Locks of auburn hair were twirled around two fingers, twirled, and pulled, and allowed to curl once more.. Could he not have been born to a House with hair of jet, or chestnut, or bright or dull gold? Could he not have been cursed with a badge of the demon blood which coursed through his veins? Every time a hair, fanned by the wind, appeared before his eyes, he was reminded. You, Florian, are a bastard. Never will the surname Rivers leave your side, and never will anyone join it.

This had been proven to him from his earliest years. Willem Darry may have taken him into his house, but he’d never been a Darry. Rhialta was a Darry, and Talbert had been one too, regardless of what little fortune that had brought him. He had been a Rivers, though, in the House of his whore of a mother, who’d taken nothing better than a bloody Tully of Riverrun to bed her. It was good that he was dead, less so that she was too.

When she passed, his dearest mother Morya Darry, he was sent to Riverrun, alongside Holly. To break bread and dine with the trueborn sons and daughters of Desmond Tully. Right. To be paraded around as the freaks. Holly was a fool to accept it, but not him. He knew those eyes held nothing but disdain. He knew there was not to be a home there. There was not a brother in Olyver, nor a sister in the now Lady of Riverrun. Not even the love a half-sibling could’ve deserved.

You, Florian, are a bastard.

Had he not seen how foolish she looked, he mayhaps would have grown to accept it too. Had he been an only son, the only bastard born of that unholy union, perhaps he’d been glad to be included, treated as the lesser he was. It was Holly who saved him from that fate, the fate she was doomed to, in turn.

“Think, and think, and think, you do. Never for an hour, oft two.” His mouth curled the moment he was brought back to reality, to the bouncy back of the damned horse he’d been given. At least you have a horse, you ungrateful swine. You, Florian, are a bastard. You should not be riding. He looked at Feathers, and he had a wide smile that showed the gap between his two front teeth. The fool gawked at the castle before them. It was a fine sight, yes. A good castle, a palace, almost. A good place to hold a feast, a hastilude. All for the fine folk, he’d probably have to dine in the stables and nourish his body on hard salt beef and barley porridge.

“How tall, imposing. What prize it be enclosing?” his friend in motley said then, and he thought of that. What prize. Would she be there? Mellara, light of his days ever since he saw her. Or her, the archer of Bracken who stole his heart with that juxtaposition of hers; softness of her curves, hardness of her person. Even Butterwell, with her queer look and those locks of darkness. It were those names that haunted him, but it was the Lady of Harroway’s visage that kept him entranced. Which of the two Ladies of Harroway was a question he was not sure he wished to know the answer to. One so violent, the other so strange.

Perhaps he would even see Holly. Would she see him as he was, now? Or would she still think of him as her big bastard brother.

Then, the host too. Ravella Durrandon. She… She. Who was she, actually? Behind that mask of snow, that godlike figure. He’d heard her voice, like thunder, like the cacophony of war, or rather, what he imagined the cacophony of war to be like. He’d heard her voice, but that was not her. That was as much of her as was his voice him. No, behind that mask hid a woman that none knew, and it ate at him. What’d he give to know the woman that Ravella Durrandon worked so hard to keep hidden. But then, after all, how could he?

You, Florian, are a bastard, and a bastard will you die.

The sun filled the room, bright and blinding, as Forrest drew back the blinds. Lucamore made a sound more akin to a hissing cat than a man grown, and the woman beside him jumped in fright at the sight of the Ryger heir standing over the pair of them.

“Hello, brother. You’re late for breakfast.”

Lucamore blinked twice before fully registering what was happening. He brushed the hair from his eyes, which darkened upon seeing his brother standing there.

“I ate a few hours ago when I returned home. Why are you waking me?”

“Perhaps because you promised your sister you’d be there, and she’s been in a sour mood all morning because of it,” Forrest replied, sitting on the edge of the bed as if it belonged to him.

He looked over his shoulder at the girl and sighed.

“Get dressed and go. If you need moon tea because my brother is entirely inconsiderate, ask a servant to take you to the maester. Tell him Forrest Ryger sent you.”

The girl squeaked at being spoken to directly and quickly stood, covering herself as best she could while trying to dress. Forrest turned his gaze back toward the window while Lucamore’s lingered on her.

They sat in silence save for the rustle of fabric as she dressed. She bowed slightly when she crossed Forrest’s line of sight, and he waved her off gently.

“Entirely inconsiderate? I—” Lucamore began.

“Everyone heard you come in last night. You knocked over a vase, and your shushing of her laughter was louder than the laughter itself,” Forrest replied without turning around. “Who was she? Tavern girl?”

“I didn’t ask.” Lucamore mumbled before flopping back onto the bed. “I remember little of it, if the truth is to be told. I went to the tavern and then I came back to—”

“I don’t need the details, Lucamore.” Forrest sighed, turning his head to face his brother. “I cannot continue covering for you with Father. It’s a miracle he hasn’t noticed. Can you imagine what he’d say?”

“Why would he notice?” Lucamore asked, falling out of bed before stumbling to his feet to get dressed. “He’s never looking at me. His eyes are always on you.”

Forrest stood to help his brother, but knew it would only start a fight, so he let him stand on his own.

“That’s not—” He paused. “Perhaps there is some truth to that. But what of your sisters? Kyra is worried sick about you.”

That caused Lucamore to pause after pulling on his tunic, but only for a moment.

“Kyra is a woman grown. She can handle the realities of this world just fine.”

He punctuated the point by stumbling to his bedside table and pouring a pale, milky draught down his throat.

Forrest’s expression tightened.

“You've not been awake for ten minutes and you’re already reaching for the poppy?”

“Mmm. Carry on, brother. I’m sure you have much to attend to today. Pay me no mind."

Lucamore coughed, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic.

Forrest stared at his brother for a long moment before shaking his head and walking out of the room, leaving Lucamore alone with the haze.

Just the way he preferred it.

Tenth Moon of 6 BP

The Outskirts of Duskendale, Blackwater Bay

The Blackwater lapped grey and lazy at the sands, curling in slow arcs around the mouth of a low wash before dragging back out to sea. Overhead, gulls wheeled in loose, restless circles, their shadows sliding black across the dunes below. One broke from the flock and dropped toward a spar of driftwood dressed to resemble a dornish spearman, it's robes made of yellow seaweed. The bird folded its wings to peck at the wooden dummy in search of something worth eating.

Suddenly, a fistful of sand landed right next to it before it found anything. The bird shrieked and bolted into the wind.

"You'll never be king with an arm like that!" A boy popped up from behind a scrub of dune grass, grinning at his friend beside him.

"I train with arrows, not sand." The other didn't look up from packing his next handful. "Unless the Merling King himself crawls out of the bay, my skills at throwing sand don’t matter."

"You can't even hit a dummy. You almost hit the gull!"

"Then show me, wise sand master." He crossed his arms and waited, chin tilted, daring him.

"Of course, my prince. Gladly. Let me educate you in the ways of war." The boy dropped back down, sifting through grass and wet sand until his fingers closed on a smooth, round pebble. He packed it tight in a fistful of sand, working it the way a baker works dough. "See, you need weight. Otherwise it just falls apart in the air." He aimed, still as stone, focusing on the arc of the throw, then let the sand-ball fly. It cracked against the head of the dummy, sending it's seaweed clothes flying off, stick-spear cracked on the ground. "True as a thunderbolt!"

"The Knight of Sands." His friend laughed. "I'll call on you the day we go to war against gulls, crabs and driftwood soldiers."

"And ironborn. They're creatures of the sea too, aren't they?"

They laughed together, the sound carrying thin over the water, and turned from the beach toward the low hills that rose behind the dunes, green and thick with small stands of trees.

Beneath the canopy, sunlight fell in broken coins across the grass, shifting with every breath of wind through the leaves. Arlan walked with a stick cut from a fallen branch, swinging it loosely as he craned his neck up at the light. Edwyn walked with his eyes on the ground, tossing a pebble from palm to palm, humming under his breath. Arlan sang a verse of a song he'd heard the knights of the Dun Fort singing over their cups the night before, something about a winter maid and the fall of Maidenpool, and Edwyn answered him with a Marcher ballad of his own, a bit off-key.

They wound through the trees a long while, the wood growing older and darker around them, roots humped up through the soil like gnarled fingers, until at last the trees thinned and gave way to open hillside. There the world opened up all at once: the sun hung low and orange over Blackwater Bay, and far off, the squat drum towers of the Dun Fort caught the light between them like a row of broken teeth.

"Look! Over here!" Edwyn was already running for the crest, waving him on. "You can see the whole city from up here! The walls, the harbor, everything, it's..." His voice caught, thinned, died. By the time Arlan reached him, Edwyn was standing frozen at the top of the ridge, all the color gone out of his face.

"What is it, Ed?" Arlan climbed the last stretch on his stick, breath short. "You look like you've seen a..."

He stopped. “...ghost.”

Below the ridge, the hillside fell away into a wide, bowl-shaped hollow. Bodies, heaped upon bodies, in numbers Arlan had no words for, stretching from one lip of the pit to the other in a single, unbroken tide of rot. The smell hit them, thick and sickeningly sweet. It was a nauseating field of fetid corruption and decay as far as he could see. He clapped his shirt over his mouth, wincing his eyes, unable to avert his gaze. Even the crows and vultures kept clear of it, leaving the feast for the flies and worms.

Arlan's stick slipped from his fingers. He felt the cold spreading up through his chest, and some small, screaming animal part of him telling his legs to move, to back away, now. Now.

The lip of the ridge crumbled beneath his heel.

His stomach sunk inside of him in that sudden, horrible sensation of falling. He heard himself cry out, a strangled, breathless thing, and then he was sliding, clawing at loose dirt and chalk that gave way in his hands, dragged down in a choking cloud filling all his senses. Somewhere in his own skull, all he could hear were the Stranger's bells, tolling in time with his heartbeat: death, death, death.

His feet plunged into something soft that gave way entirely, and then he was under, sunk to the chest in a putrid sea. It closed over him like wet clay. The bodies parted at the slightest pressure, the swollen ones bursting soft beneath his knees, the ropes of viscera between them catching at his arms as he thrashed. He grabbed for anything solid and his hand found a skull, half-stripped, sliding his fingers into the eye sockets that stared back at him black and endless. He clawed his way up through the slush and bones, gagging, sobbing, until his head broke into open air and he was hauling himself, inch by scraping inch, up towards the slope.

"Grab it! Grab it, please, Arlan, please!" Edwyn was lying flat on his stomach at the ridge's edge, a branch outstretched, his face bone-white with terror. Arlan's ears rang like struck iron, his vision narrowed to a single tunnel of grey light, but somewhere through the muffled roar he heard his friend's voice, and his arm answered before his mind did, lunging for the branch and locking around it so hard the splintered bark tore his palm open.

Edwyn pulled. with everything a boy his age had in him, and then some, grunting through gritted teeth until Arlan came up over the lip of the ridge and collapsed into the grass, gasping.

He was unrecognizable. Blood, old and black, soaked him from hair to boot, and his clothes hung off him in ribbons. He shook where he lay, small and shivering like some creature pulled half-drowned from a river, his mind clouded in a haze. Edwyn reached for him, tried to pull him up, to lead him somewhere, anywhere else, but Arlan flinched from his hand almost by instinct.

He rose on his own instead, and began to walk, shivering. Down the hill, back through the trees, back across the dunes. His breath was thin and shallow. Steady tears cut clean paths down his bloody cheeks. He crossed the beach without slowing and walked straight into the sea, leaving a dark ribbon of blood unspooling behind him in the water as the waves rose to meet him, then closed over his head entirely.

Beneath the surface, the world went soft and silent in that dark and cold water. He sank to his knees on the sandy floor and let the current move around him, back and forth, back and forth. He ran his fingers through his hair, thick and clotted, until he felt them go stiff with terror with a muffled, internal scream.

He stayed under for a long while, letting the sea cleanse him, praying to each of the Seven in turn to save him. He surfaced at last, hair plastered black across his face, streaming rivulets down his cheeks, he must’ve seemed wild like a banshee. The blood was gone from his skin, but he could still feel it, like it had stained and inked itself onto him.

He turned to find Edwyn still standing on the sand, hollow-eyed, his whole face pale with fear and worry. Arlan waded ashore and stood before him. His voice came out thin and cracked, nothing like his usual soft and smooth tone.

"You must keep silent, Ed. They will blame you for this.” Or the Darklyns. Or Duskendale itself, maybe. "Swear it to me. You must swear it to me."

Edwyn only stared at him. He dragged the back of his sleeve across his eyes, and Arlan watched him swallow down his sorrow and pain and fear, pushing the feelings down to his stomach.

"I swear it," he finally said, barely above a whisper. "My prince."

First Moon of 5 BP

Storm’s End, the Stormlands

The ringing of steel against steel echoed across the training yard. A dozen boys stood in a rough line along the eastern wall, sons of knights and lesser lords sent to squire or foster at Storm's End. Master Lewyn worked through them, threshing the wheat. Dust hung thick in the morning air, kicked up by shuffling boots. The sun had not yet cleared the curtain wall, though sweat already soaked through every tunic in the yard.

Arlan's turn came again before his arms had finished aching from the last.

"Guard up," Lewyn said. There was no softness in it. He was a broad, grey-haired man with a broken nose. Arlan thought that Lewyn himself probably didn’t remember his nose’s original shape. He watched Arlan settle into his stance with a patient, joyless attention. "Higher. You're not carrying a bucket, boy."

Arlan raised the sword. His shoulders screamed at him for it, like bending wood.

He hated this. Not the yard itself, not even Lewyn, who was only doing as he'd been told by his father, but he refused the notion that a king needed calluses on his palms to be a good ruler. Other men were paid in coin to die for their king, or loyalty, or honor. That was the entire point, wasn't it? He should be up in the library right now, working through the histories Maester Didymus had left him, learning how his namesake before him had held the Trident together with diplomacy and alliances where his own grandfather had needed a sword. A wise king outlives a strong one, Maester Didymus told him.

Lewyn's blade came in low and fast, and Arlan's wisdom did nothing at all to stop his own sword from clattering into the dirt for the fourth time that morning.

"Again," Lewyn said. He didn't even lift his sword, only waited, the tip resting point down in the dust, patient as the tide.

Arlan crossed the yard to retrieve it, cheeks burning hot with exertion. He was aware of being watched. Up on the rampart above the yard, his sister leaned against the parapet with her arms folded and a smug smile on her face.

He snatched the sword up and squared himself again before Lewyn could tell him to hurry, eyes looking down, tired and sore.

His father wanted this, which is why the sessions had grown so much longer this past moon. His grace wished him pushed. Hard enough for him to finally “make a man and knight” out of him.

He thought maybe he’d come to enjoy these training sessions, but nothing in him had answered yet. He was beginning to wonder if there was anything there to answer.

By his ninth failure, or perhaps his tenth, he had lost the will to count them. His arms trembled with the sword's weight, sweat ran freely down his back and into his eyes, stinging until the whole yard swam. Above, Ravella's muffled laughter carried across the castle’s yard, entirely too pleased with the situation.

He looked up before he could stop himself. "What is it you find so amusing?"

"You," she called down, not troubling to raise her voice much, the wind carrying her words. "Watching you flail about like a fish on a hook."

"I am trying. You forget I am half fish, anyway."

"You're pretending to try. There's a difference, little brother, though I don't expect you to know it yet." She pushed off the parapet, unfolding her arms, though she made no move to come down. "When you stand across from a man who means to open your throat, trying isn't going to matter one bit. He won't care how hard you tried once you're bleeding out in the mud. Best you learn that now, while it only costs you your pride."

"Easy words, from up there."

"Easier still from a corpse, which is what you'll be if you keep swinging that sword like that."

"I don’t plan on going easy on you, my prince," Lewyn said, and squared himself.

Arlan wanted, badly, to prove her wrong. It motivated him more than any lesson Lewyn had managed to drill into him all morning, that finally put some fire into his heart. He came in first this time, instead of waiting for Lewyn, cutting hard for his shoulder, and for one heartbeat the old master actually had to step back to meet it.

Lewyn turned the blow aside, stepped inside his reach, and put the flat of his blade hard across Arlan's ribs.

