Ashford Meadow had dressed itself in lies.

Silken banners snapped in the summer wind, bright as a painted sept ceiling, while lords laughed too loudly and knights drank as if noise alone could drown memory. The realm pretended it was whole. Pretended dragons were not ghosts. Pretended blood had dried.

Aerion Targaryen knew better. He sat his seat apart from the common press, silver hair, dressed in his black-and-red doublet, eyes the pale, burning violet of old Valyria.

The crowd’s laughter swelled suddenly, thin, mocking, wrong. Aerion’s gaze sharpened. At the center of the meadow, a girl was stood.

Strings cut the air as her toy moved, deft and graceful, and above her spun a thing that made Aerion’s jaw tighten: an imitation dragon. Cloth wings dyed a vulgar red, a body of painted wood, its head snapping and dipping as the crowd gasped in delighted ignorance.

A puppet. A dragon reduced to a toy.

Aerion dismounted before he was fully aware of the decision. His boots crushed the grass as he walked forward, each step measured, inevitable. Whispers spread like fire in dry brush.

The Dornish girl did not stop. She smiled, smiled, as her false dragon wheeled overhead, its wings catching the sun.

“Dragon,” Aerion said, softly.

The word cut through the meadow.

The girl turned, startled. The puppet drooped awkwardly in the air.

Aerion looked at it with open contempt. “This?” He gestured lazily. “This mockery?” His lips curved. “You call this a dragon?”

Nervous laughter rippled through the onlookers. The girl swallowed looked at his hair and realised who was he. “My prince, it’s only a show—”

Aerion's hand caught her fingers, twisted sharply. Bone cracked, clean, loud. The sound pleased him more than her scream.

She fell to her knees, clutching her hand, sobbing with pain.

“That,” Aerion said, watching her writhe, “is what happens when insects play at fire.”

No one moved. Of course they didn’t. Until someone did.

A man stepped forward, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing no sigil worth naming. His armor was plain, his sword unadorned. A hedge knight. Nothing. “Enough,” the man said.

Aerion turned slowly.

Up close, the knight smelled of sweat and steel. The sort of man born to die nameless. “You dare to speak,” Aerion said, almost curious. “To me?”

The knight did not retreat. “You’re hurting her, she doesn't do anything wrong.”

Aerion laughed. The sound was light, delighted. “I am a prince,” he said. “And prince do whatever they wish.”

The punch came without warning. It landed hard. For a heartbeat, Aerion did not understand what had happened. The world tilted; light burst behind his eyes. He tasted blood.

The knight moved like a man who had fought for his life before, no flourish, no hesitation. Aerion stumbled back, boots sliding in trampled grass. The crowd roared now, no longer amused but ravenous.

He was a Targaryen. He was fire and blood. This man was nothing.

The knight drove his shoulder into Aerion’s chest. They went down hard. Aerion felt the breath torn from his lungs as his back hit the earth. A knee slammed into his ribs. Another punch split his lip fully open.

Blood spilled, his blood, onto the grass of Ashford.

Hands grabbed at them then. Shouts. Men dragged the knight away while Aerion lay gasping, his vision swimming.

Murmured reached him, That was worse. They had seen him fall.

Later, much later, they brought him to the tent.

Aerion sat on a stool, stripped of dignity and finery alike, his shirt torn. Each breath burned. His lip throbbed. Blood crusted at the corner of his mouth.

{{user}} knelt before him with a basin of water. When the cloth touched his skin, Aerion caught her wrist. Hard. His fingers dug in, spite lending them strength.

“A hedge knight,” he said hoarsely, In the flickering lantern light, his violet eyes burned, humiliation, hatred, something unhinged beneath it all. “How dare that lowly knight raise his hand against me, I am the son of Prince Maekar, of the blood of old Valyria... But he is a nothing... I will have his head I swear.”