Archive of Our Own

It started with a witch.

(It actually starts with supper, but that’s too long a story, and besides, you know most of it already: the tourney, the tent, the trial, the death, the departure, the denial. Tender hearts and knightly ideals, all limping away from Ashford Meadow.)

Ser Duncan the Tall had somehow lost his squire. To be perfectly fair, he had also managed to lose himself. The market district of Oldtown was no place for a man without a guide. It was cramped and labyrinthine in some places, but not so bad as Flea Bottom or even the shadow city beyond Sunspear. Oldtown at least smelled much more pleasant than both. (Not that it smelled pleasant in any city, just more pleasant comparatively.)

They had been in the city to see the Citadel and to visit Egg’s brother, Prince Aemon, who was studying there. He was an alright lad, curious and bookish but not rude or off-putting in the way their older brothers were. Dunk couldn’t help but think on how at least only half of Prince Maekar’s sons turned out rotten.

Still, even Egg could not distract Aemon from his studies forever, so they were preparing to head back into greater Westeros. They were nearly finished shopping for supplies when Egg disappeared without a trace between one lane of shop stalls and the next.

The natural next step was to panic—not an uncommon thing for Ser Duncan the Tall. He’d lost a prince of the realm. This, too, was not uncommon, and likely would continue to be a familiar occurrence. He tended to show up after a few minutes of Dunk calling his name, but now it’d been close to an hour of wandering the stalls in a panic. Egg didn’t seem to understand Dunk’s anxiety over his sneaking off either, which didn’t help matters much. Dunk imagined he could feel the cold burn of Prince Maekar’s gaze piercing him even here in Dorne.

After a half-dozen increasingly frantic conversations with clueless shopkeepers and panicked pacing through the streets, he started to feel faint with worry. No, this was worse than worry; this was fear. He was scared, he was—

You know, it’s best not to agonize.

Those words echoed across months and months and miles and miles, striking him like a wave of cool water. That night had been warm, almost as warm as this worrisome afternoon. It was no surprise that Dunk’s mind returned to that memory as often as it did when the nights were cold and lonely and a little bit miserable. For one spectacularly beautiful night, everyone had been alive, and there had been dancing, drinking, enough to eat, and the attention of a very handsome knight who seemed just as curious about Dunk as Dunk about with him.

Sure. Curious was the word.

Their arrival in Oldtown had marked a year and a half since Ashford, and less than six months since they left Storm’s End for Dorne. Egg had been rather bereft of any peers his age, and Dunk was bereft of Lord Baratheon’s charismatic nature. The few months they’d spent there had been challenging and rewarding in different ways.

Most terribly, Dunk had spent every waking moment thinking about kissing Lyonel.

But he hadn’t, because he’d seen no indication that his feelings were even reciprocated. After all, they’d only known each other briefly in Ashford, and though they’d shared in something special and important with the Trial of Seven, Dunk hadn’t expected an important man like him to even remember someone like Dunk, let alone carry a torch like he’d been doing for over a year. But Lyonel had welcomed them as old friends, honored guests, all without asking him to swear his service and risk changing how they interacted any further.

Their departure from Storm’s End had been somber, but they’d made it through alright. If he was quieter in the days after their stay, Egg didn’t say anything about it, which surprised him. But Egg also tended to speak about Lord Lyonel often in that time, starting conversations with remember when Lord Baratheon said and I just remembered something funny he did when the wind was hushed enough for conversation through the Red Mountains. Those remembrances had never really died down. Even here, he’d spent time telling his brother about him in between recounting all their adventures.

Egg’s fondness for the Lord Paramount had to be why he thought of Lyonel right then in a crowded, buzzing market in Oldtown. Surely.

Regardless of his frenetic thought patterns, there was still the witch to consider.

A woman’s voice called out to him from a dark tent just to his left. “Lost something, have you? It’s not too late to get him back, if you’re clever about it.”

He strode to her. “You’ve seen my squire?” he demanded.

She was a hunched-back old woman, the kind who always seemed to be smiling about some hidden joke or other. At his up-front and rather aggressive approach, she didn’t even flinch, but that was likely due to the fact she was currently absorbed in her crocheting.

“Your squire?” she said, humming and clicking a ring around her work so it wouldn’t unravel.

“The bald boy, wearing robes, the one I’ve lost,” Dunk said, harried.

“Plenty of boys in robes in Oldtown,” she chuckled. “But he’s asleep right over here. Exhausted, poor thing.” Dunk peeked his head inside the woman’s tent to find Egg fast asleep on a pile of lumpy old cushions with a wet cloth over his forehead.

“What’s happened to him?” Dunk said, surging forward. He shook Egg’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t wake. Other than that, the boy just looked like he was sleeping.

“Like I said, he exhausted himself. Too great a touch of the sun, I suspect. It happens to everyone, first time this far south.”

“I should get him to a maester,” Dunk said, looking for the best way to scoop the boy into his arms.

“Plenty of those in Oldtown, too. And frighteningly few of me, Ser Duncan the Tall.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he slowly turned to the old woman. She’d settled herself in a cushy chair nearby, quietly working on what seemed to be a large net.

“What did you say?” said Dunk, valiantly fighting off the tremor in his voice.

“I wasn’t talking about your princeling ward when I called to you. I was talking about the one who laughs in your heart, noble knight.”

Dunk reckoned he could make it to the end of the street, Egg hauled over his shoulder, by the time the woman got up from her chair. It must have shown on his face, though she wasn’t looking at him.

“I’ve taken care of your boy. He’ll be right as rain in an hour, in the shade and off his feet. You’re welcome to partake of the same, ser.” The way she said it made it sound more like, you’re expected.

I dreamed of you, said another voice, from back then. This felt much the same, the fluttery embers of magic sparking up into the air unseen. Destiny and prophecy seemed to follow him around—but he wasn’t of any importance; Egg was. It must have been just his proximity to the boy that attracted such strangeness.

Sure.

But he took a seat anyway, the one set just beside where Egg was resting and across a small, seven-sided table from the old woman. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“Ah, a seeker of the truth, he is,” the old woman laughed. “That’ll serve. You don’t need to hear my name, and I heard yours on the wind. It can blow so loudly when you know how to listen.”

