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Some weeks have passed since Daeron returned to Summerhall. He couldn't say how many exactly. He has long given up on counting the days.
He has not left the house in a long time. He knows all the ways to get out, the footpaths that lead to the nearby town with its alehouse and its women. But knowing the way is little use when every path is blocked to him.
There is a maester that his father has brought in. Not Maester Wyl, who was old and kind and would read books with Aemon and Daella. That one left with father and the girls when they went to Blackhaven to send Aerion away.
At least Daeron thinks that’s where they went. It’s hard to keep his thoughts straight. The new maester won’t give him wine, and won’t let him see his whores. Daeron’s mind is fraying at the edges. At night, the dreams torment him, and during the day, shadows move in the corners of his vision.
He wakes up from some shred of unquiet sleep tangled in his bedsheets. Something is scraping at the window. Daeron turns his back on it, but the noise only grows louder.
“Daeron,” it calls. “Daeron. Brother.”
A child’s voice.
The bedsheets slither off Daeron’s body like a leather wing. He stands, he walks to the window, he pushes the curtains apart and tries to open the lead-glass pane. It doesn’t move, and the scrabbling outside gets more desperate.
“Daeron. Let me in.”
Something is not right. It’s Aerion’s voice, he thinks, from when they were children. But Aerion is meant to be well on his way to Lys now. Daeron stumbles a step back, and gets tangled in the curtain. It feels strange, hot and dry, as if it was aflame.
If there is a fire, why is the room still dark? If there is a fire, why is he not burning?
He crashes to the ground, taking the curtain and its lightless flames with him. The curtain rod knocks him in the shoulder, but it is light, some Dornish willow-wood, nothing like the touch of a tourney lance. He kicks his feet. Once, twice. The fire is not harming him, but the curtain is wrapped around his legs and won’t let him get up.
So he gives in.
Daeron is not a fighter. His greatest talent lies in lying down. He rests in his dark room, feels the curtains burning to ash on top of him while the little voice outside continues calling his name.
Daeron, Daeron…
He is still on the floor by the window when servants find him the next morning. The curtains are lying on top of him, but they show no signs of burning. The window, Daeron ascertains with a glance, is still nailed shut with boards, as it has been since they’ve locked him in here. They are in the upper level of the house; no-one could have been outside the window. He shrugs it off.
The servants wash and dress him and feed him a small breakfast. Then they scatter, and he arrives. The new maester.
The older man in his grey robes sits down in a wicker chair and bids Daeron sit in the other. Daeron follows his instruction. He has never been one to insist on rank and titles, even though he is Prince Maekar’s son, a prince of the blood. He will do as the maester says, as father told him to.
“How was your sleep?” the man asks, as he does every morning. “Any dreams?”
“No,” Daeron says. He has learned not to flinch, not to let his eyes flicker away. “Nothing.”
The maester shakes his head. “Your servants tell me they found you wandering.”
A trickle of sweat crawls down Daeron's arm. It's the heat. He takes a deep breath.
“I went to the window for fresh air.”
“You will have fresh air later. When it is time. Now answer me — what did you dream?”
The man’s eyes are staring at Daeron in the dim light of the room. Their gaze makes Daeron want to creep away, to find some hole to hide in and never come out again. But that won’t happen. His father has condemned him to be cured, and his father will not let up this time.
He has tried before, when the dreams first started. Daeron remembers being made to run laps around the house until he dropped from exhaustion, being fed all sorts of sleeping drafts that only made the dreams longer and worse, having a septa placed next to his bed that read him pious stories and pressed on his body in a way that was supposed to calm him.
None of it helped.
The attempts stopped when their mother died. Maekar was deep in his grief, and drove all the maesters and witches and charlatans out of Summerhall, because they had not saved Dyanna, and had not saved Daeron either.
Not much later, Daeron found the wine.
That helped.
This new maester is not like the old ones. He is very clinical in his approach, and very strict.
“Fire,” Daeron says, because he has no strength left to lie to this man. “I dreamed the house was on fire, and someone was calling my name —”
The maester nods, and ponders.
That evening, the servants remove all candles from Daeron's room. He tries to stop them, because the idea of being stuck in darkness with no light at all scares him more than he wants to admit. He spends hours pacing the room, trying to stave off sleep. How long has it been since he slept well? He needs wine, or a girl, or —
When Daeron was small, he used to share a bed with Aerion, his little brother, his only brother for many years. Daeron would wake up screaming from dreams of red and black dragons biting each other’s throats, and Aerion would look at him with annoyance.
“Don’t be scared of dragons. We’re the dragon masters.”
And he’d bare his baby teeth at Daeron, and Daeron would laugh, and forget to be scared.
Now all his brothers are gone, and he’s alone in Summerhall. And it’s his own fault — Aegon found a better knight to squire for, and Aerion is banished to Essos. If Daeron had never laughed at his comments about being a dragon, maybe Aerion would never have become so vain and cruel. If Daeron wasn’t such a shit knight, maybe none of it would have happened.
Baelor would still be alive, and the Humfreys too.
Daeron finds himself on the bed somehow, lying flat on his back atop the covers, his stomach roiling. There’s a buzzing by the window, interrupted now and then by little thuds, as if a bee was bumping against the boards that block all light from coming in.
There is a whispering in the room as well. For a moment, Daeron thinks he can discern voices, although he doesn’t understand the words. But then it shifts again, and it’s a rustling of leather wings across the floorboards, or the dragging of bare feet…
“Brother,” a small voice insists, “I’ve seen the dragons too.”
It’s only a memory, Aerion is not here, he won’t be here for a long time.
The mattress shifts, waking Daeron from his half-slumber. He can’t see anything, it is too dark, but the feeling of someone sitting on his bed is quite familiar. Daeron tries to breathe shallowly, as if the person sitting there would forget that he is here. It’s hopeless.
“Blood of the Dragon,” it whispers, “do you want to see it?”
A cold blade touches Daeron’s skin. Aerion’s knife, the one he carried in his belt. Daeron had had a dagger too, but not here, not when he’s in bed. He swats the blade away, rolls off the bed, lands painfully on the wooden boards of the floor. He scrambles.
“You’re awake,” the man says. “You should be sleeping. Get back in the bed.”
Daeron tries to get to his feet, but his body won’t obey him. He can’t see in the darkness; something brushes against his legs — a scaly thing, he thinks, and pulls them to his chest. There are bands of light flickering in front of his eyes; he presses the heels of his hands against them, but that only makes it worse. They form into patterns, a glint of teeth, a flap of wings, a flicker of flame —
Someone grabs him by the arm, and drags him into a sitting position. For a moment, the room looks unfamiliar, and he wants to weep. Then the shapes floating in front of his eyes combine themselves into his furniture and the four familiar walls. The figure holding him has a small lamp in the other hand, its dark cover pushed aside to shed a dim flickering light on the room. Daeron coughs, lets himself be pulled to his feet.
“I can’t do this,” he says, panicked. “I need wine, I need to go outside, I —”
“Shush,” the other person says. The voice is young, too young for the maester. Daeron glances at the hand on his arm; it is wearing a black silk glove. “Don’t make a fuss. Go back to sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
It can’t be Aerion, Daeron thinks as he is pushed face-down onto the mattress.
Aerion is not here.