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Chapter Text

The air at Harrenhal smelled of damp earth and crushed grass, thick with the scent of the Riverlands. It was nothing like Storm’s End- no salt on the wind, no distant crash of waves against the cliffs. Just the quiet murmur of the Trident and the rustling of Whent banners overhead, snapping like whips over the muddy paths. Sienna kept her chin high- Princess Elia’s ladies-in-waiting should not fidget, even when her nails bit half-moons into her palms with expectation and anxiety.

Sienna adjusted the sleeves of her gown, her gaze drifting past the fluttering black bats on yellow gold sigils of House Whent - right colours, wrong animal - toward the encampments beyond. There- black stag on gold.

Her breath caught, imagining finally seeing them again.

One year. It had been the longest without her family, since being fostered in the Eyrie with Robert and Ned, and even then, she had had family with her. She had Robert, her big brother, to comfort and give her a sense of peace when she would feel miserably homesick and missed her twin brother. She had Ned- caring, quiet and honourable Ned…

She had been there for 5 long years, learning under Jon Arryn, having her mind sharpened by his and the masters’ teachings. At the time, she didn’t understand why her parents would send her away, she was too little to feel anything but sadness and anger at been separated from Stannis and her mother. But she had grown to realize that she – a Baratheon lady with Targaryen blood – had to learn the world of politics from an early age. Nobody knew who King Aerys might ‘honour’ as bride for his heir if Queen Rhaella didn’t conceive and give birth to a healthy and hale girl.

She could imagine her father waiting for King Aerys’ summoning of her hand with bated breath, especially since she was ‘just’ half a decade younger than Prince Rhaegar. It must have been a relief, she now believed, when she had been ‘passed over’ for Princess Elia.

After that, when the wedding had happened and she had returned to Storm’s End, she had thought she wouldn’t need to leave again- at least not before being betrothed and wedded to some stormlander. Or maybe, as she had hoped after years of knowing him- to a northerner.

But it was not to be. The invitation from Princess Elia had arrived one year after her parents had perished in the shipwreck. Sienna was still full of sorrow and grief, as were her brothers, with Robert drinking more and more, Stannis closing himself to almost everybody, and Renly – her poor baby brother that couldn’t even remember the face of their parents – calling her mom when he had nightmares during storm nights. But she knew a refusal would have meant trouble and peril, even if Princess Elia had been the one inviting her, who was to say the King wasn’t behind it?

So, she had packed her trunks. Kissed her brothers. And gone.

One year.

That she had to spend learning which courtiers smiled with poison on their tongues, which servants could be bribed with silver instead of threats.

A year where she had to watch Princess Elia’s hands clench under banquet tables when Aerys ranted about her "failures", while Sienna counted the seconds between the king’s wine cups and his rages about the lack of silver-haired heirs and dornish-looking disappointments.

One year of memorising which wine-stains on the king’s table meant a servant would be flogged by dawn, of learning which shadows in the Red Keep hid allies, and which hid knives.

One year since she’d last seen-

"Go."

Princess Elia’s voice was softer than the silk gloves she’d gifted Sienna last nameday. The princess tilted her head toward the Baratheon encampment, her smile a fragile thing. "Your brothers are waiting. And I’d rather you sigh over storm lords where I can’t hear you."

Sienna’s curtsy was perfect. "Only if you promise not to endure Lord Mooton’s poetry without me."

Elia’s laugh was barely a breath. "Go, you impossible girl."

---------------

The guards at the Baratheon tent recognized her instantly. That, at least, was a relief. Not that they could mistake her from anyone else with her night black hair and blue eyes, nor misplace her tall and lean stature as anything else but Baratheon. Thanking them when one of the guards open the tent flap, she feels like memories and nostalgia punched her right on the nose. Inside the space was decorated as any hall at Storm’s End would- full of black, gold and so very functional that she could see Stannis’ hands everywhere. The air smelled of Robert’s cedarwood oil and the sharp tang of Stannis’ freshly polished armour, which almost brought tears to her eyes.

Three men were seated or leaning against a large table that must have been a menace to bring on the travels. Ned Stark looked up first from a piece of paper on the surface, often used to analyse maps and correspondence, now housing a myriad of parchment, cloths and armour parts.

"Lady Sienna."

His voice was the same- quiet as snowfall, steady as heartwood. She wondered if he could see the way her pulse jumped at her throat.

Then Brandon Stark slung an arm around Ned’s shoulders, grinning. "Gods be good, the little storm’s all grown up!"

Robert’s roar drowned whatever else Brandon might’ve said.

"SIENNA!"

He nearly toppled the table in his rush, sweeping her into a hug that lifted her off her feet. "Seven hells, you’re a sight!" He held her at arm’s length, thumbs brushing the silver-threaded embroidery at her sleeves. "Look at this work. Next you’ll be quoting poetry and sighing at sunsets."

She heard herself laugh- a true one, while swatting at his shoulder.

"Put me down before you crack my ribs, you big oaf”, she said while smiling. "I’ve learned which battles are worth fighting, brother. Unlike some people”, arching an eyebrow in his direction.

The tent flap rustled. Stannis stood framed in the entrance; his jaw clenched tight enough to crack steel.

Robert rolled his eyes. "Stop glowering and greet our sister."

"You look well," Stannis said stiffly.

Sienna crossed the space between them and pulled him into a hug. His arms locked around her – brief, bruising – before he stepped back as if burned.

"Where’s Renly?" she asked, looking around, fully expecting to see her little brother running to her, or hiding somewhere- He might not even remember me anymore, she thought feeling saddened.

"Too young for this folly," Stannis said.

Robert snorted. "I wanted to bring him! But someone-"

"-knows you’d lose him between a wineskin and a whore," Stannis finished icily.

Brandon barked a laugh. Ned sighed. The familiar rhythm of it all settled something in Sienna’s chest. As if the chains that had been constraining her had been lifted. It was an awkward feeling that she hadn’t realized she was missing until that very moment: safety. It was so strong she had to fake a cough to blink her tears away.

Robert shoved a cup of wine into her hands, his fierce smirk in place, shoulder relaxed.

"Enough about the babe. Tell me, how many lords have you wrapped around your finger so far?"

She took a measured sip, rolling her eyes at him and looking sideways at Stannis, not missing his own roll of eyes at their big brother.

“Only the ones who deserved it”, she said while crowding Stannis’ space, not minding his low grumbling, relishing in pressing her shoulder against her twin- the fact that he didn’t move away meant he was as touch starved as herself. “Some are dumb as doors, others are too sharp for their own good, like Princess Elia’s brother, Prince Oberyn”.

Ned’s gaze sharpened, seeming to never stray from her. "Prince Oberyn is at court?"

"Only arrived the week before we left, Prince Doran sent him with the Dornish delegation to escort Princess Elia." She traced the rim of her cup, feeling her heart stammering at his attention. "We’ve exchanged... interesting words, he seems to hold anyone he doesn’t know well under scrutiny, especially those near his sister."

Stannis made a sound like a crossbow releasing. "He’s a viper."

"Vipers only strike when provoked," she said lightly, nudging his arm with hers.

Ned watched her the way he used to watch the training yard at the Eyrie- quiet, assessing.

"You’ve changed", he said, drawing a questioning glance from Brandon, who seemed content to drink while the Baratheon siblings chatted.

Not where it matters, Sienna wanted to say. Instead, she tilted her head. "Robert’s last letter mentioned you’ve been reviewing northern trade routes. Rather... thorough reading."

A flicker in Ned’s eyes. Robert’s letters had been explicit- The betrothal’s all but settled, little storm. Once this tourney’s done, you’ll be counting snowflakes instead of seagulls. Or, she would go back to count storms, as if was still not settled if they would have a keep in Stormlands or in the North to establish their own cadet house. She wouldn’t mind going North, but she would prefer staying near her brothers.

"Our Ned’s nothing if not thorough", Brandon clapped Ned on the back, smiling ruefully. “He has spent most of his time here making sure our siblings don’t get into much trouble”, he said with a smirk in his brother’s direction.

"Lyanna and Benjen are here as well?”, she blinked a couple times, remembering the tales Ned would tell her and Robert about his siblings, especially wild and free Lyanna. “Have Lyanna already tried to put her name in the lists?", she asked with a grin.

Ned groaned. Brandon grinned back.

"Twice," Ned admitted. "Father made us swear on ice and the Old Gods that we would keep her out of trouble."

Robert roared with laughter.

"Gods, I like that girl!", he said with a huge smile, lifting his cup in a silent toast to his betrothed. Sienna just hoped Lyanna felt the same for her brother.

---------------

As dusk settled, Ned offered to escort her back to the castle, where Princess Elia was staying with the rest of the royal party. Stannis had insisted a Baratheon guard follow-

"For propriety", her twin said between gritted teeth.

Robert waved a hand, trying to dismiss it.

"Oh, come off it, Stannis. Ned’s practically family!", his wink in her direction proved the point that her betrothal with Ned was as much in Robert’s mind as it was in hers.

Stannis’s glare could have frozen the Trident. "Propriety."

Sienna rolled her eyes but accepted Ned’s arm anyway, whilst Brandon assuaged Stannis saying he would go with them as well. Then, he and Ned would go make sure their siblings were behaving.

Walking back, arm in arm with Ned, Sienna tried to soak as much as the sense of peace she felt for when things became tense again. They were in silence for a while, the rustle of camp and the low tones of Brandon and the guard someways behind them the only sounds to their companionship. She had missed quiet moments like this with Ned, they had many at their joint fostering under Jon Arryn.

The torchlight caught the silver in Sienna’s embroidery as she adjusted her sleeves, the stag antlers she had put at the hem seem to catch his eyes. She wished she could show him the hidden direwolf she had sown on the inside part of her bodice, close to her heart.

"Your father’s wise to be cautious. If Lyanna actually rode, half the realm’s lords would perish from sheer apoplexy", she said with a small smile.

Ned’s shoulder brushed hers, the small pressure enough to make her skin feel too warm and tight all at once.

"You’d have ridden too, once", he said, looking into her eyes for a moment, letting her drink from his grey ones.

"Once," Sienna agreed. “And I might still do it, when I’m away from any danger of being burned”, she let the inference slide into her words, his eyes becoming sharper for a moment, mouth open to question. But she couldn’t let him go there. "A stag can learn to love the snow, don’t you think?"

His breath hitched, arm flexing a bit under her hand. She pretended not to notice.

“I’m certain it can, the same way a wolf can learn to love storms”, his voice deep, full of feelings she shared.

They reached the gates too quickly. Here they would part their ways; she would go in with her guard to look for Princess Elia and help her finish preparing for the welcoming feast. Ned would go with Brandon to be certain their siblings were as they were supposed to be, and that they would be ready for the feast as well. He bowed over her hand, his lips barely grazing her knuckles. The slight touch was enough to make her glad to have taken her gloves off in her brothers' tent.

"See you in the morrow, my lady."

Her heart beat a staccato, and she smiled back at him.  For a moment, she observed him go with Brandon, inclining her head to the Stark heir as farewell. Once again adjusting her sleeves, she looked at the guard beside her, smiling kindly.

“Shall we, ser?”, she asked, already walking a couple steps in front of him, letting the hum and whispers of the travelling court envelope her, guarding her heart once more behind stormy walls.

She kept a steady pace and looked for a servant to guide her towards the wing where Princess Elia was staying, where her eyes had to be sharp as falcons’ claws, her mind focused as a direwolf’s nose, and her ears attentive as a stag’s. The game continued, it never stopped.

Chapter Text

The great hall of Harrenhal was a living beast, thrumming with music and laughter, smelling like spiced wine and candle wax, and rattling with the clatter of places and the too-loud scrape of Aerys’ chair. The banners of House Whent proudly decorated walls with their black and yellow gold colours that kept reminding Sienna of her own house- but she wished for stags in place of bats, and flowers were arranged along the pillars like vines up to the ceiling. It made her wonder how long it must have taken to put them there, and how they would make sure they didn’t look completely dead by the end of the tourney. Riverlanders and their tricks, I should ask Brandon’s betrothed, she thought.

However beautiful she found the flowers, her attention didn’t stay on them for long. The dais and high table always pulled her gaze back, where the lords and ladies played sycophants to the King. Aerys sat slumped, his hands either scratching the arms of the chair with his yellow nails or twitching toward the pyromancer lurking at his elbow- he shouldn’t be here. Neither man should be here. But, of course, that sneaky spider had to whisper about this tourney into the king’s ear and made him even more paranoid about plans to have his throne taken away.

Varys was right, of course. But for all his talk of serving the Kingdom, Sienna was sure he served himself and, more than once, had dreamed about a very tragic accident befalling the master of whispers.

Forcing her eyes away from the king, Sienna continued to map the room, its occupiers and dangers with each breath. For as upset as she was at him, Varys was right to say that any fool with a bit of luck could be born into power- and she was surrounded by fools. Her gaze dragged across the representants of the mayor and minor houses attending the tourney. Ten days to celebrate the daughter of Lord Whent, Sienna had heard the prize was three times what Tywin Lannister had offered for the tourney in honour of Prince Viserys’ birth. Truly, did these people think those supporting Aerys had also lost their intellectual minds as the king had? A minor house, lacking both wealth and old history, hosting such a tourney with these many people was bound to sound all the wrong bells. Her eyes settled on Prince Rhaegar for a moment; he sat closer to his father than protocol demanded, his silver hair catching torchlight as he leaned slightly forward- a swordsman’s stance disguised as filial attention. He seemed ready to intervene if the king’s madness turned violent.

But that also meant Princess Elia was forced to sit nearer Aerys’ clutching hands. Every time his voice rose – too loud, always too loud – the princess’ shoulders tensed beneath the delicate Myrish lace of her gown. Only Sienna and Ashara, seated close enough to share salt, secrets and warnings, noticed how the princess’s free hand drifted protectively to her almost flat stomach.

Four months along. Maybe five. The princess had confided in them just before leaving King’s Landing, her voice barely above a whisper. Enough for fatigue, almost enough to show. But not enough to be safe. Still hidden from the public eye.

Her pregnancy was still a shock to Sienna. Not a surprise, because she knew the prince was visiting Elia’s bed again. Still, it was a shock. Sienna had been new to court, barely 3 months when Princess Elia’s labour pains had started. She could still recall the way she pressed damp cloths on the princess’ brow as Master Pycelle kept muttering about ‘Dornish narrow hips’ and ‘fragile constitution’. It had taken all in Sienna not to bloody his nose- she might have if the princess hadn’t been crushing her free hand. She still remembered how Ashara would look at her from the other side of the princess, hand also captive, the dread in the Dayne lady’s eyes sending shivers down the stormlander’s spine.

They had been in that room for seventeen hours. When Rhaenys finally came, she was so small. Purple-faced, completely silent, eyes closed. She looked perfect. It was Pycelle’s pinch on her backside that startled her into wailing, the small chest rising and falling with uncontrollable sobs. Just like Elia. Then, the bleeding started, and it had been another hour until the midwives and master stopped the flow. And for three months after, Princess Elia couldn’t rise from her bed for more than a few minutes at times.

Sienna and Ashara had taken turns with her. Reading, embroidering, telling stories from home. Sometimes, they would do it together, and Sienna had the opportunity to learn more about Dorne, its customs and tales. She was able to see their closeness, and it had been enchanting even if a bit unsettling- it made her homesick, when she should have been alert. It had been a nerve wrecking time, Sienna had never prayed so much- not even when Stannis had closed himself completely off for months after their parents had died. And that was saying something.

Gods, Sienna couldn’t believe the princess had gotten with child again so fast. She couldn’t help but blame Rhaegar and his mutterings of three-headed dragons. She couldn’t believe he would put Elia through that again, not when he had been there for it all. Then again, he had nigh visited the princess during those first bedridden days, pacing the halls and composing useless dirges.

She blinks when she feels Ashara’s foot against her under the table, coming back to the here and there, cursing herself for travelling inside her own mind for so long.

“You were glaring at your cup as if it committed an unforgivable sin against you”, Ashara said, smiling mouth but worried eyes.

“Yes, it is too sweet for me. Making promises of a good time and leaving me with a bad after taste”, Sienna joked back, trying to convey that she was fine, and at the same time, that she was worried.

Ashara pretended to freely laugh, foot still pressed against hers, grounding and comforting. Her violet eyes drifting to Brandon Stark’s easy grin as it had the whole feast, her full lips curving in appreciation. Sienna made a mental note: Remind her later that Northern betrothals aren’t as flexible as the Dornish. Sienna’s gaze darted through the table to where Robert and Stannis sat with the Starks, her older brother bellowing over Brandon’s latest jape. Beside him, Lyanna stabbed listlessly at her meat, her grey eyes distant. At Brandon’s left, Catelyn Tully glowed like a candle in her river-blue gown, hanging on his every word, the flush in her cheeks going down her neck and almost reaching her bosom. Stannis and Ned sat like bookends to the revelry- her twin scowling at Robert’s third serving of boar, Ned’s quiet gaze occasionally lifting to meet hers. When their eyes locked, warmth pooled low in her belly, treacherous and sweet. She would always give him a true smile, and when Stannis’ annoyed glare would cross with hers, she would send a small wink his way. She had seen how they had tried to reign in their brothers in the beginning of the feast, but had given up after the third time Robert’s laughter boomed cross the hall.

Even from afar, she had been able to notice his eyes lingering too long on a passing serving girl with rounded hips. She knew that since she left the Eyrie, Robert had become a – for a lack of better word – whoring man. She had tried to understand based on the many books and scrolls she read about man’s urges, but how could those considered the stronger sex be so weak in exerting self-control? She also failed to accept that men could act upon their urges and be embraced by society, whilst women were thrown away and vilified. Maybe, the Dornish had it right after all… Her line of thought stopped when Robert’s gaze strayed once again to a serving girl- a girl whose apron strained over a swelling belly.

Lyanna noticed too, her knife biting into her trencher with unnecessary force.

Gods, Robert. Must you?

Brandon, meanwhile, held Catelyn’s fingers captive between jests, the river maiden swooning under his attention.

 Sienna made another mental note to corner her brother later. Pay attention to your betrothed. Learn what makes her smile. Maybe she could get Ned and Jon Arryn to talk to Robert about it if she didn’t make him see sense. How did he expect to have a good marriage if he behaved like that?

A portrait of betrothals, Sienna thought bitterly, her eyes dancing from her brother and Lyanna to Brandon and Catelyn. One endured, one adored.

Movement to her side draw her attention. Prince Rhaegar had stood up, taking up his silver harp for the hands of Connington.

The hall hushed, she could almost taste the expectation in the air. Even Aerys’ muttering stilled as the first notes shimmered through the hall- a song of lost love and longing, so haunting the torches and candles seemed to dim.

And Lyanna Stark wept.

Not the pretty tears of a lady, but silent, furious streaks that she swiped away with her sleeve. Sienna’s stomach dropped.

Oh, Robert. You great blind bull.

"You’re grimacing," Ashara murmured under cover of applause, once the song was finished. "Is it really bad wine, or bad omens?"

Sienna forced a smile to her friend, servants already jostling tables and clearing plates for the dancing. "Both. Tell me you’ve saved me a dance before the night’s out."

Ashara’s violet eyes glittered. "Only if you promise not to step on my-"

The noise from other tables being moved interrupted them, sparing Sienna from replying that her footwork was the best in the Stormlands, which would have made Ashara laugh and say something akin to ‘I dread the day I must dance with a storm lord’. Sienna turned to Princess Elia, then, noticing how her knuckles whitened around her goblet. The princess needed to get out of there.

“I need some air, the hall is quite stuffed, don’t you agree, my princess?”, she said standing first to divert any attention to herself as the reason for leaving.

“Yes, some air would do you good, lady Sienna. I will accompany you”, the princess agreed, saving face and standing. Ashara meant to rise as well, but Elia told her to stay with one glance.

They had almost reached the doors when Elia swayed a little, Sienna closed the already small distance between them in an instant, interlocking their arms and making sure to take most of the princess’ weight against her side.

Prince Oberyn materialized at Elia’s other elbow without a sound, slithering like the red viper he was, his body shielding his sister from Aerys’ view. "Allow me," he murmured, taking her weight the moment they crossed the threshold. His thumb brushed Sienna’s arm- an accident that lingered just too long.

"You watch the room like a general surveying a battlefield," he observed as they guided Elia away. His voice was all velvet, but his eyes were naked steel.

Sienna didn’t grace that with a reply. Some games weren’t worth playing- not when her heart still raced at a Northerner’s quiet stare and her Dornish princess trembled. She walked in front of them, opening the side door to the moonlit outer patio and allowing both to pass before following and closing it behind them.

Elia’s weak laugh fogged the cold air once she had breathed a couple times. "She’s better at it than you, little brother."

"High praise," Sienna deflected, indicating a stone bench, sitting down with the princess and letting her catch her breath. “Rest, my princess.”

Oberyn’s eyes were on Sienna for another moment, before he nodded to his sister. “I will keep watch."

--------------

The gardens of Harrenhal were breathtaking. The flowers arranged as living mosaics, the vibrant colours and aromas were a deep cognitive experience. Blood-blooms and moonblooms gave way to coldsnaps and dragon’s breaths, which were followed by roses, poppies and goldencups. King’s Landing had nothing like this, nor did the Stormlands. As proud as Sienna was of her homeland, it paled in comparison to the fertile soil of the Riverlands. Even on the road the air had the lovely smell of flowers, albeit less so due to the constant smell of wet earth from the many rivers. But here, in the keep’s gardens, it was almost overwhelming, masking even the smokiness from the tourney grounds.

Strolling calmly, Sienna looked at Catelyn Tully from the corner of eyes, catching as she adjusted her blue silk shawl against the morning chill. The princess had given her leave for the afternoon after they had attended the opening ceremony and beginning of the jousts and lists. Sienna had an inkling that King Aerys was going to name Jaime Lannister a kingsguard in the opening from what her shadows had told her. And she had been right. It only confirmed there was more trouble between the king and his Hand. Jaime Lannister had been glowing with pride, reciting his oaths with the same precision he had with a blade. Sienna could only feel pity for the starry-eyed blonde, life in the Red Keep at Aerys back and call would be disheartening to him- which she believed he had a taste of when Aerys sent him back to King’s Landing under the guise of protecting Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys. Although Sienna believed that Aerys had done so to show Lord Lannister that he had indeed lost his heir.

After that, came the first jousts and Sienna had been bored- so much so that the princess had given her leave after deciding to retire from public engagement for the day. So, Sienna had invited the Tully oldest daughter for a walk in the gardens. She bet that they made for an interesting pair for any that came across them: Catelyn was lovely in a teal dress with embroidered fish scales on the bodice and sleeves, while the skirts seem to dance like river water with each measured step. Her auburn hair was half up, gleaming like copper in the sunlight, and her beautiful high cheeks were slightly pink from the air. Beside her, Sienna had her storm-black braid loose over one shoulder, her dress had a solid black skirt with hidden slits that made it easier to run and ride if needed, whilst from her waist to the very bottom of her neck, a black mesh with golden accents that could pass as antlers covered her bodice and arms. Her face wasn’t looking as fresh as the Tully’s though, nightmares of dying direwolves and butchered stags giving her no rest during the past night. But Sienna wasn’t nonchalant enough to say that both, tall and young, albeit one more willowy that the other, didn’t make for a striking image in the mid of the gardens.

"Brandon says you’re to marry his brother”, Catelyn said with a small smile, a gloved hand holding the shawl in place. “That we might be sisters soon.”

A bubble of warmth rose in Sienna’s chest- her mind reminding her of Ned’s quiet smiles in the Eyrie, his hands steadying hers when she fumbled with a bowstring. They would have moment like those for the rest of their lives, and many more. Grinning, the brunette turned her face to look better at Catelyn’s, their blue eyes holding each other in companiable elation.

“Gods help you, Lady Catelyn. I’ve seen the way Brandon looks at you”, she said, smirking more when the redhead’s cheeks got pinker. “You’ll have a dozen red-haired babes before Ned and I even settle on a wedding date.”

Catelyn laughed, her cheeks flushing even more, almost matching the colour of her hair. For some, it might have been unflattering, but the shyness in Catelyn looked pretty. Perhaps it was because she was truly glad and cherishing her betrothal, or it might be because after going to King’s Landing it was so rare for Sienna to observe a person wearing their heart on their sleeves. She hasn’t lost her youthful innocence, she thought. Even after losing her mother, she didn’t let her heart be darkened by grief or politics.

“Please, call me Catelyn, or Cat. We are to be sisters, and hopefully… Friends?”, her voice full of yearning.

“Then, you must call me Sienna”, she said while letting her hand brush some flowers.

“And have you already decided if you will go north, or if Lord Eddard will come south?”

Sienna plucked a winter rose from a tangled bush, twirling it between her fingers, delaying her reply for a moment more.

“Ned loves the North. I know he would rather stay close to his family, especially having spent so many years in the Eyrie”, her eyes fixed on the beautiful blue petals. “But he’s honourable enough to accept moving to the Stormlands if I asked it of him”, she looked to Cat, their found smiles matching. “I hope my brother and his Lord Father will let the both of us talk and decide on our own, but it might be off our hands.”

They kept walking in comfortable silence for a moment, the distant cheers from the jousting field floating over the walls.

“Do you ever worry? About the matches our fathers make for us?”, Cat asked suddenly, her tone of voice sober.

Sienna’s thumb pressed against one of the rose’s thorns. Her mind bringing forth the image of Elia’s hollow laughter at Aerys’ table. Lyanna’s tears during Rhaegar’s song.

“Every day”, she replied before she could stop herself, an unintended confession. “But then I remember Brandon Stark would duel the Stranger himself if you asked. And Ned…”, her smile was the easiest to come. “Ned once walked down the Eyrie in a storm because I mentioned wanting blueberries from some wild bushes we had had days before"

Catelyn’s eyes softened. “You love him.”

A rustle in the bushes. They turned to see Ned Stark himself, frozen mid-step, a bundle of wildflowers clutched in his hand. His ears turning red.

“I- I was looking for Lyanna”, he said looking anywhere but at them.

“With foxgloves? She’d sooner eat her own boots”, Sienna said with a knowing smirk. She hesitated one moment before approaching him. “Tired of watching the jousting like us?”

Catelyn hid a smile behind her hand as Ned stammered. The moment seemed to stretch, sweet and fragile, dark blue and grey eyes interlocked- until a horn blared from the tourney grounds, shattering the peace.

“Brandon’s next tilt. Will you walk with me, Lady Sienna?”, Cat said with a smile.

Sienna tucked the winter rose behind her own ear, offering her arm to the redhead. “Always, sister”.

Turning to leave, Sienna looked back at Ned, eyes bright and smile larger. “Coming, Lord Eddard? Maybe we will find your sister cheering your older brother on?”, she said even though they both knew it was more likely that Lyanna would be pointing Brandon’s flaws and how she would do better.

As they left, Ned watched them go for a moment longer, before letting the flowers fall from his grip and fast walking towards them. “Yes, my ladies.”

--------------

The afternoon sun bled gold through the banners of House Whent, casting long shadows across the tilting yard in the afternoon of the second day of the tourney. Sienna sat beside Princess Elia in the royal pavilion, her fingers drumming restlessly against the arm of her chair. The air smelled of roasted meats, sweat, and the metallic tang of armour- familiar, yet today it set her teeth on edge. She had a strange feeling.

"You're fidgeting," Elia remarked, sipping her watered wine. "Is it the heat, or the fact that Lord Stark keeps glancing this way?"

Sienna scoffed, but her eyes betrayed her, flickering toward the Stark contingent. Ned. He stood stiffly beside his older brother, his face solemn as always- but she knew the way his jaw tightened when he was nervous. They had spoken last night for the second time in years. She had been able to slip from her quarters after making sure the Princess had no need of her, under Ashara’s assuredness that she would send a page running if anything bad happened. Sienna knew that she should have taken an escort, or at least asked Stannis to chaperone them- but she wanted to be as alone as she could with Ned, in a keep with hundreds upon hundreds of people.

