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Year 300 AC
Meereen, Slaver's Bay
The cream-gold scales had lost their luster. Death had dulled them, transformed their pearlescent sheen to something mottled and grey, like tarnished silver left too long beneath the sea. Viserion's wings were folded awkwardly against his body, torn in places where he had fallen. The great neck that had once arched so proudly now lay limp across the pyre, his head resting on the stones.
Daenerys stood at the base of the towering structure built to receive her child. Her throat constricted at the sight of Viserion's half-closed eyes, once molten gold, now clouded and empty. Drogon had torn his brother's throat, and the wound gaped black in the fading light. She had commanded that wound be covered with pale silk banners bearing the three-headed dragon of her House.
My child. My sweetest child.
"Your Grace." Ser Barristan stood beside her, his white armor gleaming in the dusk. "The sun sets. The people are gathered."
Daenerys lifted her chin. Behind her, the great plaza of Meereen filled with people—freed slaves, Unsullied, sellswords who had survived the battle, merchants, nobles who had not fled. The sounds of their quiet murmurs carried on the evening breeze. Above, circling the great pyramid, Drogon and Rhaegal screamed their grief into the darkening sky.
"The horn?" she asked, not for the first time.
"Still not found, Your Grace. The ironborn captain wore it on a chain, but the divers could not find his body or the horn."
Stolen, or simply lost to the depths. Either way, the cursed thing that had turned her child against her was beyond her reach.
"Bring the prisoners," she said.
Ser Barristan's eyes betrayed a moment's hesitation, but he bowed. "As you command."
The blood of the dragon did not weep before her people. Daenerys kept her face impassive as Grey Worm and twenty Unsullied marched forward with the first prisoner. Hizdahr zo Loraq wore the same silk tokar he had worn at their last meeting, though now it was soiled and torn. His hair, normally oiled and perfumed, hung lank around his face.
"My queen," he began, his voice rising in bewilderment as the Unsullied forced him toward the pyre. "What is the meaning of this? I have served you faithfully!"
"Faithfully?" Daenerys's voice cut across the plaza. "Is that what you call plotting my death with the Sons of the Harpy?"
Whispers rippled through the crowd. Hizdahr's eyes widened.
"I have never—"
"Chain him to the pyre," she commanded. Grey Worm moved to obey, his face expressionless as he fastened the heavy chains around Hizdahr's wrists and ankles, binding him to the wood beside Viserion's massive form.
"Your Grace," Ser Barristan spoke quietly at her shoulder. "Are you certain of his guilt?"
She turned to him. "I am."
A shuffling behind them announced the arrival of another figure. The dwarf Tyrion Lannister waddled forward, his mismatched eyes taking in the scene with unsettling intensity.
"The evidence against Hizdahr zo Loraq is compelling," he said, loud enough for those nearby to hear. "The gold mask found in his chambers. The correspondence with known Harpy leaders. The poison discovered among his possessions—the same poison that almost killed our Queen."
Daenerys had not expected the Lannister to speak in her defense. Their alliance was new, fragile, built on mutual enemies rather than trust.
"Bring the others," she called.
Eight more men were dragged forward, some struggling against their bonds, others walking with the dignity of men resigned to their fate. Wealthy merchants, former slavers, men who had bowed and smiled and plotted her downfall from the shadows.
"These men," she said, her voice carrying across the plaza, "are the Sons of the Harpy. They murdered innocents in the night. They sought to return Meereen to chains. They conspired with the masters of Yunkai." She paused. "And they helped an ironborn captain steal my child."
One of the men spat. "Better a dead dragon than three flying above our city!"
Chains rattled as the man was secured to the pyre, still hurling curses. The others followed, some begging, some silent. Hizdahr had gone pale, his protestations fading to whispers as he realized his fate.
"My queen, I beg you—"
"You were to be my husband," Daenerys said, stepping closer to him. "You arranged meetings without my guards present. You feasted with merchants who funded the Harpies. Did you think I was blind to your treachery?"
His composure cracked. "Please! Please spare me!"
But Daenerys had turned away, addressing the crowd. "I came to Meereen as a liberator, not a conqueror. I broke the chains of every slave. I gave this city justice, peace, the rule of law." Her voice hardened. "And this is how I was repaid. With poison. With daggers in the night. With the blood of my child."
She looked up to where her two remaining dragons circled. Drogon's vast black shadow swept over the plaza. Rhaegal's bronze scales caught the last rays of the setting sun, burning green-gold against the deepening blue.
