A Symphony of Ice and Fire (HOTD/The Ice Dragon)

[Firewillreign]

A crossover AU between House of the Dragon and The Ice Dragon by George RR Martin, because fuck Targryen politics. If you self-destructive assholes want to fight, I'll throw you a goddamn APOCALYPSE!!!

Inspired by the fic the Dragons Of Ice and Fire.

Before someone crucifies me for starting yet another fic on account of my terrible self-control, I'd like to defend myself and say that I had this idea for a while and couldn't get it out of my head, and then I had a really bad week and just needed to write something to get my mind of it. We'll see how it goes.

---

Long ago in a distant faraway land amidst a blistering ungodly winter storm colder and harsher than any that had come before, a girl was born.

Her father was a humble crofter, and her mother his much-beloved woman who died to birth the girl, tears freezing solid as her skin grew pale and cold and deathly, and the babe she brought forth into the world was almost no better.

Quiet, even as an infant, with skin as pale as snow, hair only a few shades darker, and eyes as bright as blue stars.

A winter child, the people of her village would whisper amongst themselves as she grew, a creature more cold than warm.

More ice than fire.

More dead than living, the cruelest of them hissed behind false smiles and closed doors, a damned life reared from a dead womb and so cursed and reviled by gods and men alike.

At first, the whispers did not matter, for in spite of his tragedy, her father's love for her was true. But it was the love of a grieving man, tainted by the shadow of loss, and it was never enough to banish the cold and the grasping specter of winter from the girl's heart and soul.

The rest of her kin fared no better. An elder sister and a brother older still who could do no more than watch and despair as the little girl grew alone, quiet and hushed, never forgotten but never welcome among the rest of their people, for what fool would risk drawing the wrath of the gods by inviting a child so clearly accursed in their eyes amongst their number?

No, best the ill-begotten plague keep to her own company unto her death and spare them all any further misery, for her mere existence was burden enough.

And yet, despite the will of the many, the girl whose name was Adara was not to be alone forever.

On the eve of her fourth year, when at last her father let her out to play among the snow and the ice lizards who carved their homes beneath frozen rock, when the cold and the dark grew great enough that all the other children had long fled home, the ice dragon came to her.

The ice dragon was a crystalline white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It was covered with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man's boots, and flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were deep blue and icy, mirrors to her own. Its wings were vast and batlike, colored all a faint translucent blue. Adara could see the clouds through them, and oftentimes the moon and stars, when the beast wheeled in frozen circles through the skies.

Its teeth were icicles, a triple row of them, jagged spears of unequal length, white against its deep blue maw. When the ice dragon beat its wings, the cold winds blew and the snow swirled and scurried and the world entire seemed to shrink and shiver.

The people of her village feared the ice dragon.

A creature of legend and storied power, whose mere sighting was considered a grave omen that would foretell the most brutal of winter storms, and all knew to fear it.

It was no enemy of man, but it was no friend either, for winter-made flesh cared naught for the trials of lesser beings and devastated kings and paupers alike.

But Adara was different, as she had always been from her very first breath.

She was herself a winter child, and the cold that snuffed out all warmth and heralded the harshest of seasons was as much a part of her as it was of the ice dragon.

So when the young dragon landed before her, half again the size of a mammoth and near enough to swallow her whole in a single bite, Adara did not shy away from it.

Instead, she raised a single tentative hand and pressed her palm to the mighty beast's snout as none had ever dared to before.

"Hello." The girl whispered in awed delight, hand tracing hoarfrost-sprinkled scales ever so gently. "Won't you be my friend?"

...​

The girl sang to it, soft and clumsy, and told it stories that none of her kind would care to hear from her. She brushed hands along frozen scars from battles against his kin and bared both heart and soul to it as she lay against its side, content in a way she'd never been before.

The ice dragon lingered only a single night before disappearing into the ether, wings catching on northern gales as its nature called it to back to the fabled lands of always winter where not even Adara would dare to follow.

"I shall miss you." She whispered as it took flight, and the words were carried by the wind only for a moment before fading into nothing.

That should have been the end of it.

But something strange and wholly incomprehensible had been forged that night between the child and the creature of the skies, and the beast was slow to forget. Like would always call to like, and the ice dragon returned to the clearing where it'd met the child who was kin to it the very same night of the following year.

Adara was waiting for it there, and when at last it landed, she did not hesitate to run in and press herself against its snout in a gesture as warm as any she would ever make, and whisper against its scales.

"Thank you for coming back."

And so a bond was forged.

...​

The dragon lingered only the one night as before, but it returned year after year, and with every return, it lingered just a little longer.

It was not until her ninth year that Adara finally mounted the dragon.

It had grown over the years, larger and stronger and fiercer than it was before, and Adara knew it was time.

She reached out and tugged at the very edge of the dragon's wing with a small hand, and the dragon beat its great wings once, and then extended them flat against the snow, and she scrambled up to wrap her arms about its cold white neck.

Together, for the first time, they flew.

At times the beating of the wings threatened to shake her loose from where she clung, and the coldness of the dragon's flesh crept through her clothing and bit and numbed her flesh.

But Adara was not afraid. She never had been.

They flew over her father's farm, looking very small below.

They flew over the village, where crowds of people came out to watch them pass. They flew above the forest, all white and green and silent. They flew high into the sky, so high that Adara could not even see the ground below, and she thought she glimpsed another ice dragon, way off in the distance, but it was not half so grand as hers.

And all the while, Adara laughed, an icy, tinkling laugh, a laugh as bright and crisp as the winter air that carried it away until nothing of it remained.

They flew for most of the day, and finally, the dragon swept around in a great circle and spiraled down, gliding on its stiff and glittering wings. It let her off in the field where it had found her, just after dusk, and vanished as it was ever wont to do.

Adara was always a lonely child, her life empty and hollow, but that day of delight and laughter and freedom was the most victoriously joyful of them all, and hers alone besides.

Perhaps it was bitterly fitting, then, that it was also the day when the path to her greatest tragedy was set in stone.

...
​

On Adara's eleventh year, a great enemy threatened the village.

Men armored and armed themselves, women barricaded themselves in their cottages with their children, and all the people prayed for salvation as an army of fire and sorcery threatened to march on their homes and raze them to naught but ash.

When the dragon came to Adara that year, she begged on behalf of people who had cursed and shunned her all her life as only a child pure of heart could beg.

"Please, help them."

