Jeanyx's gaze moved across the remaining prisoners.
There were still too many.
A couple thousand at least, gathered in uneven lines across Stormwatch, bound, exhausted, afraid, and surrounded on all sides by people who no longer looked at them as neighbors. Whatever anger had burned hottest in Jeanyx earlier had cooled into something more dangerous now—not mercy, not restraint, but impatience.
He was still angry enough that a quick death felt too generous.
But he was also Jeanyx.
And Jeanyx had never been fond of wasting effort when a cleaner method could do the work for him.
Daemon noticed the shift immediately. The slight tilt of his brother's head. The way his fingers tapped once against the wand in his hand. The way his eyes narrowed—not with rage, but calculation.
Rhaenys noticed too, though for her it only made the sick feeling in her stomach tighten.
Jeanyx looked bored.
Not detached from what had happened. Not ignorant of the weight of it. Bored, in the way a man became bored after deciding a matter was already finished and only the tedious act of carrying it out remained.
He turned his head slightly.
"Elda."
The woman appeared from near the side of the raised seats, moving with quiet purpose. She was older than some of the others, though not elderly, with a steady face and the kind of composure that belonged to someone who had survived too much to be easily shaken. Her clothing marked her as someone important within the island's structure, though not in the way court nobles wore importance like armor. Hers was practical. Earned.
She stepped close enough for Jeanyx to lean toward her.
He whispered something in her ear.
Daemon's curiosity sharpened.
He couldn't hear the words, but he watched Elda's face carefully. At first, nothing changed. Then her eyes flicked once toward the prisoners, then toward the crowd, then back to Jeanyx. For a moment, she seemed to consider the request—not with horror, but with the seriousness of someone weighing logistics.
A minute passed.
Then she nodded.
That interested Daemon more than the order itself.
Whatever Jeanyx had said wasn't just a command. It required something. Preparation, perhaps. Or cooperation. Something that involved Elda specifically.
Rhaenys, meanwhile, had stopped trying to hide how unsettled she was.
Her face remained composed because she was Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, and pride had been carved into her bones too deeply for her to openly falter in front of a crowd. But her stomach had twisted into a hard knot, and the taste of bile lingered faintly at the back of her throat.
This was not the world she knew.
That thought had returned to her several times over the past two weeks, but never as strongly as it did now.
She had thought she understood the North.
Cold. Proud. Stubborn. Honorable in that rigid, irritating way southern courts often mocked but never fully dismissed.
But here, on this island, listening to Jeanyx speak of the First Men and hearing the people themselves speak of what their ancestors had been, Rhaenys had begun to realize how shallow that understanding had been.
The Andals had not conquered the North because they lacked ambition.
They failed because the North was not like the rest of Westeros.
Its people endured differently. Remembered differently. Hated differently.
And when they gave loyalty, it was not light.
It went deep.
Deeper than oaths spoken in a sept. Deeper than marriage contracts and court alliances. It was tied to land, blood, memory, and survival. It was old in a way the south had forgotten how to be.
Now Rhaenys understood why the Andals had broken against the North like waves against stone.
She understood why Aegon the Conqueror had accepted Torrhen Stark's surrender instead of forcing the issue.
Aegon had dragons. Balerion himself.
And still, looking at the size of the North, at the forests, the mountains, the hidden valleys and frozen passes, Rhaenys could imagine the cost.
A dragon could burn an army in an open field.
But the North did not need open fields.
It had woods thick enough to swallow men whole. Mountains where scorpions or spears could be hidden in places even a dragonrider might not see until too late. Blizzards that could blind the sky. Lakes, caves, cliffs, ravines, and gods knew how many old places where magic might still cling like frost beneath the soil.
To defeat the Starks would be one thing.
To defeat the North would be something else entirely.
And for the first time in her life, Rhaenys wondered whether conquest had ever truly been as absolute as Targaryens liked to pretend.
Daemon, standing beside her, watched Jeanyx and Elda with a different kind of attention. He was disturbed, yes, though not in the same way she was. His mind kept circling the shape of power before him, not just the violence, but the structure beneath it.
Jeanyx had not merely built a keep.
He had not merely tamed a village.
He had taken broken people, strange peoples, old bloodlines, forgotten customs, beasts, magic, and fear—and woven them into a functioning realm that obeyed him with terrifying unity.
That was what unsettled Daemon most.
Not the punishment.
The loyalty.
Because no one here looked like they were obeying because a blade rested at their throat.
They obeyed because they believed.