A fortune teller, then. He started up his usual refrain, “I’ve no coin to pay you—”

Her eyes went a touch sharper. “I wouldn’t accept it if you offered it. Instead, to show thanks, you’ll take my advice. The winds blow loud around you, lad, so loud it drowns out all else. So heed me. Have you ever crafted magic, ser?”

“I thought only some people could,” he said, shaking his head. Egg had told him of the wizards of the Rhoynar, the aeromancers of Asshai, the red priests of R’hllor. “Something you’re given by the gods.”

“That can be true,” the witch said. “But there are magics of other kinds, wrought in other ways. In ritual, in belief, in seeing the pattern of things.”

Dunk didn’t consider patterns to be very magical, but what did he know? He was just a hedge knight. The old witch turned her net and started in on another row, the undyed cord slipping through her gnarled fingers with water-like grace as her gold-colored hook caught and twisted and pulled it into submission.

“Sailors are a superstitious sort,” she continued, “and for good reason. There is magic in weaving, and what is ropework but weaving of a different name?”

By then Dunk’s eyes had adjusted to the tent’s dark interior. He could make out the hanging decorations suspended from the tent poles and across the space. There were knotted, loose tapestries of undyed but finely-wound rope, even animals fashioned from thick thread, great coils of knotted rope that looked like a smaller version of a ship’s log, tossed to the water to measure the speed they were sailing. What this rope might measure, Dunk did not know. Some creations were linked through with little bells or baubles, small and intricate charms that chimed gently though there was no breeze inside the tent. Other creations were spun on and within a hoop of bent wood, like a lady’s embroidery frame, though the shape within spiraled intricately and made him dizzy to look at for too long. The place Egg had gone to sleep, he’d mistaken for a pile of pillows, but Dunk saw now that it was actually two massive coils of rope with a blanket tossed over the top of it, and a squire on top of that.

He tore his eyes away long enough to respond to the witch. “I didn’t know that,” Dunk said, which was perhaps unnecessary.

“The one you’ve lost,” she said, returning to her initial point, “I’ve a way for you to catch him again. No magic training is fine, but are you any good with snares and traps?”

He nodded. He had to be, to eat out on the road.

“What do you catch?”

“Rabbits, birds, fish.”

She grinned. “What about larger game?”

“I’m no poacher,” he said with a frown.

“Ah, but this stag wants for catching. He’s been dying for it since you met and danced in that bloody meadow.”

She didn’t mean…? His face flared with heat, and he looked around at the tent again, mind wheeling through all manner of inappropriate applications of rope and knots—and Lyonel.

“Aye, you’ll do well by my advice,” she cackled, which only worsened his embarrassment. At least Egg was asleep. “But he’s a slippery one, this stag. Bleeding hearts always are when you hold ‘em to the light. And you’ve brewed up a great storm inside him. Storms laugh louder than they weep, to be sure.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, voice straining.

“You lie half as much as he does, and twice as badly!”

“I’m—Lyonel isn’t a liar—”

“Ah, so he has a name!”

“He’s no liar,” Dunk repeated, frowning.

She set down her work, facing him fully. “But he is! What do you call someone who thinks one thing and says another? Who wants one thing and grabs at the opposite?”

“I don’t want your riddles,” Dunk said, shaking his head. Just grab Egg and put this odd day behind you. You’re for the Reach soon, anyway.

“There is a way to get the truth from any man,” the witch said, stopping him in his tracks.

Finger by finger, Dunk relaxed his hands around the arms of the chair. “I’m not going to torture my friend.” He tried to imitate Egg’s rather dry delivery, but ended up sounding a bit rattled anyway.

The witch only waved him off. “Your friend does enough of that to himself already, lad. Perhaps it’d be good for both of you to hear what’s really going on inside that curly head of his. A sailor, too, he is. So there’d be more than enough belief in the binding.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Dunk complained, this time meaning it. The witch rose from her seat, setting down her project before tottering over to a chest of drawers tucked away in the shadows. There, she opened a drawer and pulled out a length of rope that glinted gold, even in the dim light of the tent. But the glint was gone a moment later, and when she handed the coiled length to Dunk, it looked and felt like regular old rope, though a lot softer than he’d been expecting.

“What am I meant to do with this?” he asked.

She pointed a finger at his forehead, then tapped him right between the brows. “Use this line when the time comes to snare your little stag. Your hands will know the motions. You tie him tight enough, the tongue will loosen to honesty. Be good about your questions, and don’t give him release until he deserves it. If he deserves it.” Her cackle was the last thing he heard as the rest of the tent went black.

When he blinked awake, he was back at their lodgings near the port. Egg was there, too, still asleep on the bed beside him. The rope the old witch had given him creaked a little from how tightly Dunk was holding it. He loosened his grip and held the rope up to catch the spare light of sunset coming in through the window.

It was just regular rope, but Dunk felt he was looking at it differently, now. Instead of the simple bowline and slipknots he was used to making for his snares, he thought of more complex things, hitches and bends, ties and fastenings, blooming roses of rope around a hip, a curving braid around a wrist, a slender double-length shoved between crooked, smiling teeth—

Dunk buried the rope in the bottom of his pack, then repacked everything they’d bought for the journey north. To his surprise, all his market purchases from that day had been delivered here safely, though his coinpurse was as heavy as it’d been that morning.

It was as much a sign as he’d get, but it didn’t help the dread.

The rope and the strange interaction with the witch were kept shoved to the bottom of Dunk’s pack and his mind, respectively, but they were never far from reach. He tried his best not to think about them, because when he did, his mind inevitably turned to more flashes of dangerous thought regarding rope and a sturdy overhead to suspend it from. He thought in terms of simple machines, leverage, triggers, weight, loops, catches, the like. It might have been coincidence, but Dunk had never caught as many animals with ground snares in his life. After a few weeks of heading in no particular direction but, inevitably, ending up in the Stormlands, one evening decided their heading.

“Could we not go around Summerhall, ser?” Egg said, still holding his uneaten leg of quail. It wasn’t like him to hold off eating for the sake of conversation, so he must have been thinking about saying this for a while. “Perhaps round to Griffin’s Roost?”

“We’d have to go past Summerhall to get to Griffin’s Roost, boy. Say what you mean.”

