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the longest road | chapter one

summary: pretty women make dunk a fool. especially highborn ladies. pairing: ser duncan the tall x targaryenprincess!reader content/warnings: spoilers for AKOTSK, canon-typical violence and references to past death, arranged/forced betrothal, some language, implications of Aerion's cruelty, brief blood/minor injury word count: 8.8k A/N: first chapter!! yay! this has been so refreshing to work on, i absolutely love dunk's character and how adorable he is. for context, this story is set a year after the events of The Mystery Knight. so this is to say, there are points i technically "spoil" from the upcoming season(s) based on the trilogy books. so please don't read if you don't want to know anything that has not happened yet in the TV series!! hope you enjoy, i don't have a set date yet to post the next chapter but if the people ask, i shall deliver 🫡 ← prologue MASTERLIST next chapter → (COMING SOON)

213 AC – Highgarden

The idea came from the place all ideas did that were destined to be terrible– Egg’s shiny, bald head.

It had been, for the most part, a completely uneventful and thoroughly dull summer. Some tourneys won, some lost. A black eye there, a bruised rib here. Some nights spent sleeping beneath hedges in the cold rain, and others in hay-filled stables when luck decided to choose them for once. Coin won, coin spent, pockets made heavy only to grow light again in the lists. Dull, mayhaps, but unwelcome? Not at all to Dunk.

After the bloody mess that was Whitewalls– Blackfyres and prophecies and Bloodraven and stolen dragon eggs– Dunk had decided it might be best if they kept well clear of such business for a time. Egg, the gangly-legged, increasingly insolent beanpole the boy had grown into over the years, had agreed wholeheartedly.

So that had been the arrangement: lay low, ride where the road took them, enter tourneys they could afford, take honest service when offered, and most importantly…mind their own damn business. And truly, they had kept that promise to themselves. That is, until the dingy inn at Appleton.

It had been raining something fierce all day, and by late afternoon Egg had decided for the both of them that they had suffered enough of it. He thus set himself to convincing (or bargaining with) Dunk that they ought to stop somewhere for a proper supper.

“Ser, if you want to have any chance of besting Hightower knights in the lists at Oldtown, we really ought to be eating something more than jerky and porridge,” Egg had argued as they plodded along the muddied Roseroad. Rain gave a wet snort, which Egg took as agreement. “See? Even Rain thinks so. Besides…I am growing, after all. I’m nearly as tall as you.”

That was not true. Growing? Aye. Egg had been doing a great deal of that as of late, and now was all long limbs and knobby knees and elbows that seemed too sharp for their own good. He was taller than the little boy Dunk had first met in Ashford, certainly, but he hardly came to Dunk’s midsection yet. Whatever Egg might claim, he was still a boy.

Mayhaps it was the cold rain that persuaded Dunk in the end, and the thought of sitting somewhere dry for an hour. Mayhaps it was the promise of hot food. Or mayhaps, as Dunk would sometimes think in the years to come, it had been a strange string of fate that pulled them to that inn.

He had sent Egg around back to see the horses stabled while he went inside to bargain for their supper. By the time the boy returned, Dunk was already halfway through the steaming bowl of brown slop the innkeep had set before him (he did not care to ask what was in it). Egg came through the backdoor sopping wet with rainwater, boots thick with mud, and eyes bright with mischief.

Dunk set the spoon down. “Whatever it is you’re about to say, the answer is no.”

Egg’s grin only widened and he slid into the bench across from him. “Ser, you wouldn’t believe what I heard in the stables.”

“Boy, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Guess who is at Highgarden right this very moment?”

“Lord Tyrell, I would hope.”

Egg rolled his eyes. “Besides him.”

Dunk returned to shoveling the slop in his mouth. “Besides him, I’ve no reason to care.”

“It’s my sister.”

The spoon froze halfway to Dunk’s mouth. “...which one?”

“My eldest.” Egg spoke your name, and Dunk’s mind seemed to fall back in time. Before Whitewalls and Blackfyres. Before Standfast and streams. Before heartbreak and red hair. His mind went to Ashford. Baelor, and trials, and a puppet girl with broken fingers. And you, with your silver hair and red-rimmed eyes.

Something odd tightened in his throat. Dunk swallowed against it, then shoved the spoon into his mouth. “Well.”

Egg’s eyebrows rose. “‘Well’? That’s all you have to say?”

“What else am I meant to say?” Dunk took another spoonful of slop and kept his eyes fixed firmly on the bowl. “I know where you’re going with this, Egg, and I don’t like it one bit.”

“I haven’t seen her in four years, ser.”

“And that’s ‘cause she lied to send you off with me.”

Egg groaned and dragged both hands down his face. “Ser, it is hardly my fault you were dimwitted enough to truly believe my father would have given me leave to go wandering about with you.”

Dunk pointed his spoon across the table. “Watch yourself, or you’ll have a clout in the ear.”

“But I want to see her.” Egg’s eyes had gone wide and mournful, like some starving dog begging after a bone. “I miss her dearly, ser. And I am certain she misses me too.”

Dunk bent himself determinedly to the business of eating his slop. This was no affair he wanted any part of. Highgarden meant more highborn folk than he cared to count, and wherever princes and great lords gathered, trouble had a way of finding him sooner or later. And more than that– Dunk had learned that too many dragon-kin in one place always seemed to stir trouble. They had had enough of that over the years.

