✮ about me: i’m a tortured poet, writer, whatever. i have lots to say, however, uni is kicking my arse and i, therefore, have a slow writing pace. it might take me a while to read through all the requests and respond to them, but please don’t let that discourage you from sending me thoughts!! i promise they will be done in time!!
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Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
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a/n: I’m sort of having issues with the formatting right now, so if the formatting appears off, know that I’m trying to fix it asap!
Duncan was dreaming.
He dreamed of Targaryen beauty shaped in austere symmetry, wrought with a kind of impossible, almost inhuman perfection; high, sculpted cheekbones; a mouth too finely formed to belong to anything but nobility and a jaw cut clean and sharp beneath fair skin that held little colour of its own. Pale hair framing it all, falling like spun silver touched by frost, stark against a complexion that seemed almost bloodless in its refinement. He dreamed of a face carved entirely of angles and aristocratic precision, all bone and blade, elegance honed to a hard edge rather than softened by birth. And he dreamed of that gaze. Violet eyes, clear like polished amethysts, fixed upon him not with fear nor revulsion but with something akin to longing.
Duncan dreamed of lips and words he had not understood yet still remembered. The language had been foreign, shaped in harsh, clipped consonants and low, rolling sounds, vowels drawn long and deliberate. It should have felt alien. And yet something intricately buried within him had recognized it, not the meaning but the intent. It had stirred against something long forgotten, something deeper than memory and older than thought. The sound of it had brushed along the edges of his soul like a key testing a forgotten lock. Strange on the tongue, strange to the ear… and yet, inexplicably, it had tasted like home. The prince—for he had to be one; Duncan knew enough of the world to recognise Targaryen colouring—had been kind. Not cautious. Not calculating. Kind. For a brief and dangerous moment, Duncan had not been alone. The memory struck harder than the exhaustion in his wings. He dreamed of hands reaching toward him, of warmth, of a smile curving over rosy, full lips. He dreamed of words forming there, of sound meant for him, but it was all too faint, too muffled, as though he were hearing it from beneath water. Everything came blurred and distorted, shallow and distant. He strained to listen. He tried to answer. His mouth moved, but no sound came. His throat tightened uselessly.
He opened his mouth to scream—and—
Woke.
He startled into consciousness with the abrupt violence of being dragged from darkness into cold stone air. He jolted awake as though wrenched violently from the depths of sleep and thrown into cold stone air. For a heartbeat, he had no sense of place or time. His heart battered against his ribs, breath dragging harshly into his lungs as if he had surfaced from drowning. Memory did not return gently.
The cave. The sea. The cliffs.
He had crossed the water. He had left his island.
For a fleeting, disorienting moment, he almost believed himself back in the familiar shelter of his own cavern. Safe, hidden, wrapped in the scent of grass and damp earth after rain. He could almost feel the moss beneath his claws, almost sense the first thin rays of morning filtering through leaves. He imagined he could smell it too—that faint blend of salt and fresh soil that had always greeted him at dawn. But then he remembered: He had crossed the sea and landed in a stretch of highlands that looked abandoned at first glance, though not nearly as remote as his island had been. The land rolled wide and open beneath him, broken only by low stone walls and patches of grazing ground. In the distance, scattered across the hills like flecks of chalk, he spotted small white shapes. Sheep. And where there were sheep, there were shepherds. Where there were shepherds, other men were never far.
Going back was not an option. The certainty of it came with something unfamiliar tightening in his chest. Guilt. Pale hair and violet eyes surfaced again in his mind, unbidden and persistent. He knew he should not have lingered in that cave. He had known it even then. And yet he had stayed, as he always did when confronted with something beautiful and perilous, drawn to it with the senseless inevitability of a moth to flame.
Years upon years of isolation had worn him thinner than he had realized. The hunger for touch had hollowed him slowly, had grown slow and patient inside him, so gradually he had no longer recognised it for what it was. He had thought himself hardened. The smallest brush of warmth had felt like rain on ground long left to crack beneath a merciless sun. There was guilt, yes, but beneath it lay something worse: longing. A hunger so deep it felt like marrow exposed to air, like something inside him had been cracked open and left wanting; a desperate, clawing need to belong somewhere, to someone, that made his chest feel too tight for his own heart. A starving thing that would have traded caution for a single moment of warmth again. But beneath both lay resolve. He could hear Ser Arlan scolding him in the back of his mind, one careful hand against his scales, and he had nearly undone himself for it. But longing was not safety.
He would not return to that cave only to be found again. To hear the crack of branches and the rising pitch of men shouting. To see spears lifted and know that this time, they would not hesitate. He had survived too long to die pinned beneath lances. Not after all these years. Not after crossing the open sea and daring more sky than he ever had before. And yet remaining here was no salvation either; the highlands stretched wide and exposed, stripped of forest or deep shadow, open and merciless. No dense canopy. No stone deep enough to swallow him whole. There was nowhere to vanish entirely, nowhere to fold himself into earth and disappear. Even worse, everything around him was endlessly green—grass rolling over hills and more grass rolling over more hills, low shrubs scattered across the land and more low shrubs scattered across the land—and against it all he stood brass and copper.
He exhaled heavily, a low, weary sound rumbling from his chest as a faint curl of smoke slipped from his nostrils and vanished into the wind. He could not go back, he could not stay. But he was exhausted. Crossing the sea had proven far more demanding than he had anticipated, and he had never flown so long or so far without pause, and his wings ached with unfamiliar strain, muscles trembling faintly beneath scale. He had kept as high as he dared, trusting the night to swallow his shape. Darkness had shielded him, though the ocean wind had been relentless. Leaving his island had felt like tearing loose a root. Like abandoning the only certainty he had known. And yet the flight itself had stirred something he had not prepared for.
It had felt... right.
To unfurl his wings without measuring distance to the nearest hiding place. To feel the steady, smooth rhythm of each beat driving him forward over black water. To climb higher than he ever had before, where the air thinned and the stars, bright above him, looked close enough to burn against his scales. Wrapped in darkness, swallowed by night—unseen, unclaimed. For the first time in years, he had not been shrinking himself to survive, he had been vast. And for one reckless stretch of sky, it had felt like something close to freedom. But freedom did not last, and he had only landed to rest. His wings trembled now with quiet fatigue; they would not carry him much farther tonight. When strength returned to his limbs, he would have to move again. Stay nowhere long. Leave no trace. Leave no pattern for men to follow. Survival demanded it. Duncan rolled his shoulders and shook out his powerful body, stretching stiff legs and flexing his wings until the ache settled into something manageable.
But then, he went still. His head lifted. His nostrils flared. His pupils narrowed, and the wind shifted. Something new threaded through salt and grass and distant livestock. He did not move. Every sense narrowed to a single, lethal focus. Voices carried faintly across the wind. Footsteps followed. The voices grew clearer as they crested the low rise beyond him, carried by the wind in uneven fragments.
“…swear I saw something—”
“—too large for any bird—”
“Could’ve been smoke. You’ve been drinking.”
Boots pressed into grass. Metal clinked faintly. The soft, steady sound of hooves followed a moment later. Duncan lowered himself, belly pressed to cool earth, wings folded so tightly against his body that the joints ached. He angled his head downward, horns hidden among the reeds, tail curled close instead of extended. He forced his breathing to slow—shallow, controlled. The grass brushed along his scales, whispering with every small adjustment of his weight.
Too open. Too exposed.
The highlands offered no cliffside hollow deep enough to conceal his full length. If they came over the hill under which he had hidden, they would see him. The sheep scattered first. A ripple of white movement swept across the hillside as the animals sensed what the men did not yet understand. Their bleating rose in confused alarm, hooves drumming against soil as they fled downslope. One of the voices faltered.
“Do you hear that?”
Another answered, closer now. “Hear what—”
Duncan felt it before he saw them: the shift in air, the scent of leather and sweat and iron. He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, letting the faintest thread of smoke escape into the wind and dissipate before it could betray him.
Three men appeared at the crest of the hill. Shepherds, by the look of them. Rough wool cloaks hung from their shoulders, weather-worn and practical, crooks gripped in calloused hands. No armor. No lances. No polished steel raised with purpose. They had no need for weapons. And yet they carried them. Duncan had smelled the metals before he had seen them, faint but unmistakable beneath the scent of sheep and wind. Small daggers hung at their belts, simple tools meant for shearing wool or cutting rope. Not forged for war. Not meant for dragons. Still, steel was steel.
He remained pressed low to the earth, bronze hidden as best as bronze could be hidden against open land. Please turn back. The thought came as plea. He did not want blood on this new soil. Did not want to begin whatever this place would become with something he could not undo. The men were sun-darkened, their skin browned by long hours beneath the open sky. Young, but not boys, yet old enough for beards to grow along their jaws. Their hair was unruly and brown, not unlike his own in human form. Their eyes, too, were brown, intricately human. Brothers, Duncan thought, watching the way they moved in quiet understanding of one another. In another lifetime, perhaps they would have been the sort of men he might have spoken to. Shared bread with. Laughed beside. If he had ever been allowed such things.
He did not want to harm them. He did not want them to see him. He lay still, breath shallow, praying to gods he did not truly believe in that they would simply turn around.
One stepped forward cautiously, peering into the grass. Duncan did not move. His heart pounded heavily against his ribs, each beat echoing in his ears. He imagined they could hear it. Imagined the tremor in the ground might give him away. The nearest shepherd narrowed his eyes, scanning the slope where bronze lay pressed low among green, concealed for now. For one suspended, fragile second, their gazes nearly aligned. Duncan did not blink. Then the wind shifted. It rolled down from the cliffs and across his scales, lifting the warmth from his body and carrying it toward the men. The shepherd stiffened, and his nostrils flared once, subtly at first, then again, more sharply. Not fear, not yet. Confusion. Duncan knew what he was smelling. Something wrong, something that did not belong at all. Sun-warmed stone after rain. Heated iron. An impossibly faint thread of burnt resin clinging stubbornly to scale. And beneath it, something sharper—an ozone-like tang, clean and electric, like air struck by lightning.
It was subtle. But it did not belong here. And men, even simple shepherds, knew when something did not belong.
“What in the—”
Duncan rose but not to strike, just to intimidate. The grass parted around him as bronze scales lifted into view, catching the pale light. Wings unfurled halfway, not in aggression but in warning. He let them see him. Let them understand. Please, run, he thought. Run. Just run. The shepherd nearest him went pale, mirroring a corpse, stumbling backward so abruptly he nearly tripped over his own feet.
“Dragon,” he breathed, the word cracking apart.
Panic tore through them all at once—shouts, the raw cry of fear, hooves scrambling as one attempted to mount and failed in his haste. Duncan let out a low, resonant rumble, deep enough to vibrate the air without unleashing flame. He would not kill them, not unless he had to. The men fled. They ran downslope in wild disarray, abandoning crooks and nearly abandoning each other in their desperation. Within moments, the only sound left behind was the fading thunder of hooves and the frantic bleating of sheep.
Silence returned to the highlands.
Duncan stood there, wings still half-spread, chest rising and falling. He had been seen, and that meant he could not remain. He lifted his head toward the horizon, where the sea lay dark and distant—and for a fleeting, traitorous heartbeat, he thought of violet eyes and an outstretched hand again.
Then he crouched low, muscles gathering beneath bronze hide. And once more, he took to the sky, as he was born to do.
Aerion had never felt more acutely confined than he did within the embroidered walls of that royal tent. It was a prison fashioned not of iron bars but of silk and gold, guarded not by gaolers but by well-meaning incompetents and lesser men. He had given a direct order—one that had not been open to interpretation—that no word of the dragon was to leave the mouths of those who had seen it. And yet, inevitably, some witless, loose-tongued fool with more breath than sense had spoken. The word had escaped. It had spread.
Now his family knew.
He sat rigid within the royal tent, still pitched in the Rainwood, a plate of untouched food cooling before him. The candles flickered softly, casting warm light over silver goblets and rich fabrics, but the air felt anything but warm. Silence settled heavily across the gathering, stretched taut as wire. It was Daeron who broke it.
“So,” he hiccuped gracelessly, posture loose with drink, words softened by wine, and cheeks flushed in an unbecoming shade of red, “shall we address the elephant in the room?”
Aerion did not dignify him with a look. The scent of wine carried across the table, and he noted it with habitual distaste. But that his brother chose this moment to drink did not surprise him.
“A dragon,” Baelor muttered instead, almost contemplatively, rolling the word across his tongue as though reacquainting himself with a word half-forgotten, long exiled from use.
There had been little reason to speak it in recent years. Dragons belonged to stories told with lowered voices, to history and to mourning—something caught between myth and cautionary tale. They were relics of a more terrible and magnificent age. At Targaryen tables, it had been long since that word had held weight because there had been no need to speak of something lost. Something that had burned itself out with the Dance and left only memory behind.
Aerion’s gaze snapped to his youngest brother, cool and unblinking, sharp enough to wound. Aegon was young and unguarded; youth excused much. He did not yet understand the weight carried by certain truths, nor the way a single word could alter the balance of power in a kingdom. He lacked the discipline to measure consequence, the instinct to calculate silence. Aerion could not truly fault him for that. He spoke as boys did—without calculation. And yet irritation rose all the same, familiar and immediate.
There had been enough witnesses that he could not dismiss what he had seen as delusion or rumour. Too many eyes had beheld bronze against the sky. Too many ears had heard the roar. And a dragon changed everything.
House Targaryen still ruled. They remained formidable, their name respected, their authority enforced. But they were no longer what they had once been. No longer the unquestioned apex of the world’s hierarchy. Without dragons, they had become powerful men among other powerful men. Feared, yes—for steel, for punishment, for the machinery of rule—but not for fire descending from the heavens.
The old terror had faded. The old divinity had cooled. But he had felt living heat beneath his hand. He had looked into eyes that were not relic or legend, but present and aware.
No more, Aerion thought, his expression smoothing into something controlled and unreadable as his fingers curled subtly against the table’s edge. The age of ash may not be finished after all. Or at the very least—it was no longer singular.
Valarr,his insufferable cousin, who of course had seen fit to attend, cleared his throat with deliberate politeness.
“Perhaps,” he said carefully, fingers resting too neatly against his goblet, “since we are still dining, it would be more appropriate to… discuss the matter later.”
Aerion did not outwardly react, but something inside him recoiled. Discuss. A pleasant euphemism for the chaos that would erupt the moment they truly began to circle it.
The dragon. Aurax. The name surfaced instinctively, and with it, something tight and possessive flared beneath his ribs. His. It was not a thought he permitted to show on his face. Aegon, oblivious to the undercurrents gathering like storm clouds, continued chewing far too cheerfully beside Aemon. The latter remained silent, as he often did—composed, observant, withholding judgment. Aemon rarely spoke unless necessary, and for that, Aerion was momentarily grateful, but silence would not last. He knew precisely what would follow once the word was spoken without restraint. The moment the possibility of a living dragon ceased to be rumor and became fact, it would ignite something far less noble than awe.
Claims. Rights. Birth order. Fitness. Blood. Every branch of their family tree would suddenly remember its proximity to fire.
He could already imagine the argument—voices rising, composure dissolving, civility stripped away. They would not debate as princes. They would descend upon the idea like starved hounds upon fresh meat, snapping and tearing over the right to claim what none of them had touched. What none of them had felt. They had not stood in that cave, they had not looked into those eyes, they had not earned even the smallest step forward. A thin silence followed Valarr’s suggestion, stretched taut with calculation rather than courtesy. Baelor set down his goblet with quiet deliberation.
“Later,” Baelor echoed mildly, though there was nothing mild in the way his eyes flicked toward Aerion. “And when we do speak of it, I presume we shall do so with clarity.”
Aerion leaned back slightly in his chair, posture deceptively relaxed.
“Clarity,” he repeated, as though tasting the word. “You make it sound as though I have been unclear.”
Daeron snorted softly, though whether from wine or nerves was uncertain.
“Well,” he drawled, “you have not exactly elaborated.”
Aegon swallowed hastily.
“You said it was bronze,” he blurted. “With— with blue eyes.”
Aerion’s gaze sharpened. He had not mentioned the eyes to them. Maekar’s head tilted faintly, observant as ever.
“Blue?” he asked, calm and measured. “That is unusual.”
“It could not have been a hatchling,” Baelor added, folding his hands. “Not if multiple men saw it clearly. A creature large enough to be witnessed at distance would have survived for years. Hidden.”
His tone remained even. “That alone is… concerning.”
Concerning. The word landed heavier than Valarr’s polite deferral.
Valarr cleared his throat again. “If this is not rumor—if it is real—then it is a matter of inheritance. Of claim.”
There it was.
Aerion felt it before the others spoke it outright; the subtle shift in posture around the table. The straightening of spines. The narrowing of eyes. The silent arithmetic beginning behind polite expressions. Bloodlines being measured. Precedence being recalled.
Daeron’s flush deepened, though this time not from wine. “Claim? You speak as though it is already saddled.”
“If it exists,” Valarr replied coolly, “it will not remain wild for long.”
Aerion’s fingers curled slowly around the stem of his goblet.
“It is not a horse,” Aerion drawled, voice low but carrying.
“No,” Baelor agreed softly. “It is not.”
Aemon leaned forward. “Then who would ride it?”
The question fell into the center of the table like a thrown blade. No one answered immediately. Aerion felt it, the hunger sharpening, and with it, the ambition. They were already imagining it beneath them. Already seeing themselves astride bronze wings, fire at command, history bending back toward them. They had not seen fear in its posture. Had not felt the tremor beneath its breath. Had not understood that it was not waiting to be claimed.
Aurax, something in him repeated again, fierce and possessive. His. He set his goblet down.
“If,” Aerion said slowly, “there is a dragon, it is not a prize to be divided by committee. It is not an inheritance to be parceled out because one sits closer to the throne.”
Valarr’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Then what do you propose?”
Aerion held his stare.
“I propose,” he said evenly, “that the one who finds it again decides.”
Silence. Daeron let out a quiet whistle. Aegon’s eyes widened. Valarr’s expression cooled. Aemon, however, only studied Aerion more closely.
“And you are certain,” Valarr asked at last, calm and cutting, “that it would choose you?”
That, more than any mention of claim, struck something precise beneath Aerion’s ribs. He did not answer immediately. He remembered autumn-coloured scales beneath his hand. The way it had leaned; barely, but unmistakably. The way it had not struck.
“It did not burn me,” Aerion said at last.
The words were simple, but they were not nothing. Across the table, Baelor’s fingers tapped once against the wood. Valarr leaned back slightly.
“Then you had better hope it remembers that,” he said quietly.
Aerion’s expression did not change.
“The blood of the dragon has ever endured,” Maekar said at last, his gaze settling on his second son with a newfound, more deliberate scrutiny than before. “But it is the dragon that chooses. We may all ride out in search of it. We may all believe ourselves worthy. Yet in the end, the choice will not be ours to make.”
His expression hardened slightly, and he let the words rest in the air before continuing.
“We would do well to remember the cost of forgetting that. Our ancestors paid dearly for arrogance. Dragons are not trophies to be seized nor weapons to be fought over like spoils of war. They are precious. They are rare. They are the very foundation of what made us more than other men.”
His eyes moved across the table, lingering briefly on each of them.
“Let there not be a second fall born of human folly.”
Days had passed since that conversation, days that slowly bled into weeks of quiet preparation. Aerion had not been idle in that time. He read what could be found in dusty records and half-forgotten accounts, listened where others would have dismissed, and followed the smallest fragments of rumour as though they were threads leading somewhere important. Most of what he uncovered amounted to nothing—stories already told a hundred times, the bones of legends mistaken for fact. And yet he persisted. Then, eventually, whispers that did not come from lords or learned men but from the smallfolk reached him, a tale of shepherds in the hills who had claimed to see a dragon. Of course, no one believed them. The story had drifted from village to village as a source of amusement, repeated over cups of ale and greeted with laughter, taken in jest. A dragon in the hills? That was the sort of fantastical story men invented when they had drunk too much and seen shadows move in the wrong light. But Aerion believed it worth checking it out.
He had seen it once before. That was enough. If there was even the slightest chance that the creature still lingered somewhere in those lands, he intended to find it. He was not foolish enough to attempt the search openly. His movements were watched far more closely than most realized. Rivals within his own bloodline had already begun to sharpen their interest in the matter, and if word spread that he was pursuing the dragon, others would follow—cousins, knights, ambitious men eager to seize glory for themselves. Aurax would be hunted again, frightened into flight or worse. So Aerion did what necessity demanded. He went alone, and he went in disguise.
It was not something he had ever done before. Aerion had never walked the road without escort, never traveled without the protection of guards and the certainty that his name carried weight ahead of him. The thought of anonymity had once seemed almost absurd. Yet for Aurax, for his dragon, he would endure far worse. He still remembered the noise of the harbour on the morning he departed. The docks had been crowded with merchants and sailors, the air thick with salt and shouting. Wrapped in a plain cloak, hood drawn low to hide pale hair and violet eyes, he had moved among them without a second glance. No one had bowed. No one had recognized him. To the crew of the small vessel he boarded, he had been nothing more than another traveller paying coin for passage across the water.
The sea crossing had been uneventful, the horizon vast and indifferent. Now, as he stepped through the door of a modest roadside inn, he felt closer to the dragon than he had at any point since that first meeting. It might have been nothing more than imagination creeping into his thoughts, the product of too many weeks spent chasing rumours. And yet there was a strange, persistent certainty settling somewhere beneath his ribs, a quiet instinct that told him he had not come this far only to be disappointed. Perhaps it was madness creeping in, but he swore he could feel Aurax.
He had chosen a charming little inn. It was far cheaper than any lodging he would normally choose, but it appeared warm, candle-lit, clean enough and busy enough that no one would question the presence of another guest. The air was thick with the scent of stew and woodsmoke, and the low murmur of travelers filled the room with a comfortable kind of life. His eyes swept the room before settling on the counter at the far end. He made his way toward it and dropped a small pouch of coins onto the wood with a soft but decisive clink. As he did so, Aerion drew the hood of his cloak a little deeper over his brow. Thus far he had managed to keep the pale silver of his hair and the unmistakable violet of his eyes concealed from curious glances. And he had no intention of allowing something so careless to cost him his dragon.
“I require a room.” Aerion delivered the words with practiced indifference, the tone neutral and faintly bored. Even so, there was a kind of effortless grace in the way he carried himself, the sort that could not easily be disguised by a simple cloak.
The young woman behind the counter looked up from her ledger with the mild disinterest of someone who had spent the evening serving travelers. Yet when her eyes lifted fully to him, even with his face half-hidden beneath the shadow of his hood, something in her expression shifted. She blinked once, then quickly looked down again, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks as though she had noticed more of his features than he had intended to reveal. From the adjoining room that served as the inn’s dining hall came the loud, uneven laughter of men well into their cups. A group of broad-shouldered fellows crowded one of the long tables, their voices carrying easily across the room. Tankards thudded against wood as they drank, the scent of ale and sweat drifting through the air.
“Aye,” the girl said after a moment, her voice brightening as she tucked a loose strand of black hair behind her ear in a gesture that might have been shy or practiced. “And how long will you be staying, ser?”
Aerion allowed his gaze to wander past her shoulder, as though the answer required little thought. In truth, his attention had already shifted toward the men in the dining room. They were large, sun-darkened, and solidly built, their hands thick with calluses that spoke of long hours spent in fields rather than on roads. Farmers, most likely.
“Some time,” he replied at last, “I cannot yet say how long. I will pay by the night.”
The girl nodded and reached beneath the counter, retrieving a small iron key attached to a wooden tag. As she set it on the counter, her eyes flicked toward the noisy table as well, following the direction of Aerion’s gaze.
“Ah,” she said with a small, amused smile. “That’ll be Henry and his friends. He’s a farmer down the road a ways. They’ve had a bit too much to drink tonight.”
One of the men in question burst into wheezing laughter, nearly sloshing his ale over the table as the others joined in.
“They’re setting out tomorrow,” the girl continued lightly, clearly entertained by the whole affair. “Off on some grand adventure, or so they claim. A right foolish one if you ask me.”
Aerion’s fingers stilled where they rested on the counter.
“Oh?” he said casually.
She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice as though sharing a harmless piece of gossip. “They say they’re going to hunt a dragon.”
She laughed softly at the absurdity of it and nudged the key a little closer to him. Aerion did not laugh. His gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly.
“A dragon?” he repeated.
The girl gave a small, bashful laugh, tucking another loose strand of hair behind her ear as she did so.
“It’s just a silly tale,” she said. “Some shepherds claimed they’d seen a dragon out in the hills, but no one else has seen anything of the sort. No one believes it, of course. But Henry and his friends have turned it into a bit of a drinking game.”
Aerion tilted his head slightly, the movement subtle but attentive.
“Which shepherds?” he asked, his voice still even. “And where did they claim to have seen it?”
The girl faltered beneath the sudden focus of his attention. The color in her cheeks deepened, and for a moment she seemed unsure where to look.
“I—I’m not entirely certain,” she admitted, stumbling over the words as she tried to recall. “Somewhere out on the grazing lands, I think. That’s where most of the sheep are herded. But truly, it’s nothing serious. Just stories people tell.”
Aerion gave a soft, thoughtful hum, his gaze drifting once more toward the loud table where the farmers were still laughing over their ale.
“I’m sure it is,” he said. He reached for the key she had placed on the counter and turned slightly, preparing to leave. But before he could take more than a step away, the girl spoke again, her voice quick with the eagerness of someone reluctant to let an interesting guest slip away.
“It’s funny, though,” she said with a light, almost conspiratorial laugh. “Just four days ago another man came in asking about dragons as well.”
Aerion paused. He turned his head just enough to glance back at her, his expression carefully neutral.
“Is that so?”
The girl nodded eagerly, encouraged by his attention.
“Yes. Brown hair, blue eyes. Very tall—taller than most men who pass through here, though a bit too tall for my taste,” she added with a playful smile. “Still, he seemed kind enough. Paid generously for his room, too.”
Her eyes lingered on Aerion as she finished the thought, her smile softening. “You, of course… are the perfect height.”
The compliment came with another shy flush, her expression bright with youthful admiration. Aerion showed no sign of noticing. Instead he stepped back toward the counter, his interest sharpening behind the calm mask of his face.
“Who was this man?”
“Er, I don’t… exactly recall,” the girl said, startled by the sudden intensity of his interest. For a moment she searched her memory helplessly, her brow furrowing as though the name might return if she simply reached far enough for it. Then, catching the subtle shift in Aerion’s posture—the faint withdrawal of attention that suggested he might simply walk away—she hurried to add, “Oh! But I think it was something with a D. Dennis, perhaps? Or—no… no, that wasn’t it.”
Her eyes brightened with recognition.
“Dunk,” she said at last. “Yes, that was it. He called himself Dunk.”
Aerion regarded her steadily.
“And where is he now?” he asked. “Is he still staying here?”
The girl shrugged lightly, though she seemed pleased to have something useful to offer.
“I think he left that morning,” she replied. “He mentioned wanting to rest for a day or so before moving on. Said he needed to gather his strength before heading north.”
Aerion gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment and turned toward the narrow stairway that led to the upper floor.
“Wait,” the girl called after him quickly. “Would you perhaps like to stay for a drink? I could—”
“No,” Aerion replied without turning back. His tone was calm but final. “See that the water is warm. I will be drawing a bath.”
A deeper exhaustion had settled into his bones than he was accustomed to feeling. The water in the wooden tub was warm, acceptably so by common standards, but far from the temperature he preferred. Aerion had always favoured his baths nearly scalding, hot enough to drive the chill from muscle and marrow alike. This, by comparison, felt almost lukewarm. Washing himself in such conditions felt less like indulgence and more like inconvenience. When this business was finished, he decided, he would abandon the pretense of living like a common traveler and have a proper bath prepared. One drawn properly hot, perfumed with lavender and the crushed leaves he favored. Something worthy of comfort rather than necessity. His thoughts drifted, as they inevitably did, to Aurax. A strange note of pity tugged unexpectedly at his chest. The dragon had likely never known any finery at all. No carved halls to rest in, no silken cushions or sheltered chambers. No steaming baths, no rich meats served fresh and carefully prepared. Aerion leaned deeper into the water, letting the warmth coil around his shoulders as the thought settled.
That would change. He would see to it personally. Aurax would have the finest cuts of meat, perhaps exotic fare from Dorne, something rare enough to tempt even a dragon’s appetite. Perhaps the creature’s tastes could be refined, or perhaps he would simply learn what pleased him and provide it in abundance. And of course there would be a saddle, crafted by the best hands in the realm, something worthy of bronze wings. He sank slightly lower into the bath, allowing himself a brief moment of quiet satisfaction. Then his ears caught a faint sound, so soft most men would have missed it entirely. The subtle scrape of metal shifting against metal. The doorknob. Aerion stilled instantly. Water lapped quietly against the sides of the tub as he rose without a sound. His eyes fixed on the door as the faint scratching continued, someone testing the latch with careful hands. Silently, he stepped from the bath and wrapped himself in a length of cloth, movements swift and practiced. One hand closed around the dagger resting on the nearby table.
A thief? Perhaps. Or an assassin sent by some opportunistic enemy of the Crown.
Or—
Aerion tilted his head slightly, considering a different possibility. A relative. He moved to the wall beside the door and pressed himself flat against it, positioning himself so that when the door opened, the intruder would step past him. The latch turned, and the door creaked inward. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then someone stepped into the room. Judging by the weight of the footsteps—the soft creak of wood beneath them—whoever it was could not have been particularly large. Light. Manageable. Easy.
Aerion moved. He slammed the door violently into the intruder’s back before the person had fully crossed the threshold. A startled curse burst from their mouth as they stumbled forward and crashed to the floor. Aerion drove the door into them again for good measure before stepping around it, dagger already raised and ready to strike, ready to kill—
“Aegon?”
The name left him before he could stop it. Aerion stared down in disbelief at the figure writhing on the floor. His younger brother lay sprawled across the boards, groaning and clutching his side. His younger brother—now bald, apparently, of all things.
Aerion regarded the sight with thinly veiled distaste.
“What in the name of the Seven have you done to your hair?” he asked, one brow arching faintly.
Aegon pushed himself upright and glared at him.
“That’s what you choose to ask?” he snapped. “Not why I’m here?”
Aerion exhaled slowly and slid the dagger back into its sheath. The tension drained from his shoulders now that the intruder had revealed himself to be nothing more dangerous than his younger brother.
“I presume you followed me,” he drawled at last.
“You presume right,” Aegon replied with stubborn satisfaction as he pushed himself to his feet, brushing imaginary dust from his cloak as though the indignity of being thrown to the floor had never happened. Aerion studied him with open disapproval, head tilting slightly.
“In a remarkably poor disguise, I might add,” Aerion commented dryly. “Why shave your hair off?”
“So I wouldn’t look like you, brother,” Aegon huffed, rolling his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. “It seemed like the sensible choice.”
His gaze sharpened with sudden curiosity. “Well? Have you found it?”
Aerion’s expression tightened immediately. Without answering, he seized Aegon by the sleeve and pulled him fully into the room before stepping swiftly to the door. He cracked it open just enough to glance out into the dim corridor, his eyes moving left, then right, searching for any sign of movement. After a moment he pulled the door shut again with deliberate care.
“Mind your tongue, boy,” he hissed inaudibly as the latch settled into place. “These are matters best not spoken aloud in places like this.”
Aegon scratched idly at his newly shaven scalp and folded his arms across his chest.
“Sorry,” he said with a casual shrug that carried no hint of actual remorse. Then he lifted his gaze again.
“Well?” he pressed. “Did you?”
You cannot have followed me with much diligence if you cannot even answer that,” Aerion remarked critically as he watched his brother collapse onto the bed.
Aegon’s lips formed a silent oh the moment his weight met the mattress. Like Aerion, he was accustomed to softer accommodations. That bed was decidedly not among them.
“Forgive me, brother,” Aegon replied, lifting his chin with theatrical dignity and a touch of self-satisfaction, “but if memory serves, you did not appear to notice me following you either.”
He puffed out his chest slightly as he said it, clearly expecting some measure of admiration.
“Well, I was not expecting to encounter a bald child,” Aerion scoffed dryly, stepping around the bed to set his daggers carefully on the small table beside the candle.
Behind him, Aegon stretched himself across the mattress and began sweeping his arms back and forth as though he were lying in fresh snow.
“Do remove your boots from the sheets,” Aerion added sharply. “and do explain how you convinced Father to let you leave.”
Aegon froze mid-motion before sitting upright.
“Well…” he began slowly, his voice suddenly losing some of its confidence as his gaze drifted about the room in search of anything interesting enough to study. “Father was rather… resolute about it. Said it was time I learned to comport myself as a man. Yes. That was his reasoning.”
