Power is Everything Chapter 1 — Greatness from Small Beginnings (Rewrite) (Patreon)

(AN: Like I said before I don’t really like the beginning of this story so it’s been hard to continue it. It felt pointless because I just wasn’t happy with it. Anyway I’ve rewritten it. Expect a lot of changes. It’s also round 40k words for the first two chapters.)

There is a stretch of land in Westeros where the Riverlands bleeds into the Reach that the smallfolk call the Golden Seam. It runs for a hundred miles along many different borders, a place where the rich dark soil of the Trident's floodplains meets the sunwarmed earth of the south. In summer, the fields there grow so thick with barley and wildflowers that a man could lie down in them and vanish entirely. The rivers were calm and gentle and had some of the cleanest water. Travelers who pass through it often say it is the most beautiful country in Westeros, and for once, the travelers are not exaggerating.

Set among the rolling hills on the Riverlands side, far from any village or road of consequence, a building sat on the crest of a gentle slope overlooking a small lake and the treeline beyond. It was not a large building. Two stories of timber and pale stone, with a seven-pointed star carved above the door and a vegetable garden running along the southern wall. The roof sagged a little in the middle where the beams had warped over the years, and the shutters on the upper windows no longer closed properly, but the walls were solid and the hearth was warm and that was enough.

This was the Sept of Small Hands, though no one called it that anymore. For decades it had simply been the orphanage, and for decades it had done what the great lords and holy septs of the realm so often failed to do. It took in those who were unwanted and unloved. It fed them, clothed them, taught them their letters and their prayers, and asked nothing in return except that they be kind to one another. Even bastards, those children the Faith condemned as born of sin and lust, were not scorned here. 

The septon who ran the place had a simple philosophy about that: a child did not choose the circumstances of its birth, and any god worth praying to would know that.

The yard outside the orphanage was currently in chaos as it was almost everyday. 

Children ran in every direction screaming as they played with each other. A girl of six chased a boy of eight around the well. Three boys were wrestling in the dirt near the goat pen. A pair of four year olds sat in the grass pulling up dandelions and stuffing them into each other's hair.

In the middle of this, Septa Alara was trying to take a headcount.

"Bess. Tomard. Willa. Pate." She called out names, ticking them off on her fingers while sidestepping a small boy who sprinted past her at full speed, followed immediately by a smaller girl wielding a stick. Alara was young for a septa, with green eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose. Her hair was tucked beneath her wimple as the Faith required, though a few strands of copper red hair had escaped at her temples, curling in the summer heat. She was a beauty to be sure, so much so that some would wonder why she even joined the Faith.

"Meron. Dalla. Hobb. Little Jory." She paused, scanning the yard. "Big Jory?"

"Here!" came a shout from somewhere behind the chicken coop.

Alara continued. "Sarra. Wat. Brella." She stopped again. Counted on her fingers. Counted the heads she could see. Counted again.

"Where is Daemon?"

"He's fishing by the lake again!" Tomard called out helpfully, already halfway up the porch steps toward the smell of bread.

Alara pressed her lips together and looked across the yard at Septa Margaery, an older woman with grey streaks in her brown hair and the perpetually tired expression of someone who had been wrangling children for twenty years. 

The two women locked eyes.

"Your turn," Margaery said.

"I went last time."

"And yet here we are."

They held each other's gaze for a long, silent moment. Then Alara sighed and held up a fist. Margaery did the same. They shook once, twice, three times. Alara threw flat. Margaery threw a fist.

Margaery's face split into a grin. "Hammer beats parchment."

"No it doesn't!"

"It does today. Off you go."

Alara muttered something under her breath that was probably not appropriate for a septa and went inside to fetch her cloak.

The path from the orphanage wound down the hill through tall grass and into the treeline, following the curve of a stream that fed into the lake below. The wind picked up as Alara walked, pulling at her cloak and sending the wildflowers on either side of the path swaying in the wind. Summer in the Golden Seam could be warm enough to make a cloak unnecessary, but the shade beneath the trees ran cool, and Alara had learned from experience that retrieving Daemon from the lake often involved getting wet.

She found him exactly where she expected to. A large oak grew at the water's edge, its roots reaching into the shallows like crooked fingers. Daemon sat with his back against the trunk, his legs stretched out in front of him, a fishing rod propped in his hands. His head was tipped back against the bark. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open.

"Daemon."

Nothing.

"Daemon."

Still nothing.

"DAEMON!"

He jerked awake so violently that his legs kicked out, his arms flew up, and the fishing rod whipped out of his hands, arcing through the air before landing in the shallows with a splash. He scrambled to his feet, lost his footing on the roots, sat down hard, and then scrambled up again, blinking wildly. "I'm awake! I was awake the whole time!"

Alara covered her mouth, but it did nothing to hide the laugh that escaped. Daemon stood there with bark in his hair, one boot in the mud, and an expression of embarrassment on his face.

"I wasn't sleeping."

"Of course you weren't."

"I was concentrating. Fishing requires concentration."

"Was the nap part of your fishing technique?"

"It wasn't a nap." He retrieved his rod from the water, checked the line with exaggerated seriousness, and cast it back out. "I was catching fish."

"Trying to catch the Spawn of Vhagar again?" Alara asked, raising a brow and crossing her arms.

Daemon's ears went pink. "No."

Alara smiled and shook her head, she knew he was lying, he'd been coming out here to try and catch the seven damned fish for years.

There was a certain myth in the countryside around the Gods Eye. Everyone knew the story. During the Dance of the Dragons, Vhagar, the greatest dragon in the world, had fallen from the sky during a battle above the lake and sunk beneath the water with her rider still in the saddle. The histories recorded it as fact. But somewhere along the way, the smallfolk had added an embellishment: that Vhagar had been carrying an egg when she fell, and the egg had hatched in the deep water, and from it had come not a dragon but a great fish. A fish the size of a horse, with scales like black iron and eyes that glowed in the dark.

It was, by any reasonable measure, a silly children's story. The sort of tale that boys told each other around campfires. No maester had ever recorded anything of the sort, and the Gods Eye was miles from here besides.

Daemon believed it absolutely.

"Even if a fish could hatch from a dragon's egg," Alara said gently, "that would have been over a hundred years ago, Daemon. And this lake is not the Gods Eye."

"Rivers connect," Daemon said, as if this settled the matter entirely.

"The Gods Eye is downstream."

"Maybe it swam."

"A hundred miles upstream."

"It's a very determined fish."

Alara opened her mouth, closed it, and decided this was not a battle worth fighting today. Instead she stepped closer and looked down at the wooden bucket sitting beside him in the grass. Inside were five good-sized trout. Her expression softened. "You did well. Five is more than enough. It will be nice to have fish for dinner tonight."

Daemon brightened immediately. "Can you imagine though, if I actually caught it? We would eat like kings for a month! I would need a bigger bucket, maybe a cart, and we could..."

He stopped mid-sentence as the line in his hands had gone taut.

Something was pulling.

Daemon's eyes went wide and he gripped the rod with both hands, his knuckles whitening. The line cut sideways through the water, drawing a sharp V across the surface. "Something's on it," he said, his voice pitching up. "Something's on it! Septa Alara, something big is on it!"

"Pull it in then!"

"I'm trying!"

He leaned back, hauling on the rod. The line held, but whatever was on the other end pulled harder. Daemon's boots skidded in the mud. He dug in his heels and pulled again, his face screwing up with effort.

"Help me!"

Alara grabbed the rod behind his hands without thinking. Together they pulled, leaning back against the weight. The line sang. The rod bent into a deep arc.

"It's coming!" Daemon shouted. "Pull!"

They pulled.

The line snapped back. The resistance vanished all at once. Daemon and Alara, still pulling with everything they had, went stumbling backward, tangled in each other, and for one moment they teetered on the edge of the bank.

Then they went in.

The water was not deep but it was very cold. Alara surfaced sputtering, her headdress plastered to her head, her cloak billowing around her like a brown jellyfish. Daemon came up beside her, gasping and grinning, his silver hair hanging over his eyes.

"Did you see that?!" he shouted.

Alara stood in waist-deep water, looked down at her soaked robes, looked at Daemon's face, and felt something in her chest that was equal parts exasperation and love.

"I saw," she said.

"It was enormous! It had to be the Spawn of..."

"Daemon."

"...yes?"

"Let's get going before I end up drowning you in the river." Despite having a smile on her face Daemon could tell she wasn't happy. 

She waded toward the bank, wringing out her cloak. Behind her, Daemon grabbed his bucket of fish, which had mercifully not tipped over, and followed trying not to get any more on her bad side. The walk back up the hill was warm enough that their clothes started to dry before they reached the yard. When they came through the gate, the younger children spotted Daemon first.

"DAEMON!"

A wave of small bodies hit him at knee level. He staggered, laughing, as three children attached themselves to his legs and a fourth climbed onto his back. He carried them all without complaint, walking like a man in leg irons while they shrieked and giggled.

On the way up the path, he bent down and plucked a small blue flower from the grass. When he reached the porch, he knelt in front of a girl of about five with dark hair and held it out to her. "For my lady," he said respectfully. The girl took the flower, turned bright red, giggled so hard she hiccupped, and ran away to show the others.

The septon was waiting for them at the long table that served as the orphanage's dining hall. He was a thin man in his sixties with kind eyes and hands that shook slightly. He looked at Daemon, then at Alara's soaked robes, and smiled. "It appears young Daemon has dragged you along on another one of his adventures."