“Besides…” Egg went on, and Dunk could hear the change in his voice before he even looked up. “If we visited…perhaps we might sleep in real beds. And have real baths. And eat real food.”

Dunk stared down at the suspicious brown contents swirling around his spoon. Mayhaps the boy had a point. Highgarden could not be so far out of their way. A night beneath a proper roof would do neither of them harm, and–

Dunk caught himself and gave his head a sharp shake, as though he might knock the foolish thought loose. No. “Egg, I said we aren’t going. We’re bound for Oldtown, and that’s that.”

“If you’re worried about Aerion, he’s still in Lys.”

“I’m not–” Dunk exhaled hard through his nose. Even the mere memory of Aerion Brightflame made his ribs sore with a phantom pain. “I’m not…worried about Aerion. I don’t particularly care for his whereabouts, either.”

“She asks after me in every letter, ser, and I promised her if I was near, we’d stop to say hello.” Egg crossed his arms across his bony chest matter-of-factly. “And I am a man of my word, after all.”

Dunk knew about those letters well enough. Whenever they found themselves somewhere with a maester and a ravenry, Egg was forever sending word to someone– to Maekar, or you, or Daeron, Aemon, Daella, or Rhae– and sooner or later a raven would find its way back to him in turn. Egg would come away from the maester afterward with some fresh bit of news to chatter about for the next half-day. Whatever mischief was being made at Summerhall, what Aemon had buried his nose in studying, whether Daella and Rhae were quarreling again, where you had lately been visiting, whom you had seen, what foolish thing some lord at court had said.

Dunk knew none of what the letters themselves actually contained, of course. He was a Flea Bottom boy, and letters might as well have been little black ants marching across a page for all the sense he could make of them. He only knew what Egg liked to talk about, and Egg liked to talk about you.

He loved you quite dearly; Dunk had understood that much almost from the beginning. And so your name had never quite vanished from their travels. Every so often Egg would mention some place you had gone, or some piece of family gossip you had sent him, or a little memory, or one of the hundred little instructions you seemed determined to give from half a kingdom away…eat properly, keep his cloak dry, listen to Ser Duncan, and for the love of the Seven, try not to get himself killed.

So Dunk knew bits and pieces about the silver-haired little ghost from Ashford. He knew you used to steal apples from kitchens, that Egg swore you were Maekar’s favorite, that after Dyanna died you had taken to mothering the younger children as best you could. Those were the things Egg spoke of more quietly, usually late at night, when homesickness had crept up on him.

Aerion was another matter. Egg liked talking about you. He did not like talking about Aerion, and so the two of you were rarely spoken of together. Dunk knew only that the prince remained in Lys and that the betrothal still stood. Sometimes, though, he wondered whether you blamed him for Ashford and whether you thought him the great stupid brute who had bloodied the man you were meant to marry and helped send him across the narrow sea. Whether you loved Aerion despite everything. He did not think you could, though…at least from what Egg had told him.

But then, Dunk reminded himself, he did not know you.

“Can we please, ser?” Egg begged, his hands clasped before him as though this were the most precious thing in all the world. “I’ll never ask anything of you ever again, I swear it.”

Dunk knew that for a lie, and his face must have shown as much, because Egg promptly changed tactics. “She asks after you too sometimes, you know.”

Dunk looked at him.

And so, because Dunk was a simple man and a great fool besides, he found himself agreeing that they would go to Highgarden for one night and one night only, if the Tyrells would even admit a hedge knight and his squire into the keep. They would see Egg’s sister, and depart for Oldtown first thing in the morning.

That's what Dunk reminded Egg (and himself) again and again as they trudged along the Roseroad, through the green, flower-strewn streets below Highgarden, and at last up toward the great gates of the castle itself. The guards stationed there simply stared as they approached, no doubt already preparing to send the enormous hedge knight and his bald squire straight back the way they had come.

Somewhere along the road, though, Egg had transformed himself from Egg into Aegon. Dunk still did not like watching it happen. The boy sat straighter in the saddle now, his chin lifted, his shoulders squared beneath his damp cloak. He looked older somehow. More princely.

“And your business?” one of the guards called out as the two approached, one hand resting casually upon the pommel of his sword.

Egg drew Rain to a halt. “We are here to see the princess. We were told she is presently a guest of Lord Tyrell.”

The other guard, an older fellow with grey worked through his beard, barked a laugh. “Aye, you and every young fool with a cock in the Reach.” He jerked his head back toward the road. “Off with the lot of you. Back to the hedges.”

“Right, then.” Dunk gathered the reins at once. That was all the answer he needed. “C’mon, Egg–”

“She is my sister.” Egg’s voice had changed. Every bit of Targaryen in the boy seemed to rise to the surface at once, and Dunk felt his stomach tighten. Whitewalls had made him skittish about true names.

The guards stared.

Egg lifted his chin a fraction. “I am Aegon Targaryen, son of Prince Maekar.”

There was a beat of silence. The two guards stared at the bald boy, then at each other, and promptly burst out laughing.

“You?” one of them managed through his fit of laughter, wiping his eyes. “Sure, boy. And I’m the High fucking Septon!”

Egg’s face went red, and Dunk watched in horror as he shoved a hand beneath his cloak. “Egg, don’t–”

Too late. The boy pulled the heavy ring he kept hidden on him and held it between two fingers. A three-headed dragon drenched in gold glittered in the afternoon sun.