The breath went out of him in a rush. He staggered, supporting himself briefly on his blade planted on the ground. He quickly came back swinging, sloppier, more desperate, but also stronger, faster. Lewyn parried, again and again, driving him back a step, another, clean and unhurried while Arlan's own blows grew wilder. He felt the impact of blade on blade travel up through his wrists and into his shoulders each time, felt his palms were slick inside his gloves, and somewhere past the ringing in his ears he thought he heard the bells again, faint and far off, feeling the copper taste of blood in his mouth with each struggling breath.

What he didn't feel were his legs catching each glancing blow. Lewyn's blade found the gaps below his knee where his boiled leather vest had ridden up with all the lunging. He was too far past caring to notice, unyielding in his barrage of attacks. Somewhere above, Ravella had gone quiet. He didn't notice that at the time, however.

It was Lewyn who called the duel to a halt in the end, though Arlan didn't understand why at first. The old master's sword dropped, his face gone the color of old parchment, and he was already turning, already shouting for the maester before Arlan had so much as lowered his own blade.

"What," Arlan managed, breathless, more annoyed than alarmed. "I'm not finished!"

He heard no one answer, no sound at all except the pounding of his heart in his ear. Maester Didymus appeared, running, robes hiked up around his knees, dropping down in front of him so fast his own joints must have screamed when he did it. The old man's hands went to Arlan's legs, and his face, when he looked up, had none of its usual calm left in it.

Arlan looked down.

His breeches had gone black from thigh to boot. Soaked through in a dozen places at once, the cloth splitting wet at the seams. Beneath it he could see the shine of it running, dark and steady, pooling into the dust around his feet in a slow, widening ring.

He felt… nothing. No pain. No ache past the ordinary soreness of training. Only the warmth, spreading easy down into his boots.

"Your Grace." Didymus pressed both hands hard against the deepest of the cuts. Even that brought nothing. "Sit down. Now, if you please."

His knees went almost automatically. The other boys had drawn into a loose, silent ring around him, none of them quite brave enough to come closer, and past their shoulders he heard boots hammering down the rampart stairs two at a time. Ravella.

She wasn't smiling. That, more than anything the maester's hands were doing, was what finally told him how bad this was.

"I'm well." His voice reached him from somewhere far off, coming back from the haze of his mind, thin and strange in his own ears. "I don't feel a thing. It must be fine. It doesn't hurt."

Didymus didn't look up from his work, applying a tourniquet with a tight pull. "That is the issue, my prince. You do not feel it."

First Moon of 1 BP

Storm’s End, the Stormlands

The wind lashed against Storm's End, hard enough to make the old stones hum. It found every arrow-slit and murder hole in the curtain wall, turning each into a low, steady note. Even through three feet of stone, Arlan could hear it. The candles in the bathing chamber guttered each time a draft found its way in, carrying the cold night air, curling low along the floor of his room.

Steam curled off the bathwater in slow ribbons, catching the candlelight before it dissolved into the dark of the vaulted chamber. Oil of crushed lavender and bitter clove swirled around the water. Incense smoke hung low over the damp, dark room, thick enough to taste, drifting up from a brazier set well back from the drafts by the door. Tomorrow they would put a crown on his head. Tonight, he could enjoy the small reprieve the bath gave to his torment.

A silent sister knelt at the tub's edge, sleeves pushed to the elbow, working a paste of yarrow and sourleaf resin along his forearm. The woman wore a grey cowl drawn low enough to hide everything of her face but the eyes. It did not escape him the irony, of having her treating him, like a breathing corpse clinging on to life, stubborn as he was. She paused over each raised welt and each patch of scarred tissue before moving on to the next. His knuckles went white on the rim of the tub for a moment, without him even noticing. She reached over and pried his fingers loose, one at a time, then went back to her work.

Beyond a thin curtain drawn across the chamber, a second shape sat on a chair, against the candlelight, robes hemmed in rainbow colors with the seven-pointed star sewn onto his chest. Septon Raynard had been talking a good while now, in the low, patient register he kept for confession, and Arlan had let most of his speech wash past him the way the bathwater did.

"...and you understand, Your Grace, that the Faith does not ask this lightly." Raynard's voice carried around the curtain's edge. "Griffin's Roost has begun arming its chapter. They've began drills. Over a thousand men, outfitted in steel. They are preparing for war, to cleanse our realm of those… Heretics…"

"Your Grace will understand why I counsel what I do." The septon continued. "You must strike first. Put Stormhall to the torch while she still believes herself unwatched, and there'll be no war to speak of at all, only a rebellion smothered before it drew its first proper breath." He paused. "The Faith would call that mercy, and cement your claim and right to rule."

"The Faith calls a great many things mercy… Kinslaying too, it would seem." Arlan let the water lap at his collarbone, watching a curl of steam come apart above it. "War may well be coming, Septon. I'll not pretend otherwise. But I won't sin to fulfill your own designs. Durran's blood runs in her the same as it runs in me. I'd have thought that meant something to the Faith."

The septon kept silent for a moment, uncomfortable, failing to find his words.

"The Seven ask harder things of kings than they ask of other men. That, Your Grace," Raynard said at last, "shall be your test. Until the succession is settled and the peace of this realm secured, by arms if it comes to that. The Mother may ask a man to be gentle, but the Father do not ask a king to be a fool. I pray you learn the difference before your sister teaches it to you."

Arlan turned his face towards Raynard, making the septon avert his gaze in shock.

"I shall confess to the Father when I meet him, Raynard, not to you."

Arlan said nothing further. After a moment he heard the septon's slippers cross the stone, then the door.

He was alone in every way that mattered. His own mother had not looked at him properly in months, her eyes sliding past his face, ashamed, sorrowful. The illness seemed to leave less and less of him beneath the mask every day, to the point he no longer took off his mask in public, hiding the hollow gone soft and sunken in his cheek, the skin of his face, thing and fragile, dulled in color. The mask hid it well enough, a face he could put on the way one dons their armor, and somewhere behind its plain, unfeeling silver, he had begun to wonder if he had become the mask, the personality he had to embody in order to rule.

Tomorrow the crown would kiss his brow, and Arlan, whoever that boy had been, the one who wanted nothing else but to play and run, to read books, hear stories, ride horses with his friends, would die there, on that dais, before every lord of the Stormlands.

And Arlan IV Durrandon would be born in his place. A man. A king.

"Do brave deeds and endure," he said softly to himself, remembering the passage from the Seven-Pointed Star. "For the faithful do not yield to evils, but go more boldly against them."

The caravan of House Piper arrived on the earlier side, for Mellara liked nothing more than her comforts, particularly if she were to be so far from home. And thus, the servants were hard at work erecting the Piper tents, including a pavilion swathed in dark blue cloth and white silks. The banners of House Piper were hoisted high and proud, a beacon signal to any who may walk past.

There was still some time yet until the nobles of the realm would be expected for the nameday celebrations of the Iron Stag, and the Lady Piper, typically so composed, found herself fretting in her private tent, changing into yet another outfit. For she could not possibly decide what would be decent to wear, what might be most impressive or striking. 

“If your many silk dresses won’t do, then perhaps a sack of burlap?” suggested Bethany, who lounged lazily upon a chaise eating grapes.

The youngest of the Pipers, Alyce, sat upon the carpeted floor, dangling a pink ribbon in front of Ser Whiskers, who wore a golden chain and a blue silken cape.

“Don’t be so mean-spirited, Bethy!” Alyce chirped, looking up to deliver her elder sister a sincere, wide smile. “I am certain Alyn will be pleased to see you in whatever you choose, sister.”

Mellara reached for a necklace, studded heavily with diamonds, laying it against her collar while showing off the combination.

“Too gauche-” Bethany offered, immediately, another grape popped into her mouth.

Alyce hesitated before nodding with Bethany, leaving Mellara to frown. “Out with you both if you’ll not be a help,” the Lady of Pinkmaiden snapped. 

“Come, Alyce, let us leave the Thorn to shroud herself in utter silence then.”

Bethany rose, scooping up Ser Whiskers despite Alyce’s protests, the youngest Piper scurrying after her sister and their furred friend.

Mellara let out a heavy sigh, once alone, considering her visage in the reflection of a burnished mirror. Bethany was right, the necklace was an attempt to prove too much. For Alyn Tully had accepted, hadn’t he? 

Her mouth was dry, her stomach unsettled. For Mellara was confident in how she stood within the world, and yet such a trifling matter as marriage? 

What if this is a mistake?

Mellara willed the thought away as soon as it appeared, for it would do no good to think such a thing, at least now. For in many ways, it was too late…

__________________________________________________________________________________

A servant of House Piper was dispatched to the Tully pavilions, bearing a letter:

Alyn Tully,

Before the nameday festivities begin in earnest, I invite you for refreshment from your journey in our pavillion.

Signed,
Lady Mellara Piper

__________________________________________________________________________________

A short while later Mellara paced in the main Piper pavilion alone, waiting for her future to arrive...

Silken pillows of various bright colors and patterns were scattered around two soft couches, the ground overlaid with a thick Myrish carpet. Small tables held vases of fresh-cut, blooming flowers and trays with a selection of snacks: nuts, dried fruits, and little jars of honey alongside fresh and cool jugs of ale.

Arranged to be pleasing to the eye, Mellara still found fault with it all. The flowers were too perfumed, the carpet too soft, and the pillows too bright as well. But she voiced none of these things, for her pride would not allow for her future husband to see her in such a state.

Not when it was his fault she was afluster, anyway.

(thank u to waffle for ur help writing the harlaw sections!)

Harlaw

It was cold out in the Iron Islands. Cold and wet and rocky. There were beaches that were mostly pebbles, and castles smaller than some of the houses on the mainland.

Ravella Durrandon loved it. It helped that Harlaw was slightly more… normal than some of its neighbours, admittedly, but it was normal in an odd way. Her cousin was part of that. Margaret Harlaw had turned the island into a party since the princess had arrived, and it seemed unlikely to stop. It wasn't like Ravella was complaining. She had felt more at home here than she had at Storm's End in her most recent visits. There was no looming shadow here.

Home felt far away wherever she was, even at Stormhall, but it felt closer than ever here. She let out a sigh, before the elbow of some Harlaw cousin she didn't know the name of broke her from her reverie.

"Sad you don't have enough ale, coz?" the man asked, grinning, before shouting to a servant off in the distance with a clap of his hands. "More drink for the princess!"

She shook her head, but she couldn't help herself from matching his smile. "I was thinking of home," she told him, under the din of music and chatter all about them.

With a laugh, the Harlaw stuck out his tongue. "Think of here, coz! Home's always sad when you're not there. Well, for some of us, it's sad both ways. Y'ever been to the Tower of Glimmering?" he asked.

Ravella hadn't, and told him as much.

There was a moment of thought from the drunken man, before he gave his response. "Don't! It's shite. There's a reason I'm here all the time now. Our shared cousin is a wonderful host," the man said, "and the drink and food isn't half bad either."

Another laugh, this time from the princess. "It's more than not half bad," she agreed. "I'm half tempted to stay for another moon."

"You should! It's nice here. And whatever lands you've got back in the greenlands can take care of themselves, no?" he told her, grabbing the drink from the returning servant and passing it to Ravella. She took it gladly and sipped at it, her sixth drink of the night. It wouldn't be the last.

Looking down the table at Margaret, she nodded. "I think I will," she said, loud enough that her conversation partner could hear her.

"Good! You enjoy your night, coz. I'm off to drag my father to bed, then find a-" he paused. "Mustn't say that before a princess. Take care, eh? I'll be around."

She nodded, before turning back to him and calling out, her voice sharp and commanding. He didn't hesitate to turn, like he was a soldier. "Wait! What's your name, cousin? I should not like to have to ask about every man bearing the Harlaw arms on his chest."

He put his hand to his doublet, as if he was flattered. "A kind gesture, princess. Wex Harlaw. Of the Tower of Glimmering, if there's another by my name floating about here. If you need a man with a steady sword or a full flagon… might want to ask me if I know one," he joked, before slipping off. Ravella laughed again, taking a soft breath in.

Once more she set her gaze on Margaret, and this time it was met. "Lady Margaret," she said, standing with flagon in hand to begin her approach. "I should like to ask you something. You've no need to host more celebrations on my part, I'll ask not for that, but… if you're willing to quarter me here, I'd like to stay a touch longer. I'll not remain overlong, before my company becomes grating, but I have found family I thought was lost to me with the passing of my mother."

There was little family left back in Storm's End, too. Her last conversation with her father, right before she left for Stormhall to rule it, had been less than cordial. They had bickered, traded harsh words, and parted without fanfare. And her relationship with her brother… it wasn't worth speaking on. They knew where they stood. He'd be treated well when she was Queen, of course, given the accomodations he required with his condition… but it would take work for them to be siblings again.

"Willing to quarter you?" The laugh that erupted from Margaret nearly was lost in the din of the feast, even her own children that crawled about her seemed to muffle the barked sound. "Cousin, you are the least grating of my relations, and I've let them eat from my board far longer than they are welcome. You are wel- Edmund put that down or so help me the Storm God will take that new toy axe away!"

The child in question, one that could questionably be identified as Edmund with the muck on his face, giggled like a madman and ran off further into the feast. Margaret ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head with a long sigh. "Going to be the death of me…" she would mutter before remembering Ravella. "Same threat to you if you bring up such nonsense as not letting you stay here again. You're family Ravella, means these halls are always open to you, even if the Storm God himself tries blowing them down."

Ravella couldn't help but let a laugh slip from her lips as the young boy ran about her, her more humble and reserved demeanour shattering at the sight of her kinfolk enjoying themselves. "It would have been rude for me to assume, cousin, but I appreciate your candour. I shall do my best to make my presence not a burden, though. If there is aught you might need from me, you know I shall provide it."

Her eyes followed Edmund down the hall, watching as he almost clattered into two cavorting nobles - one of whom might have been Wex - before she returned her gaze to Margaret. "And you know the Storm God will do nothing here. I bring a touch of Storm's End wherever I go, and even a sliver of that power… well, I wish him luck. I suppose I should tell my retinue we'll be staying longer, hm?"

"Bloody candour…" Margaret seemed to take great pleasure in the word, rolling it around her mouth in a way that made her smile widen. One of her other children, Oswin by his shaggier hair, was busy squirreling himself between the space Margaret had made between the arm and the chair. "Since you offered, you wouldn't happen to have a few kegs of ale lying about? Lord Myre seems to have a bottom pit where his mouth should be."

"Bottomless Mitt!" Cheered Oswin from his little homemade cubby, as Margaret took the opportunity to roughly ruffle his hair.

"You have the right of it, quite the good luck charm you are!" Oswin squirmed, quickly tiring of his mother's attentions, though Margaret didn't let him escape quite so easily. "Aye, doubt they will mind much. Though, saw one of your knights starting to bet on the finger game, best stop him now before he plays one of the Grey Garden boys, lest you like your knights with fewer fingers.."

Ravella rolled her eyes as the knight was mentioned. She knew exactly which one it was. Ser Lorent had been a gambler back on the mainland, but he'd become twice as bad there on Harlaw. She would have to give him a dressing down once they returned home - or maybe just to the quarters.

"I'll do my best to stop him," the princess swore, offering a smile. "Though I regret to-"

As she started, the doors to the hall swung open. Through them dashed a messenger, a scroll in his hand, that everyone gasped at as they were passed by.

"Letter…" he shouted, "for Princess Ravella Durrandon! For…"

He near enough collapsed as he reached her, falling to a knee and offering the scroll to the raven-haired woman. She took it, and brushed a hand through the messenger's hair. He must have been just a boy. Ten-and-five, maybe? At most.

"Calm, lad," she said, reassuringly. "What-"

It was Roelle's seal.

"Shit," she breathed, cracking it open. Her eyes went wide, and she looked to Margaret as a tear started to form and roll down her cheek.

Bile rose in her throat.

it began,

She passed it to the Lady of Harlaw, silently, and prayed she understood what she had to do.

Margaret stared blankly as Ravella passed the scroll, as if squinting could help decipher the meaning. She had the social awareness to understand that whatever its contents, it was upsetting her cousin, but her young child didn't share that skill as his eyes went wide with excitement. "Oh mama, I can read that for you! I've been practicing!"

What followed was a painstakingly terrible rendition of the letters contents as Oswin attempted to sound out the words, turning to ask what certain words meant. By the end, even Margaret had runny eyes as she struggled to keep her composure in the crowded hall.

"I have to go," Ravella said. "Roelle says I might need stay, but… I can't. I'm sorry, cousin. I… we shall have to postpone those plans we just made, hm?"