The table erupted. The children laughed, Daemon looked sheepish, and even Alara smiled despite herself. "I am going to go and get changed," she said with as much dignity as the situation allowed, and left a trail of wet footprints across the floor.

When she returned in dry robes, they were all seated. The septon stood at the head of the table, and the room fell quiet with the ease of long practice. They bowed their heads together. "Father above, judge us kindly. Mother above, grant us mercy. Warrior, give us courage. Maiden, keep us innocent. Smith, strengthen our hands. Crone, light our way. Stranger, we ask only that you pass us by today."

"So say we all," the children murmured.

Then they ate.

The bread was fresh and still warm from the oven. The fish that Daemon had caught was fried in butter with wild garlic that the children had picked from the woods that morning. There were boiled turnips and a small wheel of cheese that a passing trader had given them in exchange for mending his cart. It was simple food, but there was enough of it, and the table was full with conversation and laughter.

Daemon sat near the middle, helping the younger ones cut their fish and telling a story about the thing on his line that grew larger and more terrifying and more exaggerated with each line. By the time he was done, the fish had become a sea dragon and the lake had turned into a whirlpool.

"When are we giving Daemon his nameday present?" the Tommad suddenly asked through a mouthful of bread.

The girl beside him, Bess, slapped his arm. "You weren't supposed to say anything!"

"Ow! I forgot!"

Daemon looked around the table. The children had gone quiet, some of them squirming with barely contained excitement, others glaring at Tomard with the righteous fury of a secret betrayed. The septas exchanged a glance. Daemon's brow furrowed.

"What present?"

The septon, who had been watching all of this, let out a small sigh and smiled. "Well. I had hoped to keep this for the day itself, but it seems the cat has left the bag."

He reached beneath the table and produced a small wooden box and set it before Daemon.

"Your sixteenth nameday is an important one, Daemon. In the eyes of the Faith, it is when a boy becomes a man." He paused, and something in his expression shifted. Something heavier. "And sadly, it is also when you must leave us, every man and woman has a path in life and it is out there they have to find it."

The table was very quiet now.

"But before you go," the septon continued, "we wanted you to have something to take with you."

Daemon opened the box.

Inside, resting on a scrap of clean cloth, was a bracelet. It was made of braided leather cord and strung along its length were small charms. They were carved from wood, each one different, each one rough and imperfect in the way that only something made by a child's hands could be. A little fish. A star. Something that might have been a horse or might have been a dog. A flower. A sword. A tiny seven-pointed star. Each one had been made by a different child, and each one had been made for him.

Daemon looked at the bracelet for a long time. He did not say anything at first. Then he picked it up and put it on his wrist and looked around the table at all of them, every face, from the smallest to the oldest, and smiled. "Thank you," he said. "All of you. I'll never take it off."

Bess burst into tears. This set off a chain reaction among the younger children that required several minutes and two septas to resolve. When the noise had settled, the septon leaned forward. "Where will you go, Daemon? Have you thought about it?"

Daemon's face lit up and he sat straighter, the sadness that had touched his features a moment before vanished behind the brightness that was so naturally his. "I am going to King's Landing," he said. "I am going to take the Knight's Trials."

The effect on the table was immediate and the older boys nearly fell out of their seats.

"The Knight's Trials!"

"Can I come?!"

"Are you going to fight a Kingsguard?!"

"I heard they make you wrestle a bear!"

"That is not true, Hobb."

"My friend said they drop you on an island and you have to survive for a month!"

"Your friend is a liar."

The septon let the noise wash over them for a moment before raising a hand, and the table settled. He looked at Daemon with an expression that held pride and worry in equal measure. "The Trials are not for the faint of heart, Daemon. Many attempt them. Most do not succeed. Some do not return."

"I know," Daemon said with a smile still on his face. "But I'll do my best. That is all anyone can do."

"He is going to be the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms!" Little Jory shouted from the end of the table, and the other children cheered.

The rest of the day passed the way good days do, without anyone noticing the hours going by. The children played in the yard until the sun turned gold and long shadows stretched across the grass. Daemon helped carry water from the well. He fixed a loose hinge on the chicken coop. He sat on the porch with the septon and watched the younger ones chase fireflies as the sky darkened.

He touched the bracelet on his wrist and felt every charm beneath his fingers, one by one, like a prayer.

As the sun dropped over the hills, Daemon still sat on the porch beside the septon and watched it happen the way he had a thousand times before, with his knees drawn up and his arms resting across. The younger children had been ushered inside by the septas, until the only sounds left were the crickets and the soft creak of the porch under the septon's rocking chair.

"I have always loved this," the septon said quietly, his eyes on the horizon where the last sliver of sun was sinking behind the hills. "The way the light changes at the end of the day. It was one of the reasons I chose to build the sept here, you know." He folded his hands in his lap. "No matter how hard the day has been, no matter what troubles have found their way to our door, all I have ever needed to do is wait for the sun to set. And when it does, when the sky looks like this, I am reminded of how truly amazing life is. How much beauty there is in the world, even when the world does not feel beautiful."

He turned to look at Daemon. "Don't forget that, Daemon."

Daemon met his gaze and smiled, "I won't."

The septon smiled back, and for a moment the warmth of it matched the fading warmth of the sky. But then the smile softened and fell away, the lines around his mouth deepened, and he looked out at the darkening fields with an expression that Daemon had rarely seen on his face. "You must be careful out there," the septon said. "You have grown up here, Daemon. In this sept, surrounded by people who love you. When you leave, you will discover very quickly that the world beyond these hills is a different place. There are people in it who are deceitful. People who will smile at you and mean nothing by it, who will offer you friendship with one hand while the other reaches for your throat. There are people who are violent not because they must be but because they choose to be, because they enjoy it."

He paused. "And if you take the Knight's Trials, you will encounter the worst of it. The Trials attract the brave and the ambitious in equal measure, and not everyone who is ambitious is kind."

Daemon sat and listened.

The septon held his gaze for a long breath, then nodded to himself as though he had remembered something. He rose from his chair slowly, the way he did everything these days, with care for the joints that ached and the back that did not straighten as fully as it once had. He went inside, and Daemon heard him moving through the back room where he kept his personal things, the room that the children were not permitted to enter.

When he returned, he carried a long object wrapped in cloth. It was bound with a leather cord and had clearly not been touched in a very long time as the dust had settled into the creases of the wrapping. He sat down again and laid the object across his knees, running his thumb along its length. "This belonged to me," he said, "in another life."

He untied the cord and folded back the cloth, and beneath it was a longsword. The scabbard was plain brown leather, worn smooth by years of use, and the hilt was wrapped in cord that had darkened with age and the oils of a hand that had gripped it often. It was not an ornate weapon. There was no gold inlay, no gemstone in the pommel, no etching on the crossguard. It was the kind of sword that had been made to be used rather than admired, and even after what must have been years of sitting wrapped in cloth in a back room, it looked like it could still do its job.

Daemon's eyes went wide, and the excitement that broke across his face was so genuine that it made the septon laugh. Daemon reached for it, then stopped himself and looked at the septon as if asking permission. The septon nodded, and Daemon took the sword from his lap with both hands.

He stood up and drew it from the scabbard in a single motion, and the blade caught the last of the evening light, gleaming dully along its edge. It was well made and well maintained, the steel clean and free of rust despite its years in storage. Daemon held it out in front of him, testing the balance, then gave it a few swings, turning his wrist to feel how it moved through the air. He was not trained, and his form was clumsy, but his hands were dexterous and he soon handled it well enough. 

"This is incredible," he breathed, turning the blade over to look at both sides. He sheathed it again and held it against his chest as though someone might try to take it from him. "Thank you. I mean it, truly, thank you."

He looked at the septon with curiosity sharpening his expression. "Why did you have a sword? What did you do before you became a septon?"

The septon waved his hand in a slow, dismissive gesture that carried no unkindness but also no invitation to press further. "That was another life, Daemon, and one that needn't be revisited. I was a different man then, and the man I was has no bearing on the man I am now." He looked at the sword in Daemon's arms, and something flickered behind his eyes. "But I have no use for it anymore. It has been sitting in that room gathering dust for longer than you have been alive. It would be better served with a new companion."

Daemon ran his hand along the scabbard, feeling the smoothness of the leather beneath his fingers, and nodded. "I will take care of it. I promise."

The septon settled back into his chair and was quiet for a time, watching the sky darken from violet to the deep blue of early night. "Promise me something Daemon," the septon said.

Daemon set the sword across his knees, mirroring the way the septon had held it moments before, and nodded. "Anything."

The septon looked up at the emerging stars. "People think of the Warrior as a figure of battle. They associate him with fighting and the clash of swords. Boys pray to him before duels and soldiers pray to him before wars. But the truth of the Warrior, the real truth that so many miss, is that the strength he represents is not strength of arms. It is strength of heart."

He leaned forward, and his eyes found Daemon's and held them. "When you look at that sword, I do not want you to see something used for killing. I want you to see something used for defending. For protecting." He reached out and placed his hand over Daemon's, over the sword. "Killing is the easiest thing in the world. It's having the courage to spare someone, to stay your hand when every part of you wants to strike, that requires true heart. That is the strength the Warrior asks of us, Strength of heart."

Daemon looked at the old man who had raised him and he smiled. "I promise I won't forget."

The septon pulled him into an embrace, and Daemon let himself be held the way he had been held as a small child, with his chin resting on the old man's bony shoulder and the smell of hearth smoke and old parchment filling his nose.

