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The first thought he has after waking is that his uncle had betrayed him.

The heat of the Ashford summer seemed to have seeped through the thick stone walls of the castle, turning the guest chambers into a stifling place that smelled of boiled wine, sour sweat and the cloying metallic tang of blood soaked bandages. His body felt like a large bruise with aches and stabbing pains where the blunt force of tourney weapons had found slapped on his sacred flesh. For a moment, he believed himself back in his own pavilion and perhaps waiting for a squire to polish his armor, the red enamel scales that mimicked the hide of the beast he knew himself to be. He strained his ears to hear maybe his cousin or his own brother Daeron snoozing somewhere and he heard nothing for a moment.

His violet eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the dim light to find the grey and dour faces of maesters hovering like vultures waiting for a carcass to ripen and they spoke in hushed soft tones with their chains around their neck rattling softly—a sound that grated against his sensitive ears like nails on silver—and one of them turned to him to speak to him, "Your Grace, how are you feeling? Should we give you more poppy milk?"

"What happened?"

The maester who had asked him such a question paused and then spoke very slowly as if speaking to a spooked mare, "Your Grace, the trial has ended. Your uncle, prince Baelor is dead."

Your uncle is dead.

"What?" He whispered.

Baelor is dead.

It was a joke surely, a cruel jester's farce from his uncle or perhaps his own father made to punish him for the trial and for the mud on his face and for the humiliation of withdrawing his accusation. His uncle was a dragon and dragons did not die from blows to the head, they did not perish in the dirt of a tourney meadow surrounded by hedge knights and common crowd. It can't be true, it possibly cannot be true, there was just no way.

Your uncle is dead.

Aerion stared at the maester, his beautiful face frozen in a rictus of disbelief and his pale skin hollow with something almost close to grief.

His uncle was dead.

The sight of his uncle riding onto the field was something he would never forget—the dark hair, the confident set of his shoulders and the borrowed armor of his own son that had fit him so poorly yet could not diminish his regal bearing. That moment of betrayal had felt like he had been cut open with a blade, seeing the man who was the sun of their dynasty and the Hand of the King and the finest knight in the realm had aligned himself with a dirty low born giant against his own blood.

It had made Aerion scream with rage inside his helm, swinging his morningstar with fury and utterly desperate to hurt and to maim and to prove that his uncle had made a mistake to turn his back on the silver haired boy. He had wanted to strangle his uncle there, he had wanted to inch closer to the man and slap him until his uncle asked for forgiveness for moving against his own. He never wanted the light to go out behind those eyes and he never wanted the world to be bereft of the only other man whose approval he craved in his life.

They tell him it was his father had killed his uncle.

It was a poison that he swallowed in gulps that it was his father, his stern father who had dealt the blow. His father who had fought with the ferocity of a cornered bear to protect his baby and had crushed the skull of the brother he loved. A laugh bubbled up in his throat like a hysterical sob and choking him until it turned into a dry heave—the gods were mocking them and they had to be because his uncle who had bounced the silver haired babe on his knee, who had gifted him that cold stone egg that he still slept with was dead and gone. His uncle whose approval Aerion had craved like a starving dog craves bones even as he spat and hissed to hide his desperation and to know that the hands that had once ruffled his silver hair were cold and lifeless made him want to scream.

The grief curled in his belly like a serpent of perverse longing that had no place in a nephew's heart for his own uncle and the silver haired boy remembered the stolen moments, the way he would watch his uncle from across the feast tables tracking the movement of his uncle's throat as he drank and the way his strong hands donned with rings gripped a goblet. He remembered sneaking into his uncle's tents during tourneys past like a little thief to press his face into the heavy wool of his uncle's discarded cloaks. He would inhale the scent of him unique to woodsmoke and musk of a sweating older man and it would make his head swim with a need to let the man mount him. He would steal some of the cloaks and blame it on servants, watching them be punished by whipping or losing their work with the crown prince because of his lies.

He would be a liar a thousand times and forsake just as many servants if it meant he could sleep with the smell of his uncle around him.

There were nights where he had pet his little pussy to the thought of his uncle and stuffed his face against the stolen cloaks imagining those calloused hands holding him and pinning him down to be rough and demanding. He had fantasized about the mixing of their bloodlines, dreaming that if he could just seduce the Crown Prince, he would be able to become his consort and birth worthy princes and princesses. Some days he imagined his uncle's crown on his head instead, the royal golden necklace of Heirs around his neck rather than his uncle's, some days he imagined stealing his uncle's seat just to be King and to be the ruler the Targaryen House really needed. He wanted to be his uncle Baelor and he wanted to be ruined by his uncle Baelor. His uncle was the golden standard and the archetype of what a Targaryen man should be and Aerion had coveted him with a greed that bordered on obscene.

And he will never see those mismatched eyes look at him with small fondness, will he?

No fucking way.

It was the hedge knight's fault, it was the fault of that lumbering oaf Ser Duncan the Tall. If that gutter rat had just accepted his punishment, if he had just let Aerion break his fingers or take his foot as was his right then none of this would have happened. The Trial of Seven was invoked because of a peasant's stubbornness and his uncle died for a peasant and the thought made hia skin crawl as if he were covered in insects. A prince of the blood royal, the heir to the Iron Throne was dead because of a disputes over a puppet show and a common girl. He gripped the sheets of his bed with his knuckles turning white and tearing the fine linen—he wanted that rat dead, he wanted him flayed and burned with his ashes scattered to the wind without even a proper grave. He wanted to scream and scream and scream until his throat tore and bled because how dare the Gods? How dare they take his Baelor and leave Dunk?

He looked at the maesters again seeing them now through a veil of hurt and they looked so small and so fragile like men made of paper and it reminded him so much of Aemon it made him nauseous.

"Get out," Aerion whispered with his voice a rasping hiss, "Get out before I cut your tongues from your heads."

They all scurried out, closing the door behind them.

Aerion swung his legs over the side of the bed, the movement sending a pinprick of agony through his bruised ribs and he let the pain of it ground him to this mortal world. He stood swaying slightly with his silver hair falling in a tangled mess around his face—it had grown slightly in the days he had been asleep as his hair tended to grow faster than normal men and how much of it was annoying to constantly keep it short, maybe he would let it grow this time. He had no older uncle left to impress with his short hair and pretty face anymore. He felt naked without his armor, without his silks and jewels and he was just stripped down to the pale skin that housed his monstrous soul. He walked to the window, staring out at the tourney grounds where the banners still snapped in the breeze of other noble houses. He pressed his forehead against the cool stone of the window frame, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to remember his uncle Baelor's face but all he could see was the armor—his cousin Valarr's black armor—and the way his uncle had fallen. He tried to think of anything else and failed as gaping hole in his chest where his heart should be grew colder and colder.

Your uncle is dead.

You would rather die for a hedge knight than live to rule with me, Aerion thought bitterly, you betrayed me and then you abandoned me. He hated his uncle in that moment, hated him for his nobility and for his stupidity and for his mortality because if his uncle Baelor was truly a dragon, he wouldn't have died. His uncle must have been weak in the end and he must have been of human ilk.

That is a lie, something in him whispers, a lie to stave off the crushing despair.

He turned away from the window with his eyes catching his reflection in a polished silver basin. He looked wild and messy little thing with his violet eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears that he refused to let fall. He looked like the madman they whispered he was and he touched his own cheek tracing the line of his jaw imagining it was his uncle's hand. A shudder racked his frame at the heat of a touch he would never feel again cup his face in exasperation whenever Aerion's antics grew too childish.

Father will be sad.

It's another thought that comes to him as easily did the lies he kept telling himself about his uncle, he knew his father would be a husk of the man he was and the silver haired boy would have to forever be punished to see his father wither and wither until nothing was left of the man his father used to be. His father and his uncle loved each other like true brothers, they had fought alongside each other and grew up alongside each other and his father had killed the only one who loved him in the entire family for his baby.

He walked back to the bed and sat down, staring at the empty space where the maesters had been and felt the boy who had loved his uncle curled up and died alongside the Crown Prince. He felt cheated and he felt robbed of the life he could have had if his uncle had been some peasant defending fool before he could make his uncle love him. The thought of his uncle's face usually so dignified and handsome cold and forever dead gnawed at him like insistent maggots and he wanted to scratch his own skin until he bled, until he made the maggots crawl out of him.

He stood and left his guest chambers.

The stillness of the castle corridor was heavy and silent only to echo Aerion's own breathing and the soft uneven thud of his bare feet against the stone and every step sent fire up his legs from the blows he had taken in the tourney field but his mind was not on his injuries. He was thinking of one and one person only, whose body he just had to see. The two knights posted outside the chamber stiffened as he approached with their hands drifting to hilts and then they stilled under his glare—the glare of a dragon who would burn them where they stood if they so much as breathed a word of protest. He was the prince and these kingsguard were sworn to protect him, they would not stop him from going into the chilled room holding the thing the silver haired boy's desire.

He didn't say a word to them and he pushed the heavy oak door open, the hinges groaning and he slipped inside with the latch clicking shut behind him. The air in the room was unnaturally cold and chilled by blocks of ice brought up from the cellars to stave off the rot of summer and it smelled of incense, beeswax and the coppery scent of death that no amount of perfume could truly mask. In the center of the room, bathed in the pale and watery light of a few low lit candles lay the table and on it was the body draped in a shroud of white linen that hid the rotting corpse of the realm's admired Crown Prince.

He approached it slowly, his heart dipping low down to his stomach and he reached out with his hand trembling slightly and gripped the edge of the cloth to peel it back and he—he—The sight of his uncle's head stole the air from his lungs.

The helm had been removed and the damage was inhumane with the skull, that noble vessel of Targaryen and Martell blood was caved in on the left side like a vile crater of matted hair, broken bones and dark dried blood where his father's mace had caved him in. The silver haired boy stared with his violet eyes and his lips parting in a silent scream and he could not—he cannot scream, not here where anyone can come in to see what was wrong—but the man he has grown beside and the man who he loved between whispers was dead and rotting in this table and there is nothing he can do or say to—he cannot scream.

He does not scream in the end.

"So this is your end?" Aerion whispered, "You would rather die for that peasant?"

Your uncle is dead.

With a sudden motion, he stripped the sheet away entirely and his uncle Baelor lay there in his tunic of red and black with the fabric stiff and clean like someone had straightened it far too many times and below the grotesque wound of his head, he was still perfect. The broad shoulders and the strong chest that had housed a heart too large for this cruel world with the calloused hands that rested lifelessly at his sides—it was all there like a statue of a god toppled from its plinth and the sight of dark and Dornish features of his face made the silver haired boy's stomach have butterflies.