And the ice dragon would never refuse its winter child, and when the army came to spill blood and char and salt the land, they instead met dragon breath so cold it burned, and all were broken beneath winter's fury.

After that, Adara was finally welcomed among her kin.

A hero, they called her and finally shared the warmth she'd never been allowed to long for, even as the dragon flew away once more, content in the knowledge that she was safe.

...​

It was not to be.

Unyielding strength invited challenge. Challenge incited conflict. And conflict bred catastrophe and tragedy in equal measure.

And there was no greater strength than that of the ice dragon... or the one who could wield its power.

...​

When the ice dragon returned for the final time, it was to a girl half dead and buried in the snow, delirious from pain and cradling the side where the betrayer's knife had slid into her flesh on the eve of her name day celebration.

And the dragon, who had grown strong and mighty and wrathful beyond comprehension raged, and the village and the villagers who had orchestrated this wailed and fled and died as winter fell upon them from above and laid waste to all they were and ever would be.

When the deed was done, the beast cradled its precious winter child in a single claw and took to the air with her once more, and flew her north as it had never done before.

Past the mountains and the hills and roiling snows, past the flatlands all the homes of man, past and deep across the lands of always winter where even his dying winter child would have suffered a chill if only she would live to see it through.

Inconsolable in its grief, the ice dragon did not stop flying until its wings would beat no more.

Exhausted, it fell from the sky and to a mountain below, amidst a storm it had no strength left to weather, and the snow and the ice and the treacherous magic of the land was quick to spread over them, to bury them beneath its bulk and claim their lives for it's own.

The ice dragon did not fight the end as it came for them both, for grief was a far more treacherous burden than any magic could ever hope to be.

And so it and its winter child vanished beneath the swiftly freezing ice and disappeared forevermore.

...​

Decades passed, and centuries and millennia after that followed in time.

The dragon and his winter child remained buried, entombed within a prison of magic and ice, and would have remained so until the end of time.

But something changed.

Another dragon, one of fire and not ice, silver scaled and ridden by a queen of man, visited a great Wall.

It dared not cross the boundary even when prompted to, but unbeknownst to rider and beast alike, the damage had already been done.

For the presence of such a creature, one flame and magic and power in a long since gone from this dormant land... it was the spark that lit the blaze and reawakened the slumbering magics that surged beyond the Wall.

All of them.

It took decades more as fell things began to wake for the ice dragon to rouse and awaken in its frozen tomb that long since become a mountain and a prison. The magic keeping it bound had grown as well, so much so that

Were its strife any different, it would fallen back into its slumber until the end of time.

But it sensed the impossible.

Cradled in its grip even after all this time, his winter child stirred.

She wasn't just touched by cold anymore. She had become cold, and that was what had saved her life and done far more besides.

And the ice dragon loved her far too much to condemn her to this prison any longer.

Slowly, carefully - like the glacial shift of continents - titanic wings began to unfurl.

The prison of ice rumbled in protest. The weight of the mountain and the magic that raised it tried to keep it buried.

Tried to keep them buried.

The ice dragon would not have it.

The struggle was ruinous, but it battered forth and persisted. It yearned to be free, to take the skies with its winter child once more, and roared with all the force of thousands of years of caged fury.

The mountain cracked and the heavens themselves splintered from the force of the eruption. Boulders of ice the size of mammoths were blown up through the clouds. When at last its wings broke through the surface, they pounded and summoned forth a hurricane. The air burst with a drumbeat of thunder more ferocious than the greatest of storms.

For the first time in thousands of years, as its winter child finally gasped and opened her brilliant blue eyes, the ice dragon took to the air and bellowed its victorious cry of rebirth for all to hear.

...​

A continent away, Viserys Targaryen breathed his last, and his heirs readied their mounts and prepared to dance.

Hopelessly unaware of the darkness that had been awakened far too early, and the Long Night that would soon come to claim them all.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

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[Firewillreign]

"Take Prince Lucerys back to his dragon. Now."

A part of Luke knew right then and there that he had just been sentenced to death.

As he stood there in the middle of Storm's End's Round Hall, drenched and soaked to the bone, with his uncle all but frothing at the mouth to get at him, a frenzied twist to his lips that would have been a smirk were it not so savage... it was all he could do to meet Aemond's glower and desperately try not to give away any more of his fear, for all the good that did him in the end.

Even as the household guards pulled him away and started escorting him back to Arrax, dread quickly pooled in his gut and grew with the sickening surety that his uncle's reckoning wouldn't end there.

It was only their host's blustering and the wall of armored men between them that had prevented him from clearing the distance and gouging out Luke's eye in repayment for his own, guest rights and bonds of blood be damned, and the utter rage in his one eye left Luke with no callow delusions as to what would come next.

Aemond would not let him go, not without trying to take his due in blood.

And the lord of Storm's End had just cast him out into the oncoming storm.

Out to Vhagar, who was as likely to settle for just an eye as a starving beggar was to settle for just a breadcrumb when he could have the whole loaf instead.

Borros Baratheon couldn't have killed him better if he'd swung the blade himself, and whether that was deliberate malice or careless stupidity was irrelevant because Luke could very well die either way.

He swallowed roughly, the inside of his mouth suddenly drier than dornish sand-stone.

No, he tried to reassure himself, it wouldn't come to that.

It wouldn't.

He intended to keep his composure and march his way back to Arrax with as much dignity as he could muster, but his resolve broke the moment the great doors were opened for him and he found himself bolting forward through the sleet and howling winds as quickly as his feet would carry him.

It was pathetic, and they'd rush to call him craven for it, but right then he couldn't bring himself to care about the humiliation and the shame he'd just opened himself up to by fleeing.

Let them call him what they will. There'd be other chances to prove himself, but he needed to get back to Dragonstone and warn his mother of the Baratheon's decision to support Aegon's cause and pledge their swords to his banner.

He wanted - needed wanted to to go home.

Arrax was already half-rabid before Luke made it to his side, the ordinarily mild-tempered beast snapping and shrieking with every other peal of thunder, acting more like some manner of a cornered rat than the dragon he was.

It only took a single flash of lightning to realize that it had nothing with the storm.

Vhagar had vanished.

For a moment, the wave of sickening dread that tore down his spine was so intense it was only sheer will and the thrum of Arrax's fire burning beneath his ribcage that prevented his knees from collapsing out from under him.

He staggered back to Arrax's side and leaned his weight against his bulk.

