The rain had been falling since morning.
Several days had passed since Quentyn Martell first rode through the gates of Griffin's Roost.
By dusk, Griffin's Roost looked less like a castle and more like a stone island drowning in a grey sea. Water ran in thin streams down the red walls, and the wind coming off Shipbreaker Bay carried salt that clung to skin and steel alike.
Quentyn Martell stood at the narrow window of his chamber, watching the storm blur the world beyond the cliffs.
He did not look like a prince.
He looked like a man trying very hard not to be mistaken for a fool.
Behind him, Gerris Drinkwater lay stretched across a bench with the casual ease of someone determined not to be impressed by anything in Westeros.
"It rains often here," Gerris said. "I begin to understand why they call it the Stormlands and not the Pleasantlands."
Quentyn did not smile.
"That is not what concerns me," he said quietly.
Ser Archibald Yronwood grunted from the corner. "Everything concerns you."
Quentyn hesitated, then nodded once.
"Yes."
That, at least, was honest.
The summons came near dusk, when the light had begun to fail and the sea outside had turned the colour of old iron. A servant boy, no older than twelve and already shaped by caution, delivered the message without lifting his eyes from the floor.
"The prince requests your presence for supper," the boy said quickly, as though afraid the sentence itself might be misinterpreted.
Quentyn studied him for a moment longer than necessary. "As before?" he asked.
The boy hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, my prince."
And then he was gone, disappearing into the corridor as though he feared the walls might remember him if he lingered too long.
Gerris exhaled softly once the footsteps faded.
"There is something reassuring about being summoned to supper by a man claiming to be a dead prince," he said.
"It makes one feel the world is still behaving exactly as expected."
Archibald pushed himself off the wall. "Or exactly as it should not be."
Quentyn said nothing to either of them. He only reached for his cloak.
They dined together in the great hall.
Torches burned along the walls, casting long shadows across the scarred stone. The table was not overly lavish, Griffin's Roost was a conquered castle, not a royal seat.
But the food was decent: roasted boar, fresh bread, and strong Stormlands ale. Quentyn sat to the right of Young Griff, with Jon Connington directly across from him, his scarred face grim in the firelight.
Young Griff cut into his meat with easy confidence. His blue-dyed hair caught the torchlight, though the silver roots were beginning to show again.
He looked every inch a prince, even in simple clothing.
"There is not much to offer you," Aegon said as servants began to bring in food. "Griffin's Roost is not yet a place of comfort. I hope you will forgive its lack of refinement."
Quentyn regarded him carefully. "The Stormlands are not known for refinement."
Aegon nodded once, accepting this without offence. "No. But they are known for strength. That is why we chose them."
The words were simple, but they carried intention.
Not conquest yet. Preparation.
Jon Connington spoke then, his voice cutting through the room with quiet precision. "The Stormlords are divided. Some will bend. Others will need to be broken."
Aegon turned slightly toward him. "And they will be."
There was no hesitation in the boy's answer. Not arrogance. Conviction.
Aegon's attention returned to Quentyn after a moment, as though remembering the purpose of his presence at the table.
"You have been here several days now," he said.
"You have seen our men. Our preparations. I hope it has given you some understanding of us."
Quentyn chose his words with care. "It has given me observation," he said. "Understanding is something else entirely."
Aegon did not seem offended by this. If anything, he appeared mildly intrigued. "And what does your observation tell you?"
There was a pause in which Quentyn weighed the consequences of every possible answer and found none entirely safe.
"Only that you are believed," he said at last. "And that belief is a powerful thing."
Aegon considered this in silence, as though turning it over in his mind rather than reacting to it. Jon Connington's expression tightened faintly, but he did not interrupt.
"And do you believe it?" Aegon asked quietly.
Quentyn did not answer immediately. That hesitation itself became its own form of reply.
"I believe," he said carefully, "that men follow what they wish to be true."
Aegon's gaze did not waver.
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only honest one I have."
