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Storm’s End is a dismal place during the rainy season, especially for a boy on the cusp of his first steps into manhood. It might not have been thus once, before the Windproud had been dashed to pieces in the bay and Lord Steffon and his wife drowned, but Renly can only guess- he was a babe when that happened, and the loneliness that seems to linger in its halls no matter how many people are bustling about is all he knows. He is too old now for the children’s games that had once brought the songs to life around him- three-and-ten in a few months, after all- but the rain falling outside in thick, windblown sheets has spoiled the morning’s exercises, and he’s bored.
He passes the library with a snort of contempt. Maester Jurne would certainly like him to spend the day there, but the dullness of that might actually kill him. He had spent hours in the armory when he was younger- learning the shapes and the connections of each piece of armor for the day he might have his own, feeling the different kinds of weaponry in his hand- but that too feels dull and well-trod today, and holds no interest. There’s an itchy restlessness in him that compels him to keep walking, pushing at doors that he might otherwise have overlooked.
He ends up in a small room- dusty, with cobwebs left untouched in the corner- that seems only to be used for storage. No great barrels of grain, nor crates of meat or casks of wine- those have their own places. His eyes move over a broken chair, surely meant to be repaired but instead forgotten, a pair of dented shields misplaced from the armory, and a pile of trunks and chests that look like they have not been opened in years.
One chest he recognizes- it holds his mother’s gowns, carefully folded, a mix of black and gold and soft Estermont green. He remembers being allowed to touch them when he was small, the hint of a flowery perfume that had still clung to the fabric. She must have smelled like that, but he cannot remember for sure.
He swallows, throat suddenly, stubbornly dry, and moves on.
Most of the rest of it is dull enough- sheaves of records of trade and taxation, seemingly old enough to have been removed from the library to make way for new ones. 225 AC, 228, 230. He wonders why they’d bothered to keep them at all. After what must be an hour or so, only one chest remains- shoved into a corner, nearly buried. For a moment, he has the strange feeling that he should leave it be, but he stubbornly pushes it aside.
This will be my seat when I am of age, no matter what Stannis thinks. It should have no secrets from me.
It’s a small enough thing, the Baratheon stag engraved into the lid. It had perhaps been locked once, but the salty sea air of Storm’s End softens most wood after enough years, and the latch tears clean out when he gives it a good pull. Old too, then. Inside is another bundle of parchment, neatly folded and tied with fraying twine.
More damned papers, he thinks for a disappointed moment, nearly shutting it again- what a waste this whole venture had been. But these do not look like more records. There is something personal in how they have been handled and hidden away, and Renly begins picking at the twine with curious fingers. When it falls away, he unfolds the first sheet, and finds a letter.
Milord Lyonel, it begins.
Lyonel Baratheon. The Laughing Storm, his grandfather’s grandfather. One of the greatest knights his house has ever produced, or so the histories say- until Robert, until the rebellion that had succeeded where Lyonel’s had failed. He chews his lip, reading on.
The mountains in the Vale are cold as a wight’s fingers, just as you said- well, not exactly how you put it, but I’ll not make the Eyrie’s maester repeat that when he’s been kind enough to pen this letter for me. I thank you for the cloaks you sent along with us, though you did not have to hide them in my saddlebag as you did. I would not have let the boy freeze just because I am a stubborn fool. And it is a comfort to me to be wrapped in your colors, even if it must only be a rare thing.
A mistress, maybe, to speak like that. But a mistress sleeping under only a cloak out in the wilderness? And with a boy- what boy? A bastard of theirs?
We passed the Bloody Gate safely and had only a brief skirmish with the mountain men. They were a small party, and managed only to black one of my eyes with a club before I slew one and sent the others running. The boy tells me it’s an ugly sight, but you have seen me much worse.
As thanks for escorting Lady Redfort, we have been given hospitality as long as we wish it. I don’t expect we will stay longer than a fortnight- though the braziers are hard to leave when I think of the snows outside- but it will be long enough, if you wish to write back to me here before we make for Gulltown.
Yours,
Dunk
Dunk. A false name perhaps, barely a name at all…but certainly not a maiden’s name.