He nodded enthusiastically, clearly pleased with the explanation. Aerion did not believe a word of it.
“You left without permission, then?” Aerion asked incredulously, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Seven preserve me.”
“It was hardly dangerous,” Aegon protested quickly. “No one followed me, and no one recognized me. I made quite certain of that.”
“You had better,” Aerion muttered, before letting out a weary sigh. “Now get some rest. I intend to go out early tomorrow. You will remain here.”
Aegon straightened at once, indignation flashing across his face.
“No. Absolutely not! I did not travel all this way just to sit in your room and do nothing. I want to see the dragon!”
“It is too dangerous,” Aerion replied dismissively, already turning back toward the washroom as he ran a hand through his damp hair. “Besides, you were never meant to be here in the first place. I imagine Father will have quite a bit to say when he hears of it.”
Aegon’s expression darkened into a sulk. Aerion glanced back at him briefly, studying him for a moment before sighing again.
“I am not saying this to be unkind, Aegon,” he muttered more quietly. “But Aurax is… shy, in his way. Hard as that may be to believe. He would not take kindly to a crowd.”
Aegon frowned at that.
“A dragon,” he repeated slowly, as though testing the logic of it aloud, “and you are telling me it is shy.”
Aerion dried his hands with deliberate calm before setting the cloth aside.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“That is ridiculous.”
“It is accurate.”
Aegon paced a few steps across the room, agitation stirring in the restless movements of his hands.
“Dragons are meant to be fearsome,” he insisted. “Terrible creatures that burn armies and shatter castles. That is what the histories say.”
“The histories,” Aerion responded frostily, “were written by men who rarely stood close enough to see the truth of them.”
He crossed the room and leaned one shoulder lightly against the table, arms folding.
“He was not hunting,” Aerion continued after a moment. “He was hiding.”
Aegon stilled.
“For how long?” he asked quietly.
Aerion did not answer immediately. His gaze drifted toward the candle flame, watching the light tremble against the wall.
“Long enough to learn that men bring spears,” he said at last.
Aegon shifted his weight uneasily. “And you still think he will let you near him again?”
Aerion’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “He already did.”
“That does not mean he will again.”
“No,” Aerion agreed calmly. “I suppose it does not.”
Aegon studied him for a moment, then let out a breath through his nose. “You are going to try anyway.”
Aerion did not bother denying it.
“You always were stubborn,” Aegon muttered, dropping back onto the bed with a quiet thud.
“Determined,” Aerion corrected.
“Obsessed,” Aegon said. Aerion allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile. Perhaps.
The candle burned lower as the room settled into quiet. Outside, the distant murmur of voices drifted up from the inn’s lower floor—laughter, tankards clinking, the ordinary sounds of travelers at rest. Aegon shifted again, propping himself on one elbow.
“So,” he broke the silence after a moment, “if you truly expect me to remain here tomorrow, at least tell me what exactly you are planning to do?”
Aerion glanced toward the shuttered window.
“Listen,” he answered.
“To what?”
“The hills,” Aerion hummed softly. “They have been speaking about him for weeks.”
Aegon frowned again. “I heard nothing.”
Aerion’s gaze remained fixed on the dark beyond the glass.
“That,” he said quietly, “is because you are listening for the wrong things.”
The day had not yet filled with light when Aerion left the inn. The room he and Aegon had shared had been small and ill-suited for two men, the mattress narrow and the blankets thin, but they had slept there together nonetheless, shoulders pressed close simply to keep the warmth between them. Even with the small fire crackling in the hearth, the cold had lingered stubbornly in the air. For a brief moment in the night, the closeness had reminded Aerion of when they had been children, of winters long past. Simpler days. Kinder memories. Aegon had still been asleep when Aerion slipped out. The boy had been snoring softly, heavy with the deep, untroubled sleep of someone exhausted beyond care. Outside, the town had only just begun to stir. The market square was quiet, the early morning still clinging to the streets. A few merchants had begun setting out their wares, lifting crates and unfolding cloth with slow, deliberate movements, but only a handful were present. It suited Aerion well enough. The fewer eyes that saw him leaving, the better.
The walk toward the grazing lands proved longer and more demanding than he had expected. The hills stretched outward in gentle slopes that gradually steepened, forcing him to climb higher and higher until the town below had shrunk to something small and distant. When he finally paused near the crest of one of the hills, he looked back. From that height the little city seemed no larger than his own thumb, a scatter of rooftops and narrow streets barely visible through the morning haze. The fields below were slowly brightening in the thin grey light of dawn. He could see cattle moving sluggishly through the damp grass, their thick, curly coats darkened with dew. Sheep dotted the hills in loose clusters, lambs pressed close beside their mothers.
There were no men yet. He supposed it was still early even for the smallfolk.
So far there had been no sign of Aurax. No scorched earth, no disturbed ground large enough to betray the passage of something so vast. And yet the higher he climbed, the stronger the quiet certainty grew within him that he was moving in the right direction. The air was heavy with fog and morning dew, damp enough to cling to his cloak and seep slowly into the leather of his boots. They were well-made, but not meant for such long wandering over uneven ground, and he could feel the strain beginning to settle into his legs. Aerion exhaled slowly and watched the breath leave him in pale spirals that curled into the cold morning air. At first the vapor gathered thickly before his lips, a soft cloud that billowed outward as though reluctant to part from him. Then it began to twist and thin, stretching itself into fragile strands that drifted upward on the faintest movement of wind. For a moment the little ribbons of white seemed almost alive, climbing higher and higher into the grey-blue light of dawn, unraveling as they went. The shapes lost their edges, broke apart, and scattered until nothing remained but faint wisps dissolving into the damp air, until even those vanished entirely, leaving only the cold stillness of the morning behind.
He allowed himself to linger for another moment. The hills stretched wide and silent beneath him, the early light of morning slowly bleeding across the land. For a fleeting instant, the world felt vast and almost impossibly calm. Aerion pushed his hood back and let the wind touch his hair, pale strands lifting and shifting softly in the cool air. From this height the countryside seemed small and manageable, the town below little more than a cluster of shapes swallowed by mist. It stirred in him a strange, swelling sensation; something close to triumph, or perhaps something grander. The sort of feeling that came from standing above the world and knowing it had not yet beaten you.
“Oi, lad!”
The voice cut sharply through the quiet morning air—rough, coarse, thick with the unmistakable accent of the lowborn. His hand moved before the thought had fully formed. The hood came up again, shadows swallowing the pale silver of his hair, and he turned slowly toward the sound.
A group of men stood on the narrow path behind him. Five at first glance—no, six. One of them stepped forward from where he had been lingering slightly behind the others, half-hidden by the curve of the hill. They looked exactly like the sort of men one hoped not to meet in a place like this. Dirty. Hard-faced. Their clothes were travel-stained and worn, the sort that had seen more road than hearth. Not shepherds, not farmers. Or if they were, they had long since abandoned honest work, judging by the way they stood, loose in the way of men accustomed to violence rather than honest labour and yet watchful, suggesting something else entirely: thugs. Aerion felt the faint tightening of instinct coil through him. His hand rested casually on the dagger at his hip, fingers curling lightly around the hilt. He had not brought a sword. He had chosen subtlety instead of spectacle, and for the first time since leaving the inn he regretted the decision. Still, Aerion did not fear them. Fear had never sat comfortably in him.
There was something in the blood of House Targaryen that did not yield easily to such reflexes—something older and more dangerous that ran beneath the skin. It was the same inheritance that had once driven their ancestors to conquer kingdoms, command fire and ride creatures that turned battlefields into charred bone and ash. That same restless current lingered still in some of their descendants, a darker impulse that stirred at the thought of conflict.
A hunger. A taste for flame and war. Not every Targaryen carried it; most Targaryens carried only echoes of it. In some it burned brighter. And in a rare few, it took root entirely. It was a predatory awareness buried deep in the marrow of Aerion’s bones—a terrible instinct that was not learned in training yards or taught by masters-at-arms, no, it was born. And when it woke fully, it turned men like Aerion into something devastating and inevitable on a battlefield. Where Daeron blundered through combat with more noise than precision and Aegon relied on the reckless enthusiasm of someone who had yet to truly understand what steel could do to flesh rather than skill, Aerion had always moved through battle with an intuition that bordered on unnatural. It was an instinct that rose the moment violence stirred—a brutal, unerring clarity that mapped movement and consequence faster than thought could follow. Distance, timing, weakness, the angle of a blade, the way a man’s weight shifted just before he struck—Aerion understood it all with a plain, effortless certainty. To him, battle was not chaos but pattern. And once he saw it, the end of a fight was rarely in doubt.
He tilted his head slightly, studying them with a calm that was almost curious. “Gentlemen.”
The first man stepped forward with the careless swagger of someone who mistook brashness for authority. Aerion dismissed him immediately. Not the leader.
The loud ones rarely were. They were the sparks—the men who started trouble because they did not know how to measure it. The real decision was always made elsewhere in the group, by someone quieter, someone watching. Aerion’s gaze moved past him, sweeping the others. He would need to find the one who held the weight of the pack if he meant to avoid turning this hillside into a mess of blood and bone. Much as the impulse sometimes stirred in him—that restless urge to remind men what real violence looked like—it would draw attention he did not need.
“What’s your business here, eh, lad?” the swaggering one demanded.
“I mean no trouble,” Aerion replied, the words delivered in a low drawl that carried a strange mixture of courtesy and warning. His tone was smooth, almost polite, but there was a sharpened edge beneath it that made the air between them feel suddenly colder.
The men looked him over more carefully now. Aerion saw the moment their attention settled on his clothes. He had made a deliberate effort to dress plainly, but plain by his standards still meant well-made by theirs. The cut of the fabric, the quality of the stitching, the weight of the cloak—none of it belonged to a common traveler. At best he might pass for the son of a minor lord, the sort of young noble foolish enough to wander too far from safe roads.
“We don’t want trouble either,” another man said, stepping forward with a calmer voice. “But we’ve got families to feed, you see.”
Aerion’s eyes shifted to him at once. Tall. Lean in the way of a man who had spent a lifetime working with his body rather than sitting behind a table. His hair had gone grey at the temples, though his frame remained strong and wiry. The lines in his face were not those of softness, but of weather and long years outdoors. His eyes were the thing that gave him away, a pair of measuring things. The eyes of a hawk. Leader.
“Now,” the grey-haired man continued evenly, “you look like a decent lad. Young, perhaps a little foolish, but we’ve no interest in hurting you.”
His tone remained calm, but there was steel beneath it.
“Still,” he added, spreading his hands slightly, “necessities being what they are… I’ll make you a simple offer. Hand over your valuables, and you may go on your way unharmed.”
“I do not carry my valuables on me,” Aerion replied smoothly.
The man tilted his head slightly, studying him.
“Don’t mistake calmness for mercy,” he said. “Anyone with eyes can see you’ve got coin. And that coat of yours would fetch a fair price besides.”
A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “We’d rather take them without trouble. But if it comes to it… we’re not opposed to a bit of action.”
His gaze sharpened. “You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”
For a moment Aerion said nothing, his gaze drifting slowly across the rest of the men as though considering the offer with genuine thought. In truth, he was estimating. The loud one was closest, heavy on his heels and too eager, the kind who would swing first and think after. Another stood just behind him, broader but slower, fingers wrapped around a cudgel with the casual familiarity of someone who relied more on brute force than precision. Two more lingered further back, uncertain, their weight shifting in small restless movements that betrayed nerves rather than confidence. And then there was the leader. The grey-haired man watched him without blinking, hawk-eyed and patient. That one would not rush. That one would wait for the moment that promised the cleanest end.
Aerion took all of it in. Distance between them. The slope of the hill beneath their feet. The dampness of the grass that might betray a careless step. The reach of the dagger at his own hip. The time it would take the nearest man to close the space. It unfolded in his mind with artful simplicity, like pieces sliding into place on a board already halfway through the game.
Six men. One of them dangerous. Two capable. The rest noise.
Aerion weighed the possibilities for the briefest moment. He could give them the coin and be done with it, and walk away… but the thought lasted only a heartbeat before something darker stirred beneath it. The fire in his blood did not favour retreat. It stirred now, restless and lucid, that ancient, eerie inheritance that had followed his line through centuries of conquest and ruin. It whispered of broken bones and spilled blood, of the sharp, intoxicating order that violence imposed upon chaos. And besides, he needed his coin. Aerion made his decision the way he always did: in an instant. Before hesitation could weaken it.
“I do, actually,” Aerion said.
The smile that spread across his face was sharp and wolfish, something bright and unsettling flashing briefly in his eyes—a glimmer of wild delight that belonged less to a prince than to something feral. He licked his lips almost absently as he drew both daggers in one smooth motion, steel catching the weak morning light as he shifted into a loose, balanced stance.
“Come on, then.”
One of the men behind the grey-haired leader shifted uneasily. He was younger than the others, noticeably so. His beard was still thin along the jaw, his grip on the sword uncertain. Aerion marked him immediately for what he was.
Inexperienced. An easy target.
“Gaven,” the young man murmured, voice tight with unease, “I don’t know about this. Look at him. That’s no traveler—that’s a nobleman for sure. Won’t we get into trouble for this?”
The grey-haired man silenced him with nothing more than a glance.
“Ain’t your sister sick?” Gaven said calmly. “How do you mean to pay for her medicine, lad? Or do you intend to sit around while the highborn feast in their stone halls and the rest of us rot?”
The words landed hard. The boy straightened almost immediately, shame flashing across his face.
“N-no, Gaven.”
Gaven tilted his head slightly, studying him with something that resembled amusement. “Well then. Why don’t you earn it? Go on. Finish him off, Andrik.”
Andrik hesitated. His gaze flicked toward Aerion, then back to Gaven, torn between fear and duty. But the hesitation lasted only a moment before he stepped forward, drawing his sword from its sheath.
“As you wish.”
Aerion watched him approach with faint, almost bored interest.
Slow.
The thought came instantly, accompanied by a flicker of quiet disdain. The tutors Aerion had trained under as a boy would have cut this man apart before he had taken three steps across the ground.
Andrik lunged. Aerion slipped aside easily, the movement effortless. Left-handed. The boy’s blade came from that direction first, clumsy but forceful. Yet the rest of his body betrayed something odd. His weight favored the right side, his balance subtly uneven, the stance just slightly misaligned with the hand he chose to lead with.
Aerion tilted his head. Interesting. There were only a handful of reasons a fighter moved like that. Injury, perhaps. A healed fracture that had set poorly. A shoulder that had once been dislocated and never quite regained its strength. Or simply poor training—a boy who had tried to teach himself by copying movements he did not fully understand.
Whatever the reason, the result was the same; it was a weakness, and Aerion saw weaknesses the way hawks saw field mice. Andrik swung again, this time faster, frustration creeping into the motion. The blade whistled through the damp morning air, cutting toward Aerion’s ribs with more force than control. Aerion stepped aside with almost insulting ease. Steel passed through empty space. The boy overextended slightly, weight pitching forward for the briefest instant. There. Aerion moved. One dagger flashed upward, the flat of the blade striking Andrik’s wrist with a sharp crack. The sword slipped from the boy’s grip instantly, clattering into the grass. Before Andrik could recover, Aerion stepped in close, too close, and his second dagger pressed lightly against the hollow of the boy’s throat.
The entire exchange had taken less than three seconds. The other men froze. Andrik’s breath came quick and shallow, his chest rising and falling against the point of Aerion’s blade. A thin line of blood had already begun to bead where the steel kissed his skin. Aerion regarded him calmly. Up close, the boy looked even younger. Fear had completely replaced whatever bravado he had carried moments before.
Aerion’s gaze lifted slowly to the others.
“Well,” he hummed mildly, “that was disappointing.”
The men shifted uneasily. Gaven’s hawk-like eyes had narrowed now, studying Aerion with a new sort of attention. Aerion felt the fire in his blood stir again; that dark, restless thing that had been quiet for far too long.
He leaned slightly closer to Andrik, voice dropping to something soft and almost conversational.
“You should have listened to that instinct of yours,” he murmured. “It was trying to keep you alive.”
The boy swallowed. Aerion held Gaven’s gaze as he moved the blade and slit his throat. The cut was swift and precise; a clean draw of steel across soft flesh. No hesitation. No flourish. For the briefest fraction of a moment something stirred at the edges of his mind. A faint, irritating flicker of pity sparked by the boy’s youth, by the way his eyes had widened when he realized what was about to happen. It lasted less than a heartbeat. Aerion crushed it the way one crushed an insect. There was no room for that sort of weakness here.
Andrik’s breath left him in a wet, choking sound as the wound opened. Blood spilled instantly, dark and sudden, pouring between his fingers as he instinctively clutched at his throat. He tried to speak—perhaps to beg, perhaps to curse—but only a gurgling rasp came out, thick with blood. The sound was ugly. Aerion stepped back as the boy collapsed to his knees, choking on the life leaving his body. For a moment the other men did nothing. They stared as though stunned, their minds slow to catch up with the reality unfolding in front of them. It was the look of men who had spent years threatening violence without ever truly believing it would find them in return. As if death were something that happened to other people. Not them.
But Gaven did not look shocked. Gaven was watching him. The older man’s eyes remained fixed on Aerion with an intensity that had nothing to do with fear, rather the quiet recognition of one predator noticing another standing across the field. Then, one of the younger men found his voice.
“No!” he shouted croakily, stumbling forward. “Andrik!”
His grief twisted quickly into rage as his gaze snapped toward Aerion.
“You bastard—”
The man’s grief snapped into motion. He lunged at Aerion with a hoarse shout, blade raised high and the others followed immediately, rage and panic driving them forward all at once. All but Gaven. The grey-haired man did not move. He remained where he stood, watching. Aerion barely spared him a glance. Four men? He had faced worse. The first attacker came fast but clumsy, swinging wide with the kind of strength that came from anger rather than control. Aerion stepped aside with easy accuracy, letting the blade pass harmlessly through empty air as though he had known its path long before it moved. His own dagger flashed. A quick thrust downward. The steel slid neatly into the second man’s thigh. The man screamed as his leg gave out beneath him, collapsing into the damp grass with a strangled cry. Aerion turned already, the next movement unfolding before the previous one had even finished.
Then something else reached his ears. A sound. At first it was faint beneath the noise of shouting and steel—a deep, rhythmic flutter cutting through the cold morning air.
Leather striking wind.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Aerion froze.
His heart lurched violently in his chest. He knew that sound. He had heard it once before; burned into his memory so deeply that it had haunted his sleep ever since the creature had vanished into the clouds. Night after night he had heard it again in dreams: that heavy, powerful beating of wings slicing through the sky. That sound… His hood slipped back as he looked up. And for a moment he thought he had slipped back into dreaming.
Because there, against the pale stretch of morning sky, a vast shape moved. Copper and bronze caught the growing light as enormous wings beat steadily against the air, each movement sending ripples through the mist that clung to the hills.
Aurax.
The creature hovered above the slope, circling once before slowing, great wings spreading wide as he held himself in the air. The bronze of his scales burned softly in the dawn, the edges of them catching pale gold where the light struck. Magnificent.
Time seemed to slow.
“Aurax,” Aerion breathed.
The dragon tilted his head. The motion was small, almost curious, but something in it felt unmistakably deliberate. Recognition flickered in those brilliant blue eyes as they fixed on the figure below.
Did he remember him? He had to remember. Aerion felt a frantic hope surge through him, bright and desperate. The fight, the men, the danger… All of it vanished from his mind in an instant. There was nothing left in the world but those wings beating against the sky. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He raised his hands toward the dragon as though he could somehow reach him from where he stood. Aurax remained suspended above the hill, wings moving slowly now, holding himself against the wind as he watched.
Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
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a/n: I’m sort of having issues with the formatting right now, so if the formatting appears off, know that I’m trying to fix it asap!
Duncan was dreaming.
He dreamed of Targaryen beauty shaped in austere symmetry, wrought with a kind of impossible, almost inhuman perfection; high, sculpted cheekbones; a mouth too finely formed to belong to anything but nobility and a jaw cut clean and sharp beneath fair skin that held little colour of its own. Pale hair framing it all, falling like spun silver touched by frost, stark against a complexion that seemed almost bloodless in its refinement. He dreamed of a face carved entirely of angles and aristocratic precision, all bone and blade, elegance honed to a hard edge rather than softened by birth. And he dreamed of that gaze. Violet eyes, clear like polished amethysts, fixed upon him not with fear nor revulsion but with something akin to longing.
Duncan dreamed of lips and words he had not understood yet still remembered. The language had been foreign, shaped in harsh, clipped consonants and low, rolling sounds, vowels drawn long and deliberate. It should have felt alien. And yet something intricately buried within him had recognized it, not the meaning but the intent. It had stirred against something long forgotten, something deeper than memory and older than thought. The sound of it had brushed along the edges of his soul like a key testing a forgotten lock. Strange on the tongue, strange to the ear… and yet, inexplicably, it had tasted like home. The prince—for he had to be one; Duncan knew enough of the world to recognise Targaryen colouring—had been kind. Not cautious. Not calculating. Kind. For a brief and dangerous moment, Duncan had not been alone. The memory struck harder than the exhaustion in his wings. He dreamed of hands reaching toward him, of warmth, of a smile curving over rosy, full lips. He dreamed of words forming there, of sound meant for him, but it was all too faint, too muffled, as though he were hearing it from beneath water. Everything came blurred and distorted, shallow and distant. He strained to listen. He tried to answer. His mouth moved, but no sound came. His throat tightened uselessly.
He opened his mouth to scream—and—
Woke.
He startled into consciousness with the abrupt violence of being dragged from darkness into cold stone air. He jolted awake as though wrenched violently from the depths of sleep and thrown into cold stone air. For a heartbeat, he had no sense of place or time. His heart battered against his ribs, breath dragging harshly into his lungs as if he had surfaced from drowning. Memory did not return gently.
The cave. The sea. The cliffs.
He had crossed the water. He had left his island.
For a fleeting, disorienting moment, he almost believed himself back in the familiar shelter of his own cavern. Safe, hidden, wrapped in the scent of grass and damp earth after rain. He could almost feel the moss beneath his claws, almost sense the first thin rays of morning filtering through leaves. He imagined he could smell it too—that faint blend of salt and fresh soil that had always greeted him at dawn. But then he remembered: He had crossed the sea and landed in a stretch of highlands that looked abandoned at first glance, though not nearly as remote as his island had been. The land rolled wide and open beneath him, broken only by low stone walls and patches of grazing ground. In the distance, scattered across the hills like flecks of chalk, he spotted small white shapes. Sheep. And where there were sheep, there were shepherds. Where there were shepherds, other men were never far.
Going back was not an option. The certainty of it came with something unfamiliar tightening in his chest. Guilt. Pale hair and violet eyes surfaced again in his mind, unbidden and persistent. He knew he should not have lingered in that cave. He had known it even then. And yet he had stayed, as he always did when confronted with something beautiful and perilous, drawn to it with the senseless inevitability of a moth to flame.
Years upon years of isolation had worn him thinner than he had realized. The hunger for touch had hollowed him slowly, had grown slow and patient inside him, so gradually he had no longer recognised it for what it was. He had thought himself hardened. The smallest brush of warmth had felt like rain on ground long left to crack beneath a merciless sun. There was guilt, yes, but beneath it lay something worse: longing. A hunger so deep it felt like marrow exposed to air, like something inside him had been cracked open and left wanting; a desperate, clawing need to belong somewhere, to someone, that made his chest feel too tight for his own heart. A starving thing that would have traded caution for a single moment of warmth again. But beneath both lay resolve. He could hear Ser Arlan scolding him in the back of his mind, one careful hand against his scales, and he had nearly undone himself for it. But longing was not safety.
He would not return to that cave only to be found again. To hear the crack of branches and the rising pitch of men shouting. To see spears lifted and know that this time, they would not hesitate. He had survived too long to die pinned beneath lances. Not after all these years. Not after crossing the open sea and daring more sky than he ever had before. And yet remaining here was no salvation either; the highlands stretched wide and exposed, stripped of forest or deep shadow, open and merciless. No dense canopy. No stone deep enough to swallow him whole. There was nowhere to vanish entirely, nowhere to fold himself into earth and disappear. Even worse, everything around him was endlessly green—grass rolling over hills and more grass rolling over more hills, low shrubs scattered across the land and more low shrubs scattered across the land—and against it all he stood brass and copper.
He exhaled heavily, a low, weary sound rumbling from his chest as a faint curl of smoke slipped from his nostrils and vanished into the wind. He could not go back, he could not stay. But he was exhausted. Crossing the sea had proven far more demanding than he had anticipated, and he had never flown so long or so far without pause, and his wings ached with unfamiliar strain, muscles trembling faintly beneath scale. He had kept as high as he dared, trusting the night to swallow his shape. Darkness had shielded him, though the ocean wind had been relentless. Leaving his island had felt like tearing loose a root. Like abandoning the only certainty he had known. And yet the flight itself had stirred something he had not prepared for.
It had felt... right.
To unfurl his wings without measuring distance to the nearest hiding place. To feel the steady, smooth rhythm of each beat driving him forward over black water. To climb higher than he ever had before, where the air thinned and the stars, bright above him, looked close enough to burn against his scales. Wrapped in darkness, swallowed by night—unseen, unclaimed. For the first time in years, he had not been shrinking himself to survive, he had been vast. And for one reckless stretch of sky, it had felt like something close to freedom. But freedom did not last, and he had only landed to rest. His wings trembled now with quiet fatigue; they would not carry him much farther tonight. When strength returned to his limbs, he would have to move again. Stay nowhere long. Leave no trace. Leave no pattern for men to follow. Survival demanded it. Duncan rolled his shoulders and shook out his powerful body, stretching stiff legs and flexing his wings until the ache settled into something manageable.
But then, he went still. His head lifted. His nostrils flared. His pupils narrowed, and the wind shifted. Something new threaded through salt and grass and distant livestock. He did not move. Every sense narrowed to a single, lethal focus. Voices carried faintly across the wind. Footsteps followed. The voices grew clearer as they crested the low rise beyond him, carried by the wind in uneven fragments.
“…swear I saw something—”
“—too large for any bird—”
“Could’ve been smoke. You’ve been drinking.”
Boots pressed into grass. Metal clinked faintly. The soft, steady sound of hooves followed a moment later. Duncan lowered himself, belly pressed to cool earth, wings folded so tightly against his body that the joints ached. He angled his head downward, horns hidden among the reeds, tail curled close instead of extended. He forced his breathing to slow—shallow, controlled. The grass brushed along his scales, whispering with every small adjustment of his weight.
Too open. Too exposed.
The highlands offered no cliffside hollow deep enough to conceal his full length. If they came over the hill under which he had hidden, they would see him. The sheep scattered first. A ripple of white movement swept across the hillside as the animals sensed what the men did not yet understand. Their bleating rose in confused alarm, hooves drumming against soil as they fled downslope. One of the voices faltered.
“Do you hear that?”
Another answered, closer now. “Hear what—”
Duncan felt it before he saw them: the shift in air, the scent of leather and sweat and iron. He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, letting the faintest thread of smoke escape into the wind and dissipate before it could betray him.
Three men appeared at the crest of the hill. Shepherds, by the look of them. Rough wool cloaks hung from their shoulders, weather-worn and practical, crooks gripped in calloused hands. No armor. No lances. No polished steel raised with purpose. They had no need for weapons. And yet they carried them. Duncan had smelled the metals before he had seen them, faint but unmistakable beneath the scent of sheep and wind. Small daggers hung at their belts, simple tools meant for shearing wool or cutting rope. Not forged for war. Not meant for dragons. Still, steel was steel.
He remained pressed low to the earth, bronze hidden as best as bronze could be hidden against open land. Please turn back. The thought came as plea. He did not want blood on this new soil. Did not want to begin whatever this place would become with something he could not undo. The men were sun-darkened, their skin browned by long hours beneath the open sky. Young, but not boys, yet old enough for beards to grow along their jaws. Their hair was unruly and brown, not unlike his own in human form. Their eyes, too, were brown, intricately human. Brothers, Duncan thought, watching the way they moved in quiet understanding of one another. In another lifetime, perhaps they would have been the sort of men he might have spoken to. Shared bread with. Laughed beside. If he had ever been allowed such things.
He did not want to harm them. He did not want them to see him. He lay still, breath shallow, praying to gods he did not truly believe in that they would simply turn around.
One stepped forward cautiously, peering into the grass. Duncan did not move. His heart pounded heavily against his ribs, each beat echoing in his ears. He imagined they could hear it. Imagined the tremor in the ground might give him away. The nearest shepherd narrowed his eyes, scanning the slope where bronze lay pressed low among green, concealed for now. For one suspended, fragile second, their gazes nearly aligned. Duncan did not blink. Then the wind shifted. It rolled down from the cliffs and across his scales, lifting the warmth from his body and carrying it toward the men. The shepherd stiffened, and his nostrils flared once, subtly at first, then again, more sharply. Not fear, not yet. Confusion. Duncan knew what he was smelling. Something wrong, something that did not belong at all. Sun-warmed stone after rain. Heated iron. An impossibly faint thread of burnt resin clinging stubbornly to scale. And beneath it, something sharper—an ozone-like tang, clean and electric, like air struck by lightning.
It was subtle. But it did not belong here. And men, even simple shepherds, knew when something did not belong.
“What in the—”
Duncan rose but not to strike, just to intimidate. The grass parted around him as bronze scales lifted into view, catching the pale light. Wings unfurled halfway, not in aggression but in warning. He let them see him. Let them understand. Please, run, he thought. Run. Just run. The shepherd nearest him went pale, mirroring a corpse, stumbling backward so abruptly he nearly tripped over his own feet.
“Dragon,” he breathed, the word cracking apart.
Panic tore through them all at once—shouts, the raw cry of fear, hooves scrambling as one attempted to mount and failed in his haste. Duncan let out a low, resonant rumble, deep enough to vibrate the air without unleashing flame. He would not kill them, not unless he had to. The men fled. They ran downslope in wild disarray, abandoning crooks and nearly abandoning each other in their desperation. Within moments, the only sound left behind was the fading thunder of hooves and the frantic bleating of sheep.
Silence returned to the highlands.
Duncan stood there, wings still half-spread, chest rising and falling. He had been seen, and that meant he could not remain. He lifted his head toward the horizon, where the sea lay dark and distant—and for a fleeting, traitorous heartbeat, he thought of violet eyes and an outstretched hand again.
Then he crouched low, muscles gathering beneath bronze hide. And once more, he took to the sky, as he was born to do.
Aerion had never felt more acutely confined than he did within the embroidered walls of that royal tent. It was a prison fashioned not of iron bars but of silk and gold, guarded not by gaolers but by well-meaning incompetents and lesser men. He had given a direct order—one that had not been open to interpretation—that no word of the dragon was to leave the mouths of those who had seen it. And yet, inevitably, some witless, loose-tongued fool with more breath than sense had spoken. The word had escaped. It had spread.
Now his family knew.
He sat rigid within the royal tent, still pitched in the Rainwood, a plate of untouched food cooling before him. The candles flickered softly, casting warm light over silver goblets and rich fabrics, but the air felt anything but warm. Silence settled heavily across the gathering, stretched taut as wire. It was Daeron who broke it.
“So,” he hiccuped gracelessly, posture loose with drink, words softened by wine, and cheeks flushed in an unbecoming shade of red, “shall we address the elephant in the room?”
Aerion did not dignify him with a look. The scent of wine carried across the table, and he noted it with habitual distaste. But that his brother chose this moment to drink did not surprise him.
“A dragon,” Baelor muttered instead, almost contemplatively, rolling the word across his tongue as though reacquainting himself with a word half-forgotten, long exiled from use.
There had been little reason to speak it in recent years. Dragons belonged to stories told with lowered voices, to history and to mourning—something caught between myth and cautionary tale. They were relics of a more terrible and magnificent age. At Targaryen tables, it had been long since that word had held weight because there had been no need to speak of something lost. Something that had burned itself out with the Dance and left only memory behind.
Aerion’s gaze snapped to his youngest brother, cool and unblinking, sharp enough to wound. Aegon was young and unguarded; youth excused much. He did not yet understand the weight carried by certain truths, nor the way a single word could alter the balance of power in a kingdom. He lacked the discipline to measure consequence, the instinct to calculate silence. Aerion could not truly fault him for that. He spoke as boys did—without calculation. And yet irritation rose all the same, familiar and immediate.
There had been enough witnesses that he could not dismiss what he had seen as delusion or rumour. Too many eyes had beheld bronze against the sky. Too many ears had heard the roar. And a dragon changed everything.
House Targaryen still ruled. They remained formidable, their name respected, their authority enforced. But they were no longer what they had once been. No longer the unquestioned apex of the world’s hierarchy. Without dragons, they had become powerful men among other powerful men. Feared, yes—for steel, for punishment, for the machinery of rule—but not for fire descending from the heavens.
