Chapter Text
The necklace had come to Melly from a dead woman.
By the time she reached Riverrun’s godswood, it had grown teeth.
She pushed through the narrow door at the end of the gallery and stumbled down the steps, one hand gathering her skirts, the other pressed to the garnets at her throat. Cold air struck her face. She dragged it in, but it would not go deep enough.
Behind her, music swelled from the hall as the door swung shut. Denyse had followed her as far as the gallery.
“Melly,” she had called softly.
Melly had not turned, but Denyse had not followed farther. That was how Melly knew her good-sister loved her dearly.
The gravel path gave way to damp earth beneath the trees. Her slippers slipped twice before she left the torchlight behind. The castle windows glowed through the branches at her back, but little of their light reached the path.
Riverrun’s godswood was airy, with old elms and tall redwoods stirring in the wind from the Red Fork. Narrow streams ran through the grass. Somewhere above, songbirds shifted in their hidden nests. The feast still roared behind her. Half the realm—and all of House Targaryen, it seemed—had packed Riverrun’s halls for the tourney. The first tilt would begin tomorrow.
Melly pressed her fingers beneath the necklace and pulled. It did not loosen.
Her mother had fastened it before they left Raventree, her fingers smelling of rose oil and beeswax as she recited the women who had worn it before. A great-aunt with a twisted lip. A cousin dead in childbed. Another carried away by a chill before she reached twenty.
Dead women did not frighten Jocelyn Blackwood. They had lived as women were meant to and done what was required of them.
But they frightened Melly.
At supper, Perwyn Frey had sat at her right hand and explained the Twins. The eastern toll books and western ledgers. Wagons waiting at the gates. Drovers concealing lambs beneath their carts. Chains beneath the water. Repairs to the bridge after floods.
He had soft brown hair and soft brown eyes. Even his hands were strangely soft. He had shown more life only when his little nephew Walder was carried past in a nurse’s arms. Perwyn had kissed the child’s cheek and told Melly, with sudden warmth, that he had always been fond of children.
Then he had smiled at her.
Melly had seen it at once: children with his soft brown eyes, a Frey solar above brown water, a bed she had not chosen.
Sixteen was, apparently, the perfect age to be sent to supper wearing jewels made to eat you alive.
“Are you ill?” Beth had asked.
Across from them, Denyse had hidden a smile in her wine. Farther down the board, Lord Quentyn watched through the pleasant haze of his cups, already well satisfied with the good sense of the match.
Melly found the heart tree at the end of the path.
Its slender white trunk shone faintly through the dark. Red leaves stirred overhead. The face carved into the bark looked long and sad, red sap dried in narrow tracks beneath its eyes.
It was not the heart tree at Raventree.
At home, the godswood was old enough to have forgotten the castle around it. Roots cracked stone. Ravens nested by the hundreds in the dead branches. The paths disappeared whenever rain pleased, and the earth smelled of leaves, dark water, and living things returning to rot.
The Tullys had made a garden of theirs, a place for songbirds and pleasant walks. Melly supposed it was rather like keeping a hunting hound only to admire its coat.
Still, it would do.
She crossed the last stretch of wet grass and set her palm against the pale bark. Familiar cold met her skin. For a moment, she could almost imagine she had gone home.
Serra would be in bed by now, propped against her pillows with a book she had already read twice. She should have been at Riverrun. She should have seen the swans on the river that morning, the female snapping at a castle boy while her mate trailed behind her. She should have seen the dragon circling high above the Kingsroad two days before, black against the sun and large enough to make grown men point like children.
Melly had written four pages about it. Three in words, and one in a drawing that had become less convincing the longer she worked upon the wings.
Serra would have laughed herself into a coughing fit over Perwyn.
Bridge tolls, she would have said. How fortunate. I have always dreamed of my sister marrying a man who knows what it costs to cross water.
Melly closed her eyes and rested her brow against the cold trunk. The necklace pressed tighter.
Before supper, Roger had cornered her outside the hall and demanded to know what was wrong with her.
It was Beth who told him, “She believes the necklace is eating her alive.”
Roger had inspected the garnets and shrugged before going in to supper. Bennifer had been less merciful. He hooked one finger beneath the stone at the hollow of her throat, then snatched his hand back with a shriek as though the necklace had bitten him.
After that, half their brothers and their wives had come to inspect it. In a family that large, if one missed the humiliation, another could be relied upon to describe it later.