Egg blew out a breath, sounding like Maester, his donkey. “I miss my friends from Storm’s End is all. I know they’d all love to hear about Oldtown, and—”

“Is this a new affliction? Your missing the other squires?” Egg had never been one for sentiment, outside of the odd cat, horse, or dragonfly. His friendship with the squires at Storm’s End was laughably professional by comparison, though Dunk had noticed a shift in his mood toward the positive after just a week around younger company.

“Yes, ser, it’s a terrible affliction. Might we go?”

There was certainly an undertone of something going on there, but nothing Dunk was clever enough to suss out. Unfortunately, thinking of Storm’s End made him think of Lyonel, and whatever was going on in his mind made him think of Lyonel suspended by rope, head tossed back in the way it went when he really laughed, only now his face was twisted into something like agony, but sweeter—

“That’s—I don’t know that that’s a good idea,” Dunk stammered.

Egg pouted. “Why not?”

“Because—”

“Because…?”

“Well, it’d be rude.”

“To visit friends?” he needled, and Dunk knew the angle he was going for now.

“I’ll not inconvenience Lord Baratheon whenever you feel like slacking off in your duties, Egg. That’s a quick path to a clout in the ear.”

Egg, undeterred by empty threats, just smiled. “I’m much bigger now, ser. I don’t need to rest as much as last time we were there. I’m sure I can even start sword training, too.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, now. Just because you can sit a horse for a day’s riding without complaining doesn’t mean that you do. We’re not goin’ to Storm’s End. We’ll head for King’s Landing.”

They went to Storm’s End.

They arrived late at night to the keep, the drum tower’s blazing flame a great beacon drawing them nearer, moths to a flame.

Well, perhaps only Dunk was the moth. Egg, all told, could take it or leave it once they got inside, no matter how excited he claimed to be to see his “friends”. Egg was directed to the squires’ barracks after turning down the horses, and one of the attendants Dunk recognized from their stay last year directed him to a free room. It was the same one he’d stayed in before. There was some dust on the flat surfaces, but a sheet over the bed, so at least he wouldn’t be sneezing all night.

The moment he laid his head down on the pillow, the door was kicked open. Dunk scrambled to stand, just in his smalls, tense until he recognized the shape of the man in the doorway.

Lyonel Baratheon wasn’t a man for whom the word ‘relaxed’ ever applied. A more apt term would be ‘ready.’ To anyone who didn’t know him as well as Dunk, he would have seemed completely calm on the outside, but the still-slamming door and the echo of his entrance harmonized with the fire in his eyes.  Coiled, was another word, one evocative of snaked, of muscles, of lengths of rope.

“So it is true,” he said in greeting. He sounded older, or perhaps simply awoken from his bed. Dunk had begged the guard not to bother him until morning, but that plea had clearly been superseded.

“Milord,” Dunk said, dropping into a bow.

Lyonel scoffed. “What the fuck?” he muttered. “Stop that.”

“Wh—?”

All at once, he was wrapped in the man’s embrace. It was warm, it was comforting, it was just tight enough to satisfy his lonely wanderer’s heart—and then it was gone. Dunk swayed on the spot, bereft, body tilting toward where Lyonel had gone. The lord now stood a few steps away with his hands behind his back, eyes pointed toward Dunk’s bed, the bags on the floor, anywhere but him.

“You were asleep. My apologies, ser,” he said, a careful fist wrapped around his intonation. He shifted his weight to his back foot, a man on the verge of leaving.

Dunk spoke quickly. “It’s no problem, Lyonel, really.” Only a moment later did he realize his misstep, and tensed to apologize for it—

When Lyonel smiled, it looked like the sun breaking through a dark storm overhead. Not enough to be warmed by, but enough to bring hope. “Well, if you’re certain.”

“We had planned to arrive at a more respectable hour, but—storms in the Stormlands, and all. It’s kind of a story.”

The small, vulnerable smile morphed into something more amused, a familiar sort of smirk that said try me in fifty languages. “I’m welcome to it, and you’re welcome here, Ser Duncan. Long as you need.”

“Thank you,” Dunk said. “It’s so—it’s really very nice to see you again, Lyonel.”

The smile fell away, something even softer than before taking over Lyonel’s face for just a glimmering second before it was gone again. He’s a slippery one. Bleeding hearts always are.

Dunk swallowed his heart back down from where it’d beat its way up his throat. It was a fucking shame how quickly that soft, open expression was covered up by what Dunk assumed was years of practice hiding how he truly felt—if that old witch was right about what she said.

“I was hoping to ask—”

“I should let you—”

They jolted, both coming out of their pensive pauses at the same time and being more shocked for it. Dunk deferred to him first, and Lyonel tried to do the same, until Dunk threw in a milord and reaffirmed that difference in rank between them. Trial of Seven or otherwise, they were nowhere near one another in the measurements that mattered most.

“I was… I don’t know why I came down here; I’m sorry I interrupted your sleep. They told me you were to bed, but I—”

“You just wanted to see your very good friend,” said Dunk. “And I’m gladder for it.”

Lyonel gave a small smile down at his feet, half a nod. “Well, I’m sure I can wait for you to be properly dressed next time,” he said. It was so far outside the normally relaxed, libertine behavior he regularly showed Dunk that it made him feel a bit more naked than he already was. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Ser Duncan. Good night.”

Without waiting for a response, Lyonel was suddenly gone, the door shut behind him, and Dunk was left in the dark once more.

When the morning came, and with it, some light through his small window. Dunk took a moment to look out at his view, such that it was. The window was thick and only opened about two inches on salt-rusted hinges, but through the wavy glass he caught a glimpse of green, and a flash of red. He forced the window open another inch and managed to peek an eye at the view. His room, it seemed, overlooked the godswood, the scarlet weirwood at the center of it standing in perpetual autumn. The sight of it prickled something in his mind, and the longer he looked at it, the longer it felt like holding a hand over a fire, the flames licking at his palm. How strange it was that he hadn’t noticed it the last time he was here, staying in this room.

He left the window open a crack to air out the musty room and settled in, setting aside his clothes to be washed, and everything else going into the small chest of drawers in his room. When he got to the bottom of his pack, he paised, staring at the length of rope like it might come to life and bite him.

Regardless of its appearance, Dunk firmly believed the rope was at least a little magical. It had a weight to it far beyond that which pulled it to the ground, a weight in the way a sword would continue wanting to swing, a weight like a bough about to break overhead. He reached down to grab it, holding it to the pale, milky light of early morning.

