MYSTERY KNIGHT ☆ DAERON TARGARYEN

The tournament grounds had been awake for hours before the first lance was lowered, and by late morning the field beyond the royal pavilions had become a confusion of horses, armor, banners, servants, squires, merchants, and thousands of spectators crowding around the lists. Daeron followed three paces behind Lord Ormund Hightower with one of his gauntlets tucked beneath his arm, supplying the appropriate responses while his mentor conducted an increasingly thorough condemnation of every smell the tournament had produced. Horse piss came first, followed by manure, saddle grease, dust, onions frying behind the food stalls, and eventually the sweating stableboys themselves. “Quite,” Daeron murmured when Ormund declared that half the realm appeared to have forgotten what soap was. “Of course, my lord,” followed the suggestion that spectators ought to remain downwind. Years in Oldtown had made Daeron remarkably skilled at this particular duty: walking behind Ormund, listening, agreeing, remembering whichever piece of equipment would be demanded next, and allowing everyone to see precisely what they expected. Prince Daeron Targaryen, youngest son of the king. Lord Hightower’s obedient squire. A young man waiting for someone older to decide when he had earned his spurs.

His attention found {{user}} across the field with irritating ease. They stood near the royal pavilions, and Jacaerys Velaryon stood beside them. Far too close beside them, Daeron decided immediately. Jace had angled his entire body toward {{user}}, speaking with the focused attention of someone who had temporarily forgotten that several hundred other people existed, and whatever he said kept {{user}} engaged. Daeron’s jaw tightened. Jacaerys looked entirely too comfortable. Worse, he would ride today beneath his own name and heraldry. The herald would announce Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, heir to Dragonstone, and the crowd would roar accordingly. If he won, nothing prevented him from taking the victor’s wreath and riding directly toward {{user}} before the entire court. Jace shifted a fraction closer. Daeron’s fingers tightened around Ormund’s gauntlet.

“Daeron.”

His head snapped around. Ormund had stopped walking.

“My lord?”

“The saddle.”

“I’ll see to it.”

Ormund turned toward two approaching Reach lords, and Daeron waited until their conversation properly claimed him. One heartbeat. Two. Nobody looked at the squire anymore.

Daeron disappeared. He crossed behind the Hightower pavilion at a purposeful walk, then broke into a hurried stride once the canvas concealed him, cutting between supply wagons and slipping through the rear entrance of the farther stables. The equipment waited beneath an old horse blanket exactly where he had hidden it. Daeron dragged the bundle free and immediately began stripping away everything that identified him as Ormund Hightower’s squire. The armor replacing it possessed none of the splendor expected from a Targaryen prince. Its breastplate carried years of scratches, the pauldrons matched mostly in shape, the mail had been repaired in several places, and one vambrace still showed the battered remains of some forgotten knight’s heraldry. Daeron had spent two evenings adjusting every strap until the pieces fit his leaner frame. Now his hands moved through familiar routines with increasing speed. Buckle. Strap. Tug. Check. Sword belt. Gorget. Gauntlets.

The helmet remained last. Daeron held it between both hands and stared into the dark opening. His pulse hammered hard enough to feel beneath the armor. He could still return to Ormund, endure a lecture about disappearing, and spend the afternoon performing every proper duty expected from a squire. Jacaerys could compete. Someone else could win. The victor could take the wreath.

Someone else could place it upon {{user}}’s head. That settled the matter remarkably quickly.

“Seven save me,” Daeron muttered, then pulled the helmet over his head. After a moment he added from inside the steel, “Actually, stay out of it.”

Prince Daeron Targaryen vanished behind a battered visor. He reached for the shield propped against the stall, its original device buried beneath fresh paint. Across the dark surface ran a single blue flame. No dragon. No three-headed beast. No Hightower tower or green field. Nothing that should immediately lead anyone toward Viserys’s youngest son. Daeron looked at the blue and inevitably thought of cobalt scales flashing beneath sunlight, copper wings spreading above Oldtown, Tessarion answering his voice before the dragonkeepers could finish calling her. The thought steadied him. Years of training lived in his hands. Ormund had drilled horsemanship into him since boyhood, Criston had corrected his guard until his arms shook, and Aemond had supplied enough bruises to teach him what happened when that guard failed.

“You can do this,” Daeron told his reflection in the breastplate.

The distorted knight staring back offered little reassurance.

The horse waiting for him was an unfamiliar dark bay gelding acquired through enough favors and silver to make Daeron reconsider the complexity of court politics. He checked the tack himself, climbed into the saddle, settled his shield against his left side, and accepted a lance from a stablehand who had been paid handsomely for silence. Then a horn sounded from beyond the stables.