"Easy, easy." The words were for both of them, and though the high valryian he had to scream out over the roar of the storm was mangled with fear and the pronunciation a butchery that would have had Daemon rapping his knuckles if he ever heard it, it served its purpose well enough. "Be calm, Arrax, be calm and serve me."

His own panic didn't abate, but Arrax settled long enough to lower his neck to the courtyard stone and let Luke scramble onto his saddle, and he'd just barely managed to clamp down on the last chain before the dragon heaved upwards, pearlescent white scales beating the air with fervor born of terror and launching them up and over Storm's End's curtain walls so fast he just about forgot to breathe.

...​

Because the gods were cruel and pettier than any man could ever hope to be, it wasn't until Luke had almost let himself begin to hope that he could make it home that Vhagar at last erupted out of the clouds, Aemond's half-demented cackling somehow sounding over her hideous roar.

Arrax screeched in distress and veered hard to avoid the grasp claws, and Luke flattened against his saddle to avoid breaking his neck from the whiplash.

Just like that, the chase was on, and his and Arrax's clawing hysteria ceased to be individual. He bit down on his own screaming as he felt more than heard Vhagar's wings snapping into pursuit behind them. They twisted and dove and fled through the thunder clouds, and none of it was enough because for all that Vhagar outweighed Arrax many times over, each beat of her wings was worth a hundred of his and each raging vicious current that threatened to break his desperate flight might as well have been a soft spring breeze to her.

When the crag appeared dead ahead with the promise of salvation, he didn't have to direct Arrax to turn for the dragon was already diving into the narrow chasm between the clifftops Aemond's outraged howl echoed behind them as Vhagar was forced to swerve away.

Had he been just a little more clear-headed he would made something of the reprieve, directed Arrax to claw a foothold on one the rock shelves below to wait out the storm or done anything else at all. Vhagar couldn't have followed them in if they had, and even Aemond wouldn't have possibly had the patience to weather the surrounding storms for hours just for the sake of playing this sick, twisted game.

But before he had a chance to think of it, to even dare to breathe long enough to steady himself and command Arrax, Vhagar's shadow fell across them from above the crag, easily trapping them in the shadow of her battle-scarred underbelly as she kept pace from above, and Luke lost control over his mount entirely.

Everything after that was a terrible blur.

Arrax wrestled free of his will, flying deeper into the storm in a fierce panic, and finally ending when the muscles beneath his scales grew too rigid with effort and the fool of a dragon turned on Vhagar in one last frenzied attempt to save them both.

"Arrax, no!"

He tried to stop it the moment he sensed Arrax's attention, eyes somehow growing wider still despite the wind and the rain half-blinding him with their fury, but a gout of flame wide enough to swallow an aurochs was already erupting out Arrax's gullet and sailing through the clouds ahead before he'd gotten the first word out.

Vhagar roared in irritation and something far more threatening as the flames washed over her scales and did nothing at all, enraged where before she'd only been aggravated and cleaving to the whims of her rider.

Her bellowing roar chased after them as they ascended sharply through the clouds, and Aemond's screams went from viciously gleeful to near as horrified as Luke had been since this nightmare began as Vhagar bucked against his control and began to hunt.

"No, no no! Vhagar, no!"

That was all he managed to hear before they flew out of earshot. They soared up and up and further up still with the last of their strength, trying to ascend through the storm and find their escape beyond the raging winds.

When they finally broke through the cloud cover the sunlight beyond nearly finished blinding him in its brilliance where the had failed before, dazzling Arrax's scales and rendering the clouds below into an ocean of white gold.

He should have been achingly relieved at the sight, but he could hardly bring himself to breathe as he continued clenching the reins of the saddle tight enough to lose all sensation above the joints.

Even Arrax knew better than to lower his guard, head snapping this way and that, wingbeats frantic and ready to flee for all that he only just barely had the strength to keep them aloft.

Aemond and Vhagar had been left behind, but the fear and threat of death lingered on and grew worse the longer there was no sign of them and the air remained silent save for the rush of Arrax's wings.

They'd been right on their tail. They couldn't have-

He turned to the side as the air whistled and ice shot up his spine, and there was Vhagar, hurtling up directly for them, too fast to evade, too mighty to beat back, and neither he nor Arrax had even the time to scream-

And then, right before the stranger claimed them both, something changed.

Vhagar must have felt it before any of them, for the old she-dragon's maw clamped shut an instant before it would have caught half of Arrax's body between its teeth and all of Luke along with it for good measure.

It was her snout instead that rammed into his wing and side and sent them both careening and flailing across the heavens, but that was it. She didn't pursue it even when Arrax righted himself and prepared to dive below again, and refused to obey even when the wind carried Aemond's confused demands over to them.

Instead, Vhagar's wings continued to heave, holding her in place as the dragon went abruptly, dangerously still in the air and quiet in her flight, gaze darting to the clouds below.

Luke and Arrax were somehow entirely forgotten in favor of nothing he could spot for himself. That would have been a perfect chance to escape, were it not for the fact that Arrax himself had seemingly caught on to whatever scent or presence that had broken through Vhagar's stride and went just as still and silent in the air.

Were they... wary?

Vhagar was afraid?

Gods above, what was it now?

The answer came with a whistling of air and sound that would have been reminiscent of chiming bells if it hadn't been so deep, and the rhythmic thunder-like beat of dragon wings that was so undeniably familiar and yet not, an odd quality to them set his teeth on edge and had him exhaling in mounting alarm.

When he did, his breath came out cold and misty, and only then did he realize that a sharp chill had suddenly overtaken them all.

That was all the warning they had before the clouds behind Vhagar were blown apart and out emerged...

...

For a moment, Luke didn't understand what he was looking at. The saddle reigns slipped from his grip as his gloved hands went slack.

Back in the days when all of them had lived in the Red Keep, before the poisons of Green and Black had truly seeped and rotted everything and before Driftmark, Aegon had dragged him and Jace and Aemond down to the deepest crypt beneath the Red Keep to the chamber where Black Dread's Skull had been set aside by the Old King at the time of his death.

Luke's grandfather had mourned the dragon's loss so deeply that he'd refused to set it on display in the throne room before the Iron Throne when he ascended to the chair, for he was more than just a symbol to his last rider, and so the skull remained in the crypts for all to see.

When Aegon had led them to it in another dared them to touch, he'd dared them to try and slip between the spear-like teeth and back out again if they were brave enough to try.