Of course even in his death, his uncle looked just as ethereal as when he had been alive.

His uncle was dead yes but he was also here and for the first time, he was entirely within Aerion's hold. There were no guards, no Grandfather Daeron, no Father to pull them apart and the betrayal of the trial where his uncle had rode for the hedge knight still poured into his wounds like boiling fire and in death his uncle could not leave him again. He could not turn away and could not look at the lovesick boy with disappointment.

You're sick.

Yes, I am. Aerion whispers back, I am sick and vile.

He slowly climbed onto the table with the wood creaking under his weight as he straddled the corpse as his knees bracketed his uncle's hips. The cold radiating from his uncle's body seeped through his own soft robe fit for a patient who had gotten beaten bloody at the trial of seven and the cold did not make him recoil as it might make a lesser young boy leap away. Instead, he settled his weight down grinding his pelvis against the stillness of the dead prince and it was a vileness that not even their kin of old would dare do but Aerion Targaryen had never cared for the laws of men or Gods. He was a Targaryen and Targaryen were closer to being Gods than the mortal men around them, those mortal men with those fanatic prayers of the Seven and common laws. He reached out with his pale and slender fingers tracing the line of his rotting uncle's jaw before moving down to grope the strong feel of his chest, squeezing the dead muscle and feeling the lack of resistance along the absence of a heartbeat.

"What a sight to see, you cannot even wake to defend yourself against my hands." He hissed with his face hovering inches from that cold one, his breath ghosting over the dead skin, "I wonder if you wish for me to warm you, uncle. You do look awfully cold here and dragons never did well with the cold, did they?"

His uncle did not answer back.

"You wouldn't even look at me in the trial, like your own heart knew you betrayed your kin." He whispered and his hands trembled where they were touching his uncle's chest. And that had hurt more than betrayal itself, his uncle's refusal to see the silver haired boy he was striking against who he had raised along his own sons.

Oh, how that hurt.

His fingers curled, digging into the fabric and wanting to bruise the dead flesh and to leave a mark that said Aerion Targaryen had defiled the Crown Prince. He leaned forward with his silver hair falling like a curtain around them and engulfing them in a space where only the dragon and his dead prince existed. He began to grope the body even more with his small and pale hands sliding from the chest down to the flat stomach, tracing lines underneath the thin tunic he had only ever traced with his eyes from across a feast hall and there was a thrill in it—in taking something someone could not say not to, his uncle Baelor could not push him away nor scold the violet eyed boy with that baritone voice of his.

His hand moved lower to slide down the front of the tunic and his breath hitched, turning into shallow and ragged pants as his fingers traced the line of his uncle's dick hidden beneath the cloths. He had spent so many nights alone with his hand rubbing his little pussy while his mind played the images of this man and dreamt of being pinned like a wife needed to be bred for her husband's babe. He reached into his own smallclothes with trembling hands, his fingers brushing against the damp heat of his pussy and he was already slick like a basin full of water. The wetness coated his fingers instantly and he rubbed his clit roughly that made him arch his back with a low moan leaving his throat to die in the silence of the room.

He could have never done this when his uncle was alive. He would never dare.

"You would have never let me do this," He murmured with a delirious rambling that was tinged with grief, "You were too good for a mischievous thing like me, I know what uncle Aenys told you about me."

That boy spends far too much time looking at you and he is far too undisciplined. He is not fit to wed you nor carry a babe, his uncle Aenys had gruffly said in the Red Keep at the safety of the chambers, unaware that Aerion had long since learned to sneak into the many tunnels inside of the Red Keep.

Maybe you should spend more time bedding that dull wife of yours than speaking on me, Aerion had wanted to hiss out.

Peace, brother. He is but just a child, it is not right to speak so cruelly about a boy who has yet to grow, his uncle Baelor had replied tiredly. His uncle's defense of him had warmed his heart and his cunt, something that carried within him when he had returned back to his own chambers and touched himself to the thought of that deep voice praising him for being a good little dragon.

He moved his hand faster as his fingers circled the swollen nub of his clit and fuck, it felt so good. He looked down at his uncle's face, half-expecting the eyes to snap open and for the hand to rise and slap him but there was nothing and so he leaned down to bury his face in the crook of his uncle's cold neck. He inhaled deeply as if desperate for a lingering trace of life and all he smelled was the the mustiness of the tunic and the faint sweet scent of the preservation oils the maesters had used. He licked the cold skin of the neck, tasting the skin of death and the difference of the taste sent another wave of arousal making his pussy more slick.

He moved his hips to grind his wet little pussy against the stiff thigh through their clothes and trying to find the pleasure of sex he had never experienced. He had never sought the touch of others and how could he when the true dragon would always make anyone else pale in his shadow? He was panting as a dog might, like he was debasing himself and his own uncle with his touch, he needed more and more and more. He slipped two fingers inside his pussy with a squelching sound and he was still so tight, forever aching for the cock of a man who could no longer fuck him into the bed. He pumped his fingers in and out, trying to fuck himself on them and imagining it was his own uncle inside him. He thought of his dead uncle's dick, dreaming of it hard and warm and pounding into him, breaking him open as his maiden blood pooled on the sheets under and punishing him for his sins.

Pretty little thing, his uncle would whisper and give him a kiss that ticked his lips.

"Fuck me." Aerion whispered into the dead skin with his tears leaking from his eyes to mingle with the sweat on his face, "You should be fucking me, why aren't you fucking me? Why did you have to die?" The pleasure was pained with the agony of his wounds and the grief of his loss—it felt like he had gotten drunk and drowned himself in this blend of sorrow and lust.

"Why did you have to die?" He sobbed and asked again with the words turning into a moan as he rubbed his thumb harder against his clit, "You were supposed to be the King! You were supposed to be mine!" He bit down on his own lip until he tasted blood, the copper flavor blending with the scent of death in his nose and the squelching of his fingers fucking into his wet pussy. He ground his hips down hard against his Baelor's thigh again and using the corpse as leverage, using the dead prince as his toy for pleasure.

He wonders if his grandfather would blame him for his heir's death. He wonders if the sword will fall on his neck next.

"You made me do this." He gasped out with his hips bucking involuntarily against the dead man's side and he leaned down further to press his face into the crook of his Baelor's neck again. He inhaled deeply, sniffing like a hound and trying to capture the scent of the man before it coiled into rot, "You left me alone with them—with all these people that cannot be you and not even your own son could ever be you."

His other hand gripped the cold shoulder so hard his knuckles turned white and he imagined for a split second that the cold skin beneath his cheek was warming, that his uncle's arms were rising to hold him and to pin him down and take him as Aerion had always dreamed but the body remained cold and unmoving as he had feared it would remain so until the end of his own days. He stared at the caved in skull and rubbed his cunt faster, his nails digging into the fabric of the shoulder and the flesh beneath, trying to leave a mark and trying to hurt the thing that could no longer feel pain. His hips bucked wildly, his tight pussy clamping down around his fingers as the pressure built in his lower belly.

"Kepus." He whimpered out as he came, shuddering with his back arching and his thighs trembling as the waves of pleasure washed over him shamefully. He cried out again with a wordless sound of despair, his  pussy juices soaking his hand and his thighs and staining his smallclothes. He slumped forward and collapsed onto his uncle's chest, his heart pounding against the stillness of the corpse beneath him.

He wiped his hand on his uncle's tunic, making the man smell less like death and more like the silver dragon that always followed him around. "You should have fought harder." He rasped out, "You should have come back to me, you should have not left me alone like this—you are gone and I am stuck wearing this mortal skin."

He slid off the table with his legs wobbling and adjusted his clothes trying to hide the marks of his sin. He turned his back on the body without looking again and limped towards the door, don't look he told himself. Don't look back, he is dead and I am alone.

Don't look.

He woke up in the morning with the groggy and disjointed heaviness of a boy who had waded through a spill of wounds and nightmares, the morning light splaying over his body like a soft kiss and warmed his skin like tiny little suns. His head ached with a dull persistent thud of a shield hammering into it and the ache in his body could not wash away the sour taste in his mouth of dead skin against his lips.

He lay there for a long moment, staring at the canopy of his bed and waiting for the familiar heavy tread of his father's boots with the gruff voice asking if he lived or died. His father was the type to fuss over his children despite sounding like he wanted fling each of his get out the windows of Summerhall. His father had often sat by his bedside whenever Aerion found himself wrought with fevers and colds, suffering with coughs that racked his entire small body and his father's hand would hold his even in his sleep. My father loves me, he always thought, he loves me even when I can never be enough for him.

My boy! My boy!

But the room had no warmth at his bedside and there was no other sound save for the rustle of the maesters who flitted about like gray moths who changed his bandages with efficient hands.

His father was not here.

His father who had killed his own brother to save his baby boy was not here beside him and slight stung his pride more than wound he had gotten from the trial. The sinking dread coiled in his stomach once more like a noose around his neck and he felt abandoned like a doll his father played with and then discarded in a corner. He pushed the maesters away with a snarl as his mood fouled and soured at the absence of his father and his skin crawling with the thought of what he had done the last night—the cold flesh he had savored and the pleasure he had brought with his fingers in his wet pussy and the heinous thing he had left in the death chamber.

"Where is my father?" He spoke slowly at first and then the words roared out from his mouth, "Where is he?!"

"His Grace, prince Maekar is downstairs with Lord Ashford, my prince." One of the maesters squeaked out.

Dragging himself from the bed was a trial in itself with his leg protesting with every shift of weight and he was nothing if not stubborn. He dressed with meticulous and painful slowness while refusing the help of the servants, draping himself in a tunic of black and red silk that hid the bruising and the bandages. He limped out of the chamber, his guards falling in step behind him with their armor clanking in a way that grated on his nerves. His father must have stuffed them near his chambers so he would be well guarded and not get up to any mischief anymore.

The castle of Ashford felt strange and he expected weeping from the servants who had lost a good prince that would have no doubt treated the realm better than most Kings who sit the iron throne, there were no black banners for the mourning of death and the hushed whispers of a court in grief. Instead, the servants bustled around like busy badgers and the air smelled of roasting meat and fresh bread rather than the incense of prayers being offered to the Gods for the Crown Prince Baelor Targaryen. He made his way down the winding stone stairs with his hand gripping the rail white knuckled and descending into the belly of the keep where his father must be gathered.

It was jarring thing that made Aerion's teeth grind together because had the world moved on so quickly, was Baelor Breakspear so easily forgotten? The thought should have pleased him—the removal of a rival who stole the glory from his own image and instead, it felt like a slight against House Targaryen because prince of the blood was dead and the world should have stopped turning just to mourn the loss of one so heavenly.