Their words had been careful, measured. Too careful in case a little bird heard and took it back to Varys- he might already have known of her betrothal, but she didn’t want to give him any more certainty. She was glad Ned understood, even if not completely, her need for caution.

“Robert thinks it’s a fine match,” Ned had said while they walked the same garden path that she and Catelyn had strolled on that morning. "A keep in the Stormlands. Close to home."

Home. She dreamt of leaving King’s Landing, marrying Ned and settling down in a small keep near Storm’s End. For the longest, she had dreamt of having many children with him, but now, after seeing how Elia had suffered… She hoped two or three, spaced children – for her body to heal – would be enough. And when she looked at him, somehow, she had the certainty it would be.

“I would love that”, she muttered, hand seeking his while they walked. “Truly, Ned, it would be lovely…”

His eyes sought hers, and he saw something that made him stop, forcing her to do the same. “But?”, his warm fingers enveloping hers, the yearning in his voice making her heart stutter.

She gave him a bright smile. “But it would also be lovely to go north, if you so wish. I just want to be with you, even if that means endless snow”, she let him see her honesty in her own eyes.

Ned let go of a breath he had been holding. Then, he did something unexpected, bringing her hand to his mouth, his lips kissing it- much more than the small kiss from the night before, making her blood soar to her ears.

“Me too, my lady”, his grey eyes slightly darkening. “My love.”

A trumpet blared, snapping her back to the present. The herald’s voice boomed:

"The Knight of the Laughing Tree challenges the knights who wronged the crannogman!"

Sienna frowned for a moment, hearing the murmurs rippling through the crowd. Leaning forward, she squinted at the mystery knight who rode into the lists. Mismatched armour. A shield painted with a laughing weirwood. A stature too slight for any seasoned warrior.

Her stomach dropped.

Who would be foolish enough-

Her gaze darted back to the Starks. Brandon had been talking with Catelyn, but now both were looking with interest at the mystery knight. The oldest Stark was grinning, certainly believing they were about to see the unknown person lose, while Catelyn held her shawl closed, eyeing the tournament ground in trepidation. Benjen was whispering excitedly to Ned, he seemed to almost be jumping out of his skin, clearly on the side of the anonymous fighter, whilst Ned tried to calm him down- but Lyanna’s seat was empty.

No.

Crannogman… Lord Reed’s heir? She recalled Ned telling her the night before that Lyanna was upset because Howland Reed had been beaten by some knights. They had been able to identify them during the feast, but Brandon had refused to seek reparations.

Sienna’s gaze drifted from Benjen to mystery knight to the empty seat.

No. Oh, gods, please…

Princess Elia’s fingers brushed her wrist, dragging Sienna’s attention back to her. "You’ve gone pale."

But Sienna barely heard her. Her mind was racing. Lyanna. Wild, wilful Lyanna. Brandon and Ned had said she had wanted to put her name in the lists twice. And then, from what Ned had said, she had been furious when those squires attacked Howland Reed. And now this? This was a disaster.

The mystery knight unhorsed their first opponent with brutal efficiency. The crowd roared.

Sienna’s nails dug into her palms, heart hammering against her ribcage, and praying… Praying that she was wrong, praying that the knight of the Laughing Tree was victorious, because if she was right and they got hurt…

"Gods be good," she muttered under her breath, too low for even the princess to hear with all the noise from the crowd. "She might get herself killed."

Chapter Text

(Ned’s POV – Tournament Grounds)

The Knight of the Laughing Tree moved like a winter gale—swift, relentless, familiar.

Ned’s breath caught as the knight’s lance struck true, unseating the second opponent in as many passes. The crowd roared, but Ned’s blood turned to ice. When the knight had appeared at one of the ends of the jousting lane, Ned had frowned. The mismatch in armour was eye-catching, but not uncommon- ambitious young men with little means or no sponsors often used what they could find around the camps to assemble their attire. No, what really grabbed his attention was the shield- a white weirwood tree with a laughing red face.

Unease filled his stomach, the muscles contracting reflexively as if his body was bracing for a hit. Although the people of the North were not the only ones that worshiped the Old Gods, they were the ones more outspoken and recognized for that.

His eyes moved through the knight once again, his disposition tickling his brain, calling for his recognition- but he wanted to deny it, even if unconsciously. His gaze slipped to where Sienna was seated, trying to see if she was reacting to the knight with her usual curiosity. Only to notice her tense straight spine and the way her hands were balled. Something was wrong… His mind supplied that it could be because of the king, since Sienna had confided in him that King Aerys was becoming even more cruel towards the Princess Elia with each day little princess Rhaenys looked more and more Dornish instead of Targaryen.

But the stormlander’s eyes were not on the king and her posture was not inclined towards the Princess in the protective way he had seen her in the last few days. No, her eyes were on the mystery knight, and she was slightly bent forward, as if she wanted to reach and snatch the foolish boy from the horse. Something was disturbing Sienna…

Her deep blue eyes jumped to his, the intense fear he saw there made his stomach churn. He followed her eyes to Benjen, clocking his excitement- his little brother had been excited throughout the days, but it seemed to have increased ten-fold in the past two passes of the knight. Still following Sienna’s gaze, Ned let his eyes drift to the place where his sister… Where is Lyanna?, he frowned, she had said she would arrive late at the tourney. Ned had assumed she wanted to be alone, especially after their talk yesterday night…

Ned had come back from his stroll with Sienna in the gardens, the moon high in the sky illuminating the night alongside the torches, his thoughts still on the way Sienna’s cheeks had flushed pink when he had kissed her hand and called her my love. Gods, his own cheeks were pink – if the warmth he had felt in his face meant anything – but he had acted on impulse, his heart hammering against this chest when Sienna had told him she wouldn’t mind moving to the North. She said she just wanted to be with him, and it was all Ned could do to resist the urge to hug and kiss her- that would have been too improper, but he had kissed her hand. Not a graze of lips, a full press. And the way she had gasped when he had called her his love… That small sound almost undid him.

It had been difficult to leave her, but she had to get back to her quarters to be ready to service the Princess if the need came. So, he had walked with her close to the keep, his fingers entwined with hers, heart still galloping. She had bid him a good night, his lips had grazed the skin of her fingers again- this time in the very formal way it was expected of them. Only leaving when he saw Sienna enter through the door safely.

Ned had decided to go back to the tent he shared with Brandon, but had felt the urge to go to the godswood and pray that his and Sienna’s marriage was one full of joy and love- they would be able to weather anything if they held onto one another. As he got closer, the sound of steel on wood reached his ears. His frown getting more pronounced and a sigh leaving his lips when he arrived.

 Beneath the heart tree, Lyanna hacked at a practice dummy, her hair loose and wild. He had no idea how she had dragged the dummy here without anybody noticing, although he had an inkling that Benjen must have helped her.

"You’ll ruin your gown," Ned had said, observing her already tense back grow tenser.

She’d whirled, chest heaving. "Good. Maybe then Father will buy me proper armour."

His chest hurt at the anger and misery Ned saw in her eyes.

His sister was unhappy. She had been unhappy since their father had officialised her betrothal with Robert. Lyanna disliked him immensely.

Ned understood, Robert could be too much at times- too loud, too brash, too self-centred. Ned knew Lyanna hated that Robert already had a baseborn daughter in the Vale, because it only shown how careless Robert was in his whoring ways. And Ned… He felt conflicted. He loved his sister, but he also loved Robert- he knew the good sides of him, like the way he would always care for Sienna, how he was loyal to those he loved no matter what, how he would protect those in need without thinking twice.

Yes, Robert had his rough sides, but Ned knew he could be so much better- if only Lyanna gave him a chance…

“Lya… You know Father doesn’t mind your training at Winterfell, but here, among the other lords and the court…”, he tried to argue, but she scoffed, the practice sword still clutched in her hand.

She couldn’t care less for the Southron nobles.

"No one cares what I do, Ned. Not Father, not Brandon- certainly not Robert", she had bitten back, her eyes getting misty.

“That is not true, you know it…”, he sighed, closing the distance between them, his hand finding her shoulders in a way he hoped was comforting. “Lyanna, we love you and we care deeply about you”, he saw her eyes soften, her shoulders sagging a little. “Father wants what he thinks is best and-”

“Best?!”, her voice got a shrill tone, her defiance coming back in full. Lyanna shook herself away from him, cutting the physical connection. “Forcing me to marry a whoring man that can’t keep his eyes and hands away from other women is the best for me? Someone that doesn’t seem to have one ounce of truly rational thought behind his eyes? That only talks about his prowess with a damned hammer as if he has ever known true battle?”

She laughed mirthlessly, the tears she had kept at bay trailing down her cheeks. Angry and sad tears. “A man that already had a bastard child and will probably have many more before and after we marry? THAT is what is best for me, Ned?!”

Ned had been at a loss for words. His mouth opening and closing like Lady Catelyn’s house sigil. He wanted to defend Robert and say he wasn’t like that, but he would be lying. But he hoped Robert would grow out of it, especially after his wedding with Lyanna.

“I know he isn’t perfect, Lyanna. But give him a chance… I will- I will talk to him about it”, it was the only thing he could give her. A little hope for a better future.

“As if he would even listen, he has the mind of a boar”, she muttered, eyes low on the practicing sword. “Full of himself, just like Brandon. He didn’t even support me when I said those knights should pay to what they did to Howland”, her gaze went back to his, firm and harsh. “None of you did. As if he is not worth it…”

A chill ran down Ned’s spine. He recognized that look- the same one she’d worn before racing Brandon in the Wolfswood and breaking her ankle.

"You’re not entering the lists", he felt the words leaving his mouth in a command. The way she flinched almost made him regret it.

Lyanna wiped her tear-stained cheeks with her sleeves. "No. But someone should teach those knights a lesson."

That stance. The way the knight leaned left before striking, the wild pivot in the saddle-Lyanna.

Ned’s stomach dropped. His mind seemed to superpose one of the many memories of Lyanna in a saddle, training in Winterfell, with the one of the mystery knight. It was the same person…

She wouldn’t, he thought, trying to deny it, until the knight turned the horse back to prepare for the third contender. The slight tilt forward, the left hand gripping the reins too tightly. But she had.

--------------------

(Sienna’s POV – Tournament Grounds)

The knight rode with a precision that bordered on arrogance- each tilt calculated, each strike deliberate. The time spent training clear for all that understood jousting to see. The first opponent, a Frey knight, was unhorsed in three passes. The second, a Haigh, lasted only two. The third was going to be a Blount, and Sienna felt as if she was going to be sick. The last strike from the mystery knight had been too clean, the pivot in the saddle making her think of Ned’s many descriptive stories of Lyanna- a girl who had stolen a thousand rides in the Wolfswood.

“Your highness, I believe I need some air. Could I take your leave?”, Sienna asked the princess in a very low voice, keeping it as steady as she could. Still, Princess Elia looked her way with alarm in her eyes, trying to decipher what was going on in her head.

After a moment, she only nodded, and Sienna shared a look with Ashara that said: Eyes and ears open, I will be back soon. The Dayne lady inclined her head briefly, but her eyes clearly replied with: You better tell me all about it later.

Sienna stood up and gave the princess a courtesy, soon straightening herself and turning on her heels. Her gaze passing through the other people on the dais, their eyes locked on the unknown knight and the next opponent. Everybody had their attention fixed on the grounds- but for Prince Oberyn Martell. He was standing few steps away from his sister, in the back. His dark eyes tracking Sienna’s movement like a viper’s would follow their prey. She left without giving him more than a head inclination, she did not have time. Let him wonder, she thought while her legs took her to the Stark-Baratheon party.

By the time she reached, the knights were going for the second pass. Robert and Brandon were both taking excitedly about it, wine slouching around their cups. The Blackfish had one eye on the joust and another on his niece. Benjen seemed to vibrate with excitement. Her hand touched Stannis’ arm and he turned to her, the boredom in his eyes disappearing when she flicked her eyes to the side- he was off his chair and ready to follow her the next moment.

Then, she approached Ned. His gaze locked on the knights as if he was on a trance. “Ned…”, she called out to him, voice as low as possible to not attract the attention of others.

Ned’s eyes seem to drag themselves to her. The worry in his eyes enough to make her heart stammer. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, trying and failing to say something. Gods, he wore his emotions on his face. It was always difficult for him to hide them, even more when things got him by surprised.

“Maybe we can find a better place to talk, sister. Lord Eddard…”, Stannis said tersely beside her, his mind still playing catch up with what was going on, but as Sienna set a hand on his arm, he seemed to quieten down. Trusting her.

The moment Ned nodded and got up; the knights went for the third pass. The Blount knight falling gracelessly to the floor. The crowd cheered once more for the mystery knight, as it had after each of their – her – wins. Sienna’s eyes crossed to the royal dais, the king was even more restless, his frail body inclined to the front, his matted hair falling partly on his face. But it was Prince Rhaegar unblinking gaze and tense posture that made her mouth taste sour.

Stannis had to almost drag her – and Ned, if the way his other hand disappeared over the northerner’s shoulder – to a secluded spot away from the Baratheon-Stark party, still giving them a way to see part of the jousting grounds. Stannis took a flanking position to them, giving a semblance of privacy and maintaining vigil. Her twin knew her too well…

“Ned”, she said his name once again, laced with urgency. His grey eyes focused on hers. “Where is Lyanna?”

At hearing her name, Ned seemed to flinch. Stannis’ back tensed, his head moving minutely between the empty place where the Stark daughter should have been and the mystery knight. Sienna could almost hear the pieces falling in place for him, and she would bet – if she was a betting person – his thoughts were in line with hers: what was that foolish girl thinking?!

“I don’t-”, Ned started and stopped, shaking his head.

Her gaze went to the arena, knowing intrinsically that Ned’s would follow. As the last defeated knight still knelt in the dirt, the Knight of the Laughing Tree’s voice rang out- young, bright, and laced with steel. The horse moving in front of those that had lost.

“Teach your squires honour, my lords”, the mask still in place. “Or next time, the trees will laugh louder”.

The clear threat making a murmur ripple through the crowd. Then, without another parting word or even a reverence to the royal dais, the knight spurred the horse on, leaving the grounds.

“For fuck’s sake”, she heard Stannis say the words she held in. That person – whoever they were – was mad. Or stupid. And Sienna didn’t know what was worse.

“Who is this creature? Some traitor in disguise?”, King Aerys’ shrill voice cut through the excitement of the crowd. Sienna could see spittle flying from his mouth, while his nails dug into the arms of his elevated chair.

She saw when Varys leaned in, whispering in the king’s ear with that oil-smooth voice. But she saw a gleamer of worry there when he leaned back.

Aerys’ eyes darted around; his muttering too low for her to understand. He was trying to figure it out- but it was too much for his addled mind. He would surely see whatever – or whoever – it was that he wanted to see.

“Find them! Unmask them! I’ll have their head for this insolence!”, he screamed, the kingsguard taking a moment to acknowledge the order, while Prince Rhaegar was already out of his chair without a glance to his lady-wife.

When her eyes got back to Ned, his face was ashen.

“Stay here”, Stannis said before moving back to their families’ party.

“Ned, did Lyanna tell you why she would not attend the jousting today?”, Sienna asked low, taking a step into his direction. The despair in his eyes making her heart hurt.

“She said… She said she was going to be here. But then, Benjen said she wasn’t feeling well. I thought she was still upset about last night and-”, he said before stopping himself.

Last night? What is he talking about?, she tried to understand. But, before she asked, Stannis was back with a pale Benjen in tow. Of course, the youngest Stark would know.

“Tell them where your reckless sister is”, Stannis said with steel in his voice. Sienna wanted to chastise him and say that wasn’t the best way to get information out of any person, but there wasn’t time.

“Benjen, where is Lyanna?”, it was Ned that askes, voice so serious and hard that even Sienna swallowed dry.

For his part, Benjen didn’t seem excited anymore. Either because of the king’s words or Ned’s question, she didn’t know.

“She said-”, he cracks, stammering, “She said she was going to our tent. Or the godswood to… To get rid of-”, Stannis’ heavy hand on his shoulder cuts his answer.

Just like Sienna, her twin brother knew the wind had eyes and ears wherever the nobility was.

“Stark, you go to your tent. I will go to the godswood”, Stannis said through gritted teeth, his eyes on her. “You must get back to the Princess”, he told to her.

Sienna felt her heart fill up with love. He was doing this for her. He could care less for Lyanna Stark, but he knew she cared because of Ned. So, he cared as well.

“Find her”, she muttered while giving him a kiss in the cheek. Looking into Ned’s eyes, she made him a silent vow. I will do my best to keep her safe.

---------------

The moment Sienna entered the hall with Ashara on her arm, she felt the thick scent of roasted boar and spiced wine in the air, the smoke from the braziers curling like phantom hands toward the vaulted ceilings. Despite her nervous nausea, she still felt her stomach come alive and demand food- gods, count on her Baratheon blood to care less about her state of mind and prioritize her physical needs. The tables groaned under the weight of Dornish reds and Riverlands ales, but the true feast was the gossip, served sharp and steaming on every tongue.

Everybody wanted to know who the knight of the laughing tree was.

Everybody had seen or heard about the kingsguard going through the keep and the encampment, their white capes billowing behind them, their hands opening trunks and ripping tents apart.

The nobles that had their belongings trashed were whispering angry words, their apprehension for the kings being replaced by fury- albeit momentarily. Nobody wanted to risk being accused of treason for speaking badly about the king.

“So, you think your future good sister would be too upset if I danced with her betrothed?”, Ashara asked by her side. The low tone enough to bring Sienna’s attention back to the hall, her full lips painted red, and her curls perfectly arranged over her shoulders and back.

“I think she will be positively upset, but she is too polite to say anything yet, give her some years as a wolf and she will bare her teeth”, Sienna replied, trying to ignore her fluttering heart at the slight mention of her marriage to Ned. Ashara and the Princess were the only ones she had talked about a possible match with Ned- and only after the Dayne lady had rounded her for months. “But could you not cause the discontentment of the future Lady Stark, please?”

Ashara pouted, pretty lilac eyes darting around the hall, observing the people. “You are no fun, and the Starks shouldn’t take that honour of theirs so seriously”.

Sienna almost sighed with her words. Yes, she had to agree… The thing she found so inspiring in Ned and his family was precisely what might have put them in trouble this time.

Sienna had heard the whispers slithering through the tournament grounds while she made her way to the Princess, and then when they had gone – with Ashara in tow – to the Princess’ chambers. Through it all, a chill had run down her spine and her back muscles were tenser than ever. The problem had not been the threat, but the clear offense done to the king. Still, not many seemed to be paying attention to King Aerys and his raging. People wanted to know who and where the knight came from. Who was that person that unseated not two, but three seasoned knights, with grace and skill?

Of course, there would be an increase in curiosity and questions after their performance. No, not ‘their’. You know who the knight is, you know her performance was good, Sienna’s mind kept repeating every time she tried to think of the knight of the laughing tree as a man, or even genderless. It seemed so clear that she was a bit worried – what if she was projecting? Just because the knight was smaller than expected even for a young man, it did not mean they were a woman. Even if they were – well, they could be somebody else entirely than Lyanna Stark, her not being there could have been merely coincidence.

It was a perfectly logical assumption.

You are letting your fear undermine your thinking, a voice too much like her twin’s spoke inside her head, making Sienna sigh internally. When she started to spiral and try to deny reality, her mind always evoked the spectrum of Stannis to make her think rationally again.

The mystery knight’s shield had bore a laughing weirwood tree with crimson eyes seeming to gleam in the afternoon sun. One could argue it was a clear sign of that being a northern person- Sienna would be the first to admit there were houses outside the North that still worshipped the old gods, like House Blackwood in the Riverlands. But Sienna wouldn’t say any house – outside those of the North – wore their old gods worshiping on their sleeve like that. No, anybody choosing a sigil to represent them would inevitably pick something important to them- even when trying to hide their identity. It was how they wanted people to see them and their beliefs. A laughing weirwood shown that the knight valued their history, their duty to protect nature and those in need, to right errors- especially those committed against guest rights and honour. Like what had happened to the Reed heir.

Still, to choose a weirwood as a crest for a disguise was the same as pointing a straight arrow to the northern houses present in the tourney. Especially House Stark.

Sienna navigated the hall towards the table she would share with her brothers and Ned’s family. Princess Elia had decided to rest for the evening- the excitements of the day had drained her energy, and she needed to rest for longer. Sienna was exhausted as well, but she knew she could not rest until she got to the bottom of it. So, she had sent word to Stannis that she would be sitting with them and that Ashara Dayne was their guest- she needed her presence with her family and Ned to be seen as due to the princess’ absence, not because she wanted – or needed – to talk to them. So, Ashara was used to paint the picture of ladies-in-waiting wanting to enjoy the feast and sitting with one of their families for propriety’s sake.

Smiling to Robert, who was already talking loudly and drinking, she gave him a quick kiss to the cheek when he got up to embrace her. His eyes floating to Ashara, and Sienna was proud to see that his eyes remained on her face, only leaving to her hand when he kissed her fingers and welcomed her to their table. Robert knew he must behave with her friends- Sienna would not tolerate his leering gazes on them. Stannis’ reception of them was merely perfunctory, his annoyance at Robert clear on his face.

Brandon and Ned received them both with kisses to their hands, the heat of Ned’s fingers and lips making heat form in her lower belly. Catelyn gave her a small smile when they passed her on their way, Lyanna’s eyes flickering her way- the press of her mouth tense, finger joints white from the way she was gripping the cutlery. Benjen didn’t even meet her eyes, shoulders hunched.

“It is good to finally have you sitting with us, sister”, Robert told her after she sat between Stannis and Ned at one end of the table.

“It’s lovely to finally be with family again, brother. Even if my ears will ring for the whole night because of your loudness”, she said with a sharp smirk in his direction, which earned her a loud laughter from him.

She had sent message to Stannis through one of her shadows, asking to arrange the table in a way that would give them and Ned enough privacy to talk low among themselves without drawing too much attention. Ashara had looked amused when Sienna had asked her to sit near Benjen at the other end of the table, where she would be able to engage Catelyn in conversation if needed be. The Dayne lady had agreed, but said without words that Sienna would have to explain herself very soon.

The time they had to spent at small talk made all food was like ashes in her mouth. And even her watered Dornish Strongwine tasted bitter on her tongue. Stannis had his best mummer’s face on, but the way his neck muscles were tense gave away his extreme discomfort. And Ned… Gods, Ned was trying his best to appear calm, but he was stabbing his boar meat as if it was still alive and he wanted to kill it.

“Tell me what happened”, she said before taking a sip of her water, eyes moving from table to table.

Ned’s fingers clenched around his ale, his breath coming out heavily. “When I reached our tent,” he murmured, so low only she and Stannis could hear, “Rhaegar was there.”

Sienna’s stomach plunged when she heard it, not only because Ned had dropped the royal title – which indicated his dissatisfaction with the Targaryen prince – but also, because of the implications. The prince knew. Why would he be in the Stark’s tent otherwise? He could say it was because the shield bore a weirdwood, and House Stark was Lord Paramount of the North. But, why not go to the Stark’s party directly if he thought one of them was involved? Or if he thought they could help finding the mystery knight?

Because he knew. He knew who the knight was.

Stannis didn’t look at them, his gaze fixed on the high table where Aerys picked at his food like a starved crow. “And I found Lyanna in the godswood,” he said, tone clipped. “She denied everything. But she was wearing breeches.” A pause, enough for her eyes to follow his gaze and realize that Prince Rhaegar was looking intently at their table. At Lyanna. “And there was armour grease on her hands.”

The words slithered into Sienna’s ribs like a dagger. Fool girl. Brave, reckless, doomed girl.

She wanted to get up and shake Lyanna by the shoulders then and there.

“And then?”, her voice was barely there, eyes still fixed on the royal table.

“Brought her straight to Ned, I knew he would probably be alone in their tent.” Stannis said, jaw tightening.

Sienna held her breath. Her hand holding Ned’s under the tablecloth, not daring to look into his direction.

 “We… spoke. Harshly”, his usually steady voice wavered, just for a heartbeat. “She doesn’t understand what she’s risking.”

Sienna’s chest ached. She knew that tone- Ned’s quiet, wounded certainty, the same as when he spoke of his father’s disappointment. She squeezed his hand harder, their fingers intertwining.

“You only want to keep her safe”, she muttered back, nibbling at a slice of orange. Dornish, for sure. Her eyes moving to Oberyn Martell on their own accord. As if sensing her gaze, he stared back in her direction from here he seated with some of his companions, his smirk sharp as a spearpoint. She looked away- only to lock eyes with Rhaegar, his face a mask of calm, but his fingers traced the rim of his cup in slow, deliberate circles.

Sienna forced her eyes to move, finding Ned. His throat worked. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Oh, how she wished to hold him and promise all would be well.

“Safe won’t matter if the king connects her to that knight”, Stannis said between forkfuls of food, as pragmatic as ever.

“When you met the prince… What did he say to you?” Sienna asked Ned.

 “He only enquired after Lyanna’s health, saying he noticed she was not with us. As if he didn’t know-”, a crash of cutlery silenced him.

All eyes turned to the high table, where Aerys had risen. His violet eyes wild in the torchlight.

“Where is the knight?!” he shrieked at the hall. “Bring me the traitor!” Varys materialized at his elbow, whispering, but the king batted him away. “Lies! All of it! That was no hedge knight- that was treason! He was trying to end the King’s Peace! Bring me that knight’s head! I’ll see it mounted!”

His gaze swept the crowd, lingering too long on the Starks. Only for Rhaegar to get closer to him and whisper something. The next moment, the prince was taking his harp from Ser Connington.

Sienna forced herself to breathe when the first cords of the song started, and the king seemed to relax back into his seat.

Too close. Too loud.

Stannis’ hand found hers under the table, his calloused thumb pressing once, hard, against her pulse. A silent vow: I’ll fix this.

Sienna didn’t know if he would be able to. Nor if anybody else would.

Chapter Text

The whispers still slithered in every corridor of the keep and between the tents by the time Sienna reached the Stark tent with Stannis after the feast. The words were venomous and bright, even in the dim lights of the torch and campfires.

“-heard the knight fled toward the river-”

“-that shield… Surely he is from the north-”

“-prince was seen near the Stark’s tents-”

The oil lamp guttered as Sienna pushed through the tent flaps, not needing to ask her twin to wait outside. Her blue eyes briefly gazed in Ned’s direction, his long face and grey eyes worried and tense. She hated that look on him, but there was nothing she could do besides trying to talk some sense into Lyanna. She had wanted to write Lord Rickard, but Ned had asked – begged – her not to. He knew his father would not take lightly to the fact that his daughter had entered the lists… Worse, that she might have some infatuation for the crown prince- and after Ned had caught Rhaegar in their tent, Sienna believed he was smitten as well.

The gods save her from reckless people. They would doom them all.

The scent of metal polish and crushed flowers clung to the air inside the tent. Too sharp, too deliberate. Like the girl sitting on the cot and scrubbing vambraces- hers, Sienna would bet. Even if she could pass them up as her younger brother’s.

"Come to scold me like Ned? Or threaten me like Stannis?", Lyanna didn't look up, her movements fluid and practiced, voice acid.

Benjen shifted uncomfortably by the bedroll, his eyes darting to the tent entrance where their brothers stood guard. Sienna noted how his fingers worried at his sleeve. He knows more than he has told, she made a mental note to shake him by the collar if needed be.

"I came," Sienna said, lifting a discarded gauntlet, its fingers still damp with sweat, "to ask if you've completely lost your mind." She said, throwing the piece on Lyanna’s lap.

The Stark girl went very still, the metal in the vambrace gleaming in the torch lights.

“Recognize that?”, Sienna asked, pressing her point. “One look from Stannis”, she continued, keeping her voice deceptively light, conversational. “And he found it half-buried in the godswood. Tell me, little wolf, what else will the kingsguard find once they start looking there?