When they separated, Daemon looked down at his hands, turning the bracelet on his wrist. "I think I will leave early tomorrow," he said quietly. "Before the others wake. I don't want to upset everyone with a grand goodbye."

The septon studied his face then nodded slowly. He understood. Daemon had always been better at arriving than departing, better at beginnings than endings. A drawn-out farewell with a dozen crying children would break his resolve, and they both knew it. "They will be sad," the septon said. "But they will understand, in time. That is the nature of growing up, Daemon. The people we love do not stop loving us simply because we are no longer in the room. They carry us with them, just as you will carry them with you."

Daemon nodded, and the septon squeezed his shoulder one final time before rising from his chair and making his slow way inside, leaving Daemon alone on the porch with the stars overhead. 

He did not sleep well that night, he lay in his narrow cot in the room he shared with the younger boys, listening to their breathing, watching the moonlight move across the ceiling. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the road stretching out before him, and his heart would race with excitement and then clench with something that was not quite fear but lived very close to it.

When the sky outside the window began to lighten from black to the deep grey that comes just before dawn, he gave up on sleep entirely and pushed himself out of bed. He moved quietly and dressed, pulling on his worn boots and lacing them slowly, then collected the pack he had prepared the night before. It was not heavy as he didn't own much; a change of clothes, the supplies the septon had given him, and a small pouch of copper coins.

He made his way through the hall, past the kitchen, past the dining table where they had eaten together just hours before, and toward the front door. He lifted the latch as gently as he could, easing the door open and letting the morning air wash over his face.

"Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?"

Daemon stopped in the doorway and closed his eyes, and a smile crossed his face despite the tightness in his chest. He turned around slowly to find Septa Alara standing in the hallway behind him, wrapped in a shawl over her nightclothes, her copper hair unbound and falling loose around her shoulders in a way he had never seen before as she always kept it tucked beneath her wimple. Her arms were crossed and her expression was caught somewhere between reproach and affection, as though she could not decide which one he deserved more.

"I didn't want to make it harder than it already is," Daemon said softly, adjusting the strap of his pack on his shoulder.

Alara's expression softened, and the reproach faded, leaving only the warmth underneath. "You have been an absolute pain ever since I first came to this sept," she said, though her voice wavered just slightly on the last word. "You tracked mud through every room I cleaned. You put a frog in my bed on my very first night. You convinced the younger children that I was secretly a witch, which took me months to undo."

Daemon bit his lip to keep from laughing. "They figured it out eventually."

"Hobb still checks his bed for curses."

"That is not my fault."

Alara shook her head and smiled, though it was easy to see the smile was tinged with sadness. "You have been a pain," she repeated, more quietly now, "but I have felt blessed all the same. Every single day."

She reached behind the kitchen doorframe and produced something she had placed there in advance. It was a fishing rod, and it was not the battered, warped thing that Daemon had been using for the past three years. This was new. The shaft was smooth and straight, carved from a pale wood, the line was good strong cord rather than the fraying thread Daemon had been making do with.

Daemon stared at it and his mouth opened, and for one of the very few times in his life, nothing came out.

"I thought I'd get you a gift for your nameday," Alara said, holding it out to him.

"How did you get this?" he managed, taking it from her hands and turning it over with the careful reverence of someone handling a holy relic. "This must have cost..."

"I am owed a few favours," she said, and the smirk that accompanied the words was so self-satisfied that Daemon laughed out loud before catching himself and glancing toward the sleeping quarters.

He looked at the rod in his hands, and then at the septa standing before him and he crossed the distance between them and hugged her. When he stepped back, he slung the rod alongside his pack and cinched it in place with the spare cord she had thoughtfully included. He adjusted the sword on his hip, settled the pack on his shoulders, and stood before her looking every bit the boy he still was. 

"When I am a knight," he said, "I will come back and I'll make up for everything all of you have done for me."

Alara laughed and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I will be waiting."

Daemon smiled at her one last time, the radiant smile that the children loved and the septas could never quite resist, then he turned and walked through the door and out into the morning. 

He walked and did not look back.

_____________________________________

The days that followed were some of the happiest of Daemon's life, though he had no way of knowing that at the time because he had so few days to compare them to.

He walked south along roads that wound through the hills of the Riverlands, past farmsteads and orchards and fields of wheat that rippled in the wind like golden water. He slept under hedgerows when the weather was kind and beneath the eaves of barns when it was not, snd he woke each morning to a world that was larger than the one he had gone to sleep in. 

Everything was new. 

The way the land changed as he moved through it, the colour of the soil shifting from the dark loam near the orphanage to a lighter earth further south. The smell of different trees. The sound of rivers he had never heard before. He stopped at every stream to test his new fishing rod and caught something at nearly all of them, which he took as a sign that the rod was blessed or that Septa Alara had friends in very high places.

On the second morning, he crested a ridge and saw the Trident in the distance, he stood there for a long time with his pack on his shoulders and his mouth slightly open... he had never seen a river that large in his life, it made the lake behind the orphanage look like a puddle. 

He spent the rest of that day walking along its bank, watching the barges and fishing boats drift past, waving at the men who worked them and receiving waves and curious looks in return. 

A boy with silver hair and a sword on his hip and a fishing rod strapped to his pack was not a common sight on the Trident road.

It was at that point he crossed the threshold of the furthest he had ever been from home.

He knew this because he had asked the septon once how far the nearest town was, and the septon had told him it was a place called Harroway, roughly four days' walk to the south. Daemon had never been there. He had never been anywhere. The orphanage and the woods and the lake and the fields had been the entire world for sixteen years of his life, and now he was past them, standing on a road he had never stood on before, looking at trees he had never seen before, breathing air that smelled different from the air he had grown up breathing. 

The feeling was not exactly fear and not exactly excitement but something in between that made his chest feel tight and his smile impossible to control.

He had learned at a crossroads inn that the Knight's Trials would not begin for another three months, which meant he had time. Time to walk slowly, to explore, to take detours down roads that looked interesting for no reason other than that they looked interesting. He did not have much coin, but he had his fishing rod and his skill with it, he discovered very quickly that a boy who could catch dinner was welcome at almost any campfire.

It was at one such campfire, on the evening of his fourth day on the road, that he met the merchant and his daughter.

Daemon had been following a track that ran parallel to a tributary of the Trident, a smaller river whose name he did not know, looking for a good place to fish and camp for the night. He found both in the form of a grassy clearing beside a shallow ford. He had just finished setting up his line and was gathering wood for a fire when he heard the sound of wheels on the path behind him and turned to see a covered wagon approaching, drawn by a mare that looked as tired as the man holding her reins.

The merchant was a stout man in his fifties with a red face and a beard that had more grey in it than brown. His name was Harmon, and he traded in cloth and thread and needles and the small sundries that farming families needed but could not make for themselves. His daughter Mya sat beside him on the driver's bench, a girl of about twelve with dark hair cut short. 

"Evening, lad," Harmon called out, pulling the mare to a stop at the edge of the clearing. His eyes moved from Daemon's face to the sword on his hip to the fishing rod in his hands and he climbed down from the bench with a grunt. "Looks like you've found yourself a good spot. Mind if we share it? The mare's done for the day, and the next village is still a few hours on."

"Of course," Daemon said, already moving to clear space for the wagon. "I was about to start a fire. If you have a pot, I can make us all something to eat once I catch a few fish."

Harmon's eyebrows rose. "You're offering to cook for us? Boy, I've been on this road for years and no one has ever offered me that."

"Then you've been meeting the wrong people," Daemon said with a grin that was so genuine that Harmon found himself laughing before he quite knew why.

Mya climbed down from the wagon, eyeing Daemon with her arms crossed. "Can you actually catch fish, or are you just saying that?"

"Mya," her father said.

"It's a fair question," she replied without looking away from Daemon.

Daemon met her stare with cheerful confidence and held up his rod. "Give me half an hour."

It took him twenty minutes. He caught four trout, cleaned them on a flat rock by the water, and had them cooking over the fire in Harmon's pot with wild garlic and a handful of herbs he had picked along the road. The smell drew Mya closer despite herself, and by the time the fish was done she was sitting cross-legged by the fire with her tummy rumbling. 

They ate together as the sun went down while Harmon told stories about the places he had been and the people he had traded with. A weaver in Maidenpool who made the finest lace in the Riverlands but refused to sell it to anyone she did not personally like. A farmer near the Twins who had trained his dog to pull a plough and claimed it worked better than an ox. A septa in Saltpans who had once punched a knight for being rude to a serving girl and had never been punished for it because the knight was too embarrassed to report that a woman of the Faith had knocked him out.

Daemon listened to every story with his full attention, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, asking questions that showed he was genuinely interested rather than merely polite. Where was Maidenpool? What did lace look like up close? Had the dog really pulled the plough, or was the farmer having Harmon on?

It was this quality, this bottomless and earnest curiosity about other people and their lives, that made Daemon so easy to talk to. He did not perform interest. He did not ask questions to fill silence or to steer the conversation back to himself. He asked because he wanted to know, and people could feel the difference, and it made them open up in ways they usually did not with strangers.

Mya, who had spent the first hour of the evening watching Daemon with the guarded wariness that a girl approaching womanhood should finally broke down and relaxed around him. She told Daemon about the places she had seen with her father, about the best swimming holes in the Riverlands, about a litter of kittens she had found in a barn two villages back and how she had wanted to keep one but her father had said the wagon was full enough already.

"He always says that," she confided, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. "But last year he let me keep a bird with a broken wing."

"I'm sure he'll change his mind... just keep at it," Daemon said with a conspiratorial wink. 