He prepared his face as he smoothed his features into a mask of tragic nobility and played the grieving nephew who had survived the terrible trial of seven even if he did not come victorious. He was ready to face his father's guilt and to manipulate it to twist the knife until his father gave him everything he wanted just to assuage the shame—his father would be grief and Aerion knew his father would forgive anything if the silver haired boy squeezed out a few tears, his father had a tender spot for both Daeron and he after all.

When the heavy oak doors of the great hall swung open, the sight that greeted him made him falter like a dragon misstepping into a trap. The hall was bathed sunlight and there were only two people in the room and at the center of the room stood his father Maekar Targaryen. The Prince of Summerhall did not seem slumped with heavy grief as one might suspect after kinslaying one's brother and rather stood with his broad shoulders squared with his face turned toward the entrance with an expression Aerion had never seen on him before with pure weeping relief of an old dragon that had seen something miraculous.

And facing him with his back to the silver haired boy was a figure that made the breath freeze in his hurt lungs. The man was tall and broad wearing a doublet of fine dark velvet, he stood with the easy and commanding posture of a shadow king who had ruled over the realm with a mighty fist and it was a stance so familiar it made his violet eyes swim with nausea and water for just a few seconds.

Who dared speak to the Anvil so casually the morning after he became a kinslayer?

The silhouette was familiar—so painfully familiar with the breadth of the shoulders with the height and the way the head was held high made a strangled sound die in his throat.

It couldn't be.

No.

He had seen the skull and he had touched the cold skin. The figure turned at the sound of the opening doors with a slow pivot that seemed to stretch time into an agonizing seconds of eternity and there, bathed in the morning light was the warm face of his uncle Baelor Targaryen.

No. No.

He stopped dead with his boots skidding slightly on the stone floor as heart hammered inside of his flesh like a horse galloping from the gallows itself trying to swallow it whole. It can't—it can't be because he had seen the skull. He had seen the way the bone had caved in like a crushed eggshell with the gray matter and blood matting the dark hair. He had touched the cold and stiff limbs of a body left behind while the soul of the man had been sent away from them forever until the end of time. He had ridden his uncle corpse's thigh and spilled his slick onto its tunic and the memory of the death chamber was so viscerally vivid that looking at the man before him felt like a hallucination induced by the poppy milk.

He was dreaming inside of his sorrow, he must be.

His uncle Baelor stood there whole as if everything in the past few days had been nothing but a nightmare the younger boy had walked through, like it was just a silly little lesson his uncle wanted to teach him so he did not cause any more trouble for the family. His uncle's head was unmarred with his dark hair perfectly short and painted with tuffs of white from his age, his jaw strong and set with his eyes a familiar intelligence. There was not a single line of wound on that head that had held House Targaryen in it's highest regard in the eyes of the realm after the rebellions as if the mace had never swung and his father's weeping was a stream of sorrow to be swept away. The silver haired boy's mouth opened and no sound came out like something was gripping his throat in sheer disbelief at what was before him. He gripped the doorframe to keep from falling, his fingernails digging into the wood with his violet eyes wide and trembling.

No, no, something inside of him howled.

His father's voice sounded wrong with shaky wet emotion and utterly different from the annoyed gruffness and he was looking at his brother as if he were a miracle made flesh, his eyes shining with tears he made no move to wipe away. Maekar rasped and shook his head as if he too were struggling to comprehend the sight, "I could scarcely believe when Maester Morte claimed he could heal you and he did. By the gods, I thought—I thought I had ended you."

You did father. I saw the wound, you did murder your own brother so how—

Maester Morte?

He had seen no such man. He had seen only the gray rats of the Citadel that made him want to flip a table on their faces because who could heal a crushed skull and it simply did not make sense to him and he—he couldn't move. His boots felt nailed to the floorboards and he wanted to scream, to point a finger and shout You are dead. I saw your head! I touched you!

His uncle laughed then with a rich and baritone sound that rolled through the hall and to the younger boy, it sounded hollow like something empty was echoing the laughter of the man that once was. It lacked the warmth and the genuine mirth that his uncle was known for—It was a perfect imitation of a laugh like a sound constructed to put others at ease and it scraped against Aerion's spine like a bleeding blade.

"It takes more than a blow from you to keep me down, brother." His uncle Baelor said and he clapped a hand on his father's shoulder with a gesture of forgiveness and camaraderie, "I admit my head rings like a bell but I am well enough to walk it seems. The Gods are not done with me yet." A man who had taken a mace to the head should be bedridden, blind or drooling and not standing here joking about taking a blow to the head.

His uncle smiled with his teeth white and straight and for a second, the light caught his eyes in a way that made them look flat like painted glass. The sight of it made Aerion take a step back, just enough to make the floor creak underneath him.

That is no uncle of mine, Aerion wants to say.

Then his uncle turned his gaze fully upon him and the smile remained fixed on his handsome face and it felt like looking into a mirror that reflected nothing back. There was a w r o n g n e s s to him that dimmed everything around him in wave like a subtle distortion. It was the feeling of seeing a wolf walk on its hind legs—it looked like a man but the movement was all wrong and the thought of this animal walking towards him in the dark of the night with his uncle's face made his skin break into a sweat. His Baelor began to walk toward him and closed the distance with long confident strides and Aerion who had never feared any man, who believed himself a dragon in human skin felt a sudden childish urge to turn and run. He wanted to run up to his chambers and hide under the bed like a babe of seven years rather than someone nearly grown. He wanted to run to his father and cower behind him, wanted to use his pale small hands to grip the back of his father's shoulder and keep his face pressed against the scent of family.

"And here is our little dragon." His uncle chuckled with his tone affectionate and gently teasing. He reached out and before the silver haired boy could flinch away and his uncle pulled him into an embrace. His uncle's arms were strong and wrapped around his shoulders with a heavy pressure that bordered on painful and he stiffened with his breath hitching as his nose pressed against the velvet fabric. He expected the smell of rot and of the grave but his uncle smelled like he always did before his death.

His uncle had never held him before.

In the past, his uncle had been distant and a figure of authority who dispensed discipline or disappointment to his family and never affection to any those who were not his sons. And that same uncle was touching him, he was pulling Aerion into an embrace he would have never dreamed of getting in his lifetime. He felt the solid chest against his own, the same chest he had groped in the dark and he felt the strong arms wrap around him as if trapping him like a mouse in the hold of a decaying dragon.

His uncle was cold.

It was the same cold he had felt the night before, seeping into his own skin.

"You look pale, nephew." His Baelor whispered into his ear with his breath cool against the lithe neck, "Did you think I would leave you so soon?"

The words were innocent enough and the intonation sent a shiver of dread down the silver haired boy's spine. It sounded like—It sounded like he knew. His tongue felt like a dry and swollen slug in his mouth, he could only stare at the temple where the bone had been crushed which was now smooth and whole as if the flesh knit together by some act of God.

"Uncle." Aerion managed to choke out with the word scraping his throat. Uncle, uncle, uncle. uncle.

"I am glad to see you on your feet, nephew." His uncle murmured into his ear and the voice dropped an octave becoming intimate and almost mocking from a man who had never taken such a tone with his family. "I was worried you would stay indisposed for much longer and we would have to carry you back to Kingslanding."

His father grumbled and he is far too busy staring at his uncle to pay any mind to the scathing words, "If he stayed asleep for longer, we wouldn't have to deal with any new fucking tantrums."

The hand on his back pressed firmly and right over a bruised rib, causing an that made him gasp. Aerion stood frozen in the embrace with his mind reeling. You were dead, He screamed inside of his soul, I touched you. I fucked myself on your corpse. You cannot be here. Was he the one who was mad? Had he hallucinated the death from his own wounds? The soreness between his legs was real and the memory of the cold skin was real.

His father watched them with tired face and utterly blind to the terror swirling from his son. To him, this was a family reunited and a tragedy averted by the grace of the gods, "Just come and fucking sit, Aerion. The maesters informed me you did not eat a single bite when you woke up." His father boomed, gesturing to the table laden with food.

His uncle released him and stood back with that same uncanny grace as his hand lingered for a second too long on the silver haired boy's arm, his fingers digging into the flesh underneath. Aerion stumbled back with his legs nearly giving out and collapsed into the chair his father indicated. The room spun around him—the sunlight, the food and the smiling faces of the guards, his father's joy—it all blurred into a sickening pool of a different realm. He sat there dazed with his hands gripping the arms of the chair as if they were the only things anchoring him to the earth.

Your uncle is dead.

He stared at his uncle Baelor who was now taking a seat opposite him reaching for a goblet of wine with a steady hand. The man—the thing—took a long draught with his throat working as he swallowed and the younger boy watched the movement remembering how he had fantasized about that throat, how he had touched himself to the thought of it.

"Now, let's not be so harsh on the boy. I am sure he learned his lesson, brother." The thing said languidly and his father snorted as if he himself did not believe the crown prince's words.

"He will learn his lesson when pigs start to fly." His father muttered underneath his breath as he took a seat near his brother, looking pale and afraid that his brother might crumple onto the floor with a gaping head wound all over again.

He looked at the perfect and unblemished back where the skull had been crushed and it was seamless without a single flaw in sight, there was no sight of a wound nor was there any scars from the horrible blow to the head from the mace. Aerion felt a scream building in his throat like  a hysterical dragon shriek of denial and his violet eyes flickered top his father's glowing tired face, like the light had been brought back in the man who had murdered his own brother. He swallowed his scream down and did his best to not let the bile rise to his tongue. He felt trapped—trapped in a nightmare from which he could not wake, sitting at breakfast with a man who smiled with too many teeth.

His uncle's teeth had never looked so perfect.

"You seem surprised to see your favorite uncle. I expected more, I'm hurt." His uncle smiled again and set the goblet down, his mismatched eyes locking onto Aerion's violet ones.

He knows.

His uncle knows—he must know, he must have known the sins Aerion had committed and he had come back to haunt the silly boy until he fell underneath his own thoughts of despair. He knows what I did. He felt me on him and he felt my hands.

"Uncle—" The word clawed its way out of Aerion's throat with a pathetic whisper. "I—I saw—"

He couldn't say I saw your brain and he couldn't say I wiped my slick on your clothes like a dog marking it's man. He looked up into his uncle's face and searched for the wound, for the scar and for any sign of the mace. There was nothing except for smooth skin and that maddening enigmatic smile that was far too perfect like it was the face of a doll, a mask worn by something else. His mumbling is broken by the sound of servants serving more food onto the table and someone slides a plate of fruit before him, his violet eyes turning to see his father cutting apples for him in shapes.

For a moment, he just stares at his father.