You tie him tight enough, and the tongue will loosen to honesty.

“I don’t need magic rope for him to be honest with me,” Dunk said, shoving it in the bottom of his chest of drawers and heading down to breakfast.

The storm that had followed them here still raged outside, but nobody seemed particularly concerned. Weak was the Stormlander afraid of a bit of nasty weather. When he arrived in the hall, nobles, knights, and other courtiers milled about, making conversation as they broke their fast. Egg would be eating with the other squires near the stables and such, so Dunk braced himself for the trial ahead: speaking to people.

“Ser Duncan!” called Lyonel—Lord Baratheon, when there’s company—as he took his first step into the room. Many heads swiveled between the lord and his greeted guest, and several looks of recognition flashed as Dunk strode by to greet his host. Strange, knowing I’ve been spoken about.

“Good morning, milord,” Dunk said, giving a short bow and meeting him halfway.

Lyonel looked like he wanted to take Dunk's milord and shove it up his ass, but among present company, such eschewing of manners would have been most inappropriate. Eschewing. Egg’s really rubbing off on me.

“Will you sit with me here, ser?” he said, gesturing to a quite occupied seat to his left. The affronted lord in the chair was shooed out of the way, and were Dunk not aware that Lyonel would be more insulted if he refused to sit in another man’s seat, he would have waved it off and done a turn of the room to come back at a more convenient time. As it was, Dunk might have had a bit more motive to sit down at his side to talk than otherwise, so he went.

Lyonel hastily threw together a plate of food for him from the high table’s assortment of fresh pastries, fruit, meats, and sweets. “You told me you don’t get many fresh foods on the road, don’t you?” said Lyonel, sliding the plate over to him before he could argue.

“Aye, that’s right,” Dunk said. He kept his voice low as to not attract attention for his casual address. “Actually, we—”

“So you’re to partake in as much of it as you can. Perhaps I can tempt you to st—remain longer than a measly four weeks this time.”

Dunk’s heart did a flip in his chest, and to his horror, the words wouldn’t come. Gods, he wanted to kiss him, though that was nothing new. But here? With so many eyes on them? Not knowing for sure how Lyonel felt about him? Gods, maybe he did need the rope.

That thought sparked a flame in his mind, and in the bright coals of it he saw the flickering shape of Lyonel’s shoulders pulled tight, thick gold coils of rope securing his wrists to his forearms, his ankles to his thighs, his body from the ceiling from a precarious point on his hip—

“Ser Duncan?” Lyonel said, his voice dropped to something like a whisper. The same flame from last night burned in his eyes, wildfire captured in ancient amber.

“Forgive me, milord, I’m still catching up from my travels,” he said, shaking his head.

Lyonel drew his hand back from where it had been resting on the edge of the table by Dunk’s. Dunk felt its absence like a sudden draft in a hallway. “Ah, yes, your travels,” said Lyonel, clearing his throat. “You promised to regale me.”

Dunk coughed once and shook his head, bashful. “It’s nothing so interesting as that. We visited Dorne after we left here…”

Lyonel had to remind him at points to eat his breakfast, all the while watching him with his cheek propped on a fist, smiling softly and taking in every word. Dunk was no storyteller, he preferred to listen to others’ tales, but he had to admit that his early career as a hedge knight was interesting.

“…and when I looked up, the rest of them had scattered. Took half an hour to get Egg down from the tree.”

Lyonel tossed his head back and laughed, clapping joyfully. When he swung back down, his hand landed on Dunk’s shoulder, where it squeezed once. “Gods, tell me that story again tomorrow, I’ll love it every time, I know it.”

“You’ll get bored of it soon enough,” Dunk hedged, blushing down at his food. “Ser Arlan once told me the gravest error I could make to a lord was to bore him.”

“That won’t happen anytime soon. Besides, I don’t plan to let you go that easily.”

The air between them went tense, taut as rope. Dunk gaped at him, at the hand touching him, with an awe so powerful he wondered if he’d stumbled here fully dreaming. Like last night’s sudden embrace, Lyonel pulled his hand away abruptly, leaving Dunk feeling like he’d done the wrong thing, though he couldn’t say what.

The rest of breakfast was awkward, but Dunk managed to stumble through one more story without embarrassing himself, though Lyonel didn’t laugh like he had before, and certainly didn’t touch him again. When all was finished, Dunk headed for the squire barracks to check on Egg, feeling rather uncertain of himself.

Egg was carrying on as usual, surprisingly well-behaved for the master-at-arms giving him tasks to complete around the yard. Dunk wished he had an excuse to keep himself busy and free from worrying, but there was no way to do that than to make one himself. He supposed that the privilege of deciding what to do with his life was also a bit of a consequence.

Later still, Lyonel called on Dunk to dine with him alone in his solar. Dunk heartened himself, treating the opportunity as the perfect moment to question him, to give him the chance to tell the truth.

He tried not to look at the coiled rope as he readied himself for supper.

Lyonel was already pouring wine when Dunk came in, but he straightened and smiled when he arrived, warm and welcoming where he’d been stilted and awkward that morning. It’s because we’re alone. We don’t have to pretend for anyone else. Testing a theory, Dunk greeted him with an embrace, just a short one like Lyonel had done last night, but if he let his hands linger on Lyonel’s shoulders a little longer than he would have done usually, that was his own prerogative.

When he drew back, Lyonel’s reaction surprised him. His face was not the warm, welcoming expression Dunk had hoped for, but a serious, stony look. He did not openly admonish Dunk for his familiarity; instead, he looked like he was in pain. “Is everything alright, Lyo—milord?” Dunk said, suddenly on the back foot.

Lyonel cleared his throat and shook away Dunk’s worry. “It’s just been a long day. Come, let’s eat.”

Dunk's optimism had taken quite a blow right from the start, so he didn’t have the courage to speak about what he truly wanted to know for some time, muddling through a boring discussion about the weather and the quality of the roads and the swell of the rivers running off the sea. Lyonel responded with the headache of balancing grain store inventories and quibbling over trade agreements with Tyrells and how he hadn’t been on a ship in months. Neither really looked one another in the eye as they spoke. 

It was only after his second cup of strongwine that Dunk managed to find the bravery to say, “Why is it you haven’t taken a wife?”