“My father’s seal,” Egg announced. “If you don’t know it, fetch your captain. Or the maester, or whoever has half their wits about them to know a prince when they see one.”

The laughter died at once. There followed one hushed exchange between the guards, one page sent running into the castle, and one confirmation from someone important enough to give it, and before Dunk quite knew how it had happened, he and Egg were standing in Highgarden’s great hall.

Before them on the great dais sat Lord Tyrell, a young man with golden curls and a trimmed mustache and an expression that seemed thoroughly bemused at the sight of the giant knight and skinny squire in his hall. And next to him, you.

For years, you had lived in Dunk’s mind as that last glimpse of you at Ashford: a little silver ghost at the tree line, your hand in the air waving goodbye. After that, you had lived in Egg’s letters and Egg’s stories. Still distant, still unknown.

But now? Now you were real. A ghost no longer. And a girl no longer, either.

Like Egg, the years had made you taller, though your younger brother still had several inches on you. The softness had gone somewhat from your cheeks. Your silver hair fell longer now, and there was something older in the way you carried yourself. And, to Dunk’s immediate horror, the years had taken you from pretty to beautiful.

You were real, and grown, and beautiful, and currently hurrying down from the dais with all the dignity of a princess forgotten because your little brother was standing before you again.

“Egg!” you called as you hurried toward them, catching the boy by both arms and looking him over from head to toe as though to make certain he had truly arrived in one piece. “I thought perhaps the guards were lying to me, and some other skinny, bald boy had decided to impersonate you.”

Egg, who was red at the ears and had apparently decided twelve was far too old an age to endure his sister’s affection with dignity, gave an offended huff. “I don’t think there are that many bald boys in Westeros.”

You giggled. “No, I suppose you’re right. And no one could replace my Egg.”

Whatever embarrassment he had been trying to maintain vanished at once. Egg threw his arms around you and held on tight, burying his face against your shoulder. You wrapped him up just as fiercely, one hand coming to the back of his head as though he were still the little boy Dunk had first met at Ashford. Dunk thought then of the last time he had seen the two of you together. The last time you had held your brother, at the edge of Ashford Meadow, dressed in mourning clothes. Much had changed since then.

You pulled back to examine him once more. “You’re tall now, aren’t you? And sunburned. And quite skinny.”

Egg’s face had gotten that mischievous glint to it. “Ser Duncan forgets to feed me.”

Dunk, absolutely mortified, stepped forward to attempt to defend himself. “Egg– I mean, Aegon–”

“No fear, Ser Duncan.” You sighed and patted Egg fondly on the shoulder. “I know you do the best you can with this bottomless pit of a boy. Even as a babe, he could nurse for hours. I think he drank the wet nurses dry.”

Egg huffed again, but that was the end of it. You turned then to Dunk.

“Ser Duncan.” You smiled, and something hot kindled like an ember beneath his ribs. “It is good to see you again. I hope the road has treated you kindly…and my little brother too, for that matter.”

For one dreadful moment, Dunk forgot how to speak. He had the unfortunate tendency to go dumb around pretty women. Then something in his head seemed to knock loose. You were a princess, he remembered, and he ought to bow. So he did, rather badly.

“M’lady– I mean, Princess.” He straightened too quickly. “Egg, he–he is a good boy…for the most part.”

“For the most part?” Egg scoffed.

“That is better than I had hoped,” you replied, folding your hands before you, though the smile still lingered at your mouth. Your mouth, which Dunk could seemingly not stop staring at.

What a great oaf he was.

“Well,” you went on, mercifully unaware of the battle being waged inside his head, “I imagine we all have a great deal to catch up on. Egg has a habit of leaving the more interesting details out of his letters. The two of you will be staying, of course?”

Dunk opened his mouth to explain that they could not possibly impose, that they were expected in Oldtown, that the road was long and they ought really to be getting back to it. He might even have broken his promise to Egg entirely and invented some urgent reason to leave Highgarden at once.

Egg beat him to it. “Of course. Ser Duncan means to ride in Oldtown’s harvest tourney in a few days, but he said we could stay here for a night to see you.”

“That is quite kind of him.” You turned then toward Lord Tyrell, who had been watching the entire exchange with the mild interest of a man enjoying a mummer’s play.

“My lord, you know my brother Aegon, of course. And this” –you gestured towards Dunk, who became abruptly conscious of every inch of his great height, the great size of his boots, and the muddy tracks those great boots had surely left across Highgarden’s beautiful marble floors– “is Ser Duncan the Tall.”

Lord Tyrell looked him up and down. “Aptly named,” he mused from his seat. “Highgarden welcomes you both.”

“They shall stay the night,” you decided, turning back toward Lord Tyrell. “If it would not trouble you, my lord.”

Lord Tyrell smiled. “No trouble at all, Princess. In fact, your timing is rather fortunate. We hold our harvest feast tonight. I will instruct the servants to ready a chamber near your own for Prince Aegon.”

Egg looked exceedingly pleased at the knowledge he would be sleeping in a feather bed for the first time in years.

“As for Ser Duncan…” Lord Tyrell took in Dunk, from dusty hair to dusty breeches. “We ought to be able to find him a place among the guard barracks.”

That was good enough for Dunk. To you, however, it was not.

