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Lyonel stood there dressed only in a golden brocade doublet, woven with threads that caught the light of the lightning and thunder as if the fabric itself could trap them within it, fitted to his torso and marking the breadth of his shoulders and chest without restricting his movement, as if the gold was not meant to contain him but to accompany what was inevitable. Over that luminous base, black details traced patterns of twisted branches, elegant yet firm, intertwined with stylized antler shapes that suggested more than they revealed, a subtle echo of both his sigil and his beloved’s.
The high collar, slightly padded, framed his face firmly and gave him protection without sacrificing mobility, while the sleeves, tight up to the forearms, eliminated any possibility of loose fabric becoming a grip against him. He wore nothing heavy or excessive; everything about him was designed for precision of movement, for speed of impact, for the certainty that in a storm one does not survive through endurance, but through adaptation.
Normally he would have used his favorite shield, wide, made of wood reinforced with iron at the edges and painted with the crowned stag of his house in a gold duller than that of his doublet or armor, with the inside dyed the green Duncan preferred. But he would not need it. Not here. Not now.
As for his sword, it was a long, heavy blade, balanced for real combat rather than ceremony, though in Lyonel’s hands its weight seemed to lose importance, as if his body had learned to carry it before even understanding how.
He spun it with distracted ease, almost playfully, a constant motion of the wrist that contrasted with the stillness of the field as he watched Aerion Targaryen arrive.
And that was when the problem became evident, and everything became even more amusing. The prince’s armor was not made for war. It was made to be seen.
Plates of steel too polished, almost mirror-like, reflecting the fragmented sky with every movement, with reddish edges worked into excessively complex draconic patterns, closer to ornamentation than function. The pauldrons were high, rigid, imposing… but they limited the neck’s range of movement and left small gaps in the upper arm joints, too exposed for someone who knew where to look.
The breastplate, overly decorated, lacked the simplicity needed to properly disperse an impact; every ornamental line was a potential fracture in the metal’s continuity. And at the waist, the segmentation of the lower plates was too rigid, too separated, sacrificing flexibility for aesthetics.
Lyonel did not need to think much. It was not armor meant to last. It was armor meant to impress. And that, in a field like this, was a weakness.
With only minutes left, he approached his omega almost dancing on the tips of his feet, as if the weight of what was to come did not exist yet. He suppressed a smile when Duncan only shook his head in resignation and exhaled softly before taking a dark cloth and rubbing it against his neck and wrists, soaking it with his scent before tying it around Lyonel’s neck with almost ritual precision.
The gesture drew a low growl of satisfaction from him.
—I know you enjoy this… but please… please, my love, be careful and don’t take unnecessary risks. It’s not only me who needs you now.
Lyonel softened immediately at the contained anxiety in his omega’s voice and scent, which had grown denser, heavier, as it always did when he tried to hide fear. Like the scent of a sick elm.
There were many reasons why he loved Duncan. He would probably need more than one lifetime to name them all, and still find new ones every day. But one of them —one of the most dangerous— was precisely this: Duncan did not ask him to stop being who he was. He did not try to soften him. He did not try to correct him. He understood him.
Even those parts of himself Lyonel considered excessive, wrong, or too close to what others would call cruelty, Duncan held without looking away. He accepted him whole. And that made him harder to restrain.
He pulled him closer, pressing their foreheads together as he spoke calmly, as if the entire world could be reduced to that moment if he allowed it.
—I will be careful. I am not going anywhere, Duncan… nowhere you and our fawn cannot follow me.
—All right… I love you.
—I love you too, my sapphire.
He brushed his gloved fingers over his omega’s belly, marking him with his scent in a brief, almost instinctive gesture, before stepping away and walking toward the center of the jousting field where the septon and the prince waited.
The field, the stands, and even the nearby forest seemed to fall silent as Lyonel spun his sword with idle calm and the septon raised his prayer.
—May the Seven bear witness to our solemn and bloody offering… may they look into our mortal hearts and find the truth…
The voice dragged across the air like something inevitable.
—…may the Warrior grant victory to the innocent and reveal the falsehood of the guilty. Be honorable, knights.