"But don't take too long." He'd jeered in another one of his stupid japes. "Else he'll come back to life and swallow you whole."

"No he won't." Aemond glared at his brother, but even he'd tellingly refused to step forward until Jace did.

In the end, none of them made it in, not even with Aegon needling and cajoling from the sidelines as they pushed and shoved each other closer to the skull.

Luke had made it closer than even Jace, but he didn't get a chance to enjoy the victory. Not when he looked up and truly stared at the sheer enormity of the gleaming black dragon bone looming over him.

The greatest dragon who ever lived since the Doom of Valyria dwarfed even Vhagar, and the smallest of his frontal teeth had been four times as tall as he had been and near as wide. There was something more to it as well, some otherworldly presence to it beyond the balefull candlelight reflecting on it and even its monstrous size that had the hair at the back of his neck rising in fright.

Luke had managed to hold out only long enough to squeak like a frightened mouth before bolting. Aegon had laughed himself silly after that, but Luke hadn't cared. That had been the stuff of nightmares.

He loved dragons as any dragon lord should, what he had was Arrax was proof enough of that, but even when long gone Balerion had seemed less a dragon and more a god.

That, or perhaps some fell monster straight from the Seven Hells, and that had just been his skull. He hadn't been able to even imagine how large the rest of him must have been when he'd lived, not even after seeing Vhagar firsthand in all her terrible glory.

He didn't have to imagine any longer.

The dragon that erupted out from behind Vhagar was so large it blotted out the sky ahead of it as it flew forward on wings held aloft by a hurricane of cold.

Its hide was crystal-white and glittering more sharply than any gemstone he had ever seen, its wings were batlike and stretched from one corner of his sight to the other, and when it was unhinged its jaws and roared in deafening challenge, it sounded fiercer and more powerful than any storm man had ever dared to brave.

Vhagar roared back and made to turn, but she was too slow and ponderous to meet her new foe's charge.

Calling it a clash would have been charitable. The unknown dragon was thrice Vhagar's size at least and cut through the air more swiftly than Luke had seen even Meleys fly. Vhagar had scarcely turned around before the utter mountain of a beast rammed into her with an impact akin to mountains colliding.

What little of it Luke could see over his slack-jawed awe and disbelief was over as soon as it began.

Both dragons tumbled from the impact, bodies interlocked in vicious combat as they plunged through the air and disappeared beneath the clouds, falling back into the storm, leaving only the cadence of their clashing roars behind.

That should have been the end of it.

Luke should have fled right then. He should have returned to Dragonstone and told his mother and Daemon and all the others of everything he'd witnessed, and let them settle it.

It would have been the wisest choice to make.

And yet he didn't make it, for as he watched the two dragons vanish into the thunderclouds below, the only thought he had to spare was for the rider who'd almost killed him.

Aemond.

He didn't know what drove him to it, if there was a reason at all, or if it was a bout of inexplicable insanity. Whatever it was, it had him pressing himself against the saddle and seizing the reigns once more.

"Arrax!"

It was a miracle in itself that Arrax finally deigned to obey, but not one he was in any position to savor. The air was driven from his lungs as they dove back into the dark and the chaos, intent on doing something.

Luke didn't think that far had, and he didn't get the chance to, for as he fell back into the storm, heading towards the draconic roars and the thunderous clash below, it wasn't the sight of either dragon that greeted them.

Instead, it was cold.

A wave of wind and ice and white light so cold it burned caught them just as they emerged through the clouds, and Luke abruptly found himself going numb all over and fading into rather blissful darkness, all thoughts and fears vanishing in the ether.

Even Arrax struggled madly for only a beat before going equally limp and heavy beneath him. Distantly, he registered a pleasant feeling of weightlessness, something akin to a scream and a roar wrapped in one, and then nothing at all.

...​

By the time the storm broke hours later, Borros Baratheon would receive words that would plunge the realm further into maddened chaos.

Prince Aemond and Prince Lucerys's dragons had clashed with a third, and all five had vanished into the wind with not a trace left behind.

...​

Next chapter is an Adara POV, probably, so let's see how that goes.

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

This was supposed to be an Adara POV, but the setup was too critical so I'm leaving that for the next chapter.

...

Aemond was never one to rest easy, be it in mind or body.

Between the trials of his daily duties of a prince - flexible as those were for a mere second son who was third in line for the throne by dint of his father and king's willful blindness, undeserved favoritism and blatant weakness - and the nigh-religious training he plunged into every day in the courtyards of the Red- to make up for his... deformity, his sleep tended to be heavy and his rousings dull and unexceptional.

This time, however, was different.

And was the case with everything that wasn't bestowed upon him out of some misguided sense of pity or that he didn't choose to take for himself, the change was nothing welcome.

The first thing he registered was the hurt, a half-numb, thrumming ache running up and down his limbs and echoing in his skull in a way that had his breath catching sharply before he ever managed to crack open his eye.

He shifted in place with a groan, but it brought him no relief. His body felt heavy and moved as though it had been dipped in tar, and when at last he succeded in blinking himself awake, it was with an accompanying quiver so forceful he nearly bit his tongue off.

Gods, but he felt wretched.

And cold.

So much so that between the shivering and the swiftly growing throbbing in his skull, it took him several heartbeats and near as many dazed blinks to realize that he wasn't in his bed, in his chambers in the Red-keep, or anywhere he recognized at all.

It was as though he lay in an abyss of darkness, no light to speak of save for a low burning open flame set into a steep pit mere feet away from where he lay sprawled against a bed of earthy soil and hard rock. The air felt cold and dry against his lungs, yet somehow carried with it the scent of wet leaves and rain and something sharper and far less familiar to his senses.

A dungeon or a cave, then, or something of the sort.

who reigned over them would he have wound up in a cave?

Had he been imprisoned? Abducted? Him?

Absurd.

Where were his guards? His family? His mother and Halaena

Panic began to rear-

Vhagar.

His thoughts faltered.

The moment Aemond thought of his dragon, and registered her presence at the back of his mind, everything came back to him with all the force of a thunder strike.

Aegon's crowning. Grandfather's orders. Storm's End and Borros Baratheon. The bastard and the storm he'd chased him into.

And then-

Vhagar had frozen, impending kill forgotten, and it hadn't been Aemond's desperate, frenzied pleading that had slated her bloodlust.

No, it had been fear, and fool that he had been in that moment, he'd not even deigned to consider that it was not his alone, too seized in the relief that he hadn't started the inevitable war to come before it fell upon them.

