The words "Prince Rhaegar" spilled from Jon Clinton's trembling lips like a dream, carrying all the guilt, loyalty, and despair accumulated over two decades.
The silver-haired youth in the sunlight, however, merely gazed at him silently, his violet eyes holding an unfathomable, almost scrutinizing calm.
"I am not my father, Ser Jon." Aegon's voice broke the frozen air, like an ice pick, piercing Jon's last trace of dazed fantasy.
"Look closely."
Jon Clinton's body swayed violently, as if waking from a brief but fatal delusion.
He stared intently at the person before him, his gaze like a dying traveler grasping at the last illusion of life, greedily and desperately sweeping over every inch of the other's silhouette.
Silver hair, violet eyes, facial features... Indeed, the sternness between his brows, the sharp lines of his jaw, were not entirely the same as the gentle and handsome Prince Rhaegar of his memories.
But that inherent nobility, that seemingly inborn demeanor, especially... this hair and eye color that could not possibly be faked!
"Who... who are you?" Jon's voice was terribly hoarse, each word sounding like it was scraped from sandpaper.
His hand instinctively rested on the hilt of his sword, but his arm trembled slightly.
An utterly absurd yet chilling thought, like a venomous snake, slithered into his mind.
"I already told you." Aegon took a step forward, emerging from the shadow of the pavilion, fully exposed to the sunlight.
His face became clearer, youthful, yet possessing a serenity and sharpness unbefitting his age.
"Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell."
Jon Clinton's breath hitched abruptly.
Every word Aegon spoke was like a heavy hammer, striking at the foundation he had meticulously guarded for nearly two decades.
This name, he recited it daily in his heart, called out to another boy.
He taught that boy to write this name, told him of the glory and responsibility it carried; this name was the entire meaning of his fugitive life, his only pillar for survival.
"No... impossible..." Jon heard his own hoarse voice refute, but it was so weak that he couldn't even convince himself.
His hand, pressed on the sword hilt, had knuckles white from gripping, yet he felt no strength, only a cold numbness.
"Aegon... he is right by my side." His voice was hoarse, word by word, as if each required all his strength to excavate from the ruins of his collapsing beliefs.
"He grew up in my arms, I taught him to wield a sword, to read... And you, who exactly are you?" Jon Clinton's weathered eyes were fixed on Aegon's face, as if searching for a crack in the perfect silver hair and violet eyes, a hint of disguise.
To find anything that could support his crumbling world.
Aegon watched him, watched this former close friend of Rhaegar, this once-trusted minister of the realm, now struggling like a trapped beast.
He took another step forward, the distance between them now minimal.
"So you should know even more... whose son have you been teaching?!"
Aegon's voice dropped, yet it grew heavier, like a death knell ringing close to the ear.
"Look at me." His violet eyes were like a cold pool, reflecting Jon Clinton's pale, vacant face.
"My father died at the Trident, believing his wife and children... at least would live."
He paused, letting the lingering echo of that sentence, like the cold taste of rust, permeate the air between them.
"But my mother watched me have my head smashed in."
"My sister, Rhaenys, was stabbed over fifty times, treated like an animal."
His pace of speech was steady, without hysteria, without tears, but it was precisely this absolute calm, narrating the most gruesome scenes, that made it even more chilling.
"Yet, his closest friend, the one he entrusted the realm to, hoping he would preserve his bloodline..."
Aegon stopped.
The sun was blinding, the garden silent, only the rustling of wind through the leaves, and Jon Clinton's increasingly heavy, yet seemingly about-to-break, breathing.
Then, Aegon spoke the final words, each one like a heavy hammer wrapped in ice shards, striking down hard:
"Across the Narrow Sea, you gave another boy his son's name."
"You taught that boy how to sit on his throne."
"Ser."
Aegon tilted his head slightly, his gaze like a cold scalpel, dissecting the last trace of color from Jon's face.
"Tell me."
"Is this... loyalty..."
"Or betrayal?"
"Bang!"
Jon Clinton's body lurched violently, as if struck by an invisible, immense force.
He staggered sideways, his rough palm instinctively pressing heavily against a nearby white stone pillar, barely preventing himself from falling.
The last trace of color completely drained from his face, leaving it ashen as a tombstone.
His lips trembled uncontrollably, yet no sound escaped; in his weathered eyes, what surged now was not tears, but something deeper, more absolute.
It was the foundation of his beliefs, the meaning of his existence, the worldview he had constructed for nearly two decades, shattering into desperate fragments under the youth's calm narration and the gaze of those violet eyes.
"Oh... ugh..."
A sound, suppressed to the extreme, a whimper seemingly squeezed from the deepest part of his chest, from the cracks of his soul, rolled out of his throat.
It wasn't like human weeping, but more like the wail of a wounded, dying beast in a trap, mixed with intense pain and bewilderment.
Aegon watched his collapse, his face still devoid of much expression; he knew the final straw still needed to fall.
"You don't have to believe me." Aegon's voice rang out again, still calm, yet carrying a knowingness that saw through everything.
"But ask yourself..."
He leaned slightly forward, his voice dropping even lower, yet each word was clear, like a devil's whisper, drilling directly into Jon's chaotic mind:
"When you looked at that boy, at the 'Aegon' you meticulously taught and placed high hopes on..."
"Was there ever a moment, in the deepest part of your heart, when a thought flashed that even you didn't want to admit..."
"He is... a fake!"
Jon's hand, resting on the stone pillar, tightened abruptly, his fingernails scraping against the rough stone surface.
"Because a true Targaryen," Aegon's voice was quiet, as if stating a simple fact, "is not a rehearsed drama, not an imitated posture."
"It is born there, in the blood, in the depths of the eyes, in every pause of breath."
"It cannot be hidden, nor can it be perfectly mimicked."
He stepped back slightly, his gaze calmly sweeping over the old knight's veiny hand, gripping the sword hilt tightly.
Sweeping over those legs that had stood straight for twenty years, but were now uncontrollably trembling slightly.
"Just as now, you stand here, your sword silent in its sheath, yet your body understands before your reason..."
He paused, letting the silence fill the ensuing void.
Then he raised his eyes, his violet gaze clear and sharp.
"What it is you face."
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