The old terror had faded. The old divinity had cooled. But he had felt living heat beneath his hand. He had looked into eyes that were not relic or legend, but present and aware.
No more, Aerion thought, his expression smoothing into something controlled and unreadable as his fingers curled subtly against the table’s edge. The age of ash may not be finished after all. Or at the very least—it was no longer singular.
Valarr,his insufferable cousin, who of course had seen fit to attend, cleared his throat with deliberate politeness.
“Perhaps,” he said carefully, fingers resting too neatly against his goblet, “since we are still dining, it would be more appropriate to… discuss the matter later.”
Aerion did not outwardly react, but something inside him recoiled. Discuss. A pleasant euphemism for the chaos that would erupt the moment they truly began to circle it.
The dragon. Aurax. The name surfaced instinctively, and with it, something tight and possessive flared beneath his ribs. His. It was not a thought he permitted to show on his face. Aegon, oblivious to the undercurrents gathering like storm clouds, continued chewing far too cheerfully beside Aemon. The latter remained silent, as he often did—composed, observant, withholding judgment. Aemon rarely spoke unless necessary, and for that, Aerion was momentarily grateful, but silence would not last. He knew precisely what would follow once the word was spoken without restraint. The moment the possibility of a living dragon ceased to be rumor and became fact, it would ignite something far less noble than awe.
Claims. Rights. Birth order. Fitness. Blood. Every branch of their family tree would suddenly remember its proximity to fire.
He could already imagine the argument—voices rising, composure dissolving, civility stripped away. They would not debate as princes. They would descend upon the idea like starved hounds upon fresh meat, snapping and tearing over the right to claim what none of them had touched. What none of them had felt. They had not stood in that cave, they had not looked into those eyes, they had not earned even the smallest step forward. A thin silence followed Valarr’s suggestion, stretched taut with calculation rather than courtesy. Baelor set down his goblet with quiet deliberation.
“Later,” Baelor echoed mildly, though there was nothing mild in the way his eyes flicked toward Aerion. “And when we do speak of it, I presume we shall do so with clarity.”
Aerion leaned back slightly in his chair, posture deceptively relaxed.
“Clarity,” he repeated, as though tasting the word. “You make it sound as though I have been unclear.”
Daeron snorted softly, though whether from wine or nerves was uncertain.
“Well,” he drawled, “you have not exactly elaborated.”
Aegon swallowed hastily.
“You said it was bronze,” he blurted. “With— with blue eyes.”
Aerion’s gaze sharpened. He had not mentioned the eyes to them. Maekar’s head tilted faintly, observant as ever.
“Blue?” he asked, calm and measured. “That is unusual.”
“It could not have been a hatchling,” Baelor added, folding his hands. “Not if multiple men saw it clearly. A creature large enough to be witnessed at distance would have survived for years. Hidden.”
His tone remained even. “That alone is… concerning.”
Concerning. The word landed heavier than Valarr’s polite deferral.
Valarr cleared his throat again. “If this is not rumor—if it is real—then it is a matter of inheritance. Of claim.”
There it was.
Aerion felt it before the others spoke it outright; the subtle shift in posture around the table. The straightening of spines. The narrowing of eyes. The silent arithmetic beginning behind polite expressions. Bloodlines being measured. Precedence being recalled.
Daeron’s flush deepened, though this time not from wine. “Claim? You speak as though it is already saddled.”
“If it exists,” Valarr replied coolly, “it will not remain wild for long.”
Aerion’s fingers curled slowly around the stem of his goblet.
“It is not a horse,” Aerion drawled, voice low but carrying.
“No,” Baelor agreed softly. “It is not.”
Aemon leaned forward. “Then who would ride it?”
The question fell into the center of the table like a thrown blade. No one answered immediately. Aerion felt it, the hunger sharpening, and with it, the ambition. They were already imagining it beneath them. Already seeing themselves astride bronze wings, fire at command, history bending back toward them. They had not seen fear in its posture. Had not felt the tremor beneath its breath. Had not understood that it was not waiting to be claimed.
Aurax, something in him repeated again, fierce and possessive. His. He set his goblet down.
“If,” Aerion said slowly, “there is a dragon, it is not a prize to be divided by committee. It is not an inheritance to be parceled out because one sits closer to the throne.”
Valarr’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Then what do you propose?”
Aerion held his stare.
“I propose,” he said evenly, “that the one who finds it again decides.”
Silence. Daeron let out a quiet whistle. Aegon’s eyes widened. Valarr’s expression cooled. Aemon, however, only studied Aerion more closely.
“And you are certain,” Valarr asked at last, calm and cutting, “that it would choose you?”
That, more than any mention of claim, struck something precise beneath Aerion’s ribs. He did not answer immediately. He remembered autumn-coloured scales beneath his hand. The way it had leaned; barely, but unmistakably. The way it had not struck.
“It did not burn me,” Aerion said at last.
The words were simple, but they were not nothing. Across the table, Baelor’s fingers tapped once against the wood. Valarr leaned back slightly.
“Then you had better hope it remembers that,” he said quietly.
Aerion’s expression did not change.
“The blood of the dragon has ever endured,” Maekar said at last, his gaze settling on his second son with a newfound, more deliberate scrutiny than before. “But it is the dragon that chooses. We may all ride out in search of it. We may all believe ourselves worthy. Yet in the end, the choice will not be ours to make.”
His expression hardened slightly, and he let the words rest in the air before continuing.
“We would do well to remember the cost of forgetting that. Our ancestors paid dearly for arrogance. Dragons are not trophies to be seized nor weapons to be fought over like spoils of war. They are precious. They are rare. They are the very foundation of what made us more than other men.”
His eyes moved across the table, lingering briefly on each of them.
“Let there not be a second fall born of human folly.”
Days had passed since that conversation, days that slowly bled into weeks of quiet preparation. Aerion had not been idle in that time. He read what could be found in dusty records and half-forgotten accounts, listened where others would have dismissed, and followed the smallest fragments of rumour as though they were threads leading somewhere important. Most of what he uncovered amounted to nothing—stories already told a hundred times, the bones of legends mistaken for fact. And yet he persisted. Then, eventually, whispers that did not come from lords or learned men but from the smallfolk reached him, a tale of shepherds in the hills who had claimed to see a dragon. Of course, no one believed them. The story had drifted from village to village as a source of amusement, repeated over cups of ale and greeted with laughter, taken in jest. A dragon in the hills? That was the sort of fantastical story men invented when they had drunk too much and seen shadows move in the wrong light. But Aerion believed it worth checking it out.
He had seen it once before. That was enough. If there was even the slightest chance that the creature still lingered somewhere in those lands, he intended to find it. He was not foolish enough to attempt the search openly. His movements were watched far more closely than most realized. Rivals within his own bloodline had already begun to sharpen their interest in the matter, and if word spread that he was pursuing the dragon, others would follow—cousins, knights, ambitious men eager to seize glory for themselves. Aurax would be hunted again, frightened into flight or worse. So Aerion did what necessity demanded. He went alone, and he went in disguise.
It was not something he had ever done before. Aerion had never walked the road without escort, never traveled without the protection of guards and the certainty that his name carried weight ahead of him. The thought of anonymity had once seemed almost absurd. Yet for Aurax, for his dragon, he would endure far worse. He still remembered the noise of the harbour on the morning he departed. The docks had been crowded with merchants and sailors, the air thick with salt and shouting. Wrapped in a plain cloak, hood drawn low to hide pale hair and violet eyes, he had moved among them without a second glance. No one had bowed. No one had recognized him. To the crew of the small vessel he boarded, he had been nothing more than another traveller paying coin for passage across the water.
The sea crossing had been uneventful, the horizon vast and indifferent. Now, as he stepped through the door of a modest roadside inn, he felt closer to the dragon than he had at any point since that first meeting. It might have been nothing more than imagination creeping into his thoughts, the product of too many weeks spent chasing rumours. And yet there was a strange, persistent certainty settling somewhere beneath his ribs, a quiet instinct that told him he had not come this far only to be disappointed. Perhaps it was madness creeping in, but he swore he could feel Aurax.
He had chosen a charming little inn. It was far cheaper than any lodging he would normally choose, but it appeared warm, candle-lit, clean enough and busy enough that no one would question the presence of another guest. The air was thick with the scent of stew and woodsmoke, and the low murmur of travelers filled the room with a comfortable kind of life. His eyes swept the room before settling on the counter at the far end. He made his way toward it and dropped a small pouch of coins onto the wood with a soft but decisive clink. As he did so, Aerion drew the hood of his cloak a little deeper over his brow. Thus far he had managed to keep the pale silver of his hair and the unmistakable violet of his eyes concealed from curious glances. And he had no intention of allowing something so careless to cost him his dragon.
“I require a room.” Aerion delivered the words with practiced indifference, the tone neutral and faintly bored. Even so, there was a kind of effortless grace in the way he carried himself, the sort that could not easily be disguised by a simple cloak.
The young woman behind the counter looked up from her ledger with the mild disinterest of someone who had spent the evening serving travelers. Yet when her eyes lifted fully to him, even with his face half-hidden beneath the shadow of his hood, something in her expression shifted. She blinked once, then quickly looked down again, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks as though she had noticed more of his features than he had intended to reveal. From the adjoining room that served as the inn’s dining hall came the loud, uneven laughter of men well into their cups. A group of broad-shouldered fellows crowded one of the long tables, their voices carrying easily across the room. Tankards thudded against wood as they drank, the scent of ale and sweat drifting through the air.
“Aye,” the girl said after a moment, her voice brightening as she tucked a loose strand of black hair behind her ear in a gesture that might have been shy or practiced. “And how long will you be staying, ser?”
Aerion allowed his gaze to wander past her shoulder, as though the answer required little thought. In truth, his attention had already shifted toward the men in the dining room. They were large, sun-darkened, and solidly built, their hands thick with calluses that spoke of long hours spent in fields rather than on roads. Farmers, most likely.
“Some time,” he replied at last, “I cannot yet say how long. I will pay by the night.”
The girl nodded and reached beneath the counter, retrieving a small iron key attached to a wooden tag. As she set it on the counter, her eyes flicked toward the noisy table as well, following the direction of Aerion’s gaze.
“Ah,” she said with a small, amused smile. “That’ll be Henry and his friends. He’s a farmer down the road a ways. They’ve had a bit too much to drink tonight.”
One of the men in question burst into wheezing laughter, nearly sloshing his ale over the table as the others joined in.
“They’re setting out tomorrow,” the girl continued lightly, clearly entertained by the whole affair. “Off on some grand adventure, or so they claim. A right foolish one if you ask me.”
Aerion’s fingers stilled where they rested on the counter.
“Oh?” he said casually.
She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice as though sharing a harmless piece of gossip. “They say they’re going to hunt a dragon.”
She laughed softly at the absurdity of it and nudged the key a little closer to him. Aerion did not laugh. His gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly.
“A dragon?” he repeated.
The girl gave a small, bashful laugh, tucking another loose strand of hair behind her ear as she did so.
“It’s just a silly tale,” she said. “Some shepherds claimed they’d seen a dragon out in the hills, but no one else has seen anything of the sort. No one believes it, of course. But Henry and his friends have turned it into a bit of a drinking game.”
Aerion tilted his head slightly, the movement subtle but attentive.
“Which shepherds?” he asked, his voice still even. “And where did they claim to have seen it?”
The girl faltered beneath the sudden focus of his attention. The color in her cheeks deepened, and for a moment she seemed unsure where to look.
“I—I’m not entirely certain,” she admitted, stumbling over the words as she tried to recall. “Somewhere out on the grazing lands, I think. That’s where most of the sheep are herded. But truly, it’s nothing serious. Just stories people tell.”
Aerion gave a soft, thoughtful hum, his gaze drifting once more toward the loud table where the farmers were still laughing over their ale.
“I’m sure it is,” he said. He reached for the key she had placed on the counter and turned slightly, preparing to leave. But before he could take more than a step away, the girl spoke again, her voice quick with the eagerness of someone reluctant to let an interesting guest slip away.
“It’s funny, though,” she said with a light, almost conspiratorial laugh. “Just four days ago another man came in asking about dragons as well.”
Aerion paused. He turned his head just enough to glance back at her, his expression carefully neutral.
“Is that so?”
The girl nodded eagerly, encouraged by his attention.
“Yes. Brown hair, blue eyes. Very tall—taller than most men who pass through here, though a bit too tall for my taste,” she added with a playful smile. “Still, he seemed kind enough. Paid generously for his room, too.”
Her eyes lingered on Aerion as she finished the thought, her smile softening. “You, of course… are the perfect height.”
The compliment came with another shy flush, her expression bright with youthful admiration. Aerion showed no sign of noticing. Instead he stepped back toward the counter, his interest sharpening behind the calm mask of his face.
“Who was this man?”
“Er, I don’t… exactly recall,” the girl said, startled by the sudden intensity of his interest. For a moment she searched her memory helplessly, her brow furrowing as though the name might return if she simply reached far enough for it. Then, catching the subtle shift in Aerion’s posture—the faint withdrawal of attention that suggested he might simply walk away—she hurried to add, “Oh! But I think it was something with a D. Dennis, perhaps? Or—no… no, that wasn’t it.”
Her eyes brightened with recognition.
“Dunk,” she said at last. “Yes, that was it. He called himself Dunk.”
Aerion regarded her steadily.
“And where is he now?” he asked. “Is he still staying here?”
The girl shrugged lightly, though she seemed pleased to have something useful to offer.
“I think he left that morning,” she replied. “He mentioned wanting to rest for a day or so before moving on. Said he needed to gather his strength before heading north.”
Aerion gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment and turned toward the narrow stairway that led to the upper floor.
“Wait,” the girl called after him quickly. “Would you perhaps like to stay for a drink? I could—”
“No,” Aerion replied without turning back. His tone was calm but final. “See that the water is warm. I will be drawing a bath.”
A deeper exhaustion had settled into his bones than he was accustomed to feeling. The water in the wooden tub was warm, acceptably so by common standards, but far from the temperature he preferred. Aerion had always favoured his baths nearly scalding, hot enough to drive the chill from muscle and marrow alike. This, by comparison, felt almost lukewarm. Washing himself in such conditions felt less like indulgence and more like inconvenience. When this business was finished, he decided, he would abandon the pretense of living like a common traveler and have a proper bath prepared. One drawn properly hot, perfumed with lavender and the crushed leaves he favored. Something worthy of comfort rather than necessity. His thoughts drifted, as they inevitably did, to Aurax. A strange note of pity tugged unexpectedly at his chest. The dragon had likely never known any finery at all. No carved halls to rest in, no silken cushions or sheltered chambers. No steaming baths, no rich meats served fresh and carefully prepared. Aerion leaned deeper into the water, letting the warmth coil around his shoulders as the thought settled.
That would change. He would see to it personally. Aurax would have the finest cuts of meat, perhaps exotic fare from Dorne, something rare enough to tempt even a dragon’s appetite. Perhaps the creature’s tastes could be refined, or perhaps he would simply learn what pleased him and provide it in abundance. And of course there would be a saddle, crafted by the best hands in the realm, something worthy of bronze wings. He sank slightly lower into the bath, allowing himself a brief moment of quiet satisfaction. Then his ears caught a faint sound, so soft most men would have missed it entirely. The subtle scrape of metal shifting against metal. The doorknob. Aerion stilled instantly. Water lapped quietly against the sides of the tub as he rose without a sound. His eyes fixed on the door as the faint scratching continued, someone testing the latch with careful hands. Silently, he stepped from the bath and wrapped himself in a length of cloth, movements swift and practiced. One hand closed around the dagger resting on the nearby table.
A thief? Perhaps. Or an assassin sent by some opportunistic enemy of the Crown.
Or—
Aerion tilted his head slightly, considering a different possibility. A relative. He moved to the wall beside the door and pressed himself flat against it, positioning himself so that when the door opened, the intruder would step past him. The latch turned, and the door creaked inward. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then someone stepped into the room. Judging by the weight of the footsteps—the soft creak of wood beneath them—whoever it was could not have been particularly large. Light. Manageable. Easy.
Aerion moved. He slammed the door violently into the intruder’s back before the person had fully crossed the threshold. A startled curse burst from their mouth as they stumbled forward and crashed to the floor. Aerion drove the door into them again for good measure before stepping around it, dagger already raised and ready to strike, ready to kill—
“Aegon?”
The name left him before he could stop it. Aerion stared down in disbelief at the figure writhing on the floor. His younger brother lay sprawled across the boards, groaning and clutching his side. His younger brother—now bald, apparently, of all things.
Aerion regarded the sight with thinly veiled distaste.
“What in the name of the Seven have you done to your hair?” he asked, one brow arching faintly.
Aegon pushed himself upright and glared at him.
“That’s what you choose to ask?” he snapped. “Not why I’m here?”
Aerion exhaled slowly and slid the dagger back into its sheath. The tension drained from his shoulders now that the intruder had revealed himself to be nothing more dangerous than his younger brother.
“I presume you followed me,” he drawled at last.
“You presume right,” Aegon replied with stubborn satisfaction as he pushed himself to his feet, brushing imaginary dust from his cloak as though the indignity of being thrown to the floor had never happened. Aerion studied him with open disapproval, head tilting slightly.
“In a remarkably poor disguise, I might add,” Aerion commented dryly. “Why shave your hair off?”
“So I wouldn’t look like you, brother,” Aegon huffed, rolling his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. “It seemed like the sensible choice.”
His gaze sharpened with sudden curiosity. “Well? Have you found it?”
Aerion’s expression tightened immediately. Without answering, he seized Aegon by the sleeve and pulled him fully into the room before stepping swiftly to the door. He cracked it open just enough to glance out into the dim corridor, his eyes moving left, then right, searching for any sign of movement. After a moment he pulled the door shut again with deliberate care.
“Mind your tongue, boy,” he hissed inaudibly as the latch settled into place. “These are matters best not spoken aloud in places like this.”
Aegon scratched idly at his newly shaven scalp and folded his arms across his chest.
“Sorry,” he said with a casual shrug that carried no hint of actual remorse. Then he lifted his gaze again.
“Well?” he pressed. “Did you?”
You cannot have followed me with much diligence if you cannot even answer that,” Aerion remarked critically as he watched his brother collapse onto the bed.
Aegon’s lips formed a silent oh the moment his weight met the mattress. Like Aerion, he was accustomed to softer accommodations. That bed was decidedly not among them.
“Forgive me, brother,” Aegon replied, lifting his chin with theatrical dignity and a touch of self-satisfaction, “but if memory serves, you did not appear to notice me following you either.”
He puffed out his chest slightly as he said it, clearly expecting some measure of admiration.
“Well, I was not expecting to encounter a bald child,” Aerion scoffed dryly, stepping around the bed to set his daggers carefully on the small table beside the candle.
Behind him, Aegon stretched himself across the mattress and began sweeping his arms back and forth as though he were lying in fresh snow.
“Do remove your boots from the sheets,” Aerion added sharply. “and do explain how you convinced Father to let you leave.”
Aegon froze mid-motion before sitting upright.
“Well…” he began slowly, his voice suddenly losing some of its confidence as his gaze drifted about the room in search of anything interesting enough to study. “Father was rather… resolute about it. Said it was time I learned to comport myself as a man. Yes. That was his reasoning.”
He nodded enthusiastically, clearly pleased with the explanation. Aerion did not believe a word of it.
“You left without permission, then?” Aerion asked incredulously, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Seven preserve me.”
“It was hardly dangerous,” Aegon protested quickly. “No one followed me, and no one recognized me. I made quite certain of that.”
“You had better,” Aerion muttered, before letting out a weary sigh. “Now get some rest. I intend to go out early tomorrow. You will remain here.”
Aegon straightened at once, indignation flashing across his face.
“No. Absolutely not! I did not travel all this way just to sit in your room and do nothing. I want to see the dragon!”
“It is too dangerous,” Aerion replied dismissively, already turning back toward the washroom as he ran a hand through his damp hair. “Besides, you were never meant to be here in the first place. I imagine Father will have quite a bit to say when he hears of it.”
Aegon’s expression darkened into a sulk. Aerion glanced back at him briefly, studying him for a moment before sighing again.
“I am not saying this to be unkind, Aegon,” he muttered more quietly. “But Aurax is… shy, in his way. Hard as that may be to believe. He would not take kindly to a crowd.”
Aegon frowned at that.
“A dragon,” he repeated slowly, as though testing the logic of it aloud, “and you are telling me it is shy.”
Aerion dried his hands with deliberate calm before setting the cloth aside.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“That is ridiculous.”
“It is accurate.”
Aegon paced a few steps across the room, agitation stirring in the restless movements of his hands.
“Dragons are meant to be fearsome,” he insisted. “Terrible creatures that burn armies and shatter castles. That is what the histories say.”
“The histories,” Aerion responded frostily, “were written by men who rarely stood close enough to see the truth of them.”
He crossed the room and leaned one shoulder lightly against the table, arms folding.
“He was not hunting,” Aerion continued after a moment. “He was hiding.”
Aegon stilled.
“For how long?” he asked quietly.
Aerion did not answer immediately. His gaze drifted toward the candle flame, watching the light tremble against the wall.
“Long enough to learn that men bring spears,” he said at last.
Aegon shifted his weight uneasily. “And you still think he will let you near him again?”
Aerion’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened. “He already did.”
“That does not mean he will again.”
“No,” Aerion agreed calmly. “I suppose it does not.”
Aegon studied him for a moment, then let out a breath through his nose. “You are going to try anyway.”
Aerion did not bother denying it.
“You always were stubborn,” Aegon muttered, dropping back onto the bed with a quiet thud.
“Determined,” Aerion corrected.
“Obsessed,” Aegon said. Aerion allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile. Perhaps.
The candle burned lower as the room settled into quiet. Outside, the distant murmur of voices drifted up from the inn’s lower floor—laughter, tankards clinking, the ordinary sounds of travelers at rest. Aegon shifted again, propping himself on one elbow.
“So,” he broke the silence after a moment, “if you truly expect me to remain here tomorrow, at least tell me what exactly you are planning to do?”
Aerion glanced toward the shuttered window.
“Listen,” he answered.
“To what?”
“The hills,” Aerion hummed softly. “They have been speaking about him for weeks.”
Aegon frowned again. “I heard nothing.”
Aerion’s gaze remained fixed on the dark beyond the glass.
“That,” he said quietly, “is because you are listening for the wrong things.”
The day had not yet filled with light when Aerion left the inn. The room he and Aegon had shared had been small and ill-suited for two men, the mattress narrow and the blankets thin, but they had slept there together nonetheless, shoulders pressed close simply to keep the warmth between them. Even with the small fire crackling in the hearth, the cold had lingered stubbornly in the air. For a brief moment in the night, the closeness had reminded Aerion of when they had been children, of winters long past. Simpler days. Kinder memories. Aegon had still been asleep when Aerion slipped out. The boy had been snoring softly, heavy with the deep, untroubled sleep of someone exhausted beyond care. Outside, the town had only just begun to stir. The market square was quiet, the early morning still clinging to the streets. A few merchants had begun setting out their wares, lifting crates and unfolding cloth with slow, deliberate movements, but only a handful were present. It suited Aerion well enough. The fewer eyes that saw him leaving, the better.
The walk toward the grazing lands proved longer and more demanding than he had expected. The hills stretched outward in gentle slopes that gradually steepened, forcing him to climb higher and higher until the town below had shrunk to something small and distant. When he finally paused near the crest of one of the hills, he looked back. From that height the little city seemed no larger than his own thumb, a scatter of rooftops and narrow streets barely visible through the morning haze. The fields below were slowly brightening in the thin grey light of dawn. He could see cattle moving sluggishly through the damp grass, their thick, curly coats darkened with dew. Sheep dotted the hills in loose clusters, lambs pressed close beside their mothers.
There were no men yet. He supposed it was still early even for the smallfolk.
So far there had been no sign of Aurax. No scorched earth, no disturbed ground large enough to betray the passage of something so vast. And yet the higher he climbed, the stronger the quiet certainty grew within him that he was moving in the right direction. The air was heavy with fog and morning dew, damp enough to cling to his cloak and seep slowly into the leather of his boots. They were well-made, but not meant for such long wandering over uneven ground, and he could feel the strain beginning to settle into his legs. Aerion exhaled slowly and watched the breath leave him in pale spirals that curled into the cold morning air. At first the vapor gathered thickly before his lips, a soft cloud that billowed outward as though reluctant to part from him. Then it began to twist and thin, stretching itself into fragile strands that drifted upward on the faintest movement of wind. For a moment the little ribbons of white seemed almost alive, climbing higher and higher into the grey-blue light of dawn, unraveling as they went. The shapes lost their edges, broke apart, and scattered until nothing remained but faint wisps dissolving into the damp air, until even those vanished entirely, leaving only the cold stillness of the morning behind.
He allowed himself to linger for another moment. The hills stretched wide and silent beneath him, the early light of morning slowly bleeding across the land. For a fleeting instant, the world felt vast and almost impossibly calm. Aerion pushed his hood back and let the wind touch his hair, pale strands lifting and shifting softly in the cool air. From this height the countryside seemed small and manageable, the town below little more than a cluster of shapes swallowed by mist. It stirred in him a strange, swelling sensation; something close to triumph, or perhaps something grander. The sort of feeling that came from standing above the world and knowing it had not yet beaten you.
“Oi, lad!”
The voice cut sharply through the quiet morning air—rough, coarse, thick with the unmistakable accent of the lowborn. His hand moved before the thought had fully formed. The hood came up again, shadows swallowing the pale silver of his hair, and he turned slowly toward the sound.
A group of men stood on the narrow path behind him. Five at first glance—no, six. One of them stepped forward from where he had been lingering slightly behind the others, half-hidden by the curve of the hill. They looked exactly like the sort of men one hoped not to meet in a place like this. Dirty. Hard-faced. Their clothes were travel-stained and worn, the sort that had seen more road than hearth. Not shepherds, not farmers. Or if they were, they had long since abandoned honest work, judging by the way they stood, loose in the way of men accustomed to violence rather than honest labour and yet watchful, suggesting something else entirely: thugs. Aerion felt the faint tightening of instinct coil through him. His hand rested casually on the dagger at his hip, fingers curling lightly around the hilt. He had not brought a sword. He had chosen subtlety instead of spectacle, and for the first time since leaving the inn he regretted the decision. Still, Aerion did not fear them. Fear had never sat comfortably in him.
There was something in the blood of House Targaryen that did not yield easily to such reflexes—something older and more dangerous that ran beneath the skin. It was the same inheritance that had once driven their ancestors to conquer kingdoms, command fire and ride creatures that turned battlefields into charred bone and ash. That same restless current lingered still in some of their descendants, a darker impulse that stirred at the thought of conflict.
A hunger. A taste for flame and war. Not every Targaryen carried it; most Targaryens carried only echoes of it. In some it burned brighter. And in a rare few, it took root entirely. It was a predatory awareness buried deep in the marrow of Aerion’s bones—a terrible instinct that was not learned in training yards or taught by masters-at-arms, no, it was born. And when it woke fully, it turned men like Aerion into something devastating and inevitable on a battlefield. Where Daeron blundered through combat with more noise than precision and Aegon relied on the reckless enthusiasm of someone who had yet to truly understand what steel could do to flesh rather than skill, Aerion had always moved through battle with an intuition that bordered on unnatural. It was an instinct that rose the moment violence stirred—a brutal, unerring clarity that mapped movement and consequence faster than thought could follow. Distance, timing, weakness, the angle of a blade, the way a man’s weight shifted just before he struck—Aerion understood it all with a plain, effortless certainty. To him, battle was not chaos but pattern. And once he saw it, the end of a fight was rarely in doubt.
He tilted his head slightly, studying them with a calm that was almost curious. “Gentlemen.”
The first man stepped forward with the careless swagger of someone who mistook brashness for authority. Aerion dismissed him immediately. Not the leader.
The loud ones rarely were. They were the sparks—the men who started trouble because they did not know how to measure it. The real decision was always made elsewhere in the group, by someone quieter, someone watching. Aerion’s gaze moved past him, sweeping the others. He would need to find the one who held the weight of the pack if he meant to avoid turning this hillside into a mess of blood and bone. Much as the impulse sometimes stirred in him—that restless urge to remind men what real violence looked like—it would draw attention he did not need.
“What’s your business here, eh, lad?” the swaggering one demanded.
“I mean no trouble,” Aerion replied, the words delivered in a low drawl that carried a strange mixture of courtesy and warning. His tone was smooth, almost polite, but there was a sharpened edge beneath it that made the air between them feel suddenly colder.
The men looked him over more carefully now. Aerion saw the moment their attention settled on his clothes. He had made a deliberate effort to dress plainly, but plain by his standards still meant well-made by theirs. The cut of the fabric, the quality of the stitching, the weight of the cloak—none of it belonged to a common traveler. At best he might pass for the son of a minor lord, the sort of young noble foolish enough to wander too far from safe roads.
“We don’t want trouble either,” another man said, stepping forward with a calmer voice. “But we’ve got families to feed, you see.”
Aerion’s eyes shifted to him at once. Tall. Lean in the way of a man who had spent a lifetime working with his body rather than sitting behind a table. His hair had gone grey at the temples, though his frame remained strong and wiry. The lines in his face were not those of softness, but of weather and long years outdoors. His eyes were the thing that gave him away, a pair of measuring things. The eyes of a hawk. Leader.
“Now,” the grey-haired man continued evenly, “you look like a decent lad. Young, perhaps a little foolish, but we’ve no interest in hurting you.”
His tone remained calm, but there was steel beneath it.
“Still,” he added, spreading his hands slightly, “necessities being what they are… I’ll make you a simple offer. Hand over your valuables, and you may go on your way unharmed.”
“I do not carry my valuables on me,” Aerion replied smoothly.
The man tilted his head slightly, studying him.
“Don’t mistake calmness for mercy,” he said. “Anyone with eyes can see you’ve got coin. And that coat of yours would fetch a fair price besides.”
A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “We’d rather take them without trouble. But if it comes to it… we’re not opposed to a bit of action.”
His gaze sharpened. “You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”
For a moment Aerion said nothing, his gaze drifting slowly across the rest of the men as though considering the offer with genuine thought. In truth, he was estimating. The loud one was closest, heavy on his heels and too eager, the kind who would swing first and think after. Another stood just behind him, broader but slower, fingers wrapped around a cudgel with the casual familiarity of someone who relied more on brute force than precision. Two more lingered further back, uncertain, their weight shifting in small restless movements that betrayed nerves rather than confidence. And then there was the leader. The grey-haired man watched him without blinking, hawk-eyed and patient. That one would not rush. That one would wait for the moment that promised the cleanest end.
Aerion took all of it in. Distance between them. The slope of the hill beneath their feet. The dampness of the grass that might betray a careless step. The reach of the dagger at his own hip. The time it would take the nearest man to close the space. It unfolded in his mind with artful simplicity, like pieces sliding into place on a board already halfway through the game.
Six men. One of them dangerous. Two capable. The rest noise.
Aerion weighed the possibilities for the briefest moment. He could give them the coin and be done with it, and walk away… but the thought lasted only a heartbeat before something darker stirred beneath it. The fire in his blood did not favour retreat. It stirred now, restless and lucid, that ancient, eerie inheritance that had followed his line through centuries of conquest and ruin. It whispered of broken bones and spilled blood, of the sharp, intoxicating order that violence imposed upon chaos. And besides, he needed his coin. Aerion made his decision the way he always did: in an instant. Before hesitation could weaken it.
“I do, actually,” Aerion said.
The smile that spread across his face was sharp and wolfish, something bright and unsettling flashing briefly in his eyes—a glimmer of wild delight that belonged less to a prince than to something feral. He licked his lips almost absently as he drew both daggers in one smooth motion, steel catching the weak morning light as he shifted into a loose, balanced stance.
“Come on, then.”
One of the men behind the grey-haired leader shifted uneasily. He was younger than the others, noticeably so. His beard was still thin along the jaw, his grip on the sword uncertain. Aerion marked him immediately for what he was.
Inexperienced. An easy target.
“Gaven,” the young man murmured, voice tight with unease, “I don’t know about this. Look at him. That’s no traveler—that’s a nobleman for sure. Won’t we get into trouble for this?”
The grey-haired man silenced him with nothing more than a glance.
“Ain’t your sister sick?” Gaven said calmly. “How do you mean to pay for her medicine, lad? Or do you intend to sit around while the highborn feast in their stone halls and the rest of us rot?”
The words landed hard. The boy straightened almost immediately, shame flashing across his face.
“N-no, Gaven.”
