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Lyonel was twelve and crying at the table. The capon sitting on his plate had done him no wrong but be cooked and presented. Yet he wept, for he knew the sudden, gnawing hunger in his heart could not be sated by mouth or hand or stomach. He stared at his food and felt only despair, desperate and starving yet unable to reach out and take a single bite for the wave of guilt racking his little frame.

It was later embarrassing to have been carted out of the room by his nursemaid, Yna. It was Lyonel’s first time dining with the rest of the adults at Storm’s End, and the supposed first step toward his own adolescence. He’d not known half the things said across the table, discussions of harvests and coin and marriage and the stirrings of rebellion. His supper before had been spent with his sisters in the nursery, and they mostly talked about their toys or how Maester Coryn fell asleep during lessons again that day. Tonight was to be his first step toward becoming a man, then a knight, and eventually his father’s heir. And here he was, weeping into Yna’s arms and not feeling the comfort it should have brought.

“Milord?” she asked. “Do you wish to eat?”

“It won’t help, I’m too hungry,” Lyonel hiccuped.

“Then you should eat,” she said, confused.

“I don’t—I can’t, I don’t know—”

He fainted in the hall, and that was when they knew: the bond had taken hold of him.

Dunk was ten and he was cold. It was sweltering in King’s Landing, some terrible heat wave striking the lands north of the Kingswood. The merchants who arrived in the city that morning had reported some terrible storm in the Stormlands, which everybody laughed about. He’d eyed Dunk, whose eyes sometimes were more distracting than his height, and looked a touch queasy as he added, “A great deal of children in the lands around Storm’s End have fallen ill. None know why.”

He was cold as he lay in the sun; he was sick as he ate; he was confused as Rafe told him to run. Run, her mouth said, but his ears were somewhere else, full of a mother’s weeping. His hands, covered in dirt, felt a father’s grip around them. In the bright darkness of noon in Flea Bottom, he felt a roaring roll of thunder beyond the walls of his bedchamber.

Rafe left him standing, alone and dazed in the middle of the street. A goldcloak turned the corner, and for a moment, he thought, family, but when they walloped him and left him staggering against a wall, just before he collapsed unconscious.

Dunk did not know why.

The whispers followed Lyonel incessantly after the incident at dinner. He’ll be getting his mark soon, they whispered. Strong as he feels his mate, mark’s like to be huge. Lyonel took to overdressing: gloves, scarves, long sleeves, anything to cover as much of his skin as was possible, even when the sun was hot and unrelenting. His mother attempted to explain to him that having a soulmate was nothing to hide or be ashamed of, but he didn’t want to even think about it, so he ignored her (and everyone else’s) attempts to talk about any of it.

In an effort to grow past childish afflictions like the one that had embarrassed him at dinner, he moved on to more mature pursuits. His overdressing made it difficult to ride a horse, swing a sword, or hunt, but he made do. He had grown very skilled at ignoring and concealing the way the bond affected him. He would eat normally at the table every night, and he would grin through the aches and pains, and when he couldn’t stifle it, he would laugh. He derided every sympathy, and found that the louder he laughed, the easier it was to drown out the utter misery that dwelt, evergreen, in his bones.

But in the quiet hours of the evening, when the fires were low, and he was alone, he stifled his sobs and held a hand over his belly and tried to force away the persistent pain inside him. But he would endure it, for eventually, his soulmate slept, and that was when he felt enough peace of mind to think.

Predictably, he used that time to think of his soulmate and all he’d learned from the bond. Of late, there had come sense-visions, too, but most of his findings had come from the bond’s reactions to Lyonel’s surroundings.

Whoever they were, they were wary of yellow cloaks, like the ones his family wore at court. Based on the sudden bouts of unexplained breathlessness Lyonel felt throughout the day, they were likely very active. They were sometimes cold. But they were also humble, and saw humor in simple things. Enjoyment and gratitude came easily to them. They put themselves in danger, sometimes, by the deep aching pains in his legs and the stinging scars that would appear on his body at times. He suspected they were brave, but Lyonel’s uncle always said that bravery was the same song as stupidity, but sung with more voices.

Before he died, Maester Coryn had once told Lyonel that a soul bond was dictated by the degree to which one feels lonely. The lonelier the person, the stronger the bond. Your septons might say the gods deemed it so that everyone had an equal dose of hope, that they would not be alone in this wide world.

Lyonel had thought it bullshit. He lived in a castle full of people, and spoke to someone new every day. His soulmate was likely just a miserable piece of work, too stupid to be anything but poor and hungry and afraid. The sense-visions brought scenes of cold stone, hot sunlight, wet stench, the crawl of fleas and lice, cries of echoing anguish. In those quiet, weeping hours when he should have been asleep, Lyonel felt fear on the edge of the persistent hunger, an animal fear that tasted like I don’t know if I’ll survive this.

Lonely or not, he did not want to meet his soulmate if all they offered was misery. They’d likely spent the year since the bond formed benefiting from Lyonel’s comfort, how he never went hungry, how he was surrounded by feelings of safety, contentment, curiosity, and beauty.

It wasn’t a fair deal.

So he fueled anger with his fear. He started training harder, working himself to the bone in the training yard, reading until his eyes strained, and riding until his legs went wobbly when he returned to his own feet. See how you like it, he would think, forcing his body to exhaustion each day and powering through the same hunger, the same blurts of fear and hope, the same bullshit every second.

He vowed that whenever his soulmark did appear, Lyonel would take a hot, burning blade to it, to burn the bond away for good.