The silence that followed was more shocked than furious, which was a victory, though small. Lyonel's slack expression almost made him smile, reminding Dunk of that very first night, when he answered why the fuck are you in my tent with supper. It made his heart ache to see that truth of him, warmed his blood to know he’d shocked the inimitable Laughing Storm. But this look, like the others, was packed up, and Lyonel’s next laugh was hollow, like wind through an empty hall.

Lyonel drained the rest of his cup and poured himself another. “Excuse my surprise, Ser Duncan. You sounded frightfully similar to my mother just then.”

Dunk’s ears went red, but he held strong. “Did you give her an answer like that, too?” Dunk said, surprised by his own burst of confidence.

Lyonel blinked at him, his suave nature stuttering to a halt again. If there was one thing Dunk was good at, it was catching Lyonel Baratheon off-guard.

He swallowed roughly, cleared his throat, delayed the inevitable as long as Dunk would let him. “I… my hand is rather powerful. Love matches are for fourthborn cousins, not heirs to the paramouncy.”

Still not an answer. “So you won’t take a wife because nobody’s offered something worthwhile in return.”

A flare of something rose behind Lyonel’s eyes, and before it could evolve into a full-on glare, he ducked his head, smiling ruefully down at his empty plate. “My, you’ve found some bite in the last year, haven’t you, Ser Duncan?” he said. By all accounts, he sounded amused, looked amused, but the white knuckles said otherwise. Dunk knew him too well for all that. Coiled, he thought, not for the first time.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to upset you, I just…” I just wanted the truth. “I thought it’d be a simple question.”

Another laugh, a little less hollow but no less bitter. “That’s the problem with questions. Some of them have answers that just don’t stop. Some questions are answered by the blood in our veins, and your asking them is like a knife held to a wrist. One must tread carefully.”

Dunk excused himself from dinner shortly after that, and paced the hall in front of his room. His mind kept returning to the image of his hands opening that bottom drawer and taking out the rope, setting a trap, or perhaps simply binding Lyonel’s hands.

That’s the problem with questions. Be good about your questions. Round and round the truth they went, never getting any closer to finding out what it was.

Dunk needed to try a different tactic. Instead of taking out the rope and hoping for truth, he went to an expert in withholding it.

Egg was still awake in the barracks when Dunk went down, fleecing a few opponents in a card game. He was rather displeased to abandon his winning streak, but duty came first. They went for a walk along the keep’s curtain wall. It was a clear night, oddly free of poor weather, and the moonlight was more than enough for them to see by, though each blazing torch was a welcome warmth when they passed one by.

“What was it you wanted to ask me, ser?” Egg said after a few minutes’ silence.

“What makes you think I had something to ask you?”

“You always want us to go on walks when you want to ask me a question but don’t want anybody else around to hear it.” It was true enough, and insightful enough, that Dunk could have been offended, had he not had other worries at hand.

“If you knew somebody was lying to you but you needed to know the truth, what might you do?”

Egg hummed, pausing and tapping his fingers on the top of the wall. It would have looked impressive if he’d been a foot and a half taller. It must have been a gesture he’d seen his father make before, because his response was rather Maekar-like in Dunk’s estimation. “Can you take his fingers off?”

Dunk coughed to cover up his horrible, shocked laughter. There was no mistaking who his father was now. “Er, no. In this scenario, you can’t harm them.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s—” Extremely precious to me. “A friend.”

“Friends don’t lie to each other.”

“What’s that make you?”

“Your squire, ser.”

Dunk rolled his eyes. Perhaps it was a mistake to ask a 10-year-old for advice.

“You could get him drunk,” Egg said, now apparently thinking more like his eldest brother.

“I think he’s capable of holding onto a lie while drunk, unfortunately.”

“Well, there are other vices.”

“Let’s not think about that route.”

“Blackmail?”

“I don’t really have anything besides knowing he’s lying to me.”

“But if you knew something could make him tell the truth, why not use it?”

It was chillingly precise. Dunk's words caught in his throat.

Why not use it? The answer to that question had been circling his skull for weeks now, ever since they left Oldtown with that mysterious rope. Egg claimed not to remember anything about the witch or running off, but there was no point in pressing the matter when nothing bad had come of it. Well, nothing bad except the increasingly vivid fantasies of seeing Lyonel helpless and bound in that rope, eyes pleading while his teeth, a shock of ivory and pearl, bit down around the knot in his mouth—

“I don’t know,” said Dunk, shivering. He turned his face toward the wind, tried to focus on the sound of crashing waves. With any luck, he’d lose the ruddy look in his cheeks and ears before they walked past another torch. “I… it would feel wrong. Like I’m taking advantage of him.”

“He’s taking advantage of your kindness by repeatedly lying,” Egg pointed out. He paused for a moment of self-reflection, which he moved past rather quickly, all told. “As my father told me once, a stalemate is no way to settle a war.”

The lingering specter of Prince Maekar was as unsettling as the man himself. Besides, Dunk didn’t consider what he had with Lyonel to be a war. But the pushing-pulling in his heart said otherwise. He’d been on the sidelines of battles while squiring for Ser Arlan, and after the Trial of Seven he’d had a real taste of what it might be like to stand in the center of one. What he and Lyonel had was remarkably passionate, but it wasn’t half as monumental as all that.

…was it?

He returned to his room in the castle after depositing Egg back at his card game. Without giving himself a moment to hesitate, he pulled open the drawer that held the rope. It was right where he’d left it, but it looked… bigger, somehow. By his own reckoning, it couldn’t have been longer than twenty feet, but something else itched at his mind, telling him there was more there than he was really seeing. He picked it up, and his logical mind agreed with his reckoning, but that hidden weight was there, too, something immense and unknown that made his breath hitch, something that felt like the moment he’d locked eyes with Lyonel, months and miles ago. Magic.

He shook his head free of the fanciful notion and tried to talk himself down. “You’re being ridiculous. If Lyonel doesn’t want to talk to me, maybe Egg’s right. He’s not really my friend.”

Thunder suddenly crashed against the keep, the clear night from before suddenly wiped away without warning. Dunk strode to the window and peered out as far as the small frame would let him. Gone were the stars, gone was the moonlight, down came the rain and wind. A few fat splashes dashed themselves through the open crack, making him flinch at their coldness. As if drawn by gravity, his eyes found the curtain wall, where torches were hastily used to light lanterns and exterior doors were braced against the howling gales.