He barely even saw it.

Wings that blotted out the sky, crystalline teeth like spears hurtling towards him, framed in a maw so massive the bastard could have flown his mummer's farce of a dragon down its length and still had room for more.

They were driven through the clouds before Aemond even felt the horrendous clash, an uncomprehending scream strangled in his throat

And then came the cold, in a wave as unrelenting as the tides, a cold so great it burned, froze his breath in his lungs and cast him and Vhagar both from the skies and back into the storm below-

He came back to himself with a sharp inhale as the memory of the sickening fall and the abrupt blackness sweeping over him and the pain in his head went white-hot and molten.

It lasted only long enough for him to gasp out in agony before it surged back, but that was enough for his vision to blur out from the agony. That was why it took far longer than it should have for him to realize that he was no longer alone in the dark.

He went dead-still when the girl stepped into the light of the flames, slipping out of the darkness like a ghost.

She certainly looked the part, and that she looked to be even younger than he himself was only made it more pronounced.

She was pale, far too pale. Aemond was as Targaryen as they come and even his complexion didn't match that shade of milk-white, made all the more pronounced by the brilliant golden hair that framed her face and trailed down past her shoulders and sides, sleek and glinting even in the dim light that reflected off of it.

An eerie contrast, striking and impossible to miss with her sharp features and set jaw, but it was her eyes that had Aemond freezing in an emotion he refused to name. Blue like the northern he saw only when Vhagar ascended far past the clouds and let him see all there was to see across the heavens.

Aemond met those eyes, brilliant, otherworldy blue, and knew.

"It was you."

His voice was a dry, horrible rasp, rich with realization and the very start of indignant horrible fury.

Their fall. That beast that caused it. It was hers.

He didn't how he understood it for truth, but it was. The knowledge slipped into his mind like quicksand, sealing in the cracks of his incomprehension and building pressure fit enough to burst. He knew it with all the certainty of his bond with Vhagar

"It was you." He repeated, teeth barred into a snarl that sapped the last of his strength and sent him into a fit of coughs so savage it felt as though he was hacking up a lung and rending his throat bloody.

She didn't respond, her face utterly devoid of emotion or tell.

Her expression didn't even flicker.

Somehow, that was more infuriating than any insult he'd ever taken.

"Is he ready?"

When she spoke, she did so with a voice that was more a whisper of wind than a voice, faint and low and

"No."

How pathetic it was that he couldn't even turn his head to catch sight of the second speaker in the shadows.

"You told me you would wake him." The girl said, and her eyes never left him for all that she did not acknowledge him. "He is awake."

"But he is not ready."

"It has been days."

Days?

"And it will be longer still. He is not like you, none are. The winter chill has no home in his flesh as it does yours, yet it lingers all the same and he is made lesser for it. He's of no use to you as his now."

Lesser? Of no use?

The fury came to a boil.

"How dare-!?"

He managed to spit out those two words before his voice broke, fuelled as he was by rage, and he devolved into another round of brutal coughs.

And all the while, the conversation for which he had no understanding and already a great and boundless hate carried on uninterrupted.

"And the other?"

"His suffering is greater still, and he will take longer to regain his strength if he ever does at all. Your creature should not have-"

Finally, at last, the girl's expression changed.

Without warning, her expression darkened with a burst of infinitesimal wrath.

It robbed Aemond of his own just as swiftly.

"You will not fault Frostsinger in my presence."

There was a cold, stilted pause. Her eyes were lit up in her anger and the air itself seemed to quiver and shy away from her.

"I meant no offense."

"You would have been foolish to."

Another pause followed, and Aemond breathed out at last when the anger fled and her mask of emotionless impassivity returned.

"It was his own fault. That he dove after one who was undeserving of it was his own error" Her eyes flickered to Aemond, just as dismissive, and back again. "Frostsinger is not to blame for reckless stupidity."

"Foolish." the voice agreed. "Or brave, perhaps."

"They're one and the same, and just as costly." Her voice tinted with something else Aemond recognized despite himself, an old, old, bitterness that he'd lived and breathed for years and still did to this day. "I would know."

She took one last look at Aemond - whose mind had once again fallen into a helpless daze as the implications of what, of who, they were speaking of began to sink in - and then turned away as her form melted into the shadows.

"Have him on his feet by the time I return, Green One, or I'll drag him if I have to."

And then she was gone.

Aemond made to cry out, to rage against this final, humiliating dismissal, but he'd regained no strength in the moments past, and blackness was overtaking him even before unknown hands seized him and dragged him further into the dark.

The last thing he saw was a pair of yellow eyes, set into brown, leathery skin, and he slipped into oblivion even as his mouth course hands pried his mouth open and poured broth and something altogether darker down his throat.

...​

When Aemond slept, he dreamt as he never had before.

He saw a silver-haired and violet-eyed man in a shirt of black scale wearing a familiar crown of Valyrian steel and studded rubies. In one hand, he held Blackfyre, and in the other, he pointed North, behind Aemond.

"From my blood come the Prince Who Was Promised, and his shall be the Song of Ice and Fire."

When he turned, he found himself buffeted by sharp winds and swirling snows.

Another man waiting for him in the eye of the storm, one who looked nothing like the last.

He was dark of hair and grey-eyed, dressed in boiled leathers and a fur cloak of purest black. A pale scar dragged across the length of his left eye, but the eye itself was undamaged, and both were fixed on Aemond with a burning intensity.

"My song is undone. I am no more" The stranger smiled, an aching, foreboding relief in his eyes. "It is your burden to bear now, oh would-be kinslayer. You and your will stand strong, or you'll not stand at all when the darkness rides down from the north and claims you all."

He turned around and walked into the snowstorm, his figure vanishing into the darkness beyond.

"Be ready."

It did not end there.

A shadow emerged from the darkness ahead and stood in front of Aemond. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took, and take them it did even as more emerged behind it.

Ten, a hundred, a thousand, even more.

All marched forward, towards the light, towards Aemond, eyes a haunting, soulless blue.

He tried to rear back as the first lunged for him, but he could not move. Not when it seized him by the throat with one hand, and not when it drove its other through his chest and tore at his flesh without mercy.

Soon, the others came for him too, undeterred by desperate scrabble and his screams.

He screamed and screamed unto the end, but it was all for naught, for there was no one left to hear.

...​

When he gasped awake and opened his eye, moments or days or even years later, he didn't have the wits to now, he found himself heaving on the same hard ground as before.

