That he was summoned

“I was summoned,” Jon said, the words falling flat and cold between them. Joffrey’s eyes narrowed to pale, glittering slits.

A flush rose on his cheeks, the same petulant red that always came when someone dared speak back.

“Liar.” The single word cracked like a child’s whip.

He took a step nearer, close enough that Jon smelled the sweet wine on his breath.

His lips peeled back from small, white teeth. “No one summons a bastard anywhere, Snow.” The hiss curled in the air, soft and venomous. “Least of all to Mother’s wheelhouse.”

He tilted his head, studying Jon the way a boy studies an insect before he pulls its wings off. “Do you think me a fool?”

Joffrey’s voice dropped to a wet, eager whisper, the kind that belonged in cellars, not torch-lit yards.

“I could have the Hound drag you behind the stables right now,” Joffrey breathed, eyes wide and glassy, pupils blown black with delight. “One scream from me, just one, and he’d smash your knees to splinters. You’d crawl into the great hall on bleeding stumps, Snow, like the cur you are.”

Jon felt the words land low in his belly, a sick twist that had nothing to do with fear. The prince was smiling the way Arya smiled when she finally landed a perfect needle-through-the-heart on a straw dummy: bright, breathless, already hungry for the next one.

“Or that pretty face,” Joffrey went on, tongue flicking across his lower lip. “The Hound could carve it off in long, wet strips. Leave you something the direwolf wouldn’t even sniff at.”

Jon tasted iron where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.

Steel flashed behind his eyes, bright and hungry, and there was Joffrey leaning close, close enough to count every spurt of blood, lips parted in the same wet, shining joy.

The picture turned his stomach, thick and foul as curdled milk.

“Or your tongue,” Joffrey said, almost giggling now, “nailed to the stable door so every groom and scullion can watch it blacken while you try to scream without it.”

Jon’s jaw locked so hard his teeth creaked.

He saw it clear as daylight: his own blood dripping slow onto filthy straw while Joffrey crouched beside him, close enough to count every drop, laughing with the bright, breathless delight of a boy who had just discovered his favourite new game.

Disgust rose, hot and bitter, coating the back of his throat. Not rage yet. Just the slow, sick realisation that this was not a prince threatening punishment.

Jon looked at him then, truly looked.

Golden curls framed a soft, childish face. Silk clung to narrow shoulders. The small pink mouth hung slightly open, wet and eager, as if Joffrey could already taste the blood he described.

A child playing dress-up in a prince’s skin, drunk on screams he had never earned the right to hear.

The disgust settled cold and heavy in Jon’s gut, thick as old blood.

The power coiled tighter, tasting the air, waiting for a single word to turn the boy’s daydreams into something far worse than nightmares.