—Last chance to withdraw, Heir Baratheon.
Lyonel stayed still for barely a second. Not from doubt. From amusement. And then he laughed.
An open, living burst of laughter that shattered the air as if claiming it for itself, while the sky responded too quickly, too close, and lightning descended without sound, leaving dark marks on the wet ground of the field without harming anyone.
The storm, once again, was listening.
—Oh, foolish creature… —he murmured, with a sharp smile—. The gods do not favor frauds.
Duncan had given him his implicit permission to have fun. So that was exactly what Lyonel was going to do.
As soon as the duel began, he was the one who took the first step, not in haste, but with almost insulting calm, as if the fight already belonged to him before the swords even crossed. Aerion Targaryen responded immediately, with the impatience of someone trained to believe the world should open at his passing, but even with all the instruction and tutors gold could buy, there was a difference that could not be taught: the difference between the theory of combat… and the reality of surviving it.
And Lyonel lived in reality.
There was not much to defend against, and yet Aerion attacked as if the repetition of his strikes could make them inevitable. Lyonel contained them with ease, deflecting them with economical precision, without wasting movement, as if the duel were less a fight and more a conversation the prince had not yet learned how to understand.
The Targaryens had done their best to polish him. But real steel did not respond to education. It responded to instinct. And Lyonel had too much of both.
The boy was younger, faster in theory, more impulsive in execution… but that was where his advantages ended. Because every time he tried to force the rhythm, he met resistance; and every time he tried to impose his strength, he found something worse: an answer that did not yield.
Lyonel’s laughter began as something light, almost accidental, but soon became a constant echo between the clash of weapons, an open provocation that started seeping into the air like salt into a wound. Aerion reacted as expected: with growing irritation, with a rage that began to tint his scent into something denser, harsher… a trace of sulfur the wind could not hide.
Lyonel was not sure how long he had been playing with him. Dancing. Measuring. Waiting. Until the wind shifted.
It was not a visible gesture, nor a clear sound, but a pressure in the air, a presence that leaned ever so slightly over the field as if something older had decided to pay attention. The scent arrived before awareness: Duncan. Contained nervousness, poorly hidden care, a tension that did not belong to the fight but to what the fight meant.
That was enough. Lyonel’s smile faded. Not from doubt. But from decision.
—Ah… —he murmured, almost to himself—. That’s enough.
And the sky seemed to confirm his decision, as if Elenai herself wished to protect Lyonel’s omega.
The clouds, until then indecisive, closed in further, as if the world itself had chosen to lower its head toward the field. A cold drizzle began to fall, too fine to be accidental, too precise to be natural. It was not a full storm… not yet. It was something contained. Something watching. Something waiting.
The response was almost immediate. When Aerion attacked again, Lyonel no longer received him as before. He cut him off. He stopped following the duel as an exchange of blows and began to mark it as if it were a dance.
There was no visible change at first, nothing the crowd could point to as the exact moment something broke. It simply happened. The rhythm ceased to be shared and became the property of only one of the fighters, as if the field itself had decided to reorganize itself around his presence.
Every advance from Aerion Targaryen met a response before it was even completed, not through desperate speed, but through precise anticipation that seemed to come from having seen this movement many times before, in worse conditions, in places where mistakes were not a repeatable option.
Aerion struck with restrained but growing force, trying to break the distance with a series of quick blows that would have forced many opponents to retreat. Lyonel did not retreat. He deflected the first strike with his blade, turned his body just enough to let the second pass, and by the third he was already inside the prince’s space before he could properly close his guard. There was no haste in his movement, only exact placement, as if each step were written in an order the other had not yet learned to read.
When the clash came, it was not violent in the way those watching from the stands would expect. It was precise. Lyonel’s blade found the gap between plates with an ease that did not feel like chance, opening a line along the prince’s side that did not immediately bleed as it should have. The flesh reacted in an incorrect way, as if the cut had been sealed from within at the same time it was opened, trapping the damage instead of releasing it, making the pain accumulate without escape.