A warrior, fighting off raiders and joking about his wounds after.
A man.
Yours.
His breath catches in his throat.
He has spoken to no one of this, of the heat in his face and the confused racing of his heart whenever Bryce Caron had knocked him into the mud in the training yard, before he’d been called back to Nightsong only weeks ago. Of last year, when Lord Dondarrion had visited and brought his stripling son, and Renly had looked upon the boy’s green-gray eyes and thought, pretty. Of clumsy kisses with the falconer’s son in the dark godswood, how right it had felt even as their teeth knocked together, until the boy had pushed him away like he feared his own wanting and run back toward the castle.
He still won’t look Renly in the eye.
Who would he tell? What would he say? You’re of an age to start looking at maidens now, aren’t you? Robert had asked him slyly last time he had returned to Storm’s End, but he had quickly changed the subject before his brother could press. He should be looking at maidens, should be dreaming of creamy skin and rounded tits like the other boys are, of marrying and making sons to inherit Storm’s End after him.
But he isn’t.
He sits cross-legged on the stone floor and flips through the remaining letters, careful not to tear the fragile parchment with his clammy, shaky hands. None are the lewd sort of message he’d wondered if he would find, but he realizes after a moment that they are written in many different hands- all of them dictated, maybe, as the first had been. They are brief, utilitarian- not the sort of poetic love letters maidens supposedly dream of, but there is an affection in them that even Renly, inexperienced in love as he is, cannot deny. They open differently- some as the first one had, some my love or dearest with no name.
Those, he discovers, are braver in their contents.
I'm no good with words, one begins, you know that, and even less when I must speak them aloud to a maester. I can only hope he will not record my stumbling over them.
Kindly, he had not, though Renly can almost hear it in the voice reading aloud in his head.
But I miss you too much today to keep it in, so I’ve no choice but to embarrass myself to tell you how much I crave your touch and your lips and the sound of your voice. I’ve feasted and slept in a hundred keeps and inns across the Seven Kingdoms, but no room is so bright as one you are in, and no bed as warm as one you share with me. It’s more than I deserve, to have that all the time, and more than I can accept. I know you don’t understand why I do this, and I hate that we quarreled about it again before I left. That I left without saying goodbye has kept me awake every night since, I want you to know that. I hope you can forgive me my pride, my foolish need to make my own way until I earn my rest at your side. Your heart is my home, and mine yours, even if your halls can't be.
I will return soon. I love you.
The words blur, and Renly finds himself suddenly blinking away tears like a child, though he barely understands why. He sniffs loudly, wiping stubbornly at his eyes with his sleeve. There is something strange and raw in the honesty of the words, even though he knows that the writer must have lied and claimed they were meant for some maid in Lord Lyonel's court. A few of the letters had been dated by the more meticulous maesters, spanning across what must be twenty years. Most had not. But they all- even this one- end the same way.
Yours, Dunk.
A weatherbeaten statue of Lord Lyonel stands in the courtyard outside of the Round Hall- Renly has glanced at it as he walked by a hundred times. He has a dashing look to him, depicted wearing a great rack of antlers rather than a helm, curling hair that must have been Baratheon black and a wide grin on his carven face, as if he were laughing. He looks every inch the heroic knight he was reputed to be, like Robert- the way that Renly likes to imagine himself as a man grown. Handsome, the champion of some tourney or another- but the mental picture had always fallen apart when he had imagined a wife on his arm, soft and giggling, as Lord Lyonel must have had.
He pictures something else, now.
Another figure by his side- tall and broad, as a warrior surely would be. Lightly armored for the road, in a faded traveling cloak of Baratheon black and gold. He pictures how they might have laughed, soft and private- how their hands might have touched beneath a table, where no other eyes could see. He pictures the way another boy’s hand might one day touch his the same way.
Red-faced, he shoves the bundle of letters into his doublet as he runs back to his own chambers. He hides them in a trunk there, beneath his heavy winter cloak.
He takes them out often in the years that follow.