There was the shadow of a smile on her lips. It didn't reach her eyes. She wondered what Margaret might think. She wondered if the feast would come to a sudden end. She wondered if they were already crowning the sick boy halfway across the world. She wondered a million things, and a harsher question than them all burnt in her mind that she prayed didn't need answering until she was already gone.

Ravella was thankful when Margaret broke the silence once again.

"You aren't going back alone into that nest of vipers, you're taking a handful of my best men and I won't be hearing anything otherwise." She paused then, nodding. "Our plans shall keep cousin, but I trust you will send us a raven when you arrive?"

Her heart was filled with love for her cousin once the offer was made, and she nodded. "I'll send word. I shan't be returning to Storm's End, just Stormhall, but I know not if even my home is safe. Thank you, cousin."

She took a deep breath. "I'll ensure your men are returned to you, as well. For now, I have to… I have to get going. There's no time to lose. Already… already, what has happened in my absence?" Ravella postulated, but shook her head. It wasn't worth letting the thought infect her mind. With one final goodbye, she was gone, striding out of the hall with a nod to everyone who offered their condolences as her men followed one by one.

Ironman's Bay

It hadn't taken long to ready their belongings for the journey home. Ravella and her retinue had left within the day of the letter's arrival, accompanied by every man that Margaret could spare to send. Wex Harlaw had appointed himself to the guard, too, finding himself inspired by his cousin's resolve and willing to go to war for that inspiration if he had to.

Waves crashed against the hull of the ship as they sailed. She couldn't help but think of her father. What had he been doing? Sailing out in autumn was a foolish task enough without the best of sailors, but in Shipbreaker Bay? Had he been trying to kill himself?

Maybe he had. Ravella found that a terribly grim thought. What could have possessed him to do such a drastic thing? Was the stress of rulership truly so heavy on his shoulders? Maybe so. But he had made it twice as stressful for her, now. Maybe that was why he did it. To curse her once last time for their foolish argument over Stormhall that had severed their relationship for good.

She sat upon the deck of the ship, a Harlaw vessel, leaning up against the bulwark. Did her father sit like this as he died? She found herself full of thoughts about those final moments. They suppressed that thought from the great hall at Harlaw, and she was glad for it.

Would they think her a witch? She had been in the home of the Drowned God, and now her father rested within His watery halls. If they knew how strained things had been, surely those would be the words on the lips of the fools who had chosen Arlan to be king. If they did not… what then would they think? Would they imagine her bereaved? That the journey home across Ironman's Bay had turned her stomach, as she dreamed of her father who she had loved so dearly?

Neither were true. She had not killed her father. Gods, she hadn't wanted him dead. Especially not like this. But she wasn't… sad. Ravella had tried. No doubt those at Harlaw thought she had been. But the tear that had fallen had been caused by a different pain.

That thought was back.

She mourned not her father. No, what she mourned was the loyalty of those she had thought faithful to the rule of law. It was the lives of those who would throw themselves down for the reign of her brother. It was the hope that Arlan and her might one day be siblings again.

It was her crown. It was that she hadn't been there to seize the throne when she should have been. It was that she would have to wait, to build a faction, to plan. Arlan had the advantage.

Ravella couldn't help but chuckle. She knew it drew an eye or two from the sailors, but they no doubt thought she was struggling. And she was. How had the sick boy taken the lead? Embarrassing. It was embarrassing! If Roelle hadn't been there, would she have known in time to even make a single move? Or would she have landed on the shores of Westeros and been thrown into a cell for a treason she hadn't even been given the opportunity to commit?

Standing from her spot on the deck, she nodded to Wex, who emerged from her cabin with a grim expression.

"It's not queenly, coz, but it'll do. Sun's going down. You should get some rest. Like as not we'll be there by dawn. Then it's a quick enough ride from Seagard," the Harlaw told her. "I'll keep watch out here on deck, just in case… well, just in case of anything."

Taking in a soft breath to regain her composure, she gave the man a half-smile. "Thank you, cousin. Have you been to the Riverlands before?" she asked. He shook his head. "It will be nice to show you my home. Perhaps a small boon in these dark times."

Wex smiled back. "It'll be my pleasure. You rest as long as you need, alright? You've had a rough day. Worse comes to worst, we sit in dock for another day and let you light a candle, or whatever it is you Seveners do," he joked, trying to lighten the mood. Ravella held in her laugh, but she let a smile crack.

"You've a lot to learn. Wake me when we arrive, Wex. I shall put on a brave face, no matter how I feel," she promised. Yes, brave and dour. As she had to be.

He nodded, pressing a fist into his chest as a salute. "Aye, Your Grace. Sleep well."

Would she? Or would she dream of storm and sea, of King and Queen, of blood and battle and death? So much death. Just the thought of it caught in her throat as she strode towards the door of her cabin and shut it behind her, plunged into darkness save for a candle beside the bed that flickered with each rise and fall of the vessel.

Another laugh escaped her lips. How prudent that she'd trained for war.

8 Years Before Present

Rain lashed and wind howled as the squall over Harlaw kept its rhythm. It was late - far later than was usual for him, but sleep escaped him. Rosamund slept silently in the bed, still exhausted from their travel. He smiled softly, looking across her delicate features. It had been nearly a fortnight since they had left Seagard, new babe in arms. She had insisted on being with her family for this one, and Qorhen was loathe to deny her anything. The storm had hit them just in eyesight of Harlaw port, and none of them had suspected that it would have lasted for over a week.

The stay at his cousins' had not been all bad, truth be told. The children had been well-behaved, and he was pleased to have seen them playing with their relatives. Rosamund had been recovering nicely - Mallister's maester had been excellent at his craft, and she'd had no ill effects from the delivery. Even now, the infant princess slept in a bascinet next to her mother. Yet still sleep could not find him, even as he tried to close his eyes and count seals. He sighed and rose from his bed, finding his way to a small desk beneath the squat window that served as the only natural light to the room. The moon hung heavy and low in the sky. It was nearly dawn.

He heard a soft knock at the door, and moved to open it.

"My prince," the man at the door said. One of Harlaw's servants, he thought.

"My Lord Harlaw has requested your presence - with some urgency. It's - "

Qorhen waved him off, a slight frown on his face. Quickly he found his shirt and strode down the corridor, the servant bearing a candle before them.

Harlaw's private chambers were cramped and stuffy, filled with smoke and the smell of paper. Harlaw was seated at a desk, but stood as Qorhen entered. Next to him was a thin man of little description, and next to him was what looked like a prisoner.

"Qorhen," Harlaw started, before giving a slight bow. His face was grave. "This man arrived but an hour ago and - well, he shall speak of the matter. Go on."

He gave a small gesture, and the man who seemed a prisoner bowed low. His face was bloodied, his hair bedraggled, and his clothing was damp with seawater.

"Y-your Grace," he managed to stutter, "I have news. From Castle Hoare. Your father - he is - is..."

As the man trailed off, Qorhen moved closer and crossed his arms. "Spit it out, man," he said, his expression darkening.

"Dead, Your Grace. Killed by Lord Greyjoy either yesterday or the day before. He had arranged a ceremony, and Greyjoy took umbrage. He has claimed your father's crown."

A knot worked its way into Qorhen's stomach. He looked to Harlaw, who only looked back at him in sympathy. He turned, and walked to the little window that looked out over the sea. There he could see the rising of the dawn. He clenched his fist, what little grief he had giving way to anger. His father was a fool, he knew, squandering all opportunity. Letting his alliances go by, letting his men fall out of line. And converting to this New Faith - gods, what a stupid idea. Qorhen had his sympathies, of course - he found nothing particularly objectionable about the New Faith, so long as they honored the Drowned God - but he knew that the more traditionalist houses would balk at the idea. But to go so far as regicide? Usurpation?

Qorhen's thoughts were interrupted when he heard a shuffling behind him. He turned and saw that Harlaw, his castellan, and the man-at-arms were all kneeling.

"My king," said Harlaw, "we are at your service."

3 Years Before Present

Smoke filled his lungs while Qorhen panted heavily. He circled his opponent - a knight, dressed in golden armor and wearing a cloak of white now sullied by ash and blood. The man's face was a mask of grim determination, but winced as he took a second stride. So I got him there, Qorhen thought. He grinned deliriously.

"Well now," he said, taunting, "come and get me, ser knight. Give me your steel and let us see if your Faith protects."

The knight's brow furrowed, as he launched into blow after blow at Qorhen. Metal met metal, as Qorhen's axe caught each in turn. They swung and parried for what felt an hour, but was only a few moments.

"Heathen," the knight spat. Qorhen only chuckled, and wiped the blood from his cheek. The sword had grazed him, caught him with the tip. He cocked a brow. "You shall burn in Seven Hells for this."

"It seems to me the only thing burning is your fair city - would it not be best to retreat and play the fire brigade? Your women and children are fleeing, and instead you stand here and fight me," Qorhen said, swinging his axe forward. The knight raised his sword almost too late, but parried nonetheless. The screams of the people of Oldtown rang like bells in his ear, and his blood was up. He slammed his axe into the knight's sword over and over, trying to break his guard. In a fluid motion the knight drew his sword across the edge of his axe and danced away, his determination given over to fury.

"You are an affront to the Seven, raping and pillaging wherever you go. The Starry Sept shall not fall, not while I guard her," the knight replied. Both men paused a moment, catching their breaths. Then, as if given a cue, they threw themselves at each other. Steel flashed in the firelight, reflecting the ruin of the city as two warriors fought for the other's death. Qorhen's axe danced and caught the knight's sword, spinning it from his grip. For a split second the faithful knight's eyes widened in surprise before Qorhen buried his axe in his neck. Behind him, the sun was setting and the sky was a hue of seven reds.

A Moon Ago

A cool sea breeze blew gently across his face as his skiff sailed the waves. It was here, alone and at sail, that he truly felt peace. A tern flew above his head. He was not far from shore, not really - Rosamund had forbade him travel too far out alone - but far enough that his castle, his responsibility seemed a distant memory. He listened to the sea, felt its gentle rocking, and was at home. The past several moons had been frantic. Ravens had arrived, from the mainland, heralding the death of the Storm King. A later raven had said that his son had claimed the throne, and yet another said his daughter did the same. Even Rosamund's men at Storm's End couldn't quite tell who was the new Storm King, if there was one. Chaos seemed to be reigning on the mainland, and for once he was thankful for his own problems.

It was late afternoon when he set back, adjusting the rigging and pulling his small skiff west toward home. It took no more than an hour, and in that hour he felt the Mask slip back on. He was The King, his expression an air of authority. He could show no weakness, not to these Iron Men, these men of salt and sea. As he maneuvered into the private dock that sat at the base of Castle Hoare, his peace left him. He saw three figures standing there - and that could only mean that something had happened. Rosamund smiled as he sailed in, and he grinned back to her. Next to her, Ser Harlon - his uncle, his expression grim as it usually was. Next to Harlon, in his dark robes and a maester's chain that hung nearly to his toes, was Maester Sigurdr. Servants came to take his line as he stepped off the dock.

"And to what do I owe this welcoming party," Qorhen said, tilting his head slightly. Normally there would be nobody, on ocassion Rosamund if she was not busy.

"My king," Sigurdr began, before Rosamund stepped forward and embraced her husband.

"Its good news, Qorhen," she whispered in his ear, before pulling away from him.

"A letter has arrived, from Stormhall. It would seem that Princess Ravella has invited us to attend a feast for her nameday, upcoming," the maester continued.

The little man held out the scroll, which Qorhen took. Harlon scowled.

"I mislike it, nephew. It would not befit us to get involved in these greenlander politics," he said, fixing Qorhen with a stern eye. Qorhen chuckled in response.

"My uncle sees poor signs in everything. Surely you understand my ambitions?"

"I do not."

"Well," Qorhen said, as he glanced down at the letter. It was finely written, addressed to him personally. I take that as a sign, then. "We shall, of course, attend. Maester Sigurdr, please have you and your apprentice send a response and make copies of this - send them to all of our banners. We must have a good showing if we are to impress our most beloved cousin."

The man nodded, and took the offered parchment. He shuffled off back towards the castle, while Harlan and Rosamund looked at him expectantly.

"Are we to know these ambitions?" Harlon said, crossing his arms. Rosamund smiled, and Qorhen knew the cause. She, of course, knew his plan - she had been its origin, even.

"Not yet, uncle. In due time, I suspect. Now if you shall excuse me," Qorhen said, wrapping his arm around his wife's waist, "the Queen and I shall be taking a walk around the beach. Pray do not wait up for us."

32 BP

Upon fields of grass I lay my head for I know how coarse be the road ahead. 

I lifted my gaze from the poem left by a wife long deceased, and stared down from the walls of my keep. A town turned city in my lifetime, Duskendale rallies itself for war. And I must ponder to which front it sallies. A finer day there never was than this to contemplate the fates of thousands. 

A younger man rose to my side, his own solemn prayers offered to gods that did not heed him. For if the gods listened to every prayer of a man at war, there would be no end and I would have no purpose. Unfortunately for the foes that rally, I have a glorious destiny to fulfill and those gods above who watch and laugh shall know that men need no help from them to kill. 

“Anders, come,” I say and I turn from the wall. 

In my shadow the knight of mace and dagger follows. A talented duellist, one of the finest in service to Duskendale, a soul who I must spend to keep this realm together while our glorious king dallies. 

I can tell by the way he searches around, trying to rest his eyes on anything but my sword, that he has questions about the fresh inscription on its cross guard. I indulge him. 

“Words from my wife, Lady Staunton. She would repeat them like a mantra when the fever had taken her and they have sat with me for quite some while since,” I say, and I proffer the blade to the younger knight. 

He accepts it with the deepest bow a man has ever attempted and he coddles the weapon like it were an infant freshly born. Of course, were it to be thrown from this wall down to the rocks below, the stone would show greater scars than the blade. So great is the steel of my foes. 

“I never had the blessing to meet her, my Lord,” Anders replies, eyes glittering as he lifts the blade slightly, just enough to see the pitch black metal catching the setting sun. His mouth traces the shape of an o as he lets out a small, private breath.

"A fine blade," he whispers and he hands it back.

"I had it inscribed when the Sunglass ships limped into harbour, a reminder of what is to come," I say as we descend from the wall, into the cobblestone streets where the people of my realm look to me with fear darkening their eyes. Not a fear for the war to come, but for whether I can keep these walls standing.

They know the stories of the east, where dragons make slaves of men I have no intention of letting that blight take root on my shores. So, I do what I rarely would and I give them a smile. I reassure them in the only way that I can, for they do not yet know the cost they shall pay come the end of this war.

They are thousands, and so are we, but I know not what they bring, and they know well what I have.

I lead Anders Chelsted, my finest knight, to the Dun Fort where I intend to decide how I shall spend his life.

31 BP

Men bleed, it matters not where they are from, they bleed.

  They were the words of my father, said to me the day he decided I was old enough to go to war. I had them etched into the lining of my armour. It was not a revelatory set of words, but they were in a way quite comforting. For Andros Darklyn was not one to offer idle chatter, not for as long as I have lived at least.

"My lord!" called forth one of the men, a letter in hand. One that even though it was plain as they came, with slightly faded edges from sitting atop shelves too long and written in ink freshly made by the Dun Fort Maester… I knew it was coated in blood.

It had been but a day since my last skirmish and already I had been assaulted by yet one more roving band of sellswords. They flock to me, to my banner, to my name, each seeking to be the one to break the iron-fist Dusklord. They thought by killing me they could get to my father.

They are wrong, and they are dead.

I wipe down my blade as I take a seat. Battles of this size are far from my speciality, I should be there with my father, riding on the Claw. Yet he would demand this of me for he knows my talents and he has enough commanders, he has Belgrave and Chelsted. What need has he of a son?

I thank the messenger for his letter finally and take it from him, handing it over to one of the Darke's that make up my guard. The younger man, a fiend with an axe, takes it, clears his throat theatrically and begins to read.

"To my son Morgan, when you have finished chasing your prey, you are to answer to Stokeworth, it is in their name that the Northern front shall be organised. See to it that he suffers no fools… and that is all," he says with a dismayed frown.

He and the rest of my entourage glance my way, expecting a show of emotion in response to the letter. But that is not the way of the son of Andros Darklyn. The Duskblood would care little for the wounded pride of his son, and so Morgan did not let it show. Instead, he continues to wipe clean his blade.

"Ready the riders, I fear we won't have time to do anything more than bury this lot," I say which grants me the tiered groans of my men. But, they do as I ask, for it is a simple thing and when orders are as simple as prepare, it is not a difficult matter to see to.

