a common man could touch him, a dragon, then he was nothing but bone and silk.
His fingers clawed at the debris on the table. They closed around a carved wooden dragon—a gift from his uncle Baelor for his ninth name day, only weeks ago. It was a toy meant for a prince that became a splintered tool.
Quietly, Arion lunged.
He drove the wooden dragon into the man’s nape with a frantic, jagged force. Instead of a clean strike, there was a wet, splintering crunch—the sound of a dry branch snapping inside a bag of raw meat.
The man came undone, dropping face down with a dull, boneless thud that reverberated in the very marrow of Aerion’s fractured head.
The wooden dragon remained lodged in the man's neck, horns, teeth and claws stopping a waterfall of blood from pooling on the stone floor.
Aerion stood by the scene, trembling. The physical pain arrived then, a cold needle of agony tracing the fault line in his skull. He could feel the two sides of his forehead grinding against each other with every heartbeat.
He was alive, but empty.
When Maekar finally burst into the room, his heavy boots skidding on the stone, he stopped dead. It was Aerion’s expression that halted the Prince of Summerhall.
The boy’s features, usually set in a mask of petulance and haughty disdain, had completely collapsed. His eyes were wide, blown-out pools of amethyst terror, darting frantically as if searching for ghosts. His breath came in jagged, pathetic hitches from his mouth, and his skin was the color of curdled milk, except for the blood cascading from his nose. He looked terrified.
Maekar felt a jolt of something he hadn't dared to name: hope.
As his son grew up, Maekar had listened to the whispers—the servants crossing themselves, the Maesters' worried glances, the quiet consensus that the Gods had tossed Aerion’s coin and it had landed on the side of madness, even so young. But looking at this shattered boy, Maekar saw a soul that could still feel pain. Madness was a fortress, unreachable and cold; but terror? Terror was human. Terror was a crack in the armor where a father might finally reach in and pull his child back to the surface.
Maekar knelt before him, ignoring the corpse. He reached out with a heavy, calloused hand, but Aerion flinched. The touch of a father was just more human weight, and Aerion was already crumbling under the burden of his own vulnerability.
***
By the time his brother, Aegon, was born months later, the blood on the small wooden dragon had long been scrubbed away, leaving a muddy red stain behind. But the Aerion did not frail.
Instead, he became a ghost haunting his own life. He was still a creature of porcelain pride, his chin held high to mask the scarring, but his usual self righteousness’s isolation had transformed into a desperate, watchful closeness.
He would sit with Daeron, watching with narrowed eyes as the elder prince reached for the table beer. Aerion would help him to pour the cup to see if Daeron’s escapism held a secret he didn't know. There were moments, watching Daeron’s sloppy grin, that Aerion would feel a laugh bubble in his own throat—a real one, providing an alien warmth in his chest.
With Aemon, he was a silent sentinel. He would loom over the boy’s shoulder, observing the way Aemon’s eyes lit up at a forgotten line of Valyrian lore, finding himself lingering just to hear the rhythm of Aemon’s childish voice, a mentor remembering him who he was supposed to be.
The echoes had been more than just voices; they had been his moral compass. They told him what was expected and what was beneath him. Without them, the world was a blur of uncertainty’s grey noise. He felt lost in his own skin, so he turned to his family—not as a prince, but as a student. He deemed them worthy because they were the ones like him, and he sought their guidance in the silence.
He played the part of the devoted son, but he did it with a feverish intensity. He would laugh at their jokes and share their meals, his ears straining, chasing the warmth of his family’s fire.
He was becoming too aware of himself—of the way he breathed, the way he craved the sound of his brothers' laughter, the way his physical pain subsided when he was simply present, and wondered if this affection was just another form of the madness he feared.
In the quiet hours, the static would hiss a terrible question: Were the voices ever there at all? He began to wonder if the fracture hadn't stolen his gift, but had instead woken him up from a dream of divinity.
Aerion had grown taller and learned how to live with his trauma. It haunted him like a phantom limb; whenever he was angry, or whenever he felt the stinging gaze of his father, the bone behind his eyes would throb, a rhythmic reminder of the day he became mortal.
If he strained his focus, he was certain he could still catch the faint, thrumming resonance of those presences in the back of his mind. But they were distorted now, like a song heard through a thick stone wall.
"I am a dragon," he would whisper to his reflection, tracing his scar—the permanent gift from a dead man.