---
Renly grows into a young man, tall and proud as his brothers, but with an easy charm and peacockish confidence possessed by neither of them. The secret lives in him still, like an ember buried in sand but too stubborn to be snuffed, but he no longer allows it to drown him in shame. He has come far from the gawky youth casting furtive glances at other squires and lordlings across the training yard and touching himself at night to the thought of their callused fingers upon him. No, now he is in love, with the most exquisite creature ever born in Westeros- of that much he is certain. Loras is radiant, all soft curls and golden skin exposed where his shirt is unbuttoned, and Renly wants to devour him every minute they are alone. But today, he had idly remembered the letters, and had brought them forth carefully from their hiding place, delicate with the well-worn paper in a way he is with nothing else, save Loras himself.
“Yours, Dunk,” Loras reads, a hint of disdain in his voice. “What sort of name is Dunk?”
“No idea,” Renly replies with a chuckle, nestling behind him and hooking his chin over his shoulder to read. To be close to him, too, though Loras doesn’t seem to mind. “I had always thought it might be a false one, to disguise who he was.” He leans over, nuzzles at the soft skin behind Loras’s ear just to feel him shiver. “Maybe some bannerman of his, what a scandal that would be!”
Loras frowns, shakes his head in a way that makes his curls tickle Renly’s cheek. “Sounds like a commoner name to me,” he replies, setting one letter back amidst the furs of their bed and picking up another from where they have been strewn about. “Maybe your mighty ancestor loved some stableboy.”
Renly snorts. “Not likely. Besides, what stableboy travels like this man? These letters are addressed from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms.”
Loras stretches like a satisfied, disinterested cat, his shirt lifting to reveal a perfect, flat stomach dusted with gold-brown hair. “A hedge knight or vagabond sellsword, then,” he muses, unfolding the next letter with those graceful hands Renly can’t stop watching.”Perhaps even an outlaw. How would that be for a scandal?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Is it so absurd, though? Renly thinks even as he says it. He has wondered it, once or twice. It would explain why this Dunk had needed a maester to write for him- most common folk have no need of such skills, and no one to teach them. And after all, many lords and kings have loved lowborn maids, and done far more foolish things for it than write letters.
Still, the thought of this faceless shadow-man as some roving thief or worse sits unpleasantly in the pit of Renly’s stomach. He has pored over the letters half a hundred times- certainly more than any book, since Septon Mortyn had given up coaxing him to read his prayers each morning. They’ve become almost a trusted friend as he has grown- a reassurance, undeniable in paper and ink, that he is not alone in the world, and a comfort once he was older and the ugly, whispered rumors had begun to fly. The mystery of whose words they are has long since faded from a burning question into an idle curiosity not meant to be answered. Renly has accepted that, like as not, he will never know. But the letters are straightforward, sweet and almost endearingly simple. Honest, or as honest as they can be without true privacy. And every mention of what the man had gotten up to on his travels tells of the sort of gallantry that would make a knight proud- there may be songs of gallant outlaws, but Renly has never met one. He likes to think that Lord Lyonel’s lover had been a man of honor, that his ancestor would have loved someone worthy of him, even if it sounds as though he did not believe himself to be.
“How sweet,” Loras simpers, rolling out of Renly’s grasp. “In this one he sends a shell from the beaches of Fair Isle, and a seabird’s feather.” Several of the letters mention such souvenirs- a dried flower hardy enough to grow in the spotty spring snows around Winterfell, or a river stone worn perfectly smooth. A map of sorts, of where he had been, but most of these tokens seem to have been lost after Lord Lyonel’s death. “Not much of a gift for a lordly paramour.”
He is teasing now, a little too sharp, and Renly reaches over to pull the letter from his hand almost protectively. “Don’t mock,” he says, a little sulky, propping himself up on one elbow. “If he truly was some vagabond, that may be the best he could offer. Would you scorn such gifts from me, if they were all I had to give?”
Loras only laughs, his big honey eyes so full of mirth that any annoyance Renly had quickly melts away. Gods, I truly am a fool for him. “Of course not, my love,” he says, though his lips are still curled into that amused little smile. “You should hand these off to Marillion next time he comes through the Stormlands and commission a song. I’m sure he would find such a story very, ah…inspirational.”