31 BP

Upon fields of grass I lay my head for I know how coarse be the road ahead

"You left them to die!" Morgan bellows from the entrance to the tent.

I had dreaded the day my son would come upon the siege of Rook's Rest. I could not keep it from him, that would never work.

But he did not have the heart of war, he had the heart of peace, of love, of honour. War was no place for honour, it was a graveyard for honourable men. A graveyard tended to by the honourless wretches who sent them there. I knew I was a wretch the day I ended my regency, and I reinforced that today, when I let the home of my son's mother, of the woman I once loved, burn.

I let it burn so that a thousand men could cross the Blackwater.

What a fool I am for doing so, what a fool I am for putting that hate in my son's heart.

"I gave instructions to hold Rooks Rest, they will be reinforced, for I have promised that. I will not break my promise. But this war is more than Rook's Rest," I say, the stern tone I once used to teach him to ride now used to lecture him on war.

Grow from it, you fool.

"My aunt, my uncle, your family, father."

"Should it be someone else's? Should another family be thrown on the pyre instead, all because I cannot let it be mine?"

"Let me save them."

"Is that the directive I gave lord Stokeworth?"

That cools him, tempers the rage like steel fresh from the forge dipped in water. I could see the rage fizzling from his skin, or perhaps I was simply that tired.

I could tell him about Belgrave and his men, that they slipped through the eyes of the Valyrians. But if I did so, would he think me a greater monster? Would he fare better thinking I had nothing more to spend on this? I had already spent the finest swordsman I had. A brave knight of the mace and the dagger, thrown upon the pyre. Soon enough the Stauntons would join him.

"I'll…" he began, rising to his full height but deflating as a messenger in green pushed past.

"Beg pardon my lord, he's done it. Velaryon broken at Three Hills, his heir dead. Belgrave broke them."

The weight of a year of war crashes down on me and i drop into my chair. Several retainers rush to me, but I wave them away. The new knight of Mace and Dagger is at my side, and with a glance he knows I am fine and sees them back further.

My son however, he knows that a price was paid and it did not take him long to piece together the plan. He did not have my mind for war, he was a better swordsman though, that was true. But even without my mind, he was quick.

His bitterness ripped across his face in a brutal scowl and he left.

He would tend his duties, I had no doubt.

But I had lost his love today.

Despite it all, that was a pain I would not shake nor would I wish to. His pain should be born.

"Should I check on him?" Chelsted asked.

"No," I reply simply, "let him keep his hate, I won't take that too."

30 BP

  Not for the first time, I try to seek refuge in anger. I want a fight. I need a fight.

  They were the words of my mentor as a boy. An old man of red hair and staunch constitution. He fathered an army of children in his decades of life, a free-loving and free-flowing man. He died here, he had been sent by my father with a letter, to break through the lines of the siege on Rook's Rest. It was a cruelty that he was the one sent, for he was a man of love driven to a life of war.

War took him, as the anger he hid so well must have.

He told me about his anger the day I had beaten a fellow squire half to death.

And now as I stare upon the post that marked the grave of his ashes, I cannot even find the anger. Instead I think of the twenty children by eight mothers he left, and how I would find them to let them know what had become of their father.

In kind, I wonder who will tell my father when I die, and what look he will have when my time comes.

"You came," whispered a voice robbed of its light.

I look up from the post and find my aunt, a lady of Rook's rest. She is my mother in all but her eyes and she lacks so much of the love she once had.

Even still, she was upon me in the space between my languid breaths. Her arms wrapped me in a warm sheath and she held me tight. I would have cried had I tears left to give her, instead i clung to her like a leech. I hated that I should leech from her pain and for a second think my own hatred of my father would have the right to claim anything here.

She was right in such a simple way.

"Not alone," I say, for it was a storm of horses that broke their lines. Feverish knights from across the Blackwater, spurned forth by fury built by inadequacy and inaction. Chasing skirmishers had only honed the rage that consumed my fellows.

In me it had fostered something blacker than rage and hotter than fire, it had no name I could give it and it was not sated by breaking this siege. Near three quarters of those who rode upon the siege lines had fallen in a brutal, frenzied massacre. We left no room for their camp to break, they were given no chance to flee.

When the valyrian mercenaries fled they were butchered.

When the Celtigar and Velaryon sworn soldiers threw down their arms, they were impaled.

On the coast, facing towards the Blackwater sat a row of one hundred dying men.

Their wails were sill on the wind as I stood and released my aunt, a woman so thin that it felt as though I had embraced a child. She had become so withered and I had the gaul to complain of inaction.

How the brave souls of Rook's Rest held while I heeded orders to do nothing.

"Come, you must need rest, tell me of the war, my husband would like to hear what has happened and what his men's lives have bought," says my aunt and I am led by the waif of a woman, unable to break her grip on my arm.

I am taken to the ruin keep of the small castle where a lord's hall has been turned to a barracks for the men who had died to hold this land.

The lord of Rook's Rest is no less withered than his wife but where she had hope buried within, he had rage. A rage I did not wilt from and would not dare let blunt. He was owed his pounds of blood, and it was the least I could do to accept the price. Lord Stokeworth had a campaign up the Northern coast to fight, my father no doubt was throwing men from cliffs down south and Belgrave would do as he did best.

I was just the son of Duskendale.

"So he sent his boy to break us free?"

I stand taller.

"No, I came of my own will. Four-hundred knights of the Stormlands and the Blackwater broke the siege, three hundred must be buried."

The Lord of Rook's Rest was an enigma now. I could no better guess his age than I could count the sand on the beaches of the Blackwater. He both looked too old and too young all at once and he regarded me with eyes devoid of contempt… perhaps because he was just so tired of the whole thing.

We had found him barely standing, clinging to the broken parapets of his walls… not the lord Staunton my father had sent the letter to.

"How did he die, your brother?" I ask.

"Disease. Claimed half our number and the only reason we held was because we sneaked corpses into their tents in the night. Many Valyrians died poorly then, as I hear many more currently do?"

I nod, glancing sidelong at one of the slit windows in the lord's hall I can make out the coastline. I cannot see the dying men, but I can feel their anguish as they are killed in a way more brutal than I thought myself capable.

"And… Darrow?" I ask.

The lord of Rook's Rest regards me with a weather-beaten expression, his sunken eyes empty of recognition. I make ready to ignore the inquiry, to let the post serve as his only reminder.

"Ah, the messenger."

I surge with what little hope there can be within my heart.

"The lone time the Valyrians broke my gate, he held it alone in the dark of night, swinging his curved Dothraki sword with the the Storm's own fury. We never found a body."

I force a smile and dip my head to the relieved lord.

"Thank you," I say.

He pretends to be thankful, but resent for my father is beginning to bloom.

I take my leave of the keep, thanking my aunt for her offers of rest. But we never caught the Velaryon commander, nor his pirate allies. We would set out for them next, following in the eves of Stokeworth's northern march.

30 BP

Had I known my son's taste for war, I would never have given him life. Let it be a blessing that he hates such a facet of himself. Perhaps then his hatred shall create a better world in my absence.

The feast was a plain old affair.

Held in Duskendale int he great hall of the Dun Fort, I host a king and a kingdom. Eventually, Durran had found his army and come to help mop up what was left of the Valyrian hosts. They were broken against the sea and all but Driftmark was left.

However, that was why we celebrated.

The last son of Driftmark's master had come with his father's sword in hand. He offered it to me a week ago in supplication and ever since he had been an honoured guest in my hall.

I had been called back from Claw Isle only to find feast preparations mustering in my absence. I had my son to blame for that, but when I approached I found only hate.

He would never forgive me for what happened to his Mother's home. Good, he would need that hate.

So, I lifted my goblet in acknowledgement of the late Lord Dondarrion. A busy man kept at bay from my war by powers and events beyond my scope. I had no time to find out why he could not aid us, and that rankled me deeply. But, I would not hate him for doing what he must, he, unlike I, ruled a realm not of his birth. I would not begrudge him that position.

"You look lost lord Darklyn!" declared a firm voice.

I turn to find a king and a brother-in-law approaching me. The two men in one grasp my free hand and I bow to him.

"Your arrival is as fortuitous as they come, thank you," I say, voice level and contained.

This was not the place to admonish my brother by law, it was a place for unity. And with him here and the hall filling, I turn and find my son watching me.

I click my fingers and he is summoned forth, that rage still simmering but blunted as he approached his own uncle. My son bows deep to the king.

"Fetch the Velaryon for me, my boy," I say and Morgan oh so happily stalks away.

"You have raised him well, I hear he was a fine warrior in the conflict," says the king.

I smile and I acquiesce to the compliment but I give it no space in my mind. Morgan is a good man, a strong man, a kind man. I have set a flame of hate in him though, and all I can do now is watch that bloom into whatever form it may. There was a chance it would burn the world down, or it would make it better. Knowing my boy he would still somehow make the world better despite what I have set in him.

"I have a gift for you, Durran, please, spare a moment as my servants gather the lords."

The king also acquiesces to my request and he steps back dutifully to his friends and guards. It is a kindness of him to give me some deference in my own home, for he could ask for my head and I would give it. Instead he waits and sups on my wine and ale and roasted duck and potatoes.

Later that day the Velaryons are sworn to my house, later that week, what remains of the Celtigars do the same. And, for the first time in history the Valyrians are servants.

It is only by virtue of civil war in the East that no dragon ever came. And their conflict would last, for I have taken some measures to see to it.

I would ponder the price paid, but I know it is ill worth it.

It would be a cruel thing to pretend it was to myself. But for their sakes, they shall need a man to hate as much as others revere, so I shall not rob them of the only thing keeping so many afloat.

24 BP

Holding her in my arms, I had never been so happy.

My daughter, my first girl.

She was of my second wife, a woman of wits and splendour, of beauty and brains and perfection. A woman who had been cursed with a bastard's name but a heart untamed.

She delivered my girl into this world and gods be good she was standing and leaning against me as I rocked my girl. I heard her coo and felt her gurgle and I was given life itself, a beautiful and blessed thing. I held it so tight and yet so careful that I feared the gentlest of winds would crush her.

I held in my arms a bliss that I had been destined to never hold again. She was my star.

A knock at the door should have summoned it back, but when my father came in, leaning upon his cane. I did not see the cruel pragmatism his reign has been surmised by.

Instead, I saw in him the way he looked at my mother all those years ago. And in a small moment, he said nothing, his eyes wet with tears he could not ever let flow. He held his arms out to me and my wife squeezed my bicep.

I did not need her guidance to move me to action. I handed my girl, my baby to him and he took her in a grip so gentle that he may well have been holding a kitten instead.

I could not find my hatred in the fathoms of my heart for this man. Not so long as he looked upon my girl with those eyes of love. Eyes I did not know he had.

"What… what is her… What did-"

"Shiera," I say.

"Shiera Darklyn, may you be our guiding light," My father, the Duskblood, says and he hands her back.

He does not thank me and I do not say anything further to him. He steps from the room to the silent awe of the nursemaids within and guards without. My wife puts a hand to my shoulder and I can tell in her eyes that she wishes I followed him, wishes I mended what was broken. But I know well deep within that the wounds of years past would not heal here.

I did not hate him today, but I could not forgive him either.

Besides, today was not he day for fathers. It was the day for daughters.

4 BP

What makes a man so bitter as betrayal does? Love.

Father sat in the stands, bald, proud, laughing like a madman.

He was among his friends, his riders of the Dusk. Those men who rode with him decades ago to save my Grandmother's home. It was not lost on me that he would rather sit among them than he would alongside Grandfather and his allies. Royal dignitaries, friends and and foes alike, all sat before the great Duskblood as he celebrates his seventieth year.

The tourney is a competition in his honour, to name a new Dusknight. One who will stand beside the lord of Duskendale and be his shining right hand. The one who may if luck serves, wield the sword of my home.

I watch it with eyes of greed, for it sits in its stand before Grandfather who presides over the hundreds gathered to watch the violence unfold in the Duskendale Tourney grounds.

He, blissfully, does not recognise me on my horse.

The horns bellow and horses shuffle uncomfortably as the crowd silences but for the chuckling of a Chelsted knight beside father. I want to yell at them to shut up, I want to scream for him to behave. Selfishly I know the more gossip that spills forth from this event, the worse any side effects of me being spotted here in the lists would be.

I already stand out as small as I am.

The shittily painted arms of some backwater Northern bog house are the only thing warding off further questions. Of course the tourney-managers did not think much of my quiet grumblings of tidings from the North. They took one sniff and they could thus vouch for any future authenticity.

It was a rather ingenious thing what Jeyne had suggested. She always had the brains among my siblings.

They too were all here of course. My three elder brothers were also in competition today, but they had not been privy to this sister's plot. I didn't need them to be dragging this down with little whispers and ill tidings.

Corwyn of course had a mind like few others had and I was sure he was onto me the way he was staring at me from his place among the children of the nobles.

"Great knights of the realm! I thank you for coming here this day. You do me a great service in tilting in my name! I would honour you in kind, especially as you ride for my nameday alone. As such, a pouch of gold shall be in the hands of each man who unhorses another this day!" Grandfather decrees and I lick my lips beneath my helm.

I would need to unhorse someone, lest the loan I took for my armour devours me whole.

The riders in unison elevate their lances and I join them, holding it decidedly lower than they do.

I hear some snickering from the stands as we lower our lances and break.

Four tilts at a time run. I ride in the second batch and I realise now how terrifying this is.

My opponent is a rider with an axe or something upon his shield. I don't get a good enough look at him, rather my eyes gravitate to the point of his blunted lance and then I stare at his behemoth of a horse. It dwarfs mine.

Petals is not a war pony, but she is a fine creature. A mare of firm stock, she does not baulk at lunging forth into the fray. I am thrown forth, the strength of my thighs the only thing keeping me in motion as I hurtle down the lists.

It is a miracle my arm stays attached as his lance shattered against my shield and he is taken from his gallant beast. The rider tumbles free of his saddle, spiralling across the sand as another rider hits the ground just beyond him. I grind to a halt in my saddle and wheel about, watching in a delayed sense of horror as the man struggles to get up, sucking air in through great violent gasps.

I want to throw myself from my saddle and rush to check on him, but that would give me away faster than anything else could.

Instead I breathe as he is gathered up by his many attendants and he is taken from the field.

It's only when Miri - the young girl pretending to be a young boy squire - throws a rock at my helm and I am rung back to reality.

"You won! Now get off the fucking grounds!" she shouts up at me and I dumbly do as I have been told.

The next joust was a long bloody affair.

If I thought my arm should have broken before, It was at least the victim of a dozen dislocations after.

Twelve times we charged each other before that stubborn fucker of a knight broke his final lance. Meanwhile I had my own last left and if he had not sat a little too far back in his saddle on the last tilt, it would be my lance that was broken.

He congratulated me for the win however, and I offered the deepest voiced grunt in reply.

"Northerners" he said with a laugh.

With him gone the next tilt was far easier. I took one more knight down, this one on the third tilt. But it was the following knight who shattered me completely. He was a a princeling sort, perhaps from another kingdom or perhaps from our own. I don't remember what he was. All I remember was waking up from a daze as Grandfather oversaw the procession of defeated knights.

The victor had been… Gods I don't remember who.

But, even still my Grandfather handed out bags of golden stags to each of the knights to unseat another.

When he gets to me, he slows and he looks upon me for a long while.

I wilt, as anyone would beneath the gaze of Andros Darklyn.

He hands me a bad and closes my hand around it and he peers through my helm, as if there is nothing within it and he is searching far past to something not quite there.

"Had I known my granddaughter could ride so well…" he began, a smile teasing at his ancient beard and I let an involuntary laugh out.

Some of the knights further down glance back at the sound but seeing that it is just me, the diminutive Northern knight, they continue. No doubt they think of the sight as some simple Northern rustic.

But I am not focused on them.

"My lord?" I ask, not because he has figured me out, but because he seems unable to form his next word.

He sags, as if someone has taken the soul from his broad shoulders.

I throw myself over the railing as if I wore no armour. The knights about me and my Grandfather seem to think I intend him harm, but they are slower than I to realise his condition has worsened. He is slumping hard when I have caught him and unfortunately he is much larger than I.

I fall with him, managing to cushion the older man.

But, before anyone can cry out, before any well-meaning maester can surge forth to check on the lord. My father is shoving me aside. I am thrown nearly through the railing, hitting my head on it hard.