“Those squires attacked Howland! They-”

“-are irrelevant.” Sienna stepped closer, trying to keep her voice low. “You are the daughter of the Lord Paramount of the largest region in the kingdom. You are to be beyond reproach if you want to keep your family safe”, she felt the growl building in her throat. “Instead, you decided to paint a target on your back, Aerys thinks that knight is a traitor, he thinks that you are a traitor. Do you know what he does to traitors?" She grabbed Lyanna’s shoulders, felt the girl’s flinch beneath her palms. "He burns them, Lyanna. While their families watch."

 The girl swallowed dry. Her pupils dilating with a spike of dread. Still, she didn’t break.

“You sound just like them”, she said, nostrils flaring. “‘Be still, be sweet, be silent.’” Her impression of Southron ladies was razor-sharp, and Sienna would have laughed in agreement if her stomach didn’t feel like it carried a pound of molten iron. “Rhaegar doesn't-”, the northern stopped talking, biting her own lip to keep more words from escaping.

Rhaegar. Not prince, just Rhaegar. What is going on? How… Her mind whirled, trying to grasp how Lyanna could already sound so intimate with the crown prince. Sienna shared blood with him, had been living around him for the better part of a year, in his wife’s household, and they were still very much strangers.

“Rhaegar what?” Sienna asked lowly, but she knew it was going to go unanswered. Lyanna had her jaw set in that uncanny way all Starks seemed to have when their stubbornness took the best out of them. “Lyanna, did you tell him you were entering the lists?”, her body reared back, hands falling limply at her sides.

“Of course not”, Lyanna scoffed, as if the mere idea of saying that secret of hers to the crown prince was ridiculous. Her posture was still obstinate, but her flushed cheeks and the faint tremor in her wrists indicated her nervousness.

“But he knows”, Sienna affirmed. The continued silence of Lyanna was all the confirmation she needed. “He knows and told you what?... That you're special?”, she felt the urge to scream. “Of course he did. You're the she-wolf who was going to defend the honour of her bannerman. And you did it! You tamed three knights. The fierce and pretty winter rose in a tourney of thorns.” Sienna knew she sounded bitter, upset. So she forced her own voice to drop to a whisper. “Tell me, when he spins his pretty prophecies, does he ever mention your name? Or just your blood?”

She was fifteen. Gods help her, she was fifteen and raised in the wolfswood, where honour was a straight blade and politics a foreign rot. Whatever Rhaegar had whispered to her of destiny, of songs- of her, as if she were some winter-maid from the tales… Lyanna, fierce, lonely Lyanna, had swallowed it whole.

Just as Robert swallowed the idea of her – wild and beautiful, a she-wolf to match his stag. Her mind provided bittersweetly. Neither saw the girl. Only the story. Once, she had been that naïve as well. It had taken her parents dying and the call to become a lady-in-waiting for Princess Elia to make her understand that life was not a beautiful and airy song, it was a long lament. Not even all those years under Jon Arryn’s tutelage had fully prepared her for the political games played by those in power. It was only by experiencing that Sienna had learned.

How Sienna wished she could give Lyanna her experience. How she wished to make the Stark girl understand why she should stay as far away from the royal family and court as possible.

The flush on Lyanna's cheeks darkened. Outside, Ned murmured something to Stannis- the cadence anxious, the words indistinguishable.

"Lya, mayhaps we should-”, Benjen finally found his voice, his anxious tone enough to make Sienna turn her eyes towards him.

“Stay out of this!” Lyanna stood up, vambraces and gauntlet falling to the floor, her angry eyes on Sienna. “You don't understand. No one that should understand does! Those squires would've gone unpunished. No one cares-”

“I care that you'll burn for this!” Sienna’s voice rising again, more than it should. “Lyanna, Aerys roasted Lord Qorgyle's sons for laughing too loud at court. What do you think he'll do to the girl who mocked his knights? Who challenged his peace?”

For the first time, true fear flickered behind Lyanna's defiance.

Sienna exhaled. "You think the prince sees you? Truly? You think he would be able to save you from his father? He can’t even save his mother", she said bitterly, remembering all the bruises on the queen’s pale skin. "He saw a shield with a laughing tree. A symbol. Not a girl who blisters her hands playing knight."

Lyanna’s face twisted, fear once again replaced by boldness. "You don’t understand."

Oh, but I do. Sienna bit back the words. You think you have found a saviour. And he… He probably believes he found the missing piece he needs to ‘save the world’.

“I should write to your father. Let him drag you back to Winterfell by your braid”, she said shaking her head.

Lyanna's breath hitched, her gaze flashing with indignation at the threat.

“Listen to me, you foolish girl”, Sienna caged Lyanna's face between her hands, forcing their eyes to meet. “You were raised in a castle, not at court. You know winter's hunger, not southern snakes. That man isn't offering you freedom- he's offering you a gilded cage where you'll sing his pretty songs until he tires of you.”

Lyanna wrenched free. “You don't know-”

“I know that right now, outside this tent, Ned’s heart is breaking while his mind is trying to find a way to protect you. While you?” Sienna gestured to the armour pieces on the ground. “You're playing at war like it's a mummer's farce.”

A long silence. The lamp's flame dancing between them. Even Benjen seemed to be holding his breath.

“You won't tell Brandon”, Lyanna finally whispered. “Or father”, Sienna felt like clawing her own face off.

"No”, she exhaled through her nose. “At least not tonight”, she pressed, making sure to smother any silly thoughts Lyanna might be having that Sienna would never tell Lord Rickard and Brandon. “But if I catch you within ten paces of that silver-haired fool, I will drag you back to Winterfell myself, laughing shield and all."

Benjen choked on something that might've been a laugh or a sob.

As Sienna turned to leave, Lyanna's voice followed her: “You're wrong about him.”

At the tent flap, Sienna glanced back. The girl stood amidst her scattered armour, suddenly looking every inch the child she was- elbows scraped from training, braid coming undone, mouth set in that stubborn Stark line.

Gods help us all.

“Perhaps”, Sienna said softly. “But are you willing to bet the North on it?”

Outside, the wind swept softly through the tents, the torches still flickered and people either prepared for bed or got together to continue the gossip and celebrations from that day. Sienna was so tired that she had half a mind to ignore all that had – needed  – to be done, and take a calming tea to have a full night of sleep. But if she didn’t act, if she didn’t protect her family, current and future, who would?

Stannis and Ned had stopped their small talk upon seeing her emerge from the tent. Both had questioning eyes, Ned’s full of worry, Stannis’ full of contempt- neither emotion directed at her, but she felt them regardless.

“She has been meeting with him”, the words left her lips the moment she was closer to them, farther from the tent. Ned’s eyes widened, Stannis’ jaw tensed. “I don’t know how it happened, she hasn’t said much.”

Ned’s face paled. His strong fingers twitched toward his sword belt- not to draw steel, but to grip something, anything, as if a memory had physically struck him.

 “What is it?”, Stannis didn’t wait for Ned to recover, the glint in his eye showing his clear annoyance at not having all the information.

“Last night,” Ned said, voice hollow. Eyes flickering to Sienna, telling her without words that it had been after their rendezvous in the gardens. “I found her in the godswood. Practicing with a sword. She was- agitated. I thought she just needed space.”

“You left your younger, unmarried sister alone in this strange place?” Stannis’ words were like ice cracking underfoot. “This isn’t Winterfell, the Eyrie, or Storm’s End, Stark. This is a pit of vipers.”

Ned flinched. Sienna stepped between them before he could retort, forcing both to take one step back, eyes watchful of their surroundings. “Quiet. Both of you.” The wind carried laughter from a nearby tent, too bright for the tension coiling in her chest. “Ned, you must watch her. If she so much as glances toward the godswood, drag her back to your tent. Stannis-”

“I’ll double the guard rotations,” he cut in, reading her mind. “And post men near the Stark tents- I will tell them to watch out for that mystery knight. It might be the only way that folly will be useful. If the dragon come sniffing around, I’ll know.”

 “You think Rhaegar would-?” Ned’s jaw worked.

“I think,” Sienna interrupted, “that we’re done talking tonight.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. The beginnings of a headache pulsed behind her eyes. “We will meet in the morrow. After I have seen to the princess.”

And after she made sure her eyes and ears were alert to any development concerning this damned situation.

Stannis gave a curt nod and strode off some metres away to give her some semblance of privacy to say goodbye to her betrothed- well, future betrothed. Ned lingered, his grey eyes shadowed.

“She wouldn’t-” he began.

“She did,” Sienna said softly, lifting her hand to touch his chest over the doublet with the tip of her fingers. She wondered if she was really feeling his hammering heart, or if it was her imagination. “And she will do worse if we don’t stop her.”

A beat. The torchlight flickered across Ned’s face, etching lines she hadn’t noticed before. Then he nodded, his callous hand holding hers for a moment, before stepping back.

“I will see you in the morrow”, he said, voice dropping lower. “My love.”

Sienna smiled and turned, walking towards her twin. His blue eyes – a mirror of hers – held her gaze. Then, he gave her his arm to hold. She exhaled, letting him lead them to the keep.

The tea would have to wait.

------------------

The shadow came at the hour of the bat- silent as smoke, her face hidden beneath a tattered septon’s hood that did nothing to mask the sharp scent of embalming spices clinging to her sleeves.

Sienna knew that scent. Maris of the Parchments- once a Silent Sister, until she’d been cast out for the crime of reading the letters tucked into the shrouds of the dead. Sienna had found her half-dead in an alley in Storm’s End, ink-stained fingers clutching a dead man’s confession that saved an innocent family from attaint. Sienna had given her a place by her hearth and had nurtured her back to health- much to Stannis grumbling. Maris had followed Sienna to King’s Landing as part of her small party- together, they had managed to start their network of information made by sailors, servants, silent sisters and disgraced septons.

Maris became her own master of whispers. Now those same stained fingers pressed a scrap of parchment into her palm, both their forms hidden by one of the many alcoves covered by Whent tapestries.

"The prince left the keep, he took only Ser Arthur," Maris murmured, making Sienna’s stomach drop. "Gone toward the godswood. But your Dornish viper..." A knowing tilt of her head that made Sienna’s unease grow. "He watches the dragon, yes- but his eyes keep drifting southward, my lady. To storm clouds."

Oberyn. Watching her. Sienna’s spine straightened. This wasn’t something new, he was always observing those closer to his sister.

"And my brothers?"

"Lord Stannis has taken to the library once more, Lord Whent seems keen in letting him use it as much as possible. Lord Robert..." Maris’ mouth thinned. "In the stables with a serving girl."

Sienna’s jaw tightened. She would have to talk to him- again. "See that she gets moontea. Discreetly."

Maris nodded. "Shall I pull a shadow from the king to watch the Stark girl? We’re stretched thin, but-"

"No. Aerys’ paranoia is the greater threat." Sienna rubbed her temple. A misstep. She should have assigned someone to the Starks days ago. She should have brought more of her people- her shadows. But they had to remain apprised of all the on-goings in the Red Keep during their absence as well "I’ll handle the godswood myself. You keep eyes on the king- if he so much as stirs from his chambers…"

"…the washerwomen will know before his boots touch the floor." Maris assured her, only to hesitate next. "I could watch the girl myself. A stray Silent Sister near the godswood would raise no eyebrows."

Sienna considered, then shook her head, adjusting her cloak and pulling the hood up- she was glad for choosing to wear it to the meeting with Maris.

"Stay with the king. If Lyanna is fool enough to meet the dragon prince tonight, she’ll learn the consequences soon enough."

She hid the small parchment in her dress; it would find its way to a brazier soon enough. Still, the words seemed to weight in her pocket: The dragon seeks ice. The viper tastes thunder.

------------------

The heart tree’s weeping face watched in silence as Lyanna Stark stepped into the clearing, her boots crushing the grass beneath them. Moonlight painted her in shades of silver and doubt, the borrowed boy’s clothes hanging loose on her frame. She had managed to escape Ned, and the guards Stannis had put on double shifts- there was no way she didn’t have help, and Sienna would bet her last dragon Benjen had everything to do with it.

I will wring his neck come morning, Sienna thought from her hiding place within a large weirwood, the white bark biting into her spine.

Rhaegar stood waiting near the heart tree, his silhouette carved from shadow and starlight, posture unassuming and inviting. He didn’t move to greet her- only tilted his head, as if she were a verse he’d spent years composing.

Fool girl. Brave, doomed girl, her mind started to repeat.

Lyanna’s chin lifted. “This is foolishness. My father will-”

“Your father would flay you alive for jousting”, Rhaegar interrupted, his voice like smoke over water, “but, hopefully, not for listening to harp songs” A small smile appeared on his lips, followed by a winter rose that materialized in his palm as if conjured, its blue petals luminous in the dark. “Tell me, Lady Lyanna- who can decide which sin truly deserves punishment?”

Lyanna’s breath hitched. Sienna could see the war in her- the way her fingers twitched toward the rose even as her shoulders stayed rigid. Run, she willed silently. Run now, let Ned protect you. Forget this fool of a man.

Lyanna didn’t run.

“You deserve more”, Rhaegar murmured, stepping closer. The rose brushed her collarbone, a lover’s whisper. “You could be so much more than the lady of a stormy keep”, he stopped just a couple steps from the Stark girl, purple eyes tracing her face as if looking for something lost. “You deserve to choose whatever you want.”

Lies wrapped in silk, Sienna thought, her nails carving half-moons into her palms. He doesn’t see her. Not really.

“The realm wouldn’t agree. No woman can choose her fate”, Lyanna’s voice was sad, hand hovering over the flower, but her gaze was stuck on his.

“The realm is asleep”, Rhaegar’s thumb traced the stem, his other hand rising but stopping before he could touch her arm. “Dreamers don’t ask permission to dream. Why should you ask their permission to live as your heart desires?”

Gods, she’s trembling. Not with fear, but with want. The kind that came from years of being told to sit still, be quiet, be less. Sienna knew that hunger. Had felt it herself, sharp as any blade. But this- this wasn’t freedom. This was a gilded cage with a poet’s lock.

Lyanna took the rose, face inclined to Rhaegar’s, while he bent his head towards her.

“The song of ice and fire needs you”, Rhaegar said, his breath fogging between them. “A prince must have his counterpart.”

Counterpart. Not partner. Not equal. The words slithered down Sienna’s spine, the deathly pale face of Princess Elia in the birthing bed popping in her mind’s eye. Gods, they are both things to him. Vessels to his mad ramblings.

Lyanna’s fingers tightened around the stem. “And if I refuse?”

“You won’t”, his certainty was like a hot knife slicing through curdled milk, making Sienna want to vomit. “You stood for a crannogman you barely knew. Would you really turn away from the world?”

The wind sighed through the branches, carrying the distant echo of laughter from the encampment. Somewhere, Robert was drinking, Ned was worrying, and Princess Elia Martell was trying to nurture a baby into being born- unaware that her husband was trading poetry for pawns.

Lyanna exhaled. The fight left her in a rush, her shoulders curving toward him like a flower to the sun. Her fingers gripping the prince’s doublet.

No, Sienna thought, her throat tight. Not like this.

Rhaegar cupped Lyanna’s cheek, thumb caressing her skin. “You’re the storm that wakes the dragon.”

Not ‘my dragon.’ The dragon. As if she was a tool. A key. A sacrifice.

But Lyanna didn’t flinch. She leaned into his touch, the rose pressed between them, its petals bruising.

Sienna had seen enough.

As she slipped back through the roots, one truth coiled in her chest like a viper:

His want is not for love. Not even for passion. He’s ritualizing her.

And Lyanna?

She’s letting him.

------------------

Sienna went to the only one she truly trusted with her emotions. The one that had always been there- even when they were just small seeds inside their mother’s womb. The library smelled of ink and oak, the only sound the methodical scrape of Stannis’ quill across parchment. She paused in the doorway for a moment, her pulse still hammering from the godswood. Her twin sat hunched over a ledger, his brow furrowed in that familiar way- as if the numbers would rearrange themselves if he glared hard enough.

Solid. Steady. Storm’s End made flesh.

She exhaled, the knot in her chest loosening just enough to breathe, feet carrying her closer to him. Stopping near Stannis and breathing his presence in, she let her mind go astray. He was her anchor in the storm. He could bring her back from the brink. Gods, I missed him, she thought.

 “You’re pacing”, he didn’t look up but acknowledged her presence.

“I’m standing still”, she couldn’t help the smirk that blossomed on her lips.

“Your shadow isn’t.” He tapped the column of figures before him. “Sit. Before it wear a trench in the floor.”

She collapsed into the chair opposite him, the legs screeching against stone. Stannis winced but said nothing- his version of comfort.

“Rhaegar is filling Lyanna’s head with prophecies,” she said. “Ice and fire. Songs of destiny. Nonsense he kept repeating to himself after the princess almost died giving birth.”

Stannis’ quill stilled. “Weak men use prophecies to justify weaker choices.”

“Then why did I just witness the Crown Prince using one to seduce a girl of five and ten in the godswood during the hour of ghosts?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw, his teeth grinding against one another. He was not happy- especially because she had just told him that she had been walking in the darkness… Alone.

“We’ll need proof”, he said without looking up, voice without any kind of reprimand for her behaviour. He knew she wouldn’t have done it if unnecessary. “And allies”, his tone of finality making her heart stop.

Not ‘you’re imagining things.’ Not ‘it’s just poetry.’ Just we. As it always was with them.

Sienna slumped forward, bracing her elbows on the table.

“I don’t see a path forward”, she admitted, voice low and weak.

“Because you're looking for a dagger in the dark.” Stannis flipped a page, his finger stabbing at the grain shipments as if they'd personally offended him. “We need light. A way to make that girl see his madness before it's too late- and witnesses the Dornish will trust when this comes to light.”

“Prince Oberyn-”

“-is our best chance at getting through that wilful skull of hers,” Stannis cut in, pushing his goblet toward her with more force than necessary. “And since it seems our own men are useless at keeping track of one Northern girl, we will use his. But we will need Lady Ashara too.”

Sienna gripped the goblet, the cool metal biting into her palms. “To catch Rhaegar in the act.”

“To make sure the Dornish won't dismiss this as Stormlander paranoia when they learn about it.” His lip curled. “You will need to speak to Lyanna. Perhaps even bring in the princess-”

“No”, the word came out sharper than she intended, his gaze finally seeking hers. “We'll tell Elia, but throwing them together now would only...” She trailed off, her gaze dropping to the ledger where Stannis had circled a shipment of moontea three times.

His eyes narrowed – understanding dawning on him – but all he said was, “Then Ned Stark needs to step up. If he can't control his own sister, he shouldn't have agreed to bring her south.”

A beat. The fire crackled in the hearth, casting long shadows across the ledgers- across their careful, fragile plans. Stannis exhaled through his nose alongside her own exhale.

“If it comes to it, we will corner Rhaegar with Dornish witnesses. We will beat sense into Lyanna with Oberyn's help. And if all else fails-”

“-Robert's hammer becomes our prophecy fulfilment”, Sienna finished, raising the goblet in a bitter toast.

Stannis didn't smile. But he didn't correct her either.

------------------

(Oberyn’s POV – Dawn Hallway Outside Elia’s Chambers)

Oberyn Martell had been waiting for twenty-three minutes.

He knew Sienna Baratheon’s routine better than his own- who was he kidding, he didn’t really have a routine other than making sure his sister was safe and cared for. But the storm lady, she was a creature of habit. Dawn prayers. Then Elia’s chambers. Always. But for today.

She was late. She had never been late before- not in time they first met, when Rhaenys was a small baby, and not in the last few weeks since he had reached King’s Landing to come with his sister to the tourney.

Oberyn had made the decision to come with the Dornish entourage once Doran had told him about the pregnancy. He had been surprised to say the least- Elia shouldn’t be with child again, not so soon after her miracle recovery from his niece’s birth.

Maybe never, he thought annoyed while peeling a peach with his dagger, the juice staining his fingers as he leaned against the pillar, watching the hallway for the tell-tale signs of Sienna. The barely audible woosh of black and golden fabric, the lovely scent of flowers and sea salt with a hint of steal.

His memory flickered while he waited, transporting him back to King’s Landing, almost a year earlier and a month after Rhaenys had been born. He could recall it almost perfectly:  the dim light of Elia’s solar, the scent of crushed mint and nightshade. Sienna, sleeves rolled to her elbows, grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle. Her hands were steady, but her jaw was clenched tight enough to crack stone.

“My sister says you haven’t slept”, Oberyn said, leaning against the doorway and finally addressing his sister’s newest companion beyond the casual not and glance since his arrival.

He had heard about her through Doran. She had lost her parents nigh two years ago. The only daughter born to Steffon and Cassana Baratheon. Twin to their second son- the most boring person in Oberyn’s opinion if the accounts about Stannis were right. Elia had code-written about needing more support for Rhaegar, that the stormlanders were important.

They had all known the danger they would be putting the girl in by placing her in Aerys’ close orbit. It had been by chance – madness, he now recognized – that Elia had been chosen to marry Rhaegar instead of Sienna Baratheon. But Elia had to play the game and to have only Ashara as her lady-in-waiting didn’t make them any favours in that regard.

But they had not expected Sienna Baratheon to take so keenly to the care of Elia and her child. Nor that Ashara would take an immediate liking to her. Elia’s letters had been full of praise that Oberyn chose to turn a blind eye to and judge for himself if the stormlander was truly a good person.

After a couple days, he had understood what his sister and Ashara meant when they said Sienna went above and beyond to make sure Elia and Rhaenys were well-taken care of.

“The Princess exaggerates”, Sienna didn’t look up, deft hands working nonstop with the mortar.

He crossed towards her, plucking a petal from her hair- poisonous belladonna, unless prepared just so. "You risk your hands for her. Why?", she gave him a side glance that had an annoyed glint, as if his question was ridiculous.

Finally, she stopped her movements after a while, satisfied with the concoction. Her blue gaze met his. "Because no one else will."

"And the prince? Where is he?", he asked with a smirk, hip resting against the table.

Her laugh was brittle, making the hairs on his nape stand up. "Composing another ballad about winter roses, I imagine”, she started to clean some of her utensils and set others aside for the next preparation, her exhale a clear sign of frustration. “He’s more concerned with songs than his wife and child.”

Her eyes met his again, what she thought about Rhaegar clear in her words and gaze. She doesn’t like him,Oberyn thought and gave her another smirk, before rolling his own sleeves. At her surprised expression, he let his smile grow predatory.

“I’m also willing to risk my hands for my sister, Little Storm”, he said while joining her in preparing the next drought.

Oberyn had tucked the belladonna petal into his sleeve, and later, into his favourite book. A keepsake. Apromise to always remember the stranger that cared more about his sister than those that called her family by marriage.

Now he waited for her because something wasn’t right. She had been tense all of yesterday, especially after that mystery knight had shown up. For a moment, Oberyn thought it was Ned Stark- he knew the Baratheon were arranging a double wedding alliance with House Stark. The little she-wolf would become Lady Baratheonand Sienna would marry Ned Stark, her first love, if the few rumours he had heard were true.

Elia refused to say anything when he had asked if she would need a new lady-in-waiting from the stormlands soon. Still, her avoidance was as much of a confirmation as he ever needed.

But it hadn’t been Ned Stark in behind the laughing tree shield. It hadn’t been any of his brothers either. For one, the knight had been too small to be one of the older Stark sons. And, for two, all three of them had been in attendance alongside the Baratheon brothers.

Oberyn had to admit he was curious about the person, but it was only when the strangely youthful voice had boomed from behind the closed helm of the new contender, demanding that the losing knights teach honour to their squires, that it had clicked.

Lyanna Stark had been furious about an injustice against a bannerman from the North the previous days. And she had been conspicuously absent from her seat while the mysterious knight was on the tournament grounds.

Foolish girl, he had thought while his eyes had tracked Sienna in her private talk with Ned and her twin brother.

We would love her in Dorne, though, his mind supplied while putting a slice of the peach in his mouth. His eyes left the fruit and moved to the corridor when the noise of swooshing clothing reached his ears. Soon enough, Sienna stepped around the corner, her black dress slightly rumpled, her braid half-unravelled. She’d slept poorly, if at all.

Their eyes met.

For a heartbeat, she hesitated.

Oberyn took a deliberate bite of his peach, the juice running down his thumb, eyes never leaving hers.

"Little Storm."

She exhaled through her nose, then crossed the hall towards him in quick strides.

"I might need your help," she muttered, low enough that only he could hear. "If the offer still stands."

Oberyn’s pulse quickened. Finally. He had tried to catch her the day before when she had left Elia’s chambers to go prepare for that night’s feast. But she had side stepped him, saying nothing was happening.

He had still offered his help. Now, she had come around- he was not sure if he should feel elation or trepidation. Sienna Baratheon was not one to easily bend or ask for help.

“Is this about the little she-wolf and her stunt as a knight?”, he asked while tossing the peach through the window, straightening.

Sienna didn’t answer for a moment, her eyes flickering to the sides- she was always concerned about who might be watching or listening. One little movement from her head, and he stepped closer, close enough to share secrets and to catch the undertone scent of steel and feel sleep-warm skin.

“I’m more worried about her secret meetings with a certain dragon prince in the godswood”, her voice was low but clear enough. Still, he did a double take.

“Rhaegar?”, the question left him before he could stop himself. Which another dragon prince there was that could be meeting the Stark girl? Even if Viserys had been attending the tourney, he was too young to intently meet her, much less draw her attention as Sienna was implying. Still, his subconscious needed confirmation. At her nod, he swore, fingers tightening around the dagger he still held. “My sister should know.”

Sienna hesitated, he could almost hear her thoughts about Elia’s continuous fatigue, her barely rounding belly, the lack of appetite.

“She has enough to bear.”

“I know”, his fingers found her hand, thumb brushing her wrist- a fleeting touch, there and gone. “But she’d rather bear the truth than be blinded by your silence.”

He observed as her mind seemed to whirl around itself. Then, she exhaled and nodded.

At least, Elia would be able to prepare- not for a heartbreak, his sister held some affection, but little love for her husband. No, she would be able to prepare for whatever war she would have to fight for herself and her child- children.

And Oberyn would be damned if he didn’t help her.

Chapter Text

(Oberyn’s POV – Inside Elia’s Solar)

The scent of ginger and lemon balm clung to the air, thick enough to drown in. Elia had had a rough night, Ashara had been the one to stay with her. He knew his sister’s Dornish friend and her stormlander’s lady-in-waiting took turns to stay with Elia during the nights- especially now, with a baby growing inside her and making his sister’s life a constant battle.

Oberyn leaned against the doorframe, watching his sister by the window- her dark eyes half-lidded, her fingers curled protectively over the swell of her belly. Ashara’s deft hands worked through Elia’s hair, weaving it into a braid as tight as the tension in the room. Sienna stood before them like a stormcloud made flesh, her dress still rumpled from the sleepless night, her voice low but unflinching as she laid out the truth: Rhaegar, the godswood, the damned prophecy he had been spilling, and Lyanna Stark.

Ice and fire.

Oberyn’s teeth ached. He’d heard those words before- whispered to Elia in the early days of their marriage, when Rhaegar still pretended that she might be part of his grand delusion. Then, from Sienna and Ashara’s lips when he had visited his sister after Rhaenys’ birth- Ashara’s troubled eyes, worrying his good-brother was becoming like his king father; Sienna’s stilled expression, disgusted that the prince seemed more worried about fables than about his weakened wife. They had told Oberyn how Rhaegar kept saying they needed to have another baby soon – two more – but paid no attention to little Rhaenys.

Elia laughed- a sound like glass cracking underfoot.

“Of course. A child bride for his child’s tale.” Her fingers twisted in her shawl. “He whispered of ice and fire to me once. Then Rhaenys was born, and I was too Dornish for his song. Still, he wanted another child… And I thought…”, she shook her head, swallowing the words she had wanted to say. That, maybe, another baby would give her – them – another chance at being a good family.

Ashara’s hands stilled in Elia’s hair, her knuckles whitening against the ebony strands. “We could poison him”, she said with a tilt of her head, lips half lifting in a predatory smile.