Elda stepped away from Jeanyx and began giving quiet instructions to the nearest attendants. A few moved at once, disappearing through side paths near Stormwatch while others began repositioning along the edges of the field. The Abyss Watchers shifted with them, opening lanes, tightening others, guiding the remaining prisoners into a wider formation.
Not chaotic.
Organized.
Jeanyx remained standing, wand loose in his hand, eyes half-lidded now as if he had already moved past the decision and was simply waiting for the mechanism to catch up.
Daemon leaned slightly closer, voice low enough that only Jeanyx and Rhaenys could hear.
"What did you tell her?"
Jeanyx glanced at him, then gave a small, lazy smile.
"To make it efficient."
Rhaenys' stomach tightened again.
Daemon's eyes narrowed faintly, not satisfied, but willing to wait.
Below them, the remaining prisoners began to realize something was changing. The fear moved through them in waves, muffled by exhaustion and helplessness, but still visible in the way bodies shifted, shoulders hunched, heads turned toward sounds they could not fully place.
Elda returned a short while later, face calm, hands folded in front of her.
"It's ready," she said.
Jeanyx gave a soft hum of approval and stepped forward again, the wand lifting slightly as the air around Stormwatch began to change. Not with the sharp cold of Nyx's flame this time, but something heavier, something that pressed against the lungs and made the gathered crowd grow quiet again.
Rhaenys forced herself to keep watching.
Daemon did not blink.
And Jeanyx, with that same faintly bored expression still resting on his beautiful, Alyssa-like face, turned his attention back to the prisoners as if he were about to solve an inconvenience rather than pass judgment on what remained of an entire betrayal.
Jeanyx rose from his seat slowly, not with urgency, but with the quiet air of someone who had finally decided what shape the rest of the punishment would take.
The remaining prisoners saw him stand, and the fear that had already been crawling through them sharpened into something more desperate. They were exhausted, filthy, bruised from days of confinement and interrogation, but now they watched him the way animals watched fire spreading through dry grass. They knew he was about to speak again. They knew nothing good would come from it.
Jeanyx stepped forward until the whole of Stormwatch could see him clearly.
"Separate them," he said. "Women on one side. Men on the other."
The Abyss Watchers moved at once.
There was no shouting at first, only the heavy scrape of boots and the sound of weapons shifting as the armored men advanced into the prisoners. Then came the confusion, the pleading, the first panicked attempts to cling to family members before gauntleted hands pulled them apart. Men were shoved one way. Women the other. The elderly stumbled. Some fell and were dragged upright again. The Watchers did not strike unless they had to, but they did not allow resistance either.
Daemon watched with narrowed eyes, his mind already searching for the pattern.
Rhaenys sat rigidly, her hands folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles paled. She had watched executions before. She had watched men burn in war. She had seen dragons unleash ruin from the sky. But there was something different about this, something methodical that made her stomach churn worse than a battlefield ever had.
When the separation was finished, Jeanyx looked back toward Sirius and Regulus.
"Two walls," he said. "Earth. Three hundred and twenty-eight feet long. One hundred and thirty-one feet wide."
Neither boy questioned him.
Sirius rolled his shoulders once, almost lazily, though his expression had gone more serious than before. Regulus stepped beside him, quieter, steadier, his eyes already measuring the ground. Then the brothers raised their hands.
The earth answered.
At first it was a low groan beneath the field, a deep grinding sound like stone waking from sleep. Then the ground split in two long, clean lines, and walls began to rise. Soil, rock, and buried stone folded upward in thick slabs, locking together piece by piece until two massive enclosures took shape across Stormwatch. They were not crude barriers. They were shaped with purpose, straight and clean, high enough that climbing them would be nearly impossible without tools.
Daemon's brows lifted despite himself.
Rhaenys stared openly.
The boys made it look easy.
That was the part that bothered Daemon most. Not that they could do it, but that they did it without strain, without chanting, without ceremony. The world simply moved because they asked it to.
Once the walls were raised, two dozen elves stepped forward from the gathered crowd.
They moved with an elegance that made even trained knights look clumsy by comparison, climbing onto platforms that lifted them to the tops of the walls. Each carried a bow, though the weapons were unlike Westerosi longbows. Sleeker. Curved. Beautiful in the way a predator was beautiful.
They took their positions above the enclosures.
Only then did the shape of it begin to reveal itself.
Daemon leaned forward slightly.
"A killing field," he murmured.
Jeanyx heard him, of course, but didn't answer.
Rhaenys did not need the explanation. She could see it now. The prisoners would be forced inside the walled spaces, penned in like animals, with archers above them and no real escape. Her gaze shifted to Jeanyx, expecting that to be the end of the preparation.