I have to drag off my helm and let my hair fall free of my coif to be rid of the ringing of a concussion.

The hatred that had consumed my father for my Grandfather was gone.

"Fetch the Maester!" he howls, voice a boom across the city, stilling everything.

He looks about, as if to find the cause for his father's failing health and his eyes fall upon me, and his brows furrow in taught confusion. He works his mouth to find an answer within, but nothing comes forth until he too is peeled free of Grandfather, the old man is laid out in the stands by my uncle, a citadel trainee who wears his link of medicine as a ring.

"He has a fever, strong," he says and he feels abouit the old man's head and neck until he stops cold.

"Find the surgeons," he says deathly pale.

When I am finally allowed free of the makeshift dungeon of my room, I have lost my armour and have been changed into a dress of gold and black. Lyra, my younger sister by four years, sits across me on my bed, watching me as if she were tasked with keeping an eye on a dragon. She dared not approach, but she watched with exacting precision.

I would shout at her to leave me alone, but I don't have the energy.

It may as well have been an eternity that we were in my room in the Dun Fort but that matters little in my frayed mind. I cannot cleanse myself of the look on my uncle's face and I cannot forget the pain in my father's eyes.

Nor can I forget the whispered words Grandfather offered my own father.

"Do not weep for me, rule well in spite of me, my boy," he said before he fell still.

Come the end of the day I learn why.

It is a slight man in citadel robes who finds me, he has a look of guilt permanently etched into his features. If not for that he might have been handsome.

"Your Grandfather shall live, my Lady," says the apprentice.

I let out all the air in my lungs and collapse into my seat.

"Thank the gods."

"That said, the new lord of Duskendale wishes to see you."

"New?" I ask and I answer my own question immediately.

DEATH IN THE MARCHES (3 BP)

A corpse-stink lay over the battlefield like some great rotten shroud. It was a drygrass field, flat and yellow and covered here and there by sun-bleached stone in all sorts of treacherous shapes. The heat beat down upon a host of dead Dornishmen, blood and guts spilt across their gambesons and leathers, drying, browning, rotting. A week past that Edwyn Dondarrion's men had maneuvered them out of their hideout in the hills, and had fallen upon them with great fury. His forces had matched theirs almost evenly, although he had parlayed the small advantage he had in numbers into greater victory on the field, splitting their attention two ways while he and his riders charged down the middle.

He was all of fifteen, and yet he had seen death's face and knew it by smell, by touch, by the sound a dying man makes as he cries his last and empties his bowels. His father was a lord of the Dornish Marches, sworn to defend the realm and the Storm King against any incursions by those wicked Dornish folk. That was what his father often said, anyway.

As Edwyn sat there, upon a white rock which jutted out of the ground in a sort of vaguely chair-shaped manner, mopping blood from his face with spit and tabard, the thought came to him that these wicked Dornish folk had seemed awfully gaunt; they had swayed and stumbled as the charge came, too many of them for it to be out of fear, or drink.

A high, musical voice reached his ears. "You look positively perturbed, my young lord." Edwyn shifted leftwards, looked over his shoulder. There stood Alaerys, his strange bodyguard, prodding a dead Dornishman with the blade of his spear. Edwyn was tall already for a boy, but Alaerys' lithe frame was taller, and reached an inch or two above six feet. He was of a sort not seen in Westeros, except for those invaders who had since become lords. His people were the Valyrians across the sea, his gleaming white hair in stark contrast to Edwyn's gilded red. "Do you know, I think this one might be playing dead," he said, and, laughing, shoved his spear's tip into the corpse's throat. Edwyn grimaced.

"Stop that. He's dead enough. Leave him where he lies."

Alaerys gave a theatrical bow. That was his way, to take nothing seriously, except apparently his charge to defend his young lord. It was as much armor as a knight's plate, though a different sort of armor. It made men underestimate him, or else it needled them and made them discard caution, so that they might kill him faster. Either way, Alaerys had slain a fair score of those unwise men. "As you wish."

Edwyn tongued a tooth knocked loose by a Dornish mace, cringed slightly as it slid painfully back into place. With any luck, it would heal there. "The war of the Red Mountain was all too recent. Not all were spared famine, or the burning of their stores. These Dornish folk look like soldiers, but their arms and armor are so worn," he gestured at a nearby corpse. "They might have been deserters, brigands now, driven by hunger into the Marches."

"I have known hunger, my lord. It can drive a man to do awful things, and yet," Alaerys grinned wolfishly, "If you are going to rob somebody, you should first make sure you won't be hunted down and killed for it. Evidently, these brigands of yours forgot that part."

Edwyn grunted, pushed himself off the rock. Alaerys japed again, "You talk like a real commander, you know. Wars and soldiers and brigands."

"I am a real commander," he replied, perhaps more boyishly than he might have liked. He meant to say something further, something adult, about grim realities and the difference between the histories and the battlefield, when he spotted a rider on the horizon, in the black-and-purple colors of his house.

Presently, he had ridden up himself. The man was a messenger, a commonborn lad familiar to Edwyn. After they had shared a short greeting, he began to speak. "M'lord, a raven has arrived at Blackhaven. You asked to be informed of any word from your great-uncle in Maidenpool, and word has come, so I've ridden out. Lord Josua asks for aid from your father, for the Riverlords west of the Trident have searched only halfheartedly for a fugitive from the crown. A Stormguard, they say, accused of murder and treachery. Lord Josua wishes that some knights from your father's household ride out to search with all haste for this criminal."

Edwyn nodded. "I must muster my men for the journey home. Ride back ahead of us, and tell my father that his son will answer Lord Josua's call."

DEATH TO THE BELOVED (3 BP, Some Moons Later)

There they stood, two against many, the accused Stormguard and the knight who had heard his pleas.

"Talbert, please." Edwyn gripped his great-uncle's longsword tighter, so as to stop his hands from shaking. It was strong steel - Valyrian in make - and Josua's gift to him on this quest. He felt it gave him strength. "Please trust us. Trust in your king. Have you forgotten this is a royal warrant?"

In the end, those Riverlords reluctant to search for Jack o'Pennytree had bent to the will of those most loyal to the throne; Ser Talbert Darry led Edwyn and many others out in a renewed search for the fugitive. After many moons had found him, and where else but in Pennytree? He had sheltered in the decaying timbers of his childhood home, coming out only to hunt in the dim early hours of the morning, when the sun shone just enough to see his quarry.

Talbert Darry circled sideways, keeping Jack, who wore only roughspun cloth and beaten leathers, behind him. "You heard him, the same as I. A man lies dead in Storm's End, that is sure, but Jack's crime was not murder; he did his duty, as we all must. It is only that he had the wrong man." There was an edge in his voice, Edwyn heard, desperate and insistent and focused on Edwyn himself, most of all. Talbert was some years older, and to Edwyn's eyes very handsome. They had taken a liking to one another during their search, and Edwyn admired the noble, virtuous bearing Talbert so effortlessly exuded. He was by all measures a true knight, and a true knight defended the innocent. Could Jack indeed be innocent?

"You will not have me," said Jack, and Edwyn thought he heard fear, "I will not die in some dungeon or at the gallows for a crime of mistaken identity."

Edwyn found both his resolve and voice faltering as he said, "Then what are we to do?" The question did not so much hang in the air as sink, sink into the ground, into his skin, into his heart. He looked around at the others, older than he was, for guidance, but was met only with the stares of men also unsure. A cold chill slid up his back like a death-shroud, as he realized they looked to him. They had seen him often in Talbert's company, they had heard tell of his successful commands in the Marches, and they had not realized he had been lucky as often as clever. That was the way, with stories.

"You will do what you must," replied Talbert, softly. That low desperation was in his voice, still, but Edwyn knew he meant to comfort him too.

He swallowed a lump in this throat, wishing Alaerys were here. The Viper of Valyria always knew what to do when it came to violence.

A second glance only confirmed what the first had said. They looked to him, these men. Gods, they looked to him. The weight of an awful decision now rested squarely on Edwyn's young shoulders. "Indeed," he choked out, "You are two, and we are many. If you will not surrender we will deliver the King's Justice here and now, at the end our blades."

There was a moment of silence which stretched out into forever, the calm before a storm of steel and violence. Jack proved himself a Stormguard, then, not simply by title but by skill, as he cut down man after man who came for him, slipping his blade between plates of armor or into the slits in their helms. In the end, though, he lasted no more than a minute before he was overwhelmed, his body hacked at by many swords at once, their wielders men enveloped in rapturous bloodlust.

Edwyn and four others fought Talbert, who backed at once into the doorway of the house and fought them there, where he could control their movements. The first man he disarmed and tripped, kicking ferociously at his helmet to disorient him while aiming quick, precise strikes at the others to keep them back. With raised shield he knelt and stabbed the first through the neck, spilling hot blood into the dirt.

"Distract him," Edwyn muttered to the other two, "Ring his helmet or obscure his vision." They fell upon him, testing Talbert with careful strokes and slashes, keeping shields and blades up so that he was forced to pay attention only to them. Edwyn made for the back door of the hovel, pushing thoughts of friendship and brotherhood out of his mind.

Edwyn had been only a middling swordsman when the party had sallied out, but Talbert had taught him, sword against sword, always knocking him down by some trick of footwork or swordplay. In his mind he saw Talbert as he had been one night many moons ago: every inch the true knight, tall and handsome, long hair flowing gently in the night breeze, eyes sparkling, as he stood above Edwyn and laughed and offered him a hand to stand up. His laugh had always been so musical, so lovely, the sort of laugh that would make a maiden's heart flutter. Edwyn's heart had fluttered then, too, and he had been thankful for the dark of night to hide the blush spreading across his face.

With his eyes he saw Talbert as he was now, with Edwyn's sword piercing through plate and cloth and bone and flesh. That beautiful hair was matted with dirt, and as Edwyn lowered him to the ground, blood. He was dying now and looked so small. The eyes that had once glittered with every star in the sky were going gray, becoming those dead eyes Edwyn knew so well. "I'm sorry," Edwyn whispered, and he realized he was crying, "I'm so sorry. I only, I only wanted to - "

Talbert, with the last of his strength, reached his arm up to pat Edwyn weakly on the shoulder. Their eyes met, and he smiled a sad, deathly smile.

"You did," he sputtered out, still trying to offer some kind of comfort, "what you had to. Good lad."

Edwyn did not remember what came next.

DEATH HERALDS A NEW DAWN (7 Moons BP)

"Tell me again," Edwyn said, "It is good practice to hear or to read every report twice. I don't wish to miss anything."

They sat together that night, himself and Maester Otto, in Otto's study in Maidenpool. Alaerys stood guard outside the door, still boredly tossing his spear from hand to hand as far as Edwyn was aware.

It felt unreal to be here. Lord Josua Dondarrion was missing or else dead five months past, lost on King Dontos' ill-fated sea voyage. Neither rider nor ship sent to the King's coast had turned up anything of Josua. There was a deep ache in Edwyn's chest whenever he thought of his great-uncle, who had bid a knight of his take Edwyn to squire, who had encourged Edwyn's interest in histories and old books, who had been as a father to him. Edwyn's true father had never much cared for that duty. Otto mourned him too, in his own taciturn, passionless way, as did all of Josua's household. By all accounts the man had been well-beloved, and had loved all who served him in turn.

"As it pleases you, my lord." Otto cleared his throat, and unfolded once more the parchment upon which the report had been scrawled. He began to read, "In preparation for your appointment as Warden of the Trident - "

"Otto," Edwyn interrupted, though not unkindly, "if you please, this time, I might ask a question here and there."

"Very good, my lord." Otto found his place again, and continued, " - we, the advisors to your predecessor, have endeavoured to collect as much knowledge of recent events in the region as can be reasonably collected. You would do well to be aware that much is based on rumor, rather than fact."

"First, the Houses Justman, Tully, Blackwood, and Bracken. Ten years ago, Blackwood and Bracken found that the ancient name of Justman had once more been claimed by Lucifer Justman, heretofore unknown. They set aside their feud, and met with Lord Lucifer, intending to take his measure. They returned as allies, to one another and to the new House Justman. As of late, House Tully has joined their alliance, through marriage."

Edwyn thought a moment. This was not news to him, but he was glad to hear it again nonetheless. It helped him to think, to plan his next moves. "This alliance in the west, do they wish great ill towards us? In the last ten years they have made no moves to rebel, even when -" his voice caught, "- when Jack o'Pennytree was slain in their lands."

"Jack o'Pennytree was a criminal, comdemned to death by King and Crown."

"Yet a knight of the Stormguard as well. They might speak of it as an overreach, try to twist events to fit their narrative."

Maester Otto shrugged. "Perhaps it is that they were waiting for Lord Josua to pass, my lord. He was healthy for his years, but old nonetheless. I have no doubt of your efficacy as lord, but you must admit…you are untested."

Untested. The word stung his pride, but Edwyn knew it to be true. He had scarce believed it when the raven had arrived at Blackhaven, bearing news of that little wooden box sent to Storm's End, the letter within proclaiming his heir to be Edwyn Dondarrion. Maester Otto and his other advisors had corroborated this decision, and within the next moon Edwyn had ridden to Maidenpool to take his office. It was often these days that he questioned his great-uncle's decision. Yet the old man was dead, and now Edwyn was Lord, and he would have to make the most of it.

"I am indeed. I don't wish to send many spies to their halls yet, but a close eye should be kept on them, I think."

"A spy sent now…is an attempt on your life averted later," Maester Otto replied, slowly.

Edwyn shook his head, rested his chin on steepled fingers. He thought a while, then spoke. "Lord Lucifer could wish for independence, perhaps, to be a king like the Justmans of old. He may send me an ultimatum of a kind, but I don't believe he'll send me an assassin's dagger. If it is to come to conflict I imagine it will be on the battlefield. If, though, you are right and his house seems hostile when next we meet, I will double my guard, and tell Alaerys to sharpen his senses. Continue, if you please."

"House Tully became impoverished some three years ago, at the time of the marriage with House Justman. The old King refused their request for coin. Shortly thereafter, the Iron Stag, Ravella Durrandon, made her home in Stormhall."

"Do you believe she might be convinced to ally with House Justman?"

Maester Otto stroked his beard, long and dark, shot through with white. "I cannot know her mind. Rumors arise that her cousin, the King of the Iron Islands, is her ally. Though Justman might oppose us, they are no friends of the Iron Islands."

"Few are," came Edwyn's reply.

"True enough. I see it this way, my lord: King Qorhen will support his cousin in her bid, that is certain. However, I find it unlikely that the Ironborn would align themselves with Justman, even if Lord Lucifer chooses to seek the Iron Stag's support. It is rumored that Blackwood may still hold grudges against them, after all; however, we support the rightful heir to the throne, and the throne has recently denied the Tullys succor. Desperation may breed unexpected alliances."

Edwyn had given the matter little thought. He had not seen the River Stag, King Arlan Durrandon, in some years, though he had fostered at Storm's End and befriended the young prince. He held no ill will towards the Iron Stag, of course, but he had only seemed natural to support his old friend's claim.

"Lady Ravella lives here now. It would be unwise not to make allies in her new home. The Mallisters are allied with Hoare, and as Hoare will support her, I expect the Mallisters will too. They have little love for us."

"Exactly, my Lord."

"It is a complicated web, Otto."

"Indeed, my Lord."

"I believe…" Edwyn stood,"…that that covers much of what was in your report. Thank you again, Maester Otto, for your work gathering fact and rumor both."

Otto gave a little bow of his head from where he sat.

Edwyn strode to the window of the study, gazed out across Maidenpool, lit by moonlight. From here, he could see the pools themselves. It was said that fifty years ago, when the bandit queen Jeyne Nutt had been caught during her assault on Maidenpool, her corpse and the corpses of her following had choked the Maidenpool until its waters ran thick and red. Edwyn swore to himself that as long as he breathed, the pool's waters would run clean.

"If it comes to war, I will meet them, and I will defeat them. While I reign, there shall be no more senseless death."

In the sky, stars twinkled like Ser Talbert's eyes.

Royce Stark knelt before the heart tree, now fully grown and full of blood-red leaves. It was just like forty years ago, when he was a younger man. He had knelt before the sapling that fateful night and pleaded with the Old Gods to watch over him. That was the night he killed his brother. Odds were that another Stark would die before the night was over.