“Forgive me, my lord,” you interjected, and all at once you seemed to do much as Egg had done at the gates, letting the rank of Targaryen in you rise from voice to bearing. “Ser Duncan has watched over my brother for four whole years. He has fed him, protected him, and kept him alive despite how enormous I know that task to be. He is to be given a proper chamber.”

Lord Tyrell’s brows rose, and so too did the heat creeping up Dunk’s neck.

“Princess,” he sputtered, “Truly, I’m quite content to–”

You continued as though he had not spoken. “He is a knight in service to a prince of House Targaryen. He should be housed as one.”

While Dunk felt as though he may sink through the floor, Lord Tyrell looked utterly delighted by the whole debacle. He clapped his hands. “Well then! Your wish is my command, Princess. Ser Duncan will have a guest chamber prepared for him, too.”

You bowed, skirts whispering against the floor. “Thank you kindly, Lord Tyrell.”

From the corner of his eye, Dunk caught Egg looking at him. The boy had that particular expression he wore whenever he had noticed something Dunk would much rather he had not. His gaze flicked from Dunk, to you, then back to Dunk again. If there had not been a lord upon the dais and a princess standing three feet away, Dunk surely would have given him a clout in the ear then and there.

You had already turned back toward them. “Perhaps we three might walk in the gardens before supper? I will give both of you a little while to wash and rest first, before I unleash upon you every question Egg has neglected to answer in his letters.”

Dunk bowed. “Princess.”

Though Dunk would have been grateful for a place in the guard barracks any day over sleeping beneath a hedge, the guest chamber you had insisted upon for him was surely finer than any room he had ever stayed in, or ever expected to again. There was a feather bed piled with blankets and actual sheets, stone floors softened by thick rugs, a carved chest at the foot of the bed, and some sweet floral scent lingering in the air that Dunk could not name. It was a room meant for someone highborn, not for the likes of him.

The moment the door shut behind him, Dunk became painfully aware of that fact. Painfully aware, too, of the mud caked upon his worn boots, the dust caught in his overgrown hair, the sweat dried upon his brow, the dirt beneath his nails, and the whole great mess of himself besides. He caught sight of his reflection in the looking glass and scowled at himself, then just as quickly, he scowled at himself for even caring.

Why should he? You were Egg’s sister. You knew well enough who, or better yet what he was. A hedge knight from Flea Bottom with more scars than manners and boots that had seen better years.

So Dunk told himself as he lowered himself into the first truly hot bath he had taken in longer than he cared to remember that he was only making himself presentable because it would be discourteous to go stomping about Highgarden looking like something dragged in from the road. He scrubbed the dirt from beneath his nails. He washed until his skin went pink. He raked wet fingers through his hair and tried to force it back into something less wild. He beat what dust he could from his breeches and rubbed at a stubborn stain on his sleeve until the cloth nearly gave beneath his thumb.

All because he was a guest in a clean, pretty place. Not because you were here. Certainly not because he cared what you might think when you looked at him.

Right? Right.

You and Egg were already waiting in the gardens by the time Dunk finally joined you. Egg had plainly been scrubbed clean as well and looked more princely than ever, though his bald head seemed to shine beneath the afternoon light. He brightened when he spotted Dunk trudging toward them.

“There you are!” Egg called, waving him over. “I thought you drowned in the tub.”

Whatever answer came first to Dunk’s mind could not properly be said in the presence of a princess, so he bit his tongue and kept it to himself.

As the three of you began to promenade between the rows of roses and thick summer greenery, Dunk let himself fall a few paces behind. You and Egg had not seen one another in four years, after all. It seemed only right to give the two of you room to be brother and sister again. And Egg, for all the ways he liked to puff himself up and pretend at being older than his years, became very much just a lad again in your presence.

He talked without drawing breath. Every adventure of the past four years seemed determined to come spilling out of him at once, one story tumbling over the next before the first had properly ended. From Dorne to the Reach, from tourneys won and lost to horses gone lame and nights spent beneath hedges, Egg seemed determined to recount every bit of trouble the two of them had stumbled into. You listened to it all with all the patience of an older sister, smiling and nodding where called for, laughing at the foolish parts, and gasping at the dangerous ones as though Egg had not already survived them long enough to stand before you telling the tale.

Then, of course, because he was Egg, he began to talk of Coldmoat.

“And then, there was Lady Rohanne.”

Dunk tripped over his own feet. Egg glanced back at him, and the little bastard smiled.

“The Red Widow, they called her,” Egg sing-songed, nearly skipping ahead from sheer devilish delight in the whole business. “Every one of her husbands had died in some manner or another. We thought certainly she would be withered and terrible and ugly, but she wasn’t at all. She was, though, very short, which isn’t her fault. And I found her quite beautiful, actually.”

Dunk made a strangled sound in his throat. “Egg.”

“And Ser Duncan thought so too.”

Aye, if you had not been there, Egg would have earned every clout in the ear Dunk could manage.

“And he kissed her.”

And mayhaps a throttling besides.

“Egg, enough, please.” Dunk finally managed, his face burning clear to the tips of his ears. The whole business at Coldmoat still sat strangely inside him. Aye, it had been two years since Rohanne, but she seemed to still be around him in more ways than one. Egg rode Rain, that beautiful palfrey she tried to bestow upon Dunk like a horse could make whatever had gone on between them even. The braid– that soft, red braid of hers– was somewhere in one of the packs that rested upon Maester. And still, there was a tender ache that stirred whenever he thought of Rohanne, and he had no desire whatsoever for Egg to keep prodding at that bruise in front of a princess.