Gaven tilted his head slightly, studying him with something that resembled amusement. “Well then. Why don’t you earn it? Go on. Finish him off, Andrik.”
Andrik hesitated. His gaze flicked toward Aerion, then back to Gaven, torn between fear and duty. But the hesitation lasted only a moment before he stepped forward, drawing his sword from its sheath.
“As you wish.”
Aerion watched him approach with faint, almost bored interest.
Slow.
The thought came instantly, accompanied by a flicker of quiet disdain. The tutors Aerion had trained under as a boy would have cut this man apart before he had taken three steps across the ground.
Andrik lunged. Aerion slipped aside easily, the movement effortless. Left-handed. The boy’s blade came from that direction first, clumsy but forceful. Yet the rest of his body betrayed something odd. His weight favored the right side, his balance subtly uneven, the stance just slightly misaligned with the hand he chose to lead with.
Aerion tilted his head. Interesting. There were only a handful of reasons a fighter moved like that. Injury, perhaps. A healed fracture that had set poorly. A shoulder that had once been dislocated and never quite regained its strength. Or simply poor training—a boy who had tried to teach himself by copying movements he did not fully understand.
Whatever the reason, the result was the same; it was a weakness, and Aerion saw weaknesses the way hawks saw field mice. Andrik swung again, this time faster, frustration creeping into the motion. The blade whistled through the damp morning air, cutting toward Aerion’s ribs with more force than control. Aerion stepped aside with almost insulting ease. Steel passed through empty space. The boy overextended slightly, weight pitching forward for the briefest instant. There. Aerion moved. One dagger flashed upward, the flat of the blade striking Andrik’s wrist with a sharp crack. The sword slipped from the boy’s grip instantly, clattering into the grass. Before Andrik could recover, Aerion stepped in close, too close, and his second dagger pressed lightly against the hollow of the boy’s throat.
The entire exchange had taken less than three seconds. The other men froze. Andrik’s breath came quick and shallow, his chest rising and falling against the point of Aerion’s blade. A thin line of blood had already begun to bead where the steel kissed his skin. Aerion regarded him calmly. Up close, the boy looked even younger. Fear had completely replaced whatever bravado he had carried moments before.
Aerion’s gaze lifted slowly to the others.
“Well,” he hummed mildly, “that was disappointing.”
The men shifted uneasily. Gaven’s hawk-like eyes had narrowed now, studying Aerion with a new sort of attention. Aerion felt the fire in his blood stir again; that dark, restless thing that had been quiet for far too long.
He leaned slightly closer to Andrik, voice dropping to something soft and almost conversational.
“You should have listened to that instinct of yours,” he murmured. “It was trying to keep you alive.”
The boy swallowed. Aerion held Gaven’s gaze as he moved the blade and slit his throat. The cut was swift and precise; a clean draw of steel across soft flesh. No hesitation. No flourish. For the briefest fraction of a moment something stirred at the edges of his mind. A faint, irritating flicker of pity sparked by the boy’s youth, by the way his eyes had widened when he realized what was about to happen. It lasted less than a heartbeat. Aerion crushed it the way one crushed an insect. There was no room for that sort of weakness here.
Andrik’s breath left him in a wet, choking sound as the wound opened. Blood spilled instantly, dark and sudden, pouring between his fingers as he instinctively clutched at his throat. He tried to speak—perhaps to beg, perhaps to curse—but only a gurgling rasp came out, thick with blood. The sound was ugly. Aerion stepped back as the boy collapsed to his knees, choking on the life leaving his body. For a moment the other men did nothing. They stared as though stunned, their minds slow to catch up with the reality unfolding in front of them. It was the look of men who had spent years threatening violence without ever truly believing it would find them in return. As if death were something that happened to other people. Not them.
But Gaven did not look shocked. Gaven was watching him. The older man’s eyes remained fixed on Aerion with an intensity that had nothing to do with fear, rather the quiet recognition of one predator noticing another standing across the field. Then, one of the younger men found his voice.
“No!” he shouted croakily, stumbling forward. “Andrik!”
His grief twisted quickly into rage as his gaze snapped toward Aerion.
“You bastard—”
The man’s grief snapped into motion. He lunged at Aerion with a hoarse shout, blade raised high and the others followed immediately, rage and panic driving them forward all at once. All but Gaven. The grey-haired man did not move. He remained where he stood, watching. Aerion barely spared him a glance. Four men? He had faced worse. The first attacker came fast but clumsy, swinging wide with the kind of strength that came from anger rather than control. Aerion stepped aside with easy accuracy, letting the blade pass harmlessly through empty air as though he had known its path long before it moved. His own dagger flashed. A quick thrust downward. The steel slid neatly into the second man’s thigh. The man screamed as his leg gave out beneath him, collapsing into the damp grass with a strangled cry. Aerion turned already, the next movement unfolding before the previous one had even finished.
Then something else reached his ears. A sound. At first it was faint beneath the noise of shouting and steel—a deep, rhythmic flutter cutting through the cold morning air.
Leather striking wind.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Aerion froze.
His heart lurched violently in his chest. He knew that sound. He had heard it once before; burned into his memory so deeply that it had haunted his sleep ever since the creature had vanished into the clouds. Night after night he had heard it again in dreams: that heavy, powerful beating of wings slicing through the sky. That sound… His hood slipped back as he looked up. And for a moment he thought he had slipped back into dreaming.
Because there, against the pale stretch of morning sky, a vast shape moved. Copper and bronze caught the growing light as enormous wings beat steadily against the air, each movement sending ripples through the mist that clung to the hills.
Aurax.
The creature hovered above the slope, circling once before slowing, great wings spreading wide as he held himself in the air. The bronze of his scales burned softly in the dawn, the edges of them catching pale gold where the light struck. Magnificent.
Time seemed to slow.
“Aurax,” Aerion breathed.
The dragon tilted his head. The motion was small, almost curious, but something in it felt unmistakably deliberate. Recognition flickered in those brilliant blue eyes as they fixed on the figure below.
Did he remember him? He had to remember. Aerion felt a frantic hope surge through him, bright and desperate. The fight, the men, the danger… All of it vanished from his mind in an instant. There was nothing left in the world but those wings beating against the sky. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He raised his hands toward the dragon as though he could somehow reach him from where he stood. Aurax remained suspended above the hill, wings moving slowly now, holding himself against the wind as he watched.
description box; aerion was born with a twin sister, whom he sees not only as his other half, but also stakes absolute claim and control upon. you, the most gentle and sweet out of your lot of siblings, are helplessly under his thumb.
warning; heavy nsfw warning, porn with a bit of plot, i think aerion targaryen is his own warning, smut under the cut!, the usual targcest, reader is a bit of a bimbo / oblivious, i watched akotsk and loved aerion and now i cannot stop thinking abt him lol, i love my insane targaryens, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
it was a universally accepted and a widely acknowledged fact that whenever aerion chose to exert his privilege of being entertained, hundreds would suffer. but whatever terrible, cold-blooded, heartless atrocities were born out of aerion’s vicious sadism, you tended to mellow him. yin and yang, the two of you were. the calm, cool water to quench the fire of his hot-headed, irascible temper. it was something made you beloved by the servants; they appreciated you, your kindness, your gentleness.
aerion, ever easily jealous, hated this, of course. but it was of no great surprise: he generally disliked sharing you, would definitely lock you in his room if he could, so that only he may gaze upon your face and beauty. he had thought about it more often than not, but he had been torn between letting them all see your flourishing beauty, letting them all see that you were there but no one could have you, letting the whole world gape and gawk, knowing that nobody could see you in the ways he did. soft, unguarded and unclothed in his bed; naked as you were born into the world, and all the more magnificent. aerion had arrived to the conclusion that it was more torturous this way for the servants. he also imagined, despite your forgiving nature, you would be wroth with him if he did lock you in his chambers for eternity.
let’s be honest: aerion is not the type to wax poetic. he’s not the artist, the dreamer, the vulnerable type—that role has always belonged to daeron, sweet daeron. he won’t speak words of compliment while he peppers sweet kisses all over your face, in fact, he is not sweet at all. but he does worship you, in his own way. in the bedroom, he might take more than he gives, but with you, he’s different. with you, everything is different. sometimes, one or the other compliment will slip out of his tongue, usually when he’s buried himself inside of you, as he groans short but soft words of praise into your ear. drawls filthy, unholy but appreciative words of admiration and sin, bites and marks you as he takes you, like a man possessed.
he enjoys corrupting you. you might be his better half half, but the world would be wise to remember that you are still a targaryen, after all. and, as it is famously said and known, all targaryens have a streak of madness, an innate spark of something terrible and destructive that is passed down from generation to generation, inherited through blood. the heritage of fire and ash, as it always was. not all of you is pure—and aerion knows that, because of course he does: he knows you like he knows his own four walls, he knows you inside and out like the back of his hand and, perhaps, even better than you know yourself. and he knows that sometimes, all it takes is a little… push. he enjoys it immensely when you unleash your fury. it is so becoming on you, he thinks, the enraged flush on your cheeks, the sudden, inflamed flashes in your eyes, the way your fingers turn restless and pointed. it is a truly a sight to behold. no, aerion is not the type to wax poetic at all, but if he was, he would choose moments of you like these for his poetry.
is definitely the type to have a bit of a blood kink. aerion is, by nature, a rough kisser, and the first time he had drawn blood, it had been an accident. his teeth had caught a tiny bit of your lip, and metal and thick liquid had bled into your kiss before the two of you had noticed. for aerion, there is just something about it, something private and so very intimate in sharing blood and tasting it. sometimes, he wishes he could bury himself into you, deep into your soul, coat himself with your warmth and stay there forever. but as it is not possible, he supposed he’ll have to he satisfied in tasting you in the innermost, intrinsic way possible.
he can read your thoughts, and takes pleasure in knowing that he can and that nobody else can. it is not surprising, but aerion is possessive that way because of course he is. he takes pride in it!
this was requested a lot lol!! here you go, guys. i still have a few other thoughts on our favourite crazy blonde, though… is a part three wanted? xoxo
description box; aerion was born with a twin sister, whom he sees not only as his other half, but also stakes absolute claim and control upon. you, the most gentle and sweet out of your lot of siblings, are helplessly under his thumb.
warning; heavy nsfw warning, porn with a bit of plot, i think aerion targaryen is his own warning, smut under the cut!, the usual targcest, reader is a bit of a bimbo / oblivious, i watched akotsk and loved aerion and now i cannot stop thinking abt him lol, i love my insane targaryens, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
it was a universally accepted and a widely acknowledged fact that whenever aerion chose to exert his privilege of being entertained, hundreds would suffer. but whatever terrible, cold-blooded, heartless atrocities were born out of aerion’s vicious sadism, you tended to mellow him. yin and yang, the two of you were. the calm, cool water to quench the fire of his hot-headed, irascible temper. it was something made you beloved by the servants; they appreciated you, your kindness, your gentleness.
aerion, ever easily jealous, hated this, of course. but it was of no great surprise: he generally disliked sharing you, would definitely lock you in his room if he could, so that only he may gaze upon your face and beauty. he had thought about it more often than not, but he had been torn between letting them all see your flourishing beauty, letting them all see that you were there but no one could have you, letting the whole world gape and gawk, knowing that nobody could see you in the ways he did. soft, unguarded and unclothed in his bed; naked as you were born into the world, and all the more magnificent. aerion had arrived to the conclusion that it was more torturous this way for the servants. he also imagined, despite your forgiving nature, you would be wroth with him if he did lock you in his chambers for eternity.
let’s be honest: aerion is not the type to wax poetic. he’s not the artist, the dreamer, the vulnerable type—that role has always belonged to daeron, sweet daeron. he won’t speak words of compliment while he peppers sweet kisses all over your face, in fact, he is not sweet at all. but he does worship you, in his own way. in the bedroom, he might take more than he gives, but with you, he’s different. with you, everything is different. sometimes, one or the other compliment will slip out of his tongue, usually when he’s buried himself inside of you, as he groans short but soft words of praise into your ear. drawls filthy, unholy but appreciative words of admiration and sin, bites and marks you as he takes you, like a man possessed.
he enjoys corrupting you. you might be his better half half, but the world would be wise to remember that you are still a targaryen, after all. and, as it is famously said and known, all targaryens have a streak of madness, an innate spark of something terrible and destructive that is passed down from generation to generation, inherited through blood. the heritage of fire and ash, as it always was. not all of you is pure—and aerion knows that, because of course he does: he knows you like he knows his own four walls, he knows you inside and out like the back of his hand and, perhaps, even better than you know yourself. and he knows that sometimes, all it takes is a little… push. he enjoys it immensely when you unleash your fury. it is so becoming on you, he thinks, the enraged flush on your cheeks, the sudden, inflamed flashes in your eyes, the way your fingers turn restless and pointed. it is a truly a sight to behold. no, aerion is not the type to wax poetic at all, but if he was, he would choose moments of you like these for his poetry.
is definitely the type to have a bit of a blood kink. aerion is, by nature, a rough kisser, and the first time he had drawn blood, it had been an accident. his teeth had caught a tiny bit of your lip, and metal and thick liquid had bled into your kiss before the two of you had noticed. for aerion, there is just something about it, something private and so very intimate in sharing blood and tasting it. sometimes, he wishes he could bury himself into you, deep into your soul, coat himself with your warmth and stay there forever. but as it is not possible, he supposed he’ll have to he satisfied in tasting you in the innermost, intrinsic way possible.
he can read your thoughts, and takes pleasure in knowing that he can and that nobody else can. it is not surprising, but aerion is possessive that way because of course he is. he takes pride in it!
this was requested a lot lol!! here you go, guys. i still have a few other thoughts on our favourite crazy blonde, though… is a part three wanted? xoxo
description box; aerion was born with a twin sister, whom he sees not only as his other half, but also stakes absolute claim and control upon. you, the most gentle and sweet out of your lot of siblings, are helplessly under his thumb.
warning; heavy nsfw warning, porn with a bit of plot, i think aerion targaryen is his own warning, smut under the cut!, the usual targcest, reader is a bit of a bimbo / oblivious, i watched akotsk and loved aerion and now i cannot stop thinking abt him lol, i love my insane targaryens, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
it was a universally accepted and a widely acknowledged fact that whenever aerion chose to exert his privilege of being entertained, hundreds would suffer. but whatever terrible, cold-blooded, heartless atrocities were born out of aerion’s vicious sadism, you tended to mellow him. yin and yang, the two of you were. the calm, cool water to quench the fire of his hot-headed, irascible temper. it was something made you beloved by the servants; they appreciated you, your kindness, your gentleness.
aerion, ever easily jealous, hated this, of course. but it was of no great surprise: he generally disliked sharing you, would definitely lock you in his room if he could, so that only he may gaze upon your face and beauty. he had thought about it more often than not, but he had been torn between letting them all see your flourishing beauty, letting them all see that you were there but no one could have you, letting the whole world gape and gawk, knowing that nobody could see you in the ways he did. soft, unguarded and unclothed in his bed; naked as you were born into the world, and all the more magnificent. aerion had arrived to the conclusion that it was more torturous this way for the servants. he also imagined, despite your forgiving nature, you would be wroth with him if he did lock you in his chambers for eternity.
let’s be honest: aerion is not the type to wax poetic. he’s not the artist, the dreamer, the vulnerable type—that role has always belonged to daeron, sweet daeron. he won’t speak words of compliment while he peppers sweet kisses all over your face, in fact, he is not sweet at all. but he does worship you, in his own way. in the bedroom, he might take more than he gives, but with you, he’s different. with you, everything is different. sometimes, one or the other compliment will slip out of his tongue, usually when he’s buried himself inside of you, as he groans short but soft words of praise into your ear. drawls filthy, unholy but appreciative words of admiration and sin, bites and marks you as he takes you, like a man possessed.
he enjoys corrupting you. you might be his better half half, but the world would be wise to remember that you are still a targaryen, after all. and, as it is famously said and known, all targaryens have a streak of madness, an innate spark of something terrible and destructive that is passed down from generation to generation, inherited through blood. the heritage of fire and ash, as it always was. not all of you is pure—and aerion knows that, because of course he does: he knows you like he knows his own four walls, he knows you inside and out like the back of his hand and, perhaps, even better than you know yourself. and he knows that sometimes, all it takes is a little… push. he enjoys it immensely when you unleash your fury. it is so becoming on you, he thinks, the enraged flush on your cheeks, the sudden, inflamed flashes in your eyes, the way your fingers turn restless and pointed. it is a truly a sight to behold. no, aerion is not the type to wax poetic at all, but if he was, he would choose moments of you like these for his poetry.
is definitely the type to have a bit of a blood kink. aerion is, by nature, a rough kisser, and the first time he had drawn blood, it had been an accident. his teeth had caught a tiny bit of your lip, and metal and thick liquid had bled into your kiss before the two of you had noticed. for aerion, there is just something about it, something private and so very intimate in sharing blood and tasting it. sometimes, he wishes he could bury himself into you, deep into your soul, coat himself with your warmth and stay there forever. but as it is not possible, he supposed he’ll have to he satisfied in tasting you in the innermost, intrinsic way possible.
he can read your thoughts, and takes pleasure in knowing that he can and that nobody else can. it is not surprising, but aerion is possessive that way because of course he is. he takes pride in it!
→ part one
this was requested a lot lol!! here you go, guys. i still have a few other thoughts on our favourite crazy blonde, though… is a part three wanted? xoxo
Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
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It was a violent thing—skin splitting, bones grinding and reshaping, scale and flesh tearing apart only to fuse back together in another form. Duncan felt something inside him give way and readjust in the cruelest possible manner, as though his very structure were being rewritten. The pain was blinding, total. He screamed with a mouth he did not possess, the sound swallowed by stone and darkness. The world dissolved into heat and pressure and the copper taste of it all. Then, slowly, through sweat and exhaustion and the ringing in his skull, the fog began to lift.
He was on the cave floor. Cold air touched skin instead of scale. Sweat slicked his body, catching crumbs of dirt and crushed grass that clung to him as though the forest itself refused to release him. He lay there naked as he had been born, chest heaving, heart hammering against ribs that still felt too tight. Something cracked along his spine with a sharp, protesting snap.
And then—it stopped. Silence.
Duncan dragged in a shaky breath and looked down at himself. Pink flesh where scales had been. Fingers instead of claws, trembling and weak. Hair falling into his eyes where ridges had once run down his skull.
He swallowed, throat raw.
Duncan opened his mouth. “Fucking hell.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped thin… but human. Thank the Gods. A voice where there had once been only a maw made for fire and roar.
Duncan pushed himself upright, unnaturally weak as he always was after a transformation. His limbs felt borrowed, his balance uncertain. Standing on two legs had never felt instinctive to him; he could not remember a time when it had been the only way he had moved through the world. He knew, rationally, there had been such a time—knew he had not always been this creature split between shapes—but those memories were thin and scattered. Since he had been three-and-ten. Before that, there was little. He brushed dirt from his skin, staggering like a newborn fawn before remembering how to command his legs. His arms felt too small, too light, strangely incomplete without the counterweight of a tail. He stilled, jaw tight, bracing himself as he tried to find his balance.
When he felt steady enough, he took a step forward. And promptly face-planted into the dirt.
“Seven be damned,” he muttered into the earth, spitting out grit as he shoved himself upright again. This time his legs obeyed, and his arms followed suit, clumsy but cooperative.
He crossed the cave and pulled on the rags he had bought years ago, clothes that no longer fit properly. Even in human form, Duncan was unnaturally tall. His body had gone largely unused for weeks at a time, and the muscle he had once carried as a boy had thinned, but he remained strong in a way that felt inherent rather than earned. Coordination, however, was another matter entirely. He stepped out of the cave, human again for the first time in weeks, and closed his eyes against the wind. The shift in his senses struck him as it always did. As a dragon, the world had been sharp—painfully clear. He could see farther, distinguish subtler movements, smell layers of scent no human nose could detect. Now everything felt dulled. Colors seemed flatter, sounds muted, the air empty of nuance. The world felt smaller in this body. There were things he preferred about being human. But what he missed most was flight. The stretch of wings. The lift beneath him. The brief, reckless joy of leaving the ground. He had never dared long journeys, never climbed too high into the sky, though the urge had always been there. Instead, he had stayed close to earth.
Staying unnoticed. Staying alive. The thought carried the echo of Ser Arlan’s voice. The only man who knew. Had known. Duncan clenched his jaw and forced the memory aside. He would not let himself sink into grief on the first day he was human once more.
He hummed under his breath, savoring the sound of his own voice as though reacquainting himself with it, testing the shape of it in his throat, enjoying the roughness of it, and the simple fact that he had a voice again. Then he set off toward the sea, beginning his usual walk down the worn path, stumbling over roots more than once on the way down the narrow path, cursing softly when his toes caught against stone. He had never been the picture of grace, but after weeks of neglecting his human limbs, he moved with all the elegance of an overgrown colt. His stride was too long, his balance uncertain, his feet slow to remember the ground. Still, he made the journey every time. He liked to wash away the sweat and grit of the transformation, to scrub off the lingering scent of smoke and scale. He liked the cool bite of seawater against skin, the steady pull of tide and current. I reminded him that the world was larger than the cave. Duncan had made the Cinderwoods his home; a broad, slow-growing, unhurried forest that lay at the heart of a remote island far, far away from the mainland of Westeros. It was an island of no particular value, no trade routes, no villages, no reason for ships to anchor. So unknown and so insignificant that Duncan had never been certain it possessed a name at all.
He had given it one himself. Caerwyn Isle. He had named it after the warrior queen from the stories he remembered faintly from childhood, Caerwyn the Brave. Ser Arlan had told him those tales once, when nights were warmer and the world had still made sense. Duncan remembered little of those nights by the fire, little of the man’s face, but he remembered the stories, and his voice. In the back of his head, there was the faint, unsure knowledge that Ser Arlan had always had a story.
There was no one left to tell him stories now. No human soul lived on the island. It belonged to wind and trees and beasts. Even fishermen did not trouble themselves with its waters. Once, years ago, a small group of young men had lost their way and drifted ashore by accident. Duncan had hidden and watched them from the treeline, heart pounding as they laughed and argued and repaired their nets. After a few hours they had departed again, unaware they had been observed. They were the first humans he had seen in years. He had wanted—fiercely, desperately, painfully—to step out of the trees and speak. To sit in one of their small boats and be nothing more than a man among men. But caution had rooted itself too deeply in him. So he had watched. And watched them leave.
Hunting had never required him to venture to the mainland. The island provided. Fish were plentiful along the coast, and he had grown adept at catching them, quick and precise even without flame. Wild boars roamed Caerwyn Isle in abundance, and the Cinderwoods sheltered bears and deer, and hares moved through the underbrush of the forest. Though he was large for a dragon, he did not require much. Most of his days were spent sleeping or lying in the sun, soaking up warmth through the scales. He rarely ventured far across the island, always wary of being seen even in a place no one visited, though sometimes he allowed himself small indulgences. He would wade into the shallows in dragon form and let the surf curl around his legs, watching fish dart between his claws while gulls wheeled overhead, their shrill cries slicing through the air.
It was not a particularly beautiful sound. Harsh and grating, but company of a kind. After all, there was little else to listen to on Caerwyn Isle, and even less for a dragon to do.
Duncan sighed in quiet relief as he washed himself and his clothes, scrubbing fabric and skin alike before spreading the rags over warm stones to dry in the sun. Then he dove beneath the surface, pushing wet hair from his face as he rinsed away the last of the grime. It had grown longer than he preferred. He considered cutting it. He waded back through the shallows, toes curling into the sand—ah, the strange pleasure of having toes again!—and retrieved the small dagger he kept hidden among the rocks. Returning to the water’s edge, he crouched and studied his reflection in the rippling surface. Hazelnut-brown hair, entirely unremarkable. Mousy. Plain. Light, sky-blue eyes that seemed almost out of place in such an ordinary face. He wondered what other people might have thought if they had seen him like this. Would they have called it a kind face? Or would they have noticed only how tall he was? Perhaps he was not tall at all, he considered, perhaps men had grown broader and larger in the years since he had last walked among them. He had no measure for such things anymore.
He tilted his head slightly, studying his reflection again, then huffed softly and lifted the dagger, sawing through uneven lengths of hair and letting the strands drift into the sea. The sun was already lowering toward the horizon, staining the water in muted gold. He pondered what to eat. Perhaps berries. He could never be bothered with them in dragon form—they filled no space in a dragon’s belly—but he missed the sharp, sour-sweet burst of wild berries on his tongue.
He shook water from his shortened hair and dressed once more, feeling lighter without the crust of dirt and dust clinging to him. Then he made his way toward the brush, seeking out berry shrubs he knew by heart. The first cracking of bone would come soon enough; he knew the signs. He meant to make use of the time he had. Perhaps he would eat his fill and lie in the last of the sunlight, letting warmth soak into real flesh instead of scale.
When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, the pain returned as predictably as the tide. Here we go again, he thought dimly as it began—a sharp, rising agony that spread through muscle and marrow alike. It surged and twisted and rewrote him, as it always did. And when it was done, he would rise from the sand no longer a man but scaly and broad and strong, a dragon once more.
Prince Aerion Targaryen had better uses for his time than enduring royal hunting competitions.
He had said as much—repeatedly, and without subtlety. He had made certain his father heard of his boredom, his disdain, his utter lack of interest in chasing frightened beasts for sport. The complaints had gone unanswered, dismissed with the same patient indifference reserved for childish sulking. And so he had been required to attend regardless.
Now he sat in the carriage with his arms folded tightly across his chest in open protest, jaw ticking faintly as he stared out the window. His glare could have split stone, though at present it was directed at nothing more offensive than passing trees. Even so, he managed to look infuriatingly composed while doing it. Across from him, Aegon was the very opposite of composed. The younger prince could scarcely contain his excitement, shifting in his seat every few moments as though the carriage might explode from the force of his enthusiasm.
“Will you cease with your quacking?” Aerion muttered at last, dragging his glare from the window to his brother. For a fleeting second, he considered kicking Aegon’s shins.
Aegon let out an offended squeak, outrage already forming on his tongue.
“Leave him be,” Daeron said lazily from beside Aegon, stretching his legs into the space near Aerion’s boots. He yawned without restraint. “It’s his first royal competition. Don’t you remember being excited when you were little?”
Aerion wrinkled his nose as though the suggestion offended him personally. “I do not recall such things.”
Daeron rolled his eyes and leaned toward Aegon conspiratorially. “Liar. He was the most insufferably gleeful child at events like these.”
“I was not,” Aerion snapped, nudging Daeron’s feet aside with unnecessary force. “Now cease spreading falsehoods and remove your stinking boots from my bench.”
Daeron grunted as his feet thudded to the floor. “I am far too sober for this,” he muttered, stifling another yawn.
Aegon, meanwhile, had already turned back toward the window, peering out with unfiltered curiosity.
“I wonder how long we’ll be here,” he said, voice bright and boyish.
“We will remain for several days,” Aerion replied sharply, tapping impatient fingers against his knee. “Then we row to the Unnamed Island and continue the hunt there before returning to the Rainwood. Has Father’s voice not reached your ears at any point this week?”
Aegon ignored the bite in his tone entirely.
“What’s so special about the Unnamed Island?” he asked, eyes wide with interest.
“How should I know?” Aerion replied flatly. “It holds no strategic value, no resources, no settlements. It was chosen because it is the farthest island to row to. That is all.”
“I still wonder why it’s called the Unnamed Island…” Aegon persisted thoughtfully.
Aerion turned his head slowly and stared at him as though weighing the benefits of exile.
“It is not named because it is insignificant,” he said with strained patience. “and because no one has bothered to name it.”
Daeron snorted at the edge in his voice, while Aegon continued speculating aloud as if he had not been dismissed at all. Aerion pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the first stirrings of a headache behind his eyes. For one brief, vivid moment, he considered fratricide. Fortunately for Aegon, the carriage came to a halt. Aerion did not hesitate. He seized the opportunity and stepped out at once. The door swung open and a sharp gust of wind struck him full in the face, carrying with it the faint salt scent of the sea. The scenery was unremarkable. A stretch of trees crowned in summer green. The coastline unfolding into open water. The horizon uninterrupted. This competition had dragged on for weeks, and Aerion had long since tired of it. He did not enjoy these displays of sport and hollow bravado. The sooner it ended, the better. Only one task remained: row to the Unnamed Island, bring back a deer or a boar, and return. After that, there would be some celebratory gathering — a feast to reward exhausted lords who had traveled to the Rainwood and grown weary of tents and damp air. Night was approaching; no one wished to hunt in darkness.
Aerion clicked his tongue thoughtfully. If he rowed out now and completed the final leg before the others roused themselves, the competition could be ended early. They could depart sooner. And he would win. The thought was not entirely unappealing. Perhaps it would earn a nod of approval from his father—something rarer than it ought to be.
“Ready me a boat,” he ordered quietly to a waiting servant.
Behind him, he heard his brothers emerging from the carriage: Daeron stumbling as always, and Aegon speaking at a volume fit for a market square. Another advantage to leaving immediately, he thought, was removing himself from their proximity.
The sea lay before him, darkening with the coming dusk.
The Unnamed Island waited.
Rowing proved more laborious than Aerion had anticipated, though he reached the island without incident. With only a hunting bow slung across his back and a dagger at his hip, he imagined the task ahead would be simple enough. A deer. A boar. Something large enough to secure victory and return before dawn. He dragged the boat onto the shore and straightened, taking in the stretch of land before him. White sand rolled into low dunes tufted with coarse grass, and beyond that, in the dimming light, stood a forest; dark and dense, the only place worthy of sheltering game.
Presumably, that was where the beasts would be. He trudged through the sand until he reached the treeline, then slipped between the trunks with quiet determination. The forest had grown considerably darker by then. Squirrels darted along bark. Birds called intermittently from above. But no larger creature revealed itself. He ventured deeper. And then—there. A deer. A large one. Aerion stilled at once. He drew the bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow, and raised it with steady precision. The wood felt smooth and familiar beneath his fingers, reliable and balanced. He closed one eye, narrowed the other, and exhaled slowly, willing his body into stillness.
He took one careful step forward.
Crack.
He glanced down just long enough to see the offending branch beneath his boot—brittle and traitorous—before looking back up to find the deer already bolting through the undergrowth.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and broke into pursuit.
He would not lose to something as trivial as a misstep. He ran, following the faint impressions of hooves even after the creature vanished from sight. Leaves whipped at his boots, branches snagged at his sleeves, but he pressed on, stubborn and intent.
And then he saw it again.
The deer stood some distance ahead, feeding in a patch of grass beneath the deepening blue of evening. Aerion slowed, lifted the bow once more, and stepped forward—
The ground gave way beneath him.
Something cracked sharply under his weight — not wood this time, but earth — and a torrent of curses tore from his throat as he tumbled downward. Leaves clung to his clothing, branches lashed at his arms and face, striking like thin, stinging whips. He fell through a blur of green and shadow, twisting, losing all sense of direction until he struck something hard and unyielding.
Stone.
He landed heavily on his arm. Another string of profanity spilled from his lips as a sharp, lightning-like pain shot up through muscle and bone. He lay there for a moment, breath knocked from him, nerves screaming in protest. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the narrow strip of darkening sky above, cradling his injured arm. After a few seconds, he forced himself upright, propping his weight on the uninjured side. He looked ahead. And forgot the pain entirely. A few steps away, half-concealed by lush leaves and the shadow of stone, yawned the mouth of a cave.
And within it—
There lay a dragon.
It had scales the color of sun-warmed earth and dying autumn leaves, a deep, burnished bronze like coins long passed from hand to hand, dulled by time rather than polished to shine. In the dim light of the cave mouth, that bronze seemed almost to drink in the fading gold of evening. Along its spine, the color deepened into rich umber, dark and shadowed, nearly brown-black where the light failed to reach. Each scale lay layered and deliberate, overlapping like carefully forged armor, though nothing about it felt crafted. It was living metal. Breathing earth.
The edges of its scales were lighter by comparison, worn-looking and pale as if brushed with weathered gold. The great wings, folded tightly against its body, were supported by sturdy bronze bones that arched and curved with quiet strength. The membranes stretched between them faded into a softer tawny hue, thin enough that, had the light been stronger, one might have seen the faint suggestion of veins beneath. Along the ridged line that ran from brow to tail, the paler gold returned—not bright, not gleaming, but subdued and mild, catching what little light filtered into the cave and holding it without reflection.
It was curled carefully into itself, wings drawn in close as though guarding its own warmth. Its tail wrapped around its body with deliberate neatness, the tip resting near its hind legs. Its head lay upon its foreclaws, muzzle nestled between curved talons that could have split stone. Its chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, each breath accompanied by a faint rumble deep within its ribcage. Not quite a snore, but something low and resonant, like distant thunder muted by hills.