Oberyn grinned, sharp as the dagger at his hip.

“Tempting. But let’s start with humiliation”, almost hissing the last word, leaving his perch at the door and moving closer to Sienna, noticing the tension in her set shoulders.

Elia’s voice cut through them like a whip.

“You will not risk war for this folly”, a deliberate pause, then... “Not while Aerys breathes.”

Their eyes met- a silent understanding passing between siblings. Later, that look promised. When the time is right.

Oberyn's pulse thrummed, not with impatience but calculation at this mess. It was a recipe for disaster. Aerys’ pyromantic madness, Rhaegar’s reckless obsession.

And Robert Baratheon, that roaring storm of a man, with Targaryen blood in his veins and a warhammer in his hands.

“A letter to Doran”, Elia continued, her fingers pressing harder on her rounding belly. “A suggestion that Rhaegar’s... interests... should be monitored.”

Clever. Oberyn’s pulse thrummed. Elia would not dirty her hands, but she would make sure Dorne’s knives were sharpened and ready.

Ashara's nails dug into Elia's shoulder as she finished her braiding. “This isn't just about a girl”, she murmured, too low for any but them to hear. Eyes looking straight at Sienna, speaking without words of shared secrets. “The whole of Westeros is holding its breath because of who sits on the throne. Rhaegar offered hope, but if the lords think him also… unstable- it will challenge the very legitimacy of House Targaryen.”

Sienna shifted beside him, her eyes on Elia, shining with deep set trouble.

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to-”

Elia sighed, her actions mirroring his, leaving her seat and getting closer to her lady-in-waiting. Her friend, his mind supplied. She reached out, cupping Sienna’s cheek, thumb swiping across her skin.

“You’ve bled for me, Sienna. Let me join you in your thinking for this once.”

Oberyn’s chest tightened. He’d seen Sienna grind herbs until her hands blistered, sit vigil when Elia’s fever raged, stare down Aerys’ madness without flinching. She had fought for his sister when even Rhaegar wouldn’t.

And now she stood there, shoulders almost bowing under the weight of a war she hadn’t asked for. She had come to his sister, and she had been ready for any reaction. He could be nothing but proud of his sister’s kindness, of her capacity to not blame the blameless.

“Perhaps you can fetch some flowers after we break our fast, to brighten my solar. I hear there are beautiful wild yellow carnations growing near the tents”, his sister said, drawing a confused sound from Ashara, but Sienna’s eyes held understanding.

“I will get some of those… And match them with chamomile flowers from the gardens. I’m sure the Lord and Lady Whent will not mind”, the stormlander said with a small smirk.

“Flower language, really?!” Ashara rolled her eyes after understanding, but she kept her smirk in place. Like most Dornish, she knew the meaning of flowers well.

Oberyn shouldn’t be surprised that Sienna also knew that symbolic language. But he was. Pleasantly so.

Disdain, disappointment and patience in adversity.

Should the prince be as observant as people claimed, he would certainly notice the message Elia was sending.

“Let your brother and Lord Stark know that you will meet them at noon”, Elia said after another moment, eyes looking from Sienna to Ashara, then to him. “You will take Oberyn with you, but Ashara will have to remain.”

Elia tied them all, it would be extremely odd to have them all together without her. Alarms would be raised, and they didn’t need that.

“We can talk about my other duties separately and you can tell them yourself”, the Dayne lady said with a nod, already close to Elia again and re-tying some of the laces in his sister’s dress. They had been studious about keeping Elia’s bump hidden- it was safer to wait until they were back in Dragonstone or, the gods forbid, King’s Landing, before announcing it to all of Westeros.

“I will see that the food is brought up”, Sienna said, her way of not using direct words to tell them she agreed. She curtsied- always showing respect, always acknowledging who Elia was.

Behind Elia, Ashara murmured something about Stannis’ planning, and his sister’s lips curled in a knowing smirk.

“Good. From what I have gathered, both Baratheon twins can be walking storms when they want”, her smile growing when Sienna’s reply was a snort.

“Ned is helping with that too”

Ah. Oberyn’s jaw twitched hearing the care in her voice. The Stark boy, he thought without an ounce of glee. Honourable and earnest to a fault,… And hers in all the ways that matter it seems.

For a heartbeat, something bitter coiled in his throat. Eyes tracking Sienna as she made her way to the door.

She hesitated for a moment when her eyes caught her own reflection in one of the looking glasses of the solar. Her gaze met his while she fixed her own hair as best as she could. The feeling dissolving.

This was about survival.

“We’ll ruin him,” Oberyn promised, voice low. He could feel the weight of his sister’s eyes on him, but he kept his gaze on the stormlander. “Not with swords. With whispers. Let Rhaegar choke on his own song.”

“And Lyanna?”

“We save her from herself”, it came from his sister.

A pause. Sienna’s eyes seeking his sister’s. Then, softer- “Thank you."

 “Don’t thank us yet, Little Storm. The game has only just begun. And we are going to play it as selfish people do.”

Elia snorted, he could feel the roll of her eyes.

“Ashara and I will wait in the bedroom, I have a letter to write”, she said and went through the door.

Sienna observed her, lost in thought for a moment, then her hand sought the door handle.

It only took him four strides to reach her, hand catching Sienna’s wrist before she could open the door enough and step into the hall. She frowned, turning to him. Oberyn pulled her close enough to smell the salt-and-steel scent of her.

“You have been guarding my sister since I met you”, he kept his voice low. Her cobalt eyes on his. “It is a debt I can’t repay. But I will help you in your endeavour”. Oberyn pressed his dagger into her palm- Dornish steel, its hilt wrapped in viper’s scales. “For when thinking isn’t enough”.

Her fingers closed around it without a second thought. A silent understanding passed between them- one he couldn’t name, not yet.

Sienna’s slight nod was enough to make his hand leave her wrist, the dagger disappearing between her skirt’s folds. She slid out of the door without a word, almost soundless- like a silent storm ready to unleash destruction.

Oberyn felt himself smirk- it would be very interesting to see who would survive the torrent.

-------------------

(Ned’s pov – Harrenhal Gardens)

Ned was waiting for them near the patch of gladiolus. Not that he knew a lot about flowers in general, but Stannis’ message had told him to meet with him and Sienna there. So, he had to ask around- the page boy guiding him there had proudly announced how the lady of the keep had procured the seeds of those specific flowers for the tournament.

“They are the flowers of warriors after all”, the boy had said while indicating an area with many hues of orange, pink, red and purple.

Ned had thanked him and watched him go. He couldn’t help but wonder if the choice of meeting place had been on purpose- knowing Stannis and Sienna, it was extremely likely. Leave it to the Storm Twins to be poetic when all Ned wanted was to bash his own head against a wall.

Lyanna had given him the slip last night and met with the prince- again.

He had watched her most of the night, only sleeping when the sky had been at its darkest. He thought she wouldn’t risk going at that time- how wrong he had been.

Her muddy boots in the morning had stopped his heart. Sienna’s small note had been all the confirmation he needed.

Still, he had not confronted his sister. He didn’t know how- not after the words they had said to one another the previous afternoon.

The tent flap tore open with a sound like ripping parchment. Stannis Baratheon stood silhouetted against the bright afternoon light, his grip vise-tight around Lyanna's wrist.

Ned surged to his feet, his sword clattering to the ground. He had been cleaning it, trying to feel less anxious. “Lya-?”

“Found her in the godswood”, Stannis bit out, shoving her forward. His eyes caught the oil stains darkening her fingers, the fresh blisters on her palms. “Wearing this”, he had pulled off the cloak he probably had forced her to put on.

The breeches were Benjen's- too short at the ankles, cinched tight with a leather belt. Lyanna yanked her arm free, chin lifted in defiance, but Ned saw the tremor in her shoulders.

Gods be good.

His voice came out colder than the Frostfang. “You rode in the lists.”

Silence.

Stannis made a sharp, disgusted noise. “Talk to her.” He left with a final glare, the tent flaps snapping behind him like a whip.

Ned had waited until the footsteps faded, his mind half frozen and half cartwheeling. When he spoke again, it was in the quiet, terrible tone that had always made Brandon stop mid-taunt. “You will look at me.”

Lyanna's grey eyes flashed up- wild and wounded. “I won't apologize for-”

“Enough”, the word cracked through the tent. Ned saw her flinch and forged ahead. “This isn't about Howland Reed.” He grabbed her hands, turning them palm-up. The calluses were raw, the skin shiny with salve. “This is about your damned pride”.

She had tried to pull away. "You don't understand-"

“I understand that Father was right”, his grip tightened. “You live in a dream, Lyanna. Where oaths are songs and consequences never come.”

The colour drained from her face. He should have stopped, but he couldn’t.

“Your loyalty is to yourself. Your love is to yourself.” His hands released her, while he had watched the words land like arrows. “Did you even think what would happen if-”

“What about you?” Lyanna's voice broke. She swiped at her eyes with oil-stained sleeves. “You're more falcon and stag than wolf these days. Following Robert like a trained hound. Mooning after his sister-”

Ned moved before he could have thought. His palm hit the tent pole with a thud that made the lanterns sway. Lyanna didn't cower, but her breath came quick and shallow.

For the first time in years, Ned sounded like Lord Rickard. “I am trying to keep you alive.”

She had been furious. She had refused to cry, even if her eyes had been full of tears. Then, the feast had happened, and Sienna had talked to her.

Gods, I should have taken her words about watching Lya more seriously, he thought while looking at the flowers.

The colours were so vivid together that his eyes hurt.

The low swishing of fabric made his gaze turn up. Sienna arrived, her skirts flowing with each step, her hair was free but for two thin braids at each side of her head that met in the back. She was walking arm in arm with Stannis, his face was like a grim spectre even if her expression seemed delighted.

Ned couldn’t fault Sienna for bringing Stannis into this mess- he wasn’t fool enough to think there were secrets between the Baratheon twins.

“Hi”, she said when they reached him, warming his heart.

“Hi”, he replied without thinking of all the costumes they should be keeping for the sake of appearance.

“I talked with Princess Elia, Ned”, her words almost stopped his heart- mouth opening and closing in shock. “I had to tell her…”

“It’s her husband after all”, Stannis deadpanned.

“She isn’t mad at Lyanna”, Sienna said with a small smile, keeping up the appearances- he knew. Whoever saw her from afar would think they were having a nice conversation. “But she won’t turn a blind eye to it either… Not after I told her what I heard last night in the godswood.”

Gods… No.

She probably saw something on his face. Next thing he knew, she had stepped closer to him, hand on his arm. Her eyes sought Stannis’ briefly before locking on his.

“We came up with a plan. We need to rotate watches on Lyanna”, Sienna “Until she sees reason, that is. Or, at least, you can take her back home”, she kept saying. “Stannis will take nights-”

“-because unlike some, I don’t require sleep.” Stannis said with his usual dry humour.

Ned nodded, his hand covering hers, grounding himself in the warmth of her skin. He could do with planning. It was better than thinking about what Sienna had seen the night before.

Then-

A boot scuffed stone. His eyes jumped in its direction, hand leaving Sienna’s and resting on the hilt of his sword.

“Am I late?” Prince Oberyn Martell sauntered to them, his grin sharp as the dagger at his hip.

Ned’s spine stiffened. The Dornish prince’s eyes dancing between them and lingering on Sienna – too long for Ned’s liking, too warm for his comfort – before sliding back to Ned.

“Ned, we need help”, her voice bringing his eyes back to her face. Eyes earnest, hand still on his arm, soothing. “I got help."

Oberyn Martell? Ned’s jaw tensed. She trusts the Red Viper with this? With Lyanna?

The prince smirked as if he’d heard the thought.

-------------------

(Sienna’s POV – Harrenhal Gardens)

The moment Oberyn had strolled into their hushed circle, Ned’s spine had gone rigid as steal. Now he stood there, jaw still clenched, fingers twitching toward his hilt every time the Dornish prince so much as breathed in her direction. Oberyn, of course, was delighted- flashing Ned that razor-edged grin, leaning just a fraction too close, murmuring comments laced with enough double meaning to make a septa blush.

Sienna pressed her lips together and focused on Stannis instead. Her twin’s face was its usual stormcloud, but at least he wasn’t about to start a duel in the middle of Harrenhal’s gardens.

“Ashara will handle Brandon as much as possible,” she said, cutting through Oberyn’s latest jape about Northerners and their ‘charming lack of subtlety’. “She was introduced to Lady Catelyn last night and they talked a little”, Sienna continued, remembering how the princess said it was fortuitous to have that opening to keep track of Brandon Stark during light hours. The last thing they needed was for the Stark heir to stumble on what was going on. “And if I know Ashara, she’ll have herself appointed as their chaperone by sunset today."

Stannis gave a curt nod. “Efficient. However, it means you will be tied to the Princess as her lady-in-waiting.”

“I will cover for the Little Storm whenever she needs to be elsewhere”, Oberyn said, eyes gleaming. “And when our wolf-girl inevitably slips her leash again, Ashara will be there to witness it. She’s trusted by us- it must be her.”

Sienna agreed, though Ned’s frown deepened.

“We don’t want them meeting again”, he ground out.

“No”, she said gently, eyes seeking his to give as much comfort as she could. “But wanting won’t stop her.”

“She did it once”, Stannis said bluntly, serious eyes capturing Ned’s before she could. “She will do it again- even if we make your little brother stop helping her.”

Ned’s nostrils flared, but before he could argue, Sienna stepped closer, her shoulder brushing his. She couldn’t fault him for any outburst, but he needed to remain calm. The only way to keep Lyanna away from Rhaegar for certain was to shackle her to one of them the whole day, and that was not possible. Not if they wanted to keep it from prying eyes- especially those with power to burn people on a whim.

“Which is why we have a plan. You and Stannis on watch, Ashara with Brandon, I will be on Robert and Lyanna’s duty when I’m not with the princess, Oberyn near Rhaegar.” She let her voice soften. “We will keep Lyanna safe, and we need to talk to Benjen… He must understand we need his help.”

Oberyn chuckled.

“The fate of the realm in the hands of a ten-and-three-year-old, I wonder what could go wrong”, his gaze flicked to Ned, wicked as a dagger’s edge.

Sienna resisted the urge to sigh.

Gods give me patience, because if you give me strength, I will strangle a prince.

“We’re done here”, Stannis said after a beat. There was nothing else they could do. Her twin turned to Oberyn, his voice flint. “Walk with me, Martell. If we’re seen walking in front them, it will look like chaperoning.”

His cobalt eyes looking into hers for a moment. Sienna could almost hear his thoughts. The best way to make people not notice something was to give them something else to latch on. And what better than the prospective betrothal of two nobles- a loving one.

Oberyn’s smirk was a blade in the sunlight, but he fell into step without protest- though not before glancing at Ned once more, his eyes alight with something between amusement and challenge.

Gods, he’s enjoying this.

Sienna looped her arm through Ned’s as they followed, her fingers curling into the rough wool of his sleeve. The warmth of him was a balm, the only steady thing in the storm of her thoughts.

Ned remained silent, his jaw tight. She didn’t need to see his face to know where his mind had gone- the way his fingers twitched against hers, the tension in his arm like a bowstring drawn too far.

She sighed, leaning into him just enough to press her shoulder against his.

“I’m glad we can at least have this”, she murmured. “A moment of peace in the middle of the storm.”

“Aye”, Ned’s voice was low, rough.

Ahead, Oberyn said something that made Stannis scowl. Ned’s grip tightening, making her sigh.

Sienna tilted her head, studying his profile- the furrow between his brows, the way his lips pressed into a thin line. She knew it was selfish to want him to appreciate this instant with her- his sister was in trouble, and she didn’t want to be aware of that. In trouble with the Crown Prince. Their talk had been long, with their semblance of a plan taking form. But it wasn’t perfect. To make matters worse, Stannis had once again told them to send word to Lord Rickard, and Prince Oberyn… Well, he was his own larger-than-life self.

Still… She wanted Ned to enjoy this with her- their first walk together under the eyes of strangers.

“You’re brooding.”

“I’m not.”

She laughed, soft and knowing. “You are. And I know why.”

Ned stiffened, but she pressed on before he could protest.

“You don’t trust him.”

Ned exhaled through his nose. “I trust your judgment”, he said carefully. “But he’s-”

“A viper?” she finished, arching a brow, eyes catching his. “Yes. But he’s our viper in this.”

Ahead, Oberyn glanced back again, his grin sharp enough to draw blood. Ned’s fingers flexed against hers.

Sienna squeezed his arm to reassure him, her voice dropping to a whisper only he could hear.

“He’s here because Princess Elia trusts him. He is a brother looking out for his sister, Ned”, she held his gaze, trying to make Ned see this another way. “Even if he is a snake, he would die for his sister and, in this, I trust him.” She hesitated, then forged ahead. “And he is the only one who can get close enough to Rhaegar without raising suspicion.”

The following silence was heavy, but he didn’t pull away. His jaw losing the tension.

She let her thumb trace the inside of his wrist, a continued plea. “This isn’t about favours or allegiances. It’s about keeping Lyanna safe.”

Ahead, Stannis muttered something about Dornish theatrics, and Oberyn’s laugh rang out, bright and mocking. Ned stared at Oberyn’s back for a beat longer, but after a moment, his shoulders eased slightly.

Then, he brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles and spreading warmth through her whole body.

“I trust you”, he said.

Sienna met his gaze and gave him the brightest smile she had.

Their plan was set. A fragile, desperate thing, but it was something. Even if Sienna felt they would fail miserably.

-------------------

The morning air was crisp as a new parchment when Sienna dragged Lyanna out of her tent towards the hawking grounds. She didn’t want anything to do with Sienna, but she had relented once they had reached the saddled-up horses. It had been a beautiful and hear-warming moment to see her change in demeanour when Robert had challenged her to a race. The fastest could choose their next sorting, he had said. And Sienna had worried Lyanna wouldn’t want to participate, but the competitive blood of the wolf had taken the best out of her.

Lyanna had spurred her horse, and it was all a blur of black, white and grey.

By the time Sienna and Stannis had reached them on their horses- because there was no hurry, their brother’s booming laughter was echoing across the field. Lyanna was slightly inclined on her horse towards him, her face flushed and eyes bright.

“Gods, let this work”, Sienna prayed under her breath. Her mind recalling his wine-stained grin from last night, and her hissed warnings about making Lyanna feel cared for and respected.

Robert was sprawled across a pile of furs, wine sloshing precariously in his cup. “Seven hells, sister, let a man celebrate his victories!”

Sienna snatched the cup from his hand and drained it in one go despite the urge she felt to turn it over his head.

“Your victory involves a serving girl from the kitchens and a stableboy who’s too curious”, she slammed the empty cup onto the table, breathing coming fast and hard. “Lyanna is a northerner, you oaf. She will gut you in your sleep if you continue to shame her like this.”

Robert waved a meaty hand, eyes dancing across the tent. “Brandon Stark whores twice as much as I do, and no one-”

“Brandon is an arrogant fool who doesn’t have a smart sister to tell him so”, Sienna snapped. She hated calling Lyanna less smart, but it wasn’t as if the current situation helped her case. “Don’t think I haven’t heard of his other idiocy- Barbrey Ryswell, really?!”, she glared at him. “Her father must be stupid if he thinks Rickard Stark will choose his daughter over a Tully alliance”.

Robert’s jaw dropped. "How in the hells-"

“Robert…”, she forced herself not to roll her eyes, but a smirk curled her lips. “Shadows have eyes and ears, big brother.”

He stared at her- then burst into laughter, dragging her into a one-armed hug that smelled of sweat and sour wine.

“Gods, I’d marry you if we weren’t related.”

“As if I would ever consider that even if we were not tied by blood.” Sienna elbowed him, but her voice softened. “Just... try. For me. And for yourself- you’re better than this. Lyanna deserves your best, your future trueborn children as well”, she said emphasizing the word.

She loved her niece, Mya, and she would have loved to see her grow up in Storm’s End. But Robert needed to be more careful- baseborn children were not kindly received in most places. Sienna had a feeling Lyanna would not want Mya under her roof, at least not in the beginning of her marriage with Robert.

Her brother sighed, ruffling her hair like he had when they were children.

“Fine. But only because you ask so prettily”, he told her with a small smile.

She’d spent half the night replaying her talk with Robert in her head. The other half, she had spent praying to all gods for help.

Now, watching him adjust the jesses on his gyrfalcon with surprising care after leaving his horse, she dared to hope. He had not tried to help Lyanna off her horse, but merely said he was going to hold the reigns for her. Then, he had asked about her favourite places to ride in the North beyond Winterfell’s wolfswood while his falcons were brought by their keepers- Sienna had sent them there ahead of their party. Lyanna had told Robert about the ways and plateaus to the north of the winter keep, about the icy roads and bountiful woods.

“Maybe we can travel around in the north and, then, through the east coast after we marry…”, he had said with a big smile, eyes still on his bird and failing to see the way Lyanna’s back stiffened.

At her lack of response, Robert glanced towards her, noticing how she looked straight at the gyrfalcon and – clearly – interpreting her apprehension wrongly.

“You’ve never handled a bird like this before, have you?” Robert asked Lyanna, his voice a bit too loud but lacking its usual tavern-room bravado.

“We have falcons in the North”, she replied fast, acidly.

Sienna bit her own lip, waiting for her own gyrfalcon beside her twin. She had been so happy that Stannis had brought Bronte- it had been a hard to leave him in Storm’s End, but it was the right decision. Sienna barely had time for herself as the princess’ lady-in-waiting, much less to take care of her bird.

Stannis had promised to take care of Bronte, and he had kept his word as with all his promises.

“Aye, but not like this one”, Robert hefted the hooded bird of prey toward Lyanna, his grin lopsided. “She’s a vicious little thing. Reminds me of you.”

Stannis made a sound like a strangled cat. Sienna kicked his boot.

Lyanna eyed the bird, then Robert- her distrust warring with curiosity.

“How do you keep her from biting?”

“You don’t.” Robert winked. “You just make sure she bites your enemies instead.”

Oh. Sienna bit her lip. That was… almost charming.

Ned would have loved to see this. He would have felt the same fragile spark of hope tightening her chest when hearing Lyanna’s reluctant laugh and observing Robert’s uncharacteristic patience as he adjusted the jesses on her wrist. But duty had demanded Ned stay behind.

The decision had been made late last night, after the feast where Lyanna sat mute as a statue, her knife scoring restless lines into the table, while Benjen glared at Ned like he had betrayed some sacred oath. Ashara had been the only one to pierce the boy’s defences, building up onto the rapport she had with him the night before, making japes about Northern ale and Dornish reds. Across the hall, Oberyn had played his own part- perched on the royal dais beside Elia, spinning some tale of family affairs to excuse the princess’ lack of ladies that evening.

Afterward, Ned had pulled Sienna aside while Stannis guarded them, his voice low and raw. “Benjen thinks we’re treating her like a prisoner”. She’d seen the guilt in his eyes, the way his fingers flexed as if already missing the weight of a sword and the exertion of the training yard. In the solar, she’d laid out the new plan to Elia and Oberyn- Ashara would take Benjen, she would handle Robert and Lyanna- and watched Ashara’s mouth curl in quiet triumph. “He’ll listen to me”, she’d promised, though Sienna noted how she didn’t specify how.

Now, watching Lyanna’s guarded interest in Robert’s falcon, Sienna allowed herself one measured breath of optimism. The pieces were moving. Not perfectly, but precisely. And if Benjen’s loyalty came at the price of Ned’s pride? Well. Some costs couldn’t be measured in advance. Let Ashara work her magic there while she-

“You’re scheming”, Stannis muttered, getting closer to her.

“I’m praying”, she half lied.

His sidelong glance said he knew better.

Lyanna’s laugh rang out – sharp, surprised – as Robert demonstrated the falcon’s kill dive with exaggerated arm motions. The bird, unimpressed, nipped his thumb.

“Still think this is a lost cause?” Sienna whispered, petting Bronte’s wing with care and making low kissing sounds to him.

Stannis exhaled through his nose, because of her words or loving sounds to her gyr, she didn’t know.

“If the realm depended on Robert’s charm, I'd have thrown myself into Shipbreaker Bay years ago”, he grunted, but he didn’t say they should stop trying. The longer Robert and Lyanna spent together and bonded, the better.

And when Lyanna reluctantly accepted the falcon from Robert’s hands, her fingers brushing his just once – quick as a heartbeat – Sienna clasped her free hand on her twin’s arm.

Let this be the turn we need. Let me be wrong about the tide.

-------------------

(Ashara’s POV – Harrenhal Training Yard)

The sun was still stretching itself over Harrenhal’s towers, the light golden and soft, not yet the white glare that would beat against the tents by midday. Ashara leaned against one of the carved balustrades overlooking the training yard, the stone still cool beneath her palms. She watched a sullen Benjen Stark slam his training sword against a dummy, all clumsy force and fury of a changeling- not child, certainly not man, while Ser Brynden Tully circled behind him like a hound bred for discipline.

The sight made her lips curl- not quite into a smile, not quite into anything kind.

He is good, this Blackfish, she thought. Not as graceful as a Dornish duelist, but solid in the way northern mountains were said to be. No wasted motion. Every correction came as a short, clipped word or a flick of his boot to fix Benjen’s stance. Ashara didn’t pretend she knew much about Riverland politics, but she knew this much from her observations in the last few days: Ser Brynden made order a religion.

She tilted her face to the rising sun, letting its warmth kiss her cheek. It was too pale, too harsh on the eyes. Gods… She missed the Dorne light- the weight of it. The burn it left on your skin if you stayed out for too long. The kiss of sun through silk veils… She missed it all.

Especially now, surrounded by banners and knights and the promise of songs,… Harrenhal was beautiful for it flowers and waters, but everything felt dull around the edges. Sienna said it was the dampness. Ashara thought it was the weight of too many oaths in the air. Both knew it was the numbing fear of Aerys’ madness, of Rhaegar’s delirium,… And of Lyanna’s delusion.

She had been worrying about the first two since Elia was betrothed to Rhaegar, now she also had the third one to anguish about.

Stupid, reckless people. They would kill them all.

Catelyn Tully stood beside her, hands folded neatly, gaze dancing between her betrothed and uncle. Oblivious to the uneasiness Ashara felt. Ah, to be protected from other’s plays… Ashara missed that. She knew the trout had been wary of her at first – too forward, too foreign – but a bit time and proximity worked wonders when one was among strangers and somebody offered empathy. That, and the fact that Ashara had laughed softly at one of Brandon’s more idiotic boasts the day before during their stroll around the gardens – away from the gladiolus, and had promptly told Catelyn that “you’ll never get peace with him, but you’ll get plenty of stories.”

The redhead had smiled. Genuinely.

“Your uncle’s kind,” Ashara said after gazing at Catelyn’s face for a moment, gesturing toward Brynden. “Firm, but not cruel. It’s a rare balance.”

Catelyn glanced over, a little surprised.

“He’s never liked babysitting boys too young for battle. But I think…” Her voice dropped. “I think he sees something in Benjen. Or perhaps in his sister.”

Ah. So even the Riverlands had caught the scent of scandal.

Ashara tucked a strand of night raven hair behind her own ear. “He sees a storm, then. And you Tullys are so very fond of your fish- perhaps a flood makes you sentimental.”

Catelyn laughed, to her credit. “Or practical.”

When the final dummy toppled with a wet thud, Brynden ended the training. Benjen wiped his brow, breathing hard, his shirt sticking to his chest. Still restless. Still furious. But less so.

Brynden passed them with a nod. Not a word. A brush of his gaze over Ashara, unreadable, and then he was walking away with Catelyn and Brandon that had also finished his training with Ned- off to take refreshments and guard the future Lady Stark from her betrothed’s very bold hands.

Ashara waited until they turned the corner. Then she descended, her dress flowing around her legs.

Benjen was sitting on a barrel’s edge, drinking water like he meant to drown in it. Ashara didn’t approach straight on. She angled herself into his periphery, crouched nearby to pluck a stray grass blade from her boot.