In a flash of lightning, Dunk caught a glimpse of the godswood. The trees seemed as peaceful and still as ever despite the storm. Another flash focused his gaze on the weirwood and its blood-red leaves. The rope in his hands seemed to shiver. Calling like to like, he imagined, as thunder roared overhead.

No. This was madness. He wouldn’t leverage magic he knew nothing about just to make Lyonel tell him how he felt. If Lyonel was too craven to confess it on his own, then… maybe Dunk’s heart had chosen poorly.

Another flash of light, another glimpse of the tree, another few splashes of rainwater on his hands, another glimpse at the rope.

Mad night like tonight, he shouldn’t be letting himself think of such things. The good thing about magic, however, was that he didn’t need to think. He just needed to believe.

He had no idea what he was doing, but he knew it was correct.

The snare scaled beautifully to what Dunk envisioned, but his hands somehow knew a few extra steps that took things from ‘serviceable’ to ‘artistic’. The knots and ties he used were unlike any he’d made before, but they came as easily as instinct. He was drenched from the storm, had been almost since the moment he walked into the godswood despite it’s relative shelter. But the rain didn’t bother him none. He was just focused on the trap.

He’d just finished up, backing away to conceal his work when the door to the godswood was kicked open. There were only two ways in or out, and Dunk had already barred the other entrance so he could lead his quarry where he wanted. Basic hunting principles, he shrugged.

Lyonel was early, but that didn’t matter—he’d already finished setting up, and all that was left was for the trap to be triggered.

He’d dressed hastily, barefoot with his shirt hanging out of his half-laced trousers. Still, he didn’t hesitate to dash through the godswood, white as a sheet even without the lightning leeching all color from the world in flashes. “Duncan!” he called, fear shaking his voice. He ran as if deeply off-balance, which was concerning.

He skidded to a halt in the clearing, just a few inches from where the snare had been set on the ground. He looked around wildly, mad with what had to be fear, by the stricken look on his face.

Dunk abandoned his plans, stepping from out of his blind. “Lyonel, what—?”

A sob ripped from Lyonel’s mouth, caught in a hand before he stumbled back a step. He leaned on a tree to steady himself. Dunk rushed forward, confused and a little guilty for maybe being the cause of his distress. Why had he come down here so late? He was planning to lead him here after breakfast, to—oh, this was such a stupid fucking idea.

“They—they told me they saw you come down here, with a rope,” he said, composure scattered to the wind. His words, too, barely made it to Dunk over the screaming storm. Through it all, Dunk could still see the terror in his eyes. “What—they told me you—”

“No,” Dunk said, shaking his head. “Never.” He had to wince a little for how bad it looked, how the usual response to seeing a determined man holding a length of rope was concern, but he didn’t for long. The trap was set, the prey was here, he was so close—

Lyonel grabbed him by his shirt, choosing him over the tree to support him. He felt warm, almost feverishly warm against the cold rain. It felt so close to right that Dunk felt he had to try, just one more time.

“Lyonel,” he said, voice breaking. “I need… I need to know.”

The man in his arms froze so fast it felt like a flinch. Dunk watched him swallow. “Know what.”

“How you feel about me.”

He saw it in his face before he heard it off his tongue: Lyonel was going to lie. Disappointment, stomach-dropping disappointment, slouched his shoulders and made him feel three times heavier than he was.

“I… Ser Duncan, that’s…”

He knew the excuses. Complicated. Inappropriate. Impossible to answer. He didn’t want to hear them.

“Why won’t you just be honest with me?” Dunk said, frustration rising.

Lyonel looked up, his expression that of a startled deer. It went beyond the surprise of biting back at him, the surprise of hearing him say supper in a room full of sycophants and leeches. It was fear.

“You can trust me, Lyonel, I… I thought you trusted me.” Dunk’s hand went up to cup the side of his cheek, a gentle thing for all the deception waiting behind him.

Lyonel squeezed his eyes shut. “I do trust you.”

“Then tell me. Please.”

The silence stretched, and Dunk snapped. “I’m sorry,” he said, drawing back a step. Lyonel followed, looking a little helpless, a little lost. Dunk kept going, taking careful steps over a particular spot on the ground.

Lyonel wasn’t so careful.

The trap sprang beautifully, but the ensuing strangeness threatened to undo that description. Lyonel was yanked into the air by his ankle, drawn upward toward the bough of the weirwood, stalwart and strong against the weight it was asked to bear. The counterweights Dunk had set on the other side fell to the ground with a thunk just as Lyonel reached the zenith of the snare.

And then the rope started to move.

The working end wove in bights around his legs, his hips, his torso, at least a dozen all at once. They moved like coordinated tentacles of a sea monster, wrapping their prey in an unbreakable hold. Lyonel’s arms were pulled back and secured to the small of his back, making his chest thrust outward. They wove and looped around his neck, which alarmed Dunk until he saw the safety catches to prevent strangulation. His legs were bent at the knee and tied against the back of his thighs, then secured to another point on the tree. It all happened in one quick motion, like a reverse unraveling.

Lyonel swung back and forth off the bough of the weirwood, a stunned expression on his face. Dunk looked quite similar, gawking at the magical rope. It had to have taken three, four times the amount of rope to do this than he’d reckoned he had. And it had been moving, on its own.

“What. The fuck—”

“I’m so sorry, it’s—the witch gave me a magic rope and said you were lying to me and I’ve lost you and I was afraid and—”

“Duncan—”

“—spent the whole way here trying not to think about it but—”

“Ser—”

“—Egg said you’re not my friend because you’re lying to me and I don’t understand why—”

“Dunk!”

Dunk stopped in his tracks, blinking up at him. Lyonel was squirming, trying to get out of the rope. Dunk had brought his dirk with him, like always, but it’d take skill to get him out of this without hanging him, or smacking his head on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Dunk said again, his voice small. The storm felt far away now, no longer carrying their words to distant places.

“Did you—did you set a trap for me?” Lyonel said, squirming some more. All it did was rock him back and forth on the branch.

“I—it was the only way to tie you. Are you alright?”

“Well, I’m very turned on right now, I’ll have to hand it to y—ohhh, what the fuck.”

