The wind clawed at his cloak, snapping it like a banner behind him.
He closed his fingers around the little silver lion — its mane sharp enough to bite into his skin.
Behind him, a boot scraped stone.
Not approaching.
Not retreating.
Just… there.
He really hasn't moved, Aeryon thought.
The silence stretched until it hummed against the air, a taut wire between them.
Finally, Aeryon spoke without turning.
"Is this where you warn me off?" he asked. "Or where you draw steel?"
A pause — then a low, humorless chuckle.
"No," Jaime said. "If I meant to kill you, you'd already be falling."
Aeryon's lips twitched. "Comforting."
"Don't thank me yet."
Jaime's footsteps came closer. Not fast. Not loud. But deliberate — the step of a man who had never once questioned his right to stand wherever he pleased.
He stopped at Aeryon's shoulder. Close enough that Aeryon could feel the faint heat of him beneath the golden armor.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Jaime said, quiet and razor-clean:
"You're not him."
Aeryon finally turned his head. "I never claimed to be."
"No," Jaime murmured. "You didn't. That's the problem."
Aeryon raised a brow. "Is it?"
Jaime's jaw tightened — a twitch, fast, almost invisible.
But not to Aeryon.
He was studying him as intently as Cersei had… except where she had searched for ghosts, he searched for threats.
"You carry his face," Jaime said. "His stance. His calm. Gods, even the way you breathe."
He lifted his chin. "But you're not him."
Aeryon held his gaze without blinking. "Does that disappoint you?"
Another pause.
Jaime looked away first — not in weakness, but in refusal.
"It complicates things," he said.
The wind whipped his cloak, making it crack like a warning flag.
Aeryon slid the silver lion into his pocket.
"Your sister asked me here," he said. "She wanted a private word."
Jaime's mouth tightened — the smallest, sharpest twitch.
"So I gathered."
He wasn't angry.
He was calculating.
Measuring.
Weighing.
Aeryon studied him, just as coolly.
"You knew Rhaegar," Aeryon said.
"I did."
"What was he to you?"
Another fractional pause. Jaime's throat moved once as he swallowed.
"A rival," he said.
Then, in a softer voice:
"A friend."
Then, after a heartbeat:
"And a reminder of everything I wasn't allowed to be."
Aeryon watched him carefully.
Jaime exhaled once through his nose, annoyed at himself for saying anything at all.
"She sees him in you," he muttered.
Aeryon didn't answer.
"She's wrong, of course," Jaime continued. "You're… something else. I'm just not sure what."
A gust of wind rattled the banners. Far below, the sea crashed against the cliffs.
Aeryon stepped past him, slow and unhurried — a deliberate gesture, one king to another, one predator to another.
As he passed, he spoke just loud enough for Jaime alone:
"Then keep watching."
A beat.
"You might learn something."
He didn't look back.
Behind him, Jaime said nothing — but the silence felt like a sword drawn halfway from its scabbard.
Aeryon kept walking, the silver lion warm now against his thigh, the night opening before him like a path he'd already chosen.
The wind off the battlements had died by the time they stepped into the shadowed corridor of Winterfell's guest wing. The torches hissed quietly, their flames bowing in the draft that slipped between the stones.
Cersei walked beside him in silence — too close for propriety, too far for comfort. Her perfume, sharp and honeyed, lingered in the narrow hall like temptation itself.
When they reached the small solar reserved for the royal guests, she slipped inside without waiting for him to follow. He did anyway.
The door shut with a quiet click.
For a long moment, neither spoke. Cersei turned her gaze toward the firelight, her reflection flickering across the golden cup she lifted to her lips.
"I should be in my chambers," she said finally, though her tone held no conviction. "But I find myself… intrigued by you."
"Only intrigued?" he said lightly.
She smiled — slow, dangerous. "You look at me as if you've already imagined what comes next."
"I have."
"Then you're bolder than most men here." She took another sip of wine, then offered him the cup. He drank, tasting her on the rim.
Silence stretched again — heavy this time.