It wasn't.
Jeanyx lifted his wand and sent a bolt of magic into the sky.
It shot upward like a streak of pale light, silent until it reached the clouds above Stormwatch. Then it burst open, not like a flame, but like a signal, a pulse of power spreading outward in a circular wave that vanished beyond the treetops.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then the ground trembled.
Not from dragons.
Something heavier.
A low vibration passed through Stormwatch, strong enough that loose stones rattled along the walls and a few people in the crowd shifted their footing. Another tremor followed. Then another.
Rhaenys turned toward the forest.
Daemon was already looking.
The trees at the far edge of the clearing shook.
Then one snapped.
Not bent.
Snapped.
The trunk broke apart with a deafening crack, collapsing sideways as something massive pushed through the forest beyond. Another tree went down. Then another. Branches tore free. Birds scattered upward in panicked clouds.
A blade appeared first.
No, not a blade.
An axe.
A machete-like weapon so enormous it looked impossible for any living thing to wield. Its edge was as long as one and a half grown men laid end to end, dark metal worn by age and war, its surface nicked and scarred from battles no one present had witnessed.
Then the hand holding it emerged.
Huge.
Blackened in places.
Cracked with embers glowing beneath the skin.
The giant stepped through the trees, and Stormwatch fell into a stunned silence.
Even the islanders reacted.
That was what struck Daemon first. These people had grown used to strange things. Elves, dwarves, dragons, magic, black ice, and Jeanyx himself. Yet even they stared with widened eyes as the figure came into full view.
He was a giant, but larger than any giant Daemon or Rhaenys had imagined possible.
Twice the size of the others at least.
Perhaps three times.
His body was wrapped in battered armor that looked like it had been forged for a fortress rather than a man, dented and scorched, with cloth hanging from him in ash-colored strips. A jagged crown rested upon his head, not gleaming gold, but dark, brutal, and old. His eyes burned in the shadow beneath it, faint orange points like coals buried deep in a dying fire.
And all across him, embers glowed.
In the cracks of his armor.
Along his arms.
Between plates of ruined metal.
He looked like a corpse that had refused to finish dying, a king dragged back from the edge of the pyre and given the strength of flame itself.
A murmur ran through the residents.
"Yhorm…"
The name spread quickly, spoken with shock, reverence, and disbelief.
Rhaenys caught it, then looked toward Jeanyx.
Jeanyx's expression had softened slightly, though not enough to be called warmth.
"The heir of the giants," he said, voice carrying clearly now. "Yhorm."
The giant stopped near the edge of the field, each step landing with enough weight to make the newly raised walls shed dust. His axe rested in one hand, its edge dragging a shallow trench through the earth behind him.
"On the day of the betrayal," Jeanyx continued, "he was found nearly dead. Burned. Broken. Left where his enemies thought even a giant could not rise again."
Yhorm lowered his head slightly, not in shame, but in acknowledgement.
Jeanyx's eyes moved over him with something like approval.
"For his bravery, I gave him a second chance."
A flicker of fire breathed through the cracks in Yhorm's armor.
"And with that second chance, I gave him flame."
Daemon felt Caraxes stir somewhere behind them, a low uneasy sound rumbling from the Blood Wyrm as if even he recognized that the thing before them was not merely a giant anymore.
Jeanyx lifted his wand just enough to gesture toward Yhorm.
"He is the second Lord of Cinder," he said. "Alongside Edmar."
Rhaenys looked from Yhorm to Edmar, then back again, the title landing with more weight now that she had seen what one of them could become. Lord of Cinder. It sounded ceremonial at first, like some northern honor or local myth, but standing before Yhorm, seeing the fire moving under ruined flesh and armor, she understood it was not just a title.
Daemon, however, was smiling faintly.
Not because he was comfortable.
Because he was fascinated.
The field had changed completely with Yhorm's arrival. The prisoners, already separated and terrified, stared at the giant as though death itself had been given a body and a weapon too large for mercy. The elves above the walls adjusted their grips on their bows. The Abyss Watchers moved aside to clear a path.
Yhorm turned his burning gaze toward Jeanyx, waiting.
Jeanyx stepped down from the raised seating, wand in hand, and moved closer to the two enclosures as the remaining prisoners began to understand that the walls had not been built to keep danger away from them.
They had been built to keep them in.
Once the women were forced into place at the beginning of the two long walls, the shape of the punishment became impossible to ignore.
The earthen barriers stretched out before them like the sides of a massive corridor, straight and narrow compared to the open field around it. At the far end stood Yhorm. He moved into position with slow, thunderous steps, each one making loose dust fall from the tops of the walls. Then he lifted his enormous axe and brought the end of it down into the ground with a heavy crash that made several prisoners flinch backward.