“You have to get up,” Rafe said, shaking Dunk’s shoulder and scowling. After a while, she gave up and hit him, and hit him again when he didn’t hit back. His body was just too tired, so much that he couldn’t even cry about it.

“M’sorry,” Dunk whined, his voice coming out just as weak as he felt. “Dunno what’s wrong with me.”

“It’s that bloody soulmate you’ve got. Would that you could cut it off already.”

The thought hurt to even consider. Though he’d certainly be justified in his anger. The last few months had been awful. On a normal day, it was difficult to live in Flea Bottom, running from goldcloaks and scrounging for enough to sell so they could eat. Now he had a soulmate’s feelings and instincts muddying the waters of his mind.

“Can’t even do that ’til I have the mark,” Dunk reminded her, but she just hit him again, this time on the side of the head.

“I bet there’s places in the Free Cities where they can do it before you’re scarred by it forever.”

It’s not a scar, said a soft, vulnerable part of his heart. It’s a promise by the gods that you’re not alone.

The next day, Dunk was able to get up and move around. Perhaps his soulmate decided to give up their campaign of pointless torment. Wondering about that was less important than the nervous tension Dunk felt in the city, though. Left and right, men were being grabbed off the street and crowded toward the city barracks to be stuffed into Targaryen livery. What had been whispers of war a few months ago were now loud discussions in the streets, mostly among women trying to keep their men from conscription. Dunk worried, seeing as he was about the size of most men, though less than half their age, but that didn’t stop Rafe from dragging him around now he was better.

Though his energy had been returned to him, Dunk was often hit with waves of deep anxiety and discomfort. If he closed his eyes hard enough, he swore he could make out the steady sway of a horse beneath his legs, and heard the jangling clatter of armor around him. He felt the hard pit of dread with every mile gone behind.

“I think they’re coming to King’s Landing. To fight the Blackfyres,” Dunk said one night, when their fire was lit beneath the goat pen.

Rafe sneered at him and whacked the back of his head. “Don’t start dreaming, Dunk,” she said. “S’plenty of ships hauling out of the bay every day. If you’re lucky, that miserable sod will be killed in the battle and you’ll stop bein’ so useless all the time.”

Dunk didn’t bring it up again. Still, every day brought a fluttering sort of excitement in his belly. Maybe when the fighting was done, he could sneak onto the battlefield, behind the lines, and find his soulmate. Maybe he could stand with them, protect them, in the way they protected each other in Flea Bottom: with teeth, biting to the bone.

But which side would they be on: black or red?

When he felt his soulmate was only a day’s ride away, the city was besieged by Blackfyre forces. Flea Bottom was generally in the center of King’s Landing, but from what he heard, many of those on the outer edges, near the gates, had to contend with rogue volleys of arrows shot over the walls. The goldcloaks were even antsier that day, fidgety and nervous. A nervous man with a knife had the tendency to cut anything that moved too quickly for his eyes. So Dunk wanted to stay still, hiding in one place.

Rafe had other plans, running them ragged around the docks to get a firm price on passage from the city. The lowest price they found was from a small merchant alderman, two stags for two tickets out of the city, with the implication that they’d be working with the crew, doing whatever they wanted on the way to Pentos.

That open-endedness set Dunk on edge. Occasionally, in addition to the strong emotions and unhelpful instincts from his soulmate, there would be a flush of wisdom or insight in certain situations. This was one of those moments. It stank of the same kind of work done on the less glamorous end of the Street of Silk, the girls who said and meant ‘anything goes’without flinching. The girls whose eyes looked like the ones Dunk had seen in corpses. Rafe didn’t see it, the way the alderman looked at her, but Dunk saw it, and his soulmate was ringing alarm bells about it.

But Rafe wouldn’t listen even if he tried to explain his worries. If there was one way of getting Rafe riled up, it was to show hesitation or doubt at one of her ideas. If there was another way to incense her, it was to bring up his soulmate. So he just grimaced and kept quiet, nodding along to her increasingly wild ways to get money.

Still, a churn of deep disgust twisted his insides when she said, “I think maybe we wait a few days, let the battle run its course, and when they’ve all moved on, we go in and pick up what we can find. Teeth, weapons, leather without too many holes in it. Sell it, sail on the first ship next dawntide.”

It wasn’t anything they hadn’t done before, but this time, the unease was palpable, personal. Dunk remembered: they were coming, they would be here, they would—

“We might even see your stupid soulmate, sell its bones for—”

“Don’t talk like that,” Dunk snapped, hurt and frustration boiling up in his chest, stoked to a bright bonfire by the indignant offense that trickled down the bond. His hands balled into fists. “I hate it when you talk like that. Dunno what you’re trying to prove, when your mark’s been here half a year now ’n you haven’t burned it off, either.”

She looked taken aback. Dunk rarely pushed back at her, never flinched when she lashed out at him. He was big enough to take the hits, and had been doing for years and years. But Rafe had never been kind to him about his soulmate. At first, he thought it was a way to make him feel better, Rafe shaking a fist at the gods for allowing some stranger to hurt her friend. But her mean comments never stopped, and they never stopped hurting the soft parts of him that hoped and believed there’d be a happy ending to all this pain.

Something inside him, twisting and squirming and proud, had encouraged him to stand up to her, to defend that little squishy bit she’d long pummeled without hesitation.

Her expression turned thunderous. “You said you’d never bring that up! You swore it by blood!”

“I wouldn’t take anyone else talking to me like that!” he hollered back, lightheaded from the confrontation already. “You won’t just shut your mouth when it’s good for you!”