"Tomorrow I sail for Westeros, to reclaim my father's throne. I leave behind a council to rule in my name—men and women chosen not for their birth, but for their wisdom." She turned to the assembled nobles and freedmen who had served her. "Rule justly. Rule wisely. Or you will learn again the meaning of fire and blood."
She stepped back from the pyre and looked to her children circling above.
"Your Grace," Hizdahr's voice had risen to a desperate pitch. "I am innocent! I swear it on all the gods of Ghis, I am innocent!"
Daenerys looked at him, truly looked at him for the first time since their betrothal. Had he ever seen her as anything but a foreign queen to be tolerated until she could be removed?
"Did you think of Viserion's innocence when you helped the ironborn bind him?" she asked quietly.
Hizdahr's mouth worked soundlessly. Above them, Drogon and Rhaegal swept lower, their wings stirring the air into hot gusts that made the torches flare.
Daenerys raised her face to her children. "Dracarys."
The word hung in the air for the space of a heartbeat. Then Drogon's jaws opened, and the night turned to day.
Fire erupted from above, a torrent of red-black flame that engulfed the pyre in an instant. The wood caught with a roar. Rhaegal added his own fire, golden with traces of green. The heat struck the onlookers like a physical blow, driving everyone else back. She alone stood her ground as the flames reached higher than the buildings around them.
The screams did not last long.
Daenerys watched as Viserion's scales blackened and curled. Fire cannot kill a dragon, she thought, but she knew it was a lie. Dragons could die. Dragons could burn.
The gods flip a coin when a Targaryen is born, her brother had told her once. Greatness or madness. She wondered which side her coin had landed on this night.
The fire burned for hours. The crowd thinned as the night deepened, but Daenerys remained, watching the flames consume her child and his killers. Drogon and Rhaegal perched atop the nearest pyramids, their eyes reflecting the inferno below. Occasionally they would keen, a sound so mournful it made the remaining onlookers shudder.
Grey Worm approached as the fire began to die, the pyre collapsing in on itself in a shower of sparks.
"The ships are ready, my queen," he said in his flat, precise Common Tongue. "All preparations are complete for tomorrow's departure."
She nodded, not taking her eyes from the flames. "Enough to carry all who wish to follow me?"
"Yes, my queen. The Unsullied, the freedmen who have chosen to fight for you, the Dothraki who returned with you from the grass sea. Provisions for three moons. Weapons. Siege equipment."
"And Strong Belwas? His wounds have healed?"
Grey Worm's expression didn't change. "He insists he will sail."
Daenerys turned to look at him fully. "And you, Grey Worm? Are you certain you wish to leave? You were born in these lands."
"I was born a slave," he replied. "I was made Unsullied in these lands. But I became a man in your service. Where you go, I follow."
She placed a hand on his armored shoulder. "I am grateful."
The fire had burned down to embers now, the blackened remains of the pyre barely visible in the darkness. Daenerys turned to the small council that had remained with her through the night—Ser Barristan, Grey Worm, Missandei, Tyrion Lannister, and a handful of others.
"I leave Skahaz mo Kandaq as my regent in Meereen," she said. "With a council of six freedmen and three nobles to advise him. Let it be known that any who break the peace after my departure will answer to my dragons when I return."
"If you return," Tyrion Lannister said quietly.
She fixed him with a level stare. "When I return."
"The lords of Westeros will not surrender easily," Ser Barristan warned. "They have had many years to forget the dragons."
"Then I shall remind them," Daenerys said. "As I reminded Yunkai. As I reminded those who challenged me here."
She looked back at the smoldering remains. In the morning, when the ashes cooled, she would search for anything that remained of Viserion—teeth, bones, fragments of horn that had survived the flames. She would carry these relics with her to Westeros, a reminder of what she had lost. Of what she had paid.
"We sail with the morning tide," she said. "Let all be ready."
They bowed and dispersed, leaving her alone with the dying fire. Above, her children had gone silent, watching from their perches with ancient, unknowable eyes.
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The silk curtains whispered against stone as Daenerys stepped onto her balcony. Night air carried the acrid bite of cooling ash, mingled with the sweet rot of harbor water and the ever-present musk of dragon. Her bare feet found the sun-warmed marble, still holding the day's heat like a lover's touch.