Cersei set the cup down. "You said before that you came from the North. Yet there's something in your eyes that doesn't belong here. You carry the look of someone… touched by fire."
Aeryon met her gaze. The flicker of the hearth danced in her pupils like molten gold.
"Then I should tell you why," he said.
Cersei tilted her head, curiosity sharpening to something keener. "Go on."
He drew a breath. "My mother died for me. She gave birth in a tower in the mountains — her brother at her side, keeping watch. She begged him to protect me. To hide me. To tell no one who I truly was."
The words seemed to freeze her in place. The color drained slowly from her face.
Her lips parted. "A tower… in Dorne?"
Aeryon said nothing, but his eyes gave her the answer.
"Lyanna," she whispered, barely audible — the name falling like venom and reverence both.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
He didn't look away. "Yes."
Cersei's jaw tightened. Her eyes glimmered with something wild — hatred, fascination, disbelief. "The wolf girl," she breathed. "The one who ruined everything. Rhaegar's precious northern rose."
Her fingers trembled as she poured another cup of wine, though she didn't drink it. Instead, she stared into the crimson surface like it might show her the past.
"And you're saying…"
"I'm their son," Aeryon said quietly. "Born after he died. Born as she lay bleeding and begging her brother to keep me safe. And he did."
Cersei laughed once — a bitter, broken sound. "Ned Stark, hiding Rhaegar's son under his own roof. How poetic."
He said nothing.
She turned toward him again, the bitterness softening into something else — something darker. "Do you know what it means, boy?" she asked. "You are the proof that she won. That Lyanna took what should have been mine — and left her mark upon the world."
Her eyes raked over him, hungry and sharp. "And yet you chose to stand before me."
He met her gaze. "I didn't come here by chance."
Cersei stepped closer. "No… I don't suppose you did."
She brushed her fingers along his cheek, tracing the faint scar there — her voice lowering. "You have his face. His eyes. But you're hers, too. How strange the gods are — to give me the son of both the man I loved and the woman I hated."
Her hand lingered against his jaw. "Do you know what that makes you to me?"
He swallowed. "A reminder?"
She smiled faintly. "No. A chance to take back what was stolen."
Before he could answer, her mouth was on his — not soft, not tender, but claiming. The silver clasp she'd given him earlier pressed cold between them as if to seal something far more dangerous than a kiss.
And when she finally drew back, her eyes burned like wildfire.
"You'll tell no one," she whispered. "Not Robert. Not Jaime. Not anyone. You'll stay hidden — just as your mother wanted. But you'll belong to me now, do you understand?"
Aeryon's breath came unsteady. "And if I don't?"
Cersei smiled — slow, knowing, and cruel. "Then I'll tell the world who you are. And we'll see how long the North keeps its secret prince alive."
Cersei's Private Thoughts)
Aeryon left the solar only when she released him — and she released him only when she wanted to.
He stepped out into the corridor, breath still uneven, the silver lion clasp hidden in his hand. He paused once, just long enough to steady himself, before striding deeper into Winterfell's hallways.
The door shut behind him.
Cersei stood very still.
The fire crackled. Wind moaned against the shutters. Somewhere far below, the sounds of Winterfell's nightly bustle drifted faintly upward.
But she heard none of it.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips.
Rhaegar's son.
Lyanna's son.
She let out a slow, shaking exhale — not of fear, but of something far more intoxicating.
Victory.
"So she died," Cersei murmured to the empty room, "and yet you lived. You lived because she begged for you."
Her voice was soft, distant.
"She may have stolen Rhaegar from me…"
Her hand curled slowly against her chest.
"…but her son came to me willingly."
The thought hit her like a rush. She sank into the chair beside the fire, wine cup trembling in her fingers. She took a sip — then another.
"His face," she whispered. "Seven hells… he has Rhaegar's face."
She pressed her thumb to her lower lip, remembering the heat of his mouth, the tension in his breath, the way he had stepped into her space like he belonged there.
"He doesn't carry Robert's stink. Or Jaime's softness. He carries fire."