You glanced briefly at Dunk, studied him with an intuition that only women seemed to have, and decided, by the grace of the Seven, to spare him.

“Lady Rohanne sounds lovely,” you said simply, then turned the conversation about itself. “Now, Egg, you must tell me more Dorne. You wrote almost nothing of it, and it has been so long since I visited.”

That was all it took. Egg launched eagerly into another tale, this one involving how he had somehow managed to fall into one of the pools at the Water Gardens, and just like that the moment was over. Saved, entirely, by you.

Dunk ambled along the path a few paces behind the two of you, listening with only half an ear for a while longer, until Egg gave a great sigh and stopped dead upon the stone path. He turned to you with sudden solemnity.

“You have been avoiding any talk of yourself, sister,” he wagged his finger at you. “You say I leave things out of my letters, but I think it is you who has been the sneak.”

You sighed as though the whole business already wearied you. “There is very little to tell, Egg. My life is terribly dull these days.”

“Is Father still going to make you marry Aerion?”

The question came so suddenly that Dunk stopped walking. All at once, you seemed to find the pale roses beside the path terribly interesting. Your fingers found one of the blossoms and worried gently at a soft petal between thumb and forefinger.

Dunk watched you, and for one sharp instant he was back at Ashford. Aerion in the mud beneath him. His own fist striking the prince’s jaw once, then again, then again.

“Is he?” Egg pressed, stepping nearer to you.

“Father has said nothing to make me think otherwise.”

Egg’s face darkened as though a storm had passed over it. “Aerion has been in Lys for years. If I were Father, I would leave him there until he died.”

You shot him a warning look. “Aegon. He is your brother too.”

Egg ignored you. “Why should you have to sit about waiting for him? Why would Father still make you marry him? He’s a beast. Just…just tell Father you won’t do it. You’re his favorite. He always listens to you.”

Dunk winced. It was at times like these that Egg seemed every bit the boy he was. He did not understand, did he? What say women like you had in the shaping of their own futures. Which was to say, very little.

You gave Egg a tired smile. “It is not so easy as that. I wish it were.”

“Does he still write to you?”

You paused and worried at the inside of your cheek for a moment before turning your attention back to the roses.“He does…occasionally.”

That made Egg’s face twist with displeasure, and for some unknown reason, Dunk’s stomach did much the same.

“You should send every letter straight back to him,” Egg seethed, his little bald head practically steaming. “Every nasty letter, just tell him to shove it in his–”

You hissed. Jerking your hand back from the rose bush, Dunk watched a small bead of blood well upon the tip of your finger where a thorn had caught you. Before he had quite decided to move, he had already left his place a few steps behind and come to your side.

“Here, Princess.” He held out one great hand, then seemed to remember himself. “I can– well, let me see, if you would.”

You looked up at him with a small look of surprise, but placed your hand in his without hesitation.

Dunk turned your hand over, his brow furrowing with the same concentration he had given Thunder’s hooves many a time. He had slept beneath enough hedges in his life to become well acquainted with thorns and splinters.

“Ah, there.” One enormous finger hovered over a tiny black speck near the tip of yours. “Little bit’s still stuck.”

He pressed the edge of his thumbnail carefully against your skin with a gentleness that looked almost strange in hands so large and rough. Once he had caught the broken bit of thorn, he pinched it between his nails and pulled it free. “There.”

Only then did Dunk seem to realize he was still holding your hand. Your hand. Your soft, smooth hand, looking near minuscule inside his great calloused one. A princess’s hand. In his.

He dropped it at once as though it had caught fire, and near wished it had, if only so the flames might swallow him up along with his stupidity. Taking a princess by the hand? Picking thorns from her finger as though it were the most natural thing in the world? What had possessed him? He did not know you. He had no cause to go touching you, and yet he had done it without so much as thinking.

“I–I beg your pardon, Princess,” Dunk stammered. “I did not– I only meant to–”

“Thank you, Ser Duncan,” you said softly. Your hand still hovered between the two of you where he had abandoned it. “That was very kind of you.”

Egg’s eyebrows had climbed halfway up his forehead, and he looked between the two of you as though you had both suddenly sprouted wings. Thankfully, before the boy could open his mouth and make the whole thing worse, a servant emerged from the keep to announce that it was time to ready yourselves for the feast.

“I suppose that means we ought to go inside, lest they leave no food for us, and Egg would be sorely disappointed” you said lightly, though your eyes found Dunk’s again. “And thank you again, ser.”

Dunk could only nod dumbly.

The rest of the evening unfolded in a manner Dunk found much preferable to the debacle in the gardens. Thankfully, there was no opportunity for you to negotiate his place as you had done with Lord Tyrell over his chamber. You and Aegon were seated at the high table for the harvest feast, beside Lord Tyrell and the other highborn guests, while the crowded hall below provided Dunk plenty of room to disappear into, which he was perfectly content with.

He found himself seated among several of Highgarden’s household knights and guards, where no one seemed particularly interested in asking why a giant hedge knight had arrived in the company of a prince. There was actual wine and actual ale, actual hot meat that had not been boiled into an unrecognizable brown slop, fresh bread, butter, roasted roots, and more besides. Dunk ate until his belly ached and drank enough ale to warm him pleasantly from within.