Dunk gawked at him. He didn’t expect it to work that fast, or that well.

“You’re turned on?”

“Well, it’s always a low-grade yes when you’re around, but especially—hng—now. Gods, that’s weird.”

Be good about your questions. Lyonel could say what he wished outside of them, but if Dunk asked him something, he’d have to answer. He took a step forward, feeling a bit light-headed.

“Lyonel. Erm. Have you ever been punched in the face before?” (It seemed as good a place to start as any.)

“Of fucking course I have, I’m a goddamn insufferable cunt, and not by bloody accident.” The words were almost spat out for how quickly they came, as if the truth sat unpleasantly on his tongue. “Duncan, you’re a sick bastard—” he snarled, but Dunk had embraced the high of hearing honesty from such an evasive man.

“Did you miss me while I was gone?”

“Every day. Every fucking day. From the moment you turned your back from me until the moment I saw you again. Told them—told them to tell me the moment you arrive, no matter what. Pain of death.” Lyonel gasped for air, blinking like he’d been stunned.

Warmth bloomed in Dunk’s chest nonetheless. Lyonel had certainly shown up like he’d missed him that much, but his words and actions since had given him cause to doubt it. 

“Why don’t you—”

“How many questions are you going to ask?” Lyonel cried, squirming again.

Dunk felt a wave of guilt hit him. Be good about your questions, the witch had said. Lyonel had already been distressed when he’d come down here, and now he was doing something tantamount to torture, in Dunk’s own estimation. But he needed the truth. He needed to know.

But he didn’t want to break what they had in pursuit of that knowledge.

“I… is five alright?”

“No. Two.”

“Three?”

“Two.” Lyonel kept a fierce glare. “You’ve already asked two already.”

Dunk had been expecting to hear zero or fuck off, so this was a marked improvement. He nodded his assent and flexed his hands at his side, thinking his questions over. He knew one already, the whole purpose behind this mad little experiment, but he would save that one for last. He thought on the other burning questions lingering in his mind. Would Lyonel even wish to speak with him again after this? Was it worth it?

The answer had to be yes.

“Why do you keep lying to me?” Dunk asked. This time, he felt the draw of magic pull taut between him and Lyonel, taut as the ropes binding him to the weirwood. Was this where the power came from? Was it the rope? Was it Lyonel’s own belief in knots and weaving? It was hard to tell; Dunk had no experience with this.

Lyonel’s answer leapt off his tongue regardless. “Because I’m afraid. I’m a craven, I’m a coward about things like this. It’s—I know what you’ll ask and I know the fucking futility of answering it honestly. I don’t want—agh, I don’t want to disappoint you.”

The whole time, it looked like it was killing him to say the words, like each one was another slice of the blade. He looked as out of breath as before, and Dunk realized Lyonel didn’t even have time to catch his breath before answering. He’d have to time his questions better to avoid such a thing.

He quietly considered what Lyonel had said. He’d stopped talking, so Dunk had to assume that was the whole and honest truth from him. He was afraid of the truth, and that was why he avoided giving it to Dunk, though Dunk surely deserved it from him. He considered the things Lyonel had lied to him about before. They weren’t questions he was avoiding, aside from the one about his bachelor status at dinner earlier that evening. No, they were moments of truthful, honest, real feeling that Lyonel kept flinching away from—moments as good as lies, to Dunk.

“You’d never disappoint me,” Dunk said, and perhaps that was a lie too—but wasn’t hope a lie? Did it matter, when it came to hope? He came closer, stilling Lyonel’s swaying body with his hands.

Lyonel seemed to melt into the touch, his face turning towards Dunk’s shoulder when it was offered. Behind his back, his hands flexed around air, grasping for something not granted. “I’m still afraid,” Lyonel murmured, a truth spoken on its own, if Dunk could believe it.

“You hide it well enough,” Dunk said, squeezing his arm. “I hope this isn’t terribly uncomfortable.”

“Feels like a strange hug, really. Like I said, it’s turning me o—ohhh, you think you’re clever, getting me to talk. Ask your question, ser.”

“Alright. What do you feel for me?” Dunk asked, perhaps bracing for heartbreak.

What he didn’t expect was exactly what he wanted to hear, and more.

“I love you. Of course I love you. I missed you for every fucking second we were apart. I am proud of you and all you’ve accomplished, and I am afraid to show too much of my hand lest I push you away with it and—oh,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as he went on. His face pressed into Dunk’s hand, desperate. “I’m furious, still, that you rejected me at Ashford, that you replaced me with the ideal man you’d built up in your head, that you’d spend your time with princes and not me. I’m so jealous of-of your freedom in the realm, that you can—you can—” Lyonel tried to gasp for air, just to speak some more. “I am in pain that I can’t have you—” Another gasp. “I’m sorry—for what I—” A shorter gasp, undercut by the white-eyed panic in his gaze. “Said—”

“Stop,” Dunk said, his voice half a sob. Lyonel's mouth moved around whispered confessions, trying to be honest, trying to answer him as honestly as he could, but he couldn’t take a breath for more. He saw his lips move around the words love you, love you, but no sound came out. He’d exhausted all he had from his lungs.

Dunk's hands went to the ropes, undoing them one-handed while trying to keep Lyonel aloft. Don’t hang him, don’t hang him, rang through his mind as he went. The ropes fell apart like brittle hay beneath his fingers, slithering back around Lyonel’s body and the tree above until all at once, he was bearing all of Lyonel’s weight to the wet ground.

The moment Lyonel was free of the bonds, he gasped long and loud, coughing like a man just surfaced from drowning. Dunk held him close, trembling like the leaves above them in the canopy. Dunk looked into the solemn face of the weirwood and wondered if he’d made an especially grave mistake.

Eventually, Lyonel’s coughing subsided, and Dunk did the rest of the work, flinging the rope far away from them, far as he could. “I’m so sorry,” Dunk said. “I didn’t—I didn’t realize—”

“That what I felt for you was everything?” Lyonel whispered hoarsely.

Dunk looked down at him, finally. His eyes shone brightly with tears, or the rain, or something else. “I’m sorry,” Dunk said again, but it felt like too little.