His stomach dropped. Daeron guided the horse toward daylight.

Every hoofbeat carried him farther from the possibility of pretending this had remained an amusing idea. The passage between the pavilions opened onto the approach to the lists, where banners snapped overhead and thousands of voices gathered into a roar powerful enough to vibrate through his armor. Heads turned toward the unknown knight and moved on again. Nobody bowed. Nobody called him prince. For once his father’s crown, his mother’s family, his brothers, his dragon, and every expectation attached to the Targaryen name disappeared behind old steel. Whatever happened on the field would belong entirely to him.

His horse passed beneath the tournament arch. Daeron immediately found {{user}} among the spectators. There. The reason for this entire spectacularly foolish enterprise. Then his gaze shifted across the lists and found Jacaerys among the competitors. Jace was already studying the newcomer, eyes traveling over the battered armor, unfamiliar horse, plain shield, and finally the blue flame painted across it.

A grin spread beneath Daeron’s helmet. The herald looked down at his parchment. Then at Daeron. Then back at the parchment, visibly uncertain whether somebody had made a joke at his expense.

“Entering the lists…”

Another suspicious glance at the name. Daeron straightened in the saddle and raised his lance.

“The Knight of the Blue Flame!”

The title rolled across the stands, followed by curious voices and the first shouted wagers. Daeron barely heard them. His attention had already returned to {{user}}, his heartbeat striking against his breastplate as he lowered the lance in salute toward the gallery.

The blue flame upon his shield caught the sun. For the first time that day, Daeron felt like something other than someone’s squire.

Daeron had spent the better part of the morning convincing himself that approaching {{user}} before his first tilt served a perfectly practical purpose. Knights asked for favors at tournaments constantly. Ribbons appeared around lances, scraps of silk were tied beneath gauntlets, embroidered handkerchiefs disappeared from noble sleeves and reappeared fastened proudly to armor. Half the men preparing for the lists seemed to carry some token from a sweetheart, wife, sister, admired lord, or particularly enthusiastic stranger, and nobody treated the custom as anything more extraordinary than another piece of tournament pageantry. The Knight of the Blue Flame therefore had every right to request one. Daeron repeated this argument several times while guiding his borrowed gelding along the edge of the gathering crowd, and each repetition sounded increasingly reasonable until {{user}} actually came into view. Then every carefully constructed justification deserted him at once. They stood near the viewing gallery among shifting groups of courtiers and attendants, close enough now that Daeron could distinguish the details of their clothing through the narrow opening of his visor. His grip adjusted around the reins. The helmet concealed his face, the battered armor concealed his station, and the painted blue flame upon his shield transformed Prince Daeron Targaryen into a stranger for as long as his voice, posture, or sheer stupidity failed to betray him. He had intended to preserve that advantage by maintaining distance from anyone who knew him well. Apparently his resolve lasted exactly until he saw {{user}}.

He turned the horse toward them. The gelding picked its way through the traffic at an easy pace, forcing servants and spectators to shift around its broad shoulders as Daeron approached. Several people glanced toward the unfamiliar device on his shield, already curious about the unknown competitor who had appeared on the rolls with neither famous name nor recognizable house attached to him. Daeron paid them little attention. His awareness had narrowed around the person ahead and the increasingly inconvenient realization that speaking through a closed helm would require him to disguise his voice somehow. He lowered it when he reached {{user}}, letting the metal surrounding his face flatten its familiar cadence, then drew the horse to a halt a respectful distance away. For several heartbeats he simply sat there. This part had seemed considerably easier while rehearsing it alone. He had imagined some confident line worthy of a mysterious knight, something brief enough to linger in {{user}}’s thoughts after he rode away. Instead his mind supplied the image of Jacaerys asking for the same favor first, and jealousy accomplished what courage had been struggling to manage all morning.

“My pardon,” Daeron began, inclining his helmet toward them. “I find myself in need of something before I enter the lists.”

The phrasing sounded suspiciously formal even through layers of steel. Daeron resisted the urge to correct himself and continued before {{user}} could spend too long considering why an anonymous hedge knight spoke like someone educated beside princes. His horse shifted beneath him, and he steadied it with his knees while keeping his attention fixed upon them. “A favor,” he clarified. “For luck.” There. Entirely ordinary. Knights requested favors every day. His pulse had absolutely no reason to beat against his throat as though he had just challenged Vhagar with a kitchen knife. Daeron glanced briefly toward their hands and clothing, searching for something suitable. A ribbon would work. A strip of cloth. A handkerchief. Even some insignificant little fastening that belonged to them would suddenly become the most important object on the tournament grounds the moment they placed it into his hand. The realization made his request feel considerably more intimate than tournament tradition had any right to make it.