His father looked happy, content even as both his son and brother were unscathed from untimely deaths. So, Aerion picks up a piece of fruit to put in his mouth and says nothing at all. He was always a better father's boy than a kind man who protests against things that are not so reasonable after all.

Maester Morte is found dead soon after.

The man was found in the ditch outside the curtain walls with his body twisted into a grotesque shape that would make anyone's stomach squirm as his neck was snapped at an angle so severe his chin rested against his spine. He stood at the edge of the crowd, watching as the silent sisters came to collect the corpse with his violet eyes narrowing with a suspicion that no one else seemed to share with him. It was too clean—the only man who knew the secret of his uncle Baelor's miraculous recovery and the only man who had touched the shattered skull and knit it back together with skills that shouldn't exist was dead now. His father, Maekar, was already making arrangements for gold to be sent to the Citadel like a blood price for the savior of the realm with his face set in a tone of relieved grief. He felt like a man screaming behind a pane of glass who was forced to watch as more and more people turned away from the truth that something was wrong.

He stared at the body as they carted it away and felt the creeping horror. They are all blind, he thought as his lips curled.

The feeling of wrongness pressed down on his chest until he could barely breathe and he had tried once to grab his father's arm in the solar and to hiss the truth about the cold flesh and the caved in bone, "Are we really going to pretend that—"

His father had shook him off with a look of weary exasperation and turned back to his maps. "The heat has addled you, boy. Your uncle is alive so stop trying to create trouble again and just be grateful! Else I would have sent you to Lys already."

Grateful?

Aerion wanted to laugh until he swallowed down his bile. Grateful that a monster was wearing his uncle's face? He wanted to shriek at his father's face that uncle was dead and gone and something is else is wearing his face. He wandered the halls afterwards with his limp less pronounced. I am not mad, He told himself and gripped the hilt of his dagger until his knuckles turned white, I am the only one who is sane. Uncle is dead, I know it and I made love to his corpse. I know what death tastes like and it does not walk and talk and jest.

The air here was cooler and far removed from the stifling heat of the yard and it carried a stillness that made the hair on his arms stand up. He approached the door to his uncle's chambers, his boots making no sound on the carpet covered stone and he expected guards—the Kingsguard, the white cloaks who were sworn to protect the heir's body with their lives and he remembered far too late that they were most likely injured and resting so the hallway was empty. The door was slightly ajar with a sliver of darkness cutting through the wood and he hesitated as he knew he should turn back. He knew that whatever lay beyond that door was not meant for his eyes, the dragon in him was curious and the boy in him was jealous. He crept closer and pressed his face near the crack with his violet eye widening as it adjusted to the dim interior. The room was draped in shadows with the heavy velvet curtains drawn against the sun like a sort of intimacy made for just the two in the room.

What the fuck?

Sitting in a chair near the fire was his uncle Baelor—or the thing that was his uncle. He looked regal with his dark silhouette cutting a sharp figure against the firelight and he was not alone. Perched upon his lap in a display of closeness that would have every lady of the court staring with wide eyes was Valarr Targaryen—Aerion's cousin, the Young Prince and the heir to the heir. His cousin was a delicate beauty and a softer, prettier mirror of his uncle Baelor with the same dark hair and the same beautiful mismatched eyes that seemed to hold a perpetual sorrow but his cousin lacked his father's martial bulk. He was slender and fair with that distinctive streak of silver running through his dark locks like a vein of precious Valyrian jewel. He looked small in his uncle's embrace and fragile as a bird, his legs draped over his father's thighs with his head resting against the broad chest that should have been burned by now.

The jealously that ran down his veins was irrational and so familiar.

Valarr was sitting where Aerion had fantasized about sitting, his cousin was being held by the arms that Aerion had craved, the arms that had dealt death. There was something wrong with the sight, something that twisted the familial affection into something that made the silver haired boy's belly burn with a sickening feeling of desire. His cousin was not a child to be dandled on a knee—he was a man grown and a knight who had ridden in the tourney. Here his cousin was curled up like a frightened boy, seeking comfort in the arms of a father who felt more like a empty husk than a parent and his uncle held him tightly.

His large hands encompassed his son's back and waist and it was the grip of a dragon hoarding it's gold with a possessiveness never seen on his calm uncle. His uncle's face was buried in his son's hair and inhaling the scent of him with a stillness that was inhumane like a creature waiting for the heart of it's prey to slow down.

Valarr seemed oblivious to the thing that nuzzled in his father's body and clung tighter to his father, whispering words Aerion couldn't catch. He saw the way his uncle's hand drifted and stroke down his cousin's  spine with a slow motion that no father should do to their son. It was the way one stroked a prize horse or a favored hound and it was the way the silver haired boy had touched his uncle's corpse the night before.

He wanted to run into the room and to tear his cousin away and take his place, to demand that his uncle look at him with that same hunger.

He backed away slowly and he couldn't watch anymore. The sight of Valarr receiving the affection Aerion craved even if it was tainted and even if it was wrong—it was was too much to bear. He retreated down the hallway with his limp more pronounced as his tiredness dragged him down and he found himself drawn to the room where his uncle had been laid out in state. The death chamber was empty with the table bare and the ice melted into puddles on the floor, the air still held the faint and lingering scent of death. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

His eyes scanned the room and he saw something in the corner kicked partially under a heavy drape and it was a small box. It was made of polished wood and bound in iron with strange swirling carvings that hurt the eyes if one looked at them too long and he approached it cautiously. He crouched down with his fingers brushing the lid and he found that it was unlocked. He flipped it open and expecting to find a scroll or maybe a a potion or perhaps a token but the box was empty. The velvet lining was pressed down as if something heavy had rested there recently.

The emptiness of the box gnawed at him and it prickled at him that it must be something related to the hollow man walking the halls wearing his uncle's face.

Inside him, Aerion thought with a shiver racking his frame, Whatever was in this box is now wearing his uncle's face.

He stared and stared, something dreadful making his fingers tremble and he felt so very small in that moment. He stood up and slammed the box shut down with the sound echoing loudly, his hand hiding it underneath his arm. He limped to his chambers, letting his door squeak shut and he paused for a moment—his free hand reached for the chair beside his bed and wedged it underneath his door knob.

He did not sleep that night.

The wheelhouse rattled over the rutted roads of the Reach and the journey from Ashford had begun under a pall of suffocating heat and an even heavier silence, the kind that settles over a funeral procession rather than a royal retinue returning home. Aerion sat amidst cushions of velvet and silk with his body aching, his mind filled with more paranoia than Daeron often had with his dragon dreams. He watched the passing countryside through the flutter of the curtains—the endless fields of gold and green and the smallfolk bowing in the dust as the dragons passed—and felt a profound loneliness. It was as if the world had split in two with the mundane world where peasants farmed and lords drank and the world where he felt the only one sane enough to point out something was wrong wrong wrong.

He felt like a man who had glimpsed something underneath flesh of his uncle and understood venturing any further would have him in waters dark enough to upturn his stomach. The clatter of hooves outside was a droning noise that grated on his nerves but it was the specific heavy tread of the destrier riding at the head of the column that made his skin crawl. His uncle was out there, his uncle who should be rotting in a box or burned on a pyre was riding in the vanguard, his posture perfectly straight with his armor gleaming and casting a shadow that seemed to stretch too long and too dark across the road.

The news that his brother Aegon, the little wretch known as Egg had absconded with the hedge knight Ser Duncan was a low sense of alarm for him. Under normal circumstances, he would have raged and demanded the boy be dragged back and whipped for shaming their blood by serving a commoner. He would have used it as point to prove Egg's unworthiness yet the disappearance of his youngest brother felt like a mercy or perhaps a smart escape for the little boy. The boy had fled the rotting core of their family before the blight could touch him and he almost envied the stupidity of it. While Egg was out playing squire for the massive lump oaf, he was stuck in a cage with a monster wearing his uncle's face and he spent the hours picking at the red embroidery of his tunic.

His father rode beside the wheelhouse for much of the journey like a looming presence of guilt and overcompensation, his father who was usually a man of harsh discipline and scalding words had become like a fretting mother hen towards Aerion. He would ride close to the window with his face grim and shadowed beneath his helm and barking orders at the maesters to check Aerion's bandages, to ensure the prince had water and to ask if the motion was too rough.

It felt good to be fussed over by his father that rarely showed any sort of affection towards his children and he shamelessly soaked it up with Daeron sighing outside every time their father asked if his silver haired boy was okay in the wheelhouse carriage.

Unfortunately, his father still avoided Aerion fears with the stubbornness of a mule.

Whenever Aerion tried to whisper about the crushed skull and about the coldness, his father would stiffen with his eyes glazing over with a defensive sheen and change the subject to the heat or the road or the state of the horses. It made his teeth grind together and it left the younger boy simmering in a pot of resentment utterly trapped in a carriage with his pain while his father played make believe.

Daeron snorted on his horse beside the carriage and he narrowed his eyes, throwing a cup at his older brother resulting in a loud yelp from the drunken Targaryen. Aerion hissed out, "Shut up out there."

Daeron unwilling to make more issues, just simply shut up.

The inn they eventually commandeered for the night was a sprawling and timber framed structure that smelled of roasting pork, stale ale and the nervous sweat of the innkeeper who had suddenly found his establishment overrun by the blood of the dragon. The arrival was an orchestra of shouting guards, busy servants and the clattering of armor. Aerion who was limping and leaning heavily on a cane of ebony wood watched the spectacle with a curled lip.

He saw the way the some of the smallfolk stared at his uncle with awe and with reverence, whispering about the miracle of the maester. His uncle moved through the place with that same uncanny grace and smiling that permanent charming smile while touching hands playing the part of the benevolent heir to perfection. How disgusting, his uncle had betrayed him while fighting for that low born knight  He noticed how the inn's dogs cowered and whined when his uncle passed, tucking their tails between their legs and slinking into the shadows as if deeply afraid of the man they could have ganged up on to make a mess.

Animals knew.

The beasts could smell the abyss that the humans were too blind to see and—and—he wanted to run. He had never run from anything in his life, nothing could ever make him fear not even his own grandfather who was the king yet just the mere presence of the man walking in that hollow skin made him want to run all the way to Essos if possible.

That is no man and he is no fool.

He made his way to the rear of the inn where a garden of overgrown herbs and wild flowers struggled against the encroaching weeds. The noise of the retinue faded here and he instead heard the chirping of crickets and the rustle of wind in the apple trees. It was here that he found his cousin Valarr  and the Young Prince sat on a moss-covered stone bench with his figure slumped in a posture of utter exhaustion. His cousin had always been the quieter dragon, the thoughtful one and he possessed of a melancholic beauty that Aerion had often mocked as well as secretly envied. His dark hair with that distinctive streak of silver hung limp around his face, and his mismatched eyes—one blue and one brown—were staring on the grass. He looked soft as if a strong wind could blow him away.