They scrapped together just like that, rolling and hitting each other in the little place they’d carved for themselves beneath the goat pen. Dunk suddenly went rigid and pale, eyes wide and unseeing, breaths coming in sharp gasps.

“Battle’s starting,” he whispered, a moment before Rafe knocked his head against the floor.

Lyonel barely felt the connection go numb between him and his soulmate. For hours, he’d been nauseous with dread, senses abuzz. This was his first battle as a newly made knight. He rode in his cousin’s flank as if he belonged there, but he didn’t belong there. He was fine enough in the training ring, but with fifteen summers in him, he was nowhere near the level of the others rallied beneath his father’s banner.

The men seemed to know it, but Lyonel just laughed through his fear as he always had.

Thankfully, his helmet didn’t show his frightened, wide-eyed expression, and hid how his teeth chattered behind the faceplate. He could hear his own breathing, loud and unsteady and wheezing as he waited for the call to charge. On the other hill were their opponents, waiting with lancers like himself and sharp-eyed archers and a truly absurd amount of footmen for a rebellion. Were any of them as scared as he was? Gods, his head throbbed, and his body ached, but he’d slept poorly the entire way here.

Lyonel adjusted his grip on the reins and swallowed down another wave of bile that threatened to come up with his meager morning rations. The ever-present hunger had done him some good, for once, and had kept his appetite light.

Then came the call to charge, a hundred howling horns. His heart was in his throat, pounding harder as the first rank broke free at a wild gallop. Then went the second, and Lyonel with them. Seventy paces ahead, the impact landed on the first rank in a scream of shields, lances, swords, arrows, men, horses, and hatred. All flew together, and some flew into the air when they could not occupy the same space.

Arms were lopped from their shoulders, heads removed from their necks, insides became outsides, and more blood was shed than should be across the grass. He weaved his way through the lines, a steadier rider than his peers, but he struck wildly at any man in red who dared come too close to him and his mount. He found it more useful to charge directly on the men in front of him, the mass of his horse proving an effective battering ram.

The screams of the men he trampled followed him as he rode on.

Then, halfway through catching his breath, a stuttering sort of confusion gripped him, his soulmate’s confusion. It amplified through himself into full-blown disorientation, and the world around him suddenly spun. “No, no!” he moaned, blinking his eyes hard to clear his vision of the sudden fog.

But it wasn’t fog—the fields were burning in some places, the men were burning, horses were burning. It was smoke, rancid and black, rising tall as Storm’s End in just minutes. Lyonel may not have known where the rest of the cavalry had gone, but he knew the best place to be was away from the hungry blaze. It came close, a couple of times, so close he could feel it licking against his skin, through the armor, through his clothes.

On reflex, he laughed at the sharp pain, striking another man who came too near. He went down, hollering for his mother, and Lyonel choked back another wave of revulsion at the waking nightmare of war. Was that man in red, or was he just covered in blood? Keep laughing, keep laughing.

Through the smoke and chaos, he heard a horn, then another, and another, until there were hundreds bleating as one to the poison sky. It was not the sound of the stormlords’ charge. The skin on the back of his neck prickled, and what hair that wasn’t matted down with blood and sweat stood on end. He rode out further to see the pressing murmuration of brown and black bearing down on the standing enemies. At the front was a man in gleaming onyx armor—the crown prince himself.

Lyonel could only watch as he and the Dornish host slammed into the Blackfyre flank, sweeping them up like a storm surge swept away whole towns in a single night. It was an awful, horrible thing, and he couldn’t feel a shred of pride or spirit of victory as he saw the carnage left behind.

Then the sky darkened for another reason.

Hundreds of arrows from another hill shot longways over Lyonel’s head, into the remaining thicket of rebels. Some of them reached just a few feet shy of Lyonel and his mount. The cry of anguish reached him some seconds later, chilling and terrible.

A man croaked near his leg, and he only looked down in time to see him unclip the back half of Lyonel’s greaves before he was sinking a long dagger through the back. He screamed, the laugh failing in his throat, and he lashed out recklessly with his longsword. Half the man’s head went flying. But the dagger was still there, sunk deep and grinding against his bones. It burned just like the wildfire, which still encroached on his left side.

Lyonel made a choice, forgetting the dagger and spurring his horse onward, though each galloping step twisted the wicked thing a little deeper into his flesh. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of where he was going. His armor was a dead giveaway to their enemies which banner he fought for, the heavy steel antlers bobbling his head as blood gushed behind him and mixed with everyone else’s.

And he was all alone.

Then came an odd sort of peace. Not a true peace, like relaxing in a beam of sunlight, but one that brought an unbreakable focus, sorting everything around him with an awareness he’d never felt before. Suddenly, every threat was triaged and ranked by priority; every injury was either critical or negligible. He found signs that directed him to safer ground, and pointed his horse there, reaching down to drag the dagger from his leg with a cry. He set his jaw against any mad laughter as he secured his greaves. The cool steel was a balm to the hot, gushing pain in his calf.

The focus lasted only long enough for him to ride to the line assembling a hundred yards away. The commander looked at the antlers on his helm and let out a sigh of relief. “Ser Lyonel, we thought you lost.”

“Don’t waste breath on sentiment, call the charge!” he snapped, sheathing his sword and accepting a shield and lance from a pale-faced squire. He lowered his head, grasping tight to that calm focus.

When the horns called, he descended, laughing.

Dunk's hands shook as he limped along after Rafe toward the smoking battlefield. They had waited just a day after the victory had been assured, the combatants gone, and all the bigger men had done their looting in the field. Now, they were no better than the crows.

