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Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
This ancient fortress, abandoned for hundreds of years, was being reborn at an unbelievable speed under Lynn's will.
Day and night, tens of thousands of Wight laborers toiled without rest , tireless claws and brute strength repairing crumbling walls, clearing ice from the frozen harbor.
No work chants. No conversation. Only the crack of bone against bone and the dull thud of colliding stone.
A fortress more solid than the Red Keep, and far more silent, was rising quietly at the edge of the world.
Meanwhile, Lynn sat cross-legged in the highest tower of Dragon's Fall Keep, eyes closed.
Meditating.
The Three-Eyed Raven's millennium-old secret arts, driven by Lynn's legendary-grade mental power, produced effects that defied imagination. He could feel his consciousness, depleted to its limits after forcibly awakening a million undead, recovering and expanding at a rate he could almost measure by the minute.
His awareness spread like an invisible net cast over the entire North.
The drift of wind. The fall of snow. The breathing of a snow hare tucked deep inside its burrow. All of it arrived in his mind with perfect clarity.
The moment his mental power reached full capacity, Lynn's consciousness crossed a thousand miles of frozen wasteland and descended once more over that bottomless giant corpse pit.
This time, he didn't try to wake all the dead at once.
He had grown more patient. More precise.
His will moved like a seasoned fisherman's hands, casting his net into specific sections of the pit with deliberate care. Each pass drew up only a measured haul. He wasn't flooding the market , he was curating his army.
The first to be called up were those with relatively intact skeletons: giant remains standing two to three times the height of a man, and Wildling warriors whose rotting armor still clung to their bones.
The Wildling corpses were well-preserved. The giants were simply devastating in a fight.
Both went to the top of the list.
Heavy infantry of giants. Light cavalry of Wildlings. The organization of his undead legion took shape piece by piece, assembled and refined inside his mind.
Lynn never got tired of it.
A month slipped by in what felt like nothing.
When he wasn't fishing the corpse pit for new recruits, he spent his time inside Dragon's Fall Keep, learning the edges of his newly acquired power. He made winter roses bloom across the castle's back mountain in a single night, then let them all wither the next morning, drawing their life force into himself. He sang war songs to roaring direwolves until the pack grew fiercer than the most feral dragon, fearless in a way that went past instinct into something colder.
From King's Landing, Liana's ravens arrived on schedule.
Tywin Lannister was consolidating the Crownlands with an iron fist. Joffrey had fully dissolved into a puppet king, spending his days drowned in wine and women, nestled in Liana's carefully crafted warmth. Sansa was pushing her soap empire into new markets. And across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys was pressing sugar profits into trade routes, converting gold into heavy armor for the Unsullied.
Everything unfolded exactly as Lynn had anticipated.
Until the day a magnificent sailing vessel flying a golden rose banner finally made port at White Harbor.
...
Dragon's Fall Keep. The council hall.
The room was simple and suffocating in equal measure.
Walls of unpolished obsidian. Floors buried under massive white bear pelts. No fireplace. No tapestries. Just ten figures in black heavy armor standing like statues along either side of the hall, ghostly blue flames burning in their eye sockets , the Winter Wraith Bloodguard. The cold that radiated off them was not the cold of winter. It was the cold of something beyond winter. It dropped the temperature inside the hall several degrees below the frozen air outside.
Lynn sat on the throne , carved from weirwood trunk and raw natural crystal , one hand propped lazily under his chin, watching the woman his guards led in.
Margaery Tyrell.
She had removed the heavy fur cloak that had kept out the North's brutal cold, leaving only a dark green velvet gown. The cut wasn't immodest. It didn't need to be. Every movement she made drew the eye to the curves beneath the fabric , the sway of her waist, the arc of her hips shifting with each step, stunning without trying.
Her skin was as pale and fine as the best cream from Highgarden. Her thick brown hair had been braided into an intricate arrangement and left to fall over her chest. Her face was close to perfect, and the smile on it had been calibrated with equal precision , the restraint of a noble lady and the warmth of a young woman, blended in just the right proportion to disarm any man who looked too long.
Her brown eyes were clear as amber.
She didn't look at the Bloodguard with their death-stench auras. She didn't look at the throne made of ice crystal. From the moment she entered the hall, her gaze settled on one place and stayed there.
Lynn on the throne.
Curiosity. And a trace of undisguised appreciation.
"Margaery Tyrell greets the King-Beyond-the-Wall, Lord of the Gift, Count of the Dreadfort, Triarch of Three Realms, Conqueror of the Three-Headed Dragon..." She drew a slow breath. "...Lord Lynn."
She'd made herself say every title. Respect had to be shown in full.
By the end, her lungs were burning. That was an absurd number of titles. A person needed real lung capacity to get through the whole thing without stopping.
She halted ten paces from the throne, lifted her skirt, and sank into a curtsy that left nothing to criticize. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft as a spring breeze moving through flower petals.
Lynn said nothing.
He looked at her. That was all , a slow, unhurried examination with those black eyes. Her smooth forehead. Her full lips. The astonishing rise and fall of her chest beneath the velvet.
His gaze was not shy about what it was doing. It moved like something that expected no resistance.
The silence stretched. The blue flames in the Bloodguard's eye sockets seemed to flicker with more intensity than before.
Margaery's smile did not move.