It was sleeping. Such an ordinary act, and yet on a creature of this magnitude, it felt almost indecent to witness. A dragon at rest. Vulnerable. Unaware. Even curled tightly, it was unmistakably vast. The curve of its body filled the cave’s entrance, bronze hide brushing against stone walls darkened by time. When it breathed, the air seemed to shift around it. And yet, Aerion noted the proportions carefully—the length of limb to torso, the thickness of the neck, the still-growing horns that curved back from its skull. Not ancient. Not yet at full maturity. Young, perhaps. Or, at least, not old.
Healthy, certainly. Strong. Its scales were smooth and whole, uncracked and unmarred by illness. Nothing like the descriptions of the last dragon during King Aegon III’s reign; that pitiful, dwindling creature spoken of in hushed disappointment. This one was no relic of decay. Questions struck him in rapid succession.
How had it survived the Dance? How had it escaped notice? Had someone hidden it away, protected it in secret? Or—
Perhaps it had never belonged to anyone at all.
There had been wild dragons once. Dragons born beyond the Dragonpit. Dragons that had never accepted a rider, and had stayed wild. He filed the questions aside for later. There would be time for them. He stepped closer, careful now, boots pressing against cool stone. The dragon’s chest continued its slow rise and fall. Its nostrils twitched once, twice, as if catching some distant scent.
That was the only warning. Its eyes snapped open. Clear, piercing, sky-blue eyes stared at him, steady and intelligent, focused and far too aware to belong to a mindless beast. They locked onto him instantly. The dragon’s body uncoiled with fluid, powerful precision. Wings shifted outward slightly, membranes tightening. Its head lifted from its claws, neck arching as muscles bunched beneath bronze hide. In one smooth motion, it rose higher, elongating itself, presenting a broader silhouette.
Only now did Aerion truly comprehend its size. Upright, it loomed—shoulders broad, wings capable of spanning the width of the cave mouth and more. The bronze scales seemed to shimmer faintly as they caught the last of the evening light, not gleaming, but alive with subtle depth.
“The Gods have blessed me,” he whispered into the air, scarcely aware he had spoken.
The dragon answered with a low, warning sound—not quite a roar, not yet, but a rough, vibrating growl that resonated in the stone beneath Aerion’s boots. Its lips peeled back slightly, revealing curved teeth. Its wings flexed again. Aerion, reckless or entranced, stepped closer. The dragon hissed immediately—a harsh, defensive sound—and retreated deeper into the cave. It did not lunge, it did not strike, it… shrank.
Aerion’s breath caught. It was afraid.
The realization settled heavily. If it had survived the Dance, if it had lived hidden and alone, then it knew what men were capable of. It knew the sound of armor and shouting and fire turned against fire. And here he stood, armed, intruding. He lifted one hand slowly, palm open, fingers spread in what he hoped might resemble a gesture of peace rather than threat. The gesture felt absurdly, laughably small before a creature of such size, yet he held it all the same, resisting the urge to move too quickly.
Dragon commands.
The thought came to him not as instinct but as recollection—dragged from memory rather than rising naturally. High Valyrian words drilled into him by stern-faced tutors in polished halls who had spoken of conquest and legacy, of bloodlines and fire, not of caves and trembling breath and living, wary beings. He felt, fleetingly and sharply, the strangeness of it. The language of dragonlords. Of conquerors. Of his ancestors. It struck him then how foreign it felt upon his tongue, how instinct had not delivered it to him unbidden. For all that he was Targaryen, the words did not come naturally.
“Lykirī,” he breathed, the syllables deliberate and measured. “Lykirī, zaldrīzes.”
Calm, dragon.
The High Valyrian sounded uncertain after so many years of disuse, almost fragile in the cavernous space. The creature’s sky-blue eyes blinked once, lids sliding slowly over intelligent pupils before fixing on him again, and there was something in the movement that suggested understanding rather than reflex. Its gaze did not wander; it remained fixed on him; nothing animal and vacant, no, it was assessing, conscious. For heartbeat, he dared to think it understood. Encouraged despite himself, Aerion shifted his weight and allowed himself the smallest, most cautious half-step forward.
The response was immediate.
The dragon’s chest swelled, expanding sharply, ribs flaring as a roar tore from its throat, reverberating through the cave and pressing into Aerion’s bones. A blast of heated air rushed over him with the force of its breath, carrying the scent of ash and smoke and stone and something mineral and deeply elemental. Yet it still did not lunge. Instead, it withdrew further into the shelter of the shadows. The dragon’s wings drew tighter along its sides, body angling slightly as though to make itself both larger and smaller at once: imposing in silhouette, yet retreating in instinct. Then, its bronze membranes tensed, as if to shield itself rather than to strike.
Aerion halted at once and lifted both hands higher, surrendering the ground he had claimed.
“I mean no harm,” he called out.
The softness in his voice would have startled anyone who knew him. It bore none of the sharp edges that usually drew wary, calculating glances, none of the cool authority he wore so effortlessly at court. There was no command in it, no arrogance, no impatient bite. What remained was something gentler, almost tender. Reverent.
The dragon’s next roar was lower, shorter—less explosive. Its teeth remained partially bared, and it simply held itself rigid and watchful. Aerion exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving it. A tightness settled in Aerion’s chest as he watched it. Once, dragons had been the terror of kingdoms, the masters of sky and flame, creatures that bent the world to their will and answered to no one but their riders. Creature before whom armies broke and castles burned—men had trembled at the mere sight of them. And yet this one, magnificent and whole, recoiled as though expecting pain.
What a terribly cruel, hollow thing it was, he thought, that a dragon’s first instinct should be fear.
His gaze lingered on the bronze curve of its neck, the muted gold along its ridges, the steady blue of its eyes. He found himself wondering whether it had ever been given a name. The dragon remained just within the mouth of the cave, bronze body half in shadow, half in the last fading light. It tilted its head slightly, the movement slow and deliberate—almost human in its hesitation—as though uncertain how to proceed now that the intruder had retreated instead of advancing. Its wings were no longer flared quite as high, though they remained tense, ready.
Aerion extended his hand again, slower this time, palm open and steady, offering rather than reaching. He remembered what he had once read in dusty volumes, that scent was the beginning of familiarity, that a dragon must first learn the presence of the one who sought its trust. The thought of bond stirred something fierce and bright in his chest. He wanted this creature. Not as a trophy. Not as prey. As his.
“Look at you,” he breathed, awe threading through every syllable. “What an absolutely remarkable, beautiful creature you are…”
The words were fond, adoring, and something in the dragon’s posture shifted in response. The rigid line of its wings eased. It studied him a moment longer, those sky-blue eyes searching his face with unnerving clarity, before curiosity seemed to overcome caution.
It stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully.
Then, it lowered its head, and the vast muzzle hovered near his hand for a suspended heartbeat—and then a warm, scaled nose nudged against his palm, testing, tentative.
Aerion’s breath left him in something dangerously close to a sob. A startled laugh broke from him instead, bright and disbelieving, as his fingers made contact with the firm, solid surface of scale. It was warm. Real. Textured like living metal beneath his touch. For a moment, he feared it might dissolve, that he might wake to find only trees and darkness and his own foolish imagination. But when he dared to let his hand move, sliding gently along the curve of its neck, careful not to startle, the dragon did not recoil. Its skin was smooth but strong beneath his fingers, muscles shifting subtly with each breath.
“Kirīmvose,” he murmured, gratitude carried quietly in the High Valyrian word.
Thank you.
The entire moment felt impossibly surreal and yet more solid than anything he had known in months.
“What is your name, hm?” he asked affectionately, eyes lifting to meet those brilliant blue ones. “You must have one.”
Aerion’s lips curved slowly.
“I shall call you Aurax,” he said at last, the name shaped with certainty. “A fitting name, for bronze such as yours.”
Aurax released a low rumble, softer this time, and the sound was so undeniably real, so present and alive before him, that Aerion laughed again, open and genuine, stripped entirely of pretense. He moved slowly, carefully, circling along the curve of Aurax’s body with the kind of caution one might use around a skittish horse, though no horse had ever possessed such wings. His fingers trailed briefly along bronze scale as he shifted position, gaze lifting to measure the breadth of shoulder and the strength of hind leg. If he mounted carefully—if he moved without startling—perhaps the dragon would allow it. Perhaps instinct would take hold. Perhaps fire and blood would recognize one another.
He had just begun to step toward the creature’s flank when the forest shattered. Branches snapped sharply behind him. Leaves rustled. Boots thudded against earth.
“My prince!” a voice called out, breathless and urgent. “Your father sent us — he feared something had happened when you rowed out without notice. Thank the Gods you are unharmed—”
The soldier’s words died mid-sentence. Another man pushed past him and stopped just as abruptly. His lance dipped toward the ground as his voice dropped to a stunned whisper.
“Gods be good…”
Aerion did not need to turn to know what they saw. Aurax recoiled at once. The dragon’s body compressed inward, wings drawing tight before flaring halfway in agitation. A frightened roar tore from its throat, and its blue eyes darted between the soldiers, locking onto the gleam of spearheads and the polished length of lances with unmistakable alarm. More men were emerging now, forcing their way through brush and bramble, steel catching what little light remained. The dragon shifted sideways, powerful talons scraping against stone. Its wings unfurled fully this time, membranes stretching wide before snapping inward again in restless preparation.
Aerion saw it then—the coiling of muscle, the gathering of strength beneath bronze hide. It was going to flee. It was afraid.
His stomach dropped.
“No—lykirī, Aurax,” he called out sharply, panic breaking through his composure. He reached out instinctively, hand extended as though he could physically anchor the creature in place. “Lykirī!”
But the soldiers were shouting now, some stepping forward, others raising weapons out of reflex rather than strategy. The air had shifted from reverent stillness to chaos in a heartbeat.
It was too late.
With a thunderous beat of wings that sent sand and leaves spiraling upward, Aurax launched himself skyward. The force of it drove wind against Aerion’s chest and nearly knocked the nearest soldier off his feet. Bronze wings caught the darkening air, massive and magnificent, and within seconds the dragon was rising above the treeline.
“No, no, no,” Aerion breathed, stepping forward uselessly as though he could follow. “Umbās!”
Wait!
The dragon let out a cry—something raw and wild—and then it climbed higher, slipping into the thickening dusk. Its bronze form diminished against the dark blue sky until it vanished entirely beyond the low sweep of clouds, leaving only the sound of wings fading toward the open sea.
Silence fell heavy in its wake. And Aerion stood beneath an empty sky. Aerion did not move.
He stared at the space the dragon had occupied only heartbeats ago. At the crushed grass, the deep gouges where talons had bitten into earth before takeoff. The air still carried warmth. The ground still bore the shape of him, vast and unmistakable, as though the island itself had tried to hold him back and failed.
“You fools!” The words tore from him, not spoken but flung.
The soldiers flinched as if struck, several stepping back instinctively, others lowering their lances as though faced with a far greater threat than the one that had just taken flight. None dared speak.
Whatever gentleness had softened Aerion’s voice moments earlier had vanished utterly. Burned away as cleanly as tinder under flame. In its place stood something colder, edged with fury and something dangerously close to grief. His gaze drifted back to the sky. High above, the last glimmer of bronze dissolved into the thickening dark, swallowed by distance until it vanished behind cloud. And something in Aerion went with it.
It felt as though a hook had been driven into his chest and wrenched free, ripping through sinew and marrow alike. Not metaphorical pain but something visceral, almost anatomical. His lungs seized as though air itself had been stolen from him. His ribs felt too tight, as if something had been forcibly removed from between them, leaving a hollow cavity that burned in its absence. For a moment, he truly believed he might be ill. The space where wonder had bloomed only moments earlier now throbbed with violent vacancy. He had touched something impossible. Warm. Breathing. Alive beneath his hand.
And it had been torn away from him with brutal suddenness. It was not pride that ached. It was something far deeper, something that felt perilously close to the soul. As if a door inside him, long sealed and long forgotten, had been forced open only to be slammed shut again before he could step through. His heartbeat pounded hard against his ribs, but it felt misaligned, displaced. As though it had briefly found its true rhythm—and now beat wrong in its absence. He kept staring at the sky. As if by sheer will and refusal he might drag that bronze shape back from the clouds.
The wind had already stilled. The sea lay dark and indifferent beyond the treeline. Only the massive impressions in the earth remained—proof that he had not imagined it. Proof that Aurax had been real.
They had frightened him.
They had driven him away.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms until the sting grounded him.
No. No one would drive that dragon anywhere again. Never again.
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Unnamed Island. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory.
There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
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It was a violent thing—skin splitting, bones grinding and reshaping, scale and flesh tearing apart only to fuse back together in another form. Duncan felt something inside him give way and readjust in the cruelest possible manner, as though his very structure were being rewritten. The pain was blinding, total. He screamed with a mouth he did not possess, the sound swallowed by stone and darkness. The world dissolved into heat and pressure and the copper taste of it all. Then, slowly, through sweat and exhaustion and the ringing in his skull, the fog began to lift.
He was on the cave floor. Cold air touched skin instead of scale. Sweat slicked his body, catching crumbs of dirt and crushed grass that clung to him as though the forest itself refused to release him. He lay there naked as he had been born, chest heaving, heart hammering against ribs that still felt too tight. Something cracked along his spine with a sharp, protesting snap.
And then—it stopped. Silence.
Duncan dragged in a shaky breath and looked down at himself. Pink flesh where scales had been. Fingers instead of claws, trembling and weak. Hair falling into his eyes where ridges had once run down his skull.
He swallowed, throat raw.
Duncan opened his mouth. “Fucking hell.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped thin… but human. Thank the Gods. A voice where there had once been only a maw made for fire and roar.
Duncan pushed himself upright, unnaturally weak as he always was after a transformation. His limbs felt borrowed, his balance uncertain. Standing on two legs had never felt instinctive to him; he could not remember a time when it had been the only way he had moved through the world. He knew, rationally, there had been such a time—knew he had not always been this creature split between shapes—but those memories were thin and scattered. Since he had been three-and-ten. Before that, there was little. He brushed dirt from his skin, staggering like a newborn fawn before remembering how to command his legs. His arms felt too small, too light, strangely incomplete without the counterweight of a tail. He stilled, jaw tight, bracing himself as he tried to find his balance.
When he felt steady enough, he took a step forward. And promptly face-planted into the dirt.
“Seven be damned,” he muttered into the earth, spitting out grit as he shoved himself upright again. This time his legs obeyed, and his arms followed suit, clumsy but cooperative.
He crossed the cave and pulled on the rags he had bought years ago, clothes that no longer fit properly. Even in human form, Duncan was unnaturally tall. His body had gone largely unused for weeks at a time, and the muscle he had once carried as a boy had thinned, but he remained strong in a way that felt inherent rather than earned. Coordination, however, was another matter entirely. He stepped out of the cave, human again for the first time in weeks, and closed his eyes against the wind. The shift in his senses struck him as it always did. As a dragon, the world had been sharp—painfully clear. He could see farther, distinguish subtler movements, smell layers of scent no human nose could detect. Now everything felt dulled. Colors seemed flatter, sounds muted, the air empty of nuance. The world felt smaller in this body. There were things he preferred about being human. But what he missed most was flight. The stretch of wings. The lift beneath him. The brief, reckless joy of leaving the ground. He had never dared long journeys, never climbed too high into the sky, though the urge had always been there. Instead, he had stayed close to earth.
Staying unnoticed. Staying alive. The thought carried the echo of Ser Arlan’s voice. The only man who knew. Had known. Duncan clenched his jaw and forced the memory aside. He would not let himself sink into grief on the first day he was human once more.
He hummed under his breath, savoring the sound of his own voice as though reacquainting himself with it, testing the shape of it in his throat, enjoying the roughness of it, and the simple fact that he had a voice again. Then he set off toward the sea, beginning his usual walk down the worn path, stumbling over roots more than once on the way down the narrow path, cursing softly when his toes caught against stone. He had never been the picture of grace, but after weeks of neglecting his human limbs, he moved with all the elegance of an overgrown colt. His stride was too long, his balance uncertain, his feet slow to remember the ground. Still, he made the journey every time. He liked to wash away the sweat and grit of the transformation, to scrub off the lingering scent of smoke and scale. He liked the cool bite of seawater against skin, the steady pull of tide and current. I reminded him that the world was larger than the cave. Duncan had made the Cinderwoods his home; a broad, slow-growing, unhurried forest that lay at the heart of a remote island far, far away from the mainland of Westeros. It was an island of no particular value, no trade routes, no villages, no reason for ships to anchor. So unknown and so insignificant that Duncan had never been certain it possessed a name at all.
He had given it one himself. Caerwyn Isle. He had named it after the warrior queen from the stories he remembered faintly from childhood, Caerwyn the Brave. Ser Arlan had told him those tales once, when nights were warmer and the world had still made sense. Duncan remembered little of those nights by the fire, little of the man’s face, but he remembered the stories, and his voice. In the back of his head, there was the faint, unsure knowledge that Ser Arlan had always had a story.
There was no one left to tell him stories now. No human soul lived on the island. It belonged to wind and trees and beasts. Even fishermen did not trouble themselves with its waters. Once, years ago, a small group of young men had lost their way and drifted ashore by accident. Duncan had hidden and watched them from the treeline, heart pounding as they laughed and argued and repaired their nets. After a few hours they had departed again, unaware they had been observed. They were the first humans he had seen in years. He had wanted—fiercely, desperately, painfully—to step out of the trees and speak. To sit in one of their small boats and be nothing more than a man among men. But caution had rooted itself too deeply in him. So he had watched. And watched them leave.
Hunting had never required him to venture to the mainland. The island provided. Fish were plentiful along the coast, and he had grown adept at catching them, quick and precise even without flame. Wild boars roamed Caerwyn Isle in abundance, and the Cinderwoods sheltered bears and deer, and hares moved through the underbrush of the forest. Though he was large for a dragon, he did not require much. Most of his days were spent sleeping or lying in the sun, soaking up warmth through the scales. He rarely ventured far across the island, always wary of being seen even in a place no one visited, though sometimes he allowed himself small indulgences. He would wade into the shallows in dragon form and let the surf curl around his legs, watching fish dart between his claws while gulls wheeled overhead, their shrill cries slicing through the air.
It was not a particularly beautiful sound. Harsh and grating, but company of a kind. After all, there was little else to listen to on Caerwyn Isle, and even less for a dragon to do.
Duncan sighed in quiet relief as he washed himself and his clothes, scrubbing fabric and skin alike before spreading the rags over warm stones to dry in the sun. Then he dove beneath the surface, pushing wet hair from his face as he rinsed away the last of the grime. It had grown longer than he preferred. He considered cutting it. He waded back through the shallows, toes curling into the sand—ah, the strange pleasure of having toes again!—and retrieved the small dagger he kept hidden among the rocks. Returning to the water’s edge, he crouched and studied his reflection in the rippling surface. Hazelnut-brown hair, entirely unremarkable. Mousy. Plain. Light, sky-blue eyes that seemed almost out of place in such an ordinary face. He wondered what other people might have thought if they had seen him like this. Would they have called it a kind face? Or would they have noticed only how tall he was? Perhaps he was not tall at all, he considered, perhaps men had grown broader and larger in the years since he had last walked among them. He had no measure for such things anymore.
He tilted his head slightly, studying his reflection again, then huffed softly and lifted the dagger, sawing through uneven lengths of hair and letting the strands drift into the sea. The sun was already lowering toward the horizon, staining the water in muted gold. He pondered what to eat. Perhaps berries. He could never be bothered with them in dragon form—they filled no space in a dragon’s belly—but he missed the sharp, sour-sweet burst of wild berries on his tongue.
He shook water from his shortened hair and dressed once more, feeling lighter without the crust of dirt and dust clinging to him. Then he made his way toward the brush, seeking out berry shrubs he knew by heart. The first cracking of bone would come soon enough; he knew the signs. He meant to make use of the time he had. Perhaps he would eat his fill and lie in the last of the sunlight, letting warmth soak into real flesh instead of scale.
When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, the pain returned as predictably as the tide. Here we go again, he thought dimly as it began—a sharp, rising agony that spread through muscle and marrow alike. It surged and twisted and rewrote him, as it always did. And when it was done, he would rise from the sand no longer a man but scaly and broad and strong, a dragon once more.
Prince Aerion Targaryen had better uses for his time than enduring royal hunting competitions.
He had said as much—repeatedly, and without subtlety. He had made certain his father heard of his boredom, his disdain, his utter lack of interest in chasing frightened beasts for sport. The complaints had gone unanswered, dismissed with the same patient indifference reserved for childish sulking. And so he had been required to attend regardless.
Now he sat in the carriage with his arms folded tightly across his chest in open protest, jaw ticking faintly as he stared out the window. His glare could have split stone, though at present it was directed at nothing more offensive than passing trees. Even so, he managed to look infuriatingly composed while doing it. Across from him, Aegon was the very opposite of composed. The younger prince could scarcely contain his excitement, shifting in his seat every few moments as though the carriage might explode from the force of his enthusiasm.
“Will you cease with your quacking?” Aerion muttered at last, dragging his glare from the window to his brother. For a fleeting second, he considered kicking Aegon’s shins.
Aegon let out an offended squeak, outrage already forming on his tongue.
“Leave him be,” Daeron said lazily from beside Aegon, stretching his legs into the space near Aerion’s boots. He yawned without restraint. “It’s his first royal competition. Don’t you remember being excited when you were little?”
Aerion wrinkled his nose as though the suggestion offended him personally. “I do not recall such things.”
Daeron rolled his eyes and leaned toward Aegon conspiratorially. “Liar. He was the most insufferably gleeful child at events like these.”
“I was not,” Aerion snapped, nudging Daeron’s feet aside with unnecessary force. “Now cease spreading falsehoods and remove your stinking boots from my bench.”
Daeron grunted as his feet thudded to the floor. “I am far too sober for this,” he muttered, stifling another yawn.
Aegon, meanwhile, had already turned back toward the window, peering out with unfiltered curiosity.
“I wonder how long we’ll be here,” he said, voice bright and boyish.
“We will remain for several days,” Aerion replied sharply, tapping impatient fingers against his knee. “Then we row to the Unnamed Island and continue the hunt there before returning to the Rainwood. Has Father’s voice not reached your ears at any point this week?”
Aegon ignored the bite in his tone entirely.
“What’s so special about the Unnamed Island?” he asked, eyes wide with interest.
“How should I know?” Aerion replied flatly. “It holds no strategic value, no resources, no settlements. It was chosen because it is the farthest island to row to. That is all.”
“I still wonder why it’s called the Unnamed Island…” Aegon persisted thoughtfully.
Aerion turned his head slowly and stared at him as though weighing the benefits of exile.
“It is not named because it is insignificant,” he said with strained patience. “and because no one has bothered to name it.”
Daeron snorted at the edge in his voice, while Aegon continued speculating aloud as if he had not been dismissed at all. Aerion pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the first stirrings of a headache behind his eyes. For one brief, vivid moment, he considered fratricide. Fortunately for Aegon, the carriage came to a halt. Aerion did not hesitate. He seized the opportunity and stepped out at once. The door swung open and a sharp gust of wind struck him full in the face, carrying with it the faint salt scent of the sea. The scenery was unremarkable. A stretch of trees crowned in summer green. The coastline unfolding into open water. The horizon uninterrupted. This competition had dragged on for weeks, and Aerion had long since tired of it. He did not enjoy these displays of sport and hollow bravado. The sooner it ended, the better. Only one task remained: row to the Unnamed Island, bring back a deer or a boar, and return. After that, there would be some celebratory gathering — a feast to reward exhausted lords who had traveled to the Rainwood and grown weary of tents and damp air. Night was approaching; no one wished to hunt in darkness.
Aerion clicked his tongue thoughtfully. If he rowed out now and completed the final leg before the others roused themselves, the competition could be ended early. They could depart sooner. And he would win. The thought was not entirely unappealing. Perhaps it would earn a nod of approval from his father—something rarer than it ought to be.
“Ready me a boat,” he ordered quietly to a waiting servant.
Behind him, he heard his brothers emerging from the carriage: Daeron stumbling as always, and Aegon speaking at a volume fit for a market square. Another advantage to leaving immediately, he thought, was removing himself from their proximity.
The sea lay before him, darkening with the coming dusk.
The Unnamed Island waited.
Rowing proved more laborious than Aerion had anticipated, though he reached the island without incident. With only a hunting bow slung across his back and a dagger at his hip, he imagined the task ahead would be simple enough. A deer. A boar. Something large enough to secure victory and return before dawn. He dragged the boat onto the shore and straightened, taking in the stretch of land before him. White sand rolled into low dunes tufted with coarse grass, and beyond that, in the dimming light, stood a forest; dark and dense, the only place worthy of sheltering game.
Presumably, that was where the beasts would be. He trudged through the sand until he reached the treeline, then slipped between the trunks with quiet determination. The forest had grown considerably darker by then. Squirrels darted along bark. Birds called intermittently from above. But no larger creature revealed itself. He ventured deeper. And then—there. A deer. A large one. Aerion stilled at once. He drew the bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow, and raised it with steady precision. The wood felt smooth and familiar beneath his fingers, reliable and balanced. He closed one eye, narrowed the other, and exhaled slowly, willing his body into stillness.
He took one careful step forward.
Crack.
He glanced down just long enough to see the offending branch beneath his boot—brittle and traitorous—before looking back up to find the deer already bolting through the undergrowth.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and broke into pursuit.
He would not lose to something as trivial as a misstep. He ran, following the faint impressions of hooves even after the creature vanished from sight. Leaves whipped at his boots, branches snagged at his sleeves, but he pressed on, stubborn and intent.
And then he saw it again.
The deer stood some distance ahead, feeding in a patch of grass beneath the deepening blue of evening. Aerion slowed, lifted the bow once more, and stepped forward—
The ground gave way beneath him.
Something cracked sharply under his weight — not wood this time, but earth — and a torrent of curses tore from his throat as he tumbled downward. Leaves clung to his clothing, branches lashed at his arms and face, striking like thin, stinging whips. He fell through a blur of green and shadow, twisting, losing all sense of direction until he struck something hard and unyielding.
Stone.
He landed heavily on his arm. Another string of profanity spilled from his lips as a sharp, lightning-like pain shot up through muscle and bone. He lay there for a moment, breath knocked from him, nerves screaming in protest. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the narrow strip of darkening sky above, cradling his injured arm. After a few seconds, he forced himself upright, propping his weight on the uninjured side. He looked ahead. And forgot the pain entirely. A few steps away, half-concealed by lush leaves and the shadow of stone, yawned the mouth of a cave.
And within it—
There lay a dragon.
It had scales the color of sun-warmed earth and dying autumn leaves, a deep, burnished bronze like coins long passed from hand to hand, dulled by time rather than polished to shine. In the dim light of the cave mouth, that bronze seemed almost to drink in the fading gold of evening. Along its spine, the color deepened into rich umber, dark and shadowed, nearly brown-black where the light failed to reach. Each scale lay layered and deliberate, overlapping like carefully forged armor, though nothing about it felt crafted. It was living metal. Breathing earth.
The edges of its scales were lighter by comparison, worn-looking and pale as if brushed with weathered gold. The great wings, folded tightly against its body, were supported by sturdy bronze bones that arched and curved with quiet strength. The membranes stretched between them faded into a softer tawny hue, thin enough that, had the light been stronger, one might have seen the faint suggestion of veins beneath. Along the ridged line that ran from brow to tail, the paler gold returned—not bright, not gleaming, but subdued and mild, catching what little light filtered into the cave and holding it without reflection.
It was curled carefully into itself, wings drawn in close as though guarding its own warmth. Its tail wrapped around its body with deliberate neatness, the tip resting near its hind legs. Its head lay upon its foreclaws, muzzle nestled between curved talons that could have split stone. Its chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, each breath accompanied by a faint rumble deep within its ribcage. Not quite a snore, but something low and resonant, like distant thunder muted by hills.
It was sleeping. Such an ordinary act, and yet on a creature of this magnitude, it felt almost indecent to witness. A dragon at rest. Vulnerable. Unaware. Even curled tightly, it was unmistakably vast. The curve of its body filled the cave’s entrance, bronze hide brushing against stone walls darkened by time. When it breathed, the air seemed to shift around it. And yet, Aerion noted the proportions carefully—the length of limb to torso, the thickness of the neck, the still-growing horns that curved back from its skull. Not ancient. Not yet at full maturity. Young, perhaps. Or, at least, not old.
Healthy, certainly. Strong. Its scales were smooth and whole, uncracked and unmarred by illness. Nothing like the descriptions of the last dragon during King Aegon III’s reign; that pitiful, dwindling creature spoken of in hushed disappointment. This one was no relic of decay. Questions struck him in rapid succession.
How had it survived the Dance? How had it escaped notice? Had someone hidden it away, protected it in secret? Or—
Perhaps it had never belonged to anyone at all.
There had been wild dragons once. Dragons born beyond the Dragonpit. Dragons that had never accepted a rider, and had stayed wild. He filed the questions aside for later. There would be time for them. He stepped closer, careful now, boots pressing against cool stone. The dragon’s chest continued its slow rise and fall. Its nostrils twitched once, twice, as if catching some distant scent.
That was the only warning. Its eyes snapped open. Clear, piercing, sky-blue eyes stared at him, steady and intelligent, focused and far too aware to belong to a mindless beast. They locked onto him instantly. The dragon’s body uncoiled with fluid, powerful precision. Wings shifted outward slightly, membranes tightening. Its head lifted from its claws, neck arching as muscles bunched beneath bronze hide. In one smooth motion, it rose higher, elongating itself, presenting a broader silhouette.
Only now did Aerion truly comprehend its size. Upright, it loomed—shoulders broad, wings capable of spanning the width of the cave mouth and more. The bronze scales seemed to shimmer faintly as they caught the last of the evening light, not gleaming, but alive with subtle depth.
“The Gods have blessed me,” he whispered into the air, scarcely aware he had spoken.
The dragon answered with a low, warning sound—not quite a roar, not yet, but a rough, vibrating growl that resonated in the stone beneath Aerion’s boots. Its lips peeled back slightly, revealing curved teeth. Its wings flexed again. Aerion, reckless or entranced, stepped closer. The dragon hissed immediately—a harsh, defensive sound—and retreated deeper into the cave. It did not lunge, it did not strike, it… shrank.
Aerion’s breath caught. It was afraid.
The realization settled heavily. If it had survived the Dance, if it had lived hidden and alone, then it knew what men were capable of. It knew the sound of armor and shouting and fire turned against fire. And here he stood, armed, intruding. He lifted one hand slowly, palm open, fingers spread in what he hoped might resemble a gesture of peace rather than threat. The gesture felt absurdly, laughably small before a creature of such size, yet he held it all the same, resisting the urge to move too quickly.
Dragon commands.
The thought came to him not as instinct but as recollection—dragged from memory rather than rising naturally. High Valyrian words drilled into him by stern-faced tutors in polished halls who had spoken of conquest and legacy, of bloodlines and fire, not of caves and trembling breath and living, wary beings. He felt, fleetingly and sharply, the strangeness of it. The language of dragonlords. Of conquerors. Of his ancestors. It struck him then how foreign it felt upon his tongue, how instinct had not delivered it to him unbidden. For all that he was Targaryen, the words did not come naturally.
“Lykirī,” he breathed, the syllables deliberate and measured. “Lykirī, zaldrīzes.”
Calm, dragon.
The High Valyrian sounded uncertain after so many years of disuse, almost fragile in the cavernous space. The creature’s sky-blue eyes blinked once, lids sliding slowly over intelligent pupils before fixing on him again, and there was something in the movement that suggested understanding rather than reflex. Its gaze did not wander; it remained fixed on him; nothing animal and vacant, no, it was assessing, conscious. For heartbeat, he dared to think it understood. Encouraged despite himself, Aerion shifted his weight and allowed himself the smallest, most cautious half-step forward.
The response was immediate.
The dragon’s chest swelled, expanding sharply, ribs flaring as a roar tore from its throat, reverberating through the cave and pressing into Aerion’s bones. A blast of heated air rushed over him with the force of its breath, carrying the scent of ash and smoke and stone and something mineral and deeply elemental. Yet it still did not lunge. Instead, it withdrew further into the shelter of the shadows. The dragon’s wings drew tighter along its sides, body angling slightly as though to make itself both larger and smaller at once: imposing in silhouette, yet retreating in instinct. Then, its bronze membranes tensed, as if to shield itself rather than to strike.
Aerion halted at once and lifted both hands higher, surrendering the ground he had claimed.
“I mean no harm,” he called out.
The softness in his voice would have startled anyone who knew him. It bore none of the sharp edges that usually drew wary, calculating glances, none of the cool authority he wore so effortlessly at court. There was no command in it, no arrogance, no impatient bite. What remained was something gentler, almost tender. Reverent.