When the fire had burned to embers and the stars had filled the sky, Mya fell asleep against her father's shoulder, Harmon carried her into the wagon and laid her in the nest of blankets and cloth bolts that served as her bed on the road. He came back to the fire and sat down across from Daemon. 

"Where are you headed, lad? If you don't mind my asking."

"King's Landing," Daemon said. "I'm going to take the Knight's Trials."

Harmon let out a humourless chuckle. "Those damn trials... always filling our young men with dreams of grandeur, let me warn you lad there is little grandeur in becoming a Knight... especially for our King."

"What do you mean?" Daemon asked with a little confusion. 

Harmon didn't reply for a moment he then let out a sigh."I'm sorry lad... sometimes my mouth can speak before I truly think about what's being said, I just hope you truly think about whether being a Knight is what you want."

Daemon touched the bracelet on his wrist, running his thumb over the small wooden charms. "There are people depending on me. I want to become a knight so I can take care of them."

Harmon looked at him for a while longer, then shook his head with something that might have been admiration or pity or maybe both at once. "Well. If you're heading south, we're going the same way for the next two days. You're welcome to walk with us. Mya likes you, it'll be nice to have some company for her."

"I would love that," Daemon said with a smile. 

They travelled together for the next two days, as Harmon had offered. Daemon helped push the wagon out of a muddy rut on the first morning, putting his shoulder against the back wheel while Harmon urged the mare forward, both of them covered in mud by the time it was done and laughing about it after. He fished for their meals at every stop and taught Mya how to cast a line, standing behind her at the riverbank and guiding her hands until she got the motion right, her face full of concentration and then splitting into a grin of pure delight when she felt the first tug on her line.

"I caught one! Father, I caught one!"

"Well done, girl! Pull it in!"

She reeled it in, a small perch barely bigger than her hand, and held it up like a trophy while Daemon applauded and Harmon beamed from the driver's bench. That evening, Mya insisted on cooking her fish herself, Daemon made sure to tell her it was the best fish he had ever eaten. 

On the second evening, when they had camped near a crossroads where their paths would diverge in the morning, Harmon pressed a small pouch into Daemon's hand. Daemon opened it and found a handful of silver stags inside, more money than he had ever held at one time.

"I can't take this," he said immediately, trying to give it back.

Harmon closed Daemon's fingers over the pouch with both hands and held them there. "You fed us for two days and wouldn't take a copper for it. You taught my daughter to fish, which is a skill that will feed her long after I'm gone. And you made her laugh, which she doesn't do enough of." His voice roughened at the edges. "Take it. Buy yourself a proper meal when you get to King's Landing. The food in that city is terrible and overpriced and you'll need every coin you can get."

Daemon looked at the pouch in his hand, then at Harmon. "Thank you."

"Thank you, lad. For the company."

In the morning, Mya hugged Daemon so tightly that he had to gently pry her arms loose, and when he knelt down to say goodbye she punched him in the shoulder and told him he had better become a knight or she would be very cross with him. He laughed and promised that he would, she then turned away quickly so he would not see her face, and Harmon shook his hand and climbed up onto the wagon and they went their separate ways.

Daemon stood at the crossroads for a while after they had gone, watching the wagon shrink down the eastern road until it was a speck and then nothing. He touched the bracelet on his wrist and he thought about how strange and wonderful it was that you could know someone for only two days and still feel their absence when they left.

A week after leaving the orphanage, on a stretch of road that wound through a wood of old oaks and elms, Daemon came upon a boy sitting at the base of a tree.

The boy was perhaps eight or nine years old, with a dirty face and clothes that had been patched so many times that the patches themselves had patches. He sat with his back against the trunk and his arms wrapped around his knees, when Daemon came around the bend in the road the boy looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. 

Daemon stopped. "Are you all right?"

The boy sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of dirt across his upper lip. "I'm fine."

He was not fine. That much was obvious. Daemon lowered his pack to the ground and walked over to the tree, squatting down so that he was at the boy's level rather than towering over him. "What's your name?"

"Pate." The boy sniffed again. "Just Pate."

"I'm Daemon. Just Daemon." He sat down cross-legged in the dirt across from the boy, close enough to talk quietly but far enough to not crowd him. "Are you lost, Pate?"

It took a while for Pate to get comfortable with him but when he did the story finally came out. Pate lived in a village half a day's walk to the north with his mother and his older brother. His brother had sent him to deliver a message to a charcoal burner who lived in the woods, but the charcoal burner had not been at his hut, and Pate had taken a wrong turn on the way back, and now he did not know where he was, he had been sitting here for most of the day because he did not know which direction to walk.

"I'm not crying," Pate said, though his voice wobbled in a way that made the claim unconvincing.

"Of course you're not," Daemon agreed. He stood up and offered the boy his hand. "Come on. I'll help you find your way back."

Pate took his hand and pulled himself up, Daemon hoisted his pack back onto his shoulders and they set off together. It did not take long to sort out where Pate had gone wrong. Within an hour, they found the path the boy had missed, a narrow track that branched off the main road behind a thicket of brambles that would have been easy to walk past if you were not looking for it.

They walked together for the rest of the afternoon, Pate's mood improving with every step as the woods began to look familiar again. Daemon got him talking, which was not difficult because Pate was at the age where silence was an unnatural state, and by the time the trees thinned and the first ploughed fields came into view the boy was chattering freely about his life in the village. His mother made the best pies in the Riverlands. His brother was strong enough to lift a whole barrel of ale. There was a girl named Tansy who pulled his hair every time she saw him and he did not understand why.

"She probably likes you," Daemon said.

Pate looked horrified. "Why would she show it by pulling my hair? That's stupid."

"People are strange sometimes. Especially when they like someone."

"Have you ever had someone pull your hair because they liked you?"

Daemon thought about this. "No. But I've been hit with a fish."

"A fish?"

"It's a long story."

The village appeared around the bend of the road, a cluster of thatched roofs and kitchen smoke, and a woman came running out of one of the houses before they had even crossed the boundary ditch. She swept Pate up into her arms. Pate squirmed and protested that he was fine and that his new friend had helped him and could she please not do this in front of people.

The woman, who introduced herself as Masha, turned to Daemon with tears still drying on her cheeks and a gratitude in her eyes that made him uncomfortable because he had not done anything that seemed to warrant it. He had walked a boy home. 

Anyone would have done the same.

Except, as Masha told him over the dinner she insisted on making for him that evening, not everyone would have. Her eyes kept drifting to the sword on his hip and the his silver hair. It wasn't surprising, most people had to double take when they first looked at Daemon. He had wavy silver hair past his ears, was tall and well built for his age and had quite the handsome face. He looked more like a Lord than a peasant and if it weren't for his clothes Masha would've fallen to her knees and bowed her head. 

She fed him stew and fresh bread, while Pate sat beside him at the table and told his mother about the fishing rod and the sword and how Daemon was going to be a knight, Masha smiled at Daemon with a warmth that reminded him so powerfully of Septa Alara that he had to look away for a moment.

She insisted he take a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese for the road which he tried to refuse but she would not hear of it, Pate walked with him to the edge of the village in the morning and made him promise to come back and visit when he was a famous knight. 

Daemon knelt down and looked the boy in the eye and shook his hand the way men shook hands, which made Pate stand a little taller. "You're a brave lad, Pate. I hope I see you at the Knight Trials when you're grown."

Pate nodded with a massive grin. "Definitely!"

Pate grinned, and Daemon ruffled his hair and stood up and walked south along the road. 

...

A week later, Daemon was thoroughly and completely lost, and he could not have been happier about it.

It had started innocently enough. A fellow traveller on the road had mentioned in passing that the Gods Eye was not far to the east. "Half a day's walk through the Thornwood, maybe less if you don't dawdle. Biggest lake you'll ever see, lad. You can stand on the western shore and not see the eastern one, even on a clear day. And the Isle of Faces right in the middle, with its weirwoods. Gives you a chill just looking at it."

Daemon had thanked the man, shared the last of Masha's cheese with him, and promptly left the road.

It was perhaps not the wisest decision he had ever made. He had no map, no compass, and only a vague understanding of which direction east was based on where the sun had been when he set off. 

The forest was old and pretty thick, the kind of wood where the trees grew so close together that their branches wove into a ceiling of sorts that kept the ground pretty cool on the summer days.

Daemon did not mind being lost. He had grown up in woods not so different from these, and while the Thornwood was larger and denser than anything near the orphanage, the principles were the same. Follow water downhill and you would find a stream. Follow a stream and you would find a river. Follow a river and you would find people. He was in no hurry. He had months before the Trials. And besides, every bush he passed seemed to be bursting with blackberries, and he picked them by the handful as he walked, eating until his fingers and lips were stained purple.

He was licking the juice from his thumb when he saw a rabbit.

It sat in a clearing ahead of him. It was a good-sized animal, plump from a summer of easy foraging, and the sight of it made Daemon's stomach rumble with a sudden and intense longing for something that was not fish. He had been eating fish for weeks. Trout, perch, bream, and on one memorable occasion a pike that had nearly pulled him into the river. Fish was wonderful. Fish was also, after three straight weeks, beginning to lose its appeal.

He set his pack down on the ground without making a sound, rolling it off his shoulders and lowering it. He looked at the tree nearest to him, a thick-trunked elm, and climbed it as easily as another person might climb a staircase. He settled onto a branch ten feet up, reached down to his boot, and drew out the small dagger he kept there, a simple tool he used for cleaning fish and cutting rope and a dozen other daily tasks.