Typically, Melly was on the other end of such things, giggling behind her hand and knocking shoulders while the victim burned with embarrassment.
It was Melly’s turn to burn.
Yet none of her family had watched her quite so closely as the man at the royal dais.
Though he was family too. Her first cousin, in fact.
The Blackwoods all favored one another—dark hair, heart-shaped faces, amber eyes. The man at the dais was white as snow, with hair paler still.
Six years had passed since Cousin Brynden brought Alton home from the river in a sealed coffin. The hound had come home too. Melly remembered him pacing beneath the bier while Brynden crouched beside him, one pale hand buried in the black fur at his neck. He had looked at Melly exactly once that day, and then looked away.
At supper, he had not looked away at all.
Perwyn Frey had asked whether she would walk beside the Red Fork on the morrow, while their fathers looked on and her good-sisters exchanged looks over their cups. Then the necklace had closed its mouth around her throat.
Melly had risen so quickly that her chair shrieked across the floor.
Now, beneath the heart tree, she opened her eyes. Her other hand had joined the first against the bark.
“I cannot marry him,” she whispered.
The carved face gave no sign it cared.
“I cannot go to the Twins. I cannot leave Serra. I cannot—”
Her voice broke. She swallowed against the garnets and tasted metal.
Blood. The old gods required blood. They were no better than men unless given something first.
She pressed one of the garnets into her skin until it broke. It did not take much. She swept a finger through the blood as it welled and wiped it upon the tree.
Then she sank to her knees and bowed until her forehead touched the cold bark.
“Help me.”
She kept her forehead against the bark.
For a time, there was only the cold beneath her skin and the damp earth beneath her knees. Water slipped from leaf to leaf overhead. Somewhere beyond the godswood wall, the river moved in the dark.
No answer came.
A robin dropped from the branches and landed upon a white root near her slipper. Birds often came nearer to Melly than they ought. She did not lift her head. Yet for one queer breath, she knew the roughness of bark beneath tiny claws. She felt the worm stirring in the wet earth below.
A man retched somewhere beyond the trunk.
The robin burst upward. The strange knowing vanished, and Melly opened her eyes.
A sickly yellow stream splashed across the white root where the bird had stood. A man groaned on the other side of the tree, low and deeply miserable.
Melly drew back. It was a dreadful way to treat a heart tree, even a sorry little one like Riverrun’s.
He retched again.
She stepped away from the befouled roots. Her slipper slid on moss, her heel caught against a root, and the world tipped.
She landed squarely on her arse with a wet smack.
Stunned, Melly could only stare up through the red leaves. Cold seeped through the silk beneath her. One slipper had come off, and the matching garnet hairpin lay glinting in the moss beside her.
Above her, the boy spat weakly into the grass.
Then he said, in a voice ruined by wine and sickness, “If you’ve come to collect the sweetmeats, you’re too late.”
Melly pushed herself upright, her palms slipping in the moss.
How perfectly dreadful.
“I had gathered as much.”
Water had soaked the black silk of her skirts to a cold sheen, and mud clung to the folds at her hips, but the worst of it had missed her.
“Do not look so stricken,” the boy said. “I missed.”
There was enough lazy offense in his voice to make her look up. He had slumped against the white trunk again.
“Do run along,” he said.
Melly found her slipper and shoved her foot back inside it.
Only then did she look at him properly.
Someone had dressed him beautifully. His doublet was black velvet, fastened at the throat with silver. His cloak was fine dark wool. A three-headed dragon sat crookedly near his heart.
Melly’s hands stilled upon her skirts. Her gaze moved from the dragon to the pale hair hanging damply across his brow, catching what little moonlight came through the branches.
Not merely some lord’s drunken son.
A Targaryen.
A prince.
The heat already burning in her face changed character entirely. She was sitting in the mud before a prince, her skirts wet through, having answered him as though he were one of her brothers.
And yet, Melly could only stare.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and squinted at her.
“Well?” he said. “Have you forgotten how to stand?”
Melly rose as gracefully as wet silk and moss allowed. One slipper slid forward, and she nearly caught herself against the heart tree before remembering that its roots were fouled. She righted herself without it.
By the time she stood, cheeks burning, he had pulled himself upright as well—or as straight as he could manage. He remained slightly hunched, one hand braced against the white trunk.