The thought of letting anyone but Loras see the letters sparks an odd little possessive flare in Renly's gut, but he only rolls his eyes. “Ah yes, what better way not to arouse suspicion? I can hear it now- the mighty stag was made a doe, beneath the sheets where none would know.” He chuckles at his own poor rhyme, a hint of bitterness beneath it. “And who would anyone listening think that was about?”
Loras picks up one of Renly’s hands in his own, ghosting his lips over the swells of his knuckles. “You are Lord Paramount of the Stormlands,” he murmurs, “and your brother the king. Who will dare say a word?”
It’s a fantasy, they both know it. Maybe somewhere it could be so, but not here. There are whisperers everywhere- they must be careful. Renly sighs. “If only it were so simple.”
He will have to marry, eventually. To play the part, and to continue the ruling line of Storm’s End now left to him. That much he knows, as much as he loathes the idea, and as much as Robert seems the worst person to arrange a betrothal for him. That would have been the domain of his parents, but with them gone it must be his own, and he is in no hurry. But of course, Lord Lyonel had had a wife too, or Renly would not be here today.
If he could manage it, so must I.
Suddenly, Loras pushes the pile of letters to the side and throws a leg over Renly’s lap, pushing him back into the pillows with a wicked smile. “Maybe they fucked in this very bed.”
“Loras!” Renly lets out a shocked laugh and gives Loras’ thigh a playful shove in return, but he has no true wish to unseat him. When Loras leans down to kiss him, he surges up eagerly to meet him.
Let it always be like this, he thinks. I can bear anything that comes, so long as I have him.
Loras’ grin is golden and sun-bright when they part, those silken curls falling in a curtain about his face. “Come,” he croons impishly, pinning Renly’s wrists like the victor in a battle. “Let us play the Laughing Storm and his mysterious lover.”
It makes Renly laugh again, loud and bright, and for a moment, it’s enough to make him feel the part in truth. He tears a wrist free, catching Loras about the waist and rolling him over, heedless of his yelp of indignation. His answering grin is as wild and victorious as the one carved into the statue outside. “Anything for you, darling.”
---
The histories will open your eyes, Jaime had said. You would do well to know about the lives of those who went before.
Loras is not convinced. But he mislikes feeling bested, outsmarted, especially by a Lannister- the way that he had felt when Jaime had named off half a dozen of his predecessors he’d never even heard of. The competitive streak in him is not limited to the tourney grounds or the battlefield, and so he keeps the book open after the one-handed lion leaves, and he reads.
It is a boon, too, that it gives his mind something to focus on in the quiet. It goes to dark places unbidden now, when he is alone.
He begins where Jaime had left off, with Ser Criston Cole, but finds only a dismal, dishonorable ending for the so-called Kingmaker. So, he moves on, skimming past some entries, reading the whole of others that manage to hold his attention. His eyes are near as twitchy as his hands- he has never had much of a head for book-learning, and few had asked it of him once his skill with a lance had become plain. After all, a third son not set to inherit has little use for exhaustive knowledge of dusty old chronicles, and as a warrior, the world narrows to the point of his weapon whenever he holds it.
But there are cracks in the certainty he once had of the world and his place in it. It is difficult to keep the winning smile that had once been so natural, the one the Kingslanders seem to love so much, plastered onto his face. Easier, perhaps, now that the monster Joffrey is in his grave and can never put his filthy hands onto his sister. That does much to ease the fear in him, to soothe at least a little of the constant, roiling anger, but it does nothing to heal over the gaping wound in his own soul.
Better to think of anything else, even for an hour.
Ser Donnel of Duskendale, there was one Jaime had mentioned. The son of a crabber- how quaint, he thinks idly- who had fought for the king on the Redgrass Field, defended some prince in a Trial of Seven- that, Loras remembers from his lessons, if only for the novelty of it- helped to head off the second Blackfyre rebellion, and died of a burst belly only two years later.
A whole life and its deeds, distilled into a single paragraph.
He does not know what he is meant to learn from this, save that life is cruel and short, and most of it will be forgotten not long after it is over. He means for his own story written someday to be longer.