The dragon’s next roar was lower, shorter—less explosive. Its teeth remained partially bared, and it simply held itself rigid and watchful. Aerion exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving it. A tightness settled in Aerion’s chest as he watched it. Once, dragons had been the terror of kingdoms, the masters of sky and flame, creatures that bent the world to their will and answered to no one but their riders. Creature before whom armies broke and castles burned—men had trembled at the mere sight of them. And yet this one, magnificent and whole, recoiled as though expecting pain.
What a terribly cruel, hollow thing it was, he thought, that a dragon’s first instinct should be fear.
His gaze lingered on the bronze curve of its neck, the muted gold along its ridges, the steady blue of its eyes. He found himself wondering whether it had ever been given a name. The dragon remained just within the mouth of the cave, bronze body half in shadow, half in the last fading light. It tilted its head slightly, the movement slow and deliberate—almost human in its hesitation—as though uncertain how to proceed now that the intruder had retreated instead of advancing. Its wings were no longer flared quite as high, though they remained tense, ready.
Aerion extended his hand again, slower this time, palm open and steady, offering rather than reaching. He remembered what he had once read in dusty volumes, that scent was the beginning of familiarity, that a dragon must first learn the presence of the one who sought its trust. The thought of bond stirred something fierce and bright in his chest. He wanted this creature. Not as a trophy. Not as prey. As his.
“Look at you,” he breathed, awe threading through every syllable. “What an absolutely remarkable, beautiful creature you are…”
The words were fond, adoring, and something in the dragon’s posture shifted in response. The rigid line of its wings eased. It studied him a moment longer, those sky-blue eyes searching his face with unnerving clarity, before curiosity seemed to overcome caution.
It stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully.
Then, it lowered its head, and the vast muzzle hovered near his hand for a suspended heartbeat—and then a warm, scaled nose nudged against his palm, testing, tentative.
Aerion’s breath left him in something dangerously close to a sob. A startled laugh broke from him instead, bright and disbelieving, as his fingers made contact with the firm, solid surface of scale. It was warm. Real. Textured like living metal beneath his touch. For a moment, he feared it might dissolve, that he might wake to find only trees and darkness and his own foolish imagination. But when he dared to let his hand move, sliding gently along the curve of its neck, careful not to startle, the dragon did not recoil. Its skin was smooth but strong beneath his fingers, muscles shifting subtly with each breath.
“Kirīmvose,” he murmured, gratitude carried quietly in the High Valyrian word.
Thank you.
The entire moment felt impossibly surreal and yet more solid than anything he had known in months.
“What is your name, hm?” he asked affectionately, eyes lifting to meet those brilliant blue ones. “You must have one.”
Aerion’s lips curved slowly.
“I shall call you Aurax,” he said at last, the name shaped with certainty. “A fitting name, for bronze such as yours.”
Aurax released a low rumble, softer this time, and the sound was so undeniably real, so present and alive before him, that Aerion laughed again, open and genuine, stripped entirely of pretense. He moved slowly, carefully, circling along the curve of Aurax’s body with the kind of caution one might use around a skittish horse, though no horse had ever possessed such wings. His fingers trailed briefly along bronze scale as he shifted position, gaze lifting to measure the breadth of shoulder and the strength of hind leg. If he mounted carefully—if he moved without startling—perhaps the dragon would allow it. Perhaps instinct would take hold. Perhaps fire and blood would recognize one another.
He had just begun to step toward the creature’s flank when the forest shattered. Branches snapped sharply behind him. Leaves rustled. Boots thudded against earth.
“My prince!” a voice called out, breathless and urgent. “Your father sent us — he feared something had happened when you rowed out without notice. Thank the Gods you are unharmed—”
The soldier’s words died mid-sentence. Another man pushed past him and stopped just as abruptly. His lance dipped toward the ground as his voice dropped to a stunned whisper.
“Gods be good…”
Aerion did not need to turn to know what they saw. Aurax recoiled at once. The dragon’s body compressed inward, wings drawing tight before flaring halfway in agitation. A frightened roar tore from its throat, and its blue eyes darted between the soldiers, locking onto the gleam of spearheads and the polished length of lances with unmistakable alarm. More men were emerging now, forcing their way through brush and bramble, steel catching what little light remained. The dragon shifted sideways, powerful talons scraping against stone. Its wings unfurled fully this time, membranes stretching wide before snapping inward again in restless preparation.
Aerion saw it then—the coiling of muscle, the gathering of strength beneath bronze hide. It was going to flee. It was afraid.
His stomach dropped.
“No—lykirī, Aurax,” he called out sharply, panic breaking through his composure. He reached out instinctively, hand extended as though he could physically anchor the creature in place. “Lykirī!”
But the soldiers were shouting now, some stepping forward, others raising weapons out of reflex rather than strategy. The air had shifted from reverent stillness to chaos in a heartbeat.
It was too late.
With a thunderous beat of wings that sent sand and leaves spiraling upward, Aurax launched himself skyward. The force of it drove wind against Aerion’s chest and nearly knocked the nearest soldier off his feet. Bronze wings caught the darkening air, massive and magnificent, and within seconds the dragon was rising above the treeline.
“No, no, no,” Aerion breathed, stepping forward uselessly as though he could follow. “Umbās!”
Wait!
The dragon let out a cry—something raw and wild—and then it climbed higher, slipping into the thickening dusk. Its bronze form diminished against the dark blue sky until it vanished entirely beyond the low sweep of clouds, leaving only the sound of wings fading toward the open sea.
Silence fell heavy in its wake. And Aerion stood beneath an empty sky. Aerion did not move.
He stared at the space the dragon had occupied only heartbeats ago. At the crushed grass, the deep gouges where talons had bitten into earth before takeoff. The air still carried warmth. The ground still bore the shape of him, vast and unmistakable, as though the island itself had tried to hold him back and failed.
“You fools!” The words tore from him, not spoken but flung.
The soldiers flinched as if struck, several stepping back instinctively, others lowering their lances as though faced with a far greater threat than the one that had just taken flight. None dared speak.
Whatever gentleness had softened Aerion’s voice moments earlier had vanished utterly. Burned away as cleanly as tinder under flame. In its place stood something colder, edged with fury and something dangerously close to grief. His gaze drifted back to the sky. High above, the last glimmer of bronze dissolved into the thickening dark, swallowed by distance until it vanished behind cloud. And something in Aerion went with it.
It felt as though a hook had been driven into his chest and wrenched free, ripping through sinew and marrow alike. Not metaphorical pain but something visceral, almost anatomical. His lungs seized as though air itself had been stolen from him. His ribs felt too tight, as if something had been forcibly removed from between them, leaving a hollow cavity that burned in its absence. For a moment, he truly believed he might be ill. The space where wonder had bloomed only moments earlier now throbbed with violent vacancy. He had touched something impossible. Warm. Breathing. Alive beneath his hand.
And it had been torn away from him with brutal suddenness. It was not pride that ached. It was something far deeper, something that felt perilously close to the soul. As if a door inside him, long sealed and long forgotten, had been forced open only to be slammed shut again before he could step through. His heartbeat pounded hard against his ribs, but it felt misaligned, displaced. As though it had briefly found its true rhythm—and now beat wrong in its absence. He kept staring at the sky. As if by sheer will and refusal he might drag that bronze shape back from the clouds.
The wind had already stilled. The sea lay dark and indifferent beyond the treeline. Only the massive impressions in the earth remained—proof that he had not imagined it. Proof that Aurax had been real.
They had frightened him.
They had driven him away.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms until the sting grounded him.
No. No one would drive that dragon anywhere again. Never again.
Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
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It was a violent thing—skin splitting, bones grinding and reshaping, scale and flesh tearing apart only to fuse back together in another form. Duncan felt something inside him give way and readjust in the cruelest possible manner, as though his very structure were being rewritten. The pain was blinding, total. He screamed with a mouth he did not possess, the sound swallowed by stone and darkness. The world dissolved into heat and pressure and the copper taste of it all. Then, slowly, through sweat and exhaustion and the ringing in his skull, the fog began to lift.
He was on the cave floor. Cold air touched skin instead of scale. Sweat slicked his body, catching crumbs of dirt and crushed grass that clung to him as though the forest itself refused to release him. He lay there naked as he had been born, chest heaving, heart hammering against ribs that still felt too tight. Something cracked along his spine with a sharp, protesting snap.
And then—it stopped. Silence.
Duncan dragged in a shaky breath and looked down at himself. Pink flesh where scales had been. Fingers instead of claws, trembling and weak. Hair falling into his eyes where ridges had once run down his skull.
He swallowed, throat raw.
Duncan opened his mouth. “Fucking hell.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped thin… but human. Thank the Gods. A voice where there had once been only a maw made for fire and roar.
Duncan pushed himself upright, unnaturally weak as he always was after a transformation. His limbs felt borrowed, his balance uncertain. Standing on two legs had never felt instinctive to him; he could not remember a time when it had been the only way he had moved through the world. He knew, rationally, there had been such a time—knew he had not always been this creature split between shapes—but those memories were thin and scattered. Since he had been three-and-ten. Before that, there was little. He brushed dirt from his skin, staggering like a newborn fawn before remembering how to command his legs. His arms felt too small, too light, strangely incomplete without the counterweight of a tail. He stilled, jaw tight, bracing himself as he tried to find his balance.
When he felt steady enough, he took a step forward. And promptly face-planted into the dirt.
“Seven be damned,” he muttered into the earth, spitting out grit as he shoved himself upright again. This time his legs obeyed, and his arms followed suit, clumsy but cooperative.
He crossed the cave and pulled on the rags he had bought years ago, clothes that no longer fit properly. Even in human form, Duncan was unnaturally tall. His body had gone largely unused for weeks at a time, and the muscle he had once carried as a boy had thinned, but he remained strong in a way that felt inherent rather than earned. Coordination, however, was another matter entirely. He stepped out of the cave, human again for the first time in weeks, and closed his eyes against the wind. The shift in his senses struck him as it always did. As a dragon, the world had been sharp—painfully clear. He could see farther, distinguish subtler movements, smell layers of scent no human nose could detect. Now everything felt dulled. Colors seemed flatter, sounds muted, the air empty of nuance. The world felt smaller in this body. There were things he preferred about being human. But what he missed most was flight. The stretch of wings. The lift beneath him. The brief, reckless joy of leaving the ground. He had never dared long journeys, never climbed too high into the sky, though the urge had always been there. Instead, he had stayed close to earth.
Staying unnoticed. Staying alive. The thought carried the echo of Ser Arlan’s voice. The only man who knew. Had known. Duncan clenched his jaw and forced the memory aside. He would not let himself sink into grief on the first day he was human once more.
He hummed under his breath, savoring the sound of his own voice as though reacquainting himself with it, testing the shape of it in his throat, enjoying the roughness of it, and the simple fact that he had a voice again. Then he set off toward the sea, beginning his usual walk down the worn path, stumbling over roots more than once on the way down the narrow path, cursing softly when his toes caught against stone. He had never been the picture of grace, but after weeks of neglecting his human limbs, he moved with all the elegance of an overgrown colt. His stride was too long, his balance uncertain, his feet slow to remember the ground. Still, he made the journey every time. He liked to wash away the sweat and grit of the transformation, to scrub off the lingering scent of smoke and scale. He liked the cool bite of seawater against skin, the steady pull of tide and current. I reminded him that the world was larger than the cave. Duncan had made the Cinderwoods his home; a broad, slow-growing, unhurried forest that lay at the heart of a remote island far, far away from the mainland of Westeros. It was an island of no particular value, no trade routes, no villages, no reason for ships to anchor. So unknown and so insignificant that Duncan had never been certain it possessed a name at all.
He had given it one himself. Caerwyn Isle. He had named it after the warrior queen from the stories he remembered faintly from childhood, Caerwyn the Brave. Ser Arlan had told him those tales once, when nights were warmer and the world had still made sense. Duncan remembered little of those nights by the fire, little of the man’s face, but he remembered the stories, and his voice. In the back of his head, there was the faint, unsure knowledge that Ser Arlan had always had a story.
There was no one left to tell him stories now. No human soul lived on the island. It belonged to wind and trees and beasts. Even fishermen did not trouble themselves with its waters. Once, years ago, a small group of young men had lost their way and drifted ashore by accident. Duncan had hidden and watched them from the treeline, heart pounding as they laughed and argued and repaired their nets. After a few hours they had departed again, unaware they had been observed. They were the first humans he had seen in years. He had wanted—fiercely, desperately, painfully—to step out of the trees and speak. To sit in one of their small boats and be nothing more than a man among men. But caution had rooted itself too deeply in him. So he had watched. And watched them leave.
Hunting had never required him to venture to the mainland. The island provided. Fish were plentiful along the coast, and he had grown adept at catching them, quick and precise even without flame. Wild boars roamed Caerwyn Isle in abundance, and the Cinderwoods sheltered bears and deer, and hares moved through the underbrush of the forest. Though he was large for a dragon, he did not require much. Most of his days were spent sleeping or lying in the sun, soaking up warmth through the scales. He rarely ventured far across the island, always wary of being seen even in a place no one visited, though sometimes he allowed himself small indulgences. He would wade into the shallows in dragon form and let the surf curl around his legs, watching fish dart between his claws while gulls wheeled overhead, their shrill cries slicing through the air.
It was not a particularly beautiful sound. Harsh and grating, but company of a kind. After all, there was little else to listen to on Caerwyn Isle, and even less for a dragon to do.
Duncan sighed in quiet relief as he washed himself and his clothes, scrubbing fabric and skin alike before spreading the rags over warm stones to dry in the sun. Then he dove beneath the surface, pushing wet hair from his face as he rinsed away the last of the grime. It had grown longer than he preferred. He considered cutting it. He waded back through the shallows, toes curling into the sand—ah, the strange pleasure of having toes again!—and retrieved the small dagger he kept hidden among the rocks. Returning to the water’s edge, he crouched and studied his reflection in the rippling surface. Hazelnut-brown hair, entirely unremarkable. Mousy. Plain. Light, sky-blue eyes that seemed almost out of place in such an ordinary face. He wondered what other people might have thought if they had seen him like this. Would they have called it a kind face? Or would they have noticed only how tall he was? Perhaps he was not tall at all, he considered, perhaps men had grown broader and larger in the years since he had last walked among them. He had no measure for such things anymore.
He tilted his head slightly, studying his reflection again, then huffed softly and lifted the dagger, sawing through uneven lengths of hair and letting the strands drift into the sea. The sun was already lowering toward the horizon, staining the water in muted gold. He pondered what to eat. Perhaps berries. He could never be bothered with them in dragon form—they filled no space in a dragon’s belly—but he missed the sharp, sour-sweet burst of wild berries on his tongue.
He shook water from his shortened hair and dressed once more, feeling lighter without the crust of dirt and dust clinging to him. Then he made his way toward the brush, seeking out berry shrubs he knew by heart. The first cracking of bone would come soon enough; he knew the signs. He meant to make use of the time he had. Perhaps he would eat his fill and lie in the last of the sunlight, letting warmth soak into real flesh instead of scale.
When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, the pain returned as predictably as the tide. Here we go again, he thought dimly as it began—a sharp, rising agony that spread through muscle and marrow alike. It surged and twisted and rewrote him, as it always did. And when it was done, he would rise from the sand no longer a man but scaly and broad and strong, a dragon once more.
Prince Aerion Targaryen had better uses for his time than enduring royal hunting competitions.
He had said as much—repeatedly, and without subtlety. He had made certain his father heard of his boredom, his disdain, his utter lack of interest in chasing frightened beasts for sport. The complaints had gone unanswered, dismissed with the same patient indifference reserved for childish sulking. And so he had been required to attend regardless.
Now he sat in the carriage with his arms folded tightly across his chest in open protest, jaw ticking faintly as he stared out the window. His glare could have split stone, though at present it was directed at nothing more offensive than passing trees. Even so, he managed to look infuriatingly composed while doing it. Across from him, Aegon was the very opposite of composed. The younger prince could scarcely contain his excitement, shifting in his seat every few moments as though the carriage might explode from the force of his enthusiasm.
“Will you cease with your quacking?” Aerion muttered at last, dragging his glare from the window to his brother. For a fleeting second, he considered kicking Aegon’s shins.
Aegon let out an offended squeak, outrage already forming on his tongue.
“Leave him be,” Daeron said lazily from beside Aegon, stretching his legs into the space near Aerion’s boots. He yawned without restraint. “It’s his first royal competition. Don’t you remember being excited when you were little?”
Aerion wrinkled his nose as though the suggestion offended him personally. “I do not recall such things.”
Daeron rolled his eyes and leaned toward Aegon conspiratorially. “Liar. He was the most insufferably gleeful child at events like these.”
“I was not,” Aerion snapped, nudging Daeron’s feet aside with unnecessary force. “Now cease spreading falsehoods and remove your stinking boots from my bench.”
Daeron grunted as his feet thudded to the floor. “I am far too sober for this,” he muttered, stifling another yawn.
Aegon, meanwhile, had already turned back toward the window, peering out with unfiltered curiosity.
“I wonder how long we’ll be here,” he said, voice bright and boyish.
“We will remain for several days,” Aerion replied sharply, tapping impatient fingers against his knee. “Then we row to the Unnamed Island and continue the hunt there before returning to the Rainwood. Has Father’s voice not reached your ears at any point this week?”
Aegon ignored the bite in his tone entirely.
“What’s so special about the Unnamed Island?” he asked, eyes wide with interest.
“How should I know?” Aerion replied flatly. “It holds no strategic value, no resources, no settlements. It was chosen because it is the farthest island to row to. That is all.”
“I still wonder why it’s called the Unnamed Island…” Aegon persisted thoughtfully.
Aerion turned his head slowly and stared at him as though weighing the benefits of exile.
“It is not named because it is insignificant,” he said with strained patience. “and because no one has bothered to name it.”
Daeron snorted at the edge in his voice, while Aegon continued speculating aloud as if he had not been dismissed at all. Aerion pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the first stirrings of a headache behind his eyes. For one brief, vivid moment, he considered fratricide. Fortunately for Aegon, the carriage came to a halt. Aerion did not hesitate. He seized the opportunity and stepped out at once. The door swung open and a sharp gust of wind struck him full in the face, carrying with it the faint salt scent of the sea. The scenery was unremarkable. A stretch of trees crowned in summer green. The coastline unfolding into open water. The horizon uninterrupted. This competition had dragged on for weeks, and Aerion had long since tired of it. He did not enjoy these displays of sport and hollow bravado. The sooner it ended, the better. Only one task remained: row to the Unnamed Island, bring back a deer or a boar, and return. After that, there would be some celebratory gathering — a feast to reward exhausted lords who had traveled to the Rainwood and grown weary of tents and damp air. Night was approaching; no one wished to hunt in darkness.
Aerion clicked his tongue thoughtfully. If he rowed out now and completed the final leg before the others roused themselves, the competition could be ended early. They could depart sooner. And he would win. The thought was not entirely unappealing. Perhaps it would earn a nod of approval from his father—something rarer than it ought to be.
“Ready me a boat,” he ordered quietly to a waiting servant.
Behind him, he heard his brothers emerging from the carriage: Daeron stumbling as always, and Aegon speaking at a volume fit for a market square. Another advantage to leaving immediately, he thought, was removing himself from their proximity.
The sea lay before him, darkening with the coming dusk.
The Unnamed Island waited.
Rowing proved more laborious than Aerion had anticipated, though he reached the island without incident. With only a hunting bow slung across his back and a dagger at his hip, he imagined the task ahead would be simple enough. A deer. A boar. Something large enough to secure victory and return before dawn. He dragged the boat onto the shore and straightened, taking in the stretch of land before him. White sand rolled into low dunes tufted with coarse grass, and beyond that, in the dimming light, stood a forest; dark and dense, the only place worthy of sheltering game.
Presumably, that was where the beasts would be. He trudged through the sand until he reached the treeline, then slipped between the trunks with quiet determination. The forest had grown considerably darker by then. Squirrels darted along bark. Birds called intermittently from above. But no larger creature revealed itself. He ventured deeper. And then—there. A deer. A large one. Aerion stilled at once. He drew the bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow, and raised it with steady precision. The wood felt smooth and familiar beneath his fingers, reliable and balanced. He closed one eye, narrowed the other, and exhaled slowly, willing his body into stillness.
He took one careful step forward.
Crack.
He glanced down just long enough to see the offending branch beneath his boot—brittle and traitorous—before looking back up to find the deer already bolting through the undergrowth.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and broke into pursuit.
He would not lose to something as trivial as a misstep. He ran, following the faint impressions of hooves even after the creature vanished from sight. Leaves whipped at his boots, branches snagged at his sleeves, but he pressed on, stubborn and intent.
And then he saw it again.
The deer stood some distance ahead, feeding in a patch of grass beneath the deepening blue of evening. Aerion slowed, lifted the bow once more, and stepped forward—
The ground gave way beneath him.
Something cracked sharply under his weight — not wood this time, but earth — and a torrent of curses tore from his throat as he tumbled downward. Leaves clung to his clothing, branches lashed at his arms and face, striking like thin, stinging whips. He fell through a blur of green and shadow, twisting, losing all sense of direction until he struck something hard and unyielding.
Stone.
He landed heavily on his arm. Another string of profanity spilled from his lips as a sharp, lightning-like pain shot up through muscle and bone. He lay there for a moment, breath knocked from him, nerves screaming in protest. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the narrow strip of darkening sky above, cradling his injured arm. After a few seconds, he forced himself upright, propping his weight on the uninjured side. He looked ahead. And forgot the pain entirely. A few steps away, half-concealed by lush leaves and the shadow of stone, yawned the mouth of a cave.
And within it—
There lay a dragon.
It had scales the color of sun-warmed earth and dying autumn leaves, a deep, burnished bronze like coins long passed from hand to hand, dulled by time rather than polished to shine. In the dim light of the cave mouth, that bronze seemed almost to drink in the fading gold of evening. Along its spine, the color deepened into rich umber, dark and shadowed, nearly brown-black where the light failed to reach. Each scale lay layered and deliberate, overlapping like carefully forged armor, though nothing about it felt crafted. It was living metal. Breathing earth.
The edges of its scales were lighter by comparison, worn-looking and pale as if brushed with weathered gold. The great wings, folded tightly against its body, were supported by sturdy bronze bones that arched and curved with quiet strength. The membranes stretched between them faded into a softer tawny hue, thin enough that, had the light been stronger, one might have seen the faint suggestion of veins beneath. Along the ridged line that ran from brow to tail, the paler gold returned—not bright, not gleaming, but subdued and mild, catching what little light filtered into the cave and holding it without reflection.
It was curled carefully into itself, wings drawn in close as though guarding its own warmth. Its tail wrapped around its body with deliberate neatness, the tip resting near its hind legs. Its head lay upon its foreclaws, muzzle nestled between curved talons that could have split stone. Its chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, each breath accompanied by a faint rumble deep within its ribcage. Not quite a snore, but something low and resonant, like distant thunder muted by hills.
It was sleeping. Such an ordinary act, and yet on a creature of this magnitude, it felt almost indecent to witness. A dragon at rest. Vulnerable. Unaware. Even curled tightly, it was unmistakably vast. The curve of its body filled the cave’s entrance, bronze hide brushing against stone walls darkened by time. When it breathed, the air seemed to shift around it. And yet, Aerion noted the proportions carefully—the length of limb to torso, the thickness of the neck, the still-growing horns that curved back from its skull. Not ancient. Not yet at full maturity. Young, perhaps. Or, at least, not old.
Healthy, certainly. Strong. Its scales were smooth and whole, uncracked and unmarred by illness. Nothing like the descriptions of the last dragon during King Aegon III’s reign; that pitiful, dwindling creature spoken of in hushed disappointment. This one was no relic of decay. Questions struck him in rapid succession.
How had it survived the Dance? How had it escaped notice? Had someone hidden it away, protected it in secret? Or—
Perhaps it had never belonged to anyone at all.
There had been wild dragons once. Dragons born beyond the Dragonpit. Dragons that had never accepted a rider, and had stayed wild. He filed the questions aside for later. There would be time for them. He stepped closer, careful now, boots pressing against cool stone. The dragon’s chest continued its slow rise and fall. Its nostrils twitched once, twice, as if catching some distant scent.
That was the only warning. Its eyes snapped open. Clear, piercing, sky-blue eyes stared at him, steady and intelligent, focused and far too aware to belong to a mindless beast. They locked onto him instantly. The dragon’s body uncoiled with fluid, powerful precision. Wings shifted outward slightly, membranes tightening. Its head lifted from its claws, neck arching as muscles bunched beneath bronze hide. In one smooth motion, it rose higher, elongating itself, presenting a broader silhouette.
Only now did Aerion truly comprehend its size. Upright, it loomed—shoulders broad, wings capable of spanning the width of the cave mouth and more. The bronze scales seemed to shimmer faintly as they caught the last of the evening light, not gleaming, but alive with subtle depth.
“The Gods have blessed me,” he whispered into the air, scarcely aware he had spoken.
The dragon answered with a low, warning sound—not quite a roar, not yet, but a rough, vibrating growl that resonated in the stone beneath Aerion’s boots. Its lips peeled back slightly, revealing curved teeth. Its wings flexed again. Aerion, reckless or entranced, stepped closer. The dragon hissed immediately—a harsh, defensive sound—and retreated deeper into the cave. It did not lunge, it did not strike, it… shrank.
Aerion’s breath caught. It was afraid.
The realization settled heavily. If it had survived the Dance, if it had lived hidden and alone, then it knew what men were capable of. It knew the sound of armor and shouting and fire turned against fire. And here he stood, armed, intruding. He lifted one hand slowly, palm open, fingers spread in what he hoped might resemble a gesture of peace rather than threat. The gesture felt absurdly, laughably small before a creature of such size, yet he held it all the same, resisting the urge to move too quickly.
Dragon commands.
The thought came to him not as instinct but as recollection—dragged from memory rather than rising naturally. High Valyrian words drilled into him by stern-faced tutors in polished halls who had spoken of conquest and legacy, of bloodlines and fire, not of caves and trembling breath and living, wary beings. He felt, fleetingly and sharply, the strangeness of it. The language of dragonlords. Of conquerors. Of his ancestors. It struck him then how foreign it felt upon his tongue, how instinct had not delivered it to him unbidden. For all that he was Targaryen, the words did not come naturally.
“Lykirī,” he breathed, the syllables deliberate and measured. “Lykirī, zaldrīzes.”
Calm, dragon.
The High Valyrian sounded uncertain after so many years of disuse, almost fragile in the cavernous space. The creature’s sky-blue eyes blinked once, lids sliding slowly over intelligent pupils before fixing on him again, and there was something in the movement that suggested understanding rather than reflex. Its gaze did not wander; it remained fixed on him; nothing animal and vacant, no, it was assessing, conscious. For heartbeat, he dared to think it understood. Encouraged despite himself, Aerion shifted his weight and allowed himself the smallest, most cautious half-step forward.
The response was immediate.
The dragon’s chest swelled, expanding sharply, ribs flaring as a roar tore from its throat, reverberating through the cave and pressing into Aerion’s bones. A blast of heated air rushed over him with the force of its breath, carrying the scent of ash and smoke and stone and something mineral and deeply elemental. Yet it still did not lunge. Instead, it withdrew further into the shelter of the shadows. The dragon’s wings drew tighter along its sides, body angling slightly as though to make itself both larger and smaller at once: imposing in silhouette, yet retreating in instinct. Then, its bronze membranes tensed, as if to shield itself rather than to strike.
Aerion halted at once and lifted both hands higher, surrendering the ground he had claimed.
“I mean no harm,” he called out.
The softness in his voice would have startled anyone who knew him. It bore none of the sharp edges that usually drew wary, calculating glances, none of the cool authority he wore so effortlessly at court. There was no command in it, no arrogance, no impatient bite. What remained was something gentler, almost tender. Reverent.
The dragon’s next roar was lower, shorter—less explosive. Its teeth remained partially bared, and it simply held itself rigid and watchful. Aerion exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving it. A tightness settled in Aerion’s chest as he watched it. Once, dragons had been the terror of kingdoms, the masters of sky and flame, creatures that bent the world to their will and answered to no one but their riders. Creature before whom armies broke and castles burned—men had trembled at the mere sight of them. And yet this one, magnificent and whole, recoiled as though expecting pain.
What a terribly cruel, hollow thing it was, he thought, that a dragon’s first instinct should be fear.
His gaze lingered on the bronze curve of its neck, the muted gold along its ridges, the steady blue of its eyes. He found himself wondering whether it had ever been given a name. The dragon remained just within the mouth of the cave, bronze body half in shadow, half in the last fading light. It tilted its head slightly, the movement slow and deliberate—almost human in its hesitation—as though uncertain how to proceed now that the intruder had retreated instead of advancing. Its wings were no longer flared quite as high, though they remained tense, ready.
Aerion extended his hand again, slower this time, palm open and steady, offering rather than reaching. He remembered what he had once read in dusty volumes, that scent was the beginning of familiarity, that a dragon must first learn the presence of the one who sought its trust. The thought of bond stirred something fierce and bright in his chest. He wanted this creature. Not as a trophy. Not as prey. As his.
“Look at you,” he breathed, awe threading through every syllable. “What an absolutely remarkable, beautiful creature you are…”
The words were fond, adoring, and something in the dragon’s posture shifted in response. The rigid line of its wings eased. It studied him a moment longer, those sky-blue eyes searching his face with unnerving clarity, before curiosity seemed to overcome caution.
It stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully.
Then, it lowered its head, and the vast muzzle hovered near his hand for a suspended heartbeat—and then a warm, scaled nose nudged against his palm, testing, tentative.
Aerion’s breath left him in something dangerously close to a sob. A startled laugh broke from him instead, bright and disbelieving, as his fingers made contact with the firm, solid surface of scale. It was warm. Real. Textured like living metal beneath his touch. For a moment, he feared it might dissolve, that he might wake to find only trees and darkness and his own foolish imagination. But when he dared to let his hand move, sliding gently along the curve of its neck, careful not to startle, the dragon did not recoil. Its skin was smooth but strong beneath his fingers, muscles shifting subtly with each breath.
“Kirīmvose,” he murmured, gratitude carried quietly in the High Valyrian word.
Thank you.
The entire moment felt impossibly surreal and yet more solid than anything he had known in months.
“What is your name, hm?” he asked affectionately, eyes lifting to meet those brilliant blue ones. “You must have one.”
Aerion’s lips curved slowly.
“I shall call you Aurax,” he said at last, the name shaped with certainty. “A fitting name, for bronze such as yours.”
Aurax released a low rumble, softer this time, and the sound was so undeniably real, so present and alive before him, that Aerion laughed again, open and genuine, stripped entirely of pretense. He moved slowly, carefully, circling along the curve of Aurax’s body with the kind of caution one might use around a skittish horse, though no horse had ever possessed such wings. His fingers trailed briefly along bronze scale as he shifted position, gaze lifting to measure the breadth of shoulder and the strength of hind leg. If he mounted carefully—if he moved without startling—perhaps the dragon would allow it. Perhaps instinct would take hold. Perhaps fire and blood would recognize one another.
He had just begun to step toward the creature’s flank when the forest shattered. Branches snapped sharply behind him. Leaves rustled. Boots thudded against earth.
“My prince!” a voice called out, breathless and urgent. “Your father sent us — he feared something had happened when you rowed out without notice. Thank the Gods you are unharmed—”
The soldier’s words died mid-sentence. Another man pushed past him and stopped just as abruptly. His lance dipped toward the ground as his voice dropped to a stunned whisper.
“Gods be good…”
Aerion did not need to turn to know what they saw. Aurax recoiled at once. The dragon’s body compressed inward, wings drawing tight before flaring halfway in agitation. A frightened roar tore from its throat, and its blue eyes darted between the soldiers, locking onto the gleam of spearheads and the polished length of lances with unmistakable alarm. More men were emerging now, forcing their way through brush and bramble, steel catching what little light remained. The dragon shifted sideways, powerful talons scraping against stone. Its wings unfurled fully this time, membranes stretching wide before snapping inward again in restless preparation.
Aerion saw it then—the coiling of muscle, the gathering of strength beneath bronze hide. It was going to flee. It was afraid.
His stomach dropped.
“No—lykirī, Aurax,” he called out sharply, panic breaking through his composure. He reached out instinctively, hand extended as though he could physically anchor the creature in place. “Lykirī!”
But the soldiers were shouting now, some stepping forward, others raising weapons out of reflex rather than strategy. The air had shifted from reverent stillness to chaos in a heartbeat.
It was too late.