His face was swollen with drink, with dark pouches beneath his eyes and a reddish stain across both cheeks. The whites of his eyes carried a faint yellow cast. He might have been handsome on a day when he was not quite so revolting. Up close, he smelled of wine and bile and sweat, the sour fug of a man who had spent too many hours drinking in the same fine clothes.
His eyes narrowed as though he were trying to remember something.
“You’re not a servant.”
“No,” she said.
His gaze traveled from her face to her gown, then to the roots and the place where she had fallen.
“What are you doing here?”
Melly stared at him. “Praying,” she said, unable to keep the obviousness of it from her voice.
“I had gathered as much,” he said. “Have you forgotten something?”
Sense returned all at once.
Melly curtsied, lower than she ever did for Lord Tully, though not so low as she had for Prince Baelor that afternoon when the royal retinue arrived.
“My prince,” she said.
When she rose, he was frowning at her.
“That was not what I meant,” he said, with vague disgust.
Melly stared.
“Your name. Your house.” He made an impatient motion with one hand. “Who are you?”
“Blackwood,” she said quickly, gathering her wet skirts again. “Mellara Blackwood.”
“Was Alton your brother?”
Her fingers tightened in the silk.
She had already thought too much of Alton tonight. Hearing his name aloud threatened to tear open the place she tried never to touch.
“Yes, my prince.”
“He was Bloodraven’s squire.” The prince looked away, as though the name had escaped without permission. “Lord Rivers, I mean.”
Melly watched him more closely. “Yes.”
“I was sorry to hear of it.”
She looked down at the mud clinging to her gown.
“It was long ago.”
Behind them, the feast rose briefly in a burst of music and voices, then dulled again beneath the trees.
Six years was long ago. It did not always feel like it.
Melly waited for him to tell her what little he remembered of Alton, or offer one of the useless kindnesses people produced whenever the dead were mentioned.
He did neither.
“My lady,” he said instead. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He said it dryly, as though the entire scene had made a mockery of the words.
Melly looked up at him. “Of course, my prince.”
“Enough of that.” He waved one hand between them. “You have watched me retch upon a tree. We are past pleasantries.”
Melly was not certain they were past anything. He remained a prince, however poorly he wore it at present.
“Yes, my prince.”
“You are doing that deliberately now.”
“I would not dare.”
“No?” He leaned more heavily against the trunk. “You sounded much braver from the ground. Why are you here alone during supper?”
“Fresh air.”
“At night?”
“Is it not freshest at night?”
His mouth twitched.
“And prayer,” she added.
“You Blackwoods and your old gods.” His gaze moved to the pale trunk behind him. “What did you ask them for?”
Help, she thought. And they gave me you.
Something in her loosened at that. Melly considered him again.
Which prince was he?
Not one of Prince Baelor’s sons. They had their father’s dark hair. Nor did he belong to the golden branch of the family. Princess Aemma had sat at supper in gold silk, looking as though someone had polished all the dragon out of her.
That left Prince Maekar’s sons.
One of them was Aerion Brightflame, whom everyone knew from the tourneys: beautiful enough to make good sense seem unimportant, with violet eyes, cruel-cut cheekbones, and a mouth forever caught between a smile and a smirk.
The resemblance emerged once Melly looked for it. The same pale coloring. The same sharpness about the eyes, though drink had blurred it in the prince before her and left dark shadows beneath them.
“Have you finished?” he asked.
Melly blinked.
“Looking me over.” He let his head rest against the tree. “I asked you a question, Blackwood.”
“I heard you.”
“Then you are merely slow to answer.”
Melly stared at him. The scoff escaped before she could swallow it.
“I was trying to place you, my prince, so that I might not offend you further.”
He laughed then, sudden and real.
“You would not have seen me. My father generally keeps me out of sight.” His bloodshot gaze passed over her, lingering just long enough to make her aware of it. “Away from pretty maidens, especially. He fears I might send them running.”
One pale eyebrow lifted.
Only then did Melly realize she had taken a step backward.
“There,” he said. “You see?”
Heat climbed higher into her face. She planted her slipper firmly in the moss and refused to give him another inch.
“I only wished to stand beyond the smell.”
The words were out before she understood what she had said. Her stomach dropped.
“Forgive me, my prince.”
He stared at her.
Melly resisted the urge to curtsy again. She had the dreadful sense that doing so would only make matters worse.