“I’ve seen scorpions with less bite than you this morning,” she drawled, lilac eyes sparkling in jape.

Benjen snorted, not looking in her direction.

“If you’re here to scold me too, don’t bother”, he said, his posture half turned against Ned’s direction.

“Seven forbid I waste my breath on moral lessons,” she said, standing and dusting her hands. “But I do admire your aim. That dummy had its arm nearly severed. Were you picturing someone in particular?”

He didn’t answer, grey eyes flickering to his brother, which was as good as a yes.

“You’re angry. That’s fair”, she said while her hip rested on the barrel beside his. “But what are you going to do with it? Stay furious while others fix things? Or help the ones who are trying?”

Benjen’s jaw twitched. Ashara wondered if that was a Stark trait. She had seen it in all his siblings in the last few days.

“Lyanna says no one listens to her”, he said finally, the pure indignation for his sister – the one he adored the most – was endearing. It was so very similar to her love for Arthur when they were mere babes.

“Lyanna screams into storms and expects the rain to obey”, Ashara tilted her head. “That doesn’t mean we stop building shelters.”

He looked to her, finally. His eyes weren’t Ned’s- too sharp at the corners, too young still. But they had that same wolf-shadow under them now. The one that meant he understood exactly how bad things might get.

“You want me to spy on her. To be another of her captors. It’s not fair”, voice breaking as it often did with changelings.

“No, it is not”, she agreed, holding his gaze. “Life isn’t fair, if it was, a married man would not be straying from his wife, would he?”

His breath left him as if she had punched his stomach. Good, that had been her intention. He needed to see the problem from another perspective. Ashara pressed on.

"Your sister thinks this is a song. But when dragons fight over prey, it's the lands that burn. Ask your Tully friends how many smallfolk died the last time Targaryens turned on each other." She observed his face lose all colour, even with his blood still high from the training. “We want you to watch her,” she said, gentler. “And be the brother she needs, not the accomplice she thinks she wants.”

Benjen stared at the ground, shoulders falling inward. Ashara sighed, softened. He was too young, he shouldn’t be carrying this weight.

“You’re not the villain in this, Benjen. But you could be the reason she survives it”, his knuckles whitened around the waterskin. For a heartbeat, she thought he might throw it. Then his shoulders slumped back down.

And without waiting for agreement or argument, she turned and left him there, because sometimes letting someone choose was more powerful than any order. She had learned that from Sienna. And from Elia.

She glanced in Ned’s way and nodded slightly- they couldn’t pressure the young Stark too much at once.

And gods willing, Benjen Stark would learn it too- before the fire came.

-------------------

(Sienna’s POV – Harrenhal Library)

The hour of the owl found Harrenhal’s library steeped in the kind of silence that clung to the bones. Sienna traced the spine of a crumbling Valyrian bestiary, its gilded title flaking beneath her fingertips. Outside, the last drunken revelers had staggered to their beds, but here, the only sounds were the whisper of Stannis’ quill and the restless drag of her own fingers against oak.

Just that late afternoon, she had laughed with Robert over the falcons they’d flown and the targets she’d struck dead-on – genuinely – only to freeze like a startled doe when Rhaegar took up his harp at the feast. Sienna had watched from the high table, her goblet of watered wine untouched, as the girl’s knuckles whitened around her fork. The prince’s song had been some maudlin thing about winter roses, his gaze lingering on the Stark contingent like a man reading omens in entrails. And Lyanna-

Gods.

She’d been worse than defiant. She’d been transfixed.

The arrow trials had gone well, or so Stannis had told her- between glares at Robert and the muttered complaint that Benjen needed a proper weapons master if he was to ever shoot straight. Ned had added, with that faint hope in his voice, that Lyanna had looked more herself today. She’d even bantered with her betrothed. “You should have seen her”, he’d said. “Almost happy.”

But then the feast came. The King’s anger over the vanishing knight had rippled through the hall, his voice rising in cracked fury until the food itself seemed to go cold. Rhaegar, always the pious son, had risen to sing- something soft, something mournful. It stilled Aerys for a time, though Sienna suspected it only buried the madness deeper.

Lyanna had watched the prince with the expression of a girl chasing a ghost through a snowfield. When Sienna caught her eyes drifting toward Rhaegar and saw the slight nod he gave her across the hall, she’d felt the weight of failure settle in her gut. By then, Robert was already on his third cup of wine, laughing too loudly at Brandon’s jokes.

It felt as if the fragile progress they’d made earlier had never happened. As if a she-wolf’s favour could be held by charm and birdsong alone.

Sienna had left with Princess Elia and Ashara before the cheese was served.

Across the library, Stannis turned a ledger page with deliberate precision. The candlelight carved hollows beneath his cheekbones, making him look more spectre than man. He hadn’t spoken since she’d slipped inside, but the set of his shoulders said enough.

Sienna exhaled through her nose, trying to calm down the may strings of thought in her head.

 “She was warmer to him today. Until the singing started.”

 “Robert celebrated by emptying three flagons before the third course”, Stannis didn’t look up.

“A marked improvement from five.”

“He vomited in a suit of armour.”

“At least it wasn’t Lord Royce’s lap this time.”

A muscle jumped in Stannis’ jaw. The names in the tome spines blurring as Sienna blinked away exhaustion.

Elia had retired early, her hands trembling as Ashara helped her into bed. “I miss Rhaenys”, she’d confessed, her voice thin as parchment. “She’d laugh at all this pageantry. My brave girl.” The words had lodged in Sienna’s ribs like shrapnel.

Now, watching Stannis tally grain shipments like they might hold the answer to this madness, she wondered if this was how queens drowned- not in fire or fury, but in the quiet spaces between other people’s follies.

“I think we need to break the betrothal”, she said quietly, not daring to look back at the books, eyes lost in the delicate carvings in the shelf in front of her.

“Robert will not like it”, Stannis said at last.

Sienna turned a rusted key on the bookshelf. “No. He’ll be heartbroken.”

The quill stilled. Stannis’ eyes – Baratheon blue, like hers, like Renly’s, like his – lifted with uncharacteristic heat. “You say that as if it’s trivial.”

Ah.

Of course he was worried. Beneath all that granite disapproval, Stannis loved Robert in his own thorny way. Loved him enough to endure the drinking, the whoring, the endless loudness that set her twin’s teeth on edge.

“A broken heart is better than a broken kingdom,” she said, softer now. The key came free with a click. Inside the compartment lay a bottle of Dornish red and two goblets- her own private rebellion against Harrenhal’s preference for Arbor wines.

Stannis watched her pour with the air of a man witnessing a minor sacrilege.

“Lyanna isn’t drawn to Rhaegar’s politics. She’s drawn to the escape.”

“And what does our prince offer, if not gilded chains?”, she asked.

“Poetry. Prophecy.” Stannis accepted the goblet with a grimace. “The delusion that she’s special enough to rewrite the rules. She wants to be free from the world she was born in, she believes Rhaegar will let her be whatever – whoever – she wants to be.”

“Then she’s a fool,” Sienna said. “He doesn’t offer freedom. He trades one cage for another and calls it destiny.”

She swirled her wine, watching the candlelight fracture in the crimson depths. She’d seen the way Lyanna’s breath hitched when Rhaegar spoke of destiny, the way her chin lifted as if she alone held the key to some grand design. It was the same look Robert got when boasting of his conquests- that desperate, shining need to be more than another lord in another castle.

“If we break the betrothal,” she said slowly, “at least the cage won’t be Robert’s.”

Stannis’ fingers tapped the ledger- once, twice. “You think that will stop her? She is chasing something that doesn’t exist.”

"I know”, she almost hissed. “You know, even Lyanna knows. Still, she wants”, a scream was lodged in her throat. “Aerys has burned nobles for laughing too loud. What do you think he'll do when Robert – grandson of a Targaryen princess – demands justice for his stolen, or worse, spoilt bride?”

A beat of silence.

“We should have written to her father after all.”

“Ned asked me not to”, she sighed.

Stannis’s face turned colder than the stone beneath them. “Ned Stark is not the Lord of Winterfell.”

She knew he was right. She knew it in her bones. But Ned’s had voice echoed in her memory the past days: “Give me time, Sienna. Let me try first.” And she had wanted to give him that. Had wanted to believe theycould mend this quietly before it became a full-blown storm.

“If we go to Lord Rickard now,” she said softly, fingers tightening against her cup. The taste of wine becoming way too bitter in the back of her tongue. “Lyanna will never forgive Ned. And he… he loves her too much to lose her like that.”

Stannis didn’t move. Didn’t blink. But something shifted. A tension, maybe. A breath held too long.

“Love won’t stop a war,” he said.

And Sienna saw it again. The tightness around his mouth wasn’t just frustration. It was fear. Not for the realm, not even for Lyanna. For Robert. For the brother who drove him mad with drink and pride and bluster- and who he would kill for without hesitation.

Sienna set down her goblet, breathing deeply.

“Then we make Robert renounce it first. Publicly. If he’s the one to end it, her honour stays intact. Rhaegar might even lose interest- what use is a girl with no political value to a prince?”, even as she said it, she knew it was senseless. The way Rhaegar talked to Lyanna… There was nothing rational or about political value there.

Stannis snorted. “You think Robert capable of that kind of sacrifice?”

“Not for duty.” She met his gaze. “For us? He might.”

A gamble. But Sienna had spent a lifetime learning how to wield her brothers’ love- Robert’s blazing and uncomplicated, Stannis’ grudging but unshakable.

“And if it doesn’t work? We don’t have much time, soon the tourney will end, and we will go our separate ways.” The candle guttered, casting shadows across Stannis’ face.

“We will have to keep eyes on them”, shadows- was what she meant. From his gaze, she was sure he understood. “If it fails… Then we write to Winterfell.” She reached for the wine again, her thumb brushing the dagger at her belt- Oberyn’s gift, cool against her skin. “And pray the raven arrives before Lyanna does something irrevocable.”

Stannis exhaled through his nose. For a moment, he looked every inch their father- Steffon Baratheon’s same stubborn jut of the chin, the same way of holding the world at bay with sheer force of will. Then he lifted his goblet in a mock toast.

“To Robert’s broken heart, then.”

Sienna clinked her cup against his. “And the realm’s survival.”

She knew that she did not have to tell him anything else. Stannis knew the way her mind worked- he had realized from the first moment what was at risk. She had wanted to fix it all, but now… Now she needed to cut their losses as much as possible, to save as many as possible.

Sacrifices might have to be made, and Sienna would be damned if those ended up being their loved ones.

Chapter Text

(Sienna’s POV – Under Harrenhal Kitchens)

The air in Harrenhal’s underbelly tasted of damp stone and charred meat, the torchlight bleeding like a wound against the walls. Sienna stood motionless in a forgotten archway, her shoulders braced against the chill- not from the cold, but from the absence of sound. Above, the revelry of the feast was a distant roar; down here, even the rats moved quietly.

Maris materialized from the dark, her robes the colour of old blood and older ink. The scent of myrrh and grave-soot clung to her, a warning to those that ever crossed her, a relic of her past among the Silent Sisters. Now, she served a different kind of silence.

“Four Reach lords,” Maris murmured, voice low and unhurried, “met in Lord Rowan’s tent. No squires. No songs. Only names: The Bold. The Lion. The Harp.”

Sienna’s thumb traced the pommel of her dagger- Oberyn’s gift, but her sharpening. The harp. Rhaegar’s favourite weapon and one of his monikers for her many eyes and ears. Of course.

“The prince?” she asked, though she already knew.

“Absent.” A pause. “They spoke of songs with more verses than they’d been taught.”

A bitter laugh was lodged in Sienna’s throat. Rhaegar had meant this tourney to be his coronation in all but name- a stage for whispered alliances, for lords to bend toward him like sunflowers chasing dawn. Then Aerys had lumbered in, a dragon with rotting wings, and sent them all scurrying.

“He visited the godswood the past two nights. Left alone”, Maris told her, voice even lower.

Sienna allowed herself a fraction of relief. Ned and Stannis’ doing- keeping Lyanna guarded and occupied as much as they could. But time was slipping through their fingers like sand.

The torch flickered. Sienna’s shadow own writhed on the wall, making her arms look like twisting antlers. She glanced toward the stairwell. No one. Still safe.

“I’ve been distracted,” she admitted, more to herself than Maris. Lyanna’s recklessness, Ned’s pleading, Stannis’s cold calculation- they’d pulled her gaze from the board. But the game hadn’t stopped.

Maris tilted her head, the torchlight carving hollows beneath her eyes. “The shadows didn’t falter, my lady. We watched while you fought other battles.”

A rebuke and a reassurance. Sienna exhaled through her nose. “The Riverlands?”

“Hoster Tully wades in shallow waters.” Slow and loyal. “Blackwood prays to old gods and older grudges.” Ah, cautious and wary of dragon fire. “Frey-”

“-counts coins and corpses,” Sienna finished. She knew the tune. Knew, too, the dissonance beneath it: Rhaegar’s careful symphony of rebellion, now warped by his father’s madness. And in the eye of it all, Lyanna Stark, chasing her heart desires like a child chasing fireflies.

“And Brandon Stark?” Sienna asked, though she already dreaded the answer.

 “Attended two meetings”, Maris’s mouth thinned. “Seems more interested in trailing Dornish ladies. The Star’s name came up. Often.”

A gamble, that- keeping Ashara so close. But the Dayne focus was fixed on the younger Starks now. Small mercies.

“The Spider?” Sienna asked.

“Watching the king closely.” Maris continued, shifting in place- the parchment in her sleeve crackling. “For now, we’re beneath his notice.”

For now. Sienna’s jaw tightened. That meant too little, and too much. She’d spent many months learning the steps of the spider’s dance- how to move unseen, how to make even whispers useful. But Rhaegar threatened to upend the board entirely with his ice and fire obsession

Elia knows, she thought. The princess had said nothing, but Sienna had seen the way her fingers tightened around Rhaenys’ swaddling cloth whenever Rhaegar muttered of a promised prince.

“My brothers?”

“The Falcon asks after the Stag’s shadow,” Maris said. Jon Arryn’s code name, fitting for a man who preferred to strike from heights. “The next meeting may have a seat for him. Less so the Storm.”

Stannis, then. Robert would rage if he knew he’d been overlooked- but Robert was too loud for whispered councils.

“Tomorrow,” Sienna said softly, blinking the tiredness away, “the prince will win the joust.” It was as predictable as the sun setting in the west. “I wonder who he will crown with winter roses.”

Maris didn’t flinch. “And you?”

Sienna’s hand fell from the dagger. I will be watching. But this time, she wouldn’t just watch.

“I’ll make sure the Sun won’t pick up the petals of a fallen crown alone.”

She watched as her shadow melted into the dark, the torch sputtering near her. Then, she turned, boots silent on stone while she also vanished in the dark.

-----------------

(Lyanna’s POV – Last Tournament Day)

The morning air was thick with the scent of trampled grass and hot metal, the distant clang of armorers at work ringing like a war drum in Lyanna’s blood. She watched the squires polish the prince’s black plate, their hands quick and reverent as acolytes tending an altar. The rubies embedded in the breastplate caught the light, winking like droplets of fresh blood.

That could be me, she thought, flexing her sore fingers beneath her sleeves. If I’d been born a boy.

If the world were fair. If the gods had given her anything but this restless, roaring heart and a future as narrow as a birthing bed.

Benjen shifted beside her, kicking at a loose stone. “Robert looked like a storm given flesh in the melee,” he said, too casually.

Lyanna hummed, remembering the way her betrothed had swung his Warhammer- all thunderous laughter and unchecked fury, the crowd screaming his name like devouts to a god. For one wild, giddy moment, she’d imagined herself fighting at his side, their shoulders pressed together as they carved through a circle of foes. Equal. Partners. The thought sent a strange, hot thrill through her chest- before cold sense returned. Robert would never see her as anything but a pretty prize to mount above his hearth.

The memory rose unbidden.

Robert finding her after the melee, his face still smeared with dirt and glory, the crowd’s cheers clinging to him like summer heat. He’d pressed something into her hands- not flowers, not some trinket meant for a lady’s sewing box, but the dagger he’d taken from the last knight he felled. Its hilt was carved with a snarling weasel, the steel sharp enough to draw blood- the blade nicked from combat. House Haigh’s sigil. One of the knights who’d tormented Howland.

“A she-wolf should have teeth,” he’d said, grinning as if he’d given her vengeance itself.

For one breathless moment, she’d loved him for it- for seeing the wildness in her and not flinching.

Her fingers had curled around the hilt, torn between fury and a traitorous thrill. She’d already beaten the Haigh knight in the joust, left him whimpering in the mud. Had Robert even asked why the knight yielded so quickly? Or did he just assume the victory was his to bestow?

The whispers began before she could speak. “A betrothal gift fit for a wildling bride.” “Doesn’t he fear she will slit his throat in their marriage bed?” The weight of their stares turned the steel to ice in her hands. She’d thrust it back at him. “Keep it. You’ll need it more than I when the next your whores come calling.”

Robert’s laughter had died like a guttered candle.

Now, her empty palm itched. She hadn’t kept the dagger- but she remembered the weight of it. The rightness.

She was upset still. Robert didn’t truly see her. To him, she was a song to sing when he was drunk on victory and ale. A broodmare with hips for heirs and a smile to flatter his pride.

Unlike Rhaegar.

He listened. Or at least, he made her feel like he did. With him, it wasn’t japes and jugs and jesters tumbling in the mud. It was prophecy and poetry; dreams and destinies whispered like secrets between two souls who mattered. He spoke of her as if she were part of something greater- a song yet unwritten, a spark in the long night. With him, she could be more than a lord’s daughter, more than a womb. She could choose.

The past week had been a blur of hissed arguments and searing glares. Ned’s voice, raw with betrayal – “Father was right. Your loyalty is to yourself.” – still rang in her ears. Sienna’s watchful gaze, heavy as a collar around her throat. How could they not understand? She’d seen how Sienna looked at Ned when she thought no one noticed- like he’d strung the stars between Winterfell’s towers. Why was their love allowed to bloom while hers was trampled underfoot?

She ignored the voice that sounded too much like her late mother: Because Ned would never make Sienna his whore.

The night before, Oberyn Martell had cornered her in the shadow of the feast hall, his smile sharp as a viper’s fang. “Tell me, little wolf- do you enjoy being his third choice? First came Elia, but even my sister is next to the realm.” Benjen had shoved him away, spitting curses, but the words festered like a wound.

The truth was that she didn’t know. But she wasn’t his wife, bound to his duty. She wasn’t Elia, fading in a tower while he chased songs. And wasn’t that freedom?

Now, as the trumpets blared, Lyanna touched the hidden pocket sewn into her skirts. Three winter roses pressed between the pages of Songs of the Long Night, each a promise as fragile as dawn. The latest had appeared on her pillow at first light, its stem coiled with a silver ribbon. Her fingers brushed the book now, remembering the velvety petals, the needle-sharp thorns. Like everything worth wanting.

She’d been so lost in thought she’d barely noticed the final tilt. Ser Barristan’s fall – the thunderclap of his armour hitting the sand – had barely registered. Nor the way Aerys lurched to his feet, clapping like a child at a mummer’s show as he declared Rhaegar champion. The prince had knelt to receive his prize: a circlet of winter roses, their petals blue as twilight. So like the ones he had gifted her. The ones she’d tucked away like stolen secrets.

The crowd’s roar dulled to a murmur as Rhaegar passed his wife’s dais, the winter rose crown glistening in his hands like frozen fire. Princess Elia’s knuckles whitened around her goblet, her dark eyes brimming with something that made Lyanna’s stomach twist- not anger, not even sorrow, but pity.

“For the queen of love and beauty.”

Rhaegar’s voice was soft, his fingers lingering as he offered the crown. Lyanna’s breath caught. This was the moment the songs would remember: the prince’s devotion, the crowd’s gasp, the way the sunlight would crown her for once-

But it wasn’t his gaze she felt.

Sienna, across the dais. Not angry. Not even surprised. Just… resigned. As if she’d known this would happen, as if she’d watched this tragedy play out a hundred times before.

A crown today, a pyre tomorrow, the words slithered down Lyanna’s spine like ice, a mix of her mother and the stormlander’s voices. Suddenly, the roses in her pocket felt like chains.

She laughed, sudden and bright as cracking ice.

“How kind! But surely you mistake me for the birthday girl?” With a flourish, she swept the crown toward Lord Whent’s blushing daughter. “We Northern maidens all look alike, I hear.”

The crowd erupted once more. Robert’s booming laugh shook the stands while Oberyn’s smirk cut like a dagger. Only Rhaegar’s eyes betrayed him- a flash of dragon fire before he bowed with lethal grace.

Good, she thought wildly as he retreated. Let him ache.

But even as she smiled and curtsied, her pulse hammered against her ribs. She had thrown away something- what, she couldn’t yet name. When she glanced back at Elia, the princess was whispering to Sienna, their fingers laced together beneath the table. A silent understanding passed between them, swift and wordless as birds taking flight.

And for the first time in days, Lyanna didn’t feel chosen. Or as if she ever had power to choose.

She felt like prey that had wandered into the hunter’s snare, mistaking the glint of the trap for sunlight.

----------------

(Sienna’s POV – One of Harrenhal’s Dark Corridors)

The feast to mark the end of melee and joust activities wouldn’t begin for another hour, but the weight of the coming days pressed against Sienna’s temples like a too-tight circlet. King Aerys had decreed the royal party remain until the final celebration- four more days of mummery, four more nights of watching Rhaegar’s gaze cut toward Lyanna like a blade seeking its sheath.

She slipped into a deserted corridor, the stone walls muffling the distant clamour of servants preparing the hall. For a moment, she simply leaned against a door to a empty supply room, eyes closed, breathing in the silence-

Thunk.

Her forehead met the oak. Once. Twice.

Between the impacts, her mind recalled the meeting she had with Robert that afternoon. He had been livid because of what Rhaegar did. Sienna was just glad he didn’t know everything that was going on.

 “That dragon cunt thinks he can slight me like this? Crown my betrothed like she’s some-”

“She rejected it,” Sienna snapped, too tired for diplomacy. “Be angry for Princess Elia, if you must. Not your pride.”

A beat. Then, uncharacteristically quiet: “Is she… is the princess alright?”

Sienna had blinked. Robert’s concern for a woman he barely knew was so foreign in his voice that it disarmed her. Then he’d gripped her shoulders, his thumbs pressing into her collarbones like he could imprint safety there: “I know you think me dumb, but I see the danger here. I hate that you’re in the middle of it all. I can’t wait to have you away from dragons.”

She’d almost laughed. Away from dragons. As if he wouldn’t start a war with one because of his frail ego.

“Then show Lyanna you see her,” she insisted. “Not as your betrothed. As a person. Or your marriage will be miserable, brother. It would be kinder to break the betrothal.”

He flinched- not at the idea, but at the toll it would take on their family. “Never,” he growled. “Not like this.”

Thunk.

“If you are attempting to summon a woodswitch,” drawled a familiar voice, “I’d recommend bloodier methods.”

Sienna didn’t turn.

“Go away, Oberyn.” She was so tired she didn’t even try to address him by his title.

Still, she felt more than saw him pushing off the opposite wall- all lazy grace and sharp amusement.

“And miss the spectacle of a Baratheon trying to headbutt sense into the world?” His dagger flashed as he spun it between his fingers. Almost a twin to the one he gifted her days before. It made Sienna wonder how many of those the Dornish had. “You’ll crack your skull before the wood.”

“A fair trade,” she muttered, still pressing her forehead to the door. “She refused the crown. In front of half the realm. That should mean she has come to her senses-”

“And yet, she still looks at Rhaegar like he is the reason the sun rises in the east every morrow”, he completed with a snort. Sienna turned her head to look at him. “Elia told me that Ashara saw them.”

Sienna closed her eyes, remembering.

 Maris had whispered in her ear less than two hours before, urgent as a blade drawn. “The dragon prince is moving toward the godswood. He sent word to the wolf girl. The silent wolf seemed distracted, he isn’t guarding her as before.”

Sienna had moved without a thought, seeking Ashara. The Dornishwoman had slipped into the trees like smoke. Ashara later recounted how she and – to Sienna’s worry – the Blackfish had watched Rhaegar weave his honeyed lies. “He appeared out of thin air beside me, Sienna. After, when we were back to the keep, he said he saw me enter the trees and worried I might find trouble”, she had told Sienna, a little too unconcerned for the stormlander’s liking.

But she didn’t have the mind to care overly much about that. After Ashara told her of Rhaegar’s soothing tone when he talked to Lyanna, praising her selflessness and bravery at gifting her crown to a small girl. Not recognizing the rejection. Telling her how the realm was fortunate to have her, how they had an important journey ahead.

“The prince of prophecy,” Ashara had spat afterward, “is just a man who’d rather steal a girl than honour his wife.”

Sienna felt the frustration like a physical force in her head. Which is probably why she had ended up in that position- trying to figure out who would give in first, the door or her skull. She could imagine Stannis’ scowl and Robert’s amused laugh if they caught her like that.

“She is rejecting Robert too”, she sighed but straightened, rolling her shoulders. “We can’t force her heart, but we can’t let her-”

“Can’t let me what?” Lyanna’s voice cut through the shadows.

They turned. Lyanna stood in the middle of the hallway, arms crossed, the torchlight illuminating her face, giving it sharp angles while the dark hid the still rounded, child-loke features.

“Ah…” Oberyn smirked “The wolf-girl emerges with her trusted companion”, he said with a nod to Benjen, who remained farther down the corridor. “Tell me, was the prince very disappointed that you gave his roses away?”

“I didn’t want the crown”, Lyanna’s glare was like the frozen lakes of the North. “I gave it away, didn’t I? In front of him, in front of everybody!”

And I don’t know whether to thank you or rage against you for that, Sienna thought. It had been extremely reckless to rebuke the crown prince like that, especially in front of Aerys. Yet, Sienna had been grateful. Hopeful, even.

Until Maris let her know the prince and the wolf-girl were going to meet. For all her rebuffing, Lyanna still wanted Rhaegar.

“But you wanted him”, Sienna said. No mercy. “You still do.”

A silence. Lyanna’s defiance flickered- just for a breath.

“You think I’m just a thing to him?” Her pivot almost made Sienna smile. Lyanna didn’t want to talk about her feelings- fine, she could work with that.

“I think he would set you on fire or drown you in freezing waters if he thought it would fulfil his delirious mind”, Sienna pressed, taking a step towards the Stark girl. “He doesn’t want you, Lyanna. He wants what he thinksyou can give him.

Another step.

The movement made the daggers at her belt catch the torchlight- Oberyn’s slender Myrish blade with its viper’s fang pommel, and the heavier one beside it, its hilt carved with a snarling weasel.

Lyanna’s breath hitched.

Sienna followed her gaze to Robert’s gift- the Haigh dagger she had reclaimed after Lyanna threw it back at him. The girl’s fingers twitched toward her own empty belt, her expression flickering between longing and resentment.

Deliberately, Sienna tapped the weasel’s brass eyes. “I’ll commission a new pommel soon. Stag antlers and a snarling wolf.” A pause, just sharp enough to hurt. “I plan to gift it to Ned.”

Lyanna flinched.

Oberyn whistled low. “Cruel, Little Storm.”

Sienna didn’t reply. Let her think about what she’d tossed aside.

“Robert wants me for what I can give him”, she snarled at Sienna. “He barely listens to what I say, he never cared to ask what I want”

“My brother isn’t perfect, Lyanna. But he is willing to work on himself. For you. For your marriage”, she answered. “He isn’t perfect. He doesn’t know how to compose songs. But he is loyal to his loved ones. He is loud and he certainly doesn’t know any pretty poetry. But he can be kind when you let him in. Give it time, you will see.”

Please, she wanted to beg. Give Robert a chance. Give yourself a chance.

Lyanna’s jaw tightened. But she didn’t storm off.

Progress.

