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The citadel had prophesied that a long summer would follow the longest of winters, but, even so, the first cool breath of autumn felt like it had arrived too soon for Brienne as she watched the sun rise over the waking city. Pentos had become their home back when the true rebirth of spring had been just a fever dream, summer a fantasy, hiding and fighting and scraping together a meagre existence the only way for two knights to survive undetected until the Dragon Queen had melted her ancestors' throne into molten memories. She was gone now too, Daenerys Targaryen, the last of her name, her demise a nightmare to add to the few who had survived The War of The Five Kings, The Long Night, The Battle For The Wall, heroes left to be immortalised in the tomb lying across Brienne's lap.
The White Book had been the last thing Tyrion Lannister had given to Jaime, more a memento of the brothers they had been than the resentful, estranged men they had become of late. Brienne had been the only one to see it as the peace offering it was, The Queen's pardon that came entwined in its pages whispering of The Hand's influence. Though they could no longer stand to breathe the same air as the other, a Lannister, it seemed, always paid their debts. Nevertheless, Jaime had raged as they had boarded their brightly adorned Pentoshi pirate ship of sell swords, whores and hedge knights, leaving the city as they had once entered it, nothing more than a scarred maiden and a maimed soldier.
Jaime was asleep now, in a bed they had long since begun to share as lovers, the thought of their previous night together warming her even more than the rays of light conquering all she could see. Brienne only ever crept out onto their crumbling balcony to read while he was otherwise occupied, The White Book still able to sweep back him to times he had happily forgotten somewhere in the years of perpetual winter. It still held a strange sort of power over her, however, the white pages like worn silk beneath her fingertips, the names that had been brought to life in her childhood stories cast in a stark reality. Each Lord Commander had left his mark; Duncan the Tall's sloped script a puzzle in itself to figure out, Gerold Hightower prone to stoicism beyond the the men that had come before or after, Barristan Selmy's authoritative cursive promptly cutting out to be replaced by a more arrogant hand. This was Jaime before she knew him, told in simple terms without any of the truths she had come to know and the details she loved. She was struck by how little of him there was in them, how little of them all, Loras Tyrell, the boy she had knocked into the mud at Bitterbridge, reduced to a dozen lines of vanity and valiance. But it was all Brienne had to remind her of what they had been before.
Jaime was waking behind her, breaking her focus as she ran her eyes over his bunching muscles while he twisted under the thin bed sheet, burying his nose in her pillow and letting out a groan that dropped her stomach to the floor, the sun catching the remaining strands of gold in his hair. Age had not dimmed his beauty, nor his passion and she felt another wave of emotion rush over her. Her eyes stung, the words on the white page blurring as she studied one last sentence before storing the book safely away again.
Brienne of Tarth, it read, Dragon Slayer.