Then he laughed. This time the sound was fuller, if no less ragged.
“Blackwoods,” he said, wiping one corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Are you all like this? Seven hells, there are dozens of you, aren’t there?”
“There are ten of us,” Melly said.
Once, there had been eleven.
“Your poor mother.”
“My father thought we might exhaust the Brackens through introductions.”
His laugh faded.
“You are amusing, Mellara Blackwood.”
A smile caught at her mouth before she could prevent it.
Her mother had told her often enough that a lady might be pleasant, but ought never to make herself amusing. Men enjoyed a clever tongue only until they discovered themselves beneath it.
Melly smoothed the smile away.
“Forgive me, my prince. I was raised among six brothers.”
“Is that meant as an excuse?”
“It is the only one I have.”
He gave up trying not to smile. “I begin to like your brothers.”
“You ought not. It only encourages them.”
He looked at her, or tried to. His attention wandered past her shoulder before returning.
The smile slipped from Melly’s mouth.
His gaze caught upon her throat.
“What is that?”
Melly glanced down. “A necklace.”
“I can see that.”
He leaned forward to inspect it, bringing the sour reek of wine and bile nearer. The movement nearly carried him off balance again, but his eyes remained fixed upon the stones.
“It is cutting you,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”
Melly touched the garnets. She had almost forgotten the ache while speaking with him. Now the little stones pressed sharply beneath her fingers, teeth sunk in a perfect circle around her throat.
“It is.”
“Then take it off.”
Her fingers found the clasp beneath her hair.
She stopped there.
“I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“My sister will tell my mother, and I shall never hear the end of it.”
He reached toward the wineskin at his hip, still regarding the necklace with displeasure. “Who is it for?”
Melly’s hand remained at the back of her neck. “No one.”
His eyes lifted to hers. Glassy though they were, they had not become stupid.
“You fled supper wearing jewels you hate,” he said. “Someone is meant to be impressed.”
Melly looked toward the heart tree. It was no use lying.
“Perwyn Frey.”
“Frey,” he repeated, as though the name itself offended him. “How advantageous.”
“So I am told. My father wishes me to know him better.”
“And does Perwyn Frey prefer his maidens half-strangled?”
Her fingers tightened around the stones. “He has not said.”
A ragged laugh broke from him. It became a cough almost at once, and he turned his face away until it passed. When he looked back, his eyes were watering.
“So that was your prayer. You came running from supper, nearly tore that thing from your throat, and begged the old gods for aid.” His gaze moved pointedly toward the roots he had fouled. “Was it Frey you wished them to save you from?”
Melly ought to have lied.
“Yes.”
“And they sent you me?”
She looked at him across the ruined roots: a prince, drunk and filthy, one hand still braced against the heart tree as though it were the only thing preventing him from joining his supper upon the ground.
A faint smile touched his mouth.
It might have been handsome on another night. Water trickled softly behind them, and she became newly aware that they were alone beneath the trees.
His eyes had left the necklace.
They rested upon her mouth.
“Perhaps they did,” he said, looking away.
He adjusted his grip upon the trunk, as though that had been the trouble.
“What is so terrible about this Frey?”
“Nothing, perhaps. He is kind enough. He likes children. He knows a great deal about bridges.”
“Monstrous.”
“But I cannot go to the Twins.”
“Why? They are a wealthy house. You would be well provided for.”
“I would have to leave Serra.”
“Who is Serra?”
“My sister. She is older than I am, but she is ill. She cannot travel far.”
Melly waited for the jest, but none came.
“I write everything down for her,” she added. “Tourneys. Dragons. The stupid things my brothers do. She says I tell stories better than anyone else.”
“And no one else can tell her stories?”
“Not mine.” The answer came more sharply than she intended.
He finally pulled the wineskin from his hip.
“And Frey would take you away from her.”
“Yes.”
His thumb pressed into the leather.
“Give me your favor tomorrow.”
Melly stared at him.
“My favor?”
“You know what one is, don’t you, Blackwood?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then give it to me. It will make a better story than bridge tolls.”
She searched his face for mockery. There was some there, certainly. There seemed to be some in everything he said.
But he was waiting for her answer.
“You mean to ride?” Her gaze traveled over him before she could stop it.
“Do not look so shocked. I am a knight.”
Melly lowered her eyes. “Of course, my prince.”