-----------------

(Lyanna’s POV – Feasting Hall)

The crown of winter roses looked absurd on Lord Whent’s daughter. Too large for her brown curls, too blue against her flushed cheeks. Yet, the girl wore it proudly, beaming as if she had been handed the prize by the Crown Prince himself- not as the half-thought discarded thing it was.

Lyanna stabbed at her venison, the knife scraping the plate like a challenge. Across the hall, Rhaegar sat motionless beside Elia, his fingers steepled under his chin. Watching his father. Always watching him but also staring in her direction oftentimes. She could still feel the touch of his fingers on her cheek- barely there and gone, but enough to spread warmth all over her.

When she thought only of him. His words and gestures, she felt like all made so much sense in life. He offered her freedom to choose her own path. He didn’t ask her to be a perfect lady, or to perform to nobles and royals alike- Rhaegar only wanted her to be herself and meet him as the ice to his fire. Both devastating and beautiful.

Yet, when she remembered Sienna’s words, her heart and mind anguished. She didn’t want those words to be real- that Rhaegar only wanted to use her for his dreams, that Robert wasn’t perfect, but he was willing to meet her halfway.

That she could find freedom with the stormlander too. She just needed to give them – her and Robert – a chance.

Robert’s laughter boomed beside her, shaking the table as he clapped a passing Jon Arryn in the shoulder. He’d been like this all evening- loud with his friends, quiet with her. As if he had taken Sienna’s scolding to heart but hadn’t quite learned what to do with his hands when they weren’t holding a hammer or a tankard.

Then-

“I, uh-” Robert cleared his throat, sudden as a spooked horse. “Thought to write you. After we return home.”

Lyanna’s knife stilled. What?

From the corners of her eyes, she could see how the others were reacting. Ned’s head snapped up, a hopeful crease between his brows. Stannis, ever the statue, merely lifted an eyebrow. Even Benjen choked on his watered wine.

Robert rubbed his neck, the gesture oddly boyish and shy for a man built like a siege tower. “Not that I’m any great hand with letters. Stannis used to say my penmanship looked like a drunk stag’s hoofprints.”

Benjen snorted into his cup. Against her will, Lyanna’s lips twitched.

Robert leaned closer, his voice dropping beneath the din of lutes and laughter. “But I’d like to know how you fare. Truly.”

The words were simple. Unpolished. Nothing like Rhaegar’s.

Lyanna’s fingers loosened around her knife. Give it a change, Lyanna, her mother’s voice asked gently.

She breathed through her nose once, then gave him a curt nod followed by a small smile.

“I will try my best to decipher it”, she replied.

Robert's grin was as surprised as she felt at saying the words. She refused to look at the royal dais for a long time, dreading what she would find there. When she did look, he was gazing her way so longingly that her heart shuttered.

I will try, she told the voice in her head. But don’t expect me to like it.

-----------------

(Sienna’s POV – Harrenhal’s Feast)

Sienna’s mind was still reeling from her impromptu meeting with Lyanna. She hoped the girl would listen to her- just like every other time with Lyanna, she hoped. But, she couldn’t let herself wonder about that and ignore the present. The feast was the fullest she had seen since the very first one, probably because many would start back to their homes come the morrow. Lucky bastards.

She would have to endure a bit longer- and even then, when she left with the Princess’ retinue, she would not find complete rest and safety. Still, Dragonstone was better than King’s Landing. Princess Elia had told her in the afternoon, after Ashara had to rush out on her chase. It had been decided it would be best to go straight to the island due to the princess’ condition, and little princess Rhaenys would be waiting for them there.

Small mercies, indeed, Sienna thought while observing the room while seated beside Robert. Since he had owned the melee, it was common sense to have his siblings and close friends around him. Still, her eyes kept dancing around the room while she made small talk with those around her…

Lord Whent’s daughter preened under her ill-fitting rose crown, oblivious to the venom in the king’s gaze.

The prince hadn’t touched his wine, his eyes travelling between his father and Lyanna, observant of the threat and the prey. Ignoring his lady wife in favour of a delusion.

Robert, for once, wasn’t drinking either.

Her brother sat stiffly between her and Lyanna, his usual roar muted to occasional rumbles. His mood lifting when their mentor came by their table and congratulated him, once again, on fighting like a beast.

“I’m glad you did not kill any of them, Robert”, Jon Arryn with serious eyes and a small, fond smile.

Robert laughed, the sound booming around them.

“I promised Sienna I wouldn’t trouble the organisers overly much”, he said with a smirk in her direction.

She rolled her eyes, smiling to Jon. They barely had talked during the tourney, both busy with their own preoccupations. He had smiled to her in turn, like the father-figure he had always been since she was a child.

“I’m glad you can make him see reason, Lady Sienna”, he said with deference, and she inclined her head.

“I can only hope he fears my crossness more than he loves bloodlusting”, she said, and Robert humped, clasping Jon in the shoulder with another loud laugh.

 After Jon left, he seemed to quiet down again.

A strategic retreat- or so she thought, until he turned to Lyanna with a cough that sounded like a man bracing for battle.

“I, ah-” Robert’s knuckles whitened around his tankard. “Thought to write you. After we return home.”

Ned’s head came up like a hound scenting dawn. Stannis’s eyebrow arched- a seismic event by his standards.

Robert ploughed on, gruff as a gravel road. “Not that I’m any great hand with letters. Stannis used to say my penmanship looked like a drunk stag’s hoofprints.”

Benjen Stark choked into his cup. Lyanna – proud, prickly Lyanna – seemed to bite her cheek. Lips barely moving. Not a smile, but the ghost of one.

Sienna hid her own behind a sip of Dornish red. Clever, she thought. Robert had disarmed Lyanna the only way possible: by admitting a flaw without flinching.

Across the hall, Oberyn murmured something to Princess Elia that made her hide a laugh behind her napkin. A distraction, yes, but not the one Sienna needed.

Rhaegar had gone very still; his eyes focused on Robert and Lyanna.

Later, she’d replay the way Lyanna’s fingers uncurled from her knife. The way Robert’s shoulders relaxed when the girl didn’t scoff.

For now, she watched the prince watch them- and prayed to the Stranger that progress wouldn’t cost them all.

-----------------

Her House's camp was a flurry of activity as squires packed tents and grooms readied horses. Sienna stood beside Stannis, her arms crossed to ward off the morning chill, as she watched the controlled chaos unfold. Her twin’s presence was a steady anchor amidst the bustle, his sharp eyes missing nothing- least of all the half-packed trunks that Robert had abandoned in favour of one last round of sparring with Brandon Stark.

“If left to Robert, we’d be scrambling to saddle the horses an hour before riding out”, Stannis remarked, his voice dry as parchment. “Fortunately, some of us understand the value of preparation.”

Sienna smirked, nudging him with her elbow, soaking in his presence as much as she could.

“Careful, brother. That almost sounded like praise for your own efficiency.”

Stannis exhaled through his nose, the barest flicker of amusement in his gaze.

“Merely an observation. Unlike you, I don’t require validation for competence”, he bit back but didn’t move away from her.

She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. Instead, her attention drifted toward the Stark camp, where servants were already loading wagons for their departure the next day. The sight eased something tight in her chest.

“One more night”, she murmured, her fingers finding his arm, which he bent instinctually to accommodate her. “Then Lyanna will be on the road to Winterfell, and we can stop worrying about her slipping away to meet a certain silver-haired fool.”

Stannis followed her gaze, his jaw tightening. “Assuming she doesn’t find another way to be reckless during the day”.

“Robert’s taken care of that”, Sienna said, a note of reluctant approval in her voice. “He invited her to train with him this afternoon. Apparently, he’s decided brute force can still impress her. Her brute force against his, in this case.”

Stannis gave her a sidelong glance.

“And you think that’s a fine idea?”

“I think it’s the first time he’s tried to engage her on her terms instead of his”, she countered. “Which, frankly, is more than I expected from him.”

A pause. Then, with the faintest twitch of his lips – so subtle she might have imagined it – Stannis said, “There’s no chance in the Seven Hells you’re making me supervise that.”

“Oh, Stannis.” Sienna turned to him, eyes wide with exaggerated innocence. “Would I do that to you?”

“Yes.”

“You wound me”, she batted her lashes.

He levelled her with a look that had made seasoned knights falter. But it only gave her mirth.

“If you insist on this, I will deny any involvement. Publicly. Repeatedly.”

“But you’ll be there”, she grinned. “I would if I could, but I have to attend the Princess and help with all the packing… And I’m not sure Ned can deal with it alone”.

He exhaled, long-suffering.

“I’ll be there. But if anyone asks, I will say you let it happen.”

“Naturally”, she agreed, then added, “And if it works, you’ll never admit you had any part in it.”

Stannis didn’t dignify that with a response, but the slight tilt of his head was concession enough.

For a moment, they stood in companionable silence, watching the camp prepare for the road ahead. The weight of the coming separation pressed between them, unspoken but heavy. Soon, Stannis would ride for Storm’s End with Robert, and she would depart for Dragonstone with Elia. Months – perhaps longer – would pass before they saw each other again. Perhaps, it would be on Robert’s wedding. Perhaps, on hers and Ned’s.

Sienna swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat.

“Try not to let Robert burn down the Stormlands while I’m gone”, she said lightly.

Stannis didn’t look at her, but his voice was quieter when he replied. “Try not to get yourself burned by dragons.”

She smiled, though it felt brittle. “I’ll do my best.”

Stannis stared at their House banners being rolled for travel, his jaw working.

“Two nights remain before we part. No need for farewells now. There is much to do, much can still happen.” He said, and she knew what he was referring too, the whole reason behind this mummer’s farse of a tourney.

“My shadows say the falcon preens for flight. He’ll come to you before then”, her voice dropping to a murmur only he could hear.

A muscle twitched in Stannis’s temple. They both knew his patience was wearing thin.

“Let him roost. I won’t chase a man who plays at secrecy.”

The unspoken truth hung between them: But we need him.

A beat.

Then, because she couldn’t help herself – because she needed him to know – she added, “I’ll miss you.”

Stannis was silent for so long she thought he might ignore her entirely. Then, just as she slipped her hand from his arm turned to leave, he muttered, “Don’t be sentimental. It’s unbecoming.”

But as she walked away with her companion guards, Sienna caught the way his hand flexed at his side- as if he was already missing her.

------------------

The morning air of the third to last day of the tourney was crisp despite the constant exodus. Since the day before, the courtyard has been alive with the clamour of horses and shouted orders from those leaving Harrenhal or getting ready to depart. Sienna stood apart, watching as the Stark retinue prepared to ride north. Lyanna moved with a stiffness that spoke of sore muscles- no surprise, given Stannis’ dry report the night before.

“Robert put her down in three moves, he’d said, as if reciting a ledger entry. She got up. Laughed. Went at him again”

A small, reluctant smile had tugged at Sienna’s lips. That was something, at least.

The night had been blessedly uneventful. The prince had remained with Elia – at his wife’s request – and though Sienna had meant to keep vigil, exhaustion had nearly claimed her in the solar. Oberyn had found her there, her fingers still curled around a half-empty cup of tea. "I will keep watch, Little Storm", he had said while shooing her with a smirk.

True to his word, he had. When she’d slipped into Elia’s chambers at dawn, he’d been perched on the windowsill like some lazy predator, looking far too fresh for a man who’d spent the night awake. He’d merely raised a brow at her, as if to say See? I told you.

Now, she observed the farewells unfolding before her. Robert bowed over Lyanna’s hand with surprising grace, though his usual booming laugh carried across the yard. Benjen, caught in a hearty clap on the back, staggered but grinned. Brandon clasped arms with Robert, their friendly rivalry momentarily set aside. Ned stood a little apart, murmuring something to his sister, his face unreadable but his grip tight on her shoulder.

Lyanna swung onto her horse with a Stark’s ease, but her gaze snagged on the distant godswood, lingering too long. Sienna followed her stare-

A flicker of silver between the trees. Gone in a breath.

No. Her pulse spiked. You’re seeing shadows.

Then, Benjen called Lyanna’s name, and she wrenched her attention back to her brothers. Ned had clasped the boy close, probably to murmur some last advice. Sienna imagined he also felt the same sadness she did when saying farewell to her siblings. Ned also didn’t know when he would see them again for certain.

Perhaps when Brandon and Catelyn married.

Lyanna’s laugh rang out, too bright, too forced.

Sienna’s fingers found the hidden Dornish dagger at her belt. Just shadows. But she’d spent a lifetime trusting shadows. And they’d never lied to her before.

Still, she didn’t step forward. It wasn’t her place- not yet. But she allowed herself to imagine a future where she and Lyanna might speak freely, as sisters twice over. Where their children – if Baratheon or Stark in looks, it hardly mattered – would play together in the halls of Storm’s End or even Winterfell. The thought was fleeting, hopeful.

Ashara appeared beside her, a silent shadow in violet silk. Together, they watched as Catelyn Tully and the Blackfish approached Brandon. The betrothed pair exchanged polite words after he gave her hand a brief kiss, Catelyn’s smile demure, her eyes full of love, but sharp.

“She’ll make a fine Lady Stark”, Ashara remarked. “Sweet, but there’s steel beneath.”

Sienna hummed. “Her father is a political creature. He’d make a fine Hand, given the chance.” She let the implication hang – he has ambitions for his children – and was rewarded with Ashara’s knowing glance.

A moment later, Ashara pressed a small scroll into her hand.

“The Blackfish asked me to give this to you. For your father.”

Sienna’s fingers closed around it. Jon Arryn’s name might as well have been written in fire.

“Did he say anything else?”

“Only that the fishermen will follow him.” Ashara’s lips curved.

Sienna arched a brow, curious at her friend.

“You’ve gotten awfully close to the Blackfish”, she said with a side glance to the Dornish. Why would Ser Brynden give it to Ashara when Sienna and Catelyn were supposed to meet after luncheon to say their farewells?

He had been acting strangely since Ashara had told her that the Blackfish had also been there the night she saw Rhaegar and Lyanna meet in the godswood. The knight had said nothing for days, and that made Sienna nervous. She would ask Maris to assign some shadows to him.

Ashara rolled her eyes, but there was a flicker of something – amusement? Satisfaction? – beneath the dismissal.

“He and Catelyn leave this afternoon”, she said as if Sienna didn’t know that fact, as if she hadn’t told Ashara just last night she would meet the riverlanders after luncheon. “He wanted everything settled before then”, the finality in Ashara’s tone made Sienna swallow her questions- for the moment.

Fishermen. Riverland lords, then. Sienna tucked the scroll into her sleeve, calculating. If Ser Brynden Tully was already throwing his support – and his brother’s, for that matter – behind Rhaegar’s plans pending Jon Arryn’s decision,… Then, the pieces were moving faster than she’d anticipated.

Relief warred with vigilance. The Starks were leaving. Lyanna would be gone soon. But the game was far from over.

She glanced once more at Ashara, who was watching Ser Brynden with a gaze that held more than mere political concern. Interesting.

But that was something she could dwell on another day.

-----------------

The Baratheon tent stood half-empty, cots still made for the night but everything else packed away with military precision for the morning departure- Stannis’ doing, of course. Sienna ran a finger along the edge of Robert’s discarded travel chest, the wood worn smooth from years of use. It smelled of leather and steel, like home.

She had already said her farewells to Catelyn Tully in a carefully orchestrated meeting-Stannis as her companion, as propriety demanded of a lady, which had been the perfect excuse to pass the Blackfish’s letter into his hands unnoticed on the way.

Ser Brynden had been watching from across the garden long before they were with hearing distance, his gaze sharp as a honed blade. She still wanted to know why he had given the letter to Ashara, for all that could be, Sienna wanted to find it amusing that the Dayne had gotten under his skin in a good way.

Fishermen, she thought with a pleasing feeling. Let them bite.

Stannis had also taken her to his and Robert’s tent, the way there just long enough for him to deliver his own report in that clipped, efficient way of his. The secret meeting the night before- Lord Whent’s solar, Vale lords clustered like nervous hens, Brynden Tully a shadow among them. Jon Connington had spoken for Rhaegar, all polished arrogance. “The princess needed him.”

Sienna’s lip had curled at that. As if Elia hadn’t spent months recovering from Rhaegar’s needs.

“They mean to call a Grand Council”, Stannis said, voice dripping with disdain. “As if Aerys would step aside for a vote.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’ll burn them all and give their lands to the next sycophant who licks his boots.”

“Connington claims the kingsguard will follow Rhaegar.”

“They will follow the king”, she snapped without meaning to, her dislike for the man only growing. “Aerys is still the king.”

Stannis had given her one of his rare, approving nods.

“Precisely what I said.”

Then he had left for his meeting with Jon Arryn, and she had been alone with the weight of what was coming.

Sighing, she put her satchel on Robert’s cot, knowing full well which was his by the state of the blankets- there was no way Stannis would ever leave his blankets all strewn around like that. His cot was made with perfect precision. Sienna was sure all the folds had the same size.

There was no way she would put her bag there, her twin would be sour for the whole time they had left together in Harrenhal.

The tent flaps rustled, and Robert ducked inside, his laughter filling the space with him.

“There you are! I’ve been waiting for you for ages-” He stopped in front of her, taking in her expression. “Gods, Sienna, who died?”

She forced a smile. “No one.” Yet.

He clapped her on the shoulder, his grin undimmed.

“Lyanna loved our training session. Laughed when I knocked her into the dirt. Came back for more, too- like a proper Baratheon.”

Gods, he was so smitten. Sienna wished, for a moment, she could be like him. Unconcerned. Carefree.

Please, Robert. Write to her. She didn’t say it aloud. She didn’t need to.

“I will write her”, he promised, as if he had heard her anyway. Then, his expression shifted, something uncharacteristically hesitant in his eyes. “I’ve got something for you. For your last birthday, and the next one too. I hate sending parcels to Dragonstone or the Red Keep… You never know if those Targaryen lackeys will deliver them.”

Before she could reply, he dropped the pendant and chain into her palm.

The weight surprised her- solid gold wrapped around steel, the Baratheon stag reared in mid-charge.

“Go on- press the left antler”, he said with barely contained excitement.

When she did, a slender blade slid free with a snick sharp enough to make her breath catch.

“Gods, Robert-”, she didn’t know what to say, mouth open and closing like a fish.

“Took the smith three tries to get the hinge right,”, he boasted, spinning her around to clasp it at her neck, the blade slipping back to its hidden place the moment she let the antler go. His calloused fingers brushed her nape, warm as summer sun. “Won’t rust. Won’t break. Just like you.”

Sienna touched the stag, its edges already wearing smooth against her skin. How long had her brother kept it with him for the edges to be like that.

“You’re giving me a stabby necklace."

"A Baratheon necklace," he corrected, squeezing her shoulders. “If some piss-drunk lord grabs your ass at a feast, you can gut him like a proper lady.”

She laughed, but her throat tightened. The pendant settled between her collarbones like a promise- heavy, unyielding, hers.

“Made one for Ned too”, he said grinning more. “Direwolf instead of a stag, but same steel. Had to- he’s my brother, isn’t he? In all the ways that matter. And, soon, in another way as well.” He said wiggling his eyebrows. “This way you will match!”

Sienna’s chest aches. Robert had never been good with words, but this- this was as close to love as he knew how to say.

The tent flaps whipped open again. Stannis stood there, his expression flat.

“Of course you couldn’t wait.”

“You’re just jealous I thought of it first”, Robert jested with his perpetual grin.

Stannis didn’t dignify that with a response, but Sienna knew. The precision of the mechanism, the seawater-tempered steel- it had Stannis’ fingerprints all over.

“Click the right antler to lock the blade. Both together to retract it”, he said matter of fact.

Of course he had memorized the mechanics. Of course he had tested it.

Stepping back, Sienna made a gesture for them to wait while she retrieved her satchel. Sienna reached into it and pulled out a knight doll- stitched in Baratheon gold and black, yielding a hammer, but also carrying a sword in the belt, its tiny shield bearing a painted stag.

“For Renly. Tell him it’s a Stormlord, like Father used to tell us about.”

Robert’s grin softened. “He’ll sleep with it every night. Might even name it after you.”

Stannis eyed the doll but didn’t seem to be bothered by its non-practicality. Through the years since their parents’ death, he had learned to be less abrasive towards their younger brother. Of course, he still preferred ‘useful’ gifts, but he allowed those that were more emotional.

Reaching back into the satchel, Sienna pulled out a large leather-bound ledger, its cover embroidered with storm clouds and stags in silver thread. Extending it to Stannis, she smiled big when he hesitated only a moment before taking it.

“The pages are replaceable. I had the maesters line them with ship sails- won’t tear, even when you’re cross. And I embroidered it myself”, she knew he would recognize her work anywhere, but she wanted to make sure.

Her twin ran a thumb over the stitching.

“Practical.” But when he opened it, his breath caught- the first page bore their father’s handwriting, that Sienna had copied meticulously: ‘Steffon’s Household Accounts, 276 AC’. He swallowed dry, eyes glinting when he looked up at her. “Thank you.”

She smiled back, blinking hard to ward off her own tears. She hated goodbyes.

Looking in Robert’s direction, her smile turned into a smirk when she saw that he seemed to be keeping his mouth shut and comments to himself. No teasing when saying goodbyes, that was their unspoken rule.

Sienna reached inside her own dress pocket and tossed Robert a braided leather cord, threaded with tiny steel beads shaped like lightning bolts. He caught it in the air, fingers tracing the details.

“For your hammer grip. Or your wrist. The beads won’t rust or cut your skin- Dornish treatment of steel.”

Robert wrapped it around his fist immediately, flexing his fingers.

“The Princess’ handiwork?”

“She helped”, Sienna said, remembering how Elia had requested those beads from Oberyn after she had mentioned her plans for Robert’s gift. The Red Viper had brought it with him, and Sienna had spent most of the journey doing the braid with their helpful comments. “You’re welcome.”

“You won’t come to say farewell tomorrow?”, Robert asked, fingers still trailing his gift.

“I will, but I wanted to give this to you now. So you make sure to keep it safe for the journey, since you have a penchant for losing things…” She couldn’t help herself, her smile broadening. Stannis huffed, pulling the knight doll from Robert’s arm, and already stepping away to put the gifts in his trunk.

“That was ONE TIME”, it was always impressive how Robert could be loud even when he was whining. “I was 8!” He continued, all of them remembering when he lost the first handkerchief Sienna had ever embroidered as a birthday gift to him. She had been only 6 and it wasn’t even remotely beautiful, but Robert had misplaced it and the family had forever teased him.

Sienna laughed, waiting for Stannis to return. Smiling, she reached out and pulled them both into a hug. Robert laughed, crushing them against his chest. Stannis stiffened- then, after a heartbeat, his arms came up, awkward but firm. Mostly around her.

She closed her eyes, memorizing the feel of them- Robert’s booming heart, Stannis’ steady breath. She would miss them terribly.

-----------------

That night’s feast had been quieter, the hall half-empty as lords and ladies departed Harrenhal in waves. Sienna had sat beside Elia and Ashara, picking at her food while they traded hollow pleasantries about the tourney, about Dragonstone’s damp halls, about anything that didn’t matter. The king, at least, had seemed less coiled- fewer eyes meant fewer imagined daggers. But Sienna had still angled herself between him and Elia, still watched his twitching fingers. A risk, drawing Aerys’ attention, but Elia was her princess. Her friend. Even if they hadn’t been close for long, duty and loyalty ran deeper than courtly affection.

Ashara had been unusually pensive, swirling her wine with a distracted air. Sienna had nudged her under the table.

“The Blackfish seems to trust you,”she’d murmured, watching the Dornish lady from the corner of her eye. “A rare feat from what I hear”.

Ser Brynden and Catelyn Tully had left with the Riverrun retinue late in the afternoon. Sienna had not been there to say farewell, but her shadows had told her about Ashara’s presence and the way both Catelyn and the Blackfish seem close to her. Odd, but interesting. A welcome distraction from all the political murmuring going on.

Stannis had told her earlier, just before the feast, that the lords considered the tourney a success- for what remained to be seen.

Ashara’s lips had curved, just slightly.

“He’s a cautious man. Doesn’t like fools in power making reckless choices.” A pause. “We have that in common.”

Sienna had arched a brow. “And what else do you have in common?”, she asked while hiding her smirk behind her cup of Dornish red.

Ashara had only smiled into her own wine, but the flush on her cheeks had been answer enough.

Now, the godswood was silent save for the rustle of leaves and the distant murmur of the departing camps. Sienna pulled her cloak tighter- thicker wool lined with fox fur, a blessing as the autumn chill returned. The gods had granted fair weather for the tourney, but winter’s breath lingered at the edges, impatient to come back.

Ned stood by the heart tree, his own cloak still light, his cheeks flushed but Sienna wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the cold. He turned at her approach, and the way his eyes softened – like she was the only thing worth seeing – made her breath catch.

No words about Lyanna passed between them. No need. His sister was safe, riding north with Brandon, Benjen and the rest of the Stark retinue. Robert’s letters might even make her smile when they reach her. For the time being, she wanted to focus on this: the quiet, the relief, the promise of a betrothal soon to be sealed.

Ned reached into his doublet and withdrew a silver bracelet, its links shaped like tiny, intertwined direwolves.

“My mother’s”, he said, voice rough. “Hers before her. Meant for my wife.”

Sienna’s throat tightened, her hand lifting towards it. She traced the wolves with her thumb, then lifted the hem of her sleeve. Ned’s fingers brushed hers as he fastened the bracelet. His hands were warm, calloused from sword and reins.

She memorized the feel of them, her eyes on his face, trying to commit to mind the way his lashes cast shadows on his cheeks when he looked down, the quiet intensity in his grey eyes. He was doing the same, she realized- studying her like he feared he might forget.

Ned suddenly smiled more, hand going to his pocket and pulling out a direwolf pendant on a chain. Much like her stag.

Sienna laughed low, opening a bit more of her cloak to show him Robert’s pendant fully for Ned surely had saw a glimpse of it just then. The hidden blade resting against her breast.

“We’re each one half of a pair now”, she said while reaching into her own dress pocket next and withdrawing a folded square of grey linen embroidered with sprinting direwolves and golden stags.

“So you never forget whose fury walks with you.” She muttered, cobalt eyes on grey ones.

 “I’ll keep it close”, Ned said as he unfolded it carefully, his thumb brushing the stitches. “Until the snows melt.” He pressed it to his chest – right over his heart – before tucking it into his doublet.

Then, from her belt pouch, she produced a steel ring- its surface etched with Stormland waves, now bearing a fresh-carved snarling wolf on the band.

“My father’s. His father’s before him”, she said, almost repeating back to him what he had said about his mother’s bracelet. They thought alike. “The smith added the wolf for you.”

Ned slid it onto his middle finger, the fit perfect. “I’ll wear it always”, his eyes looking back into hers.

Sienna smiled more, holding his hand and bringing it to her lips, kissing steal and skin. He stilled, breath held.

“I’ll miss you”, she whispered, feeling her throat seize with emotions.

“And I you.” His fingers touching her face softly.

A pause. Then, so softly it was almost lost to the wind. “May I kiss you, my love?”

She smiled, nodding, and his fingers moved to her chin, lifting it slightly towards him. His lips met hers- tentative at first, a chaste press, a question. Then, deeper, testing, as if he wanted to memorize the taste of her as well.

Sienna wanted to stay in that moment forever.

When they parted, he pressed their foreheads together, eyes half-lidded, a smile tugging at his mouth.

Sienna wanted to laugh. To cry. To demand Robert and Lord Rickard finalize their marriage contract now, before the world teared them apart again. She didn’t care if they lived in a windswept Stormland keep or the frozen halls of a northern keep, so long as they were together.

But duty called.

Reluctantly, she stepped back, her fingers lingering against his.

“Until next time”, he murmured. I love you, it sounded like.

“Until”, she agreed. And I you, she said back with her eyes.

Then she turned, walking back toward the castle where Maris waited- her shadow, her sentinel. The bracelet was cool against her skin, the pendant heavy at her breastbone.

Two halves of a promise.