His body was stronger. His strength returned, at least in part, and the chill that had all but crippled him was gone.

But it meant nothing then, for when he looked up, he found Lucerys Velaryon standing over him, eyes wide frenzied, face mottled in fury and black frostbite burns, with a heavy rock held high above him in a furious, two-handed grip.

On instinct alone, Aemond moved-

And the rock came down.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Though they had struck an alliance of circumstance in the face of a greater threat - or had been forced to, more like - Adara still knew very little of the true nature of the Earthsingers.

That left her wary

Attempting to navigate her way out of the cave systems where the score of them she'd come to know dwelt left her wary and frustrated.

For all that they loved their wild lands and their deep forests and venerated their pale, red-leaved trees above all else, the green folk chose to dwell below it all, following twisting snow-white roots down into the dirt and the dark and carving their homes where no man or beast would ever think to look for them

And what homes they were - impossibly long-winding crawlways that led to hollowed-out earthen halls or grander caverns of such maddening size that twenty tall men could stand atop one another's shoulders and still not be able to reach the lowest of the hanging stalactites that grew down from above. Other steeper and more precarious tunnels led to hardpacked dead-ends, or worse, opened up over treacherous pits so deep that no poor fool who fell into their depths would ever be heard from again.

The greatest strife, however, was the absence of light so far below the earth. The Earthsingers were born with eyes the color of bronze, yellow-gold or amber that glinted like gemstones in the shadows and let them navigate the darkness of their deepest caverns as easily as they could sprint in the forests that grew above them, but Adara was not so lucky.

Her vision was sharp - perhaps sharper than the ordinary, even - but the blackness that pervaded the dwellings of the green folk was nigh-absolute save for the strange, moist and wriggling creatures that lined the walls of a precious few caverns and shone with inner light in shades of blue and green.

Even then, their brilliance could do only so much to light the way. A few paltry sparks, fight against the ever-present dark.

How very fitting, given everything that was to come.

In the end, Adara could make her way to and from the earthen prisons where she'd stashed the two princelings she'd appropriated, but marching through the unyielding darkness was never an easy journey. That she steadfastly clung to her dignity and refused to have the Earth singers lead her about like a helpless child was perhaps a failing, but she could not bring herself to care no matter how much greater her grief was for it.

And it was greater - by the time she stumbled and tripped her way back to to surface of this strange isle after leaving the elder of her two captives in the care of their mutual hosts, her palms were bruised, her knees were battered and her irritation was simmering beneath her skin in a manner that had become as familiar to her as breathing since the moment she'd woken up amidst ice and cataclysmic devastation nary a moon ago.

Adara was no more appreciative of it now than she was then.

The sun rose over the crimson-hewn canopy of the so-named Isle of Faces even as she began to walk along worn dirt tracks that ran across its surface, ignoring the towering and ever so foreboding weirwoods that loomed on either and every side of her with practiced apathy.

At least the dawning light was soothing, and the bleeding-red eyes of the god-trees regarded her with equal indifference.

For now.

Frostsinger was asleep when she finally stepped onto the gravel shore, though he quickly roused as he sensed her approach. The sound of splintering ice and erupting water sprouts rang out as he rose, so incomparably large now that most of his tail and a fourth of his bulk had to rest in the shallow waters along the lake coast and had frozen it solid in turn.

Despite his size, he wasted no time in surging for her. She laughed in long-missed delight as his gargantuan head dropped towards her, the glint of the rising sun reflecting off his horns and scales and setting them ablaze with a glow of marvelous silver-white.

He bumped her with his snout as she drew near, impossibly gentle for a creature so large, and when his eye-slitted eye settled on her it was with the only kind of warmth a creature of ice could possibly come to know, a warmth that he reserved for her and her alone.

"I've missed you too." She whispered and reached with both hands to stroke at his hoarfrost-covered scales. Even the smallest of them was twice as large as her open palm, but she made due, and the contented chiming trill that rang out from between his teeth was proof enough that he was satisfied as well.

Frostsinger sang so sweetly only when he was pleased, and that too was often for her alone to enjoy. It had been what had earned him his name, and it had only grown more fitting with time.

Abruptly, something else drew her attention. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a tall, shadowed figure darting across the edge of the treeline and pursed her lips at their flickering appearance.

Frostsinger's song stilled, replaced with a thrumming call and the beginnings of a warning snarl as he sensed her happiness shift to unease but she steadied him with a soft call of her own.

"Easy. They have no quarrel with us."

While the Earthsingers called the Isle of Faces home, it was the green men who were its wardens, and those who dwelt on the isle's surface had never once called on her or revealed themselves to her save for whenever she caught a stray glimpse of one of them of her own accord and she was glad for it.

They were not hostile to her presence, not she could tell, and seemingly had no care for either her or Frostsinger or anything but their oaths and their trees, whatever those were, but they were still other and eerie in a way that set her teeth on edge and her shying away from them all the same.

That she could occasionally feel them - or something else - watching her as she went to visit Frostsinger had not endeared them to her, and the strange appearance she'd spotted the one time one drew too close for comfort had only made it worse.

Even the memory of it was startling.

There was so very little of this life that she could recognize, so heavy a burden to carry as it was. She had no wish for more complications, and the green men all but reeked with the threat of them.

"Come." She said, beckoning Frostsinger to her as the figure disappeared from sight. "Let's race the clouds, my lovely."

He crooned softly, eyes still fixed on the spot where the Green man had paused - ever and always so doggedly protective - before huffing in satisfaction and stretching out his gargantuan wing in the same motion she'd seen a thousand times before. Adara scaled it with ease, sprinting and giggling in bubbling joy as she slipped between the spear-like scales and icy frills on his back, nestling herself into that one crook that had remained the same in all the time Frostsinger had grown and wrapping her arms around her favored hold.

"Frostsinger." She called, her smile stretching from ear to ear "Fly."

And her dragon roared his icy agreement, spread his wings and heaved himself upwards into the heavens with a burst of deafening sound akin to a thousand peals of thunder.

...​

They soared through the clouds for hours, gliding over plains, forest, hills, and a seemingly endless array of streams and rivers rushing on below, the thrill of the cold winds and the absence of the strange, heavy air of the isle a pleasant change after days of knowing nothing else.

When at last they circled back after roaming for miles and miles, Adara was settled and at peace in the way only flight could leave, pale skin as flushed as it could ever get and with contentment thrumming in her veins.