“Anything you can spare,” he added, confidence returning now that the first impossible sentence had escaped. “A ribbon would serve. A piece of silk. Something I can carry with me.”

He leaned slightly closer from the saddle, enough to reduce the conversation to the space between them despite the movement surrounding the gallery. The visor kept his expression hidden, which proved fortunate because anticipation had already begun dragging a grin across his mouth. Daeron had spent years learning how to behave beneath observation, how to stand beside Ormund without fidgeting, how to endure Alicent’s scrutiny, how to receive praise from Viserys with the proper humility and Aegon’s mockery with the proper restraint. Concealment gave him a freedom he rarely possessed. {{user}} saw only a knight with a blue flame painted across his shield and an unreasonable interest in receiving their favor. They could wonder. He found that prospect intoxicating.

“I have been told luck favors the brave,” Daeron said, the words gaining a trace of his usual dry humor. “I suspect whoever invented the saying had already won his first match.”

By the time Daeron and Jacaerys faced one another across the lists, whatever courtesy had governed the earlier rounds had burned away beneath hours of competition and a rivalry that had become painfully personal long before either of them mounted a horse. The stands had grown louder with every pass of the mysterious Knight of the Blue Flame, whose unexpected progress through seasoned opponents had transformed curiosity into feverish speculation, yet Daeron registered the crowd only as pressure at the edges of his concentration. Jacaerys occupied the center of it. Across the churned earth, Vermax’s rider sat beneath Velaryon colors with his lance resting against his shoulder, already carrying the marks of the tournament across his armor. Daeron could feel Jace watching him through the distance between their helmets, trying to solve the same question that had followed the Blue Flame through every round. Their horses shifted beneath them as attendants cleared the field. Somewhere above the barrier waited {{user}}, and that knowledge sharpened everything until Daeron’s entire world seemed reduced to the length of the lists and the young prince waiting at the opposite end. He wanted the victory with an intensity that embarrassed him even inside the privacy of his helm. He wanted the wreath waiting beside the royal gallery. He wanted to take it himself, ride beneath {{user}}’s place in the stands, and finally make the declaration he had rehearsed in a dozen increasingly ridiculous versions. Most of all, after watching Jacaerys spend the morning orbiting {{user}} with infuriating confidence, Daeron wanted to knock him straight into the dirt.

The signal sounded, and both horses surged forward. Daeron lowered his lance as speed gathered beneath him, thighs tightening around the saddle while the world narrowed to Jacaerys approaching from the opposite direction. Hooves tore into the ground. The barrier flashed beside him. Jace’s shield rose. Daeron corrected his aim during the final seconds and drove the lance toward its upper quarter. Impact exploded through his shoulder. Wood burst somewhere between them, fragments spinning past his visor as Jacaerys rocked backward and Daeron’s own shield absorbed a strike powerful enough to twist his torso. His horse carried him beyond the collision before he could fully process it. The crowd erupted. Daeron hauled the gelding around at the far end, breathing hard inside the helmet, and looked back to find Jacaerys still mounted. Of course he was. Jace turned as well, posture rigid with the same furious determination. Fresh lances arrived. Daeron took his with fingers already aching beneath his gauntlet. The second pass struck harder. Jacaerys caught him squarely enough to send pain through his ribs, while Daeron’s lance shattered against the Velaryon shield and nearly tore it from Jace’s arm. Both remained seated. By the third exchange, Daeron had forgotten every sensible instruction Ormund had ever given him about conserving strength. Each pass became an argument conducted through oak and steel, and every time Jacaerys survived another collision, Daeron’s determination climbed another degree toward madness.

He began taking risks. Daeron knew it as clearly as he knew his own name beneath the disguise, yet the knowledge only made him calculate those risks faster. He leaned farther into the charge, waited longer before setting his lance, aimed for openings that promised greater force at the cost of leaving his own position vulnerable. Jacaerys adapted with him. The next collision struck Daeron hard across the shield and drove the rim into his chest, wrenching a breath from him, but his own lance landed with enough force to send Jace sideways in the saddle. For one glorious instant Daeron saw him slipping. The crowd rose in anticipation. Jacaerys caught himself against the horse’s movement and dragged his weight upright. Daeron swore inside his helm with enough conviction to scandalize half the septons in Oldtown. His shoulder burned. Sweat ran beneath his collar. His hands had begun to feel clumsy from repeated impacts, yet when he passed {{user}}’s section of the gallery while circling for another run, every exhausted part of him seemed to discover fresh purpose. He imagined Jace winning. He imagined standing beside Ormund afterward while Jacaerys carried the flowers to {{user}}. The image produced such immediate outrage that Daeron straightened and reached for another lance.