He approached him slowly with his cane sinking into the soft earth with the pain in his leg leaving him unable to walk properly. He felt a need to poke his older cousin—he always liked to buzz around his cousin like a bee just to make the older boy look at him. He stopped a few feet away and casted a long shadow over his cousin while his cousin didn't look up at all. He didn't acknowledge Aerion's presence though he must have heard the crunch of boots on gravel and he just continued to stare at a patch of clover, his hands clasped tightly in his lap with the knuckles white.

"So, we're just going to act like everything is fine and dandy, like uncle just didn't come back to life from the wound that should be impossible to come back from?" He said sharply with a mocking tone laced with the disbelief that bubbled just beneath his skin. He leaned on his cane and tilted his head with his violet eyes boring into his older cousin.

He wanted a reaction—he wanted Valarr to scream and to cry and to agree with him. He wanted someone to say yes Aerion, you are right. It is a monster. He saw his cousin's shoulders stiffen with a subtle tension that rippled through his lithe frame and the Young Prince's hands unclenched and then clenched again, tighter this time with the nails digging into his palms.

He slowly raised his head and the look he gave the silver haired boy was a look of pure loathing. For the first time in their lives, the quiet and studious Young Prince looked ready to come over and strangle his cousin with his own hands, kinslaying be damned. His mismatched eyes were blazing with a cold fire, wet with unshed tears but hard as flint.

"Do not." Valarr hissed with his voice trembling with a suppressed rage that was startling in its volume, "Do not speak of him, not you. You—you are the reason he was hurt, you and your father that swung that mace." He stood up with his movements jerky and uncoordinated as if his body were fighting against itself. He towered over the seated position he had been in and though he was the same height as Aerion, his eyes itself seemed to overcome his younger cousin. The older boy took a step toward him and for a second Aerion actually flinched as he stepped back on his bad leg.

His older cousin continued with his voice rising and cracking under the strain, "He is alive and the Gods have given him back to me."

"None of what happened was my fault. If that peasant oaf had not—" He gritted out only to be interrupted by his older cousin.

"I saw him," Valarr whispered pleadingly, "I held him when they had let me see him after he had—he was so cold and I thought I would never feel his touch ever again. And then he was returned back to me, he is warm and he speaks to me, he remembers me."

Aerion laughed,  "Warm, is he? Did you look at the back of his head, cousin? You seemed far too busy crying like a babe to notice that the man holding you didn't even breathe properly. I saw the skull, Valarr—What sort of man just simply walks that off?"

How can you be so loved by that thing while it ignores me? He wants to bite out most of all. His cousin's face twisted with grief and fury as he shoved the younger man with a hard push that sent the Bright Prince stumbling back and nearly losing his balance on his injured leg.

"Shut your mouth! Just stop it, how much more will you take from me? Do you want my father dead once more?" His cousin screamed and his chest heaved with tears finally spilling over his lashes and rolling down his peach cheeks, "He is my father and he is here with me—If you speak of this again and do something foolish, I will kill you myself Aerion. I swear it by the Gods."

Aerion steadied himself on his cane breathlessly as he looked at his cousin and saw the little boy that had not been allowed to grow under his father's suffocating affections. The Crown Prince rarely let the heir of his to venture into anything without hovering behind him like some sort of clingy haunting, unable to stomach the thought of his baby boy swaying away from him and it had resulted in this boy-child that would never be able to amount up to Baelor Targaryen.

"Fine. If that is what you wish, cousin." He whispered and he turned on his heel, limping away from the garden and leaving his cousin standing amidst the grass weeping silently into his hands.

He has the midday meal in the stifling common room of the inn and the heat that made Aerion's skin crawl with the sensation of a thousand invisible insects. The air was thick with the scent of roasted capons, heavy gravy and the sour tang of wine that turned his stomach and made the simple act of swallowing feel like eating black tar. He sat at the high table with his injured leg propped on a cushioned stool and picking listlessly at a plate of greens while his family gorged themselves on the sweet roasted meat. To his left, his elder brother Daeron was already deep in his cups with his face flushed and slack, snoring softly between bites of bread with a disgusting look of sloppiness that he was sure his father would later scold his elder brother for.

No matter that Daeron never really learns form his scolding.

At least his drunken older brother was safe from the horror that sat at the head of the table and he felt like a man trapped in a painting where the coloring was all wrong and where the lines of the artists did not meet and he was the only one screaming while everyone else smiled. He gripped his fork until the silver bent with his knuckles white and his violet eyes darting around the table to see if anyone else would notice the fact his uncle was something entirely made from their nightmares. His eyes flickered to his father who was too busy playing the repentant brother, refilling his brother Baelor's goblet and grumbling too loudly at jokes that weren't funny.

His cousin Valarr sat next to his father with his eyes red rimmed and distant, staring at his plate and chewing on his meat pieces like he was already close to curling up into deep sleep. His cousin had cried hard and anyone could see from the way his red nose sniffled, something his prim cousin would never show to others before.

His eyes then went to the Crown Prince that sat with the stillness of a dragon waiting for the grass to rustle and his movements were fluid that lacked the fumbling of a living man. Aerion watched with breath held as his uncle Baelor reached for a slice of beef, it was rare and bloody meat that it was practically raw with the juices pooling red on the trencher. His uncle did not cut it and lifted the meat to his mouth before tearing into it with gusto that made the silver haired boy practically gape. There was no savoring and no chewing for flavor, the man simply ate the meat like it was nothing to chow down raw meat he had asked for.

The heir was eating raw meat and no one was saying anything.

His grip on his fork faltered as he stared at his uncle's eyes or the lack thereof of humanness. He counted the seconds and then the minutes—one minute and then two and then three and then four and then—his uncle did not blink, not even once. Those mismatched eyes of brown and blue remained wide open and glistening with nothing which should be impossible considering people like them needed that moisture for tears or anything. His uncle stared straight ahead while he ate and chewed with a grinding motion of his jaw that echoed in Aerion's ears like stones rubbing together. It was the eating of a thing that had forgotten what food was supposed to be like a pantomime of sustenance performed to appease the cattle around him.

Aerion tugged on his father's arm like a child once more, whispering underneath his breath, "Father—Father, he's not even blinking. Father, he's not blinking."

His father sighed and just told him to eat his food without making a nuisance of himself. He stared at his father with inherent incredulity  in his heart for a few moments before they slid over to his uncle and the man smiled emptily with the blood from the meat staining his teeth red on that handsome face of his. He looked away immediately and played with the rings in his fingers, feeling the familiar stirrings of his own madness and the dragon dreams that usually told him he was a dragon curdling into eerie blackness now days. He felt betrayed by his own senses and his own kin— was he the crazy one? He looked at the bloody meat again, seeing the way his uncle swallowed a chunk whole with his throat distending slightly to accommodate it and it was vile to the younger man.

He pushed his plate away, the clatter of silver on wood loud in his own ears though no one else seemed to hear it and he wanted to flip the table, to scream, to stab his uncle with his steak knife just to see if he bled red or black or nothing at all. When his uncle Baelor finally wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, staining the white cloth with a smear of crimson that looked too bright and too arterial, he stood up.

"I find myself weary from the journey." The thing in his uncle's skin laughed, "My head still sings a little from my brother's affection so I must take some rest before we head out again."

The man walked as he passed Aerion, the air seemed to drop in coldness and the scent of raw meat made his nausea bundle up again. He shivered with the hairs on his arms standing up and he watched his uncle's back as he left the common room, the heavy oak door swinging shut behind him. The room felt lighter instantly and he ignored the ache of his leg, he grabbed his cane and shoved himself up from the table. He limped out of the common room and he moved as quietly as his injury allowed, favoring his good leg. The inn was old with the floorboards groaning under his weight and he followed the path his uncle had taken up the narrow twisting stairs to the guest level. The hallway here was dim and lit only by the dusty daylight filtering through narrow arrow slits. He felt like a child again, sneaking through the Red Keep.

He reached the end of the hallway where the best chambers were located and the door to his uncle's room was closed with a heavy slab of dark seasoned wood that looked impenetrable. It was mundane and boring door like any other so he stopped a few feet away and pressed his back against the rough plaster of the wall, breathing shallowly through his mouth to avoid making a sound. He waited for sounds of movement like boots on the floor and the creak of a bed frame or the rustle of clothing yet there was nothing. It was as if the room beyond was a vacuum and step by agonizing step, Aerion crept closer as if drawn by a morbid curiosity that overrode his senses screaming at him that something is so wrongwrongwrong.

He stopped directly in front of the door.

There was a small viewing window cut into the wood at eye level and covered by a thin ragged curtain on the inside yet the fabric had slipped and left a gap. And through that gap and through the cracks in the warped wood of the doorframe, he saw it. At first it was a low hum like a sound that he felt in his teeth and in the marrow of his bones and the sight of the blue light made his breath still in his lungs. It wasn't the warm, orange glow of fire or torchlight, it was the cold and harsh brilliance of a star— it pierced through the wood and through the cracks, casting long beams that sliced through the hallway darkness.

It shone in symmetrical and geometric beams like a starburst carved into the very air. The light was like a liquid rippling across waters with swirls of neon pink and purple diluted by the blue. He stared into the heart of the light through the small window and he couldn't see the room— he couldn't see his uncle Baelor. He slowly stared at his own boots, seeing them bathed in the glow and looking like they belonged to a stranger.

And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the light vanished and left him with nothing to see.

He stood there in the dark as his heart dropped to his stomach and—he— he was alone in the dark with the thing behind the door. The fear fell on him like a cold bucket of water that doused his curiosity instantly and he took a shaky step forward with his cane clattering softly against the floor. He reached for the handle of the door that felt slick with his clammy hands and his hand trembled with the brass rattling against the wood.

With a sound that he swallowed down into a dry throat, he turned the latch. The lock clicked open and the door drifted open under the pressure of his shaking hand. He stepped across the threshold, his injured leg dragging slightly, the tip of his cane tapping softly on the wooden floorboards. The room was so dark it clung to him like a viscous ink that seemed and the only light in the room came from the window on the far wall where the heavy velvet curtains had been left partially undrawn.

His breath came in short and shallow rasps that sounded so loud to his own ears and he felt naked as if watched by a thousand unseen eyes hidden in the corners of the room. "Uncle?" He whispered with the word barely more than a breath like a scared young nephew.