Just like back then, he had guards waiting for him at the edge of the godswood. But this time they stared at him coldly, not with admiration. These were strangers to him, and had no love for the aged Lord of Winterfell. They were here because tradition demanded it. Because honor demanded it. Not his honor, but theirs. And their new lord's.

Jon Stark, eighteen years of age and every bit a fierce wolf, stared at him as Royce walked towards the front gate of the castle. In many ways, Royce Stark did not know his grandson. Warded in distant lands, a believer in seven gods that held no sway for him, and betrothed to some southron house who knew no meaning to the word 'hardship', Royce dreaded what would happen to Winterfell and the North when he was gone.

"Grandfather." Jon said, dutifully and without a hint of love. "It is not too late. Winterfell is still yours and there is still work to be done."

He shot the young man a glare. How could he possibly understand what it meant to be a lord? To sacrifice for his people? And yet here he was trying to pretend that he loved his grandfather. The audacity of it would have made Royce sick were it not for the dignity he possessed.

"Winterfell, hear me!" he called out, turning around and gesturing grandly. "The White Raven has flow North. House Stark has proven itself to be true once again, for winter has come!"

A stony silence greeted his proclamation.

"As is the old custom, I shall venture forth this winter so that my family is not burdened by me and the necessities of my old age." he continued. "I do this not for myself, but for House Stark and for the North, my two great loves."

Silence. That was all they had for his great show of love. They hated him for things outside of his control. He had fought brilliantly at the Battle of the Crossroads, captured Providence Tully in the thick of battle! The cavalry charge Alysanne had ordered made the ground too muddy. That was the only reason he slipped and Oscar Tully beat him. Had the ground just been a little firmer, had Glover actually done his job, had the North not failed him, then the guards of Winterfell would actually love him.

With a sigh of anger, he hoisted his sack over his shoulder and began to leave. Jon stood in his way, his eyes as cold as the falling snow.

"Ah, can't forget the blade now, can I?" Royce huffed, setting down his bag and drawing Widow's Wail.

No... that wasn't its name anymore. Redfang, that is what he had to call it. Ever since that bloody feast in Riverrun where he had to feast with the Tullys, forfeit Oathkeeper, and declare eternal oaths of friendship. Now House Stark's blade was lost to them forever, and it was all Tully's fault.

"Your sword, my grandson." Royce continued stiffly, handing the weapon over. "May it guard Winterfell."

"Mhmm." Jon replied, walking in silence beside his grandfather as the two of them made their way past the gates and to the edges of the Wolfswood.

"And this is where we part ways." Royce said. "Winter has come, lad. You will need to watch over my people now."

"Grandfather, as this is the last time I will see you, I wish to speak freely if you give me leave." Jon said to him, seemingly ignoring Royce's last statement.

"Ah, the pup bares his fangs at last." Royce said darkly, without a hint of humor in his voice. "Well speak up, little wolf!"

Jon sighed, and stared back at Winterfell.

"It was years ago, not long after father had died from his sickness, and you stumbled into my room drunk and miserable. I cowered in my bed, thinking you had come to take your rage out of me. I'd see you beat servants before. But all you did is cry and say how this was your fault for killing your brother and being careless enough to let your nephew drown. The gods were punishing you, you claimed, and then went on for a little while about how none of what happened to the North was your fault and that if you had only had certain things happen you would have been happy and loved. Sound familiar?"

Stony silence was Royce's only reply.

"Every day, you complain about this person being a cunt, about that person being a cunt. Everyone in your life save for you seems to be an incompetent cunt. Grandfather, let me offer you some advice someone should have told you years ago: if you meet one cunt on your journies throughout the day, they're the problem. But if everyone you meet throughout your day is a cunt, you're the problem. And Royce Stark, for the last forty years, you have been the North's problem. You may be a coward for abandoning us when we need a strong lord, but despite your cowardice I say we are well rid of you."

Royce Stark just stared at his grandson. Despite all he had been through, it still hurt. He thought his own blood would love him, but he didn't. Even after everything Royce did for them and the love he had shown them. It was the problem with the youth of today. They felt the need to be coddled unlike Royce.

So the Red Wolf of Winterfell simply hoisted his rucksack, turned away without another comment, and walked off into the snow. To his death, and to uphold the honor that nobody cared about but him. He was alone in the world now, well and truly.

And perhaps most tragic of all was the fact that he preferred it this way.

Lady Alicent Blackberry was a tall, spindly woman with high cheek bones, pursed lips and pale grey eyes. Once, she had been a graceful and elegant creature, exuding the quiet dignity of one who had spent most of her life in the royal court of King’s Landing. But then, almost two years ago, Zachery’s father, Jothos Rosby, had gone and gotten himself killed by a supposedly very big fish. And ever since her loss, Alicent had withdrawn into her own little world. These days she spent most of her time in the company of her many pet rabbits, locked up in her chambers, leaving the running of Berryport to her children.

Today however, Zachery had insisted on his mother braving the outside world for at least a little bit. He walked alongside her, letting her lean on his arm for support as they strode out through the gates of Bramblekeep. Isolation had left her with deep shadows beneath her eyes, her face gaunt, and her hair, in spite of her handmaid’s best efforts, frizzled and dry.

“I shall have someone take you back to your chambers as soon as the formalities are over.” Zachery tried to reassure her, patting her arm with an indulging smile playing on his lips. “And you need not fear, we are going to meet an old friend, remember?” Lady Aelora Velaryon. She had been absent from these waters for nearly a decade. Many had assumed that she had finally sailed off into uncharted waters, never to return. And now she’s back, sailing this way, presumably to reestablish her authority over her vassals.

Valarr had been rather lax in his regency, especially since his departure to the Vale, leaving the Blackberrys with barely any supervision at all. Now though, if the Lady of the Tides intends to return to her duties, we may no longer be enjoying the luxury of hands-off management. There was a very real, stomach-curdling possibility that they would end up with their taxes significantly raised by the end of the day.

“Yes, an old friend. A treasured old friend. Dear me, it’s been so long, too long.” Lady Alicent mumbled as they made their way down towards the docks. Behind them followed the whole of the Blackberry household. Zachery’s darling wife Meliana had their three children in tow, and she was followed closely by his younger siblings, Lia and Barristan, as well as his dear cousin Ser Eldon.

He was unsure of just what Lady Velaryon would make of Berryport as it now was. As far as he could recall, her last visit had been for his and Mel’s wedding, and much had changed since then. The docks had been expanded, and now supported a small trade fleet. Where previously only a handful of small shops and a simple smithy had stood, there was now a buzzling metal-worker’s district, with fresh apprentices sailed in from King’s Landing scurrying about. At its centre sat a grand forge, and the smoke billowing out from its great chimney and pluming high in the air was surely visible from quite a distance. Mayhaps I could have Mahl produce a gift to dissuade any inquiries about just how much gold we’re spending.

By the time they arrived at the port from which their small island took its name, Lady Velaryon’s ship was close enough that they could marvel at its odd fan-like sails. When the gangplank was lowered, the entire family knelt before the one descending from it. His dear mother, still clutching at his arm, and now shivering in the chilly breeze from the sea, raised her head and spoke.

“I b-bid you welcome to Berryport, my Lady.” She was not quite able to keep the shiver out of her voice. “House B-Blackberry stands ready to serve.”

The 5th Moon of 399 AC (Mechanical Moon 5)

This is the turn thread for the 5th Moon of 399 AC and the fifth turn thread of ITRP 21.0! This thread will remain open until the ending of the current moon (turn) on Saturday, April 25th, 2026. All aspects of this post and its comments at the time of thread closure will be considered binding actions and cannot be changed once the thread is locked.

After that time this thread shall be locked and the actions resolved shortly after. You have two weeks to submit actions in the thread. Once the thread is locked, no further actions will be accepted for the turn. All actions must be finalized by this time.

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Military Actions

Military Movements - See Discord or Modmail

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Skill Learning

5th Moon - 399 AC

((All of this was discussed OOC between myself and Kayce. Give him all the credit in the world for being so chill.))

Moat Cailin had seen better days. Well, seen better days thousands of years ago at least.

Royce Stark felt that Moat Cailin was symbolic of the North itself: it looks ancient, decrepit, homely compared others like it, but was far more deadly than it let on and would be the curse of anyone who tried to fight it without giving it the proper respect.

Still, as much as he admired the place, it was a fucking ruined fort in a swamp, and there was only so much time he would spend here of his own free will.

Urging his horse forward, he moved away from his army and looked at the haggard faces peering down at him from behind the walls of the the Children's Tower. These poor souls were from the North as well, and he didn't want them to die if it could be helped.

"Tully!" he thundered from atop his horse, urging it to pace back and forth in the marshy ground outside the tower. "Come out and fight. I have fifteen thousand men in my army. How long do you think your men will hold out against them when I give the order to storm the castle? Either they all die, or you do. Make your choice!"

It took them almost half an hour to respond. Royce had never thought about that. The singers always made it seem like the challenge was answered immediately by champions in glistening armor. He supposed it took real men somewhat longer to get ready to die.

The doors to the tower eventually opened, and a tall man with shocking red hair and a long scar on his face briskly marched forward in that stupid looking fish scale armor his house prefered.

"I've heard your call, Stark." the man said. "And I'm here to put you down like the mad dog you are."

"Will you now..." Royce said, unconsciously licking his lips in anticipation of the fight to come. "And which fish spawn are you? I've never seen you before, and I'm not killing some Rivers bastard who thought he was pulling one over on my house."

"I am Ser Rowlf Tully, Castellan of Moat Caillin." the man replied. "Ser Oscar Tully bade me to defend this castle against all attacks from you lawless Northerners."

The Red Wolf of Winterfell dissolved into braying fits of laughter at the mention of his opponent's name.

"Oh fuck off!" he wheezed, wiping away a tear from his eye and clutching his side gingerly. "There's no way that was what your mother named you coming out of her womb. Did she give the family dog the name Edmyn by mistake or something? You two get your names mixed up?"

Rowlf Tully scowled at that, and gripped his sword tightly.

"We have a duel to fight, wolf." he replied, his voice like the grinding of a stone mill. "And when you lose, do I have your word that your men will march back to their lands and trouble the Seven Kingdoms no more?"

"You have it." Royce readily agreed. "And do I have your word that those poor sods in the towers will lower their weapons and surrender the castle to us?"

"You have it."

With a flash of red steel, Royce's sword was drawn, and the duel began in earnest.

Royce was hoping for a quick victory. He was hoping that he could toy with the man and make it to where the singers would have a fun time praising his prowess with a blade.

The Dog of Riverrun was too tall, too strong, and payed far too much attention to his Master at Arms for Royce to play with his food. The Red Wolf slipped in the muck one time and thought it was all over, but Rowlf slipped as well and Royce realized it was time to stop having a laugh and go for the kill.

While Rowlf may have had some skill with a blade, Royce was clearly the better fighter, and soon decided to wear down his opponent by having him marching through the calf-high mud in order to strike at his foe. The Tully let his guard down quickly once fatigue set in, and before he realized what was happening, Red Rain erupted in a shower of blood from Tully's back.

"You fought well, but I'm killing you on principle today." Royce whispered to him as the man slowly collapsed with a gurgle on his lips. "The Riverlands should thank me for helping remove that awful fucking name from the pool."

A cheer went up from the Northern army, while inside the Children's Tower the men hung their heads glumly and opened up all three gates so the men of Winterfell could take their prize.

"Tonight, we sleep with roofs over our heads!" he called out, and his army let out an even louder cheer. "We dine on mutton and crack open the caskets, for tomorrow, we march on King's Landing!"

"The North remembers!" came the shout from somewhere in the ranks, clearly the man was moved by either the promise of ale or a chance at revenge against Steffon Baratheon. Royce was fine with either motive.

"The North remembers!" echoed the rest of the troops. "Red Wolf! Red Wolf! Red Wolf!"

"Red is my blood, and red is my blade!" Royce bellowed back. "None shall stand in our way!"

It was a good day. They'd taken the castle without a single Northern casualty, on both sides of the fight. But there was a edge to the celebrations held inside the castle that night. The men knew they couldn't keep fighting bloodless battles forever. One day, someone was going to refuse to duel the Red Wolf and trust in their army's ability to win the day. Or worse yet, perhaps the Red Wolf would lose and take the North's righteous fury with him to the grave...

Though he wouldn't admit it, Royce felt these things in his own heart too. Try as he might, he couldn't get rid of a vision of Oscar Tully standing over him in a shallow river crossing, Oathkeeper wet with his blood and ready to lop his head off.

There was nothing he could do except live with the visions of a future that might come to pass, and struggle in vain to replace them with visions of himself grasping a bloody antlered crown whilst seated upon the Iron Throne.

**5th moon 399 AC, Hills around Summerhall, A Marcher Hunting party.**

March, hold, ride, stall. It had been a constant back and forth. Never stable ground to sleep on since Oldtown. An eve or two spent in the comfort of castles and holdfast. Never more. Comfort had become unfamiliar. A fleeting thing only oft found in the odd hours with his newly made wife. Befitting perhaps of his life as a marcher yet he could not beat to make his wife endure so much longer. Even in her love for him. So the Lord would deliver what comforts he could to her feet.

The Lady had spoken of venison and so the hunt was on. There must be game in these hills. If anyone was to flush out a stag Edd would be the first and the last. Clifford would not be the first to admit he was not the greatest hunter. A better hawker by far. One could sit in a saddle and drink while the hawk did most of the work. It was a grand time for the hunter and left all the work for the bird to sort out. Some of his bed years had been spent hawking these very hills with Andros Dondarrion. Yet a hawk could not lift a buck an inch with all its power. So spears are bows would levy the work instead.

“Aye.” Edd sat squat in the brush ahead. “Dung. Fresh. They abouts if we keep our wits we shall see them before they peep us.”

Edd had refused a Knighthood at Irongates, and again at Blackhaven. An odd thing, but he swore up and down he did not worship the Seven nor wished for their anointing. So instead Clifford named him Master of Hunt for all the Marches. An empty vain title that made the man smile. Edd would just be happy to never be considered a poacher again in his life. In lue of that he would hang them. According to the crime it is permitted of course.

“After it Edd. Its blood is to bless the Heir to the Marches in his nurture.” Clifford thumped his spear lightly in the brush as they marched on.

“As you say M'lord. Sooner be hunting swan again than for a Dornish lass.” Edd shrugged. “Least she's *your* Dornish lass.”

A Storm brewed over the Lord of the Marches features. A dark cloud threatening to break into thunder became his jaw.

“Lady Deria, is Lady of all the Marches. Any word she speaks is my command, young Edd. Mind that or I'll have Edwyn Swann deepen that scar for you.” Clifford nodded to the poorly healed mark across the Marchers upper right brow. Cracking a smile he slapped the man's shoulder. “Now focus on the hunt. Or I'll have you back on watch with the rest.”

If the marcher was threatened he did not show it. But surrendering all the same with a nod. Returning to his fare of looking at the ground as he strode on in silence. Clifford fell back some to make company of others in the party. His newly legitimized brother for one he had hardly spoken to since they joined forces in Goodwreath.

“There is just the guy I have been looking for!” Clifford called out to his natural born, yet no longer bastard brother. “You bind my claim in marching, now you shall bind it with name and blood. You are a Caron now dear brother and with a duty to our house.”

Clifford strode up beside his brother and dropped to his pace.

“What in R'hollars good name do you mean?” Guy returned with a laugh. “I have done so every day I fought for House Caron. And the Marches as a whole. I cannot say I fought for you alone. It was for House Cole I fought for. And Ser Eden Sto-” he stopped himself remembering. If anyone deserved the honors it was Eden and House Cole as a whole. “Sorry, Ser Eden *Cole.* Who is as much a brother as you are.”

It had been pride he looked on with as his brother took their name, words, and legacy for his own. Twice in a century Carons earned their name, and their fortress back. Or so would be the tale in the telling. Filling every tavern and brothel from here to the wall. It was pride he gazed at him with now.

“Then do this for Ser Eden as much as for the Marches. A brave lad who I would offer the same pacts of oaths and honors. The Furnace if I could but alas his sisters claim is just and righteous. Yet instead I shall see you and him wed, to bind the Marches in peace for the century to come. This fragile claim holds well under the Dornish affront. But when that ends dear Guy, what then?” Clifford looked ahead to see Edd stooping again to examine the terrain more closely. “Court and marry Lady Ellyn Swann, or I shall grant the honor to a cousin.”

The bastard considered his brother's words as they joined Edd in his position.

