When he stood on his toes, he could touch the tips of Balerion's teeth. They were black and shiny and as sharp as the blades protruding from the sides of the Iron Throne. As sharp as the sword of the King's Justice that took my lord father's head.

Tyrion sucked the blood off his finger. Somehow, he always ended up cutting himself on a tooth, but he couldn't resist; he just had to touch them. The Black Dread. Even his flame was black.

He liked being in the Great Hall, listening to the Hand of the King as he received petitions. It made him forget who he was – what he was. And it was not like he could do much else around King's Landing.

Cleos squired for Ser Addam who had accompanied them from the Westerlands, and Lyonel served as a page for Lord Eddard's own sworn man Jon Umber. Nobody wanted to take a dwarf boy of almost four-and-ten into their service though. I would make a terribly short knight, I suppose.

But as long as he kept quiet, Lord Jon allowed him to accompany him when he held court in the King's stead. Sometimes, Tyrion would linger after the other men had left to look at the dragon skulls on the walls: Balerion, Vhagar, Meraxes, Vermithor, Caraxes... He could name them all and tell their histories to anyone who would listen.

When he wasn't in the throne room, he was in the library, devouring tome after tome, reading about the history of the Seven Kingdoms, the Valyrian Freehold, about the Wall in the North, the Summer Isles in the South, and about dragons – he loved to read about dragons most of all. The capital's collection held books he could only dream of growing up at the Rock - and countless letters and scrolls that no more than a few handful of maesters had ever seen.

Grand Maester Ebrose allowed Tyrion to read anything so long as he handled the manuscripts with care and kept everything in good order. "You should visit the Citadel if it's knowledge you're craving," the soft-spoken man would tell him. "You ought to ask leave of Lord Eddard to travel to Oldtown."

But Tyrion was old enough to know the Lord Regent would never grant him such a request.

Someone tapped his shoulder. "Ser Gerold!"

The White Bull towered above him. "Lord Arryn has asked me to see you don't get lost wandering among the dragons."

I've never heard of a man getting lost in the Great Hall, Tyrion wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He'd heard Gerion and Ser Addam whisper about the news from the West – or the South, rather. My sister wed Lord Ormond's heir. He knew enough about the history of Dorne to understand that the Crown was not pleased.

Nor his uncle, for that matter. Tyrion had never seen him so angry. Gerion who always smiled and was so slow to anger had slammed his fist on the table and cursed his sister. "That she would risk the life of her own blood for this useless alliance."

Tyrion sighed. Well, what did I expect? "The Lord Hand is kind to send you to keep an eye on me so nobody snatches me and ships me back to my aunt." Somehow, the only thing worse than being barely a step above a prisoner was people thinking he did not know he was a hostage.

The old Lord Commander of the Kingsguard did not deny it. "You can come back tomorrow to look at the skulls," he said, not unkindly. "But it's late. I'll have to take you back to Maegor's Holdfast for tonight. Hand's orders."

As if being ordered out of the throne room like a child wasn't humiliating enough, Ser Gerold insisted on accompanying him all the way back to the Lannister quarters, handing him over to his uncle. Gerion was his cheerful self again. "There's lamprey pie and minced lamb on the table. Have some. It's good!"

But Tyrion wasn't hungry. Instead, he seated himself by the window, looking out on the Narrow Sea below. I'm almost a man grown. I would have been free to travel the world two years from now if I had stayed at the Rock. There were so many places he still wanted to see: Oldtown, the Free Cities, the ruins of Old Valyria, and everything that lay beyond. Instead, he was trapped in King's Landing, made to pay for the sins of his father.

The sins of a stranger. Tyrion had known his father little more than the mother he himself had put in the grave. Lord Tywin had rarely ever visited Casterly Rock while he still served as Aerys's Hand, and after he had returned following his dismissal, he had been little more than a shadow looming over his childhood, a pair of pale green eyes looking down on him with disapproval.

He had felt oddly indifferent when his aunt had told him of his father's death. When they'd returned his bones to the Rock to be interred in the Hall of Heroes, he'd long been on his way to King's Landing. A dwarf for a set of bones. Hard to say who got the worse end of the deal, my aunt or the King in swaddling clothes.

He had cried when Genna told him of Jaime – Jaime who had always been kind to him banished to a frozen Northern wasteland, all for a crime Tyrion was certain his brother had not committed. If I was free at least, I could go visit him at the Wall.

But he wasn't free, he knew. He was a hostage.