A flicker crossed her eyes — something hungry, something triumphant, something that bordered on obsession.
"If the gods denied me the father…"
She smiled slowly.
"…perhaps they offer me the son."
Her gaze drifted toward the door he had walked through minutes earlier — her expression melting into something fierce, possessive.
And she whispered, as if promising the stones themselves:
"I won't lose this one."
A moment later, her smile faded — replaced by calculation.
"Ned Stark kept him hidden all these years…" She traced her nail along the rim of her wine cup. "And he thinks he can keep hiding."
Her eyes hardened.
"No. Not anymore."
She leaned back, wine burning down her throat.
Winterfell was cold. Stark cold.
But she?
She was wildfire dressed in gold.
And now?
Now she had something worth burning for.
Aeryon's Private Thoughts
The moment the solar door shut behind him, Aeryon inhaled sharply — not out of fear, not out of guilt, but out of relief.
It worked.
The corridor was empty. The torches hissed. Somewhere in the distance, a guard's spear clattered as he shifted his weight. But Aeryon barely heard any of it.
His pulse still throbbed from Cersei's kiss, from her nails on his jaw, from the wildfire heat in her eyes when she realized exactly who he was pretending to be.
Or who he let her believe he was.
He walked slowly, deliberately, down the hall, every step measured. The stone beneath his boots felt steadier than it had all night.
She bought it.
Every word.
Aeryon ran his thumb over the silver lion clasp she had pressed into his hand. The metal was cold, but his palm was warm around it — claiming it.
Claiming her.
"Rhaegar's son," he whispered under his breath, amused. "Lyanna's dying wish."
He almost laughed — but held it back. Winterfell had enough ghosts.
No need to add another echo to the halls.
He hadn't spoken a single lie.
Not technically.
But the truth he gave her?
That was crafted blade-sharp.
Everything he said — the tower, the brother, the secret — was real.
It just wasn't his.
And in Cersei's mind?
That distinction no longer mattered.
Aeryon's footsteps softened as he reached the dim stairwell leading to the guest chambers. He paused at the top, leaning a shoulder against the wall.
This was why he had chosen Rhaegar's face — the silver hair, the smoldering eyes, the quiet threat of beauty that drew people in and made them see what they wanted to see.
No one who had known Rhaegar — not intimately, not from a distance — would look at him and doubt.
It was a mask crafted for politics. A bloodline made for manipulation.
And Cersei, of all people, had been the easiest to claim.
All it took was a few truths, a few careful pauses, the right softness in his voice…
…and she unraveled like silk.
Aeryon smiled faintly.
Now she was his.
Not in the obvious ways.
Not in the physical ways — though that certainly didn't hurt.
No.
She was his because she believed.
Believed he was the last ember of the man she had obsessed over.
Believed he was the living proof that Lyanna's victory had not been complete.
Believed he had chosen her.
And she would fight for him now.
Not just with her body — that was trivial.
She would fight with her power.
Her influence.
Her secrets.
Her scheming mind sharpened by years beside a king she despised.
Aeryon pushed away from the wall and continued toward his chambers, steps silent, eyes bright in the dim torchlight.
He didn't fear the world learning the truth.
He had told Cersei exactly why:
If Ned Stark tried to deny him, he'd have to reveal how he knew the truth.
And breaking that oath — the oath Lyanna died begging him to keep — would destroy him.
Ned Stark, the honorable wolf, would never sacrifice honor for politics.
He would choke on the truth before he spoke it.
A perfect trap.
A perfect shield.
A perfect lie.
Aeryon paused at the door to his room, fingers tightening on the lion clasp.
Everything he'd done so far — the posture, the mystery, the half-truths, the eyes that never flinched — had one purpose:
Secure the queen.
The most dangerous woman in Westeros.
The woman who could make or break kingdoms.
The woman who now believed he was hers.
He slipped into his chambers, closing the door behind him.
Yes.
The plan was working.
He had his first major piece on the board.
And the game had only just begun.
(Author here. what did y'all think of the reveal on why he chose Rhaegar Targaryen's appearance.)