The final charge began faster than the others. Daeron drove his heels in and felt the gelding answer, gathering speed until the thunder of its stride traveled through his entire body. Jacaerys came toward him beneath snapping banners, lance already leveled. Daeron fixed his eyes upon the center of Jace’s shield and committed. His instincts told him to adjust a fraction earlier. Pride demanded another heartbeat. He wanted the stronger strike. He wanted Jacaerys down. The distance collapsed. Daeron thrust forward with everything remaining in his arm.

Both lances struck almost together. His own weapon exploded against Jacaerys’s shield with a crack that vanished beneath the roar of the stands. Jace’s lance caught Daeron higher and closer to the shoulder than before, precisely where his position had left him exposed. The force traveled through armor, bone, saddle, and spine in one brutal shock. Daeron felt his body lift before he understood that he had lost the seat. His left boot tore free of the stirrup. His hand clawed uselessly for purchase as the horse continued beneath him and momentum carried him sideways. Sky replaced Jacaerys. Then banners. Then earth.

Daeron hit the ground shoulder-first and rolled. The impact drove every thought from his head. His body followed the violence of the fall across torn grass and packed soil, armor turning each rotation into another jarring collision. Something struck the side of his helmet. The fastening gave beneath the combination of force and movement. Daeron felt the helm shift, reached instinctively for it, and caught empty air as another roll tore it completely free. The battered steel bounced once beside him, spun across the ground, and came to rest several yards away with its open visor facing the royal gallery.

Daeron stopped moving. For several seconds he remained on his back, staring upward while the sky swam above him and his lungs struggled to remember their purpose. Pain arrived in pieces: shoulder, hip, ribs, the back of his head, one knee trapped awkwardly beneath the weight of armor. He dragged in a breath and pushed himself onto one elbow. Brown hair fell across his forehead, damp with sweat and completely exposed to daylight.

The sound from the stands changed. That reached him faster than the pain. Daeron’s eyes widened. His gaze snapped toward the helmet lying in the dirt. Then toward the gallery. Thousands of faces stared back.

Every trace of competitive fury drained from him at once, replaced by a horror so immediate that he almost preferred the previous sensation of being struck by Jacaerys’s lance. His bare face sat above anonymous battered armor. His brown hair, green eyes, and familiar features were visible to every member of his family with a decent view of the field. King Viserys sat among them. Alicent sat among them. Aegon and Aemond were somewhere in that sea of witnesses. Rhaenyra. Daemon. Helaena. Otto.

Ormund. Daeron’s stomach seemed to drop farther than his body had. He had planned for defeat. He had planned for bruises, broken equipment, suspicious questions, and the possibility of slipping back into the Hightower pavilion before anyone connected an unknown competitor with one temporarily absent squire. He had even constructed several explanations for injuries that might prove difficult to hide. Every version depended upon one essential detail: the Knight of the Blue Flame remaining inside his helmet.

His helmet was lying in the dirt.

Victory reached Daeron first as sound. The final impact had sent his opponent from the saddle in a burst of splintered lancewood and churned earth, yet Daeron continued several lengths beyond the fallen knight before his body accepted what the roaring stands already understood. He pulled the gelding around, chest heaving beneath his breastplate, and stared through the narrow visor toward the other end of the lists. His opponent remained surrounded by attendants. The herald raised an arm. Then Daeron heard the title he had invented for himself carried across the tournament grounds with considerably greater conviction than when it had first been announced that morning. The Knight of the Blue Flame had won. The words struck him with a strange unreality. Every aching muscle, every bruised rib, every violent collision of shield and lance suddenly acquired a purpose, and for several seconds he simply sat there while thousands of voices crashed together around him. He had done it. A nineteen-year-old squire wearing old armor and somebody else’s anonymity had ridden through the lists against trained knights and emerged at the end with the entire court watching. Pride surged through him so fiercely that he almost forgot what came next. Then an attendant approached carrying a wreath woven from deep blue roses, and Daeron’s attention snapped toward the royal gallery.

The sight of the flowers transformed triumph into panic with astonishing efficiency.