But in the high, thin ringing of his ears, the only answer was the silence.
He was a Targaryen prince, even if the ancient gods would no longer speak to him, he would wear his birthright as an armour.
But armour is little protection against the mundane irritations of a young brother.
***
The garden was quiet, save for the rhythmic, hollow thud of the bucket hitting the stone walls of the well. Aerion stood over the dark circle of water, his hands gripping the stone rim until his knuckles turned as white as bone. Normally, he would tell himself he was a creature of fire and gold, soaring above the mundane dirt of the world. But now, in the stillness, the jagged, chaotic echoes that used to crown his mind were gone.
In their absence, he felt entirely too much.
He looked toward the shaded veranda where his mother usually sat. She wasn't there today; she was inside, reading with Daella and Aemon. His mother’s influence felt like a grounding assurance.
He remembered how she had stayed by him even when the madness was at its loudest and then when it ceased at once. She had been the only one who didn't look at him with the clinical fear his father wore. To Aerion, she was the pinnacle of beauty—no "proper" Valyrian features, but a shimmering glint of strength in her gaze. He caught his reflection in the dark water of the well: the sharp nose he’d inherited from his father, now showing a healed scar crossing it at the highest bridge point.
A dragon face, he thought with a trace of bitter longing, but at least I have her eyes.
He thought of his siblings, only hatchlings in their mother’s arms not so long ago, and felt a flare of protective heat.
"You know, Narciso started like that too, but I doubt you would turn into a flower, brother."
Aerion didn't need to turn to know the menace had arrived. Aegon—Egg—was standing a few paces off, looking far too dusty for a little prince of the blood.
Aerion straightened, his face instantly smoothing into a mask of regal detachment.
"I wouldn’t. But for us, vanity is a dragon’s trait, not some common folk sin." Aerion replied, though there was no true venom in it. He walked toward the younger boy, looming over him with a practiced, predatory grace. "And you, little rat, could use some of it. Did you roll in the mud like a peasant’s dog?"
He reached out, cuffing Aegon’s head with just enough force to mess up his hair, but not enough to hurt. Aegon let out an indignant squawk and tried to trip him, Aerion felt a flicker of genuine, uninvited amusement.
***
There was a cat in the well.
After supper, Aerion went to the gardens alone. His mother was tending to Rhae, the latest addition to his hoard of siblings. He adored them vehemently, but could appreciate having some time to himself for the rest of the day.
The gardens were Lady Dyanna domain, a place where the harshness of Maekar’s discipline and the pressure of the court didn't seem to reach.
Since the attempt on his life, privacy had become a luxury he was rarely afforded. Whether they hovered out of a newfound concern for his safety or a quiet relief at his sudden, 'welcome' change in temperament, he neither knew nor cared. Their scrutiny meant nothing to him.
He sat on the bench near the rose bushes, enjoying the view and the scent of the flowers. He indulged his mind with visions of old histories: great beats sweeping across the sky of Summerhall, swallowing the sunlight, only for it to be replaced by their incendiary breath.
It would have been a pleasant scene, were it not for the incessant meowing behind him.
He vaguely remembered Aegon crying earlier, mentions of a runaway pet that had been troubling the child.
Aerion could almost swear his brother had a ferret instead of a cat, used to seeing that small, white, blurry pest that frequently roamed the corridors with Aegon on its heels as if the creature owned him. Not an ounce of the conqueror in him, it seemed.
He considered letting the stupid animal where it was— after all, it got there by his own accord. But dealing with the repercussions would be a hassle, so he decided to spare himself.
He lowered the bucket. The kitten struggled to get in, probably exhausted from trying to climb the stone walls, or simply trying not to drown.
Aerion lifted the bucket, fishing out the cat.
He didn't know how to handle the soaked animal—and he didn't want to get his clothes dirty either, so he retrieved it from the bucket holding it by the scruff of the neck like he'd once seen a lioness do.
When Aegon saw him with the cat, he immediately wept, visibly relieved.
A quick retelling of the events made his young brother abruptly stop sobbing and run towards him for an embrace, with the animal between them, soaking his vest with its drenched fur.
It was pathetic, really, he almost regretted his intervention; perhaps he should have let nature take its course after all.
If Aegon was a creature of easy tears and playful personality, Daeron was made of sharper, darker things — the kind of things that Aerion actually understood.