Though the spot Frostsinger had chosen to land in was a surprise she had not been expecting.

"Did you bring us back to gloat?" She raised a teasing eyebrow at her dragon who huffed in denial and turned to sprawl over the clearing near the opposite shore of the God's eye from where the isle was, settling himself in after their long flight.

Across from them, at the other end of the clearing, the one-eyed would-be kinslayer's dragon lay, head lolled to the side and eyes shut in her forced slumber.

Her wings had several long gashes and rents pockmarking the inner, pale yellow membranes. Her under-belly was littered with scars and her upper half was worse off, with large trenching marks cutting in above her spine where Frostsinger's claws had hooked around her bulk and carried her aloft after his breath had subdued her.

Despite its wounds and Adara's own dispassion towards any fire-born creature of any sort, she could not help but admit to herself that the she-dragon was a gorgeous beast, larger than any other fire drake she had seen or fought in the days long gone, scarcely under a third the size of Frostsinger and with scales the color of faded leaves.

It was impressive, to an extent.

What name had the one-eyed priceling screamed at her? When all four of them had been tumbling down into the storm before that addled fool of a boy had chased after them and nearly gotten himself killed for his efforts in a feat of stupidity Adara still could not comprehend.

Ah, yes.

"Vhagar." She said the name aloud, tasting the foreign word on her lips, and was suddenly seized by surprise when the great beast shifted, rumbling in place weakly and cracking open a single, sluggish eye.

She stepped back as a baleful bronze pupil met her sharp blue, the dragon belting out a hoarse and dangerous growl before Frostsinger surged up behind her and roared a frigid, crackling battle cry so brutal it likely had birds and beasts for miles scattering in terror.

He needn't have bothered. Vhagar's eye was already slipping before he'd even risen, the one cry of protest at the pain and indignity she'd been forced to endure having sapped her of all strength as quickly as it had come.

It was to be expected. Adara knew that if she crossed the distance between them and pressed her hands against those scales, they'd be cold and half-frozen. The price of enduring Frostsinger's fury.

When an ice dragon breathed, it wasn't ice alone that burst out of its crystalline maw. It couldn't be, or else it would never be able to hunt. Its game would either freeze solid and burst from the force of it, or the frost would set into the flesh and spoil the taste.

No, should the ice dragon choose to hunt live prey as Frostsinger had done at her command, their breath would seep into it with a chill beyond the natural, a cold that sunk into the bones and made the flesh go heavy and weak, and it's owner fall into a slumber of the likes of which few ever managed to escape.

It was an ugly, creeping hurt. Adara remembered it well, or something very much like it through the vague recollections of an altogether different kind of pain.

Those last days had been nothing but pain, until the ice had crawled into her lungs and heart and silenced it all for-

She inhaled sharply and shook her head, dismissing those poisonous thoughts and turning her attention back to Vhagar.

Were it an ordinary creature that had been bathed in Frostsinger's cold fyre, they would have never risen at all. Her friend had grown too strong. That Vhagar could even move after days and days of slumber where the other smaller one was little more than an icicle in a cove by the isle was a testament to her strength, but it wouldn't be enough to pose any sort of challenge at all

It must be galling, Adara thought with an emotion approaching pity, for something so large and so great to be brought so low. Vhagar had likely been the undisputed queen of the skies for decades until Frostsinger had burst through the heavens and dragged her off her throne with ice and fury she could not hope to match.

It was tragic, but life often was. It was her dragon who ruled the skies now, and he would rule it forever if she had her way.

And she would, even if there remained so much more to be done.

Adara hardened her heart and turned her back to Vhagar, leaving her to her slow, lonely recovery as she marched back to Frostsinger's side.

"It's time to go back, my lovely."

Frostsinger only crooned his agreement and offered her his wing once more.

...​

By the time they landed back on the isle, the sun was high in the sky, though the morning mist still clung in heavy billowing waves by the treeline and refused to disperse, as it was often won't to do.

That was why Adara missed the Earthsinger slipping towards her on on soft-treading feet until Frostsinger suddenly caught the spry creature's scent and growled in deadly warning, barring teeth like jagged spears with cold glowing at the back of his throat.

"No, there's no need." Adara hurried to reassure him, steadying her palms against his snout in an effort to calm him. When at last he settled, she turned to glare at the golden-eyed singer with a hint of real anger in her own. "You very nearly died."

Frostsinger would have frozen her and half the isle had she taken another step towards Adara's unprotected side, her bad side, and been utterly unrepentant about the carnage.

"I meant no harm, but there is news." the words were meant to placate, but the urgency beneath them had Adara's spine straightening and Frostsinger growling again. "The Raven calls."

Oh.

Oh, no.

...​

Adara hurried behind the Earthsinger as she led her deeper into the Isle's heart than she'd ever been before, straight into the territory of the Green men.

The closer they drew to their destination, the heavier the canopy of red leaves above grew and the darker everything below grew in turn until the only light left was a pitiful glow reflecting off of the red sap bleeding from the weirwoods and running down their bark in bleeding rivers that seemed to run forever.

When at last the Earthsinger stopped running, Adara had to force herself to swallow and clenched her fists at the sight that awaited them.

A single weirwood stood in the clearing ahead, taller and greater than all the rest before them, though this one had no red leaves to speak of. Instead, it had ravens, dozens and dozens of them, black as pitch perched in rows and stretched over a litany of stretching white branches, all of them deadly still and silent as if frozen in place.

As soon as Adara stepped one foot into the clearing, every raven snapped its beady black eyes to her with unerring, unnatural focus.

"Girl."

All the ravens spoke as one, their voices a warbling cacophony, yet Adara still found her eyes drawn to the one among many, perched on the highest branch of the looming weirwood, a path of white feathers encircling its neck.

"Winterchild."

She swallowed again and took another step forward, meeting the Raven's gaze.

"Raven Of Three Eyes." She called out the stilted greeting, unable to hide the unease and wariness in her voice. Across the island, she heard Frostsinger roar his displeasure, but he did not come for her just yet.

That was for the better. The last time the raven had come to her, it had been in the moments after they erupted from their icy prison. Adara had been so confused, so hurt, her memories a ruined, aching mess, and then the black crow had landed before and cracked her skull open anew without ever touching her.

It poured pictures and visions and meanings into her mind, filled her memory with words and symbols and and even a language that meant little and nothing to her save for the pain that they brought.

Westeros. An iron throne. A dance of fire and blood.