Hastily tied cloths over their face kept the worst of the smoke, flies, and smell out of their mouths. Dunk split off from Rafe at the mouth of the worst of the horror. It took a few minutes just to make himself move.

The last two days, he’d felt numb and detached, slower than usual and sluggish in everything he did. He hardly remembered the places he’d been, or when he’d eaten last, or what Rafe had told him ten minutes prior. She seemed a little guilty over hitting him so hard he went unconscious, but did not apologize for anything else.

Time felt sharp and slow at once, when before it’d marched on steady as anything. His mouth felt dry, unbearably so. He took a canteen off a dead man and coughed violently to find it not full of water, but some kind of rancid, burning spirit. Dead man’s courage, he named it, throwing the skin far from him.

There were still a few other scavengers about, but he avoided them and kept to himself, looking for—what was he looking for again?

Teeth, weapons, leather without too many holes in it.

He avoided the corpses. He found a dagger somewhere halfway up a hill, and reacted strangely. Just the sight, a blade stained with blood, made him drop to his knees and vomit everywhere. He wheezed and continued heaving so long as he could see it, so he closed his eyes, picked it up, and cast it far away.

He focused on what he knew. He knew his soulmate had been at the Redgrass and survived. Some minutes after Rafe had knocked him out, he’d been roused by an immense pain in his calf. He’d clutched at it in horror, screaming loud enough that the goats started bleating in panic. Rafe had threatened to clout him again, but he’d scrambled back into the corner, pawing at the place where there should be a knife, a dagger, a—

“Oh,” Dunk breathed. He looked out toward where he’d thrown the dagger, but couldn’t bring himself to walk toward it. The one thing he knew had touched his soulmate, and he’d thrown it away the first chance he got. He burned with a distant sort of ache and guilt, but every emotion felt far away, his own but removed.

When he concentrated, he could feel nothing from his soulmate besides the listing haze.

Lyonel had been dozing in and out of a poppied slumber since the battle was won. The Baratheon party had done what it had come to do, and did not stick around in King’s Landing to further congratulate themselves on the victory, so they were instead hastening back to Storm’s End, some three days into the journey. Lyonel had lost his horse somewhere in the battle and hadn’t seen her since, so he wrote his mount off as another casualty among the many left in the mud. He was vaguely aware of his uncle being proud of him, patting his shoulder and calling him brave before leaping off the cart and leading the march south.

Same song as stupidity.

Mid-afternoon, three days after the battle, Lyonel gasped, screamed, clawed at his chest and the fire licking his calf. “No, no, no—!” he moaned, halfway through ripping away the bandages before the attending maester stilled him, holding his wrists immobile with surprising strength. The thick silver links in his chain swayed above him, and in his mind’s eye, he saw a grimy palm, full of coins just the same color. A sneer. Blood. A girl, bloody-smiled, no, that grin was in her neck—

“My lord, you must calm!”

“My—my leg, it’s—”

“You’ll reopen the wound if you thrash so.”

He submitted to more milk of the poppy, just a half-sip, and the effect worked quickly enough that he could see through the cloud of pain and recognize reason again. It was still difficult to breathe, the pain immeasurable in his chest. The drug kept him from recognizing whether the pain belonged to him or his soulmate, and when the maester unwound the bandages around his calf, it looked no worse than it’d been when they put it on. One wound.

Lyonel stared at it, uncomprehending. He could still feel the deep, aching stab there, almost right in the same place as his wound from battle. He reached to prod at it, but the maester stopped him, making a face at his unwashed hands. But now Lyonel was concentrating on it, he could feel the divergent sensations.

He’d seen what happened to horses in the stable when they kicked or flinched when getting branded. The marks were doubled, a close shadow of itself. This felt like that. Close enough to still make out the pain, but when he focused, there were two images to parse. Only one belonged to him, and the other belonged to his soulmate. Still one wound, just two scars.

This was two wounds, one scar.

Dunk understood the numbness coming from his soulmate, because it harmonized with his own. Rafe’s loss had torn something open in him, a wound much like the one on his leg, and neither had any hope of closing anytime soon.

The old hedge knight he’d been following hadn’t seemed to notice him yet. It’d been three days since they left King’s Landing. The pain distracted him from the sadness and anger burning holes in his heart. But he was flagging, the effort needed to go on growing greater and greater with every step.

He’s got three horses. Three! Could he spare not even one? he thought, but… the thought didn’t sound quite like himself. The voice was all wrong, lower, with a different accent than his own.

As much as it was a good point, Dunk had to accept that a man’s horses were his business, and no orphan should lay claim to one just because he was following after him like a pup. Dunk didn’t even know if he was chasing him, or something further on, something south, someone warm and a little mean and very, very tired.

He collapsed the morning of the fourth day. It took one unsure foot to trip, and he went sprawling on his back, facing the sky. There came a desperate, bubbling feeling in his chest made of pure worry. It was unfettered by the usual caution he felt from his soulmate. There was a light floatiness to his body, like it was floating away, away—

Stand, damn you! Shout for him! Shout for help!

“Nobody helps,” Dunk whimpered, his voice naught but a gasping little breath past his lips. “Nobody’s ever helped.”

Try, please.

“Help,” he whined, loud as he could.

Get up first. Nobody helps the pathetic, or hears the small. Be tall.

It incensed him to hear such an opinion in his own head. Dunk groaned and rolled to the side first, then got to his feet.

Then he noticed the hedge knight standing in the road.

The horses were lashed to a tree some distance away, watching their master boredly. Dunk swayed, adjusting so that he put weight on his right foot. He blinked a few times and said, “please help me.”