His wide eyes strained in the gloom were drawn to the far wall and there was the built in closet of oak that stood with its doors thrown wide open. The inside of the closet was a maw of absolute blackness and darker even than the room around it, a rectangular abyss that seemed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. It was from there that the feeling of wrongness came like a palpable wave of cold dread that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. He leaned forward and squinted into the dark. He wanted to see his uncle's boots or his cloak or anything mundane that would explain away the sheer dread he was feeling in his stomach.

But he saw nothing.

It was so dark that he could see nothing and he took another step with the floorboard creaking loudly under his boot and he froze, his breath stuttering in his throat as he heard something that made him want to run to his father. The sound was a wet and low grinding noise that made his stomach turn over of the food he had swallowed. It was the sound of bone rubbing against bone and certainly not in the way a joint pops or a knuckle cracks. This was the sound of flesh being forcibly torn apart with crrrk—snap—squelch.

It came from the depths of the closet and it sounded like a heavy branch being twisted until it splintered overlaid with the slick visceral noise of meat being pulled apart. His hand flew to his mouth to stifle a gag and—he—he knew that sound. He had heard it on the tourney field when a horse's leg broke and he had heard it when his father's mace had connected with his uncle's skull. The sound coming from in there was a slow thing of bones of breaking and resetting.

"Uncle," Aerion breathed with his voice trembling, "You're scaring me."

He couldn't move.

A soft grunt of pain drifted out of the closet, a sound so human and yet so distorted that it made tears prick at the corners of his eyes. It was a grunt of exertion and of agony endured—UnngGHh—It was followed by a sharp and loud crack like a neck breaking and then the sound of something heavy shifting against the back wall of the closet. The clothes hanging inside rustled and he thought of his uncle Baelor in there, in that darkness that smelled of rotting decay. The sounds of the bone crushing continued like a of wet pops and snaps that sounded like a bag of walnuts being crushed with a hammer—and then they stopped. He stared into the black rectangle of the closet with his eyes watering from the strain and he lowered his hand from his mouth with his lips trembling.

"Uncle—are you—is something okay?" He tried again, "Please come and let me—let me see you."

A voice came out of the dark and it was his uncle's voice unmistakable in its tone, "Aerion?"

The name hung in the air and it was as if his uncle Baelor had just woken up from a dream he did not understand. It sounded like his uncle who had kissed his cheek warmly after his mother's death years ago. The sound of his name, spoken with such eerie intimacy and he took a clumsy step backward with his instinct to flee finally taking the wheel.

"No—" He whimpered out, shaking his head. "No, you're dead. You're scaring me, you're not my uncle, you're not—you're not him."

He backed away with his eyes never leaving the closet as if turning his back would make his uncle pull him in. He needed to get to the door—he needed his father. He needed to be anywhere but here. As he stepped back, his bad leg buckled under his weight and his heel caught on the edge of a loose rug and his balance, already precarious vanished. He flailed his arms and the world tilted with the ceiling rushing down to meet him and the floor rushed up. He fell backward hard and utterly unable to catch himself. The back of his head struck the wooden floorboards with a sickening thud that shook through his entire skull. A burst of white light painfully scattered behind his eyes, brighter than the blue light from before had been.

For a second he lay there stunned with the breath knocked out of him, staring up at the ceiling where the shadows seemed to be lengthening and stretching down like fingers to grab him. He tried to lift his head and to crawl away yet his limbs felt so very heavy. The darkness of the room began to encroach on his vision and turned the edges of the world gray and then black.

The last thing he heard was the voice closer this time as if hovering over him.

Your uncle is dead.

When he woke up, the first thing he registered was the pain at the base of his skull where he had struck the floorboards like a persistent thump. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of the dim candlelight that felt like needles piercing his eyes. The memory of the the blue light and the bone-snapping sounds from the closet—it all rushed back in a sickening tide that nearly put him in renewed panic.

He wasn't in the hallway anymore and he was in his bed, the velvet covers pulled up to his chin and he heard the sound—the crisp and deliberate turning of a parchment page, loud as a glass clattering in the heavy silence of the room. He froze as his his breath caught in his lungs, his entire body going rigid under the sheets. He turned his head slowly and fought the stiffness in his neck, the movement agonizingly slow as dread coiled like a serpent in his belly.

Your uncle is dead.

And there he was.

His uncle or the thing that wore his uncle Baelor's face like a mask, the older man sat in the chair beside the bed with one leg crossed over the other with an ease that belied the horror Aerion had saw in that room. He was dressed in a loose tunic of dark silk with the fabric drinking in the shadows and in his hands rested a leather bound book that looked far too mundane for a creature that had been dead a few days ago. The handsome Dornish face was composed and lacking the silver framing of Valyrian hair yet having the look of a man that him seem more dragon than human. His uncle watched him with a calm demeanor with those mismatched eyes, the way a maester might study a specimen in a jar.

"Careful there." His uncle said, his voice a smooth dark river that flowed over the jagged rocks of the silver haired boy's fear, "You took quite the tumble, nephew. I almost thought you would have cracked your own skull the way I did."

Aerion felt breathless with his lungs refusing to draw in enough air to steady his racing pulse. He stared at those mismatched eyes, paralyzed by the fear and those jarring sounds he had heard in the dark. This was the man he had mourned, the man he had lusted after and the man whose corpse he had defiled. And now that corpse was sitting in his room, reading a book and looking every bit of the beloved uncle whose attention he had always wanted. He tried to speak and the the words disintegrated on his tongue.

He felt small.

"Y—You—" He stammered out with his voice thin, pathetic to his own ears, "I—I—You're not him—" He was babbling and he sounded like an idiot, far from the huffy prince he had been in the tourney. He pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing as the room spun with his violet eyes wide and wet with delirium. He wanted to screech for the guards, for his father.

His uncle Baelor closed the book with a soft thud, the sound familiar and authoritative. He set it on the bedside table with care his movements having that same uncanny precision Aerion had noticed at dinner.

"But it is me, little dragon." His uncle murmured with a faintly indulgent smile playing on his lips—a smile that didn't quite reach the mismatched eyes. He stood up, unfolding his tall and broad frame from the chair and the room seemed to shrink instantly. He loomed over the bed as if casting a long shadow that swallowed the silver haired beauty whole. The denial in his throat died as his uncle leaned over him, placing a hand on the mattress by his lithe hip as the mattress dipped under the weight and pulled the boy slightly toward him.

"You have always had such a vivid imagination, Aerion. Perhaps the blow to your head in the trial rattled more than just your teeth. We must have the royal maesters see to your injuries after we reach the Red Keep." His uncle whispered softly.

"I remember when you used to be so much smaller." His uncle continued with his voice dropping an octave and becoming intimate with his hand reached out and hovering over the silver haired boy's face for a moment before brushing a stray lock of silver hair from his forehead. The touch was freezing like stone in winter and he flinched, a whimper escaping his lips, "So much needier for my attention." His Baelor whispered, his gaze dropping to the boy's chest and watching the rise and fall of his breathing. "You would throw tantrums, break toys, hurt animals and then interrupt councils—all to make me look at you, to have my personal attention on you."

He trembled with his hands clutching the sheets, his knuckles white, "I—I did not—"

He tried to deny it and the lie felt like black vileness in his mouth. He had wanted his uncle Baelor's attention and he had craved it like a dog awaiting it's master's affections. And now he had it in the most worst time imaginable. His uncle's heavy hand trailed down from his face over his throat—lingering there for a heartbeat over the skin before going lower, over his chest and down to his stomach.

"I remember how you would wear such tight clothes in front of me." His uncle murmured, his eyes darkening with the blue iris glowing with a faint luminescence, "Baring that neck at me after my lady wife's death and parading yourself like a prize filly at an auction. Did you think I did not see it? Did you think I did not know what you were offering?"

He froze as shame crept up in his flesh like a flush that turned him utterly red—his uncle knew. His uncle had seen him fluttering his silver eyelashes at the older man and had noticed his seductions, the man had remembered even to this day like the sight would not leave his mind. He wonders if his uncle touched himself to the thought of his nephew's young flesh. It makes him flush all over again. The hand moved lower, slipping beneath the waistband of his velvet breeches with an entitled presumption and he gasped, his hips bucking as his uncle Baelor hummed. His hand large and calloused and cold slid inside his smallclothes, finding the heat that had been building there despite the fear.

"My brother would have had my head if I touched you all those years ago." His uncle stated, his fingers brushed against the wetness slicking Aerion's folds and he let out a strangled noise that was more like a sob than a moan. It was wrong—his uncle was twisted and different and the sensation of those cold fingers in his soft pussy made his thighs tremble. "Such a pretty boy," His Baelor whispered with heavy hungry satisfaction, "I should have fucked you on the eve of your fourteenth name day rather than wait for so long."

He began to rub with his palm cupping Aerion's mound, his fingers seeking out the sensitive little cunt and his thumb found the swollen nub of the clit, pressing down hard and digging in with a pressure that was faintly hurtful. The silver beauty's head fell back against the pillows, his eyes rolling up with his mouth falling open in a mewl of pleasure. The cold metal of the heavy signet rings on his uncle's fingers dragged against his sensitive skin like a biting chill that contrasted exquisitely with the heat. The sounds of his pussy being rubbed were loud in the quiet room and obscenely wet.

"Please." He whimpered out, "Uncle Baelor."

His uncle's thumb circled and mashing against the clit with a faster pace, making the silver haired boy's toe curl at the feeling of being pleasured by another person for the first time in his life. The older man leaned closer with his face inches from Aerion's as if scenting his neediness. He arched his back off the mattress with a high and keen whine tearing from his throat with his toes curling. His pussy clamped down around his uncle's fingers and he felt his slick spilling out, soaking his smallclothes and coating his uncle's fingers in wetness. He collapsed back onto the bed with his chest heaving and sweat sticking his silver hair to his forehead. He lay there, trembling utterly spent and staring up at the canopy with unseeing eyes. His uncle slowly withdrew his hand and the wet sound of suction pop made heat rise to his ears. His uncle held his hand up as if staring the glistening wetness in the candlelight.

"Good boy." His uncle whispered and then he brought his fingers to his mouth, licking them clean with a slow swipe of his tongue, his mismatched eyes never leaving Aerion's flushed face. His uncle stepped away to grab a glass of water and returned back to his side.

The glass of water pressed against his lips was cold, the cold water weeping down the sides to drip onto his chin and he drank greedily with the water tasting metallic like licking a sword blade, it soothed the parched ache in his throat. His uncle held the glass with a steady grip, tilting it just so and forcing the younger boy to swallow at a pace that left him gasping and sputtering, water trickling down his neck to soak the collar of his tunic. It was a nursing gesture and when the glass was empty, his uncle Baelor set it aside with a dull clink on the bedside table. Aerion blinked blearily, his violet eyes swimming with the dazed hue and the lingering disorientation of his earlier fall.