Ser Roland Crakehall. Ser Willam Wylde. Ser Davos Mallister. Bywin Brax, killed in the third Blackfyre rebellion. Sylas Rivers, in some meaningless skirmish with bandits in the kingswood. Gyles Waynwood, at Starpike.
It makes for more dismal reading than he’d expected.
When he comes to an entry that fills both pages- and the next two, when he tries to flip past it- he pauses.
Ser Duncan the Tall.
He has heard the name before, scattered throughout histories and tall tales- the hedge knight that one of the Aegons had squired for in his youth, eventually raised to his former charge’s Kingsguard. That is as much as he remembers, indifferent student that he was, so he turns the page back to the beginning.
There is no house, no record of parentage, but he supposes that is not so unusual for a hedge knight. Squire to Ser Arlan of Pennytree- whoever that was- and knighted in his 22nd year before Ser Arlan’s death. Defeated Prince Aerion Targaryen in the trial of seven held at Ashford Meadow, proving himself innocent of the charges levied against him.
Loras flips back a few pages. The same trial in which the White Swords defended the prince? He fought against them?
That, if nothing else, piques his interest.
The entry is so long that Loras begins to lose track of where Ser Duncan had been and what he had done halfway through. He had traveled the Seven Kingdoms half a dozen times over with his royal squire, that much is clear- from Dorne to the Wall and everywhere between- and had kept going long after the boy had grown into knighthood. He had served great lords one year and defended poor villages the next, had lost jousts and won melees, fought in true battles and rescued maids and accompanied travelers safely to their homes. It is as colorful a life as any man ever had, enough that for a moment it makes Loras envious, until he remembers the rest of what a life as a hedge knight entails. Gods forgive me, he thinks with a wry twitch of the lips, but I am not made to sleep in a ditch.
Appointed to the Kingsguard in his 46th year, it continues, upon the coronation of King Aegon V. Escorted Prince Aemon Targaryen and Ser Brynden Rivers to Eastwatch aboard the Golden Dragon, and remained with them for two moons at the Wall. Slew Daemon Blackfyre III at the Battle of Wendwater Bridge- that is familiar, if he thinks back to his lessons hard enough. In the next paragraph, he finds familiarity of a different sort.
Ended the Laughing Storm’s rebellion in single combat in his 52nd year, after a hard-fought and well-matched battle. Took part in the peace that was made after, remaining at Storm’s End for half a year as personal guard to the Princess Rhaelle. Returned as an envoy with the king’s leave when Lord Lyonel fell ill in 241 AC, and remained until his death the following year.
Loras frowns. The last part is a strange detail to have been recorded, among records of wars and adventures and valiant deeds. But someone, perhaps Ser Duncan himself, had thought it important enough to wish it remembered.
There is more, after that. No more battles in that long stretch of relative peace, but yet more tourneys despite the man’s age, a promotion to Lord Commander, and then the ending that Loras already knew. King Aegon’s folly at Summerhall- just another mad dragon he’d turned out to be, in the end. But his eyes remain fixed on that paragraph, something nagging from deep in his memory, from a time that feels a lifetime ago.
Ser Duncan the Tall, he reads again, and again, until he finds it.
Yours, Dunk.
All at once, a hundred little hints fall into place.
It can’t be.
But it must.
It could be no one else.
Renly will not believe it, he thinks for what is nearly a joyous moment, before he remembers, and the grief hits him like a squall.
He gasps, and something long-buried comes bubbling out of him before he can stop it- strange, wet sounds he hardly recognizes as his own, half laugh, half sob. He clutches at the book nearly tight enough to tear the parchment, and suddenly he is weeping openly, as he has never allowed himself to do in this nest of lions and snakes. His whole body shakes with it, his keening echoing in the blessedly empty tower. There is something strangely cathartic in it, like the moment a dam shatters and the river behind it bursts through. He has poured himself into his rage, has exacted bloody revenge on men who did not deserve it, had found purpose in searching ceaselessly for Renly’s killer until he had accepted that it was Stannis all along. He has torn at his pretty hair and slammed his fists into stone walls until his knuckles bled.