Every now and again, though, his gaze wandered toward the high table. Egg sat beside you, talking enough for three men as he turned from you to Lord Tyrell and then to whichever lord or lady happened to lend him an ear. He looked different up there. A prince amongst princes and lords, at ease in a world Dunk could enter only as somebody’s guest. It was…odd to see. Something both proud and sad stirred in Dunk’s chest.

He had grown much from the little boy Dunk had first met at Ashford. Taller now, wiser too, though still a little devil whenever the mood took him. He was Egg, always, but as the years passed Dunk found himself catching more and more glimpses of Aegon beneath him.

How much longer? Dunk wondered sometimes. How much longer before their days upon the road came to an end?

Maekar had been lenient enough after discovering the little plot you and Egg had hatched between yourselves to send the boy away with him. Dunk supposed that, after the Great Spring Sickness had carried off so many of the realm and so many Targaryens besides, the prince had come to think there were worse places for his youngest son than the road. Dunk did what he could to raise him right through all of it. To teach him when to speak and when to hold his tongue, when to draw his sword and when to leave it sheathed, how to treat men who had nothing as well as those who had everything. Make him into the sort of man Dunk knew he had the makings to become.

That was his task, he supposed. Raise him up, and one day set him free. Dunk did not much like thinking about the day when the second part of that task would come.

Enough of such gloomy thoughts.

He drank from his cup and, instead, chose to look at you. Candlelight caught upon your silver hair until it seemed almost to glow. Dunk had come to associate hair that pale with princes and trouble, with Aerion’s cruelty and all the muddled business that seemed forever to follow dragons wherever they went.

On you, though, it looked different. Nice, mayhaps. No– nice was too small a word for it.

Dunk had always thought you pretty, if truth be told. Pretty at Ashford, though he had scarcely allowed himself more than a proper look at you then. You had been Aerion’s betrothed, and he had already caused trouble enough without adding the ogling of princesses to his list of offenses (not that he had any more business doing it now).

The wine and ale had made him warm, though, and mayhaps a little loose besides, and there was no denying what he had already discovered that afternoon. The years had been kind to you. The pretty girl from Ashford had become a beautiful young woman. And staring at you from across the hall turned Dunk’s thoughts toward something that had occupied them rather more often these past few years than it once had.

Women.

If Dunk were being honest with himself, he would have admitted that he was rather hopeless when it came to women. A pretty girl could smile at him and rob him of half his wits. A kind one could take the rest. Suddenly he would forget how words worked, where to put his hands, how to move his feet without making a great fool of himself.

Aye, a giant, hopeless oaf he was.

Once, when he had still been a lanky lad squiring for Ser Arlan, some lord’s daughter at a tourney had told him he had handsome hands. Dunk had near dropped the sword he was polishing and taken off three of his own toes.

Then, of course, there was Tanselle. Tanselle-Too-Tall, with her lovely brown skin and bashful smile. Seven save him, Dunk had done foolish things for that girl. He had struck a dragon prince in the face for her. Nearly killed that same prince in a seven-against-seven trial. And, in some dark corner of his mind that he did not much like visiting, he had helped get another prince killed for her too. A good prince, and a man who might have made a good king.

But striking Aerion? No, Dunk had never regretted that. Aerion had deserved every blow and more, and oftentimes Dunk still found himself wishing he had hit the bastard harder.

They had never seen Tanselle again, even during all those days spent in Dorne looking for her and the other puppeteers. He thought, sometimes, of her. But more with a fondness than a sadness.

Rohanne Webber was another matter entirely.

If the things Dunk had done for Tanselle were foolish, what had happened with Rohanne was something else altogether. He had killed a man with her tangled up in the middle of it, and very nearly killed himself in the doing. What made it worse was that, for one stupid little while, Dunk had thought mayhaps she felt something of the same for him.

He remembered waking after the Chequy Water bruised, battered, half-drowned, and scarcely certain he belonged among the living. For one foolish moment, he had thought Rohanne might be there. She had not even come to see him once. Instead, she had gone and married Ser Eustace Osgrey.

Mayhaps that was Dunk’s own fault. Rohanne had made things plain enough, for all the flirting and whatever strange thing had passed between them. If you were better born, she told him, I’d marry you.

What was a man meant to do with words like those? Apologize for being an orphan out of Flea Bottom? Ask her to choose him anyway, as though a great penniless hedge knight had any right to ask such a thing of a beautiful highborn lady with lands and duties and a name older than his own?

He thought more often than he cared to admit of the last time he had seen her. The feel of her soft mouth beneath his. His fist tangled in that long red braid before his dagger sliced through it. It hurt his heart even now, though Dunk sometimes thought he had no right to let it. There had never been a world in which a woman like Rohanne Webber was meant for a great, poor, stupid man like him. If he had been fool enough to wish otherwise, then there was no one to blame for the hurt but himself.

He looked back toward you, smiling and laughing at the high table, silver hair bright in the candlelight. Perhaps, Dunk thought, pretty highborn women were best avoided altogether.

With that matter settled, he decided he had drunk enough, thought enough, and made enough of a fool of himself for one day. He finished what remained in his cup and retired to the guest chamber you had secured for him.

That night, he dreamed of a river running red and silver, the two colors winding around one another until the current caught him and swept him over a great waterfall into the dark lake below.