“A terrible knight,” he added.
“And you wish to carry my favor?”
“I wish to see what Frey does when I ask for it.”
A laugh escaped her. The prince looked faintly surprised, as though he had not expected to earn it.
“One prince wearing your ribbon,” he said, “and your father may discover there is no need to hurry you across any bridges.”
Melly’s smile faded.
He said it as though it were another jest, but she saw at once what he meant. Perwyn might be kind. His house might be wealthy. None of it would matter if a prince rode before half the realm wearing her favor.
A prince could unsettle the whole arrangement merely by looking in her direction.
“You would do that?” she asked.
Through the branches, a torch passed along the gallery and disappeared.
“I have done considerably worse for less amusement.” His eyes moved over her. “For uglier maidens, certainly.”
Heat rushed into Melly’s cheeks.
“How chivalrous of you.”
“I told you. I am a terrible knight.”
She tried not to smile, but it proved impossible.
Melly clasped her hands behind her back and moved a little way along the roots, putting herself just beyond the reach of the fouled earth.
“Well, I have been told I am bad luck, you must know. That I am cursed.”
“By whom?”
“My brothers. They blame me whenever they fall from their horses.”
The prince laughed. His gaze followed her, glassy but intent. He fixed the wineskin back to his hip without drinking.
“Are you a witch, then, Mellara Blackwood?”
“My brothers would say so.”
“And what do you say?”
“That they sit a horse badly.”
He pushed away from the heart tree.
One careful step brought him over the white roots toward her. His boot landed perilously close to the yellow stain, but he seemed not to notice.
Melly did. The sight of him coming toward her sent a ridiculous little flutter through her, until the smell of wine reached her again and she stepped back.
“Careful. The tree has suffered enough, my prince.”
He laughed, bending with it before immediately regretting the movement. One hand found the trunk again.
“You are cruel. How am I to woo you if you will not let me near?”
Woo her.
The boldness of it startled her. He had asked for her favor, looked at her mouth, and now spoke of wooing her as though they had not met beside his own sick.
Melly’s heart beat faster despite herself.
“You have chosen a curious manner of it.”
His smile sharpened. “And yet you understood me.”
The wind moved through the branches, carrying the sourness of wine and bile back between them. There was no mistaking how drunk he was. His eyes were wet and bloodshot.
Melly softened her voice.
“You are unwell, my prince. Perhaps tomorrow—”
“But we are here now.”
“With your sick between us,” she said. “And some still on your chin.”
The words escaped before she could make them kinder.
His smile vanished.
“Seven hells, Blackwood. You know how to flatter a man.”
Melly looked at her feet.
“My apol—”
“Do not apologize.” His back struck the trunk again. “I am a foul creature, or so my brother likes to tell me.”
“I would not go so far as foul.” Her eyes returned to the wine at the corner of his mouth. “Though you are making a determined attempt of it. You ought to go to bed before your brother is proven entirely right.”
This time, he did not smile.
“My father was right. Pretty maidens do run.”
“I am not running.”
“No,” he said. “You are only going somewhere I am not.”
Melly found no honest way to deny it. She gathered the heavy wet silk before her courage failed.
“If you still mean to ask for my favor tomorrow,” she said, “you may.”
The prince straightened as far as the tree allowed.
“You think I shall forget?”
“I think you may wish to.”
“I shall not,” he said. “I remember insults particularly well.”
Melly curtsied, less deeply this time. “I shall look for you tomorrow in the lists, my prince.”
She had taken three steps toward the path when he spoke behind her.
“Keep to the trees.”
Melly looked back. The prince nodded toward her ruined skirts.
“There are men drinking beneath the gallery,” he said. “You will not want them asking how you fell.”
She had been so occupied with escaping him that she had nearly forgotten the cold silk clinging to her backside.
“Thank you, my prince.”
His mouth tightened.
“Daeron.”
“Pardon?”
“My name,” he said. “Since you spent so long trying to place me.”
He remained beneath the red leaves, pale and disordered, the white trunk holding him upright.
Prince Daeron. Prince Maekar’s eldest son.
Melly dipped her head. “Tomorrow, then, Prince Daeron.”
She turned and disappeared between the trees, keeping to the dark as he had told her. Only then did the necklace settle its teeth into her again.
Serra would enjoy this story, she thought. Though she did not yet know how it would end.