Aerion tried to turn to correct it, but Lyonel was no longer there. The exchange had continued for him without interruption, as if the prince’s reaction had simply been another part of the same motion. The second impact came to the arm, not enough to remove him from the fight, but enough to alter how he held his sword. The strength in that side of the body dropped immediately, and the weapon began to fall with a different weight, clumsier, less reliable.
The air shifted shortly after.
Not in a way obvious to all, but enough to be felt on the skin, like a pressure without visible origin. The wind stopped behaving like background and began to act like a boundary, circling the jousting field with an uneasy consistency, while the rain, which had already begun as a cold drizzle, grew denser over certain points of the ground without natural reason.
Lyonel did not look at the sky. He did not need to. The environment was not an external variable; it was an extension of what was happening at the center of the field. The third exchange was faster.
Aerion tried to adjust his stance, change the angle of attack, search for an opening on Lyonel’s left side, but the attempt came too late. The response was not only defense, but correction. Lyonel’s blade intercepted the movement with minimal precision and returned the strike in a short line that hit the prince’s arm joint, forcing an involuntary reaction that further weakened his control. The weapon almost slipped from his hand, and for the first time there was a visible fracture in his rhythm.
Lyonel noticed without stopping. He incorporated it.
The fight did not slow, but it did become tighter. There was less and less space between the two bodies, less time between attack and response. Lyonel’s laughter began to appear between breaths, not as open mockery but as something that slipped out effortlessly, as if the body itself found the exchange inevitably entertaining. It was not simple joy. It was recognition. The kind of recognition that only appears when the opponent stops being unknown and starts becoming predictable.
The prince tried to force distance again.
He did not find it.
The field did not respond uniformly. Every step backward felt heavier, as if the ground itself offered a subtle but constant resistance, enough to break the rhythm of retreat. Every attempt to reorganize met an invisible obstacle: the wind against him, the rain denser in the eyes, the lack of synchronicity between what he wanted to do and what the space allowed.
And Lyonel kept advancing.
Not with excessive aggression, but with absolute control of the rhythm.
The next cut was deeper than the previous ones, not because he sought to end the fight, but because he sought to remove a possibility of defense. The damage to the already compromised arm extended far enough that the fingers began to lose partial coordination, and the sword started to respond with delay, as if the prince’s body had to remember how to hold it between each attempt.
Still, Aerion did not stop.
And that, in other contexts, would have been worthy of respect.
But here it only prolonged the inevitable.
The helm fell shortly after.
There was no single moment that explained it, only an accumulation of correct impacts at precise angles until the metal no longer held as it should. When it finally came loose, the prince’s face was exposed, marked by the earlier exchanges, the strain of effort now visible in every muscle, in every attempt to continue holding a fight that had grown larger than his ability to control it.
Lyonel entered the prince’s space when Aerion tried to regain balance after a misstep. There was no pause between intent and execution. The first unarmed strike hit the face with enough force to alter the body’s orientation, followed by another that corrected the direction of the fall before it could complete. It was not rage. It was physical precision, the kind of violence that does not disperse because it does not need to.
Each impact had purpose. Each pause was deliberate, granting a false sense of relief. The fight had not become chaotic. It had become controlled. And that was worse.
The prince’s face began to lose shape between blows, not through uncontrolled brutality, but through the continuity of a sequence that did not allow him enough recovery time to recompose himself between errors. The body reacted too late. Defense arrived after impact. Thought failed to translate into movement before the next had already occurred.
Lyonel did not accelerate. He did not change the rhythm. He simply sustained it. There was no need to tire himself unnecessarily, not when he planned to have a banquet later and dance with his beloved.
The sky, meanwhile, did not intervene.
The rain kept falling, colder now, almost like sleet, denser over the field, as if the entire world had narrowed its attention to that single point where two bodies continued moving within an ever-shrinking space.
And somewhere between the sound of metal, strained breathing, and the weight of the air, the duel ceased to resemble an exchange.
And began to resemble a decision that had already been made.
Aerion Targaryen’s final attack did not carry the clumsiness of the previous ones.