Targaryen.

It was only before the end, where Frostsinger had moved to kill the menace and reduce the forest they had nestled themselves into a frozen ruin that the god - or whatever the Raven truly was - had shown her something with meaning enough to earn her attention.

A threat, blue eyes in the dark so like her own yet devoid of everything but vile hate, coming for all things warm and living, and in time, even her and the dragon who'd chosen her above all others.

That was why Adara had chosen to fly south, father south than she and her people - if the traitors long gone could be called such - had ever imagined the world to stretch, why she had captured the dragon-riding princelings and brought them to this isle, and why even now she stood at the Raven's call and awaited its words.

For Frostsinger first and herself second, and no one else.

But even her patience was coming to an end.

"What is it now?" Adara spoke again when the raven made no further move to speak. "I've done as you asked."

"Both of them are near dead."

So he knew.

"They'll heal. It was no fault of mine that the second dove after us-"

"No. T'was mine own will that sent the Strong boy after you."

Adara paused at that. The fool hadn't followed after them of his own accord, then.

"Then no one is as fault. What more is there to be said? I've broken the kinslayer's stride and brought him and the other one here, to the heart of your power-"

"Not my heart." The raven croaked at once, feathers ruffling in place. "My heart lies to the north."

"Then let me bring them-"

"No. The enemy grows stronger. Its forces are amassing beyond the Builder's wall. Even now, the Giants and the Childen and the rest of the Old ones feel their rousings, but if you of all of them come north again, the enemy will hasten their stride solely to slay you and the world will be doomed for it."

Adara blinked.

"Why?" A horrible thought occurred. "Do they want Frost-"

"The dragon is of no consequence. In the grand tapestry of fate, it is nothing. Merely another beast that has grown stronger and mightier than was its due on account of olden magic. Were it not for that, it would be no more different than any of its other brethren. No, it is you who draws the enemy's ire."

"Me?"

"You. You. You." On every branch of the wierwood, the black crows echoed the word "You, who are touched by cold yet still lay claim to warmth. You, who are touched by cold that has no mercy for fools and yet harbors no malice for the living. You are not simply another foe to the great enemy, but a challenge, and it will not suffer you to live."

"Then what would you have me do?" She said at last, and she did not even attempt to his her frustration and the building rage in her breast. "I was... I was not part of this, you said as much, but you awoke me, awoke us-!"

"Not me." The raven cut her off. "Never me. You should have slept forever, and the song is undone for your presence."

"I do not know what that means."

"You will understand in time. You will. You must. The song is undone, another must take its place."

"I do not know what that means." She tried again, voice rising in over the shuffle of crows. "Why won't you tell me more? I did what you asked, brought the two boys-"

"Not them." The raven croaked. "Not them, no good. One is too soft, and the other is of too much iron, brittle and unwieldy."

"Then why have me seize them?!" It took her a moment to realize that she was screaming, her chest heaving with the force of it. "Why have me do any of this!? What use are they to me if they are not the ones I need!?"

She had to stop the threat. She had to protect Frostsinger. He was all she ever had then and all had left now.

"Both will have their part to play, but they alone will not be the fire to your ice."

"Then who is?"

"You will know in time. You must. The Dragons will dance as one or not at all."

Adara went to speak against that, for those words meant nothing to her, but the raven did not let her draw breath for it.

"Aid will come. The witch of rivers and the daring will answer when the call of blood rises, and the debt of vengeful youth must at last be settled."

The last word rang out with a finality that made the hair on the back of her neck rise in panic, for she still didn't understand.

Then, the raven spoke one final time.

"Go now. You should not have left the fools to themselves."

It took her a long, dreadful moment to comprehend those words. Then it dawned on her, and she cursed in cold dread and turned to bolt back to the warren she'd left behind.

As she ran, the crows began to howl and disperse, a great cloud of black feathers and sharp words howling around and for her in a way that she would never forget for as long as she lived.

"Stop them. Save them. Make them bow. You must, you must, you must."

...​

Adara dove into the tunnel she'd left behind, heedless of the darkness as she sprinted further underground and back to the cavern where she'd left her charges.

When at last she burst into it, she only had a moment to be grateful for the glow of the firepit before she caught sight of the younger of two, eyes cloudy and half-mad with delirious rage as he hefted a rock high above the other.

She moved, but not before the black-haired boy screamed and brought the rock down. The elder of the two was saved the fate of having his skull cracked open and spilled across the dirt when he lashed in a brutal, desperate kick that flung the boy back. Rather than taking off his head, the stone landed roughly on his chest instead and left him heaving in agony.

The younger boy screamed again, still half-mad as he rose and surged forward to attack again, but Adara was already there and she tackled him to the ground with all the force she could muster. His head snapped back against the earth and he stilled.

She froze, before exhaling shakily when she caught the tell-tale rise and fall of his chest.

"He should not have been here."

She turned to catch sight of the Earthsinger slipping in from the tunnel behind her, yellow eyes alight with concern.

"He is still half-dead and suffering. The paste we've been feeding him must have granted him enough strength to rise and attack like a beast driven by instinct, but that is all. He is not ready, not yet. Neither of them is"

Adara heard the words, but they sounded distant to her ears. She rose to her feet, feeling unsteady and unnaturally light-headed, and turned to where the elder princeling lay heaving and shaking in the dirt, his one act of self-defense robbing him of what little strength he'd mustered.

"He could have killed him. I need them, I need them both, and he almost died."

The Earthsinger stepped back, ever so slightly, wariness in her gaze.

"We did not expect them to recover so quickly. I will have a guard placed on them."

Adara did not hear her, or offer any answer of her own. She merely looked first to the silver-haired princeling, before turning her gaze to the one at her feet.

She thought of all she had to do, and all she didn't know to do because the raven told her little and nothing despite her efforts. She thought of the past, of the betrayal and the pain, and to the future, of the enemy and the threat, and all she stood to lose.

Frostsinger.

And then, quite abruptly and without any warning at all, she collapsed and burst into tears.

...​

On the other end of the God's Eye, deep in the bowels of the monstrous Harrenhall, a witch awoke from her slumber.

Alys Rivers, the bastard daughter of Lyonel Strong, roused and blinked up at the bricked roof of her chambers in stunned disbelief.

Once, twice, three times.

Then she threw back her head and laughed, long and deep and loud, the mad cry ringing through the halls of Harren's Folly in a way nothing had and ever would again.

...​

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