With a thunderous beat of wings that sent sand and leaves spiraling upward, Aurax launched himself skyward. The force of it drove wind against Aerion’s chest and nearly knocked the nearest soldier off his feet. Bronze wings caught the darkening air, massive and magnificent, and within seconds the dragon was rising above the treeline.
“No, no, no,” Aerion breathed, stepping forward uselessly as though he could follow. “Umbās!”
Wait!
The dragon let out a cry—something raw and wild—and then it climbed higher, slipping into the thickening dusk. Its bronze form diminished against the dark blue sky until it vanished entirely beyond the low sweep of clouds, leaving only the sound of wings fading toward the open sea.
Silence fell heavy in its wake. And Aerion stood beneath an empty sky. Aerion did not move.
He stared at the space the dragon had occupied only heartbeats ago. At the crushed grass, the deep gouges where talons had bitten into earth before takeoff. The air still carried warmth. The ground still bore the shape of him, vast and unmistakable, as though the island itself had tried to hold him back and failed.
“You fools!” The words tore from him, not spoken but flung.
The soldiers flinched as if struck, several stepping back instinctively, others lowering their lances as though faced with a far greater threat than the one that had just taken flight. None dared speak.
Whatever gentleness had softened Aerion’s voice moments earlier had vanished utterly. Burned away as cleanly as tinder under flame. In its place stood something colder, edged with fury and something dangerously close to grief. His gaze drifted back to the sky. High above, the last glimmer of bronze dissolved into the thickening dark, swallowed by distance until it vanished behind cloud. And something in Aerion went with it.
It felt as though a hook had been driven into his chest and wrenched free, ripping through sinew and marrow alike. Not metaphorical pain but something visceral, almost anatomical. His lungs seized as though air itself had been stolen from him. His ribs felt too tight, as if something had been forcibly removed from between them, leaving a hollow cavity that burned in its absence. For a moment, he truly believed he might be ill. The space where wonder had bloomed only moments earlier now throbbed with violent vacancy. He had touched something impossible. Warm. Breathing. Alive beneath his hand.
And it had been torn away from him with brutal suddenness. It was not pride that ached. It was something far deeper, something that felt perilously close to the soul. As if a door inside him, long sealed and long forgotten, had been forced open only to be slammed shut again before he could step through. His heartbeat pounded hard against his ribs, but it felt misaligned, displaced. As though it had briefly found its true rhythm—and now beat wrong in its absence. He kept staring at the sky. As if by sheer will and refusal he might drag that bronze shape back from the clouds.
The wind had already stilled. The sea lay dark and indifferent beyond the treeline. Only the massive impressions in the earth remained—proof that he had not imagined it. Proof that Aurax had been real.
They had frightened him.
They had driven him away.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms until the sting grounded him.
No. No one would drive that dragon anywhere again. Never again.
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Unnamed Island. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory.
There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
→ also available on ao3: click here.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
→ updates starting from chapter 2 ONLY on ao3 due to formatting issues on tumblr! please follow the link or search ‘Of Skin and Scales’ by interloved on ao3.
Warnings: Aerion is his own warning lol, later chapters contain smut, porn with plot, nsfw, minors dni!!
Description: Cursed in childhood by a blood witch to live as a dragon and granted human form only once each month, Duncan has long hidden in the deepest shadows of the Black Forest. For years, the wilderness kept his secret… until a royal hunting competition drives riders and hounds into his territory. There, he is discovered by Prince Aerion. And Aerion, who has always hungered for legends thought lost to time, decides he cannot—will not—let the last dragon slip through his grasp.
also available on ao3: click here.
It was a violent thing—skin splitting, bones grinding and reshaping, scale and flesh tearing apart only to fuse back together in another form. Duncan felt something inside him give way and readjust in the cruelest possible manner, as though his very structure were being rewritten. The pain was blinding, total. He screamed with a mouth he did not possess, the sound swallowed by stone and darkness. The world dissolved into heat and pressure and the copper taste of it all. Then, slowly, through sweat and exhaustion and the ringing in his skull, the fog began to lift.
He was on the cave floor. Cold air touched skin instead of scale. Sweat slicked his body, catching crumbs of dirt and crushed grass that clung to him as though the forest itself refused to release him. He lay there naked as he had been born, chest heaving, heart hammering against ribs that still felt too tight. Something cracked along his spine with a sharp, protesting snap.
And then—it stopped. Silence.
Duncan dragged in a shaky breath and looked down at himself. Pink flesh where scales had been. Fingers instead of claws, trembling and weak. Hair falling into his eyes where ridges had once run down his skull.
He swallowed, throat raw.
Duncan opened his mouth. “Fucking hell.”
The words came out hoarse, scraped thin… but human. Thank the Gods. A voice where there had once been only a maw made for fire and roar.
Duncan pushed himself upright, unnaturally weak as he always was after a transformation. His limbs felt borrowed, his balance uncertain. Standing on two legs had never felt instinctive to him; he could not remember a time when it had been the only way he had moved through the world. He knew, rationally, there had been such a time—knew he had not always been this creature split between shapes—but those memories were thin and scattered. Since he had been three-and-ten. Before that, there was little. He brushed dirt from his skin, staggering like a newborn fawn before remembering how to command his legs. His arms felt too small, too light, strangely incomplete without the counterweight of a tail. He stilled, jaw tight, bracing himself as he tried to find his balance.
When he felt steady enough, he took a step forward. And promptly face-planted into the dirt.
“Seven be damned,” he muttered into the earth, spitting out grit as he shoved himself upright again. This time his legs obeyed, and his arms followed suit, clumsy but cooperative.
He crossed the cave and pulled on the rags he had bought years ago, clothes that no longer fit properly. Even in human form, Duncan was unnaturally tall. His body had gone largely unused for weeks at a time, and the muscle he had once carried as a boy had thinned, but he remained strong in a way that felt inherent rather than earned. Coordination, however, was another matter entirely. He stepped out of the cave, human again for the first time in weeks, and closed his eyes against the wind. The shift in his senses struck him as it always did. As a dragon, the world had been sharp—painfully clear. He could see farther, distinguish subtler movements, smell layers of scent no human nose could detect. Now everything felt dulled. Colors seemed flatter, sounds muted, the air empty of nuance. The world felt smaller in this body. There were things he preferred about being human. But what he missed most was flight. The stretch of wings. The lift beneath him. The brief, reckless joy of leaving the ground. He had never dared long journeys, never climbed too high into the sky, though the urge had always been there. Instead, he had stayed close to earth.
Staying unnoticed. Staying alive. The thought carried the echo of Ser Arlan’s voice. The only man who knew. Had known. Duncan clenched his jaw and forced the memory aside. He would not let himself sink into grief on the first day he was human once more.
He hummed under his breath, savoring the sound of his own voice as though reacquainting himself with it, testing the shape of it in his throat, enjoying the roughness of it, and the simple fact that he had a voice again. Then he set off toward the sea, beginning his usual walk down the worn path, stumbling over roots more than once on the way down the narrow path, cursing softly when his toes caught against stone. He had never been the picture of grace, but after weeks of neglecting his human limbs, he moved with all the elegance of an overgrown colt. His stride was too long, his balance uncertain, his feet slow to remember the ground. Still, he made the journey every time. He liked to wash away the sweat and grit of the transformation, to scrub off the lingering scent of smoke and scale. He liked the cool bite of seawater against skin, the steady pull of tide and current. I reminded him that the world was larger than the cave. Duncan had made the Cinderwoods his home; a broad, slow-growing, unhurried forest that lay at the heart of a remote island far, far away from the mainland of Westeros. It was an island of no particular value, no trade routes, no villages, no reason for ships to anchor. So unknown and so insignificant that Duncan had never been certain it possessed a name at all.
He had given it one himself. Caerwyn Isle. He had named it after the warrior queen from the stories he remembered faintly from childhood, Caerwyn the Brave. Ser Arlan had told him those tales once, when nights were warmer and the world had still made sense. Duncan remembered little of those nights by the fire, little of the man’s face, but he remembered the stories, and his voice. In the back of his head, there was the faint, unsure knowledge that Ser Arlan had always had a story.
There was no one left to tell him stories now. No human soul lived on the island. It belonged to wind and trees and beasts. Even fishermen did not trouble themselves with its waters. Once, years ago, a small group of young men had lost their way and drifted ashore by accident. Duncan had hidden and watched them from the treeline, heart pounding as they laughed and argued and repaired their nets. After a few hours they had departed again, unaware they had been observed. They were the first humans he had seen in years. He had wanted—fiercely, desperately, painfully—to step out of the trees and speak. To sit in one of their small boats and be nothing more than a man among men. But caution had rooted itself too deeply in him. So he had watched. And watched them leave.
Hunting had never required him to venture to the mainland. The island provided. Fish were plentiful along the coast, and he had grown adept at catching them, quick and precise even without flame. Wild boars roamed Caerwyn Isle in abundance, and the Cinderwoods sheltered bears and deer, and hares moved through the underbrush of the forest. Though he was large for a dragon, he did not require much. Most of his days were spent sleeping or lying in the sun, soaking up warmth through the scales. He rarely ventured far across the island, always wary of being seen even in a place no one visited, though sometimes he allowed himself small indulgences. He would wade into the shallows in dragon form and let the surf curl around his legs, watching fish dart between his claws while gulls wheeled overhead, their shrill cries slicing through the air.
It was not a particularly beautiful sound. Harsh and grating, but company of a kind. After all, there was little else to listen to on Caerwyn Isle, and even less for a dragon to do.
Duncan sighed in quiet relief as he washed himself and his clothes, scrubbing fabric and skin alike before spreading the rags over warm stones to dry in the sun. Then he dove beneath the surface, pushing wet hair from his face as he rinsed away the last of the grime. It had grown longer than he preferred. He considered cutting it. He waded back through the shallows, toes curling into the sand—ah, the strange pleasure of having toes again!—and retrieved the small dagger he kept hidden among the rocks. Returning to the water’s edge, he crouched and studied his reflection in the rippling surface. Hazelnut-brown hair, entirely unremarkable. Mousy. Plain. Light, sky-blue eyes that seemed almost out of place in such an ordinary face. He wondered what other people might have thought if they had seen him like this. Would they have called it a kind face? Or would they have noticed only how tall he was? Perhaps he was not tall at all, he considered, perhaps men had grown broader and larger in the years since he had last walked among them. He had no measure for such things anymore.
He tilted his head slightly, studying his reflection again, then huffed softly and lifted the dagger, sawing through uneven lengths of hair and letting the strands drift into the sea. The sun was already lowering toward the horizon, staining the water in muted gold. He pondered what to eat. Perhaps berries. He could never be bothered with them in dragon form—they filled no space in a dragon’s belly—but he missed the sharp, sour-sweet burst of wild berries on his tongue.
He shook water from his shortened hair and dressed once more, feeling lighter without the crust of dirt and dust clinging to him. Then he made his way toward the brush, seeking out berry shrubs he knew by heart. The first cracking of bone would come soon enough; he knew the signs. He meant to make use of the time he had. Perhaps he would eat his fill and lie in the last of the sunlight, letting warmth soak into real flesh instead of scale.
When the sun finally slipped below the horizon, the pain returned as predictably as the tide. Here we go again, he thought dimly as it began—a sharp, rising agony that spread through muscle and marrow alike. It surged and twisted and rewrote him, as it always did. And when it was done, he would rise from the sand no longer a man but scaly and broad and strong, a dragon once more.
Prince Aerion Targaryen had better uses for his time than enduring royal hunting competitions.
He had said as much—repeatedly, and without subtlety. He had made certain his father heard of his boredom, his disdain, his utter lack of interest in chasing frightened beasts for sport. The complaints had gone unanswered, dismissed with the same patient indifference reserved for childish sulking. And so he had been required to attend regardless.
Now he sat in the carriage with his arms folded tightly across his chest in open protest, jaw ticking faintly as he stared out the window. His glare could have split stone, though at present it was directed at nothing more offensive than passing trees. Even so, he managed to look infuriatingly composed while doing it. Across from him, Aegon was the very opposite of composed. The younger prince could scarcely contain his excitement, shifting in his seat every few moments as though the carriage might explode from the force of his enthusiasm.
“Will you cease with your quacking?” Aerion muttered at last, dragging his glare from the window to his brother. For a fleeting second, he considered kicking Aegon’s shins.
Aegon let out an offended squeak, outrage already forming on his tongue.
“Leave him be,” Daeron said lazily from beside Aegon, stretching his legs into the space near Aerion’s boots. He yawned without restraint. “It’s his first royal competition. Don’t you remember being excited when you were little?”
Aerion wrinkled his nose as though the suggestion offended him personally. “I do not recall such things.”
Daeron rolled his eyes and leaned toward Aegon conspiratorially. “Liar. He was the most insufferably gleeful child at events like these.”
“I was not,” Aerion snapped, nudging Daeron’s feet aside with unnecessary force. “Now cease spreading falsehoods and remove your stinking boots from my bench.”
Daeron grunted as his feet thudded to the floor. “I am far too sober for this,” he muttered, stifling another yawn.
Aegon, meanwhile, had already turned back toward the window, peering out with unfiltered curiosity.
“I wonder how long we’ll be here,” he said, voice bright and boyish.
“We will remain for several days,” Aerion replied sharply, tapping impatient fingers against his knee. “Then we row to the Unnamed Island and continue the hunt there before returning to the Rainwood. Has Father’s voice not reached your ears at any point this week?”
Aegon ignored the bite in his tone entirely.
“What’s so special about the Unnamed Island?” he asked, eyes wide with interest.
“How should I know?” Aerion replied flatly. “It holds no strategic value, no resources, no settlements. It was chosen because it is the farthest island to row to. That is all.”
“I still wonder why it’s called the Unnamed Island…” Aegon persisted thoughtfully.
Aerion turned his head slowly and stared at him as though weighing the benefits of exile.
“It is not named because it is insignificant,” he said with strained patience. “and because no one has bothered to name it.”
Daeron snorted at the edge in his voice, while Aegon continued speculating aloud as if he had not been dismissed at all. Aerion pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the first stirrings of a headache behind his eyes. For one brief, vivid moment, he considered fratricide. Fortunately for Aegon, the carriage came to a halt. Aerion did not hesitate. He seized the opportunity and stepped out at once. The door swung open and a sharp gust of wind struck him full in the face, carrying with it the faint salt scent of the sea. The scenery was unremarkable. A stretch of trees crowned in summer green. The coastline unfolding into open water. The horizon uninterrupted. This competition had dragged on for weeks, and Aerion had long since tired of it. He did not enjoy these displays of sport and hollow bravado. The sooner it ended, the better. Only one task remained: row to the Unnamed Island, bring back a deer or a boar, and return. After that, there would be some celebratory gathering — a feast to reward exhausted lords who had traveled to the Rainwood and grown weary of tents and damp air. Night was approaching; no one wished to hunt in darkness.
Aerion clicked his tongue thoughtfully. If he rowed out now and completed the final leg before the others roused themselves, the competition could be ended early. They could depart sooner. And he would win. The thought was not entirely unappealing. Perhaps it would earn a nod of approval from his father—something rarer than it ought to be.
“Ready me a boat,” he ordered quietly to a waiting servant.
Behind him, he heard his brothers emerging from the carriage: Daeron stumbling as always, and Aegon speaking at a volume fit for a market square. Another advantage to leaving immediately, he thought, was removing himself from their proximity.
The sea lay before him, darkening with the coming dusk.
The Unnamed Island waited.
Rowing proved more laborious than Aerion had anticipated, though he reached the island without incident. With only a hunting bow slung across his back and a dagger at his hip, he imagined the task ahead would be simple enough. A deer. A boar. Something large enough to secure victory and return before dawn. He dragged the boat onto the shore and straightened, taking in the stretch of land before him. White sand rolled into low dunes tufted with coarse grass, and beyond that, in the dimming light, stood a forest; dark and dense, the only place worthy of sheltering game.
Presumably, that was where the beasts would be. He trudged through the sand until he reached the treeline, then slipped between the trunks with quiet determination. The forest had grown considerably darker by then. Squirrels darted along bark. Birds called intermittently from above. But no larger creature revealed itself. He ventured deeper. And then—there. A deer. A large one. Aerion stilled at once. He drew the bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow, and raised it with steady precision. The wood felt smooth and familiar beneath his fingers, reliable and balanced. He closed one eye, narrowed the other, and exhaled slowly, willing his body into stillness.
He took one careful step forward.
Crack.
He glanced down just long enough to see the offending branch beneath his boot—brittle and traitorous—before looking back up to find the deer already bolting through the undergrowth.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and broke into pursuit.
He would not lose to something as trivial as a misstep. He ran, following the faint impressions of hooves even after the creature vanished from sight. Leaves whipped at his boots, branches snagged at his sleeves, but he pressed on, stubborn and intent.
And then he saw it again.
The deer stood some distance ahead, feeding in a patch of grass beneath the deepening blue of evening. Aerion slowed, lifted the bow once more, and stepped forward—
The ground gave way beneath him.
Something cracked sharply under his weight — not wood this time, but earth — and a torrent of curses tore from his throat as he tumbled downward. Leaves clung to his clothing, branches lashed at his arms and face, striking like thin, stinging whips. He fell through a blur of green and shadow, twisting, losing all sense of direction until he struck something hard and unyielding.
Stone.
He landed heavily on his arm. Another string of profanity spilled from his lips as a sharp, lightning-like pain shot up through muscle and bone. He lay there for a moment, breath knocked from him, nerves screaming in protest. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the narrow strip of darkening sky above, cradling his injured arm. After a few seconds, he forced himself upright, propping his weight on the uninjured side. He looked ahead. And forgot the pain entirely. A few steps away, half-concealed by lush leaves and the shadow of stone, yawned the mouth of a cave.
And within it—
There lay a dragon.
It had scales the color of sun-warmed earth and dying autumn leaves, a deep, burnished bronze like coins long passed from hand to hand, dulled by time rather than polished to shine. In the dim light of the cave mouth, that bronze seemed almost to drink in the fading gold of evening. Along its spine, the color deepened into rich umber, dark and shadowed, nearly brown-black where the light failed to reach. Each scale lay layered and deliberate, overlapping like carefully forged armor, though nothing about it felt crafted. It was living metal. Breathing earth.
The edges of its scales were lighter by comparison, worn-looking and pale as if brushed with weathered gold. The great wings, folded tightly against its body, were supported by sturdy bronze bones that arched and curved with quiet strength. The membranes stretched between them faded into a softer tawny hue, thin enough that, had the light been stronger, one might have seen the faint suggestion of veins beneath. Along the ridged line that ran from brow to tail, the paler gold returned—not bright, not gleaming, but subdued and mild, catching what little light filtered into the cave and holding it without reflection.
It was curled carefully into itself, wings drawn in close as though guarding its own warmth. Its tail wrapped around its body with deliberate neatness, the tip resting near its hind legs. Its head lay upon its foreclaws, muzzle nestled between curved talons that could have split stone. Its chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, each breath accompanied by a faint rumble deep within its ribcage. Not quite a snore, but something low and resonant, like distant thunder muted by hills.
It was sleeping. Such an ordinary act, and yet on a creature of this magnitude, it felt almost indecent to witness. A dragon at rest. Vulnerable. Unaware. Even curled tightly, it was unmistakably vast. The curve of its body filled the cave’s entrance, bronze hide brushing against stone walls darkened by time. When it breathed, the air seemed to shift around it. And yet, Aerion noted the proportions carefully—the length of limb to torso, the thickness of the neck, the still-growing horns that curved back from its skull. Not ancient. Not yet at full maturity. Young, perhaps. Or, at least, not old.
Healthy, certainly. Strong. Its scales were smooth and whole, uncracked and unmarred by illness. Nothing like the descriptions of the last dragon during King Aegon III’s reign; that pitiful, dwindling creature spoken of in hushed disappointment. This one was no relic of decay. Questions struck him in rapid succession.
How had it survived the Dance? How had it escaped notice? Had someone hidden it away, protected it in secret? Or—
Perhaps it had never belonged to anyone at all.
There had been wild dragons once. Dragons born beyond the Dragonpit. Dragons that had never accepted a rider, and had stayed wild. He filed the questions aside for later. There would be time for them. He stepped closer, careful now, boots pressing against cool stone. The dragon’s chest continued its slow rise and fall. Its nostrils twitched once, twice, as if catching some distant scent.
That was the only warning. Its eyes snapped open. Clear, piercing, sky-blue eyes stared at him, steady and intelligent, focused and far too aware to belong to a mindless beast. They locked onto him instantly. The dragon’s body uncoiled with fluid, powerful precision. Wings shifted outward slightly, membranes tightening. Its head lifted from its claws, neck arching as muscles bunched beneath bronze hide. In one smooth motion, it rose higher, elongating itself, presenting a broader silhouette.
Only now did Aerion truly comprehend its size. Upright, it loomed—shoulders broad, wings capable of spanning the width of the cave mouth and more. The bronze scales seemed to shimmer faintly as they caught the last of the evening light, not gleaming, but alive with subtle depth.
“The Gods have blessed me,” he whispered into the air, scarcely aware he had spoken.
The dragon answered with a low, warning sound—not quite a roar, not yet, but a rough, vibrating growl that resonated in the stone beneath Aerion’s boots. Its lips peeled back slightly, revealing curved teeth. Its wings flexed again. Aerion, reckless or entranced, stepped closer. The dragon hissed immediately—a harsh, defensive sound—and retreated deeper into the cave. It did not lunge, it did not strike, it… shrank.
Aerion’s breath caught. It was afraid.
The realization settled heavily. If it had survived the Dance, if it had lived hidden and alone, then it knew what men were capable of. It knew the sound of armor and shouting and fire turned against fire. And here he stood, armed, intruding. He lifted one hand slowly, palm open, fingers spread in what he hoped might resemble a gesture of peace rather than threat. The gesture felt absurdly, laughably small before a creature of such size, yet he held it all the same, resisting the urge to move too quickly.
Dragon commands.
The thought came to him not as instinct but as recollection—dragged from memory rather than rising naturally. High Valyrian words drilled into him by stern-faced tutors in polished halls who had spoken of conquest and legacy, of bloodlines and fire, not of caves and trembling breath and living, wary beings. He felt, fleetingly and sharply, the strangeness of it. The language of dragonlords. Of conquerors. Of his ancestors. It struck him then how foreign it felt upon his tongue, how instinct had not delivered it to him unbidden. For all that he was Targaryen, the words did not come naturally.
“Lykirī,” he breathed, the syllables deliberate and measured. “Lykirī, zaldrīzes.”
Calm, dragon.
The High Valyrian sounded uncertain after so many years of disuse, almost fragile in the cavernous space. The creature’s sky-blue eyes blinked once, lids sliding slowly over intelligent pupils before fixing on him again, and there was something in the movement that suggested understanding rather than reflex. Its gaze did not wander; it remained fixed on him; nothing animal and vacant, no, it was assessing, conscious. For heartbeat, he dared to think it understood. Encouraged despite himself, Aerion shifted his weight and allowed himself the smallest, most cautious half-step forward.
The response was immediate.
The dragon’s chest swelled, expanding sharply, ribs flaring as a roar tore from its throat, reverberating through the cave and pressing into Aerion’s bones. A blast of heated air rushed over him with the force of its breath, carrying the scent of ash and smoke and stone and something mineral and deeply elemental. Yet it still did not lunge. Instead, it withdrew further into the shelter of the shadows. The dragon’s wings drew tighter along its sides, body angling slightly as though to make itself both larger and smaller at once: imposing in silhouette, yet retreating in instinct. Then, its bronze membranes tensed, as if to shield itself rather than to strike.
Aerion halted at once and lifted both hands higher, surrendering the ground he had claimed.
“I mean no harm,” he called out.
The softness in his voice would have startled anyone who knew him. It bore none of the sharp edges that usually drew wary, calculating glances, none of the cool authority he wore so effortlessly at court. There was no command in it, no arrogance, no impatient bite. What remained was something gentler, almost tender. Reverent.
The dragon’s next roar was lower, shorter—less explosive. Its teeth remained partially bared, and it simply held itself rigid and watchful. Aerion exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving it. A tightness settled in Aerion’s chest as he watched it. Once, dragons had been the terror of kingdoms, the masters of sky and flame, creatures that bent the world to their will and answered to no one but their riders. Creature before whom armies broke and castles burned—men had trembled at the mere sight of them. And yet this one, magnificent and whole, recoiled as though expecting pain.
What a terribly cruel, hollow thing it was, he thought, that a dragon’s first instinct should be fear.
His gaze lingered on the bronze curve of its neck, the muted gold along its ridges, the steady blue of its eyes. He found himself wondering whether it had ever been given a name. The dragon remained just within the mouth of the cave, bronze body half in shadow, half in the last fading light. It tilted its head slightly, the movement slow and deliberate—almost human in its hesitation—as though uncertain how to proceed now that the intruder had retreated instead of advancing. Its wings were no longer flared quite as high, though they remained tense, ready.
Aerion extended his hand again, slower this time, palm open and steady, offering rather than reaching. He remembered what he had once read in dusty volumes, that scent was the beginning of familiarity, that a dragon must first learn the presence of the one who sought its trust. The thought of bond stirred something fierce and bright in his chest. He wanted this creature. Not as a trophy. Not as prey. As his.
“Look at you,” he breathed, awe threading through every syllable. “What an absolutely remarkable, beautiful creature you are…”
The words were fond, adoring, and something in the dragon’s posture shifted in response. The rigid line of its wings eased. It studied him a moment longer, those sky-blue eyes searching his face with unnerving clarity, before curiosity seemed to overcome caution.
It stepped forward. Slowly. Carefully.
Then, it lowered its head, and the vast muzzle hovered near his hand for a suspended heartbeat—and then a warm, scaled nose nudged against his palm, testing, tentative.
Aerion’s breath left him in something dangerously close to a sob. A startled laugh broke from him instead, bright and disbelieving, as his fingers made contact with the firm, solid surface of scale. It was warm. Real. Textured like living metal beneath his touch. For a moment, he feared it might dissolve, that he might wake to find only trees and darkness and his own foolish imagination. But when he dared to let his hand move, sliding gently along the curve of its neck, careful not to startle, the dragon did not recoil. Its skin was smooth but strong beneath his fingers, muscles shifting subtly with each breath.
“Kirīmvose,” he murmured, gratitude carried quietly in the High Valyrian word.
Thank you.
The entire moment felt impossibly surreal and yet more solid than anything he had known in months.
“What is your name, hm?” he asked affectionately, eyes lifting to meet those brilliant blue ones. “You must have one.”
Aerion’s lips curved slowly.
“I shall call you Aurax,” he said at last, the name shaped with certainty. “A fitting name, for bronze such as yours.”
Aurax released a low rumble, softer this time, and the sound was so undeniably real, so present and alive before him, that Aerion laughed again, open and genuine, stripped entirely of pretense. He moved slowly, carefully, circling along the curve of Aurax’s body with the kind of caution one might use around a skittish horse, though no horse had ever possessed such wings. His fingers trailed briefly along bronze scale as he shifted position, gaze lifting to measure the breadth of shoulder and the strength of hind leg. If he mounted carefully—if he moved without startling—perhaps the dragon would allow it. Perhaps instinct would take hold. Perhaps fire and blood would recognize one another.
He had just begun to step toward the creature’s flank when the forest shattered. Branches snapped sharply behind him. Leaves rustled. Boots thudded against earth.
“My prince!” a voice called out, breathless and urgent. “Your father sent us — he feared something had happened when you rowed out without notice. Thank the Gods you are unharmed—”
The soldier’s words died mid-sentence. Another man pushed past him and stopped just as abruptly. His lance dipped toward the ground as his voice dropped to a stunned whisper.
“Gods be good…”
Aerion did not need to turn to know what they saw. Aurax recoiled at once. The dragon’s body compressed inward, wings drawing tight before flaring halfway in agitation. A frightened roar tore from its throat, and its blue eyes darted between the soldiers, locking onto the gleam of spearheads and the polished length of lances with unmistakable alarm. More men were emerging now, forcing their way through brush and bramble, steel catching what little light remained. The dragon shifted sideways, powerful talons scraping against stone. Its wings unfurled fully this time, membranes stretching wide before snapping inward again in restless preparation.
Aerion saw it then—the coiling of muscle, the gathering of strength beneath bronze hide. It was going to flee. It was afraid.
His stomach dropped.
“No—lykirī, Aurax,” he called out sharply, panic breaking through his composure. He reached out instinctively, hand extended as though he could physically anchor the creature in place. “Lykirī!”
But the soldiers were shouting now, some stepping forward, others raising weapons out of reflex rather than strategy. The air had shifted from reverent stillness to chaos in a heartbeat.
It was too late.
With a thunderous beat of wings that sent sand and leaves spiraling upward, Aurax launched himself skyward. The force of it drove wind against Aerion’s chest and nearly knocked the nearest soldier off his feet. Bronze wings caught the darkening air, massive and magnificent, and within seconds the dragon was rising above the treeline.
“No, no, no,” Aerion breathed, stepping forward uselessly as though he could follow. “Umbās!”
Wait!
The dragon let out a cry—something raw and wild—and then it climbed higher, slipping into the thickening dusk. Its bronze form diminished against the dark blue sky until it vanished entirely beyond the low sweep of clouds, leaving only the sound of wings fading toward the open sea.
Silence fell heavy in its wake. And Aerion stood beneath an empty sky. Aerion did not move.
He stared at the space the dragon had occupied only heartbeats ago. At the crushed grass, the deep gouges where talons had bitten into earth before takeoff. The air still carried warmth. The ground still bore the shape of him, vast and unmistakable, as though the island itself had tried to hold him back and failed.
“You fools!” The words tore from him, not spoken but flung.
The soldiers flinched as if struck, several stepping back instinctively, others lowering their lances as though faced with a far greater threat than the one that had just taken flight. None dared speak.
Whatever gentleness had softened Aerion’s voice moments earlier had vanished utterly. Burned away as cleanly as tinder under flame. In its place stood something colder, edged with fury and something dangerously close to grief. His gaze drifted back to the sky. High above, the last glimmer of bronze dissolved into the thickening dark, swallowed by distance until it vanished behind cloud. And something in Aerion went with it.
It felt as though a hook had been driven into his chest and wrenched free, ripping through sinew and marrow alike. Not metaphorical pain but something visceral, almost anatomical. His lungs seized as though air itself had been stolen from him. His ribs felt too tight, as if something had been forcibly removed from between them, leaving a hollow cavity that burned in its absence. For a moment, he truly believed he might be ill. The space where wonder had bloomed only moments earlier now throbbed with violent vacancy. He had touched something impossible. Warm. Breathing. Alive beneath his hand.
And it had been torn away from him with brutal suddenness. It was not pride that ached. It was something far deeper, something that felt perilously close to the soul. As if a door inside him, long sealed and long forgotten, had been forced open only to be slammed shut again before he could step through. His heartbeat pounded hard against his ribs, but it felt misaligned, displaced. As though it had briefly found its true rhythm—and now beat wrong in its absence. He kept staring at the sky. As if by sheer will and refusal he might drag that bronze shape back from the clouds.
The wind had already stilled. The sea lay dark and indifferent beyond the treeline. Only the massive impressions in the earth remained—proof that he had not imagined it. Proof that Aurax had been real.
They had frightened him.
They had driven him away.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms until the sting grounded him.