Several seconds passed before the old man’s face folded a little from its gruff expression into something a little softer, full of concern. Dunk still held his breath, waiting for a rejection, something—

“Alright, lad. There’s a stream this way. We’ll get you sorted. Y’ever been a squire?”

When Lyonel awoke next, he was in his bed at Storm’s End. For one disorienting minute, he wondered if all of it—the battle, the wound, the return—was simply a wretched dream. He felt a lingering sort of numbness in his chest and head, stuffy like a hot, overcast day, and his leg still hurt like a bitch. He squirmed to see if movement would rid him of it.

It did not. In fact, it sent arrows of agony through his leg to his foot, his arms, his skull. He groaned behind his teeth, writhing and balling his hands into fists in the coverlet he lay atop.

“Easy, Lyonel,” came a deep, sonorous voice to his right. He turned his head—

Gold cloak, goldcloak, sword at the hip, dangerous, killed Rafe—

Gasping, he scrambled back in his bed until he hit the bedpost, breathing hard through the fear and hurt drowning him. He shook his head, babbling nonsense in terror and casting his eyes about, a knife, where’s a knife—

“Lyonel!”

That wasn’t a goldcloak. That was his father. He’d stood from his chair, then thought better of it, making himself a smaller threat. Baratheons were large men, but his father had never been imposing enough for his son to react like that.

“Fuck,” Lyonel panted, then groaned tightly, reaching for his leg and tilting onto his side so he wouldn’t fall out of bed. He struggled to get back into place, but it was slow-going. The lingering fear and pain made it difficult to do much else than grit his teeth and breathe.

“Easy,” his father repeated, putting a hand on the bed and leaning forward. “You’re home.”

Lyonel nodded, shutting his eyes against the tears that threatened. He’d not felt such a pain in—well, in several months, really, since his soulmate had hurt himself terribly in the night and he’d had to grin and laugh through the pain ripping apart his hips and thighs. He reached for that strength of will now, forcing the pain off his face and saying, “How long have I been back?”

“You’ve been back two days, and it’s been ten since the battle. The maesters had you drugged to the seven hells when you returned with Lorin. You were attacking your wounds like a mangy dog every time you were lucid. The maesters should be up soon.”

With that, his father departed, leaving Lyonel’s mind spinning. The drugs and skipped time made a mess of his thoughts. His soulmate had been hurt, something awful had happened while they were returning south, it was nothing to do with the battle, had he been there? Gods, it felt—he felt—

A maester came in, as promised, along with a servant who brought a thin stew for him to eat, after so long asleep. He submitted to an examination and denied any further milk of the poppy, the scent of it turning his stomach and nearly putting him off his appetite, had he not been starving.

After a few minutes, the maester gave a soft exclamation. “My lord, look, here, on your ankle! How wonderful!”

Dread curled in his stomach the moment he saw the mark.

It was small, just a few inches wide, and it flickered, cloud-like, at the edges. When the maester’s hand drifted toward it, the mark moved, shooting up his leg and beneath his tunic where the maester could no longer see it. But Lyonel could feelit, curled like a small animal somewhere near his belly. His first urge was to cover it with his arm, to protect it. His second was to find a hot knife and burn it off.

The maester realized his blunder when the mark had gone, ears reddening as he stood. “My apologies, my lord, I don’t know what came over me. None but your soulmate should have any care for your mark, after all.”

“The whole bloody keep’s had care for it since I was twelve,” Lyonel snapped. “Begone with you.”

“Of course, my lord. I shall leave you some bandages—”

“OUT.”

The slam of the door reverberated through the room sharply, but Lyonel’s ears were already ringing. Finally alone, he warred with himself, hands twitching to pull up the edge of his shirt to see the mark. He’d only caught the barest glimpse of it, and it’d looked like a small greenish blur, easily mistaken for a bruise.

He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to meet his soulmate. He didn’t want a soulmate. The very thought of it twisted his stomach.

But he had the mark now, and the mark was the one thing that could be mutilated to sever the bond between souls. He’d thought about it nearly every day since he understood what was happening, but now he was back home, with a few knives of his own and a fire in his hearth and even the maester’s supplies waiting for him, he couldn’t fathom going through with it. He’d come out of the battle with enough scars. Why make one more?

The little knot of warmth hiding against his belly shivered somewhat before settling. Lyonel could not feel the thrumming connection for once, all of it traded in for this living ink upon his skin.

The bond, emotions, the feelings—those were easy enough to hide. The pain and the instincts and reflexes could be suppressed. The mark could go anywhere it wanted on his skin, which was why Lyonel had not allowed himself to be seen undressed in any manner for years. But that fucking maester was likely already gossiping to the rest of the castle, and they’d all know about it by day’s end.

Sorrow built up in his chest like a great wave. He curled as much as his injured leg would allow and stifled a few panicked sobs in his pillow, and spent the rest of the day shoving away the outstretched concern from the little ember of warmth ingrained in his skin.

Years passed. Some days were better than others, namely the days when Dunk had something to keep his mind off the dull spot in his emotions: scrubbing rust from mail, scraping the muck out of the horses’ shoes, training days. Ser Arlan was alright company, though not a very good teacher, but Dunk got by with the faint bit of instinct that came through the bond now and again. It made sense—his soulmate had fought at the Redgrass, so he must have had some measure of arms training.

The mark remained rather blurred when he had the chance to see it. The first time he saw it, just a fortnight or so after losing Rafe, he’d been overjoyed, but then it had zoomed across his skin and hidden itself on the back of his head. Most of the time, it stayed there, hiding where he couldn’t see it.