The rabbit had not moved. It was nibbling at something in the grass, its body still, its ears rotating slowly like tiny sails catching the wind.

Daemon moved from the elm to the next tree, a younger oak with thinner branches that bent slightly under his weight but held. He crouched on a limb directly above the clearing, judging the distance, calculating the drop. 

He would need to be quick. 

Rabbits were fast, faster than most people expected, and if he did not pin it on the first attempt he would be chasing it through the undergrowth on his hands and knees, which was an experience he had no desire to repeat after the last time.

He jumped.

The rabbit heard him. Of course it did. The moment his feet left the branch it bolted, launching itself sideways. Daemon hit the ground where it had been sitting, rolled forward onto his feet and ran.

He crashed through the undergrowth after it, branches whipping at his face and arms, his feet finding roots and stones that tried to trip him. The rabbit zigzagged through the bushes in quick turns that Daemon could not hope to match in dense forest, but he was fast and he was stubborn and the rabbit was running uphill, which favoured the longer-legged pursuer. He gained ground, his dagger in his right hand, his left arm shielding his face from branches, and he was winding up to throw when the sound reached him.

He stopped so abruptly that his feet skidded in the leaf litter and he nearly fell.

Someone was shouting.

He stood perfectly still, his chest heaving, the dagger lowered to his side. He listened, tilting his head, wondering if he had imagined it.

"HELP! IS ANYONE OUT THERE? HELLO?"

He had not imagined it. The voice was distant but coming from somewhere to the north. Daemon slid the dagger back into his boot and jogged toward the sound, weaving through the trees. The voice kept calling, growing louder as he closed the distance, the words becoming clearer as he got closer. 

"SOMEONE! ANYONE! I WILL PAY YOU! I WILL PAY YOU HANDSOMELY!"

Daemon pushed through a wall of undergrowth and emerged into a small clearing beneath a stand of tall beeches, looked up and stopped.

A boy hung twenty feet in the air.

He was suspended by one ankle from a rope that had been slung over a high branch, his body swaying gently in the breeze like a pendulum. He was about Daemon's age with golden hair that hung straight down from his head. What Daemon could see of his face it was flushed a deep red from the blood that had been pooling in his skull for what was clearly an extended period. 

He was dressed in clothes that were finer than anything Daemon had ever seen in his life, a doublet of deep crimson leather worked with gold thread, breeches of soft wool, and boots of tooled leather that alone were probably worth more than the orphanage's entire yearly budget.

It was, without question, a trap. 

A snare loop concealed in the leaf litter, attached to a counterweight or a bent sapling, designed to catch a deer or a boar by the leg and haul it into the air. The boy had walked straight into it.

On the ground beneath him, scattered across the clearing as though someone had upended a pack and rifled through its contents, lay a bedroll, a water skin, several items of clothing, a wrapped bundle that might once have contained food, and a sword. The sword caught Daemon's attention immediately. The scabbard was red leather chased with gold, and the pommel was shaped like a lion's head. It was, by a considerable margin, the most beautiful weapon Daemon had ever seen.

"Oh thank the gods," the boy said from above, his voice cracking with relief. "Get me down from here. Now. Immediately."

Daemon looked up at him, shielding his eyes against the light. "Are you all right?"

"Do I look all right? I'm hanging upside down from a tree! Cut me down!"

"How long have you been up there?"

"Hours! Does it matter? Cut the rope!"

Daemon tilted his head, "This is clever. The counterweight must be on the other side of that branch, see how the rope runs through that notch? Someone knew what they were doing."

"I don't care about the engineering! Get me DOWN!"

"What's your name, my names Daemon!?"

The boy made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a scream, his body swinging in agitation. "We can do all that after you've freed me!"

Daemon walked closer, stepping over the scattered belongings, and looked up with his hands on his hips. He could see now that the boy had an empty scabbard hanging from his belt, which had slid up his body and was now dangling near his armpit. He glanced down at the sword on the ground, the one with the lion pommel, and then back up.

"Did you drop your sword?"

The silence that followed was so intense that Daemon could hear the rope creaking.

"Yes," the boy said through his teeth. "I dropped my sword."

"That's a shame. If you had it, you could probably cut yourself free."

"I AM AWARE OF THAT."

"Was it the fall that knocked it loose, or did you let go when the trap sprung? Because if it was the trap, you might want to consider a wrist strap. My dagger has one, and I've never dropped it, even when I fell out of a tree once. Well, twice. Three times if you count the time the branch broke, but I don't think that should count because it wasn't really my fault, the branch was rotten and I couldn't have known that unless I..."

"STOP TALKING AND HELP ME!"

Daemon raised an eyebrow and looked up at the boy with an expression of mild surprise. "You're pretty rude, you know."

The boy closed his eyes and took a long, shuddering breath through his nose. When he opened his eyes again, some of the fury had drained out of them, replaced by something closer to desperation.

"You're right," he said, and the words came out like they cost him something. "I apologise. I have been hanging upside down for the better part of the afternoon, someone went through my belongings and took my food, and I believe I am going to be sick. My name is Jaime. Jaime Lannister. I would be deeply, sincerely grateful if you would please help me get down."

Daemon's face broke into a wide grin. He walked over to the lion-pommelled sword and picked it up, wrapping his hand around the grip and lifting it from the ground. It was lighter than his own sword, the balance different, the steel catching the light with a lustre that spoke of quality far beyond anything a common smith could produce. He held it out in front of him and turned it slowly, admiring the way the lion's mane flowed into the crossguard.

"This is incredible," he said softly. He gave it an experimental swing, cutting the air with a sound like tearing silk, and then another, turning his wrist to test how it moved. He did not know proper form, but his body moved with a natural fluidity that made even his untrained swings look cool. He tried a lunge, then a series of quick cuts that he had seen a hedge knight perform at a crossroads inn.

"Are you done playing with my sword?" Jaime asked from above with slight annoyance.

"Sorry, sorry." Daemon looked up, then at the tree, then at the rope.

He walked to a beech tree adjacent to the one Jaime hung from, and climbed. He went up fast, hand over hand, his feet finding knots and forks in the bark until he was level with the branch that Jaime's rope ran over. The gap between the two trees was perhaps six feet.

"What are you doing?" Jaime asked, watching Daemon with one eye through the curtain of his golden hair.

Daemon jumped not to the rope, which would have been the sensible thing. He jumped directly at Jaime, wrapping his arms around the boy's torso in midair.

The impact drove the breath out of Jaime in a wheezing gasp, and their combined weight set the rope swinging wildly, the branch above groaning in protest.

"Hold still," Daemon said, trying to adjust his grip. His hands slipped on the smooth leather of Jaime's doublet and he grabbed for purchase.

"THAT'S MY EAR."

"Sorry." Daemon shifted, reaching for Jaime's belt, but the swinging motion threw his hand off course and it landed somewhere considerably lower.

"THAT IS NOT MY BELT."

"I'm trying to..."

"STOP TOUCHING THAT."

"If you would just hold still for one..."

"YOU ARE GROPING A LANNISTER."

"I'm trying to get a GRIP!"

They swung back and forth in an increasingly unruly tangle of limbs, Daemon scrambling to find a hold that was not an ear, a groin, or any of the other sensitive areas that Jaime's body kept presenting to his hands. At one point Daemon's elbow connected with the side of Jaime's head, producing a yelp. At another, Jaime's flailing knee caught Daemon in the chin, making him bite his tongue.

Through the pain and the swinging, Daemon managed to pull himself up along Jaime's body until he could reach the rope above his ankle. He drew his dagger from his boot with his free hand and held it against the rope.

"Wait," Jaime said. "If you cut that, we'll both fall."

Daemon looked down.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" 

"But how are we... I mean how do you expect..." Jaime sighed. "Forget it just cut it..."

"You know if you still had your sword," Daemon said cheerfully, "you could have cut yourself free and this wouldn't be a problem."

The sound Jaime made was barely human.

"I'll cut on three," Daemon said, adjusting his grip on Jaime's torso. "Ready?"

Jaime braced himself, his jaw clenched, his hands reaching up to grip Daemon's arm. "Ready."

"One."

The rope snapped and they dropped.

They hit the ground in a graceless tangle of arms and legs and profanity, Daemon landing mostly on top of Jaime, whose back struck the leaf-covered earth with a thud that drove the air from his lungs for the second time in as many minutes. They lay there for a moment, groaning, before Jaime shoved Daemon off him.

"You said three! You said you'd cut on three! You only said ONE!"

Daemon rolled onto his back, wincing and rubbing his shoulder. "I hadn't even cut it yet."

They both went still. Jaime pushed himself up onto his elbows, dirt and leaves in his golden hair, and stared at Daemon. "What do you mean you hadn't cut it yet? How did we get down then?"

"I cut you down," a voice said.

Both of them scrambled up at the voice. They both tried to roll into the same direction and ended up colliding, they then shoved off each other with their hands and elbows, using each other's bodies as leverage to push themselves upright. Daemon's hand went to his sword hilt. Jaime snatched his 

 blade from rhe ground belt where it had been left, when they both got up they looked at who spoke. 

Three men stood at the edge of the clearing.

They were not the kind of men who inspired confidence. The one in front was tall and lean with a face like a hatchet, all sharp angles and hard skin, his hair hanging in greasy ropes over his shoulders. He held a short sword in one hand and a coil of rope in the other, the end of which was freshly cut. 