Daenerys thought of the visions she had seen in the House of the Undying. A dragon frozen in ice. A battle in the snow. A blue flower growing from a wall of ice. Prophecies are like treacherous women, Xaro Xhoan Daxos had told her once. They make play with words to lead men astray.
Her eyes found the red comet that had guided her since Drogo's death, now a faint smear against the blackness. For a moment, she thought it pulsed, growing brighter, then dimmer again. A trick of tired eyes, perhaps.
"It's quite marvelous, isn't it?"
The voice came from her left, soft as silk. Daenerys spun, her guards' names on her lips—but the words died unspoken.
Quaithe stood where shadow met moonlight, her lacquered mask gleaming like wet blood. The stars seemed to bend around her, as if the night itself recoiled from whatever lay beneath that wooden face.
"The comet?" Daenerys kept her voice steady, though her pulse quickened. "Beautiful, yes. But deadly too, I think."
Laughter rippled from behind the mask, not the tinkling of bells but like wind through empty tombs.
"We cross paths once more, yet your riddles still plague my dreams." Daenerys advanced, noting how the shadowbinder's garments appeared to pulse with their own shadowed essence, flowing like ink-dark water. "'To go north, you must journey south, to reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.' Where must I go, and what is the shadow I must pass beneath?"
She could not recognize the pleading voice. The peculiar perfume that perpetually surrounded Quaithe reached her—frankincense mixed with another scent, one that caused her nose to twitch with primordial alarm.
Quaithe tilted her head, and Daenerys could have sworn she smiled beneath that mask. The woman said nothing, only turned her gaze back to the bleeding star above.
"The comet. You say it's deadly, yet you do not know how deadly." Her words fell like drops of molten wax. "It heralds change—a change that remakes the very essence of the world. Even now, Westeros transforms."
"Change. What has changed?" The question only brought anger as the prophecies go unanswered.
"In the bones of the earth, a new fire stirs." Quaithe's mask tracked the comet's bleeding path, the lacquered surface catching its crimson light. "The stars themselves bend to witness what rises in the sunset lands."
"The comet pulses," Daenerys took a deep breath. "Like a heart. Like it's alive."
"More than alive." Quaithe's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, silk sliding over broken glass. "It awakens what has slept since the world was young. What was dead shall live. What was stone shall burn."
"Riddles." The word cracked like a whip. "Always riddles with you."
"Truth requires no riddles, only eyes to see." The shadowbinder's form rippled, edges bleeding into darkness. "In the North, where ice meets fire, where death meets life—there, the old blood stirs. There, the prophecies converge."
Daenerys's nostrils flared. That strange perfume grew stronger—frankincense, yes, but beneath it something else. Something that made her skin prickle with recognition she couldn't name.
"Tell me one truth." Daenerys's voice cut through the night air. "Just once. No shadows, no whispers. Please, for once speak plainly."
The silence stretched so long she thought Quaithe had melted back into darkness as she always did. Daenerys's jaw tightened, ready to turn—
"There are other dragons in the North."
The words crashed into her like a tidal wave. Daenerys whirled, silver-gold hair whipping across her face. "What did you say?"
Quaithe stood motionless, that damned mask reflecting crimson starlight. "You heard what you needed to hear."
"Dragons?" The word tasted wrong in her mouth. "You lie. My children are the only—"
"The only ones hatched from stone, yes." Quaithe's head tilted, considering. "But not the only fire made flesh."
Daenerys's gaze dropped to the terrace stones, searching for answers. When she lifted her eyes again, only wind-stirred silk curtains greeted her. The space where Quaithe had stood held nothing but air.
Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting crescents into her palms. The shadowbinder's words echoed in the emptiness: other dragons in the North.
A low rumble vibrated through the pyramid's bones. Drogon, sensing her distress even from his perch atop the Great Pyramid. The sound pulled a bitter laugh from her throat.
"Of course you vanish now." She spoke to shadows that didn't answer. "When I finally need answers."
A gust of wind caught her hair, sending silver strands across her vision. Through the veil of her own locks, she caught movement—or thought she did. A ripple in the darkness beyond the rail, gone before her eyes could focus.
Then, carried on salt wind and dragon-musk, a whisper that might have been imagination: Find the son of ice and fire, for only then do you stand a chance against the cold ones.
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The Twins, Riverlands
Rain dripped from Jaime's golden hand as they approached the Twins. The weight of Lannister crimson sat heavy on his shoulders—a costume for a mummer's farce, but one that would open gates. Five men of the Brotherhood marched beside him, similarly garbed in stolen Lannister colors. Behind them, over a hundred more waited in the darkness, cloaked in mud and shadow.