Chapter Text

(Sienna’s POV – Time Skip 1: 3 weeks later, a ship near Dragonstone)

The last days of Harrenhal had slipped away like sand through a sieve- too fast, too quiet. Sienna had watched her brothers ride out at dawn on the second to last day of the tourney, Robert’s laughter echoing across the empty yard, Stannis already scanning the horizon for storms. Ned and Jon Arryn had gone with them, their party swallowed by the kingsroad’s dust. By evening, the castle had felt hollow, half its banners gone. Even the king had retreated to his chambers, dining alone with his whispers and his knives.

“No more meetings”, Maris had murmured that final night, her voice blending with the rustle of parchment as she updated Sienna. “But the buzzing remains. Like wasps in a disturbed nest.”

Sienna had sent her to rouse their shadows- sailors in the ports, silent sisters in the septs, disgraced septons with ears pressed to confessionals. “Compare the whispers”, she’d ordered. “A lie once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern. Three times is an enemy.”

Now, standing at the bow of the ship as Dragonstone’s jagged towers clawed at the sky, Sienna twisted the silver bracelet around her wrist- Ned’s gift, the direwolves cool under her fingertips. The pendant rested heavier against her collarbone, its hidden blade a comfort.

Behind her, Elia coughed lightly into her sleeve, her pregnancy swelling beneath layers of wool and silk. The princess had insisted on joining them on deck despite the chill, her dark eyes fixed on the approaching island, eager for the first glimpse of princess Rhaenys. Rhaegar had ridden for King’s Landing with Aerys, his parting words to his wife another murmured prophecy about ‘the song’s next verse.’ Sienna had bitten her tongue so hard she tasted blood.

Oberyn appeared at her side, his smirk sharp as the wind. “You look like you’re plotting to push someone into the sea.”

“Only if they sing”, she muttered.

He laughed, but his gaze flicked to his sister, his amusement fading. The princess had lost weight these past weeks, her cheeks hollow despite the babe’s growth. Not kind, Sienna thought. This pregnancy has not been kind.

Ashara joined them, her violet eyes scanning the horizon. “No ravens from the North?”

“None from anywhere”, Sienna said, too quickly. No news should have been good news- Lyanna safely home, Ned riding for the Vale. But the silence itched under her skin. Blindness is a luxury we can’t afford, her mind supplied in the voice of Stannis.

Dragonstone loomed closer, its black stone drinking the pale morning light. Relief and dread coiled in Sienna’s chest- relief for solid ground, dread for the isolation. Here, whispers took longer to reach them. Here, the shadows stretched deeper.

The wind bit through her cloak, but she welcomed it. Winter had returned, only gone for a couple months, crisp and clean, and for a fleeting moment, she imagined Ned feeling this same breeze in the Vale. Closer to you here, she thought, pressing the bracelet to her pulse. Even if only in the cold.

--------------

(Sienna’s POV – Time Skip 2: a moon’s turn later, Dragonstone Nursery)

Rhaenys’ tiny fists clutched Sienna’s sleeve as she blinked up at her, dark eyes heavy with exhaustion. It had been a long day of playing for the little princess, and a long day of caring for mother and daughter for Ashara and Sienna.

The little one had refused to leave Elia’s side for long after they returned from Harrenhal. Those many weeks away had been the longest they had spent apart and Rhaenys would pout and cry if they tried to separate her from her mom during those first weeks back. It had taken them another two weeks to reassure the little princess that her mom was not going anyway.

It had been difficult to explain why her papa was not back yet. There had been tears, but Elia and Oberyn had distracted her with fantastic stories of the tourney- even some about Rhaegar’s beautiful songs and bravery. Which Sienna disliked but couldn’t say they were lies.

“One stowy?”, Rhaenys asked around a yawn, as if Sienna hadn’t told her a story of the Stormlands and her mother two from Dorne before that.

Sienna smiled, smoothing the girl’s wild curls. She was relentless, surely a Dornish trait.

“Your mother needs her rest. And so do you, little sun”, she said booping her nose, and getting a small giggle. “Tomorrow, I will tell you all about the storm princess that conquered the sea, alright?”

The princess pouted, but nodded, burrowing deeper into the blankets. Sienna tucked the edges tight, the way she’d done for Renly many times, and kissed her forehead. The memory rose unbidden- Elia finding her in the Red Keep’s nursery over a year ago, watching her stack blocks with Rhaenys. “You’re gentler with her than her own nursemaids.”

She’d been reckless then, admitting how much she missed Renly. But Princess Elia had sat beside her and asked about her little brother, and that had been the beginning of their closeness.

A shadow moved in the doorway. Oberyn leaned against the frame, arms crossed, his gaze flicking from the pendant at her throat to Ned’s bracelet on her wrist.

“You’re softer than you pretend, Little Storm.”

 “Any news from the masters?”, she ignored the jab, more concerned about the Princess.

“Elia sleeps.” He stepped closer, voice dropping, eyes observing his niece that had already lost the fight with sleep. “The babe kicks like a Sand Steed. A good sign.”

Sienna exhaled. Good. Two more months to go and Elia would have her new baby in her arms- if the gods are good, Stannis’ voice said in her mind. And they often aren’t. His voice continued, but she suppressed it.

Things had been calm.

Maris had assured her that their shadows were communicating all that happened as fast as possible. The new ones still had not reached the North, but those for the royal family, the valemen and the fishermen were positioned.

No word from King’s Landing other than the usual, which was better than ill tidings- Rhaegar seemed occupied soothing Aerys’ latest fury. In the North, Brandon prepared to go back to the Riverlands in five moon turns to marry Catelyn Tully, and Lyanna’s letters in response to Robert’s flowed steady from Winterfell. Ned had reached the Vale with Jon Arryn. Stannis had sent a letter saying that Renly had decided to name his knight doll Steffanis, which her twin refused to believe was a mixture of their father’s name and his.

Her gaze flickered to the window. Dragonstone’s gloom pressed against it, but inside the fire crackled warm.

The world seemed to be holding its breath. Sienna had a feeling it would not do so for long.

--------------

(Oberyn’s POV – Dragonstone Nursery)

He watched Sienna murmur to Rhaenys, her fingers deft as they adjusted the blankets. The silver bracelet glinted in the firelight- Stark steel, ugly and cold. Gold would suit her better. Copper, even. Something alive and warm.

Annoying, how often his eyes tracked it.

Not jealousy, he told himself. Only vigilance. The stormlander was always close to his sister and niece, it was only fair for him to be cautious.

Rhaenys giggled as Sienna booped her nose, and something in his chest tightened. She cared for the girl as if she were her own- no hesitation, no calculation. A kind of love one could not pretend to have.

“Will you return to Dorne soon?” Sienna asked, glancing in his direction.

 “And miss all this cheer?”, he forced a smirk. “Besides, someone must keep you from brooding yourself into the sea”, she rolled her eyes at him, but indicated the door with her head. Both left the nursery silently, the only noise the swishing of her skirts.

Truth was, he longed for the Water Gardens, for Obara’s fierce grin, Nymeria’s sharp tongue. Even little Tyene’s quiet mischief. But Elia came first. He would stay until the babe came, safe and screaming.

Then? Perhaps Pentos. Volantis. Anywhere he could burn this restless energy and forget about royal intrigue.

“I miss my daughters, my brother and his children”, he said once they were farther down the corridor. “I will spend some time with them, and perhaps plan a trip to the Free Cities”

“I heard they are strong”, she said while following the path to Elia’s rooms. “Your daughters, I mean”, she clarified when he looked too long at her without answering.

Oberyn snorted, nodding.

“They are fierce. Obara is a great fighter with the spear already. Nymeria is not far behind, but she also enjoys old war stories. Tyene… She is still young, but very interested in herbs”, like you, he wanted to say, but kept it to himself.

“If they ever come visit their aunt and cousins, and I’m around, it would be lovely to meet them”, she said with a kind smile, stopping in front of Elia’s doors. “Try not to flirt with every pirate in the Free Cities.”

“Only the pretty ones,” he lied, winking at her.

His eyes followed her as she entered, the bracelet gleaming like a reminder that even if his daughters came to visit Elia and the little ones, the stormlander would be too far gone.

--------------

(Oberyn’s POV – Time Skip 3: 2 moon’s turns later, near Elia’s Quarters)

Dragonstone had never felt more like a prison.

Oberyn paced the corridor, his boots wearing grooves into the ancient Valyrian rug. Three months of this damned island- three months of grey skies and greyer stone. Of salt-stung winds that carried no scent of orange blossoms or warm sand.

Three months watching his sister fade like a desert flower trapped in shadow.

We should never have come. We should never have let her marry that man.

Beyond the arched windows, the Narrow Sea churned black under a bruised twilight. Somewhere out there, Dorne waited- alive with colour and heat, where Elia might have thrived under the sun’s care instead of wasting in this dragon’s mausoleum.

A scream tore through the corridor.

Oberyn’s hands clenched into fists.

It had been hours.

Hours of midwives scurrying in and out like frightened mice, of masters muttering about “the princess’s delicate condition”- as if they hadn’t been the ones to chain her to this cursed family.

He’d been banished from the room after snarling one too many oaths about Rhaegar’s throat, but not before seeing the way Elia’s fingers had dug into Sienna’s forearm, the Baratheon girl’s face pale but steady as a cliff against the storm.

At least she doesn’t flinch.

A small hand tugged his sleeve.

“Uncle?” Rhaenys’s voice was too small, her eyes too wide. She clutched her stuffed black dragon, its embroidered scales fraying at the seams. “Why mama cry?”

Oberyn’s breath caught.

He knelt, cupping her face. “Oh, sweetheart. Your mama is hurt, but she will be fine”, the lie tasted like ash. “Your mother is the strongest woman in the world.”

Another scream. Rhaenys flinched. She should not be here, he should take her somewhere else, away from Elia’s screams and cries. But he couldn’t… He had to stay near, to make sure…

A woman appeared- hooded like a silent sister, her face lined with kindness but her eyes sharp as a hawk’s. She held out a hand to Rhaenys, stained fingers belying a mysterious story.

“Come, little sun”, she said, using the same nickname Sienna had for her. “Your Aunt Sienna found kittens in the stables. Would you like to see them?”

Rhaenys hesitated. “Aunt Sienna?”

“Yes”, the woman smiled. “She asked me especially to show you.”

Oberyn studied her- the quiet authority in her posture, the way the nursemaids fell in step behind her without question. Maris, he realized. She belonged to Sienna’s small household. He had seen them talking more than once, often when they thought no one was around.

Sienna had told him, when he confronted her about the old lady with stained fingertips, that she trusted Maris with her family’s wellbeing. Not only her life, but also those of her loved ones.

When he had asked Elia and Ashara about it, they had stared at him for a long moment. Then, his sister gave him a tired smile, “Sienna and those under her never tried to hurt or undermine me, brother. All she has done has been to help, sometimes at her own peril”.

Like in Harrenhal, had been left unsaid.

Oberyn nodded once to his niece, and Rhaenys went, her small fingers trusting in the stranger’s grasp. The nursemaids following behind.

He went back to Elia’s quarters, pacing the solar. Feeling like he would catch on fire from the inside out with all that accumulated energy.

The door to Elia’s chamber slammed open. A master stumbled out, his robes streaked with blood. “The babe is breech! We must cut-”

“You will not touch her with a blade!” Sienna’s voice was a whip-crack, her Baratheon fury burning through the exhaustion.

For a moment, Oberyn could see the room. Elia’s lower body, legs bent and covered by sheets; red rags on the floor; Ashara’s profile while she held his sister hand; Sienna’s face, eyes furious at the master.

An elder woman brushed past then, entering the solar and crossing to the bedroom, behind her a younger one, carrying a heavy pouch. A midwife, he could tell by her posture, an old one- her hands gnarled but steady. She murmured something to Sienna, who glanced at Oberyn – one heartbeat of silent understanding – before the door was shut again.

He made sure to kick the master out, giving orders that he was not to come near his sister without being asked to. Or he would have to deal with Oberyn himself.

Then, the waiting.

The worst kind of torture.

Oberyn paced.

He drank.

He paced more.

He threw a goblet at the wall, the dregs of Dornish red bleeding into the stone. He prayed- to the Seven, to the Rhoynar’s old river gods, to the old gods of the North, to any power that might listen.

Let her live. Take my blood instead. Take Rhaegar’s.

A final scream. Then-

A cry. Thin at first, then rising into a furious wail.

The door opened. Ashara emerged, her violet eyes bright with tears, a swaddled bundle in her arms.

“A son,” she whispered.

Oberyn took the babe- so small, so red-faced, with wisps of silver hair already curling at his brow. Aegon. The name sat bitter on his tongue, but the child was innocent. His sister’s son.

“Elia?”

Ashara’s lips trembled, purple eyes full of unshed tears. “She’s alive.”

Alive, but how much blood had she lost? The sheets they carried out were sodden, the scent of iron thick enough to choke on. Oberyn cradled Aegon closer, the babe’s cries fading into hiccuping breaths as exhaustion took him. He barely noticed Ashara going back into the room, feeling drained of all that pent up energy out of sudden.

Time blurred.

The fire burned low. Somehow, Oberyn must have slept, for he woke to a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Sienna stood over him, her braid unraveling, her sleeves stiff with dried blood. “Your sister lives,” she said softly. “She lost less blood than with Rhaenys.”

Oberyn almost laughed. If this was less, how had Elia survived the first time?

But Sienna’s eyes were steady, her grip firm as she pulled him up, and he went willingly.

“Come. She’s asking for you and her little boy.”

--------------

Elia slept, her breath shallow but even, one hand curled around Aegon’s swaddled form. She was pale and tired, but she had smiled at him when he had entered, jesting that he looked worse than she felt.

Oberyn pressed a kiss to her damp forehead, giving a silent thanks to whichever deity had heard his pleading prayers.

“Who was that woman?”, he asked Ashara after sitting on a chair near the bed. “The one who took charge when the masters faltered?”

Ashara’s gaze flicked to Sienna, who leaned against the far wall, her arms crossed- not in defiance, but to keep her trembling hands hidden. It must feel the same as after battle, when the shaking started.

“Daena of Driftmark”, Ashara murmured. “Sienna found her two moons ago. Had her quietly stationed in the fishing village below Dragonstone.”

Oberyn’s brows lifted. He hadn’t noticed any movement. Ashara’s smile was faint.

“After Rhaenys’ birth, she wrote to everyone she knew that might have known midwives- Storm’s End, Gulltown, even the Free Cities.” She said as if recounting a tale. “Daena delivered the Vale’s last set of twins alive. She was the only one Sienna trusted to override the masters.”

“She will stay until the Princess is well enough to leave the bed by herself”, Sienna picked up the explanation. “She knows how to make mothers recover after difficult births”, she said. The three of them knew ‘difficult’ was an understatement.

Oberyn was out of the chair and crossing the room in three strides, catching Sienna’s wrist. Her skin was cold.

“You”, he said, “are full of surprises.”

Sienna met his eyes, her exhaustion making her blunt.

“My duty is to your sister, but she is also my friend. I don’t leave friends to the mercy of fools.”

Something hot and unnameable flared in Oberyn’s chest- not just gratitude, but awe. He had spent many moons dismissing Sienna as another courtly schemer, all polished words and hidden daggers. But this? This was loyalty forged in blood.

He squeezed her wrist once before releasing her, returning to the chair beside the bed. Ashara’s eyes burning the side of his face with silent questions.

“Next time you plot, Little Storm, invite me.”

 “And ruin the fun?”, she said with a ghost of her usual smirk.

--------------

A moon’s turn had passed since Aegon’s birth, and at last, Dragonstone’s gloom began to loosen its grip on his heart.

Oberyn watched from the terrace as Elia walked the garden stone paths, Rhaenys skipping ahead with her black kitten clutched to her chest. “Balerion the Dwead, Uncle!”, she had told him days ago, her R’s still slipping into W’s occasionally. His sister’s steps were slow but steady, her arm looped through Ashara’s for balance, while Sienna walked slightly to the side- all three smiling and sharing small talk.

Behind them, a nursemaid carried Aegon- already round-cheeked and loud, his dark purple eyes shifting to near-black in the sunlight. Dornish eyes, Oberyn thought with satisfaction.

His sister was healing. Thriving.

All he could do was offer a thankful prayer to the gods.

--------------

“You’re leaving.” Elia’s voice was knowing when he joined her later, her fingers plucking a withered petal from a winter rose. Those were difficult to grow in the south, but the cold weather had been helpful lately.

“I’ve been caged too long,” he admitted, sitting down beside her in the bench. “I miss home, and my wandering ways”, he smirked, though the words tasted oddly bitter.

She smiled, nodding toward Rhaenys, who was now attempting to coax her kitten onto Aegon’s blanket. “And I must stay. My battles are here.”

Battles. They both knew she meant the ones fought with quiet words and careful smiles, the ones Rhaegar had left her to wage alone. The prince’s latest letter still lay crumpled in Oberyn’s pocket- another head for the dragon, scribbled between lines of prophecy. Elia had scoffed. “The midwife said no more children. Even if I wanted to”, she had told him bitterly.

A gust of wind carried the scent of salt and stone, but beneath it- orange blossoms, hot sand, the echo of his daughters’ laughter from a thousand leagues away. The pull of home was a physical ache.

His gaze caught Sienna and Ashara on the far parapet, heads inclined together in conversation and arms braced against the battlement as they stared northward. Sienna had been restless these past weeks, her disdain for Rhaegar curdling into something sharper. “He should be here”, she had told him the day before. “Not chasing ghosts while his son learns to smile.”

Oberyn had dismissed her worries. She had told them that Lyanna and Robert were still corresponding, even if her twin said it was with less frequency than a month ago. Rhaegar seemed preoccupied with his father, not even having spare time to meet his newborn son. Elia was alive, healthy.

Whatever crisis that could have existed, had been averted.

The biggest concern, in his opinion, was when Rhaegar would make his move on the throne. But, as long as Elia was safe, away from the Red Keep, Oberyn could care less.

--------------

He left at dawn, the sky streaked with pale gold, the air still clinging to night’s chill.

He had said his goodbyes the day before, not wanting to make Elia drag herself to the docks during this ungodly hour.

He waited until Rhaenys had eaten supper – and dessert – before knelling in front of her. His little niece smashing her kitten between them as she launched into his arms.

“Uncle Oberyn will bring you real sand from the Water Gardens”, he murmured against her hair, kissing the crown of her head- once, twice, as if he could imprint the scent of her – sun-warmed and faintly sticky with honey – into his skin.

“Soon?”, she asked against his shoulder, her small voice crushing his heart.

“Not very soon, little sun”, he said, borrowing Sienna’s nickname for her. “But I will see you and your brother again before he is one.”

He decided right then and there that he would keep that promise.

Sniffing, she nodded, giving him another squeeze, but releasing him when Balerion gave a plaintive meow. Turning, she ran to Elia, hugging her legs and hiding her face.

Rising, Oberyn sighed, eyes turning to Aegon. The babe fussed in his nursemaid’s arms, tiny fists batting at the air. Smiling, he got closer and pressed his lips to the boy’s forehead- warm as Dornish stone at dusk.

“Grow fierce, little dragon. And if you don’t, I’ll teach you how”, he whispered, before looking to his sister.

Sienna had already picked Rhaenys up, consoling her and giving the siblings space to say their goodbyes.

Elia smiled, stepping towards him. She cupped his face, warm thumbs brushing the sharp planes of his cheeks. He kissed her brow, her palms, then – for the first time since they were children – her forehead.

“I will bring you many stories and treasures from my trips. And an orange tree for this dreadful place”, he said.

“I don’t think it would survive”, her laugh was a fragile, fleeting thing, but her grip on his hands was iron. “Just come back whole and hale.”

He had smirked. Then, he had said his farewell to Ashara, promising to send her regards to her family. Sienna had nodded at him, forgoing the formal hand kiss, wishing him speed and safe travels.

Approaching the dock, he saw her amidst the buzz of sailor activity. Cloak pulled tight against the wind, braid of raven hair over one shoulder. Without a word, she thrust a bundle into his hands when he was close enough.

“For your daughters”, Sienna finally said after he kept looking between it and her face.

Surprised, Oberyn unwrapped it with careful fingers over some boxes that still needed to be loaded on the ship. The contents left him mute.

There was a book of herbs and poisons, its pages painstakingly copied from Storm’s End’s libraries if the title was anything to go by.

“For Tyene,” she said. “When she’s older she might want to learn plants from other regions.”

Next, his hand found a treatise on military strategy, its margins filled with what could only be Stannis Baratheon’s precise notations.

“Nymeria might find it useful”, the stormlander said with a shrug.

Then, a war braid of copper-tanned leather, threaded with beads shaped like viper fangs.

“You said Obara is practical. She will like that it won’t break”, she smiled kindly. “At least, Robert did, and he is as practical as they come.”

For a long moment, Oberyn could only stare. These were not courtesies tossed aside at the last moment. They were pieces of his own stories, fragments he had shared during those long nights tending Elia- Tyene’s curiosity, Nymeria’s sharp mind, Obara’s love of battle-ready things.

She’d been listening.

“I told you once that Elia is my friend”, she said carefully when he remained in silence. “After these months, I would like to think you are a friend as well”.

“I will tell them their aunt Sienna spoils them,” he managed, his voice rougher than he intended.

Sienna’s smile was fleeting. “I hope they can visit, once everything settles.”

Yes, I do too, he thought.

Reaching into her dress pocket, she pulled out a chain. Dark grey, almost black. Its pendant, a viper coiled around a tiny golden sun. Extending her hand, she let him pick it up.

Valyrian steel, he recognized. He could garrotte a man, and it would not break. Without hesitating, he fastened it around his neck.

“Thank you”, he said and offered his arm. Sienna clasped his forearm, and he did the same with hers, feeling the strength in her grip. “Look after my sister.”

“Always.”

He re-wrapped the gifts and followed the last sailor into the ship. As it pulled away, he watched her grow smaller on the dock- a storm clad in mortal flesh, carrying the weight of kingdoms on her shoulders.

Oberyn hoped it was an exaggeration of her mind. The viper’s chain around his neck felt suddenly heavier.

--------------

(Sienna’s POV – Time Skip 4: two moon’s turns later, Dragonstone Yard)

Two months had passed since Oberyn’s departure, and Dragonstone had settled into an uneasy rhythm.

Sienna stood in the enclosed yard, watching Rhaenys chase Balerion through the patches of sunlight, the cat’s tiny black form darting between her ankles. The air was thick with salt and the distant murmur of the sea, but the warmth of the afternoon did little to ease the tension coiled in her shoulders.

Ashara lounged beneath a shaded arch, her violet eyes half-lidded as she cradled Aegon against her chest. The babe had grown stronger, his dark eyes alert as he lifted his head to watch his sister’s antics. Elia sat beside her, fingers tracing idle patterns on the arm of her chair- a picture of calm, if one didn’t notice the way her gaze flicked toward the gates too often.

Waiting for a husband who would not come.

The whispers had kept Sienna awake for nights on end.

Brandon Stark had left Winterfell nearly a moon’s turn ago, riding ahead of his party to Riverrun to prepare for his wedding to Catelyn Tully. Benjen and Lyanna were to follow, with Robert, Ned, and Jon Arryn joining soon after. Sienna had traced the routes on her maps, calculating the days- so close now. The wedding would be a spectacle, a distraction.

And a front for treason.

Maris had murmured as much last night, her voice low over the flickering candlelight. “The lords will use the feast to plot. The king knows it. That’s why he’s spiralling.”

And the prince- where was Rhaegar?

Reports placed him leaving the Red Keep a fortnight ago, but no ship had sailed for Dragonstone. No rider had been spotted on the kingsroad. He had always been secretive, slipping through the realm like a shadow, but this time, the absence gnawed at her.

Something was not right.

He could arrive unannounced, she told herself. She had heard reports that Barristan once said the prince moved like a ghost when he wished.

That was it.

A flicker of movement at the edge of the yard.

Maris materialised at her side, her face ashen beneath the hood.

Sienna’s stomach dropped before the woman even spoke.

She took the offered parchment with numb fingers, the wax seal already broken. The words blurred, then sharpened with terrible clarity.

Lyanna Stark, missing.

Rhaegar last seen near Harrenhal.

Brandon rides for King’s Landing in fury.

“No.”

The word slipped out before she could stop it, brittle as ice cracking underfoot.

Ashara was on her feet in an instant, Aegon clutched tighter. Elia’s chair scraped against stone as she stood, her voice cutting through the haze. “Sienna?”

“When?”

“Ten days past. The roads were difficult for the shadows, the seas have been unhelpful”, Maris said, justifying the unusual delay. “The Wild Wolf rode hard… If he didn’t stop, he must be reaching King’s Landing by now”, she continued grimly.

A fleeting, wild thought – send a raven, a rider, anything to intercept him – before reality crashed down.

Ten days. Brandon would already be at the gates. Varys would know. Aerys would be waiting.

“No.”

She barely registered the tremor in her own voice, the way her knees threatened to buckle. Maris’s grip on her elbow was the only thing keeping her upright.

Lyanna. Brandon. Ned.

Robert.

The pieces snapped together with brutal precision.

She should have known.

She had known.

The whispers, the prophecies, the prince’s sudden absence- it had all been leading to this moment and she had thought… Stupid, stupid girl, Stannis’ voice – cruel, like when he truly despised somebody – danced in her mind. You really thought you had any power to stop a dragon in their game?

Rhaenys’ laughter rang through the yard, oblivious. Aegon let out a fussy whimper, his tiny fists waving. Elia’s fingers closed around Sienna’s wrist, her touch grounding.

Sienna hadn’t even registered that the women had moved.

“What is it?” Ashara demanded, purple eyes big and fearful.

Sienna forced air into her lungs. Forced her voice to be steady.

“War.”

Chapter Text

(Sienna’s POV – The Walled Gardens)

The cloudless sky pressed down on Dragonstone's gardens like a leaden lid. Sienna sat rigid on a stone bench, her fingers digging into the granite as Rhaenys chased Balerion through the rosemary bushes. The kitten darted under a myrtle shrub, tail flicking, while the toddler giggled- a sound that should have been light but today felt like glass shards in Sienna's chest.

Fifteen days since Lyanna disappeared. Five, at least, since Brandon charged into the dragon's den. Four days since Maris had brought the news, and the words still coiled in her gut like spoiled meat.

Lyanna vanished. Rhaegar spotted in the Riverlands. Brandon rode for King's Landing in fury.

She wished it was all a very elaborated prank. To show that her methods were unreliable, that her shadows were not working as they should.

But it was real. And there was very little she could do to prepare for it, and nothing to stop what was coming.

 She was blinded, her wings were clipped, and her shadows weren’t fast enough.

Sienna didn't remember much of running to the rookery- only the feel of her skirts hiked up, lungs burning, and the slam of her palms against the oak door.

She stopped short at the sight.

Her mouth hanging open, but no words leaving it.

Every perch was full.

Every-single-one.

Ravens shuffled restlessly, beaks clacking. The cage marked Storm's End – empty yesterday when she had sent a reply to Stannis – now held a hulking black bird that glared at her with beady eyes. The same one she saw the maester tie her message to.

It shouldn’t be here, her mind screamed.

"I need to send a message." Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, sharp and biting. "To Storm's End."

“Ravens are grounded by the king's decree, my lady”, Gormon's jowls quivered, but he squared his shoulders, his chains rattling when he turned in her direction.

Behind her, Maris sucked in a breath. Sienna's vision tunnelled even more. Aerys is cutting the realm's throat.

“Why?”, she demanded, feeling herself listing. Maris’ hand on her back the only thing keeping her afloat.

“The king has his-”

“His own reasons for what?”

Elia's voice cut through the rookery's gloom. She stood framed in the doorway Sienna didn’t remember to have crossed, Ashara at her shoulder, Aegon clutched to her chest. The baby's wispy hair caught the torchlight- silver like Rhaegar’s, like the chain around the maester’s neck.

Gormon bowed.