The man to his left was shorter and wider, with a gut that strained against a stained leather jerkin and a cudgel resting on his shoulder. The third was the youngest, barely older than Daemon, with a nervous look and a woodsman's axe.

All three of them had the look bandits or outlaws of some kind, not the romantic outlaws of songs and stories but the real kind, the kind who smelled like they had not bathed in a month and not because they weren't able to but it seemed they liked the stink.

Jaime's expression darkened as recognition flashed across his face. "He was the one who went through my things!" He pointed at the leader with his sword, fury blazing in his green eyes, but then he turned to Daemon as realisation dawned on him. "Wait if he was able to cut the rope from the ground why did you climb up and go through all that effort?"

Daemon looked at the far side of the tree, where the wooden peg was clearly visible at waist height, the cut end of the rope still dangling from it. He looked back at Jaime.

"I didn't think of that," he said.

"You're an idiot."

"Why didn't you mention it?"

Jaime opened his mouth, held it open for a long moment and then closed it.

The tall man with the hatchet face stepped forward, the coil of rope swinging lazily from his hand. "Found some good stuff in your pack, Goldie. Fine clothes, nice flint, good rope. No coin though, which was disappointing." He smiled, showing teeth that were mostly brown and partly absent. "So I went and got my lads, figured we'd cut you down proper and have a chat about where you're keeping your gold. Maybe cut you open if we have to. Turns out someone beat us to the cutting down part."

Daemon looked at Jaime. "Are these friends of yours?"

Jaime stared at him with an incredulous expression. "Are you an idiot?"

The tall man laughed. "I like this one. Tell you what, boys. Drop the swords, empty your pockets, and we'll let you walk out of here with everything still attached. Fight, and we'll take it anyway, along with a few bits you'd rather keep."

Jaime shifted his grip on his sword, rolling his wrist so the blade caught the light. He glanced sideways at Daemon. "Do you know how to use that?"

Daemon looked down at the sword on his hip, and then back at Jaime. "No."

Jaime sighed through his nose. "Fine. I'll take the two on the right. You handle the one on the left." He nodded toward the youngest bandit, the one with the axe.

Daemon scratched his chin and looked at the three men with a thoughtful expression. "Do we have to fight them? I was really just hoping to go fishing by the Gods Eye."

"Yes, Daemon. We have to fight them. They are trying to rob us and they have expressed a willingness to cut us open."

Daemon held up both hands. "Fine, fine."

The tall man's smile disappeared and he jerked his head at his companions making all three of them charge.

Jaime moved to meet them.

What happened next was the most extraordinary thing Daemon had ever seen a person do with a sword.

The tall man came in first, his short sword aimed at Jaime's midsection in a thrust. Jaime sidestepped the blade by inches, pivoting on his left foot so that the bandit's momentum carried him past, and in the same motion he brought his own sword around in an arc that caught the man's blade near the hilt and deflected it wide. The bandit stumbled, overextended, and Jaime was already turning to face the second attacker, the heavy man with the cudgel, who swung at his head with a two-handed blow that would have caved in his skull.

Jaime ducked under the swing, dropping his weight onto his back leg and letting the cudgel pass through the space where his head had been. As the heavy man's arms reached the end of their arc, Jaime stepped inside his guard, so close that their chests nearly touched, and drove the pommel of his sword into the man's temple with a hard strike. The man's eyes rolled back and his legs folded and he dropped to the ground like a sack of wet sand.

The tall man had recovered and was coming back, slashing now rather than thrusting. Jaime parried the first slash high, letting the force slide along his blade and away, then countered with a cut to the man's wrist that opened a shallow line of red across his forearm. The man hissed and pulled back, switching his sword to his other hand, and Jaime pressed forward. He moved like he was dancing, each step flowing into the next, his weight always balanced, his blade always where it needed to be. 

He feinted at the knees, drawing the man's guard down, then snapped his wrist and brought the flat of his sword across the man's hand with a crack that made the bandit's fingers spring open. The short sword fell to the ground. Jaime reversed his blade and slashed the man's thigh, cutting through the threadbare cloth and into the muscle beneath making the tall man drop to one knee with a cry of pain.

Jaime stood over him, his sword raised, and a smile crossed his face, he then drew the blade back.

...

Daemon had, during this time, been dealing with his own opponent.

The young bandit with the axe had charged him alongside the others, and Daemon, who did not know how to use a sword, had done the first thing that occurred to him. He ran directly at the boy, closed the distance before the axe could swing, and launched himself feet-first into the most committed dropkick of his life.

Both of his boots connected with the bandit's chest. The impact lifted the young man off his feet and sent him backward through the air in a trajectory that ended when his back hit the ground, he slid several feet through the leaves and dirt before coming to rest against a log with a wheeze. The axe flew out of his hands and buried itself in the turf nearby.

Daemon, who had landed on his own back in the execution of this maneuver, rolled sideways and scrambled to his feet, shaking leaves from his hair.

The bandit got up. He was angry now, his face was red and his pride was wounded, he abandoned the axe in favour of charging Daemon with his bare hands, grabbing fistfuls of Daemon's tunic and slamming him back against a tree. 

Daemon bit the man's hand.

The scream that followed scattered every bird in a fifty-yard radius. "YOU LITTLE SHIT! I'LL CUT YOUR PRETTY FACE INTO RIBBONS! I'LL WEAR YOUR TEETH AS A NECKLACE! I'LL..."

"You think I'm pretty?" Daemon said, looking up at him with a raised brow and a smirk.

The bandit roared and swung a fist at Daemon's head. Daemon ducked, the fist cracking against the tree trunk behind him, and the bandit howled and clutched his hand. Daemon drew his sword, fumbling with the scabbard for a moment before getting the blade free, and held it out in front of him in a two-handed grip that no swordsman in the history of Westeros would have recognized as any known form.

'It can't be too hard to figure out,' he thought. 'Pointy end goes toward the other person. Everything else is details.'

The bandit came at him again, and Daemon swung the sword in a wide arc that missed by at least two feet. The bandit ducked under it easily, came up inside Daemon's guard, and drove a fist into his ribs that made him gasp. Daemon staggered sideways, brought the sword back around in a clumsy backhand that the bandit dodged by leaning back, and then nearly dropped the weapon when his grip slipped on the leather wrapping.

The bandit lunged. Daemon sidestepped on instinct alone and the bandit's momentum carried him forward. Daemon stuck his foot out. It was not a technique. It was not a strategy. It was the oldest trick in the book, and it worked.

The bandit tripped over Daemon's outstretched boot, pitched forward with his arms windmilling, and hit the trunk of a beech tree face-first with a sound like a mallet striking a melon. He slid down the bark and crumpled at the base of the tree in a heap, very much unconscious.

Daemon stood over him, breathing hard, his sword hanging at his side, a look of mild surprise on his face, as though he was not entirely sure how that had happened. He turned around to see Jaime standing over the tall bandit, his sword drawn back for a killing blow. 

Daemon crossed the clearing and caught Jaime's sword arm before the blade could fall.

Jaime's head snapped toward him, fury and confusion warring on his face. "What are you doing?"

"It's over," Daemon said. "He's beaten. You don't need to kill him now."

Jaime stared at him as though he had just suggested they all sit down and have tea together. "He tried to rob me. He went through my belongings. He was going to cut me open for coin. And you want me to let him go?"

"He's unarmed and on his knees. He can't hurt you."

"He's a criminal. This is justice."

"This isn't justice," Daemon said. "Justice is what happens when someone is brought before a lord and given a chance to answer for what they've done. This is just killing someone because you want to."

Jaime's jaw clenched harder. "They were going to kill us."

Daemon looked at him with his purple eyes and said simply, "Should a Lannister really compare himself to a bandit?"

Jaime held Daemon's gaze for a long time before he tutted and let his sword arm down. "Get out of my sight," he said to the bandit. "Before I change my mind."

The man did not need to be told twice. He hauled himself upright, dragged the heavy man to his feet by the collar, and the two of them stumbled out of the clearing as fast as he could manage, though they did leave their young friend behind. 

Jaime sighed and walked over to where his belongings lay scattered and knelt down to sort through what remained of his pack. The bandits had taken his food, his tinderbox, and a silver clasp that had held his cloak. Everything else was present but disordered, and Jaime repacked it.

Daemon, meanwhile, propped the youngest bandit into a sitting position against the tree he had knocked himself out on, arranging his limbs so he would not wake up with anything painfully twisted. He patted the young man on the shoulder, stood, and stretched his arms above his head until his back popped. "I'm starving after all that," he said brightly, rolling his shoulders. "Well, it was good meeting you, Jaime. I hope the rest of your journey goes better than today." 

He turned and started walking back the way he had come, toward where he had left his pack before the rabbit chase that had started this whole affair.

"Wait."

Daemon stopped and turned around. Jaime was standing with his repacked bag over one shoulder. He cleared his throat.

"It occurs to me," Jaime began. "That as you have rendered a considerable service to a son of House Lannister, it would be only appropriate, indeed it would be expected by the customs of hospitality and the traditions of noble reciprocity, for me to extend to you the honour of hosting me for the evening meal, in recognition of your assistance and as a gesture of goodwill between..."

Daemon stood there with a completely blank expression on his face, his head tilting slowly to one side as the sentence grew longer and more elaborate without arriving at any discernible point.

"Are you trying to ask if you can have some food?" he said.

Jaime paused and his mouth hung open for a moment, the next words of his elaborate sentence dying somewhere between his brain and his tongue. Finally after a moment his shoulders dropped and he let out a breath that seemed to drain the last of his dignity. "Yes," he said. "I have no food. They took all of it."