Brienne walked at his right, her height and breadth somehow diminished by the ill-fitting armor. Her face remained a mask of grim determination, though her eyes flicked constantly to his. They had scarcely spoken since he'd made his bargain with the corpse of Catelyn Stark.
The torches at the gatehouse guttered in the night wind. Jaime flexed the fingers of his left hand, feeling the absence where his sword hand should have been. The irony wasn't lost on him—he'd lost the hand that had killed a king, yet here he was, about to help slaughter an entire house.
"Who approaches?" A guard's voice called from the ramparts.
"Ser Jaime Lannister, with an escort from Riverrun," he called back, the lie smooth on his tongue.
A moment passed before the postern gate creaked open. Jared Frey emerged, flanked by two guardsmen. His weasel face peered suspiciously through the drizzle before recognition dawned.
"Ser Jaime? By the Seven, it is you." Jared's hand dropped from his sword hilt. "We weren't expecting... There've been reports you went missing from the Lannister host. Lord Emmon at Riverrun sent word you'd disappeared."
Jaime forced a smile. "That was rather the point, Lord Jared. Some missions require discretion."
The lie came easily. Too easily. Once, he might have found satisfaction in that. Now it left a sour taste.
Jared nodded too eagerly. "Of course, of course. Please, enter. Lord Walder will be... surprised to receive you at this hour, but the Twins are always open to friends of House Lannister."
Friends. Jaime almost laughed. Friendship had never been part of it—only cold calculation and broken vows.
As they stepped through the gate, Jaime's eyes swept the courtyard. Too few men. Far too few.
"Your garrison seems thin, Lord Jared. Has something happened?"
Jared waved a dismissive hand. "Most of our strength marches with Black Walder in the North. Roose Bolton requested reinforcements after Stannis Baratheon's attack. And we've men at Riverrun too, supporting your uncle's occupation."
"I see."
Before Jared could respond, Lem Lemoncloak stepped forward, driving a dagger up under Jared's jaw. Blood sprayed across Jaime's face, warm and sticky in the cold night. The two guardsmen died just as quickly, throats opened by daggers before they could shout.
Jaime stood frozen as the bodies dropped to the mud. One moment they had been men. The next, cooling meat. The taste of copper filled his mouth though he hadn't been cut.
"Open the gate," he heard himself say.
Within moments, the main gates groaned open, and the rest of the Brotherhood poured into the courtyard. Lady Stoneheart moved among them, her hood drawn against the rain, Brienne moved to her side.
"Is this justice?" Jaime murmured to no one in particular as more guards died silently, efficiently. He'd killed men in battle, but this... this was butchery.
Brienne caught his eye. "They murdered guests under their roof, Ser Jaime. They violated sacred law."
"And we're not guests?" His voice sounded distant to his own ears.
She had no answer for that.
The great hall stood empty at this hour, tables still bearing remnants of the evening meal. The Brotherhood divided into groups, moving through the castle with practiced silence. These men had been fighting and surviving for years in the Riverlands. They knew the art of quiet death.
Jaime followed Thoros of Myr and Lady Stoneheart up the stairs, Brienne at his side. The first sleeping Frey they found was a young man, no more than twenty. His throat was cut before he fully woke. The next room held an older man and his wife. The woman screamed as her husband's blood fountained across the bedclothes.
"The servants," Jaime grabbed the arm of a brotherhood man about to stab a terrified chambermaid. "Spare the servants. They had no part in this."
"He's right," Brienne added, her hand on her sword hilt. "We came for the Freys, not their smallfolk."
Lady Stoneheart's ravaged face turned toward them. Her throat worked, producing that horrible rasping whisper: "All... who... served."
"No," Jaime stepped between her and the trembling girl. "If we kill everyone who ever served a Frey, we're no better than them. Lock them away, but don't butcher them."
For a moment, he thought she might order his death then and there. But Brienne moved to stand beside him.
"My lady," Brienne said softly. "Remember who you were."
Lady Stoneheart stared at them with those terrible eyes, then nodded once. The servants were bound and herded into the kitchens under guard.
They found Walder Frey in his chambers, asleep beside a wife young enough to be his great-granddaughter. The Lord of the Crossing woke to rough hands dragging him from his bed, his nightshirt tangled around spindly legs.