***
Daeron was his closest sibling. Obviously, he had known Aerion longer, since he was the oldest, and although there had been a growing distance between them before the assassination attempt, they were always quite close.
There was some comfort in recognizing someone else’s insanity.
Sometimes, Daeron had strange dreams and he couldn't bear them alone.
Aerion offered to carry its weight for him. “Visions”, he named them without fear.
“You are like Daenys, a prophetic dreamer. Don’t be afraid of your greatness, brother. You have been graced by our heritage.”
Looking at his brother, pale and terrorized, Aerion felt a surge of protectiveness and bitter jealousy.
“Give them to me, brother,” Aerion whispered softly, his hand tight on Daeron’s shoulder. “The dreams. If they haunt you, let them haunt me instead”.
It wasn't just kindness that made him reach for Daeron. It was a scavenger’s instinct, a withdrawal thirst that wanted to press his ear to his brother’s chest and hear the wings beating inside.
If the gods were going to pour their fire into a vessel as cracked and leaking as Daeron, why had they left Aerion—the one who was strong enough to hold it—completely empty? Every time Daeron shivered from a dream, Aerion felt a pulse of resentment that tasted like ash.
He would be the shield for his brother’s prophecies, yes, but he longed to find a way to let it bleed into his own veins, making him whole again.
A strong bond was settled between them after that.
But even the strongest bond frayed under the weight of the years that followed.
***
By the time the party set out for the Reach, the silence had grown heavy. A suffocating shroud that not even the rhythmic thud of horse hooves could pierce.
Aerion was already on edge when the letter arrived from his father—Prince Maekar, still brooding in the shadows of the Red Keep after the funeral. They were to participate in the Ashford Tournament to honor the birthday of the Lord’s daughter.
It felt jeering. His mother, Dyanna, had passed only half a year ago, and the ache of it hadn't subsided. Aerion hadn't realized he possessed a heart until it was split in half; he loathed how well-acquainted he had become with the throbbing presence of it. Perhaps, he told himself, striking something beyond the training grounds of Summerhall would purge the emotions he couldn't quite swallow.
The journey offered no respite. Daeron and their spoiled brat of a brother, Aegon, had vanished somewhere along the road, leaving Aerion to face their father’s mounting wrath alone. Aemon had gone to the Citadel to become a maester, and the girls were deemed too young and proper yet for the violence of the lists.
Aerion found himself looking toward the horizon, hoping the road would awaken the ancient whispers of his blood—that the Dragon would finally claw its way back to the surface and pull him from the abyss.
It was midday when the orange and white banners of House Ashford first flickered against the sky. They reminded him of a sunset—a fire that was dying, just like his mother. Aerion closed his eyes, and for a fleeting, cruel second, the scent of the camp was replaced by the smell of flowers.
He remembered their last evening together before the coughing began to tear her apart. He had been sitting at her feet, his mind a storm of white noise and jagged thoughts. Dyanna’s hand, cool and steady, had found his temple.
"What’s going on that loud mind of yours, my boy?" she had whispered.
"It’s not loud, Mother," Aerion had confessed, the admission feeling like treason. "It’s... empty. Like a bell that keeps ringing after the strike."
She had leaned down, her face a pale moon in the twilight. "Then we learn how to resonate with it. You carry so much fire, Aerion. But fire needs a hearth. Without it, you will only ever be a wildfire, consuming everything—including yourself."
But Dyanna was gone now, and with her, the only version of Aerion that felt in control. Now, the sweet scent was a mockery and the sunset was merely a bloody smear across the sky.
He watched the other knights dismounting, their squires fussing over polished plates and colorful surcoats. They looked like painted dolls. He saw the way their pulses throbbed in the hollows of their throats and the way they winced at the weight of their own helmets. They didn't know what he knew. They didn't know that under all that steel, they were just pitiful bundles of meat and bone.
His thoughts drifted to his cousin Valarr—so golden, so untouched. He felt a sudden, violent urge to see if the Prince of Dragonstone's heir had the same creak in his neck as a common assassin. Aerion wasn’t looking for a trophy or a lady's favor; he was looking for the roar in the silence.
If he was to be a wildfire, he would be the one to choose what burned. He would win this tournament with such cold perfection that the ringing in his head would finally have no choice but to break. He was a dragon before anything else. And if he had to turn the world into ashes to find himself again, he would pleasantly ignite the flames.