"Why didn't you just say so?" Daemon said with a snort, already turning and waving for Jaime to follow.

"Just..." Jaime started, but he did not finish the sentence. The indignities he had already suffered today were too numerous to catalogue, and adding one more by arguing with the strange, tree-climbing, bandit-biting lunatic who had just saved his life seemed like more than the universe should reasonably ask of him.

He shouldered his pack and followed Daemon into the woods. They had barely gone a hundred paces before Daemon started.

"So you're really a Lannister?"

Jaime pushed a low-hanging branch out of his way and let it swing back, though Daemon caught it without breaking stride. "Yes."

"I heard about your family. Someone told me once that Lannisters make everything out of gold. Your cups, your plates, your chamber pots. Is that true?"

Jaime stopped walking and turned to look at Daemon with an incredulous expression. 

Daemon looked back at him with perfect sincerity, his brow slightly furrowed, genuinely waiting for an answer.

"We don't make everything out of gold," Jaime said slowly. "We mine gold. We're wealthy because of the gold mines beneath the Rock. The castle itself is carved into a mountain. We eat off normal plates. Our chamber pots are... normal chamber pots."

"Oh." Daemon nodded, absorbing this. "That makes a lot more sense. The man who told me was a tinker, and he seemed pretty sure about the chamber pots. I think he might have been having me on."

"I think he might have been."

"What about the floors? He said the floors were gold too."

"The floors are stone."

"And the doors?"

"Wood."

"The beds?"

"Wood, Daemon. They're wood. Like every other bed in every other castle in Westeros!"

Daemon grinned broadly and clapped Jaime on the shoulder as he walked past him. "Good. I was worried about you, I'd be grumpy too if I had to sleep on a golden bed."

They found Daemon's pack where he had left it, leaning against the base of a stump near the place where the rabbit had first appeared. Daemon swung it onto his shoulders, adjusted the straps, and led the way east through the trees toward the sound of running water he had heard earlier. 

Jaime followed a few paces behind, his own bag slung over one shoulder, his sword hand resting on the lion pommel at his hip out of a habit.

As they walked, Daemon talked. 

He told Jaime about the orphanage, about the septon who ran it and the septas who helped him, about the children and their names and their particular habits and the things they were afraid of and the things that made them laugh. He described the lake behind the orphanage and the fishing and the time he had convinced four of the younger boys that there was a treasure buried under the chicken coop.

Jaime listened to approximately none of this. He walked with his eyes on the path. Occasionally he would make a sound that could generously be interpreted as acknowledgement, a grunt or a hum that Daemon seemed to accept as sufficient encouragement to continue.

"And then there was the time I accidentally let the goat into the kitchen, which was really not my fault because the latch on the pen was already loose, but the septa blamed me anyway because the goat ate an entire wheel of cheese and she said I should have noticed it was loose, which is fair I suppose."

"Fascinating," Jaime said, in a voice that made it clear he had not heard a single word.

The stream appeared through the trees, a clear ribbon of water running over smooth stones between mossy banks. It was not deep, perhaps knee-height at the centre, but it was wide enough to hold fish. Daemon dropped his pack by the bank and began assembling his fishing rod.

He looked up at Jaime, who was standing at the water's edge with his arms folded, and smiled. "Want to learn how to fish?"

"No."

"It's easy. I could show you in a few minutes."

Jaime's chin lifted slightly as if looking down in it. "I'm not allowed to do things like that."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a Lannister."

Daemon's brow furrowed. "Are Lannisters allergic to fish?"

"What?"

"What?"

Jaime looked at him. 

Daemon looked back. 

Neither blinked.

Jaime shook his head with an annoyed motion. "No, we are not allergic to fish."

"Then what's the problem?"

Jaime exhaled through his nose. "There are things that nobility cannot do because they are considered beneath their station. Fishing is one of them. Hunting with hounds and hawks is acceptable. Fishing with a rod and a line is peasant work. If a lord were seen doing it, people would talk. It would be embarrassing. A lord provides for his household through the labour of his servants and smallfolk, not by squatting in a stream with a stick."

Daemon listened to this explanation with his full attention, nodding along wnd when Jaime finished, Daemon smiled warmly. "I think I get what you're trying to say," he said. "You've never tried fish before. Don't worry, it's really good."

Jaime opened his mouth, closed it, and sat down heavily on a rock near the bank with a defeated posture. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the water while Daemon waded into the shallows and began to cast.

"So how did you get so good with a sword?" Daemon called out over his shoulder as he worked the line through the current, letting it drift downstream before drawing it back. "Back there with those bandits, I've never seen anyone move like that."

Something changed in Jaime's bearing. The sullen posture straightened. His chin came up. When Daemon glanced back, there was a light in the Lannister boy's green eyes that had not been there before.

"I've been training with a sword since I could walk," Jaime said confidently. "I held my first blade at three. A wooden one, sized for my hand, that my uncle Gerion had made for me. By the time I was seven, I was sparring with boys twice my age. By fifteen, the master-at-arms at the Rock told my father he had nothing left to teach me."

He paused, turning a small stone over in his fingers. "People call me a prodigy. They say I'm one of the most gifted swordsmen House Lannister has produced in generations." The bitterness crept back into his voice on that last word, before he smoothed it away. "But the truth is simpler than all of that. I love it. I love the way a blade feels in my hand, the way a fight unfolds, the way you can read a man's intentions in his footwork. It's the only thing in my life that has ever made complete sense to me."

Daemon turned to face him fully, his fishing line momentarily forgotten. "That's incredible. I haven't had much experience with mine. The septon gave it to me when I left and I've been swinging it at trees mostly."

Jaime's mouth twitched. It was not quite a smile, but it was closer than anything Daemon had seen on his face so far. "I noticed."

Daemon laughed and turned back to the stream. Within a few minutes, the rod bent in his hands and he pulled a fat trout from the water, followed shortly by a second. He laid them on the bank beside his pack and looked over at Jaime, who was sitting exactly where he had been. "Could you start a fire? The sun's going to go down soon and these cook better fresh."

Jaime's spine stiffened. "I refuse. Starting a fire is servants' work. It's beneath me."

Daemon looked at him with a blank expression. "Ahhh," he said, drawing the sound out. "You don't know how to start one." He nodded to himself, as though confirming an earlier suspicion. "I think I'm getting good at understanding this fancy talk now."

Colour flooded into Jaime's face so fast it looked like he had been slapped. "Of course I know how to start a fire. I've seen it done hundreds of times."

"Great. So you'll start one then."

Jaime stood up and walked to the ring of stones Daemon had cleared near the bank. He gathered a handful of dry leaves and twigs and arranged them in a pile. He pulled two sticks from the ground, held one against the other, and began rubbing them together with a determination that bordered on violent.

Daemon chuckled softly and went back to the water. He caught two more fish, cleaned all four on a rock using his boot knife and threaded them onto green sticks he cut from a nearby willow. By the time he turned back to the fire pit, Jaime was still crouched over his pile of leaves, rubbing the sticks together with such ferocity that his arms were shaking, his face red, and a thin wisp of something that might charitably have been called smoke was rising from the pile before immediately dying.

"Does nobility always take this long starting a fire?" Daemon asked, settling down cross-legged beside the pit with his four speared fish resting across his knees.

Jaime made a sound that was not a word in any language. 

A tiny ember appeared in the leaves. Jaime's eyes went wide and he leaned forward and blew on it. The ember glowed brighter for one beautiful moment, and then went out.

Jaime stared at the dead pile of leaves and said nothing. His jaw was clenched so tightly that Daemon could see the muscles jumping beneath his skin.

Daemon set the fish aside and moved to sit beside him. "Here," he said gently. "You've got the right idea, but you need different wood. These sticks are green, they've got too much moisture. You want dead wood, dry wood, and you want to use a flat piece and a round piece."

He found what he needed in seconds, a flat plank of dead bark and a straight, dry stick about the length of his forearm. He placed the stick upright on the bark, cupped his palms around it, and began rolling it back and forth between his hands. "The trick is you don't go fast at the start. You go slow and steady and you let the friction build. When you see smoke, you keep going. Don't stop and blow on it like you did, that cools it down. Just keep the pressure going until the ember catches the tinder on its own."

Within a minute, a curl of smoke rose from the contact point. A tiny orange glow appeared in the bark, and Daemon carefully nudged a nest of dried grass and shredded birch bark around it, still rolling the stick, still pressing. The tinder caught. A small flame licked upward. Daemon fed it with wood shavings, then twigs, then larger sticks, and within a few minutes a proper fire was crackling in the stone ring. 

Jaime watched the entire process in silence. When it was done, he looked at Daemon and said "Thank you" in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged out of him against its will. 

Daemon grinned and propped the fish over the flames, leaning the sticks against stones so they angled over the heat. The fat began to sizzle almost immediately, filling the air with a smell that made both their stomachs growl.

As they waited for the fish to cook, Daemon sat back on his hands and looked at Jaime. 

"Can I ask you something?"

"Could I stop you?"

"Probably not. What are you doing out here? You seem a little bit unsuited to the whole rough lifestyle. No offence."

Jaime stared into the fire, the flames reflecting in his green eyes. "It's complicated."

"Everything is, until you talk about it."

Jaime's jaw tightened. "It's none of your business."

Daemon's expression shifted, the brightness dimming into something softer. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to touch on something sensitive."