For a moment, even from a distance, it seemed different. Cleaner. More decisive. As if everything left of his pride had been compressed into a single final motion, a direct line that did not seek to correct the fight but to negate it. He advanced with what remained of his stance, ignoring the weight of his own body, ignoring the way his injured arm no longer responded with the necessary precision, ignoring even the blood that still did not fall as it should, held within cuts that remained open like burning marks, cauterized in a way that should not have been possible.
Lyonel saw it coming without changing expression. There was no surprise. Only recognition. That kind of attack always came at the end. And it was always too late.
For the first time in the entire duel, he stopped restraining cruelty.
It was not a visible change in posture, nor an exaggerated gesture, nor a sudden burst of speed. It was something simpler and more final: he stopped adjusting the fight to the other’s survival. Space ceased to be managed with minimal precision and instead became closed without concession. Every step Aerion tried to take met immediate resistance, not from the terrain itself, but from the way Lyonel occupied the fight as if no alternative outcome were possible.
The prince’s attack still came.
And Lyonel met it without stepping back.
Lyonel’s sword pierced the final defense with absolute precision, entering the point where Aerion’s movement could no longer correct itself, not even by instinct. The impact halted the prince’s advance completely, not as a violent interruption of the body, but as the exact moment in which everything sustaining him ceased to be enough.
The world made no sound.
It only changed weight.
Aerion’s body remained suspended for an instant, held by the blade as if the air itself had forgotten how to let him fall. His arms gave out first, losing all tension, and the sword slipped from his hand without resistance. His head followed, tilting forward with a slowness that did not match the earlier rhythm of the fight, as if even gravity had hesitated for a second before claiming him.
From afar, the image was not of a defeated man. It was of something interrupted mid-descent. Like a dragon struck down at the exact moment it still believed it was flying.
Aerion Targaryen’s body no longer offered resistance, suspended in that impossible stillness that follows everything that has stopped sustaining itself because death has already taken it. And then, as if something within the world had finally decided to stop holding back, Lyonel laughed.
It was not a restrained or measured laugh, but an open, deep one that rose effortlessly from his chest and spread across the field as if it belonged equally to the man and the sky. At that same instant, the air shifted again, not toward the strange or the impossible, but toward something recognizable, as if nature itself had decided to reclaim what was its own after having been bent for too long around something that did not belong to it.
The sky broke.
But not like before.
There were no soundless lights or invisible pressure in the air this time. This time the storm arrived as a storm should arrive: with thunder, with real wind, with heavy clouds splitting open in dark layers that poured water over the field without order or intent, only gravity and natural fury. The sound of thunder returned, full and complete, and for the first time since the beginning of the duel everything stopped feeling like something dreamlike.
The rain fell hard and immediate, washing the mud of the field, dragging the blood from the earth, and dissolving any remnant of that impossible tension that had held the combat together like a ritual. Water struck Lyonel’s body, ran through the golden brocade of his doublet, and cleansed it without effort, revealing something that had not changed at any point in the duel: there was no exhaustion in his body, no visible wounds, no sign of real strain in his breathing.
He was only standing there, as if the fight had happened around him and not against him.
The contrast was absolute.
The field, once closed in on itself like a suspended space, was now simply mud, rain, and metal struck by water. The mystical violence that had seemed to envelop everything had dissolved into a common storm, but the result remained, still and final in the center of the arena, with Lyonel’s sword still driven through it, holding the body on its knees.
Looking like the dead dragon it had always dreamed of being in life.
The air, heavy with the salt of the sea from Storm’s End, lashed at Lyonel Baratheon’s curls, followed by a faint trace of flowers that did not belong to that place. He did not need to look at the sky to understand. The gods had watched. And they had approved.
With a barely perceptible nod, directed at no one in particular, Lyonel turned until he found Baelor Targaryen among the crowd. Even at a distance, the prince’s pallor was evident, the only visible sign of the anguish he allowed himself at the fall of his nephew.
—Let it serve you, Breakspear —he said, voice steady, without needing to raise it for it to carry weight—. You and your family, as a warning. In the Stormlands we do not play… and it is only a matter of time before a Baratheon brings your line to extinction, or something worse.
He did not wait for a response.