When Dunk awoke the next morning, his limbs pleasantly loose from the feather bed, the first pink light of dawn had only just begun to creep through the stained-glass windows. He sat up and looked around the chamber, then he remembered that he did not belong there. The longer he stayed in fine places like Highgarden, the more foolish his thoughts seemed to become, and Dunk had decided he had entertained enough foolish thoughts for one visit. It was time to leave.

Once dressed, he went to Egg’s chamber and knocked, but there came no answer. When he pressed an ear to the door, however, he was greeted by the unmistakable sound of snoring. There was little point dragging the boy from bed before the horses were ready anyhow, so he made his way down to the stables alone. By the time Egg finally decided to rejoin the living, Dunk meant to have Thunder, Rain, and Maester ready for the road.

He was tightening Thunder’s tack when the great horse shifted beneath his hands, as though already objecting to the early hour. Dunk checked one strap and gave it another tug before running a broad hand down Thunder’s neck.

“I know, I know,” he murmured when the horse snorted. “Smells too sweet here for my taste too.”

Thunder snorted again.

Dunk nodded. “Aye, I agree. We’ll be on our way soon.”

“He’s a handsome horse,” came a voice from the stable entrance.

Dunk turned. You stood there with a velvet cloak wrapped around your shoulders against the morning chill.

He cleared his throat and took a half-step back. “Princess.”

You came farther into the stable and lifted one hand toward Thunder’s nose. The horse, who ordinarily distrusted strangers on principle and had somehow taken up Chestnut’s old habit of viewing the world with deep suspicion, leaned eagerly into your touch. Ever the lady’s man.

“He may be handsome,” Dunk sighed, watching Thunder shamelessly nuzzle against your palm, “But he’s not particularly well behaved. Usually doesn’t take to most folk.”

“Well, then, I am quite flattered.” You smiled at the horse and scratched gently along his nose. “My own horse growing up was, in Daeron’s words, a demon who had forgotten how to fly. If you walked too near behind her, she would try to bite your bottom.”

Dunk considered that seriously. “Sounds like a good horse to have.”

“Oh, she was horrible.” You laughed softly. “But I loved her nonetheless.”

You gave Thunder one last stroke before turning your attention back to Dunk. “I don’t mean to keep you with tales of ill-tempered horses, ser. I only thought perhaps you and my brother had decided to sneak away without saying goodbye.”

Dunk rubbed at the back of his neck. “Aye, well…I believe Egg is still asleep.”

“That sounds correct.” You drew the velvet cloak a little tighter around yourself against the morning chill. “I am glad the road brought the two of you here. I missed my brother terribly over the years, but I always knew he was safe with you.”

Dunk ducked his head.“I-I try my best, Princess. He’s a good boy. Prone to wandering straight into trouble whenever he gets the chance, but…” Dunk glanced down at the buckle he had been fastening, deciding it easier to speak to that than to you. “He’s kind. And clever, too. I think…I think he’s done near as much for me as I’ve tried to do for him.”

Your expression softened. “That makes me very happy to hear.”

There was then only the quiet shifting of horses in their stalls and the faint sound of birds waking beyond the stable doors. Then something in your manner changed, and your face became nervous.

“I suppose I am glad the road brought you here for another reason too,” you began. “There is…something I have meant to say to you for a very long while.”

Dunk looked up.

“I…I owe you an apology.”

His brow furrowed.

You took a breath. “For lying to you.”

Ah. Dunk said nothing, and so you went on.

“I’m sure Egg has confessed by now that my father did not really give leave.”

“Aye.” Dunk nodded. “He did. Years ago, not long after we first took to the road. I was wroth with the lad for it. For a good while, I thought your father might come riding out from behind every tree we passed and take my head then and there.”

You lowered your gaze and worried at the fur-lined edge of your cloak between your fingers. “It was my fault, Ser Duncan, not his. I came up with the lie and told him to act alongside me. If you wished every ill upon me for it, I could hardly blame you.”

Dunk let out a slow breath. In truth, there had been a time when he had been angry with you. What had you expected to happen once the lie was uncovered? Had you truly thought him fool enough never to discover it? Had it never occurred to you what Prince Maekar might do when he finally found his youngest son wandering half the realm with some great oaf of a hedge knight who had carried him off without leave?

“After everything that happened with the trial…and Aerion…” Your voice tightened around your brother’s name. “I could not bear the thought of Egg remaining near any of it.”

Dunk said nothing.

“He has always been different,” you continued after a moment. “From the others in my family, I mean. You are right: he is kind, and clever, but there is something else in him too. He does not care so much for all the things the others with Targaryen blood seem born caring for.” Your mouth pulled into the faintest smile. “Half the time I think he would sooner sleep in a stable than upon a feather bed, provided someone told him princes were not meant to.”

That sounded enough like Egg that Dunk nearly laughed.

“I was frightened,” you admitted. “After Ashford. After seeing what Aerion had become, and what all that pride had done to everyone around him. And then…I saw Egg with you. I saw what you had done for Tanselle when no one else would do anything at all. I thought perhaps if Egg went with you, he might grow into a different sort of man.”

Dunk blinked. “A different sort?”

You looked up at him then. “Like you.”

For a moment Dunk could only stare blankly. “Like…me?”

You nodded.