For a moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire and the hiss of fish fat dripping onto hot stone. Jaime sat very still, looking at the flames, and then he shook his head slowly. "No. I'm sorry." He rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his palms into his eyes. "You've been nothing but kind to me since we met. You cut me down from a tree, you fought bandits for me, you're cooking me dinner, and I've treated you badly the entire time." He dropped his hands and looked at Daemon directly. "It's just been a rough couple of weeks."

Daemon nodded easily. "Don't worry about it anymore. The past is over and tomorrow will be better."

Jaime regarded him with something that might have been scepticism. "Where did you hear that from?"

"The septon of the orphanage I grew up in."

"What if tomorrow isn't better?"

Daemon pulled one of the fish from the fire, tested it with his finger, and handed it to Jaime. "Today can be bad. But you'll never know what tomorrow will be until you get there.

Jaime took the fish and looked at it, and then at Daemon, and something in his chest loosened just slightly. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "I suppose not."

They ate in silence for a while, the fire popping between them, the sky above the canopy deepening from blue to purple. Jaime finished his fish before Daemon finished his first, which Daemon took as a compliment. He handed Jaime the second one without being asked, and Jaime took it without protest. 

When the second fish was gone and Jaime's hands were still, he sighed. "I ran away from home," he said.

Daemon did not speak, he simply listened. 

"My father is Tywin Lannister. You may have heard of him." Jaime said in a emotionless tone. "He is the Lord of Casterly Rock, the Warden of the West, and the richest man in Westeros. He is also the most controlling, the most calculating, and the most suffocating human being I have ever known."

He turned the empty stick over in his hands, stripping the bark with his thumbnail. "Everything I am is something he planned for me to be. The swordsmanship, the training, the education. He didn't raise a son. He built a successor. Every meal, every lesson, every conversation was designed to produce the perfect heir to House Lannister. Someone strong enough to fight, smart enough to rule, and obedient enough to do exactly what he was told." The stick snapped in his fingers then he tossed the pieces into the fire and watched them catch.

"He chose who I could speak to. He chose what I could read. He chose what I ate, when I slept, who trained me. If I excelled, which I always did, it wasn't enough. If I failed, which I almost never did, it was treated like a catastrophe. There was no room to breathe. No room to make a mistake or to want something for myself. I was never a person to him. I was a legacy."

"I hate it, I hate him. I hate being around him, I hate being around my sister, I hate what she does all the time. I just had to get out of there..." He stopped. His hands were shaking, very slightly, and he pressed them against his thighs to still them.

"Why do you hate your sister?" Daemon asked gently.

Jaime's mouth compressed into a thin line. He was quiet for so long that Daemon thought he might not answer at all. "I don't hate Cersei." He closed his eyes. "But I can't be around her. I don't think it's healthy. For either of us."

He did not elaborate, and Daemon did not ask him to. Whatever lived behind those words was something Jaime was not ready to say and Daemon was wise enough, in his own instinctive way, to know that some doors needed to be opened from the inside.

Daemon nodded slowly. He did not fully understand what Jaime was describing. He had grown up in an orphanage full of love and warmth, and the idea of a family that functioned the way Jaime was describing was as foreign to him as gold chamber pots. But he understood pain when he saw it, and he understood the courage it took to talk about it. 

"So I left," Jaime continued, opening his eyes and staring at the fire. "The morning after my sixteenth nameday. I took my sword, some clothes, what coin I could carry without it being noticed, and I walked out of the Rock before dawn. I've been going from inn to inn along the Gold Road, heading east toward King's Landing."

"What changed? Why go off the road?"

Jaime's expression darkened. "My father's men caught up to me. Two days ago. I went out the back window and into the woods. I've been moving through the forest since then, trying to stay off the roads." He gestured at the clearing around them, at the trees and the fading sky. "As you can probably tell, I am somewhat out of my element."

"Where are you heading?"

"King's Landing. I'm going to take the Knight's Trials."

Daemon's face split into such a wide and sudden grin that Jaime actually leaned back. "You're taking the Knight's Trials?!" Daemon nearly shouted, grabbing Jaime by the shoulder in his excitement. "I'm taking the Knight's Trials! I've been walking south for weeks to get to King's Landing for the Trials! This is amazing!"

Jaime blinked, caught off guard by the sudden physical contact. "You're taking the Trials?"

"Yes!"

Something in Jaime's expression shifted, the excitement on Daemon's face producing a reaction that was not enthusiasm but concern. "You have your aura unlocked?" Jaime asked.

Daemon's brow furrowed. "My what?"

Jaime stared at him. "Your aura. Have you had it unlocked?"

The confusion on Daemon's face was genuine. "What's an aura?" Daemon asked.

Jaime set down the stick he had been fidgeting with and turned to face Daemon fully. "Every living person produces life energy. Most people never learn to control it, so it leaks out of them their whole lives without them ever knowing. But if you learn to contain it, to hold it inside your body and direct it, it makes you stronger. Faster. Tougher. It's the reason knights can do things that seem impossible to common people. Why a single trained warrior can fight ten untrained men and win. Why the Kingsguard are feared across the realm. It's not just skill with a sword. It's aura."

Daemon sat completely still listening with apt attention.

"You can't see it unless you train your eyes to," Jaime continued. "But if you've ever been near a powerful lord, someone truly strong, and felt a pressure on your chest, a heaviness in the air, a feeling like something was pushing down on you. That was their aura. Smallfolk feel it but they don't know what it is. They think it's just fear, or respect, or the natural authority of nobility."

Daemon thought about this. He thought about the hedge knight he had seen on the road weeks ago, the one who had moved with a speed and power that seemed impossible for a man his size. "I had no idea," Daemon said quietly. "No one ever told me."

"I'm not surprised," Jaime replied. "It's mostly known among nobility. Highborn children have their aura unlocked at sixteen, it's practically a coming-of-age tradition."

"Do you have yours on right now?"

"Not active, no. But yes, it's been unlocked. My father had it done the morning of my sixteenth nameday. It was one of the last things he did before I left." A flicker of something complicated crossed his face, gone before Daemon could read it.

Daemon was quiet for a moment, processing. Then he looked at Jaime with an expression that was entirely too calm for what he was about to say. "You're telling me that to join the Knight's Trials, you need this aura thing."

"No you don't need it to join. But without it, you will almost certainly die. The Trials are designed for aura users. The challenges, the opponents, the environment. A person without aura walking into those Trials would be like a man without armour walking onto a battlefield."

"And most of the other candidates will have theirs unlocked already."

"Every highborn candidate, absolutely. Some of the common-born as well, the ones who've been lucky enough to find someone to teach them. But there will be plenty of peasants there who don't have it, yes. Boys who heard stories about the Trials and thought they could become knights through courage alone." Jaime replied. "Most of them won't survive the first stage."

Daemon looked at the fire and for a moment he was very still. Then a smile crept onto his face and he looked at Jaime "How do you unlock it?" he asked.

Jaime had expected fear, or at least concern. "It can be done through months of intensive concentration and meditation. That's the safe way. Or it can be forced open by someone who already has their aura unlocked, by pushing their own energy into another person's body to break their nodes open. That's faster, but it's dangerous. If the person on the receiving end can't control the flow, their life energy bleeds out and they die."

Daemon nodded, then he turned to Jaime and said, "Could you unlock mine?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I've had my aura for less than a month. I barely know how to use it myself. I don't know the technique for unlocking someone else's, and even if I did, the risk of killing you would be enormous."

"But you could try."

"Try? Daemon, this isn't fishing. I can't just poke your aura nodes with a stick and see what happens. If I push too much energy into you, you could get really hurt. If I push too little, it won't work and we'll have wasted our time. If I push it into the wrong place, I could damage your internal organs. The answer is no."

Daemon considered this for approximately three seconds. "What if we made a deal?"

Jaime's eyes narrowed. "What kind of deal?"

"You need to get to King's Landing without being caught by your father's men. That means staying off the roads, living rough, moving through forests and countryside. Things you are clearly, and I say this with all respect, terrible at."

"I am not terrible at..."

"You got caught in a trap designed for animals, Jaime. A trap that you walked into with both eyes open. You dropped your sword. You couldn't start a fire. You had no food. When I found you, you were hanging upside down and screaming."

Jaime's mouth opened. It closed. It opened again, then he gave up and it closed again.

"I know rough living and I love the woods," Daemon continued. "I grew up in them. I can hunt, I can fish, I can build shelter, I can navigate without a road, and I can get us both to King's Landing without anyone finding us. I'll also teach you how to survive in the wild."

He leaned forward. "And in return, you unlock my aura and teach me how to use a sword."

Jaime looked at him for a long time. "You're asking me to risk killing you so that you can enter a competition that will almost certainly kill you anyway."

"That's one way of looking at it."

"It's the accurate way of looking at it."

"But not the only way." Daemon held out his hand, palm open. "Tomorrow might be the best day of my life, Jaime. But only if you help me get there."

Jaime stared at the outstretched hand. He looked at Daemon's face, searching for doubt or hesitation or the faintest trace of fear, and found nothing but that infuriating, radiant, unshakeable smile.  He huffed a short breath through his nose and shook his head. "Fine. You've got a deal." He reached out and gripped Daemon's hand, squeezing hard. "But if you die, it isn't my fault."

"If you do kill me... please don't eat my body when you run out of food..."

(AN: So this is the first chapter of the Rewrite of Power is Everything. A lot of stuff is going to be different in this story and a lot of stuff is going to be the same or similar, but mostly different. While it's mostly based on a game of thrones I'm leaning a little more into Hunter x Hunter. History will also be a little different. It'll all be explained though.)