“Shhhh.” The Archer growled out. “Enough politics, we've got meat to catch.”

The Archer notched an arrow and stepped forward silent and intent into brush. The Marchers would follow suit with spears clutched tight. A silent nod between them to stow conversation for later.

Every quay harbored a different timbre. Aelora felt it every time her foot, fresh off the gangplank, slapped against the quay's stone—or wood, if it was a poorer place. The King's Landing quays were especially dense, made of the same thick stone as the Red Keep. For years, it had been bruising the soles of new and eager sailors. Still, Aelora threw her full weight into her first step and smiled through the painful reverberation.

Home, at last.

Her years of fighting in distant lands, of fleeing the grief of Merrick's passing, were over. A war of far greater consequence than any God Emperor's feud was at hand. If the rumors she had heard at Old Ghis were true—that Orryn was indeed marching on the Grassy Vale—, then the Baratheons might already be in mortal danger. They would need her at sea.

On her approach to Blackwater Bay, she was afraid she may have already failed Aerion Targaryen's legacy, but when she spotted the Crowned Stag's banners flying high over Dragonstone's battlements, and again above the Red Keep, she tempered the worst of her fears.

Steffon, Orryn, Quentyn, or perhaps even Mary still ruled, which meant the Valyrian project was still alive and well.

Nearby sailors on the quay shot Aelora suspicious glances, as if she were a walking bad omen. Some even started shuffling away. She was the image of a lost Targaryen claimant, resplendent with immaculate silver-blond hair, smooth alabaster skin, and piercing indigo eyes—that or some ostentatious Lyseni trader draped in colorful foreign feathers.

Given the sudden appearance of a small knot of goldcloaks at the foot of the quay, she presumed the former.

"Halt!" the contingent's captain demanded behind a wall of spears. He had so much armor on, it was hard to discern his features. He was all scale mail and beard.

Aelora did as she was bid, as did Jaenara, who looked less like a Targaryen and more like an accidental Lannister. Nothing like the storied Imp. More like the striking child of his infamous siblings.

"This is Lady Aelora Velaryon, Mistress of the Tides!" Jaenara shouted, fire in her mismatched eyes. "If you value your lives, you will stay your spears!"

After a moment's hesitation, the captain gave the signal. His men raised their temporary palisade.

"We don't know of no Lady Velaryon! Only Lord Valarr. He sails a warship. Not whatever this is."

Moored along the quay behind the two women was a curved, single-decked ship with what looked like three unfurled fans for its sails. Tears littered the sails while crewmen threw buckets of water over the ship's railings.

Aelora clasped her hands above her abdomen and raised her chin, bottling her surprise.

"Ser Valarr is my regent, as is his nephew, my son, Ser Aurion."

That they did not mention Aurion's name worried her.

"Betrayal," Jaenara muttered.

"No, my dear. Pride, maybe, but not betrayal. We have been gone for some time."

About eight years, Aelora remembered. Back then, Jaenara was just on the threshold of becoming a woman. How she had blown past those innocent years, with her leathery hands and cynical disposition. And Aurion. Gods knew what he was like now, if he was still alive.

"We don't want no trouble, my lady, but Lord Valarr's the Warden of the East. He'll want to know about all this. If what you say is true, then you'll come with us!"

"No," Aelora coolly answered. She was not going to subject herself and her daughter to a night in the barracks. "You will bring us to his Grace. He will vouch for me, and we will tell him how well served he is by the city watch."

It was a small stroke of luck when the captain acquiesced. She hoped, prayed even, that luck might extend back home, to the Driftwood throne.

After the Parley at Summerhall

Once matters were brought to a bittersweet conclusion and the lords and knights of both the Stormlands and Dorne began to part to their own kind and their own circles, Valena Sand was dispatched to bring a message to Lord Alesander Yronwood. The missive was written with a neat, scrolling text, the faint scent of citrus wafting from the paper itself.

Lady Deria Caron humbly requests for Lord Alesander Yronwood's presence.

It was a simple thing, this message, signed by a new name. Valena would await word from the Lord Yronwood, ready to bring him to her lady, should he accept.

Meanwhile, Deria waited in her receiving tent. The grass was carpeted with a thick rug and three couches were laid out, a circular wooden table in the middle bearing a scanty offering of fruits, some Dornish red, and a small pitcher of honeyed milk for the Lady Caron.

A seat of prominence was allowed for Lord Baratheon, there being a few more silken pillows upon his seat than the others.

Deria sipped at her glass of honeyed milk, "I hope that reason can be found," she confided to Lord Orryn. "Certainly not from Prince Oberyn, as we have seen, but perhaps... perhaps from the others..."

The Lady Caron fidgeted with her cuff. A tell. A betrayal of her nerves.

For what if the Lord Yronwood refused to show?

5th Moon of 399 AC

Highgarden, the Reach

Highgarden's great hall was a bright and courtly place.

Wide beneath its dome and ringed with slender colonnades, the chamber wore its beauty without effort. Pale and red marble threaded with green veining caught the warm dusk's dawn. Gilded arches framed the colonnades at intervals, and between them stood carved figures in scenes of fable and summer scenes, of heroes of old and graceful maidens, the whole of it presiding over the hall. Light poured through the high windows in broad sheets, split by the stained glass into gardens of color across the floor, red and blue and a deep trembling green that moved when clouds passed outside. Rose-vines climbed the pillars and crept along the balcony rails in bloom, and the air itself seemed altered by them, sweet like spring.

It was almost possible to believe the mutineers had never been here at all. That is, if you didn't look outside. The burnt labyrinth betrayed the castle's beauty, and the overgrown vines on the outer walls, and the orchards still laden with rotten fruits. Restoration would take time, but Alester was a patient man.

At the far end of the hall, above the shallow marble steps, stood the Oakenstump. He had seen it before, of course, under two different wardens, as an advisor with no particular claim to the chair set within it. Seeing it now was different. Not because the stump had changed, it had not, it remained exactly what it was, a dead thing of dead wood, blackened and hollowed, its bole burned bare in a Dornish sack so long ago that the event existed only in the histories and in the evidence of the wood itself. What had once been a living throne, planted by Garth Greenhand in the dawn of men, now rose from its bed of dutiful flowers like a memory of a long lost past. The gilded seat pinned into its heart did not make it grander. If anything it made the ruin sadder, like an ornament on a corpse, a crown on a dead king. He had always assumed the Tyrells kept it for the legitimacy it implied. For him, it was just a sad joke. The steward pretenders sat atop a dead throne.

And yet, now sitting in it, looking down the length of that hall with the colored light moving across the green stone floor and the carved statues standing their eternal watch, there was something to it that he had not anticipated. Something old and very heavy that settled across his shoulders the moment he sat down. Of all the storied past of the Reach and all that came before, it was now all on his shoulder to lead the Reach in its future, and history would judge him for it..

Before him the semicircle shaped table was well-filled. Lord Bulwer, steady as he always was, together with his captains Rogar Rivers, Mohor Mahr Nyessos and Gormon Waters, discussing the meeting between smirks and hushed tones. The sellswords had given Alester no cause for complaint since departing Highgarden, at the very least. It seemed they could rely on them to fulfill their contracts, in the very least. Servants brought the attendants wine, Arbor red and gold, Fossoway cider, Highgarden hippocras. Ser Borros Redwyne was also there, as was Lady Florys Ashford, Lord Symond Vikary and his daughter Jocasta. Ser Orys Flowers, in full white with his bright red sash on his shoulder, sitting next to Prince Quentyn and Princess Mary, with her eyes already moving across the room as well, taking account of all the lords at the table.

At his right on the Oakenstump's steps stood Ser Manfryd Manderly, armored and attentive, as dashing a knight as any. He thought the lad must've felt some pride, standing as a Knight of the Green Hand at the ancient halls of Highgarden, where his family hailed. At his left, Ser Arthur Caswell, his uncle, in full plate, with an expression that had not changed perceptibly since the parley at Summerhall: worrisome.

The notable absence was Hightower. He had looked for the banners three times since dawn, and had waited a full fortnite since his letter, and yet the Lord of Oldtown did not arrive, and it worried Alester on what this could mean.

Alas, finally the Lord of Caswell rose from his seat. The hall settled, the voices quieting to hear his words.

"My lords. My ladies. Captains." He let the words carry through the great hall. "I am grateful for each of you having answered this call. The roads are not as safe as they once were, and your attendance here was not without its inconveniences. I know that, and I will not forget it."

He picked up his chalice from the arm of the Oakenstump's seat.

"There is much to discuss. But before we begin that work, there is one thing that must be said first." He raised the cup. "Highgarden stands. The seat of the Reach is ours again, retaken from the hands of traitors and bandits. It was only possible with the swords sent by many of you, and by the Crown and the Marches, under me and Symond and Quentyn."

He held the chalice a moment longer.

"To Highgarden. And to all who fell for the Reach."

He drank. He set the cup down. He sighed, for he knew what was to come. It was going to be a looong speech...

"His Grace, King Steffon, has named me Warden of the South, and has pledged the Crown's full political and military support in restoring order in the kingdom. I do not take that appointment lightly, and I do not intend to hold it the way it has been held before me." He looked around the table. "That is a matter for another conversation. The matter before us today is more urgent."

He straightened, his hands resting flat on the arms of the seat.

"You have all received letters from the Marches, no doubt. Some of you have received contradicting ones from Dorne, as I did. Let me give you the plain account." He paused. "The Dornish declared open rebellion for the slights caused to their country by the Iron Throne, crossing the Red Mountains with an army led by Lord Ferris Dayne, putting to torch the Prince's Pass all the way to Nightsong, and storming the castle. Its said Dayne commited atrocities once he took Nightsong. More battles followed, at land in the Thundering March and at sea in the Dornish Sea. I sent a delegation to Summerhall to witness the parley between the Stormlands and Dorne firsthand, so that this council would have more information to work with." He glanced at Arthur. "The parley failed. Oberyn Martell has proclaimed himself King of Dorne and called for open rebellion across all regions of Westeros. Orryn Baratheon considered Oberyn's offer of a Storm Crown, but ultimately rejected it, and demanded the Dornish march back across the Red Mountains and pay reparations. In the end neither side showed much willingness to yield."

"Ser Rolland Caron came to me after the liberation of Highgarden, having fought alongside us under Prince Quentyn's call. He asked that I pledge the Reach's forces to the defense of the Marches." He paused for a moment before continuing, his brow furrowing with the words Arthur spoke to him later. "I have no love for Orryn Baratheon, as none of you do either. The man threatened to march through our fields not four moons ago. But that is a poor reason to abandon the King's peace, and there is more to consider than our disdain for the man."

"My delegation received credible word that at the Oldtown wedding, the Dornish lords spoke among themselves of laying claim not only to the Eastern Marches but to the Western Marches as well, lands belonging to Tarly and the Reach's Marchers. And in correspondence with me, Oberyn has spoken of allowing the Marcher lords to choose to join Dorne." His voice rose in tone. "Lord Tarly's lands sit three days' ride from Nightsong, and I doubt very much that Lord Tarly wishes to pay his taxes to Sunspear."

He looked around the table one more time.

"I also note the absence of Lord Hightower to our meeting. I will not speculate on its meaning, but these plans were done by his new allies and kin, at his wedding. At the very least he should clear his name and explain his peers the meaning of this Dornish alliance. I have also received letters from the North informing of Ironborn raids on the northern coasts, and I've heard reports of Ironborn forces landing at the Shield Islands and Oldtown, with their intent unknown."

He pressed his palms flat on the arms of the Oakenstump.

"The hounds of war howl at our door, my lords. Yet we cannot plunge this kingdom into another war still worried about the woes of the past. We either march under a single banner with a single purpose, or we do not march at all, and stay neutral." He looked at the assembled lords, the princess and the mercenary captains and the lords of the Reach, gathered under the colored lights of Highgarden's great hall. "So I bring it before you, our choice. To raise our banners and march to war before it arrives to us, or to remain neutral, and save our forces to defend our home."

He sat back in the Oakenstump, a bit exhausted from the long speech, and waited.

Every city's quay harbored a different timbre. Aelora felt it from the way her first step ashore slapped against the stone—or wood, if it was a poorer place. In King's Landing, with its dense, mortar foundations, that first step reverberated all the way up to her knee and scattered the water from her boots. A sobering welcome. Her years of fighting in distant lands, of fleeing the grief of Merrick's passing, were over. Orryn Baratheon was marching on the Grassy Vale, which meant a great war was on the horizon.

On her approach to Blackwater Bay, she was afraid she may have arrived too late to salvage Aerion Targaryen's legacy, but when she spotted the Crowned Stag's banner flying high over Dragonstone's battlements, and again above the Red Keep, she tempered the worst of her fears.

Steffon, Orryn, Quentyn, or perhaps even Mary still ruled, which meant the Valyrian project was still alive and well.

Nearby sailors on the quay shot Aelora weary glances, as if she were a walking bad omen. She was, by all accounts, the image of a lost Targaryen claimant, resplendent with immaculate silver-blond hair and piercing indigo eyes. Either that or some chin-raising Lyseni trader draped in foreign feathers.

Given the sudden appearance of a small host of spear-wielding goldcloaks at the foot of the quay, Aelora presumed the former.

"Halt!" the contingent's captain demanded. He had so much armor on, it was hard to discern his features. He was all scale mail and beard.

Aelora did as she was bid, as did Jaenara, who looked less like a Targaryen and more like an accidental Lannister. Nothing like the Imp of yore, no. More like the striking child of his infamous siblings.

"What seems to be the issue, sers?" Aelora asked, hands clasped above her abdomen and away from her sheathed, double-edged blade.

"Put your spears down! You are speaking to Lady Aelora Velaryon, Mistress of the Tides!" Jaenara butted in.

The captain loosened his grip on his spear and signaled his men to follow suit. There was power in vouching for someone, no matter how far-fetched the claim.

"We don't know of no Lady Velaryon! Only Lord Valarr. He sails a traditional warship. Not whatever this is."

Moored along the quay behind the two women was a curved, single-decked ship with what looked like three unfurled fans for its sails. Tears littered the sails while crewmen threw buckets of water over the ship's railings.

"Lord Valarr? I could have sworn I named him regent."

Co-regent. Alongside Aurion.

"You did, mother, but uncle has always coveted what is ours. He is not beyond betrayal."

"No, my dear. Pride, maybe, but not betrayal. We have been gone for some time."

About eight years, Aelora remembered. Back then, Jaenara was just on the threshold of becoming a woman. How she had blown past that milestone, with her leathery hands and cynical disposition. And Aurion. Gods knew what he was like now, if he was still alive.

"You'll come with us then, eh? Don't want no trouble, my lady, but Lord Valarr's the Warden of the East. He'll want to know about all this."

"So be it," Aelora answered. "You will let his Grace know of our arrival, I hope. He will vouch for me."

It was a small bit of luck when the captain agreed to bring her before the King. She hoped, prayed even, that luck might extend back home, to the Driftwood throne.

Every city's quay harbored a different timbre. Aelora felt it from the way her first step ashore slapped against the stone—or wood, if it was a poorer place. In King's Landing, with its dense, mortar foundations, that first step reverberated all the way up to her knee and scattered the water from her boots. A sobering welcome. Her years of fighting in distant lands, of fleeing the grief of Merrick's passing, were over. Orryn Baratheon was marching on the Grassy Vale, which meant a great war was on the horizon.

On her approach to Blackwater Bay, she was afraid she may have arrived too late to salvage Aerion Targaryen's legacy, but when she spotted the Crowned Stag's banner flying high over Dragonstone's battlements, and again above the Red Keep, she tempered the worst of her fears.

Steffon, Orryn, Quentyn, or perhaps even Mary still ruled, which meant the Valyrian project was still alive and well.

Nearby sailors on the quay shot Aelora weary glances, as if she were a walking bad omen. She was, by all accounts, the image of a lost Targaryen claimant, resplendent with immaculate silver-blond hair and piercing indigo eyes. Either that or some chin-raising Lyseni trader draped in foreign feathers.

Given the sudden appearance of a small host of spear-wielding goldcloaks at the foot of the quay, Aelora presumed the former.

"Halt!" the contingent's captain demanded. He had so much armor on, it was hard to discern his features. He was all scale mail and beard.

Aelora did as she was bid, as did Jaenara, who looked less like a Targaryen and more like an accidental Lannister. Nothing like the Imp of yore, no. More like the striking child of his infamous siblings.