He asked Ser Arlan about it once, just after they decided to make their way to Oldtown. “Ser, is it odd that my mark doesn’t like me seeing it?”

“How’d you know you’ve got one?” he snarked back. “Yer dirty enough, s’hard to believe you’re not made of mud entirely.”

Dunk blushed, looking down at the state of his hands. “I’ve seen it, ser. Only time it doesn’t move away is when they’re sleeping.”

“Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall,” Ser Arlan said, chuckling to himself and riding on ahead, so he wouldn’t have to answer any more questions.

But Dunk was on a horse, too, and a familiar burning curiosity bubbled up in his chest, along with indignation at being dismissed. He rode up beside Sweetfoot. “Ser, really—does it mean there’s something wrong with them?”

“It means they likely don’t want to see you,” he said, voice sharpening.

“But that’s—”

“You want to ask the maesters in Oldtown, see what they think? Or do you want them to just burn it offa ye?”

The thought made him feel cold with fear and sadness. “No, ser,” he said, hurt swelling in his voice. “I just thought—”

“Don’t you start doing that, now. We’re better off without you thinkin’.”

“…yes, ser.”

And then Arlan was dead, and Dunk sort of forgot that conversation.

“Fuck, this is bad,” Lyonel panted, wincing down the road at the dust still climbing into the air. “Very bad.” His horse had long disappeared into the dust, along with his sword, his pack, his waterskin, and his gloves. Lyonel grunted as the pain in his sprained ankle reminded him of its existence. “Fuck,” he whined, limping off the road to lean against an elm. He breathed through the wave of dizzying nausea and considered the merits of crying for help, or simply crying.

He’d sent the caravan on ahead in a fit of melancholy. He’d woken that morning to a deep, penetrating sadness in his heart that wiped out all of his desire to get up and finish the journey to Ashford. He’d felt a similar way once before, years ago, and even now, echoes of it returned whenever he heard words like strafe and safe and waif. His mind did a double take at those words, grief in their mishearing. But now, the word that had done it was starling. So he’d sent the group ahead until he could get himself together, and once they were out of earshot down the road, he wept for close to an hour, tucked out of the rain with only his horse for company, never so alone as now.

He’d pissed the horse off, somehow, which meant that less than five minutes after finally setting out after the rest of his caravan, he’d been thrown from her back and onto the road, watching her run off in the opposite direction as thunder rumbled overhead.

“Fuck,” he repeated when he heard the gallop of many hooves approaching from the direction his horse had gone. With his luck today, it’d be a bandit come to kill him. His ransom money was with a different horse, and oh, did he feel stupid right now.

Thick as a castle—

The foreign thought did not finish in his head, because there was suddenly a giant riding down the road, with four horses stretched across the entire lane. Lyonel tried hobbling toward the trees to hide, but the sharp pain in his ankle had him laughing breathlessly on reflex. His thigh shook with pain, and his head swam like he’d had a bit too much to drink.

“Is this, er, milord, is this your horse?” the giant called. Lyonel took deep breaths, the pain still forcing laughter up his throat (because if not laughter, then breakfast), and tried to look remotely normal as he turned around.

“Ah. Yes,” Lyonel said, recognizing his mare. “Thank you for—” The moment he took a step forward, his knee buckled and he collapsed in a heap by the side of the road, retching at the pain in his ankle.

“Gods! Are you—hrrk—”

When Lyonel looked up through his streaming eyes, the man was trying to wipe off the bit of vomit that had gotten on one of his horses. He coughed, covering his mouth before he could retch again.

“Am I that repulsive?” Lyonel said, arms shaking as he held himself up.

And then it started to rain.

The man dismounted and got them off the road and under the cover of the trees. The horses followed, though the one that had been vomited on was clearly unhappy to go along. He slung an arm around Lyonel’s back to keep him upright and off of his injured ankle, which he appreciated until he caught a whiff of the man that almost sent him heaving once more.

“Here’s good,” he said, helping Lyonel sit down on a flat area of the ground near the base of a tree.

The trees here were thick, and sheltered them from most of the rain, but a few errant drops still got through. He flinched when one of them hit his hand, which was still bare, since his gloves were tucked into his horse’s saddlebags. While the man’s back was turned, he hid them quickly, shy about the whole ordeal.

That feeling worsened when he knelt down in front of him and started undoing the buckles on his boot. “Might want to take your hose off, too, the cold air will help with the swelling.”

“I—are you certain?” Lyonel said, breath hitching. The man was achingly gentle, but Lyonel still hissed when he took off his boot. “Isn’t there a-a stream or something I can—”

“Probably not. You’ll only end up catching your death, sitting in rivers and streams.”

“I’m sturdier than I—ow, fuck!” The man ripped open his hose at the seams to roll the end of it up his calf. “What the fuck!”

His foot was still pale, but the large swollen lump around his ankle was a light pink. The man gently set his ankle down on some moss, his hands warm as sunshine and rough with labor. “You didn’t want me to take them off, so what do you want me to do?”

Lyonel grabbed his bare forearm, speaking through gritted teeth. “Do less!”

“You’re such a whiner, Lyonel,” Dunk said, shaking his head.

“I am not!” Lyonel squawked.

He watched as Dunk stood up, clicking his tongue at the horses to draw them nearer. He unfurled a tarp from the one he’d vomited on, and removed each of their saddles before setting up a little camp. Lyonel watched with fascination, though he was still pissed at being ignored. Even his horse didn’t seem overly concerned with him.

“Are you headed to Ashford too, Dunk?” he asked, just for a break in the quiet. It wasn’t tense or awkward; it was peaceful, really, but Dunk was still a stranger, for all he felt like he wasn’t.