No. No one would drive that dragon anywhere again. Never again.
description box; aerion was born with a twin sister, whom he sees not only as his other half, but also stakes absolute claim and control upon. you, the most gentle and sweet out of your lot of siblings, are helplessly under his thumb.
warning; heavy nsfw warning, porn with a bit of plot, i think aerion targaryen is his own warning, smut under the cut!, the usual targcest, reader is a bit of a bimbo / oblivious, i watched akotsk and loved aerion and now i cannot stop thinking abt him lol, i love my insane targaryens, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
you love your twin brother aerion. and while the two of you could not look more alike, your personalities are worlds apart. you’ve always been a gentle soul, warm-hearted and good-natured, a lover of the peaceful nature and landscapes you were blessed to be born in, and a mediator through and through. you’ve always shied away from crowds, hated conflict, violence and fights, and never liked being put in the spotlight. some might say you were the most delicate of the dragons, the most docile one. always going along with everything, never complaining, never angry, never cross. on the other hand, aerion was everything you weren’t, a blazing fire compared to your soft spring sun. but in a way, you were one.
in comparison, aerion was the one leading you everywhere. while you were content to simply follow, aerion had this pathological need to dominate, which showed in him demanding all of your absolute attention and devotion, always having to be the one in control—the one making the decisions, the one arranging the plans, the one choosing activities. the older the two of you grew, the more the activities changed. but you were happy to let him do it, you had no interest in scheming and planning mischief anyway; you preferred to play the harp, to go and explore the lands riding on horseback or leisuring in the garden. but more often than not, aerion would drag you out of your room or garden to spend time with you. he’s always had a knack for finding you, wherever you were.
aerion is violent, cruel and arrogant most of the time. there is something within him that burns with the intensity of a thousand fires, something bright and powerful, but as bright and powerful it was, it also showed a certain type of hunger and greed for greatness that could not be controlled. you’ve always admired his confidence and passion, wishing you could be more outgoing—whereas you shrunk in attention, fleeing like a deer, aerion bathed in it, enjoyed it even. but he loved basking in your attention the most. back when he used to get into all sorts of fights as a boy, he would get all kinds of injuries. but under your attentive and loving care, they always healed quite nicely and quickly. he loved having you fuss over him, and when it was time to sleep, he enjoyed burying himself next to you, all cooped up in your tender embrace. his favourite moments were when you were running your fingers through his hair, carefully massaging his shoulders, wrapping your fingers around his muscles. he kept visiting your chambers, even when it outgrew childish behaviour and was frowned upon, considered inappropriate. but he didn’t care, and sought your bed every night anyways, and you didn’t complain. you liked having him close, enjoyed being in his presence. there was something strangely grounded in having him near you. for aerion, separation has always been something he has struggled with. if he could, he would just chain you to him for eternity, or lock you somewhere he knew was safe. but he supposed you would be severely cross with him for that, seeing as you loved your fresh air and all.
but aerion is controlling. always has been, but especially when it concerns you. he has this constant, obsessive need to know where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. he most definitely has someone monitoring you, following you around when you’re not with him. you’ve never caught the man who was your shadow, but you were certain there was one, even if you couldn’t exactly prove it. you sometimes feel a little uncomfortable knowing you’re being watched at all times, but brother knows best! and honestly, you’re a little flattered aerion would go such lengths to protect you and keep you safe! and in a way, it was necessary. you grew up protected and sheltered, and it created a sense of lingering innocence in you. you always saw the best in people, just like you did in aerion.
does NOT handle it well AT ALL when your attention is somewhere else. ever since you were children, he would break your toys if you dared to prefer your dolls over his company. you learned very quickly it was best to just follow his whims—most of the time, he could not be reasoned with. but as you grew up, his self-control grew and with that, his ability to hold back. nonetheless, by then the habit to simply obey him had been so ingrained into you it was nothing more than a mere unconscious reflex. you would always take his side, and even if he did something wrong, your forgiving nature would be taken advantage of mercilessly. you never could hold grudges, especially not against your dear brother.
the two of you have always been close. closer than what was normal, and to the point it was hard to tell which parts of you were his and which parts of him were yours. your kindness and sweetness had bled into him, made him a little softer around his edges sharp enough to cut. but he reserved this tenderness, this softness, only for you. no one saw this side of him that you saw, and people mostly thought you stupid for it. because while aerion was foul, cruel and a menace to others, he never treated you badly. in fact, he liked to spoil you with sudden gifts. it never occurred to you that he liked gifting you pretty dressed and jewellery because he liked seeing you in it—all covered in his things. things he chose, things he bought; you were utterly and entirely claimed by him. although you, oblivious little girl, never noticed, only always beaming ear to ear when aerion stood in front of your chambers with yet another present.
his fingers wander. he’s always been touchy, slept embracing you, but as you blossomed into a woman, his touches grew… inappropriate. or well, you suppose they weren’t, since aerion said they weren’t! you’re not sure when it started—perhaps when you were showering together again, and he had started noticing your breasts. it was purely experimental back then, when he had pinched your pliant flesh, wrapped his hands around them. but the older you became, and the more your body started to mature, so did his. his body began to parallel somewhat that of a god, where his stomach used to be soft and warm, there were now muscles hard enough to be carved out of marble, and arms that were strong and veined; and while once his arms around you had felt light, they were now heavy. whenever you woke up early and found yourself in his arms, you were usually trapped. moving his arm felt like moving a kilogram! but even now, he likes to bury his head in your breasts before sleep, enjoys fondling the perky flesh of your arse. aerion says it makes him feel at peace, and you don’t mind. you like having your brother at peace! but sometimes he puts his hands between your legs, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing, and that feels… you’re not sure how to describe. aerion says it’s supposed to help you, make you comfortable, but it makes your belly all tingly and… feels good.
men flock to you, of course they do. aerion hates it more than anything. he is a prideful man, but he is also a jealous man. and while him staking his claim over you in childhood might have fended off suitors off successfully enough, it was not enough anymore. now, being of age, the interest in you had strengthened again, from all sides. and father was determined to marry you off, ship you off somewhere. somewhere away from aerion. obviously, he had a fit about it, he reasoned with father, argued with father, and even threatened to burn any man who dared to ask for your hand alive. you had chuckled when he had stormed into your room at night then, all angry and hissy, foul words directed at your father spilling from his lips.
“aeri, sooner or later it would’ve happened anyway,” you shrugged, fairly unconcerned, as you kept brushing your hair. you were sitting in front of your vanity, carefully removing all the fancy jewellery. “besides, father means to find a suitable wife for you as well. soon, i imagine.”
aerion scoffed, still pacing around, chest heaving and violet eyes glittering in dissent. “i have no need for a wife. i don’t want a wife. and you will not be married off to some lowlife scum.”
you lifted an eyebrow, watching him through your mirror. “aerion. it’s always been my duty to serve our house—through marriage, with my life. it is your duty, also. you mustn’t be cross with father for this. in fact, i am grateful—”
“grateful?” aerion spit in rage, “grateful for what, selling you like a cow to the highest bidder?”
“—grateful that he has waited this long. he could have found me a husband when i turned five and ten, but instead he waited,” you interrupted calmly, rising from your chair now, unaffected by his moods by now as you approached him, lacing your fingers into his angrily spasming ones, “and gave me three more wonderful years with you.”
you gave him a chase, innocent peck on his cheekbone. “but all good things must come to an end. we mustn’t forget our responsibilities.”
aerion’s eyes darkened as his gaze trailed off to your lips, clinging onto the sight of them like sticky honey.
“no. i won’t allow it, you’re mine,” he drawled grimly. his anger had cooled down, like it always did when you initiated him. aerion had always had a fierce temperament, one that he had learned to rein in by now but still lost control of sometimes. in moments like these, only you were ever able to tame him. or, not afraid to get burned—most people standing in his wrath or being his subject of anger tended to not do… well. but aerion, for all his temperament, was always his calmest with you. you were the most even-tempered, amiable targaryen there was, balancing out the unstable moods of the most hot-tempered targaryen there was. in fact, it was considered strange that you were so amicable and docile. most targaryens had an attitude similar to aerion’s: proud, cocky in a lazy, self-assured way that came from the sureness of superiority, and were getting used to always getting what they wanted.
you were different. you were humble, never thinking yourself to be above others simply because of your heritage or lineage, although aerion always pointed out that dragons were above the common people—lions and wolves and roses. while you privately did not fully agree, you did think aerion was magnificent. he had always stood out in a crowd, perhaps only to you, but he did. but you never did disagree with him openly, god forbid, knowing he might take it the wrong way.
“my darling, it is not upon us to choose,” you hummed, hand finding its way to aerion’s cheek, leniently caressing it, “we must listen to what father says. i should like to think he’s secured me an age-appropriate match, at least. i should like to hear who he recommends.”
you let your fingers run through his pale hair, nostalgically reminiscing all the times you had did that in the past, and turned your back to him with a soft smile dancing around your lips. “how exciting, don’t you agree, aeri? a new chapter of my life is going to start soon. i hope he will treat me kindly…”
aerion’s eyes started darkening again. with one stride, he was in front of you, something deep in his eyes shimmering with promise.
“you will not leave me,” he repeated. “i will not have it. i would sooner kill father than have you shipped off like a broodmare to someone below our station.”
“aeri—” you pleaded in shock, placing your hands on his chest in your stupor. it’s treason to say such things, you wanted to say, but something in your heart warmed at the thought of your brother being so protective over you. always my knight in shining armour, you thought fondly.
“i mean it,” he rumbled coolly, “no one. takes you away from me. a dragon… deserves someone of the same station.”
he placed his hands down to your, big, veined hands sliding over your smaller ones, as he placed chaste kisses on your knuckles.
“and who would that be, dear brother?” you laughed, “there is barely any true velaryon blood left—well, i suppose our cousins could qualify. valarr, and the lot.”
aerion’s face twisted with a visible disgust. “their blood is polluted, my love. no, it must be someone like us.”
he lightly tilted his head, representing somewhat a hawk sizing up its prey, as a sharp smile tugged on his plush lips. “the only befitting mate for a dragon… is another dragon.”
would be the type to ruin your prospects and rather kill your father and hide behind the claim of wanting you because of “keeping the blood pure” because openly confessing it would mean actually acknowledging this thing between the two of you. it was left usually unspoken, unsaid but known, a subject untouched. to open this can of worms, it was not a good idea. regardless, he had put ideas into your head you weren’t opposed to—you could marry your brother. it might be a little frowned upon, but targaryens have married their siblings for ages, and one could argue no one else but you would last with aerion targaryen as a husband. but your father disagreed, and when aerion asked him for your hand, he refused it. you were to be married to someone else.
aerion would definitely kill your spouse. he would NOT care whether your status and reputation would be affected, he would NOT care about making you a widow. he would, however, take you for himself. aerion is selfish like that. he never claimed to be someone else.
he is absolutely intrigued by you, fascinated by your nature. not just because he obsesses over you, but simply because of you as a person. aerion has seldom met people with so much love to give, and so much love to give freely. since you two were babes, you had given him your loyalty and attention and affection and respect unconditionally, always staying by his side. although your other siblings thought you stupid for always taking his side, they also knew how blinded you were by aerion. he may be the worst person around, but never around you. you never experienced his cruelty, rarely even heard of it. and when you did, you turned a blind eye—surely aerion wouldn’t do that! he’s not that kind of person! time passed, and your siblings gave up trying to show you who aerion really was. well, was to them. again, he treated you entirely differently.
there has always been darkness in aerion, but you knew that. it was tied to this… insatiable hunger. the first time you slept with him, you noticed that he was a mean lover. he takes more than he gives, but when he gives, oh does he give. he likes seeing you squirm and hearing you beg, relishes in the power he has over you. as much as he loves being rough with you, he loves taking his time. spreading you open, rubbing and tugging against your clothes, fingers dipping into you, mouth claiming your lips as his. he loves coaxing out the little gasps, shy whimpers and soft moans you always try to suppress; in fact, he makes it a point to draw these small sounds out of you. he thinks they’re delightfully delicious, and when he sinks into you, it’s like the two of you are finally whole.
aerion is the kind of crazy that wishes to be so obsessively close to you he wishes he could crawl into your skin and sink his claws into your heart.
occasionally, aerion has his moments of tenderness and affection, and it reminded you that his love for you was buried deep within him, intertwined with his soul, as much as your love for him was. you supposed it had always been like this, your worlds were always circling around each other rather than the sun. for example, he has these moments at night, when he’s drawing moons and stars on your skin, whispering soft praises into your ear, complimenting your hair, your eyes, everything about you.
definitely fantasises about putting a dragon into you. he would never admit it, but simply the thought of you pregnant, his seed having taken root in your round belly, it arouses him terribly.
but all this fairytale ends when your father reaches a decision, and you’re to be married off.
sorry for dropping off the face of the earth lol… this is my apology? i promise to never vanish like that again hahaha. you guys interested in part two?
description box: your boyfriend, who happens to be your professor as well, corrects your very badly written essay. you’re not happy about the grade he gives you and try to change his mind…
warnings: nsfw warning, porn with plot, smut under the cut!, age gap + modern!anakin, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
IF THERE IS ONE thing that anakin skywalker’s students fear, it is the striking, red ink of his fountain pen. usually, he corrects essays using a pencil, however, when he spots something seriously wrong, he uses his red fountain pen.
unfortunately for you, your essays should always be covered in red colour. however luckily for you, anakin makes a point of correcting essays at home—home, as in the apartment you share together (as in the apartment he pays for but allows you to live in without paying rent)—, since he’s always had this saying that “homework shouldn’t be done in the workplace”. or something like that. you love to listen to anakin, but when he switches into professor mode and starts saying stuff with his the voice he uses in lectures, you usually drift off. oops. sorry, babe.
“ani, i’m home!” your light voice calls out to him softly. and he rubs his temples because he knows you won’t be happy about the grade he’s going to have to give you, since most of your essay is marked in red annotations. and because he knows that inevitably, you will throw a fit. it’s never pretty when you throw a fit. and usually, anakin ends up caving in—how could he ever let you wallow in anger?
“hey, sweetheart.” he replies, setting his glasses aside as he takes you in, your body’s tender flesh almost fully exposed thanks to the extra short skirt you’re wearing and the cropped t-shirt you had thrifted a week ago.
this is going to be really hard, he thinks because when you’re unhappy or angry with him (or both), you won’t let him touch you. the chances of anakin keeping his wandering hands away from you are slim to zero.
“what’re you up to?” you cheerily greet him with a kiss on his cheek, wandering off straight to the kitchen for a drink, “if it’s not too much, i was thinking we could catch a movie tonight… i’ll wear that pretty silk dress you like. what do you think, how’s seven?”
you beam at him, flashing him a flirty wink as you fill a cup with water from the sink.
anakin thinks about you in the “pretty silk dress” he likes. the one that hugs your figure, your ass, so god damn nicely, the one that shows just enough cleavage to make other men jealous of the goddess he has in his bed every night but that doesn’t reveal enough to make them see what they’re missing out on. oh yeah, this is definitely going to be really hard.
you peek over at his desk. “think you’ll be done by then?”
for a moment, the very incredibly unethical thought of just bumping the F he’s given you on your essay up to an A crosses his mind, before he shuts that thought down to keep his mind from wandering to what he will be missing out on tonight. and his back—you’re probably going to make him sleep on the couch. the couch that makes his back ache even after a short 15 minute nap.
that unethical thought crosses his mind again because, why go through so much trouble? when he can just… and he shuts the thought down aggressively, again.
“ani? what’s wrong?” the worry in your voice makes his heart bleed.
he thinks about it again, and weighs his chances. on one hand, he could lose his job. on the other hand, he could lose you. he doesn’t feel as opposed to losing his job than losing you. so what if it’s a little unethical? it’ll just be this once, he tells himself. just this once.
“nothing’s wrong, darling,” he replies with an assuring smile, “nothing is wrong at all.”
oh, well. fuck it.
he definitely made the right choice. you’re on your knees, lovely and beautiful as ever, that beautiful, shiny hair flowing over your delicate shoulders, and those lips… god, those lips. wrapped around him, all tenderness and warmth, nothing but love and gentleness. and boy, was he right—nothing wrong at all.
description box: rick knows it’s wrong, but he can’t keep his hands off you.
warnings: slight nsfw warning, mostly a drabble , prison!era
RICK THINKS IT’S SO CUTE actually, this little crush you have on him. it’s so obvious by the way you’re always looking for him when you enter a room, or the way you always giggle at his jokes—they’re rarely actually funny but you seem to think they are—and the way you always puff your chest a little when he’s there, as if you’re trying to get his attention.
and he lets you. lets you indulge your little fantasies. lets you follow him around. lets you cling to his arm.
he knows he probably should put an end to it—for god’s sake, you’re half his age! he could be your father! but you’re such a pretty, young thing; such an emotional and sensitive soul and so dependent on him, you’re as cute as a button and he just can’t bring himself to.
you’re a crybaby. so sweet. can’t get anything done without him, but rick secretly likes it, he likes the way you need him to do simple things for you like opening a bottle. he’ll flex his arms while he’s doing it and watch you almost drool over his arm muscles. it’s so adorable, really, he thinks.
or when you need help reaching something high in the shelf. he’ll grind up against you, hand on your waist, as he reaches up. he loves the way your breath hitches nervously and the way your frame almost disappears in comparison to his height.
sometimes you’ll even fake problems. you’re not even trying to open that box, you just straight up make your way to rick, demanding he opens this box for you. you think you’re so clever; that he doesn’t notice, but he does.
you make him feel like he’s young again. like he’s twenty years old and still desirable. rick knows you think otherwise, by god you’ve made that obvious. he could’ve taken you right there at the shelf and he knows you would’ve let him, would’ve let him do unspeakable things to your body, would’ve let him have you. but he didn’t. because he has a ring on his finger. because he has a son. because he has a daughter. and although he doesn’t have a wife anymore, he restricts himself from any kind of contact this way.
but right now, he somehow doesn’t seem to care, not when he has you like this—legs propped up over his shoulders, his name falling from your lips like a prayer, tears and runny mascara on your cheeks and marks all over your neck and chest.
he loves it when you’re like this. so unravelled. so messy. so pretty.
and he can’t help himself—he just has to have you.
description box: your boyfriend, who happens to be your professor as well, corrects your very badly written essay. you’re not happy about the grade he gives you and try to change his mind…
warnings: nsfw warning, porn with plot, smut under the cut!, age gap + modern!anakin, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
IF THERE IS ONE thing that anakin skywalker’s students fear, it is the striking, red ink of his fountain pen. usually, he corrects essays using a pencil, however, when he spots something seriously wrong, he uses his red fountain pen.
unfortunately for you, your essays should always be covered in red colour. however luckily for you, anakin makes a point of correcting essays at home—home, as in the apartment you share together (as in the apartment he pays for but allows you to live in without paying rent)—, since he’s always had this saying that “homework shouldn’t be done in the workplace”. or something like that. you love to listen to anakin, but when he switches into professor mode and starts saying stuff with his the voice he uses in lectures, you usually drift off. oops. sorry, babe.
“ani, i’m home!” your light voice calls out to him softly. and he rubs his temples because he knows you won’t be happy about the grade he’s going to have to give you, since most of your essay is marked in red annotations. and because he knows that inevitably, you will throw a fit. it’s never pretty when you throw a fit. and usually, anakin ends up caving in—how could he ever let you wallow in anger?
“hey, sweetheart.” he replies, setting his glasses aside as he takes you in, your body’s tender flesh almost fully exposed thanks to the extra short skirt you’re wearing and the cropped t-shirt you had thrifted a week ago.
this is going to be really hard, he thinks because when you’re unhappy or angry with him (or both), you won’t let him touch you. the chances of anakin keeping his wandering hands away from you are slim to zero.
“what’re you up to?” you cheerily greet him with a kiss on his cheek, wandering off straight to the kitchen for a drink, “if it’s not too much, i was thinking we could catch a movie tonight… i’ll wear that pretty silk dress you like. what do you think, how’s seven?”
you beam at him, flashing him a flirty wink as you fill a cup with water from the sink.
anakin thinks about you in the “pretty silk dress” he likes. the one that hugs your figure, your ass, so god damn nicely, the one that shows just enough cleavage to make other men jealous of the goddess he has in his bed every night but that doesn’t reveal enough to make them see what they’re missing out on. oh yeah, this is definitely going to be really hard.
you peek over at his desk. “think you’ll be done by then?”
for a moment, the very incredibly unethical thought of just bumping the F he’s given you on your essay up to an A crosses his mind, before he shuts that thought down to keep his mind from wandering to what he will be missing out on tonight. and his back—you’re probably going to make him sleep on the couch. the couch that makes his back ache even after a short 15 minute nap.
that unethical thought crosses his mind again because, why go through so much trouble? when he can just… and he shuts the thought down aggressively, again.
“ani? what’s wrong?” the worry in your voice makes his heart bleed.
he thinks about it again, and weighs his chances. on one hand, he could lose his job. on the other hand, he could lose you. he doesn’t feel as opposed to losing his job than losing you. so what if it’s a little unethical? it’ll just be this once, he tells himself. just this once.
“nothing’s wrong, darling,” he replies with an assuring smile, “nothing is wrong at all.”
oh, well. fuck it.
he definitely made the right choice. you’re on your knees, lovely and beautiful as ever, that beautiful, shiny hair flowing over your delicate shoulders, and those lips… god, those lips. wrapped around him, all tenderness and warmth, nothing but love and gentleness. and boy, was he right—nothing wrong at all.
description box; aerion was born with a twin sister, whom he sees not only as his other half, but also stakes absolute claim and control upon. you, the most gentle and sweet out of your lot of siblings, are helplessly under his thumb.
warning; heavy nsfw warning, porn with a bit of plot, i think aerion targaryen is his own warning, smut under the cut!, the usual targcest, reader is a bit of a bimbo / oblivious, i watched akotsk and loved aerion and now i cannot stop thinking abt him lol, i love my insane targaryens, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!!
you love your twin brother aerion. and while the two of you could not look more alike, your personalities are worlds apart. you’ve always been a gentle soul, warm-hearted and good-natured, a lover of the peaceful nature and landscapes you were blessed to be born in, and a mediator through and through. you’ve always shied away from crowds, hated conflict, violence and fights, and never liked being put in the spotlight. some might say you were the most delicate of the dragons, the most docile one. always going along with everything, never complaining, never angry, never cross. on the other hand, aerion was everything you weren’t, a blazing fire compared to your soft spring sun. but in a way, you were one.
in comparison, aerion was the one leading you everywhere. while you were content to simply follow, aerion had this pathological need to dominate, which showed in him demanding all of your absolute attention and devotion, always having to be the one in control—the one making the decisions, the one arranging the plans, the one choosing activities. the older the two of you grew, the more the activities changed. but you were happy to let him do it, you had no interest in scheming and planning mischief anyway; you preferred to play the harp, to go and explore the lands riding on horseback or leisuring in the garden. but more often than not, aerion would drag you out of your room or garden to spend time with you. he’s always had a knack for finding you, wherever you were.
aerion is violent, cruel and arrogant most of the time. there is something within him that burns with the intensity of a thousand fires, something bright and powerful, but as bright and powerful it was, it also showed a certain type of hunger and greed for greatness that could not be controlled. you’ve always admired his confidence and passion, wishing you could be more outgoing—whereas you shrunk in attention, fleeing like a deer, aerion bathed in it, enjoyed it even. but he loved basking in your attention the most. back when he used to get into all sorts of fights as a boy, he would get all kinds of injuries. but under your attentive and loving care, they always healed quite nicely and quickly. he loved having you fuss over him, and when it was time to sleep, he enjoyed burying himself next to you, all cooped up in your tender embrace. his favourite moments were when you were running your fingers through his hair, carefully massaging his shoulders, wrapping your fingers around his muscles. he kept visiting your chambers, even when it outgrew childish behaviour and was frowned upon, considered inappropriate. but he didn’t care, and sought your bed every night anyways, and you didn’t complain. you liked having him close, enjoyed being in his presence. there was something strangely grounded in having him near you. for aerion, separation has always been something he has struggled with. if he could, he would just chain you to him for eternity, or lock you somewhere he knew was safe. but he supposed you would be severely cross with him for that, seeing as you loved your fresh air and all.
but aerion is controlling. always has been, but especially when it concerns you. he has this constant, obsessive need to know where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. he most definitely has someone monitoring you, following you around when you’re not with him. you’ve never caught the man who was your shadow, but you were certain there was one, even if you couldn’t exactly prove it. you sometimes feel a little uncomfortable knowing you’re being watched at all times, but brother knows best! and honestly, you’re a little flattered aerion would go such lengths to protect you and keep you safe! and in a way, it was necessary. you grew up protected and sheltered, and it created a sense of lingering innocence in you. you always saw the best in people, just like you did in aerion.
does NOT handle it well AT ALL when your attention is somewhere else. ever since you were children, he would break your toys if you dared to prefer your dolls over his company. you learned very quickly it was best to just follow his whims—most of the time, he could not be reasoned with. but as you grew up, his self-control grew and with that, his ability to hold back. nonetheless, by then the habit to simply obey him had been so ingrained into you it was nothing more than a mere unconscious reflex. you would always take his side, and even if he did something wrong, your forgiving nature would be taken advantage of mercilessly. you never could hold grudges, especially not against your dear brother.
the two of you have always been close. closer than what was normal, and to the point it was hard to tell which parts of you were his and which parts of him were yours. your kindness and sweetness had bled into him, made him a little softer around his edges sharp enough to cut. but he reserved this tenderness, this softness, only for you. no one saw this side of him that you saw, and people mostly thought you stupid for it. because while aerion was foul, cruel and a menace to others, he never treated you badly. in fact, he liked to spoil you with sudden gifts. it never occurred to you that he liked gifting you pretty dressed and jewellery because he liked seeing you in it—all covered in his things. things he chose, things he bought; you were utterly and entirely claimed by him. although you, oblivious little girl, never noticed, only always beaming ear to ear when aerion stood in front of your chambers with yet another present.
his fingers wander. he’s always been touchy, slept embracing you, but as you blossomed into a woman, his touches grew… inappropriate. or well, you suppose they weren’t, since aerion said they weren’t! you’re not sure when it started—perhaps when you were showering together again, and he had started noticing your breasts. it was purely experimental back then, when he had pinched your pliant flesh, wrapped his hands around them. but the older you became, and the more your body started to mature, so did his. his body began to parallel somewhat that of a god, where his stomach used to be soft and warm, there were now muscles hard enough to be carved out of marble, and arms that were strong and veined; and while once his arms around you had felt light, they were now heavy. whenever you woke up early and found yourself in his arms, you were usually trapped. moving his arm felt like moving a kilogram! but even now, he likes to bury his head in your breasts before sleep, enjoys fondling the perky flesh of your arse. aerion says it makes him feel at peace, and you don’t mind. you like having your brother at peace! but sometimes he puts his hands between your legs, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing, and that feels… you’re not sure how to describe. aerion says it’s supposed to help you, make you comfortable, but it makes your belly all tingly and… feels good.
men flock to you, of course they do. aerion hates it more than anything. he is a prideful man, but he is also a jealous man. and while him staking his claim over you in childhood might have fended off suitors off successfully enough, it was not enough anymore. now, being of age, the interest in you had strengthened again, from all sides. and father was determined to marry you off, ship you off somewhere. somewhere away from aerion. obviously, he had a fit about it, he reasoned with father, argued with father, and even threatened to burn any man who dared to ask for your hand alive. you had chuckled when he had stormed into your room at night then, all angry and hissy, foul words directed at your father spilling from his lips.
“aeri, sooner or later it would’ve happened anyway,” you shrugged, fairly unconcerned, as you kept brushing your hair. you were sitting in front of your vanity, carefully removing all the fancy jewellery. “besides, father means to find a suitable wife for you as well. soon, i imagine.”
aerion scoffed, still pacing around, chest heaving and violet eyes glittering in dissent. “i have no need for a wife. i don’t want a wife. and you will not be married off to some lowlife scum.”
you lifted an eyebrow, watching him through your mirror. “aerion. it’s always been my duty to serve our house—through marriage, with my life. it is your duty, also. you mustn’t be cross with father for this. in fact, i am grateful—”
“grateful?” aerion spit in rage, “grateful for what, selling you like a cow to the highest bidder?”
“—grateful that he has waited this long. he could have found me a husband when i turned five and ten, but instead he waited,” you interrupted calmly, rising from your chair now, unaffected by his moods by now as you approached him, lacing your fingers into his angrily spasming ones, “and gave me three more wonderful years with you.”
you gave him a chase, innocent peck on his cheekbone. “but all good things must come to an end. we mustn’t forget our responsibilities.”
aerion’s eyes darkened as his gaze trailed off to your lips, clinging onto the sight of them like sticky honey.
“no. i won’t allow it, you’re mine,” he drawled grimly. his anger had cooled down, like it always did when you initiated him. aerion had always had a fierce temperament, one that he had learned to rein in by now but still lost control of sometimes. in moments like these, only you were ever able to tame him. or, not afraid to get burned—most people standing in his wrath or being his subject of anger tended to not do… well. but aerion, for all his temperament, was always his calmest with you. you were the most even-tempered, amiable targaryen there was, balancing out the unstable moods of the most hot-tempered targaryen there was. in fact, it was considered strange that you were so amicable and docile. most targaryens had an attitude similar to aerion’s: proud, cocky in a lazy, self-assured way that came from the sureness of superiority, and were getting used to always getting what they wanted.
you were different. you were humble, never thinking yourself to be above others simply because of your heritage or lineage, although aerion always pointed out that dragons were above the common people—lions and wolves and roses. while you privately did not fully agree, you did think aerion was magnificent. he had always stood out in a crowd, perhaps only to you, but he did. but you never did disagree with him openly, god forbid, knowing he might take it the wrong way.
“my darling, it is not upon us to choose,” you hummed, hand finding its way to aerion’s cheek, leniently caressing it, “we must listen to what father says. i should like to think he’s secured me an age-appropriate match, at least. i should like to hear who he recommends.”
you let your fingers run through his pale hair, nostalgically reminiscing all the times you had did that in the past, and turned your back to him with a soft smile dancing around your lips. “how exciting, don’t you agree, aeri? a new chapter of my life is going to start soon. i hope he will treat me kindly…”
aerion’s eyes started darkening again. with one stride, he was in front of you, something deep in his eyes shimmering with promise.
“you will not leave me,” he repeated. “i will not have it. i would sooner kill father than have you shipped off like a broodmare to someone below our station.”
“aeri—” you pleaded in shock, placing your hands on his chest in your stupor. it’s treason to say such things, you wanted to say, but something in your heart warmed at the thought of your brother being so protective over you. always my knight in shining armour, you thought fondly.
“i mean it,” he rumbled coolly, “no one. takes you away from me. a dragon… deserves someone of the same station.”
he placed his hands down to your, big, veined hands sliding over your smaller ones, as he placed chaste kisses on your knuckles.
“and who would that be, dear brother?” you laughed, “there is barely any true velaryon blood left—well, i suppose our cousins could qualify. valarr, and the lot.”
aerion’s face twisted with a visible disgust. “their blood is polluted, my love. no, it must be someone like us.”
he lightly tilted his head, representing somewhat a hawk sizing up its prey, as a sharp smile tugged on his plush lips. “the only befitting mate for a dragon… is another dragon.”
would be the type to ruin your prospects and rather kill your father and hide behind the claim of wanting you because of “keeping the blood pure” because openly confessing it would mean actually acknowledging this thing between the two of you. it was left usually unspoken, unsaid but known, a subject untouched. to open this can of worms, it was not a good idea. regardless, he had put ideas into your head you weren’t opposed to—you could marry your brother. it might be a little frowned upon, but targaryens have married their siblings for ages, and one could argue no one else but you would last with aerion targaryen as a husband. but your father disagreed, and when aerion asked him for your hand, he refused it. you were to be married to someone else.
aerion would definitely kill your spouse. he would NOT care whether your status and reputation would be affected, he would NOT care about making you a widow. he would, however, take you for himself. aerion is selfish like that. he never claimed to be someone else.
he is absolutely intrigued by you, fascinated by your nature. not just because he obsesses over you, but simply because of you as a person. aerion has seldom met people with so much love to give, and so much love to give freely. since you two were babes, you had given him your loyalty and attention and affection and respect unconditionally, always staying by his side. although your other siblings thought you stupid for always taking his side, they also knew how blinded you were by aerion. he may be the worst person around, but never around you. you never experienced his cruelty, rarely even heard of it. and when you did, you turned a blind eye—surely aerion wouldn’t do that! he’s not that kind of person! time passed, and your siblings gave up trying to show you who aerion really was. well, was to them. again, he treated you entirely differently.
there has always been darkness in aerion, but you knew that. it was tied to this… insatiable hunger. the first time you slept with him, you noticed that he was a mean lover. he takes more than he gives, but when he gives, oh does he give. he likes seeing you squirm and hearing you beg, relishes in the power he has over you. as much as he loves being rough with you, he loves taking his time. spreading you open, rubbing and tugging against your clothes, fingers dipping into you, mouth claiming your lips as his. he loves coaxing out the little gasps, shy whimpers and soft moans you always try to suppress; in fact, he makes it a point to draw these small sounds out of you. he thinks they’re delightfully delicious, and when he sinks into you, it’s like the two of you are finally whole.
aerion is the kind of crazy that wishes to be so obsessively close to you he wishes he could crawl into your skin and sink his claws into your heart.
occasionally, aerion has his moments of tenderness and affection, and it reminded you that his love for you was buried deep within him, intertwined with his soul, as much as your love for him was. you supposed it had always been like this, your worlds were always circling around each other rather than the sun. for example, he has these moments at night, when he’s drawing moons and stars on your skin, whispering soft praises into your ear, complimenting your hair, your eyes, everything about you.
definitely fantasises about putting a dragon into you. he would never admit it, but simply the thought of you pregnant, his seed having taken root in your round belly, it arouses him terribly.
but all this fairytale ends when your father reaches a decision, and you’re to be married off.
sorry for dropping off the face of the earth lol… this is my apology? i promise to never vanish like that again hahaha. you guys interested in part two?