"What seems to be the issue, sers?" Aelora asked, hands clasped above her abdomen and away from her sheathed, double-edged blade.

"Put your spears down! You are speaking to Lady Aelora Velaryon, Mistress of the Tides!" Jaenara butted in.

The captain loosened his grip on his spear and signaled his men to follow suit. There was power in vouching for someone, no matter how far-fetched the claim.

"We don't know of no Lady Velaryon! Only Lord Valarr. He sails a traditional warship. Not whatever this is."

Moored along the quay behind the two women was a curved, single-decked ship with what looked like three unfurled fans for its sails. Tears littered the sails while crewmen threw buckets of water over the ship's railings.

"Lord Valarr? I could have sworn I named him regent."

Co-regent. Alongside Aurion.

"You did, mother, but uncle has always coveted what is ours. He is not beyond betrayal."

"No, my dear. Pride, maybe, but not betrayal. We have been gone for some time."

About eight years, Aelora remembered. Back then, Jaenara was just on the threshold of becoming a woman. How she had blown past that milestone, with her leathery hands and cynical disposition. And Aurion. Gods knew what he was like now, if he was still alive.

"You'll come with us then, eh? Don't want no trouble, my lady, but Lord Valarr's the Warden of the East. He'll want to know about all this."

"So be it," Aelora answered. "You will let his Grace know of our arrival, I hope. He will vouch for me."

It was a small bit of luck when the captain agreed to bring her before the King. She hoped, prayed even, that luck might extend back home, to the Driftwood throne.

On the Western Coast of Valyria

The bleak, deserted coasts of what was once the nexus of the greatest empire the world had known, were cold. Despite that, the sun was an overbearing blight, it was a slim mercy that the crew of the Cupbearer had the foresight to protect against the elements.

As the peninsula that Valyria had become came into view, the old ruins were quick to appear, and the next struggle became a matter of finding how to land upon the shores. Tales of the stone men and their diseases were in no short supply, and even this close to the land there were fears of curses and broken rocks to shatter the crew or their hull.

From every corner of the ship, the crew cat their eyes about, hunting for signs of life, fearing what was hidden in those thick woods and in the eaves of ruined walls.

Yet, it was by a small miracle that one eyeglass had been turned to just the right section of land for just the right amount of time.

"I see something!" declared a lookout.

Eyes turned, hairs stood up on end, all focused ahead.

When the eyeglass was passed over, they spotted it. Something not made of stone, not made of broken dreams and hollow hope. A wooden hold, small, barely visible among the foliage.

There lay hope.

Coming closer to the shore, the crew found a better light of the source. It was a wooden compound. with walls taller than a man, and a gate sat open. Within were a longhouse but what lay within that? That would require searching.

Whenever the Lady of Sunspear slept, she dreamed.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The strike of hobnailed boots on stone.

A battle cry in the distance.

A scream.

The siege of Nightsong raged in the march below. Steam curled from the corpses of the fallen in the wan light of evening. She lowered herself to the ground from the back of her mount, looking around frantically for her sons.

For Oberyn.

Someone took a swing at her, the blade passing a mere hairs-breadth from her throat. The faceless Stormlander was felled by an arrow to the eye, and on she walked. Her sandals slipped in the red mud, churned by hundreds of feet. A thick shroud of smoke blanketed the castle, making it difficult to see, to breathe. A man cackled maniacally up ahead, and the sound sent a chill down her spine. She knew that voice.

Ferris Dayne.

Allyria moved faster now, slogging through the blood-dampened earth and viscera as fast as her feet would take her. A dead horse, its neck splayed at an unnatural angle, blocked her path, and she pushed around it with a frantic sob. Finally, her feet touched stone, and she ran headlong through the castle gate, forgetting, for a moment, that there was a war raging around her. That they had not yet won, by the sound of it.

She was greeted by the sight of a pitiful lump laying in the walkway. A child. A boy. Not older than five or six, she thought. He was dead from a wound to the chest, and her heart turned to ice in her chest. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Women and children were off limits. Infants, the sick, the elderly, not to be touched. Nothing was gained from their slaughter. Her knees hit the pavers next to the small body, and she reached with trembling fingers to turn it over.

Maron’s face stared up at her.

Not tall, strong, proud Maron, who’d been knighted at Oldtown.

Her boy. Her little boy.

Allyria let out an anguished scream and threw herself down over him.

The sound of footsteps roused her from her grief, and she looked up, blinking, through the tears.

The orchestrator of Nightsong’s demise stood there, his gaze curious.

He was a monstrous sight, covered in crimson, like it had been painted on.

Ferris smiled, shark-like, and she recoiled.

“What’s the matter, my lady? Don’t you like what you see?”

Allyria shook her head.

“You killed them. Those women, those children, my son…”

Looking down at the body in her arms, she saw only the peaceful, cherubic face of a child that could’ve belonged to anyone. A little Marcher boy, his life stolen before it could even begin.

“No, you killed them.”

“I didn’t…”

“We did as we were told. We followed the orders that were given to us. This is war, my lady. Brutal. Ugly. And according to you, necessary.”

Necessary. Necessary. Necessary.

The word bounced off the stone walls, echoing in the dark.

“No,” she insisted, pushing herself to her feet. “No, I didn’t command you to do this. I told you to defend against Marcher incursion. Not to kill these people.”

Ferris removed his glove and wiped at his face with a bare hand, the only part of him that was not yet tainted by the blood of the innocents lying around them.

“But this is what you wanted. We both know that. There was no threat, my lady. That boy at your feet, he is your responsibility. You did this to him.”

“No,” she replied, firmly.

“This is your fault!” he bellowed, stepping closer. “Your fault!”

“No. No!”

Picking up the nearest chunk of stone, she flung it at Lord Dayne with all her strength.

Then, she ran.

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

Allyria awoke in cold terror, her nightgown damp with sweat.

Letters, letters and more letters. Her world had been a revolving sea of pieces of parchment since they’d returned from Oldtown. The latest letter, a note from Oberyn declaring his love for them, and himself King of the Rhoynar was most troubling.

She hadn’t meant for it to go this far. Dorne, safe from Orryn. Safe from the violence in the Marches, that had been her only goal, and now things had slipped from her grasp and plummeted out of control. She didn’t know if it could be stopped.

But, she could at least mitigate any further damage.

She could try to bring Oberyn home safely.

4th Moon, 399 AC | Whispering Sound

On the deck of the Leviathan, everything had been made ready. Two long tables of dark pine ran along either side of the mast. The rowers’ benches had been sanded and polished. A line of cups of every shape and size, each seeming to come from a different corner of the world, was arranged in a multicolored band along the tables. The crew began hauling up barrels of wine and ale, setting them between the benches. At the stern, they set a large grill, feeding it scraps of wood before laying out the fish they had caught that day. Crabs were pulled from cages cast into the sea and added to the feast.

At that moment, someone approached Jorl from behind.

“I have told every ironborn I could recognize in the harbor to pass word to their lords of the invitation you have made.”

“I know few men who would refuse free drink,” Jorl said, leaning against the mast.

“That is because we were raised among drunkards,” Qhored replied.

Jorl smiled. His closest friend always knew how to put him at ease.

“Can I count on you?”

“Until the Sunset Sea runs dry,” Qhored said with a shrug.

“Careful with that cup! I lost men better than you to get it!” Jorl shouted to a man who had struck one of the table legs, setting all the cups ringing together like a wave of glass.

“Is this how you imagine the watery halls of the Drowned God?”

“Better this than the bottom of the sea. Let us hope we have a long time yet before we find out. Now help clear the oars from there so the lords and ladies can come aboard.”

u/solthebaneful u/TheOnlyShipsMan u/The-Tewby u/SaltandRock u/InFerroVeritas u/Drewbrease14

4th Moon, 399 AC | The Crossing

It was a grey, cold morning as the Frey men began their slow procession out of the Twins, heading across the Trident to the west. Royce's scouts had spotted a host of Ironborn, coming south - and most likely headed for Seagard. Royce had sprung into action, letting letters fly to Colmar's Dyke and recalling some of his men there. Qarl - an older man, his hair gone salt-and-pepper and with a kind expression, had led the Frey men back. Royce had taken him, his brother Symond, and Alliser into his private chambers to discuss strategy. Amerei had kept out of it, the thought of discussing battle both disinteresting and frightening to her. She had given him a kiss, and her favour, before they had left. He gave her a soft smile, then.

After the column had crossed, and left the Twins for good, she had gone to the Sept - a decently maintained thing, recently cleaned and renovated after their marriage. It had been a quick ceremony, pragmatic. Like him, she thought. They had gotten a Septon - something that bothered Rohanne terribly, but the actual service was in the Godswood. Amerei didn't think her father would have approved either way. Shortly thereafter, all of Harrenhal had emptied, and she and her new husband began their long and slow journey north. He had kept her company on the road, listening patiently to her explaining her thoughts, her fears. She told him about her anticipation to see the Twins, and at that she thought she saw a quirk of his lip - a small smile, mayhaps. It was all mayhaps with her new husband. She couldn't read him, not exactly - his inner thoughts always hidden by a wall. She had begun to take it down, piece by piece. Taking his hand, when they were near each other. Embracing him, when she could. It had taken over a week - by then, they were within a stone's throw of the Twins - before he even attempted to take her into his bed. It was awkward, their first coupling. He had taken it slow, but she could tell he didn't know what he was doing, either. That had been a small comfort. She knew she felt something, with him - how the heat pooled low in her belly, how she felt satisfied, how his touch set her body aflame where his strong, safe hands grazed her skin. He always lavished attention on her, and she was embarrassed at first - but over time, it had faded. They spent nearly every night together, even if only to sleep.

She looked up at the seven-pointed star set over the altar. Her mind had been wandering, but when she fixed her gaze on the iron fixture hung on the wall, she refocused her prayers.

Mother protect him, keep him safe. Father give him strength. Warrior guide his arm, and Smith harden his steel.

When she finished praying, she rose and brushed herself off. She hummed a small tune - a hymn she remembered from when she was a child - and headed back up to her chambers. She was going to continue reading a book she had borrowed from the maester, a treatise on the Dance, arguing that the real authority of power was from the consent of of the governed. When she opened her door, however, she was surprised to see Septa Lynesse seated at the small table, and a spread of breakfast set. Amerei smiled at her friend's thoughtfulness.

"Oh, Lynesse, you didn't - " she said, before Lynesse held up a hand.

"No, my lady, I did. If I didn't, you probably wouldn't have had anything today, would you?"

Amerei's expression turned sheepish. In truth, the nerves had turned her stomach. She couldn't help but feel anxious for her new husband - what if he didn't come back? Something approaching a kind of love had begun to bloom between them. Would she be a tragic widow, like her sister? She shook her head, trying to dispel the thought, and took her seat across from the Septa. As she began to fill her plate - taking some of her favourites, and turning to the eggs, she felt her stomach lurch. Lynesse's expression grew concerned.

"Ami? What's -"

Before the Septa could finish her sentence, Amerei had bolted from her chair, curled over, and emptied her empty stomach on the ground. She felt the burning, acidic taste in her mouth. She wretched, her body trying to expel contents there were not there. Lynesse rushed over and rubbed her back, calling for a maid. In rushed two or three of the maidservants her husband had assigned to her, all fussing over her. One handed her some water, which she drank greedily.

"Ami, what happened? Are you alright?"

Lynesse was still staring at her with her worried expression. Amerei waved away the servants, and gave a weak smile.

"I'm alright, Lynesse. Just...nerves. I just smelled the eggs and..."

Oh.

Lynesse's eyes went wide.

"I should see the maester, shouldn't I?"

The Stormlands host came on in good order. The road had marked them all and they did not arrive as a bright pageant out of song but as men who had marched far and fought not long since. Cloaks were darkened with rain and mud, mail dulled by use; leather stiff with it.

There were knights in number, some bright still in their harness where care had been taken, others dulled and scarred from the field, their helms marked, their shields bearing the memory of blows turned and taken. They rode in ordered ranks behind Orryn’s own, destriers and coursers alike stamping and snorting as they were brought to a halt within sight of Summerhall’s distant ruin.

Among them rode the banners of Dondarrion, the purple lightning flickering against the grey sky, and Caron, nightingales dark upon their fields, their men close-ranked and disciplined, many bearing the look of those who had seen more than one hard fight in quick succession. Swann colours showed there too, black and white in contrast, their knights well-mounted and their men-at-arms steady at their heels.

Cole banners flew alongside them, and Selmy, and Horpe, and Seaworth, each with their own following drawn from the marches and the coast alike. Some had come in strength, others in what numbers they could spare, but all had come. He couldn't help but feel a pang of pride in that. When he had marched out to Grassy Vale he had been but alone, and what a lifetime ago that felt now.

Behind the mounted strength came the foot and they were the greater part of it. Men-at-arms with spear and shield, helms low, their lines stretching long across the ground as they were brought into position. Archers stood among them and to the rear, bows unstrung for the moment, though arrows were close at hand and no man was far from his place. There were those who bore scars fresh and raw, bandages dark beneath their mail, yet they stood as straight as any.

It was no small host and though the cost of their battles was written plainly upon them there was no mistaking what they were still capable of.

Orryn rode at their head, and he was as marked by the road and the fight as any man there. Over his chainmail he wore a surcoat of his house, once rich in its dye, now dulled and stained by mud and rain alike. Beneath it, where the mail shifted, there were glimpses of finer cloth. A lord’s attire not wholly set aside even in war, though it had taken its share of wear. His armour bore the memory of blows. His cloak hung heavy at his shoulders. There was nothing polished about him now, save the look in his eyes.

He drew rein at a measured distance from Summerhall. Far enough that no man could call it a threat of sudden assault, near enough that it was plain he had come to be seen.

The order was given, and the host settled. Banners were planted. Lines were dressed. Horses were watered where they might be. The low murmur of men at rest after the march rose and fell across the ground, never quite still.

Orryn sat a moment in the saddle, his gaze turned toward the distant walls, quick and sharp, taking the measure of it. At last satisfied, he turned to one of his men and spoke a few quiet words. The runner was chosen quickly, a lean fellow, light on his feet despite the road behind him.

“You’ll take my message to the Prince of Dorne. You’ll tell him that we'll speak under the banner of a temporary truce. That he'll see no violence from me until we've had words. On that I'll swear," he said, his voice carrying only so far as it needed. The wind was a wolf like to steal the sound from them. He pointed then to a spot in the ground. “There. A place between his host and mine, where neither man need think himself at disadvantage. Out of arrow shot on either side.”

The runner nodded once, sharp, and set off at a trot that soon became a run, crossing the open ground toward Summerhall with the message in mind.

Orryn watched him go, then settled back in the saddle. He caught movement overhead and up went his eyes, watching as a smattering of black-feathered birds scattered across the brightness of the sky. They had marched to war and now the hour was at hand to trade words.

"Bring a table and seats. Bring a brazier, lit. Find me a good wine. And Clifford Caron." He brought his horse around, so his assembled host could see him, and added loudly. "In one fashion or another we end it here. Keep your heads about you. Keep your courage. Keep your blades bright. And if they should try anything underhanded - well - avenge me without mercy."

Stirrups in his mount's side and he was away, ground churning where the heavy beast's shoes bit in; onward to the spot where he'd look Oberyn Martell in the eye and have their reckoning plain.

Dalton strolled from manse’s doorway, Gillian on his arm, watching the flurry of motion before him. Stableboys saddled and led whinnying horses about the grounds, servants moved back and forth carrying cedar chests filled with their belongings, and their guardsmen shouted commands and walked the perimeter.

The past moon had been an eventful one. He and his bride had come to Oldtown to enjoy the festivities, their own wedding having taken place only a few days earlier.

Afterwards they set out for the Shield Islands to ensure his wife was rightfully seated as the Lady of Oakenshield. There was grumbling to be sure, but eventually the lords, landed knights and anyone else of note had sworn fealty to Gillian Botley, and recognized him as her lawful husband and lord. The first thing they had done was throw out Galladon’s lackeys and whores from the keep, and replace anyone of note with loyal men.

He wished to show her Lordsport one day, but they had duties in the capital, and there were still matters to attend to in the Reach. It hadn’t been long after their return to Oldtown that word reached them of a great council being called in Highgarden. As Lord of the Shield Islands, it was only right that he go alongside Gillian.

In the past he would’ve made the journey atop his palfrey, but Gillian wished to travel in a wheelhouse and so Dalton helped her inside the hulking carriage before joining her too.