"What is the meaning of this?" he spluttered, rheumy eyes finding Jaime in the crowd. Recognition dawned, followed by relief. "Ser Jaime! Thank the gods. Tell these men—"
His words died as he realized Jaime stood with the intruders, not against them.
"Lannister?" Walder's voice cracked. "What treachery is this? We had a pact, a deal! Your father and I had a deal!"
"My father is dead," Jaime said flatly.
They dragged Lord Walder down to the great hall, his bony feet bumping on each stone step. His young wife remained behind, forgotten in the bedchamber, her terrified sobs fading as they descended.
The great hall had been transformed in their absence. Bodies lay strewn across the stone floor. Torches blazed in every sconce. The smell of blood hung thick in the air.
"Why?" Walder kept asking as they hauled him toward the high table. "We were allies! The crown promised us protection!"
"My sister has other concerns now." Jaime moved to the side, allowing Lady Stoneheart to approach.
Walder Frey looked up at the hooded figure, confusion evident on his ancient face. "Who's this now? Some outlaw queen? I've paid your toll for years, outlaw. I'm the Lord of the Crossing, and you'll not—"
Lady Stoneheart pulled back her hood.
In the torchlight, her ravaged face emerged from shadow. The gash across her throat gaped obscenely. Her eyes, once Tully blue, now burned with cold fire as she stared down at the architect of the Red Wedding.
Walder Frey's bladder released at the sight of her. A puddle formed beneath him as he scrabbled backwards on the floor.
"No," he whispered. "No, you're dead. We killed you. We killed all of you."
Lady Stoneheart placed a finger against her ruined throat, pressing the wound closed enough to form words that rasped like steel on stone.
"The North... remembers."
She drew a dagger from her belt—the same blade that had cut her throat at her son's wedding feast. With mechanical precision, she knelt beside Walder Frey and opened his throat from ear to ear, watching with emotionless eyes as his life bled out across the floor of his own hall.
Jaime turned away. He had seen enough death to last several lifetimes. His golden hand felt heavier than ever, the weight of all his failures cast in metal and strapped to his stump.
A commotion at the hall's entrance drew his attention. Anguy the Archer pushed through the door, clutching papers.
"My lady," he called to Stoneheart. "Found these in the old man's solar. Letters from the North."
Lady Stoneheart wiped her blade on Walder's nightshirt and rose. She took the parchments with blood-stained fingers, her eyes scanning the contents. She passed them to Thoros, who read aloud.
"It seems the bastard of Winterfell has left the Wall. Jon Snow marches south with an army of wildlings and northern lords. They've taken the Dreadfort." Thoros raised his eyebrows, continuing, "And there's more. The Knights of the Vale cross Moat Cailin, led by—" he paused, looking at Lady Stoneheart, "—led by Sansa Stark."
A sound escaped Lady Stoneheart's ruined throat—something between a gasp and a sob. She pressed her fingers to her neck, forming words with terrible effort.
"My... child... live."
She turned to Jaime, those dead eyes boring into him.
"North... we go... north."
"To Winterfell?" Thoros asked. "My lady, that's hundreds of leagues in winter."
"Justice... for Robb." She pointed at Jaime. "He... comes."
Jaime felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty hall. "The Boltons betrayed your son as much as the Freys did. Is that what you want? To see Roose Bolton's head on a spike beside Walder Frey's?"
She nodded once.
Brienne stepped forward. "I will accompany you, my lady. I swore to protect your daughters."
Jaime looked around the blood-soaked hall. How many Freys had died tonight? Dozens, certainly. Men, women, old and young. Some guilty, some merely born to the wrong house. And now they would march north to continue this bloody work.
Once, I might have called this madness. Now I'm not certain what to call it.
There was a time when oaths had meant nothing to him. When he had been the Kingslayer, the oathbreaker, the man without honor. Now he found himself drowning in oaths, each pulling him in different directions.
But perhaps there was honor to be found here after all. Not in the slaughter of the Freys, but in what came after. In helping Brienne fulfill her oath to find and protect the Stark girls. In facing the music for his family's crimes against the North.
"Very well," Jaime said. "To Winterfell."
Outside, the rain had stopped. Dawn's first light crept over the eastern horizon, illuminating the towers of the Twins and the swollen waters of the Green Fork. By midday, the ravens would fly to King's Landing with news of the slaughter. By then, they would be long gone.
The things I do for honor, Jaime thought bitterly as he followed Lady Stoneheart from the hall, leaving bloody footprints in his wake.