“Aye, I suppose,” he said, a bit of gruffness in his tone. “It was that or Lannisport. Maybe.”

“So you mean to compete in the tourney?”

“Why not? I’m—well, I’m a knight.”

A pang of guilt-shame-lie hit Lyonel like a rogue arrow. He blinked, wondering exactly where that had come from. He saw the tension in Dunk’s shoulders, though, and how he avoided his gaze as he picked up firewood in the area. Lyonel had been a knight since he was fifteen, and had been immediately sent off to war. What did he care that a man called himself a knight and had doubts about it? Dunk had immediately stopped to help him, delaying his own travels on the road in the process. That was a nobler thing than most of the accomplishments of the knights he knew.

“You’ve certainly the horses for it,” he commented.

“They belonged to my ser, when I squired for him.”

“My condolences,” Lyonel said, only after speaking realizing that Dunk hadn’t said why his ser was gone. But Dunk did not correct him, only nodding. “Tis a difficult thing. Was it recent?”

Dunk sighed, dropping his pile of sticks in a little pile nearby. “This morning, actually. We were going up to Ashford together. And he, er, knighted me as he was passing.”

Again, the pang from before. Lyonel decided that he’d only call him on the lie if he did it a third time, and then thought: why am I feeling his guilt?

“Well, I’m glad you found me,” he said, words coming slowly, like he had to taste each one to verify where it was coming from.

Dunk looked over his shoulder at him from where he was building up the small fire. His eyes gleamed a perfect sky blue that made Lyonel’s heart pound. “I’m glad I did, too,” he said, before turning back around. Lyonel watched as a small smudged shape moved along Dunk’s nape from beneath his scalp. At first, Lyonel had no clue what he was seeing, and nearly thought it a gigantic louse, but when it got clear, his breath hitched.

Soul mark.

It was fairly taboo to show it to anyone but one’s soulmate, but Lyonel couldn’t avert his eyes from it for the world, watching it creep slowly beneath the stretched edge of Dunk’s collar. A prickling warmth from his chest told Lyonel his own mark was on the move, and he flinched a little when he tried to cup his hand over it to stop it. It jostled his ankle, making him groan and grab his leg to try and stabilize it.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Dunk said, suddenly in his space and taking over, immobilizing his thrashing with a firm grip on his calf. “Should’ve taken care’a you first, ‘fore I did the shelter and the fire.”

“What?” Lyonel wheezed.

“That’s the order of things when you’re in this area. You take care of any injuries, then set your shelter, fire, and water, then you tend your horses and find food. You’re a knight, haven’t you ever been outside before?” He pulled two straight sticks from the pile and lashed them to Lyonel’s lower leg with a few strips of linen, tying the knots over the sticks so as not to irritate his skin. The whole thing was done in a matter of minutes, his hands working with the speed and confidence of an expert. It rather made his mouth run dry.

“I… other people usually take care of that sort of. Stuff.”

“So you are a noble lord, thought so,” Dunk chuckled. Lyonel caught him making a flinching little face at himself. Confusion, Lyonel guessed. You’re not alone in that.

“When we get to Ashford, I will repay this kindness, ser. Don’t let it be said a Baratheon is an ill host.”

“I shouldn’t dream of it, Lyonel,” Dunk chuckled, moving back toward the supplies.

Clarity hit like a cold raindrop, in little plashes of truth, one after another. Dunk had been using his name since they got to the clearing. And he’d not given Lyonel his own, either. He’d simply… known it. He looked at the horses. Sweetfoot, Chestnut, Thunder. And the sword leaning on Sweetfoot’s saddle, that belonged to—Ser Arlan. No wonder hearing the word starling had set him off that morning.

“Oh,” Lyonel said softly, blinking owlishly at Dunk, who had turned back to start the fire once he made sure Lyonel’s ankle was secure. He’d not reacted to him giving his family name, which—

“What?” Dunk said, striking the flint and catching sparks on the first try. His competence and confidence set another fire, this time in the low parts of Lyonel’s belly. The glowing ember of warmth from the soulmark had migrated there, too, the whole thing coalescing into a great and beautiful flame.

Lyonel gawked at him, amazed he hadn’t realized what he had yet.

A scrap of memory, not his own. An old man’s voice, a beloved old man’s voice, Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall.

He’d lost his ser that morning, and Lyonel had felt that grief and loss and loneliness, so terribly that he sent everyone else away so he could—so he could wait, that was it, not so he could get himself together in private, but because he was waiting, and for—

Oh, gods.

The fire was serviceably warm, and there was more than enough dry wood around to feed it through the night if need be. Dunk brushed his hands off on his lap and stood, twisting his neck a little to get a kink out of it. He’d felt his soulmark slip across it earlier, slinking around like it thought itself sneaky, but it’d just dashed back up into his scalp, resting just behind his ear and curling tight and warm, like a little kitten. He reached up and scratched over it, a little habit of comfort he allowed himself sometimes. Skittish today, are we?

Lyonel made a little noise from the tree, a bit strangled. Dunk looked over quickly and assessed he wasn’t in any further pain, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable in the least. “Alright?” Dunk said, heading for the saddlebags.

“Yeah,” said Lyonel, a little tightly. He supposed that was alright, though. He was in pain. But he did seem the nervous sort, which felt at odds with what Dunk had heard about Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm. He’d expected loud, bellowing bravado, and found only wide-eyed, skittish nerves, a man who hid his hands beneath his tunic and shied from taking off his hose around another man.