For a moment, the hall was still.
Then Aegon gave a small nod, as though accepting not defeat, but limitation.
The conversation drifted after that into matters of war and loyalty, of houses that might bend and those that would resist. Aegon spoke of them not as abstractions but as people he was already preparing himself to judge fairly.
There was something almost unsettling in the way he spoke… not because of cruelty, but because of restraint.
He did not sound like a man demanding a crown.
He sounded like a man trying to deserve one before it arrived.
And that, Quentyn realized, might be far more dangerous than ambition alone.
When the meal had nearly run its course, Aegon looked at him again.
"Dorne is not easily persuaded," he said.
"No," Quentyn agreed.
Quentyn set his cup down carefully.
He had spent the days watching, how the men followed the boy, how Connington hovered protectively, how Young Griff carried himself with a mixture of youthful fire and surprising poise.
"You have their loyalty," Quentyn said at last.
"That much is clear. They follow you willingly. Some of them even with enthusiasm. not easily won, not for someone who arrived with nothing but a name."
Aegon's mouth curved faintly, though there was little of amusement in it. Only awareness.
"They follow me," he said, "because they believe I am what I say I am. Not because I command it. I am Aegon Targaryen. That belief… carries its own weight."
His eyes shifted briefly, as if searching Quentyn's face for something unspoken.
"I want Dorne to stand with me," he added more quietly, "not because it is expected, but it is right. Because my mother was one of yours. Because blood should mean something still, even after all that has been done to it."
At that, Quentyn did not look away, though something in his expression tightened almost imperceptibly.
"My father remembers what blood once cost us," Quentyn said.
"He remembers loyalty paid for in bodies. My aunt… my cousins…" He paused, the words catching slightly before he forced them onward.
"Dorne does not forget easily when it has been made to bleed."
A flicker passed over Aegon's face then… not anger, not denial, but something quieter and more contained.
Grief, perhaps, or the echo of it.
"I know," he said after a moment.
His voice had softened. "I know what Dorne lost. I was raised on that story as much as I was raised on any other. I think of it more often than I would like."
Jon Connington shifted slightly at his side, his voice rough when he finally spoke.
"Dorne has no reason to trust the men who rule in King's Landing now," he said. "They have had nothing but ashes and silence from them. Dorne has suffered enough under the men who sit the Iron Throne. Prince Doran knows that better than most. "
Quentyn turned his gaze toward the older man.
"And if he does not?" he asked quietly.
"If we misjudge this? If we place our faith where it does not belong?"
Aegon did not answer immediately. When he did, there was no offense in his tone, only something steadier.
"Then do not place it blindly," he said.
"Look at me. Listen to those who have chosen to follow me. Judge me by what I do, not what I am called."
He hesitated, then added more simply:
"I have no throne yet. No crown. Not even certainty that I will ever reach them. But I have not turned away from the chance when it was offered. That must count for something."
Quentyn studied him for a long moment.
The boy did not sound like a conqueror. He did not sound like a false king either. He sounded, uncomfortably, like someone trying very hard not to become a story he could not control.
Finally, Quentyn spoke.
"I will carry your words to my father," he said.
"And he will weigh them as he always has. But Dorne does not rush toward dragons anymore. It has learned what fire leaves behind."
Aegon nodded once, slowly, accepting this without protest.
"That is enough," he said.
"Time. I would ask for nothing more than that."
As the meal continued in quieter conversation, Quentyn felt the weight of decision pressing down on him heavier than before.
He thought of his sister, somewhere out there with a real dragon prince. He thought of his father's tired eyes and endless patience.
Not toward certainty, but toward comparison, toward the shape of two distant claims pressing against the same unseen future.
Two dragons.
One boy before him, careful and earnest, still learning the weight of his own name.
And somewhere far away, another rumor taking shape around a different kind of fire.
And Quentyn Martell, who had come only to observe, began to understand that observation was no longer a neutral act.
Not anymore.