Before anyone else could intervene —aside from Maekar Targaryen, who was already crossing the field urgently to reach his son’s body— Lyonel turned and walked away with the same calm with which he had fought.
His attention was no longer on the duel. It was where it should be.
His omega was waiting, wrapped and protected beneath Lyonel’s favorite golden cloak, a warm stain of color amid the grey of the rain. One of his hands held his squire’s face, pressing him gently against his belly to spare him the sight of the field, of his elder brother’s body, of everything that should not be part of his world.
And at the sight of him, something in Lyonel —something that had no name in combat— went still.
He barely crossed the distance between them, and Duncan looked up at him. That alone was enough. The change in the air was immediate, almost tangible, as if everything that had been tense, contained, and vibrating beneath Lyonel’s skin had finally found a place to settle.
The storm did not disappear. But it stopped being him.
Lyonel stopped in front of his omega, and this time there was no real pause between intention and action. His hands rose at once, firm but careful, framing Duncan’s face before he leaned in, resting his forehead against his. It was a gesture that held nothing public or political. His breathing changed in that same instant, deeper, slower, as if only then his body remembered how to do it without the weight of battle.
Duncan reacted first.
The shift in his scent was immediate, even sharp, turning from contained tension into something more acute, more urgent, while his hands searched Lyonel with an unhidden need, checking for wounds that were not there. His fingers paused at his chest, his sides, his arms, as if expecting to find something open, something broken, something that justified the violence he had witnessed.
He found nothing. No blood. No real exhaustion. Only warmth. Only presence. Only him.
Duncan exhaled sharply, and something in him gave way as his shoulders loosened, leaning slightly more into Lyonel as if the confirmation lifted a weight he had been carrying long before the first blow. His scent shifted again, growing denser, sweeter, something Lyonel felt immediately, deep in his chest. And beneath it— movement. Subtle. But unmistakable.
Lyonel lowered his gaze at the same time his hand descended to his omega’s belly, covering it with a protective firmness that carried no doubt. His fawn was reacting to the change, to the scent, to the closeness, to everything that had happened without truly understanding it, but feeling it all the same.
The sound that escaped Lyonel was not quite a laugh, but close— a low echo of what it had been minutes before, now without edge, without cruelty, transformed into something more intimate, warmer, almost tender.
—It’s over —he murmured against Duncan’s lips, barely brushing them—. It’s over now.
His thumb slid over his omega’s skin in calm strokes, marking him with his scent even under the rain, reaffirming what needed no words.
Mine. Yours. Ours. Safe.
Behind them, the world returned to existence.
The murmur grew slowly until it became impossible to ignore: voices, reactions, recognition. Some cheered without restraint; others watched with a mixture of respect and caution, as if still trying to decide what they had just witnessed.
But among the nobles there were those who did not applaud. Those who did not speak. Those who simply observed in silence. And understood. Not only the victory, but what it implied: that a Baratheon needed nothing more than a moment to dominate such a duel… nor a single wound to leave it, laughing, and still lean over his omega as if the rest of the world had demanded nothing of him.
That was not just strength. That was danger.
Lyonel, for his part, did not spare them a glance.
His sword was still in the field, still driven where he had left the prince’s body, but he made no move to retrieve it. He did not care. The Silent Sisters would claim it when the world returned to organizing what had just been broken.
Not now. Nothing deserved his attention more than Duncan.
He slid a hand to the back of his omega’s neck, pulling him just slightly closer, as if needing to be certain he was still there, that everything else had stayed behind where it belonged.
—Tell me something… Do you like dancing? —he murmured, with a playful tone that completely broke the weight of the moment.
The question drew a laugh from Duncan, exasperated but warm and sincere, while Egg let out a confused sound beside them and the squires groaned in exhausted disbelief, unable to decide whether they were witnessing the end of a battle or the beginning of something far more absurd and typical of the Ser they served.
—Doesn’t everyone? —Duncan replied, still caught between laughter and patient exasperation.
The laugh that was about to form in Lyonel broke softly when Duncan leaned in and kissed him. It was not urgent or claiming, but gentle, almost tender, as if the world around them did not exist at all and they had all the time in the world.
And in that contact, everything else stopped mattering.