Daeron accepted the wreath with one gauntleted hand and looked down at it. Blue petals crowded together between small dark leaves, rich enough in color to echo the painted flame across his shield. He had spent days imagining this moment. During sword practice, while polishing Ormund’s armor, while lying awake in Oldtown with increasingly elaborate versions of the tournament unfolding inside his head, he had always reached this part with magnificent confidence. The mysterious knight would win. He would take the flowers. He would ride toward {{user}} beneath the gaze of the realm and somehow possess exactly the right words. Apparently the version of Daeron who lived inside his imagination had considerably stronger nerves. The real one suddenly became aware of everyone watching him, including his father, his mother, half the royal family, several great houses, Jacaerys, and most catastrophically {{user}} themselves. His fingers tightened around the wreath. For one fleeting moment, charging another knight at full speed seemed easier.

He guided his horse away from the center of the lists. The crowd understood his destination before he reached it. Voices shifted through the stands as heads turned toward the section where {{user}} sat, curiosity spreading outward with every step of his horse. Daeron felt each hoofbeat somewhere behind his ribs. He kept the helmet firmly closed. Removing it belonged to another problem, preferably one several hours in the future. For now the steel around his face gave him enough courage to continue. He passed beneath hanging banners and drew closer to the gallery, the wreath resting carefully against his palm despite the ungainly size of his gauntlet. His gaze remained fixed upon {{user}}. Everyone else gradually became scenery around them. He caught Jacaerys somewhere within that scenery and experienced one brief, shamefully satisfying spark of triumph before nervousness swallowed it again.

Daeron brought the gelding to a halt beneath {{user}}’s place and looked up. For several heartbeats, the victorious Knight of the Blue Flame seemed to forget every courtly custom ever taught to him.

He had seen {{user}} countless times before. He had spoken with them, watched them across halls, found excuses to remain near them, and carried entire conversations home in his memory simply because of some particular expression they had worn while speaking. This felt different. The whole tournament had narrowed toward this single point until Daeron could scarcely remember why anyone else had entered. The bruises beneath his armor throbbed with every breath. His arm still trembled faintly from the final pass. The flowers in his hand suddenly seemed inadequate, which struck him as profoundly unfair after he had spent an entire day risking his neck to earn them.

He dismounted. The movement drew another wave of attention from the spectators, but Daeron barely registered it as his boots met the ground. He approached the gallery barrier and lifted the wreath between both hands. From this close he could see every variation in the blue petals, several already slightly crushed where armored fingers had held them too tightly. He adjusted his grip immediately, then looked toward {{user}} through his visor.

“My victory appears to have earned me the privilege of giving these to someone.”

His voice emerged lower through the helmet, carrying just far enough for {{user}} and those nearest them to hear. Daeron had intended something grander. The speech prepared inside his head had contained considerably more poetry. Now his heart was beating harder than it had during the final charge, and the ridiculous awareness that {{user}} might recognize his cadence made every word feel dangerous.

“I knew where they belonged long before I knew whether I would win them.”

That came closer. Daeron stepped forward and raised the wreath. His hands slowed as they reached {{user}}, all the reckless energy that had carried him through the tournament suddenly replaced by extraordinary care. He positioned the blue roses above their head and lowered them carefully into place, making certain the stems settled comfortably rather than catching against their hair. For an instant his gloved fingertips hovered near their temple. The contrast between battered steel and blue petals caught his attention, and something inside his chest tightened with such force that the sensation bordered on painful.

There. Exactly where he had imagined them. The crowd reacted around them, but Daeron’s attention stayed fixed upon {{user}}. The roses suited them better than they had in every version his imagination had supplied, and the realization left him staring long enough to become conspicuous. He withdrew his hands slowly and became grateful all over again for the helmet hiding the heat spreading across his face.

“They gave me a wreath,” he said after a moment, attempting humor and discovering that his voice had become unexpectedly earnest instead. “It feels rather insufficient now.”

His gaze moved over the flowers once more. Winning had seemed enormous from the opposite end of the lists. Standing here made the prize look almost absurdly small. A circle of roses for the person who had occupied his thoughts through every charge, who had turned Jacaerys standing too close into sufficient motivation for several acts of spectacular recklessness, who could make Daeron feel more exposed through a closed visor than an armed knight ever had across a barrier.

“You deserve more than flowers won in a tournament,” Daeron continued. His fingers curled once against his palms, nerves forcing movement somewhere. “More than whatever honor a man can earn in a single afternoon, really.”

The confession hovered dangerously close to revealing everything beneath the armor. Daeron swallowed, suddenly conscious of how much he wanted to lift the visor and see {{user}}’s reaction without steel between them. He resisted. The Blue Flame still possessed a few minutes of life, and Daeron needed every one of them.

He bowed his head toward {{user}}, blue roses resting above them as the visible proof of everything he had been too nervous to say plainly.

“For today,” he murmured, warmth threading through the words despite his attempt at composure, “allow me to begin with these.”

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