"Up," His Baelor commanded softly, "On your knees, little dragon." The words hooked directly into the submissive and desperate part of him that craved his uncle's presence. He scrambled to obey, his injured leg dragging and hurting with stabs of agony that made him hiss but he forced himself up, turning to bury his face in the silk pillows and presenting his back to the black dragon in the room.

The humiliation of the position made him flush like a tomato, he was kneeling like a common whore with his ass in the air and his face pressed into the softness of the pillows. He felt the mattress shift as his uncle moved behind him like a dragon circling its prey and then came the hands as those fingers hooked into the waistband of the silver haired beauty's velvet breeches and with a sharp tug, he began to peel them down. Aerion shivered with gooseflesh spanning across his thighs and soft ass as his smallclothes followed, dragged down to his ankles and leaving his lower half completely exposed, pale and naked in the dim light. He felt stripped of his spitting remarks, of his dignity and of his very skin. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pillow, inhaling the scent of lavender and his own sweat.

His uncle's hands returned and settled heavily and possessively on the curve of his ass. Those fingers adorned with rings dug into the soft flesh, kneading and squeezing with a roughness he did not expect from his uncle. He felt like a mare being checked for breeding and his value was being assessed by the quality of his flesh. His Baelor tested the give of the muscle, the width of the hips and his thumbs pressing into the dimples of Aerion's lower back before sliding down to spread the cheeks apart.

"Wide hips for a boy." His uncle murmured, "Good for riding and good for babes if the seed takes."

The silver haired boy let out a muffled whimper into the pillow, a sound of shame and confused desire—he hated being treated like this, his pride was being stomped on as his uncle spoke of his hips like he were some maiden from another house being judged for his ability to bear healthy babes yet the slick sliding down his thighs gave him away. The cold metal of his uncle's rings dragged against his skin like icy brands that marked him as property and it was embarrassing how much he liked his uncle looking at him, touching him even as a piece of meat—at least Aerion was the crown prince's boy. The hands moved inward, brushing against the damp heat of his pussy with the excess of his earlier release still slick and inviting.

His uncle hummed with a low sound in his chest that was more dragon than man. His uncle moved to stand beside the bed, looming over his prone form with one hand remaining firmly planted on the younger boy's ass and pinning him in place. The other hand however moved to his head as slender fingers threaded through the short silver strands of hair, scratching lightly at the scalp and stroking the silky strands with a trance that was undeniably comforting.

It was the touch one gave to a favorite pet, a soothing gesture to calm a skittish animal and he starved for affection and terrified out of his mind, leaned into the touch instinctively. A soft sound bubbled up in his throat that was so close to a purr, the touch was agonizingly familiar. It was the way his uncle Baelor used to comfort him when he was a child and had scraped a knee or been scolded by his father Maekar. It was a gesture of paternal affection and feeling it now made him hope that everything was just fine.

That he hadn't killed his own uncle because of his desire for vengeance and the man had never had his skull caved in. He leaned into the touch instinctively with purring sound becoming more loud in his throat against his will. He was starving for this—for approval and for affection—even if it came from his uncle's hand.

"You are so soft." His Baelor whispered, letting the trickle of soft silver hair strands around his finger. "You always did have the prettiest hair as if they were star lights. Perhaps you ought to let it grow a little longer, maybe adorn it with a few jewelries I gifted you for your namedays."

He nodded hesitantly, "Okay—Okay, uncle."

"You're so beautiful for a boy and so many desire us, our bloodline. Your father was known to tumble in the straw with the stable boys, have you?" His uncle whispered as if he were gossiping, his fingers resuming their kneading of the soft ass. The accusation slapped the silver beauty and the sheer audacity of the question made a dragon's fire ignite in his belly, burning away the fear for a fleeting second. He jerked his head up from the pillow with his face flushed, his eyes violet blazing with insulted pride and if he were a dragon, he would be smoking fire.

"No!" He hissed, "How dare you! I am a prince of the dragon blood! I am not some—some common slattern to be used by filth! I have never—no one has ever touched me! Only I—only I touch me." The idea that he, Aerion Targaryen, would lower himself to bed a commoner or anyone for that matter was an insult to his dragon lineage.

His Baelor chuckled full of humor and Aerion almost reached back to take a bite out of the man's face, something twisted or not. "Shh, shh, easy now," He soothed, pushing the silver haired boy's face back down into the pillow with the hand in his hair and the grip tightening just enough to be a warnin., "A spirited mare you are indeed. How wrong of me to accuse my beautiful dragon of such a thing, I should be flogged by a whip for this mistake." The amusement in his voice was there.

The hand on his soft ass slid down, the fingers coating themselves in the slick fluids that leaked from his pussy. His uncle lined up two of his long and slender fingers with the pussy and pushed roughly—he thrust them inside in one smooth motion and made the pretty Targaryen gasp as his back arched with a high pitched keen escaping his lips as he felt the give of his cunt. His tight and unused cunt clamped down around the fingers, the coldness of those fingers inside his pussy made him whimper loud enough to be embarrassing.

"Kepus." He whined pathetically.

"Tight." His uncle noted and began to pump his fingers in and out, the wet squelch loud and obscene, "Such a tight little cunt, pretty dragon."

Aerion mewled into the pillow, biting down on the silk case to stifle his cries and the sensation was agonizing and ecstatic all at once. The two fingers moved with relentlessness and piston like, scissoring inside him and stretching the walls of his pussy, hitting spots that had only ever been teased by his own smaller hands. He felt full and his uncle chuckled once more, "I think a dragon like yourself can take more."

A third finger joined the first two and then a fourth—he screamed with a muffled sound as his body was forced to take the fingers of his Baelor's hand. He felt like he was splitting apart and like he was being torn open. "Please—too much—it's too much!" He sobbed as his hips writhed trying to escape the fingers inside of him but the hand in his hair held him firm and rooted him to the spot.

"You like it." His uncle whispered into his ear, his breath warm against his neck. "You can take it, it's just the first time." The four fingers curled and thrust, fucking him with a roughness that made his toes curl and he was dripping with his own slick soaking his thighs, the sheets and matted in his pubic silver hair.

The pleasure began to bleed into the pain and he found himself pushing back against the hand—craving the stretch and the fullness. He purred and drool pooling on the pillow.

"That's it." His uncle encouraged and pumping slowed as the pressure inside his soaking pussy increased. His uncle's hand was deep inside him up to the knuckles, stretching him to his absolute limit and he felt distended with his pussy gaping around the fingers. He was drowning in sensation.

"Do you think..." His Baelor's voice was a low rumble that made his pussy throb, "Do you think this sweet, tight little cunt could take my fist?"

His violet eyes widened in the pillow as panic flated again. A fist? It was impossible—he would snap in half, he couldn't take a whole fist, he would tear. "No—no Kepus, please—" He whimpered shaking his head.

Slowly, his Baelor began to tuck his thumb into his palm and compressing his hand into a tight hard knot inside the silver haired beauty. The sensation of the knuckles rearranging inside him was horrifyingly reminiscent of the sounds in the closet and the stretch increased as Aerion felt the ring of his little pussy burning like a circle of fire. "Unngh!" He grunted with his body bucking instinctively and trying to throw his uncle off yet Baelor was too heavy and too strong.

"Shh, quiet now. Don't fight your uncle like this." His Baelor struck his ass with his free hand with a stinging slap that shocked Aerion into stillness and with a grinding twist his uncle pushed. The widest part of the hand—the knuckles pressed against the tight ring of muscle and he shrieked into the pillow with a long drawn out sound as he felt himself being pried open wider than nature intended. The burn was blinding and he felt the snap of his pussy's resistance giving way. His uncle shoved and with a sucking sound, his fist slid inside. He went rigid with his breath seizing in his lungs as he was impaled, he was stuffed like a turkey. He felt the heavy mass of the fist filling him completely and pressing against his bladder, his tailbone—his very soul.

It was too much, and it was everything. He whined with tears streaming down his face and his uncle held his fist still inside him letting Aerion adjust to the fist.

"There." His Baelor whispered stroking those silver hair with his free hand with the gesture tender. "See? You fit me perfectly, nephew. There's no need to fuss."

His uncle fucked that his fist inside of him—making Aerion whine into the pillows before finally his uncle took his fist away. The stretching emptiness as the thick knuckled hand slowly retreated, sliding backward with a wet and sucking noise he felt as though his very insides were being pulled out along with it. The feeling of it made him nauseous, the ridges of his Baelor's knuckles dragging against the over sensitized pussy walls and scraping against nerves that were weak. When the hand finally popped free, the sudden absence of pressure left him gasping with his mouth hanging open in a drooling O. He lay there with his hips still elevated on the tangled sheets, his body a mess of sweat and slick. His pussy did not close and it remained gaping flushed red, the lips swollen and fluttering as they tried to close up yet were unable to. 

A mixture of his own natural slick and the slick gathered from his uncle's fingers leaked from the used cunt, dripping down his inner thighs in slow and thick rivulets to pool on the expensive bedding. He felt hollowed out and his mind was a haze of cotton, his thoughts unable to form a single coherent sentence.

The older dragon did not allow him to linger in the afterglow and the older man climbed his weight on the mattress with the bed frame groaning in protest. His large hand, the one not currently coated in Aerion's slick pressed firmly between the boy's shoulder blades and he pushed down, flattening the silver dragon boy against the mattress until the prince's chest and stomach were pressed into the silk sheets with his face turned to the side and buried in the pillow. Aerion grunted as the air was forced from his lungs with his limbs splayed out like a starfish, utterly at the mercy of the black dragon above him. He felt the heavy weight of his uncle body settle over his back like a blanket. His uncle nuzzled into the crook of his neck, the movement becoming something more akin to a dragon scenting its kill and the man's nose was cold and icy hard against the sensitive skin behind his ear. Aerion squeezed his eyes shut with his hands clutching the pillow as if it were a shield and his knuckles white. 

He could feel the stubble on his Baelor's chin scratching against his shoulder. Then came the sound that made the silver haired boy's breath stutter—the rustle of fabric and the heavy clink of a belt being undone and the soft thud of heavy breeches dropping to the floor as his uncle was freeing himself. He couldn't see it pinned as he was and he heard the squelching sound of the older man scooping up some of the slick—and then the slick noise of a hand working a cock.

Schlick.