He sported a rather comely blush across his cheeks that Dunk found difficult to look away from. Lyonel cleared his throat, casting about for something to talk about.

“So you’ve been in no tourneys before?” Lyonel said. Hide-conceal-embarrassed, Dunk felt pulsing in his chest. A strange feeling, but he wondered if it were the fault of his earlier guilt over lying about his knighthood.

“Er, no. We went by a few, but never entered them. Are you going to join the lists?” Dunk grabbed a length of hard salt beef and returned to the fire, using his knife to cut it into pieces. He also brought out a waterskin, half-full from the day.

“Well, not anymore,” Lyonel chuckled, gesturing to his foot. “I’ve been looking for excuses, though.”

That was surprising. “I thought you were a talented combatant.”

“Oh, I am,” Lyonel shrugged. “I’ve always been quite good at warsport.” He looked into the flames, just loosely holding onto his food, but his mind was hundreds of miles away. “It’s not a thing man should be good at.”

“Jousting?”

“Killing each other. Even for fun. Especially for fun.” Lyonel took a large bite out of his beef, then made a face. “Gods, what is this?”

“You might want to take smaller bites than that,” Dunk said, laughing uneasily. When silence fell again, he ventured, “Have you been to war, then?”

“I was at the Redgrass.”

“You—what? But you’re so young!” Dunk exclaimed.

“I was fifteen, no older,” he sighed, but took a smaller bite as directed. “Horrible day. Awful day. The scar on my leg, that’s from then.” He swallowed roughly, looking down at his hands. “If it weren’t—if it weren’t for my soulmate, I might be dead.”

Something about hearing those words spun up a flare of jealousy in Dunk’s head, but it was settled just as quickly. He asked, “Were they there, too?”

“No, I think he was nearby, though. Near enough that I could feel him, when I needed to. I… early in the battle, I was stabbed in the leg. When the fog cleared, when the fighting stopped, all I could think of how bloody sad I was that I’d hurt him. Through the bond. And he’d given me bravery and focus and a level head. That guilt’s followed me for, what’s it been, twelve years?”

Dunk spared a thought to wonder why Lyonel saw fit to tell him, a perfect stranger, about such things. But it was just a thought. He handed him another hunk of beef. “You didn’t stab yourself with that dagger.”

Lyonel’s hand twitched as he took it from him, blinking quickly before nodding. “You’re right,” he breathed, laughing a little, but the corners of his eyes creased falsely, his laugh full of pain none could really hear or see. But Dunk saw it. Dunk heard it.

“I put my soulmate through a lot, too,” Dunk said, chewing on his words slowly and carefully. “I was… I grew up in Flea Bottom. It was miserable. I was hungry all the time. Nearly starved most winters, got attacked by goldcloaks who were just as starved as we were. Was sick, was cold, couldn’t do anything about it. I tried… I tried making up for it, by looking at pretty things, listening to songs, but I knew I’d never make up for what I put them through, just starving.”

Lyonel drew a shaky breath, biting rather aggressively into his food. He just breathed carefully for a while. “They say the bond is made stronger by one’s loneliness. It took me a long time to forgive my soulmate for his pain and misery. I can only hope he can forgive me mine. And the pointless discomfort I put him through as a child, and for making him throw up on his horse because I was stupid and got thrown off my horse.”

Dunk went very, very still. The little flicker of warmth that normally rested just behind his ear, soft and warm as a kitten, drifted down his neck to his shoulder, then down his arm to his hand, where it curled in his palm. It felt like holding a sun-baked stone.

He uncurled his hand and angled it to the light. It showed the fire before him, small but welcoming, tentatively fighting against the errant raindrops that slipped through the canopy.

Lyonel’s breath hitched. “And I—I spent so long avoiding everything to do with him, and for that I am sorry.”

“Why?” Dunk croaked, still staring at the fire he held in his hand.

“Because I was afraid. When I’m afraid, I laugh, so nobody looks too close and sees it for a lie. And I’ve been so afraid for so long, all people hear and expect is the laughter, and all I expect is that fear.”

Dunk reached up to turn Lyonel’s face from the fire, making them look at each other, and really see each other for the first time. “I know you were afraid, Lyonel,” he said, adjusting his hold on him so he was cupping his jaw, thumbing at the beard there with idle fascination. “And lonely.”

Lyonel squeezed his eyes shut and reached a shaking hand up to grab Dunk’s wrist. “I’m sorry.”

Because it seemed like the only right thing to do, Dunk leaned in and kissed his forehead, a gentle thing, but searingly warm, warm as their soulmarks, warm as those rare moments when Lyonel had felt perfectly happy, and Dunk was allowed to feel it, too. Lyonel made a soft noise when he pulled away from the kiss, hand tightening on his wrist. A soft sort of despair, a little fear, bloomed like a patch of daisies between them. Dunk shushed him and brought him in for a real kiss.

This one put the first to utter shame, the connection sliding into place like the last tumbler in a lock, leaving everything wide-open between them. Desperation, need, desire, all these things swept away the sadness and anxiety of before. Even the shared pain in Lyonel’s ankle was lesser, fading away with the rush of extreme happiness. They both started smiling, breaking the kiss in the only way they’d accept.

“You taste like salt beef,” Lyonel chuckled.

“Yeah, well, likewise, milord.”

“How dare you call me that. Impertinent soulmate.”

Dunk laughed, and so did Lyonel—a real laugh, free of fear and pain. It was the loveliest thing he’d ever heard.

The night was warmer for the fire, for their laughter, and when dawn arrived, they rode out to Ashford. It was a slow road, but they were together. Little else mattered.