After that, he rested both hands over the pommel of the weapon's handle and became still.
Completely still.
Like a statue carved from ash, iron, and dying fire.
The women stared at him from the other end of the corridor, their faces pale, their breathing uneven. Some were crying silently now. Some looked too exhausted to cry. Others looked at the walls, at the archers above, at Yhorm waiting at the far end, trying to piece together the rules before they were spoken.
Jeanyx stepped forward.
His expression was calm, almost bored again, but not careless. That was what made it worse. There was no frenzy in him. No shaking anger. No wild cruelty spilling out without control. This was organized. This had shape.
"Now," Jeanyx said, voice carrying clearly across the field, "the game is simple."
Rhaenys' stomach tightened at the word.
Game.
For a moment, the world around her seemed to narrow. She looked at her cousin's face, at the easy way he said it, at the gathered people watching without protest, and something cold moved through her chest.
Was this madness?
Not the loud kind the singers loved to whisper about. Not a king screaming at shadows or burning men because a voice in his head told him to.
This was quieter.
Worse, perhaps.
Valyrian madness dressed in reason, given structure, made useful.
But then a memory returned to her, sharp and unwelcome. A question that had been put to her not long ago, though it felt heavier now than when she had first heard it.
What if it had been her children?
What if it had been Laena and Laenor these people had tried to kill? What if they had burned Driftmark, slaughtered her guards, betrayed her roof, and endangered everything she had built to keep her family alive?
Rhaenys' lips parted slightly, but no words came.
Because the answer came too quickly.
Too honestly.
She would have done worse.
That realization settled in her like a stone sinking into deep water. It did not make what she saw beautiful. It did not make it gentle. But it made it understandable in a way she had been resisting since the punishment began.
She was horrified because Jeanyx had the power to do what grief and fury demanded.
She was unsettled because if she had that same power, and if it were her children standing at the heart of the betrayal, she did not know where her mercy would end.
Daemon noticed the change in her from the corner of his eye. He didn't comment, but his gaze lingered for half a heartbeat before returning to Jeanyx.
Jeanyx raised the wand slightly, pointing toward the far end of the corridor where Yhorm stood unmoving.
"You may only move when the words green light are spoken," he said. "When red light is spoken, you stop."
The prisoners stared at him.
Some did not understand at first. Others understood too quickly, their expressions collapsing into quiet terror.
"If Yhorm sees you move after red light is called," Jeanyx continued, "even slightly, the archers will shoot."
Above the walls, the elves drew their bows in perfect unison.
The sound was soft, but it carried.
Rhaenys' eyes lifted toward them. Their faces were calm, almost serene, and that serenity made them look less like executioners and more like priests performing a ritual they had done before.
"The arrows are poisoned," Jeanyx said. "They will not strike vital areas."
A ripple moved through the prisoners.
"They will not kill you quickly."
Daemon's expression barely shifted, but his eyes sharpened.
Jeanyx let the sentence sit long enough for the women to fully understand it.
"You will die slowly," he said. "Painfully. On the ground, in front of everyone you betrayed."
A few of the women began pleading then, voices breaking apart as they tried to speak over one another. Some begged innocence. Some begged for their children. Some swore they had been forced, that they had not known, that they had only followed others because they feared what would happen if they refused.
Jeanyx listened for a few seconds.
Then he raised one hand.
The pleas quieted, not because they had calmed, but because the Abyss Watchers shifted at the edges of the corridor, and the women remembered where they were.
Jeanyx pointed to a pale line carved into the ground just before Yhorm's feet.
"Cross that line," he said, "and you live."
The silence that followed was strange.
Hope appeared in some faces.
Not strong hope.
Not real hope.
But the desperate kind people created when there was nothing else to hold onto.
Yhorm did not move. The fire beneath his armor pulsed faintly, his burning eyes fixed on the corridor before him, watching the women at the far end with the stillness of something that did not need to breathe.
Daemon leaned back slightly, studying the rules now that they had shape. There was cruelty in it, yes, but also something else. Control. Fear sharpened into movement. Desperation turned into spectacle. He could see why Jeanyx had chosen it.
Rhaenys hated that she could understand it too.
Jeanyx lowered the wand and glanced toward Elda.
She nodded once.
The crowd seemed to hold its breath, not loudly, not dramatically, but in that quiet way people did when they knew the first movement would matter.
Jeanyx looked back at the women in the corridor, his voice calmer than it had any right to be.
"Green light."