Aerion whimpered into the pillow, his hips giving a small instinctive twitch. When his uncle finally pressed himself fully against his silver haired beauty's ass and then pressed against the cleft of the soft ass, the man lifted his hips as if to grind the size of it against his skin and spreading the slick fluid over the cheeks, painting him with it. He felt blunt head of the dick prod higher and pressing insistently against the tight puckered hole of his ass. He gasped as his eyes flew open, his head whipping to the side on the pillow and the sensation of the head pushing against that tight hole sent a shiver of pure panic through him. Sodomy was for the desperate men who couldn't buy a whore and had other men nearby, it was for the lowborn and not for a prince of the blood. It was a thing he had never permitted and never even considered.

"No!" Aerion hissed angrily and struggled to twist his hips away, "Not there! Don't you dare! I am not a dog to be taken from behind!" He bared his teeth nearly snapping at the air with his instinct to bite, to wound.

His uncle chuckled with a rumbling sound that vibrated against the younger boy's back. His uncle withdrew his dick with the head of his cock sliding away from the tight hole, leaving a smear of cold slick behind. The younger dragon let out a shaky exhale with his body sagging with relief though the anger still simmered in his eyes wet and furious. He hated this helplessness—He hated that his uncle Baelor could make him beg and hiss in the span of a heartbeat. His uncle moved to soothe the mare he had agitate as he leaned down, pressing his face into the side of the younger boy's neck again and this time his lips found the skin. He pressed a kiss to the skin and then another to the jawline, then another to the flushed cheek. 

"Shh, easy sweet thing. I know where you need it. I know where you are wet for me." He trailed kisses down the column of that pale throat, nipping lightly at the tendon and marking him. The younger boy melted and he stopped struggling with his arms coming up to cradle the pillow, burying his face in the silk once more.

With Aerion subdued, his uncle let the heavy head of his cock reach the lower lips and his pussy reacted instinctively. The swollen and battered flesh fluttered, the gaping entrance still stretched from the fist seemed to weep fresh slick and slicking the path for the heir to the iron throne. He let out a low moan with his hips tilting up slightly and seeking the fullness he had been denied a moment ago. 

"Here." The silver haired beauty croaked as he used his hand to reach back and grip the thick dick of his uncle, trying to make it nudge against his soaking and gaping little pussy, "Here— please."

His uncle Baelor pressed in fully within the tight pussy, the sensation of fullness was so overwhelming and the initial burn of the stretch made him gasp with his mouth hanging open in moan, his eyes rolling back until he was staring blindly at the headboard. The weight of his uncle on top of him was crushing and flattening his chest into the mattress. His pussy fluttered as his uncle fucked in deeper, working past the muscle wall that the world deemed to be a virgin cunt. His uncle withdrew almost to the lips and leaving Aerion feeling suddenly achingly empty, before slamming back in with a pressure that knocked the breath from his lungs. The sound of their bodies colliding was wet and loud like a obscene sound. The bed frame groaned with the wood creaking rhythmically under the fuck and the noise was lost under the visceral sounds of the sex. His silver head was driven into the pillow with each pounding, his silver hair messed up and his flushed face along with his neck sweated. 

He moaned as his uncle fucked him, his stomach flipped and turned in somersaults of pleasure and a liquid heat pooling in his gut as his toes curled, digging into the sheets and his legs sprawling wide helpless to do anything. The sweat that dripped from those dark brow onto Aerion's neck was cold like melting snow and sending shivers racing down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. He reached back blindly with his hands scrabbling for purchase on his uncle's strong thighs, his fingers digging into the hard muscle and trying to pull him closer, deeper, wanting to merge with the man until he forgot what he began and ended.

"Yeah, good little pussy. You like it when I fuck it hard, don't you?" His Baelor grunted with his voice rough, "You want me to come in your pussy?" 

Those hands gripped his hips tighter with the thumbs digging into the soft flesh until they surely left bruises and the older man leaned down, biting the curve of Aerion's shoulder with his teeth scraping against the skin. It was the Heir to the Iron Throne asking the spare if he wanted to be bred. 

He sobbed with a keen sound, nodding his head into the pillow frantically, "Yes—yes, please, please."  He didn't care about the implications and he didn't care about the lineage— he felt the calloused hand move from his hip to grab a handful of his hair and yanking his head back, forcing his neck to bare itself. 

"Sweet boy." His uncle purred at him and the praise was like a drug. The thrusts became harder and faster as his uncle was pounding him into the mattress, trying to drive him through the floorboards. The older man went rigid with his muscles locking up and he drove his dick in to the hilt one final time and burying it so deep the silver haired boy choked and held it there. His uncle came inside of his pussy and filled it up, giving it a few more rough and shallow thrusts and grinding his hips to ensure every drop was put deep inside before collapsing his weight fully onto Aerion.

They lay there for a moment and he lay panting with his chest heaving against the mattress, his body twitching. He felt full and stuffed with the seed, his pussy throbbing and gaping around the slowly softening flesh of his uncle. 

"Do you wish to come too?" His uncle's voice broke the silence softer now and the older lifted his weight slightly just enough to allow Aerion to breathe. He leaned down with his lips grazing the shell of younger boy's ear, "I can give your cute pussy a few pets." 

Aerion sniffled, wiping his nose on the pillowcase and feeling small and needy. He nodded like a cat who had gotten scuffed and taught a lesson. He moved and winced as the movement caused the semen to squelch inside him with a wet sloppy sound that made his face burn. He turned onto his side and curled his legs up slightly, his uncle Baelor's hand guided him and pushing his top leg back opening him up like a book.

He lay on his side with his bottom leg straight and his top leg bent as well as pulled up towards his chest exposing his ravished underbelly to the candlelight and to his uncle. The sight must have been pathetic—his pussy red and swollen gaping open while leaking a mix of clear slick and the thick milky seed with his thighs trembling with exhaustion. His Baelor reached down with his large hand covering the entire area and his palm resting on the mound and he used his thumb to find the swollen nub of Aerion's clit which was peeking out from the hood, red and angry. "Hurts?" His uncle asked as he rubbed the little nub with his thumb, teasing it like a cherry. 

He whined with this hips bucking forward to meet the hand and his head thrown back against the pillow, "No—right here, feels good there." 

His uncle used his other fingers to play with the lips of the pussy and dipping them into the mess they made after having sex, scooping the seed and smearing it back over the clit. He came with a whimper and slumped back on the bed. His uncle leaned forward to kiss the side of his lips, sighing as if smelling something pleasant and Aerion let him. 

"Are you really uncle?" He asked with something small in his voice. 

The older man paused, his mismatched eyes flickering to the violet ones. He whispered, "Of course I am." 

Aerion Targaryen believed him. 

The morning sun over the Reach was a blazing and unforgiving eye that offered no comfort, its golden rays cutting through the lingering mist of dawn to shine the flurry of the royal retinue preparing for departure. Servants scurried like ants across the dusty courtyard of the inn, saddling destriers and packing heavy trunks of clothing and armor and shouting hoarse commands that grated against Aerion's pounding skull. He sat rigidly on a heavy wooden bench near the mounting blocks with his injured leg stretched out before him swathed in fresh linen bandages that served as a convenient and unimpeachable excuse for his lack of participation. 

His body felt like it had been thoroughly trampled by heavy cavalry and like a chewed on dog left to rot in the gutter. Beneath the fine dark silk of his trousers, his pussy was a limb of tender hurt. Every minute shift of his weight and every breath he took sent a stinging chafe across his overstretched lips and bruised maiden walls. The soreness was so aching that he could barely sit properly and forced to hover awkwardly on one hip to alleviate the agonizing pressure on his used cunt. He could still feel the heaviness of his uncle's Baelor's fist grinding against his pussy and worse still was the lingering uncomfortable fullness sitting deep in his belly. Despite his shivering efforts to clean himself before the servants arrived, he could feel the seed seeping out of him with every movement, slicking his thighs and staining the fresh cotton of his smallclothes. And the box he had picked up before was gone when he had woken up.

He turned his gaze away from the courtyard dust and saw a few yards away, his brother Daeron sat slouched in the saddle of his palfrey with his face pale and clammy, swaying dangerously with the horse's movements. The heavy stench of sour wine radiated from his older brother even at a distance, his eyes bloodshot and half closed cocooned in a drunken stupor that it made his father fume beside Aerion. Beside Daeron sat Valarr, the Young Prince, the son of the man who had taken his maidenhead last night. His older cousin sat straight backed on his black courser and his posture was brittle, his mismatched eyes fixed on the grass with a somber and haunted emptiness. 

His cousin knew something was wrong, Aerion was certain of it and his cousin had chosen to simply put silk over his eyes. 

His father, Prince Maekar stood just a few paces away with his broad back turned to the courtyard as he conversed in low gruff tones with the master of horse. He stared at that broad back and for the first time in his life, he felt something in him long for the father that had held him since he had been put in a cradle. He slowly turned his head and leaned slightly toward the older man. 

"Father." Aerion whispered with his voice so fragile and so entirely devoid of its usual haughty melody that it sounded like a stranger speaking from his throat, "Father, I am afraid." 

His father paused mid sentence, his heavy shoulders stiffening as if he had been struck by a stray arrow and he turned slowly with his stern weather beaten face registering a surprise so deep it was almost comical. Aerion Targaryen was never afraid—he was the boy who threw cats down wells, who put a knife to his brother's thigh and the one who charged a giant hedge knight without a second thought. The silver haired boy would rather chew off his own foot and rather burn alive in wildfire than admit weakness to the father whose approval he both craved and resented. His father Maekar took a step closer with his dark purple eyes searching Aerion's pale and found only wide dilated pupils and trembling pink lips. The gruffness melted from his father's demeanor replaced by a sudden gentleness that made the younger boy want to cry. 

"Of what?" His father asked back as his tone dropped to a soft and breathless rumble, crouching slightly to bring his face level with his son's.

The urge to spill it all was a rising flood in his throat. He wanted to whisper that his uncle Baelor was dead, that the thing wearing his skin was a being that didn't blink, didn't breathe and had fucked him in the night. He opened his mouth with the confession on the tip of his tongue—then his violet eyes flickered past his father's stooped shoulder. 

There standing by the heavy oak doors of the inn bathed in the morning light was his uncle. The Crown Prince was fully armored for the road with the red and black tunic gleaming, looking every inch the hammer of the realm. He was deep in conversation with one of the older and white-cloaked Kingsguard, nodding and smiling that perfect and empty smile. But as his violet eyes gaze landed on him, his uncle's head turned to stare right back at him. 

Aerion went utterly still as if an invisible hand had wrapped around his throat. He swallowed the flood of words and forced the panic down into the bruised aching pit of his stomach. He closed his mouth with his pink lips pressing together in a tight and bloodless line. He looked back at his father's concerned expectant face and the lie slipped out smoothly as it often did. 

"Nothing, father." He murmured with his voice deadening, "Nothing at all."