Lyonel just slumped against him. “Quit apologizing. I should be the one apologizing—Duncan.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t think—whatever spell this is, I don’t think it’s done.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Because I still feel the same sort of ‘I have to vomit the truth out whenever you ask me anything’ thing as before, only this time I’m thankfully in your arms, and—”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough. Let me think.” He idly stroked Lyonel’s hair as he thought back to what the witch had said. The motion calmed both of them, somehow. “The witch said, your hands will know the motions. Be good about your questions, and don’t give him relief until he deserves it, if he deserves it.”

Lyonel scoffed. “That’s not particularly helpful.”

“I know,” Dunk said, getting frustrated. “Maybe we should go inside, though.”

“A splendid idea, you can take me to my bedchamber, where I shall try valiantly not to—” Lyonel clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling the rest of his answer, though Dunk could guess. It made him blush and smile rather helplessly.

As they went, Dunk explained the rope, the witch, and the like. Lyonel considered his words for a long time before speaking. “I’ve no mind for magic, though the Baratheons have a deeply hidden secret knowledge of—”

“I don’t want to know,” Dunk said, which they found worked as a sort of reset switch for Lyonel’s honest blathering.

“Thanks,” Lyonel sighed in relief, taking another few stairs before starting again. “This isn’t me being lurid, because I could be a lot worse given the right indication it’d be welcomed. But do you think ‘release’ could mean something a bit more fun than untying me from the weirwood? And for that matter, this whole ordeal is likely due to the fact you strung me up from a notoriously magical tree in the first place, which could be treated as blasphemy, if you take the old thing’s face at, well, face value, which—ha!”

“Lyonel,” Dunk said, face aflame.

“I don’t really know how to stop being honest about how much I want—mmph!”

The lord’s blabbering was put to a stop by Dunk’s mouth pressed firmly to his. A moment later, his back hit the cold stone walls of the passageway, and a moment after that, his hands came up to hold Dunk even closer, melting into him. When he’d stiffened in Dunk’s embrace, drawn away from his touch, those had been lies, too. What do you call someone who thinks one thing and says another? Who wants one thing and grabs at the opposite?

When they drew apart, Lyonel looked rather dazed. Dunk supposed it was fairly late at night, and they’d just had quite the strenuous time of it out in the godswood. But he couldn’t help the open adoration he felt for the man while he looked so soft. Dunk dragged them along, now almost to Lyonel’s solar.

“She also said it might work well because you believe in the magic of ropes, because you’re a sailor.”

“What a lofty generalization! It’s true.”

Dunk just grinned.

Inside the solar, the energy shifted a little. Lyonel made a soft, if panicked noise his face looking like he had a lot of things to say and he was trying not to say it. Dunk ushered him to a settee, stripping him out of his wet, muddy clothes and doing the same for himself. “C’mere. No, don’t say anything. Gods, I didn’t—I didn’t know how well that’d work.”

“Mhm,” Lyonel said, sounding a little sarcastic.

But Dunk was a bit too tender for sarcasm. “I… can I ask you one more question, Lyonel? Please.”

“Yes,” Lyonel said instantly, then clearly bit his tongue to keep from going on.

Dunk made it quick. “Do you think you could forgive me for doing this to you?”

“I already forgave you when you kissed me.”

Dunk blinked in stunned silence, then leaned in to kiss him again. Lyonel went happily into his arms, unburdened of his own fear and worry. Dunk drew him into his lap and stroked his hands over all of the places Lyonel still felt a little chilly from the outdoors. Lyonel whimpered into his mouth, grasping desperately at him in a way totally alien to what Dunk had been expecting.

The truth is stranger than dreams, Ser Arlan had told him once. He couldn’t remember what it was he was talking about, but it felt keen in this moment.

“Release,” Dunk mumbled against Lyonel’s lips. “Can I—”

“Please,” Lyonel said, nodding so emphatically they nearly knocked heads.

Dunk cupped his hand over Lyonel’s cock, squeezing and feeling how warm and plump he was just from a bit of light kissing. Lyonel gave a soft moan, and Dunk spat in the palm of his hand, getting to work on him.

It felt like something had unspooled within him as well, loosening his tongue the longer it was shoved down Lyonel’s throat. “I missed you too,” Dunk panted, grinding his hips up against Lyonel’s ass. “Every day. Tried not to. But I—”

Lyonel’s moan cut him off, encouraging as much as it sounded emotionally devastated.

“Thought of you every day. When it rained, when the wind blew, when I heard music, when I saw a deer—”

“Think of you when I see the sky,” Lyonel panted, his eyes wild. “Your eyes are bluer—”

“M’sorry I didn’t come with you. But I’ll always come back, always,” Dunk whined. His hand on Lyonel’s hip tightened, the coil in his belly going tighter and tighter as his cock slipped against the back of his thighs.

“Why?” Lyonel demanded.

It was the strangest sensation, feeling a compulsion to tell the truth. Hesitation, want of deflection, both sat on his tongue like bitter fruits, acidic and sour and unpleasant. But Dunk wasn’t hesitating because he didn’t want to say. He was hesitating because his brain forgot all words but four.

“Because I love you.”

Lyonel’s cock pulsed in his hand as he came, lips coming down to latch onto a point in the crook of Dunk’s neck. His sobs were muffled there, transferred into teeth and tongue. Dunk couldn’t help his own tipping over, spilling against Lyonel’s thighs and making a mess where they were pressed together. Dunk moaned to the open air, head falling back though all he wanted to do was watch Lyonel in ecstasy.

When his heart returned to its normal pace and Lyonel had gone soft beneath his touch, Dunk wondered with a pang if things were back to how they were, with Lyonel lying and Dunk pleading for the opposite. He held Lyonel closer, clinging to the last edges of what might never come again.

“I think I could sleep a hundred years,” Lyonel groaned, still unmoved from where he’d melted against Dunk’s lap. “Truth takes it out of you.”

“If you’re unused to it, perhaps.”

Lyonel gave a displeased snort. “Yeah, well.” He paused, swallowed, considering. “Maybe… I can practice. With you.”

Dunk thought about the length of rope down in the godswood, and the familiar sparks of imagination returned, pictures of Lyonel, naked as he was now, tied in different positions, mouth wide open, legs spread, wrists bound, trussed over a bench, ass up, waiting—

“Aye, I think we can get some more use out of that rope.”

“Perhaps not hanging from the weirwood next time,” Lyonel said hastily.

“No promises.”