He has not cried like this since the day he dug Renly’s grave with his own hands. Margaery has tried to coax it from him when they are alone, but it is too raw, and he has been too afraid of how he would surely crumble in her gentle arms. The anger is easier. Safer.
For a mad moment, he wonders if he could find Lord Lyonel's letters, the ones he had sent to Ser Duncan. Would they be just as discreet, just as pragmatic, or full of all the poetry that Ser Duncan’s had lacked? He could tear apart every room of the White Sword Tower looking. Maybe it would feel good. But the quarters of the Kingsguard are not some lord's keep with a thousand corners in which to hide things. They would all be buried in relics if the personal effects of every man who had ever served were retained. No, with no family to return them to, they would have been destroyed after his death- after the last of his story was recorded here.
This is all that is left. A single passage in a book, a bundle of letters locked in a chest a hundred leagues away, and Loras himself, the bearer of a secret he has no one to tell. The rest of the story is lost to time.
Oh Renly, he thinks, bent low over the pages, over stories that line up so perfectly with the ones he had read years ago, now that he thinks of them. Would that you were here to send me letters, to send me pebbles and flowers and other worthless little things, just to show me where you are. That you are safe.
I understand now. I would treasure every one.
The memory of that day is faded at the edges, but sun-warm the way every memory of Renly is, so different to the cold that seeps into every moment now without him. His face remains sharp when Loras conjures it, as does the shape of his hands, the way he had held the letters like something precious.
There had been one final letter, that Renly had shown him only with great reluctance. It had been the shortest of all of them.
Lyonel,
Word has reached King's Landing of what you’ve done. I don’t understand. All this, and for what? Pride? How do you think this will end?
There is time to reconsider. I have asked nothing of you all these years, but I beg you now. Please.
-Dunk.
“What do you think he did? Take another lover?” Loras had asked, only idly paying attention as he might have to a piece of gossip back at Highgarden, but Renly had shaken his head and pointed to a small inscription in the top corner.
“This one is dated,” he had murmured. “239 AC. The year he renounced his fealty to the crown and rebelled.”
Loras had frowned, though his focus had been torn between the words and the press of Renly's thigh against his. “Why would some lowborn paramour be so angry about that? Would he not wish to see his lover upon the throne?” As I would, he’d thought then, though it would be years before he gave voice to it.
Gods, it had been so obvious, looking back- they’d been such fools-
“I don't know,” Renly had said quietly, curling in on himself in a way that had looked entirely wrong on him. He was a man always meant to be tall and sure and proud. That is how Loras chooses to remember him. “I suppose he just didn’t want to see him executed if the rebellion failed.” And yet, he had not been- the gentle terms of the Laughing Storm’s defeat had always seemed a historical oddity, put down to an unusually merciful king, but now, it is yet another puzzle suddenly solved. “But I hate to think that made them stop loving each other.”
It didn’t, Loras thinks desperately, as if the words could reach him if he only tried hard enough. They reconciled. And he was with him at the end, as I should have been.
You would have liked to know that, I think.
Eventually, Loras’ heaving sobs fade into shuddering, gasping breaths, and the grip of his hands upon the book eases. He feels shaky and hollowed out, but also somehow lighter. The pages of the White Book are spotted with tears, the ink bleeding ever so slightly where they had fallen, but they will dry, and Loras will gather himself and become the Knight of Flowers once more. He has no other choice.
He takes one last long moment first, closing his eyes and ghosting his fingers over the old words. Another’s hand had touched these same pages once- not merely one of the many men who had worn the same white cloak, but someone who had loved as he had loved, and lost as he had lost. There is something comforting in that thought, just as there had once been for a young boy holding a bundle of letters.
It had taken him so long to truly understand.
I will carry Renly’s memory with me until I die, and be glad to do it, he muses, speaking silently to the empty air. He will live on in me every day, that much I promise.
But I will carry this, too. Someone should.
Someone should remember that they loved.
He will talk to Margaery, he suddenly resolves. She will be glad of it. He needs not carry it all alone.
For now, he tucks the words and the memories away, in a deep, private place behind his breastbone, as he closes the book and turns to leave.