But her hand, hanging at her side, half-hidden under the skirt, tightened at the knuckles until they went white.
She felt the rudeness. She felt the pressure behind it, deliberate and unhidden.
She did not step back.
This was her first test, and she had known it was coming before she walked through the door.
"Lift your head."
Lynn's voice arrived eventually — flat and empty of anything resembling emotion.
Margaery raised her head slowly and met his gaze.
"You have nerve, Lady Margaery Tyrell." Lynn leaned forward slightly, fingers laced together over his knee. "A few guards, one ship, and you sail straight into my frozen North."
"Enough pleasantries."
"I know exactly why you're here. Tell me — do you think this Northern dragon is as tame as the pets your family keeps in their garden?"
A wounded expression settled over Margaery's face, measured to the last degree.
"Lord Lynn, I'm afraid I don't follow your meaning. I intended no offense." She kept her voice gentle. "I've come with Highgarden's apologies and House Tyrell's sincerity. Nothing more."
"Apologies." Lynn repeated the word. "Sincerity."
He said it the way a man repeats something he found in a pile of garbage.
"Where were Highgarden's apologies when my soldiers bled out in the Riverlands? When my supply lines ran dry because of the war?" His voice didn't rise. It pressed. "Where was House Tyrell's sincerity when Roose Bolton ignited a rebellion in the North and tried to pull House Stark down from the inside? You had an agreement with me. Where was it?"
"Empty promises. Every word."
"You treated me like a fool."
Each sentence landed on her like a stone.
Margaery understood, then, that he might actually be angry.
"Margaery." Lynn's eyes didn't leave her face. "What I saw was your granary doors shut tight and your knights drinking with the Lannisters in King's Landing." A pause. "Now the war is finished. Now you arrive with your apologies and your sincerity."
The corner of his mouth pulled into something that wasn't a smile.
"You think I'm going to take that? Like a fool with no memory?"
Margaery exhaled slowly. The smile left her face. What replaced it was something quieter and more genuine , a sober sincerity that suited her better than the performance had.
"I won't pretend otherwise. My father was shortsighted. It was our family's mistake, and I acknowledge it." She met his eyes without flinching. "My grandmother, Lady Olenna, believed from the very beginning that you were Westeros's future. She argued for it. But her words weren't enough to move my foolish father."
She offered her father up without a moment's hesitation.
"So she sent me herself, to express her respect to you in person — and to make clear that House Tyrell has decided to correct its course."
"Correct its course." Lynn settled back into the throne, watching her with an ease that made it worse somehow. "That's a lovely way to put it."
"Same as before, though."
"So the Queen of Thorns sent you to test the waters. To see what this Northern dragon is actually worth. To decide whether it's still early enough to get on board."
Margaery didn't deny it.
She knew better. In front of someone like this, lies were a waste of breath.
"Yes."
She held his gaze without wavering.
"My grandmother wants to know what you want. Highgarden's wealth. The granaries of the South. The finest knights in Westeros." She let the list sit for a moment. "Say the word, and House Tyrell will give you all of it."
A beat.
"Including me."
She stepped forward. The ambition in her brown eyes wasn't hidden , it burned there, open and unashamed.
"Tywin Lannister can offer me a queen's crown."
"But I believe you can offer me more."
Lynn studied her.
That beautiful face, every line of it written with ambition and self-assurance. He found he wasn't particularly angry anymore , if he ever had been. He hadn't taken real damage in the war. A good portion of what he'd said was theater, and he'd known it while he was saying it.
He had to give her credit. Margaery Tyrell was sharp.
She knew exactly where her leverage was, and she knew exactly how to spend it.
Unfortunately, she'd brought that leverage to the wrong table.
"Queen."
Lynn laughed, once, brief and genuine. He made his decision: he wasn't going to make this easy for her.
He rose from the throne and came down the steps slowly. One step at a time. With each one, something cold and immovable moved through the air around him , less like a chill and more like the pressure that comes before something breaks.
Margaery's heartbeat climbed with every step he took.
He stopped when he reached her. He was a full head taller, maybe more. He looked down at her the way a man looks at something small that has surprised him.
"What makes you think you're qualified to be my queen?"
He reached out and hooked one finger under her chin, lifting it until she had no choice but to hold his gaze.
His fingertip was ice-cold.
Her body shivered before she could stop it.
"Is it this face?" He kept his voice conversational. "Or this rather fine body of yours?"
His gaze dropped to her chest without apology.
"Or is it the grandmother who sat behind the curtain and calculated every move — and only now, after everything is decided, wants to place her bet?"
Margaery bit her lip and said nothing.
For the first time, something appeared in those beautiful amber eyes. Humiliation. Just a trace of it, but real.
"Save the tricks you use on the fools in King's Landing, Lady Margaery." Lynn's voice dropped lower. The dangerous edge in it was quiet but unmistakable. "Here, if you want something, you pay for it. That's the only rule."
He let his hand drop and stepped back.
"House Tyrell missed the best window to place a bet. You want back at the table — you pay double the stake to get there." He kept watching her. "I had a similar agreement with the Lannisters, for what it's worth. They broke their word too. So this isn't personal to your house. If the Lannisters want back at the table, they'll pay the same price."
He looked her up and down one last time.
"Now. Speak your mind."
➤ Next: Making a Decision
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