That made less sense than anything else you had said. Dunk had near beaten your own brother bloody in the mud. Your betrothed, no less. He had set half of Ashford into chaos because he had been too stupid and too angry to keep his fists to himself, and somehow you had looked upon all of that and decided this was the sort of man you wanted your little brother to become? No. Surely Dunk was still asleep upstairs in that feather bed.

“So I know you have little cause to forgive me,” you went on, your gaze falling once more to the hay scattered beneath your feet, “And I will not ask you to. I only wanted you to know that I am sorry. Truly.”

“You are–” Dunk stopped himself, then tried again. “Princess. You needn’t apologize.”

You looked up, eyes wide.

“Egg is…” Dunk swallowed. “He’s near enough a brother to me now. I cannot think what my life would be without the little nuisance in it. So if that lie of yours is what put him there… Then I suppose I ought to thank you for telling it.”

A quiet settled between the two of you after that. You turned back to Thunder and laid a hand upon his neck. Dunk watched your fingers move against the dark hair and, against his better judgment, thought of that same hand resting inside his own the day before. The thorn beneath your skin. The little bead of blood. And, before that, the talk of Aerion and the letters he still sent you from Lys.

Bitterness and bile twisted in Dunk’s belly. Mayhaps it was because the two of you were alone. Mayhaps it was all that talk of Egg and Ashford and things left unsaid for four years. Whatever the cause, Dunk suddenly found himself asking the question he had wondered about even as he rode away from you all those years ago.

“Princess, I have meant to ask…” Dunk cleared his throat. He had never been good at finding his way through matters like these, and the words seemed especially difficult now that he had begun.

“With Aerion…when he comes back…” He shifted his weight. “Will you be happy?”

Your hand stopped against Thunder’s neck. Then you resumed stroking him as though Dunk had asked nothing of consequence at all.

“Ser Duncan,” you began after a pause, “I remember you having another horse at Ashford. A brown one. What became of him?”

Dunk blinked at the change. “I…aye. Chestnut. He died in Dorne, not long after Ashford.”

Sadness softened your face. “I am sorry to hear that, ser.”

“Aye.” Dunk took a small step nearer. “But, Princess, what I meant about Aerion was–”

“There you are!” Egg came barreling into the stable like a little storm, his clothes only half-set to rights and one boot seemingly not fastened at all, as though he had rolled from bed and run straight down without bothering to finish dressing. “Ser, I thought you had left me in Highgarden!”

Dunk snorted. “Mayhaps I should have.”

“Oh, you would miss me too much.” Egg turned to you. “And I think she would tire of me soon enough and send me back onto the road anyhow.”

“That does seem likely,” you agreed with a laugh.

Then your expression softened, and you drew Egg into your arms. He immediately began squirming with all the offense of a twelve-year old boy who considered himself far too grown to be embraced by his sister in front of other people. “I am going to miss you, Egg.”

His squirming stopped. After a moment, his arms shyly went around you in return. “I suppose…I’ll miss you too.”

You drew back just far enough to look at him. “Will you ever come back to Summerhall?”

Hesitancy crossed Egg’s face. Dunk knew that look well. Egg was trying to find a kinder way to say what Dunk already knew to be true: the boy would sooner spend another year walking the roads barefoot than return to Summerhall for good.

“Sister,” he treaded carefully, “You know I don’t much like it there.”

You nodded in understanding. “I know, my boy. I know. I think I would choose the road over much of our family too, if anyone gave me leave.”

That won a small smile from him.

“But you know you may come to me whenever you like, yes?”

Egg nodded.

Then you looked at Dunk. “And the same is true for you, Ser Duncan. Even if Egg is no longer traveling with you someday, I would be happy to see you again.”

Heat rose like a wave through Dunk. He tried desperately to will it back down before Egg noticed.

“Aye, Princess,” Dunk managed.

“I wish you both great adventures,” you called as Dunk swung himself onto Thunder and Egg climbed atop Rain. “And perhaps the next time our roads cross, I will have some stories of my own to share.”

Before long, they were back upon the Roseroad, making their way down the cobbled hill from Highgarden with Maester plodding behind them. Just as he had all those years ago, Dunk looked back.

You did not stand beneath the trees of Ashford Meadow like some little silver ghost in mourning black. You stood at the gates of Highgarden, older now, silver hair stirring in the morning breeze, a beautiful young woman where the girl in his memory had once been.

Dunk raised one great hand. You raised yours in answer, and waved him goodbye again.

For a long while after that, Dunk and Egg rode in silence toward Oldtown. Though Highgarden and all its fine rooms were shrinking farther behind them with every step, Dunk’s thoughts remained every bit as foolish as they had been inside its walls.

He kept thinking about your hand. Your hand with that tiny bead of blood upon your finger. Your hand resting in his. Your hand stroking Thunder’s nose in the morning light.

After another stretch of silence, Egg turned towards him atop Rain. “Ser,” he began, his voice suspiciously light, “may I ask you something?”

Dunk kept his eyes fixed upon the road. “So long as it isn’t stupid.”

“Do you think my sister is pretty?”

Dunk nearly choked on nothing. His head whipped around. “Egg– I– she’s your sister!”

Egg nodded solemnly. “Aye. She can still be pretty.”

Dunk opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Nothing useful came. At last, he scowled. “Mind your tongue, or I’ll give you a clout in the ear.”

Egg smiled to himself as though Dunk had given him precisely the answer he wanted, nudged Rain forward, and said nothing more.

Aye. Perhaps pretty highborn women truly were best avoided.

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