“Grounding Dragonstone's ravens, Your Grace.”

Sienna watched Elia's knuckles whiten around Ashara’s arm. Sienna heard her own voice as if she was outside her body.

“Just Dragonstone?” Please, let it be just us, she begged the gods even if she already knew the answer.

Aerys would strike all of them with fire if he could find justification for it. Now, he had one.

Brandon, you fool.

The maester hesitated. Then, softly: “The whole kingdom”.

Balerion pounced on a fallen lemon, and Rhaenys' shriek of delight yanked Sienna back to the sunlit garden. Her eyes followed the little girl, observing her elated and open expression. Not a worry in sight- as it should be for babies.

Sienna didn’t know if she could keep it that way for long.

The days and nights since the message had blurred together, each moment heavy with the weight of what was coming. She still didn’t remember leaving the rookery- only the slam of her chamber’s door, the painful crack of her fist against the wardrobe- stupid, stupid girl, and the realization that they were all hostages now, prisoners of a king who had severed their fastest lifeline. The ravens, those clever, loyal birds, were grounded. And she hated it- hated that the power to silence the realm rested in the hands of men who bowed to the Citadel before their own oaths.

Her mind was full of the night before, remembering how she had raged- against the world, against herself. How could I be so blind? The signs had been there- Rhaegar’s absence after the birth of his heir, the whispers of prophecy, Lyanna’s recklessness, the long space between letters to Robert. She had known, and yet-

She had knelt in the sept that morning, before the Crone, begging for wisdom she didn’t possess. Before the Warrior, she had prayed- for Robert’s temper, for Stannis’ cunning, for Ned’s survival. Then, before the Stranger, she had asked for resilience when facing the unknown. And then, like Nestor Royce had taught her years ago in the Eyrie, she had locked it all away. The fear, the fury, the grief. Numbness was better than chaos.

Numbness let her plan.

Maris had been waiting by her door when she emerged- a silent sentinel. Sienna wondered if she had stood vigil all night. But it mattered little… They needed to activate their network. Ravens were faster than horses, faster than boats, faster than legs. Without them, messages would crawl across the realm like wounded animals, arriving too late to matter.

Two is one, one is none.

Sienna, Stannis, and Maris had spent more time than she could recall weaving a web of contingencies. Codes split between messengers, words hidden in merchant ledgers, songs carrying secrets in taverns. Sailors, servants, bards- anyone who could move unseen. But Stannis had never been satisfied. He had experimented with falcons and hawks, training them to carry messages like the ravens did- with varied results, he’d grumbled.

Their father had started something better.

Lord Steffon Baratheon had understood the power of knowledge- and who controlled it. Years before his death, he had begun quietly ensuring that the maesters serving Storm’s End were his, loyal to the stag before the Citadel or the crown. He had sent Stormlanders to the Citadel, paid their fees, secured their futures. Jon Arryn had done the same in the Vale.

Sienna knew the maesters at Storm’s End and the Eyrie were loyal. But Dragonstone?

Little chance.

So, she had decided to send messages anyway- to Jon Arryn, to Rickard Stark, to Stannis. She had to trust that he had already received word of Lyanna, Rhaegar, and Brandon. Two is one, one is none. If one of them fell, the other had to carry the weight.

She had met with Ashara and Elia afterward, laying out her immediate plans. Ashara had insisted on sending word to the Blackfish- “He’ll listen to me”. Whatever the rapport those two had built in Harrenhal, Sienna hoped it was enough to swing Sir Brynden.

If he’s even still there.

Brandon had been on his way to Riverrun when he’d learned of Lyanna- if not already there. Reckless as he was, he wasn’t fool enough to neglect sending a raven to his father. And Rickard would have told Jon and Ned. And they, in turn, would have warned Stannis. And I would know.

There had been time. Days before the ravens were grounded.

Yet no word had come.

Something reeked in the Riverlands, and it wasn’t dead fish.

Elia had been colder, sharper: “Doran must know”.

Sienna had agreed. The notes had been written, some in code she had created with her twin, some with simpler, but deceiving, messages for a fish knight, a sun prince, and a viper.

Maris had made sure to distribute them to the right shadows, with urgent words and orders turning them their main communication pathway.

It would be slower, but it would be theirs. Sienna wasn’t sure how effective they would be- not with her locked in an island full of dragon loyalists. But she refused to let everything be out of her hands and ears.

Now, standing in the garden, she watched Rhaenys chase the black kitten, her laughter bright against the quiet dread thickening the air. Sienna let her fingers trail over the bracelet Ned had given her, finding a small measure of comfort in each direwolf link she felt.

Her eyes trailed to the sky. Still too clear, too blue-wrong. Sienna preferred storms. At least then, the world matched the tempest inside her.

She bent down to scoop up the kitten as it rubbed against her skirts, its tiny body warm against her palm.

Please, she prayed silently, fingers buried in black fur, as she flashed a smile to Rhaenys that ran in her direction. Let my messages reach them in time.

Let Stannis have already acted.

Let Robert keep his head.

Let Ned survive this.

Because in her heart, she knew-

It was already too late for Brandon Stark.

---------------------------

(Stannis’ POV – Storm’s End Harbor)

The salt wind bit at Stannis’ face as he stood on the docks, watching the captain of the Dawn Chaser approach. The man’s face was grim beneath his weather-beaten hat, his fingers stained with tar as he pressed a folded slip of parchment into Stannis’ palm.

Too small for good news.

He unfolded it, the paper rough against his calluses. Cobalt eyes deciphering the coded words with practiced ease. He had been one of its creators after all.

Lyanna Stark missing. Rhaegar last seen near Harrenhal. Brandon rides for King’s Landing.

The words were sparse. Efficient. They did not need embellishment of any kind, they should always be practical. But it was the numbers in the corner – indicating the date it was sent – that curdled his gut. More than a sennight ago.

Sienna’s name was the first thing that rose in his mind, sharp as a blade between his ribs.

She had been right.

They had both been right. They had done everything – spying, surveillance, serious talks, redundancies – and still, it wasn’t enough. Because royals thought themselves above consequence. Because Targaryens still believed the realm would kneel simply because their ancestors had ridden monsters.

His jaw locked. The taste of bile coated his tongue.

The letter in his breast pocket burned like a brand.

Five days prior, Maester Cressen – loyal, Stormlander-born, his father’s man – had found him in the training yard, where he observed Renly’s training. His little brother’s knight doll – Ser Steffanis – tucked under his arm for safe-keeping after Renly had begged him to keep Sienna’s gift from prying hands.

As if anybody would dare steal something from the boy.

Still, he had stared into Stannis’ eyes with his own cobalt blue, too much like Sienna’s, and it made Stannis acquiesce. Better to look ridiculous than to have the doll lying around in the yard. He would never admit that it was because – just like Renly – Stannis felt closer to his twin by caring for the silly doll.

Ridiculous or not, he didn’t look embarrassed when the maester approached.

“My lord”, he’d murmured, eyes darting to the guards. “The ravens. They’ve been grounded.”

Stannis had gone very still. “Where?”

“Everywhere.”

The word had settled over him like a shroud.

That night, after tucking in Renly and Ser Steffanis, he had gone to his quarters and had pulled his ledger from his desk- the one she’d given him at Harrenhal, its pages crisp, its spine unbroken. A twin to her own. He had flipped through it methodically, searching for the telltale crease of hidden parchment.

And there it was. Wedged between columns of grain stores and armour counts. A letter that he had found during his travel back to Storm’s End- but that he hadn’t re-read since then.

Her handwriting, precise as a knife’s edge:

Stannis,

If the worst happens – whatever that means – and if I’m away from you, from Robert and Renly… I need you to keep them safe. To keep him grounded.

He had scoffed when he first read it. Not wanting to think of that possibility. Preferring to believe she would be at least closer if that ever happened. Especially with her betrothal almost official.

He didn’t scoff again.

Give him the other letter I’ve put in this ledger. It’s for him. I hope he recalls our talks. I hope he remembers that our fury can be slow. It doesn’t need to be revealed at once.

And I beg you, favourite twin brother. Be kind to him.

She had underlined the words. Emphasising them and making the words sound in his mind as if she was speaking beside him.

I don’t know what will come. But if it does, prepare for it. You know what they will try to do. If you can’t avoid that, make them work harder to get it. Look to the north and the east. Call on them. And, perhaps, reach for the sun.

He knew what those against House Baratheon would do. He had been reading and studying it at his father’s knees from the moment he could understand words on a page.

Siege. Starvation. Storm’s End could hold, but at what cost? It didn’t matter. He would make sure it held. For her. For them.

He would have to prepare to use his contingencies to reach The Eyrie as soon as he found out what was happening. The Starks. He imagined they already knew.

How can you be sure, brother?, Sienna’s voice sounded in his head. Light, challenging. You must make sure.He would have to find a way to do that.

And Dorne. The Sun. Stannis didn’t trust them. But he trusted his twin- more than himself.

She had believed – even months prior – that Dorne might ally with them. After Rhaegar’s slight, it was something to consider.

I love you, brother. Love them for the both of us.

- S.

Stannis had read it once. Then again. Then folded it with military precision and slid it into his breast pocket, where it had lived since.

Now, standing on the docks with the sailor’s note in hand, he pressed his palm over the hidden letter, as if he could absorb its certainty through the wool of his doublet.

There were steps to be taken. They had prepared for it- but he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. So suddenly.

And the grounding of ravens… He had to stop his teeth from grinding together.

Robert would need to be told.

That alone was enough to make Stannis’ temples throb.

His brother had been... different since Harrenhal. Less roaring, more simmering. Enjoying the letter exchange with his future bride.

Sienna’s influence. But Robert’s own doing.

Stannis could still remember when his older brother had asked Lyanna Stark about sending letters to each other. He could still recall his surprise that Robert had not been angry and loud about the crown Rhaegar had bestowed upon the she-wolf’s head. Even if she had laughed it out as a mistake, Stannis had prepared to intervene.

Yet, Robert had behaved. Even tried his hand at charming the girl.

It was only later – well after the feast – that Sienna had told him about her brief conversation with their brother.

Stannis could still hear her voice, brittle with exhaustion.

“He called the prince a dragon cunt. Feeling all high and mighty about being slighted because of a crown of flowers”, she rolled her eyes. “I wish Robert truly understood the larger implication of the that fool’s actions.”

“I don’t know why you spend wishes with foolishness”, he answered, eyes perusing the latest report on grains. “Robert can’t see farther than his hammer-wielding hand.”

Sienna gave him a small smirk, back resting fully against the chair. He had pretended to not see.

“I told him to be happy she rejected it”, she sighed. “That he should be angry for Princess Elia. Not his pride.” At his silence, he had continued. “And he- He actually stopped and asked after the princess’ well-being.”

That made him lift a brow. It sounded as if Robert understood, for once, that life was not about him.

“I know. I was surprised too”, Sienna laughed low and fast. There and gone. “I told him to show Lyanna that he sees her for herself. Otherwise, it would be better to break it up”, her fingertips darting around her water cup. “He was a bit hurt by it, but said ‘not like this’. I think… I hope he understood.”

His eyes locked on hers faster than his own thoughts. Sienna had really brought that up to Robert? And he hadn’t screamed like a child about it? That was… Shocking.

She just smiled at him, tired eyes on his.

If push came to shove, they might have a way out.

Stannis exhaled through his nose, the memory leaving his mind, being replaced by the echo of Sienna’s plea: Be kind to him.

Kindness had never been their language. Duty was simpler. Cleaner. But Sienna had always been the bridge between them- the one who could sand the jagged edges of Robert’s pride and Stannis’ rigidity into something that fit.

Now, with her on Dragonstone, surrounded by dead dragons and silence, that bridge was ash.

Stannis turned the sailor’s note over in his hands, eyes fixed on the Dawn Chaser. Its next stop would be Dragonstone, and then, Gulltown.

At least 2 days to his sister. Triple of that to The Vale. If the seas were favourable.

No matter. He would send the messages he needed to. By sea and by land. And, in the right strategic time- by air.

It’s not just the Citadel that controlled Storm’s End’s skies.

Two is one, one is none, Sienna’s voice told him once more.

He had to reach Rickard Stark somehow, before House Stark became extinct like its sigil.

Brandon Stark was as good as dead. Stannis knew it with the same certainty he knew the tides- Aerys would not let such an insult pass unanswered.

Ned would ride south.

Robert would want blood.

And Sienna-

His gaze flicked northeast, toward the horizon where Dragonstone lurked beyond the curve of the world.

His sister, locked in an island of mad men.

The thought sat like a stone in his gut.

But emotion was a luxury. He had ledgers to review, ships to secure, and a brother to safeguard and another to steer toward vengeance without folly.

He crushed the note in his fist.

War was coming.

And Storm’s End would be ready.

---------------------------

(Sienna’s POV – Dragonstone, one week after the grounding of ravens)

The rain came in sheets, relentless and cold, drumming against Dragonstone’s black stone like the gods themselves were hammering at the gates.

Not the storm I wanted, Sienna thought, missing the sound of thunder and the lightening spectacle. The skies still too blue, too calm.

The whispers from King’s Landing had come like hammer blows with each boat that docked on Dragonstone. First, the confirmation that Brandon Stark had arrived at the capital, screaming for the crown prince to come out and face him. Fool. He and his companions had been thrown into the black cells.

Then Lord Rickard had been summoned to the capital- “with a royal retinue to escort him”, Maris had spat, which meant armed guards and no chance to refuse.

And now this: Aerys’ demand for Elia and the children.

Sienna’s nails dug into her palms. She had known it was coming. The whispers had slithered from the Red Keep for months- ever since Aerys’ paranoia had sharpened to a blade’s edge after Harrenhal. His constant ramblings about mystery and traitorous knights had reached Sienna week after week.

The king had always wanted them back in the capital, but now? After arresting the Starks? His suspicion had curdled into something monstrous, and she’d bet her last stag Varys was fanning the flames rather than damping them.

Maris stood beside her, her face ashen even in the dim light of the solar. Her words rolling in Sienna’s mind like a strong whirlpool in the sea.

“The king intends to recall the princess and her children to King’s Landing. Soon. He’s sending guards to ensure they come.”

Elia had bought them time with carefully worded letters, with Daena’s emphatic reports about her fragile health. But time had run out.

Brandon was imprisoned and Rickard was most certainly being forced into a trap. The recall order for Elia wasn’t just madness- it was a threat. Hostages, Sienna thought bitterly.

It seemed that when bad news rained, they poured.

“The maester must have told them the princess is well enough to walk,” Maris said, breaking the silence at last. “Or one of the Spider’s birds”, her voice tight. They had tried to smoke out Varys’ spies from Dragonstone, but Sienna knew it was almost impossible to insulate oneself against him.

Even if they were on an island.

Sienna’s fingers twitched at her sides.

“I will strangle him with his own chains”, she said of Gormon, the only ‘enemy’ she could really give a face to and that was close. Her vision blurred for a moment, the weight of it pressing down on her like a physical thing. Then, quietly, she added. “You know what I must ask next, don’t you?”

“Yes”, Maris didn’t hesitate. “You must speak to the princess. And Lady Ashara.”

Sienna closed her eyes.

Elia was napping under the pergola, her swollen belly bare to the warm air, her skin so thin and pale that Sienna could trace the veins beneath it. Oberyn lounged nearby, sharpening a dagger, while Ashara braided Rhaenys’ hair into intricate loops. An impressive feat to achieve with a toddler.

A rare moment of peace.

“The king grows restless,” Maris murmured from an alcove near her, the shadows stretching long. “He fears Dorne’s loyalty. He wants the princess and the babe in the capital.”

Sienna continued to watch Elia’s slow breathing, the rise and fall of her ribs. “He’ll never let them leave once they’re there.”

They were insurance against Dorne. But also, against Rhaegar.

“No”, Maris agreed. “He won’t.”

Later that week, they had met in the bowels of the castle. Sienna had turned to her best shadow. The torchlight barely reaching them.

 “Maris. I promised you once I would never dishonour you.”

The older woman smiled, small and sad. “I know you never will.”

“What I must ask of you now-”

“My lady”, Maris interrupted gently, “there is little you could ask that would bring me dishonour. In the great game, I am small.” A pause. “We both are, in a way.”

Sienna’s throat went dry. She still hadn’t made peace with what she was about to ask.

“How well do you know the town’s orphanage?”

They had started planning before they even knew if Aegon would be a boy or a girl. Sienna had hoped – prayed – it would never come to this. That it would remain just another contingency, gathering dust in the back of her mind.

But now Rhaegar was gone. Lyanna was gone. Brandon was likely dead or doomed. And her brothers – gods, Robert, Stannis – were surely already moving pieces on a board she couldn’t see.

“They won’t like it”, Sienna muttered, staring out toward the garden where Elia sat with Aegon in her lap. The babe had grown plump and bright-eyed, his legs and arms thick with rolls, his laughter ringing like bells.

Not like us.

Rhaenys and Aegon were not pawns. They were children. But the game didn’t care.

“They don’t have to like it”, Maris said softly. “But they must do it. The little ones… they are not like us. They are central to the game.”

Sienna exhaled. The rain lashed harder against the windows.

Time to break a princess’s heart.

---------------------------

The parchment in Sienna’s hands felt like a death warrant.

Outside, the rain continued to fall heavily, hammering Dragonstone’s towers like the gods themselves were weeping. Fitting, she thought bitterly. Of all the horrors she had carried to Elia these past week – Rhaegar’s betrayal, Brandon’s arrest, Rickard’s doomed summons – this would cut deepest. A mother’s fear was a sharper blade than any crown’s displeasure.

She had rehearsed this moment a hundred times in her head, but standing in the dim solar with Elia’s expectant gaze upon her, the words turned to ash in her mouth. The fire crackled, casting long shadows across the princess’s face- still pale from Aegon’s birth, still fragile. Yet much better than after she had had Rhaenys.

No gentle way to say it.

“Aerys demands your return to King’s Landing,” Sienna said, her voice flat. Letting the parchment fall to the wooden table. “He is going to send guards to ensure compliance.”

Elia’s breath hitched, eyes not leaving hers. Sienna thought it impossible, but more colour drained from her face. Across the room, Ashara’s sharp inhale was the only sound- a blade slipping between ribs.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then Elia’s fingers curled into the arms of her chair, knuckles white.

“When?”

“Soon.” Sienna’s thumb rubbed the edge of the parchment like she could erase the words. “Before Rickard arrives, if I had to wager. The king will want control over most pieces on the board before he makes his move.” The fire popped, casting sparks that died before the hearth. “They would already be here if Aerys thought we knew what was coming.”

Ashara surged forward. “He can’t-”

“He’s the king,” Sienna cut in, sharper than she meant to. “He can.”

Ashara's hand found Sienna's wrist, her grip tight enough to bruise.

“Are you certain?” The words were barely audible- not a challenge, but a last anchor to mercy.

Sienna didn't blink.

“It's time.” The firelight caught the stormlander steel in her eyes as she turned to Elia. No going back now.

The smell of salt and damp stone clung to the narrow hall as Sienna led Ashara through the unmarked door. Inside, the air was warm, thick with the scent of milk and lavender soap. A nursemaid – one of Stannis’s, stern-faced and silent – bobbed a curtsy before slipping out.

And then, there they were.

The little girl first- no older than two, perched on a rug with a wooden knight in her hands. Her hair was a shade lighter than Rhaenys’s, her skin less golden, but the shape of her eyes – gods, the eyes – was near enough to make Sienna’s stomach twist.

But it was her laughter that made Sienna tear up. She had been around her enough times to know they had such a similar, carefree laugh.

Then the boy in the crib.

Andrik slept with one fist curled near his cheek, his silver-white hair fine as cobwebs. Slightly bigger than Aegon, but close enough. Close enough. The reports never mentioned the prince’s eyes- and why would they? Aegon’s were so dark they looked Dornish brown, only revealing their violet depths in sunlight. This boy’s brown eyes wouldn’t raise questions with courtly people that never saw him before.

Ashara went rigid. Sienna had brought her here without saying much, just that there was something – someones – Ashara needed to see.

“What is this?”

“Her name is Rhaelle,” Sienna said quietly. “He is Andrik.”

“Why are they here?”

 “Because Aerys will never let Elia’s children leave the Red Keep once they’re inside.” Sienna didn’t hesitate, her eyes still on the little girl.

Ashara’s laugh was brittle. “You’re mad.”

“Mad is a king who burns men alive for sport.” Sienna stepped closer, voice dropping. “You think I want to do this? I’m out of pretty choices, Ashara. Stannis has funded this house for months- nurses, tutors, guards loyal to us, not the crown. If the time comes, these children walk into the dragon’s mouth so Elia’s don’t have to.”

Ashara’s hand flew to her dagger. “And if they’re discovered?”

“They won’t be.” Sienna’s voice was iron. “The court hasn’t seen Rhaenys since before we departed for Harrenhal, and Aegon’s never set foot in the Red Keep. No one knows their faces well enough to question it- not with the coming chaos.”

“If,” Ashara pressed, her fingers whitening around the hilt. “What if?”

The firelight carved shadows across Sienna’s face as she turned fully toward Ashara.

“Then I will make sure they get a kinder fate than Aerys would give them.” Her thumb brushed the hidden vial in her sleeve- nightshade, bitter and quick. “A mercy, not a spectacle.”

A beat. Then Ashara’s shoulders sagged. “Elia can never know.”

“She will,” Sienna said. “When the time is right.”

Elia’s chair scraped against stone as she stood, hands wringing together with unbearable anxiety. Sienna could not feel what she felt as a mother, but she loved the little ones deeply – both sets. She understood at least part of the anguish in the princess’ heart.

“There must be another way. A delay, a-”

“There isn’t.” Sienna stepped forward, hands outstretched. “But I have a plan. You need to trust me.”

Elia’s dark eyes searched hers.

“Tell me.”

Sienna exhaled. Then she told the princess everything.

How Maris had first visited the orphanage while Elia still carried Aegon, counting infants with the same ruthless precision Stannis used for supplies. How she’d found an orphaned toddler – a dead fisherman’s daughter with a laugh like wind chimes – and paid the matron triple her weight in silver to “foster” her. How Stannis had quietly sent two nursemaids from Storm’s End, their loyalty bought with pensions that would feed their own great-grandchildren.

Two is one, one is none, her brother had signed the letter, the funds always arriving when needed.

The boy had come later, smuggled from Driftmark in a midwife’s basket after Aegon’s birth. One of Daena’s women had brought him- a silver-haired babe left in the womb-waters of some Velaryon bastard’s stillborn mother. When Sienna first saw him sleeping, his rosebud mouth slack with milk-drunk contentment, the breath had left her lungs. Such a beautiful child to be left alone in this world.

She could still recall Stannis’ response. Characteristically practical, just like her twin. “See that he’s fed beef broth twice daily, it strengthens the bones”, and the extra gold for his care arrived without delay.

The solar was secure- Sienna knew this like she knew the scar on her palm from Robert’s first dagger lesson. Every shadow in the princess’s quarters belonged to her and Maris. The guards outside? Baratheon men, rotated in after the ravens were grounded. The local servants? All vetted by Daena’s network of midwives. If Varys had spies left here, they were deaf, mute and dead.

Only then did she speak the names aloud: “Rhaelle and Andrik. Easy to turn in Rhaenys and Aegon.”

Silence. Then-

“Orphans?” Elia's voice cracked like thin ice. “You would have me hand my children to strangers and take theirs in return?” Her hands rose instinctively, as if to physically ward off the idea. “I will not be parted from them. Not for any threat.”

Sienna reached slowly across the table, her open palms a peace offering. “I would never ask you to abandon them. This is how we keep them safe-”

“By giving them away?” Elia's breath came too fast now, her fingers twisting in her skirts. “What mother could-”

“They are not going to strangers,” Sienna cut in, her voice low and urgent. She stepped closer, her hands open between them like a supplicant's. “Rhaenys and Aegon will be on a Dornish galley that will depart as soon as the captain is told- Maris has secured it in the far dock. They will be in Sunspear before the moon turns."

Elia shook her head, her dark eyes wild and dazed, still in denial.

“And these... these other children? You would have me-”

The parchment crumpled violently under Sienna's palm as she slammed her hand down, the sound like a whip-crack in the close room.

“Elia.” Just her name- raw and stripped bare. "Aerys isn't summoning you to court. He's gathering hostages. Your brothers will have to ride to support him the moment you enter that city, or your children will be the first thing he dangles over the battlements.” She leaned in, her free hand catching Elia's wrist, the piece of paper crushed beneath her other palm. “I would smuggle all three of you to Sunspear tonight if I could. But the harbour’s watched, there are no roads off this cursed rock, and Varys has ears in every fucking crack in the walls beyond these rooms.”

Elia staggered back as if struck. Ashara moved to steady her, but the princess wrenched away, turning toward the window where the sea churned black beneath the gathering storm.

“You ask me to send innocents to die,” she whispered.

“I ask you to let me save your innocents.” Sienna’s throat burned.

The wind howled through the cracks in the stone. Sienna’s ears picking up a distant noise, almost like a thunder in the far distance.

Elia’s shoulders trembled. When she turned back, her eyes were dry- Dornish steel, not tears.

“How?”

“Ashara and I will smuggle them out through the lower tunnels to the waiting galley- we will give them milk of the poppy to keep them quiet. The orphans take their place in the nursery. Ashara departs with the evening tide.” Her hand drifted to the dagger at her belt- Oberyn’s gift, steel kissed by Dornish sun. For when thinking isn’t enough.

Ashara opened her mouth to protest, but Elia cut her off with a raised hand, understanding dawning in her dark eyes. “You are Dornish. No one would question your recall home.”

“We’ll forge a letter from Edric Dayne given to us by a Dornish captain,” Sienna said, watching the Dayne lady closely. “It will say Ashara is being called to see her father and mother. Stay with family for some months before returning to the Princess’ service.”

Elia nodded, hugging her self, pulling her shawl closer.

“There are Dornish ships in the harbour- one leaves with the evening tide tomorrow.” Sienna continued, eyes focused on the princess. “It wouldn raise suspicion if another joined it”, referring to the galley waiting on them.

“Tomorrow?” Elia’s voice barely carried over. Ashara was by her side in an instant, arm around her waist.

Sienna braced herself. She could not falter, even if it hurt to see Elia like that.

“While the waters are still open. The ravens are grounded- even if Gormon sent word about Ashara leaving, by the time anyone acted..." By then, Rhaelle and Andrik would be in place, Ashara and the true Martell children far at sea. On the way to safety in the Water Gardens, loved as Doran and Oberyn’s own. Adored by their cousins.

Elia’s gaze drifted, and then fixed on hers once more.

“Swear to me they will be loved. That Oberyn will-”, her words being interrupted by a sob.

Sienna was on her other side in a heartbeat. Arm going around her, hand touching Ashara as well.

She had begged the gods this would never need to happen.

But a mad man had laughed at her prayers.

“Like his own”, her own voice was hoarse by tears that she refused to let fall. She knew Elia didn't really need her to guarantee Oberyn would love her children. But the Dornish princess was terrified- heel, Sienna was too. She would offer her all the mercies she could. “They will want for nothing. And you...” She swallowed hard. “You will hold them again when this is over.”

Elia sobbed again, her tears falling down her cheeks in desolation.

Sienna couldn’t promise all would be well, but she could hope.

She cradled the princess’ head against her shoulder, cobalt eyes finding Ashara’s lilac ones.

A gust of wind rattled the shutters. Somewhere below, waves clawed at the black rocks.

A loud thunder made Sienna’s heart drum faster.

They would weather this storm, and Sienna would give her all to reach the other side unscathed.

Chapter Text

(Stannis’ POV – Storm’s End)

The raven came at dawn, slicing through the bruised purple sky like a blade.

Stannis watched from the battements. He had been used to waking up before the sunrise for many years but, since the ravens’ grounding, he hadn’t had a peaceful night of sleep.

For a fleeting moment, he allowed himself to hope. The king had grounded the ravens, no bird should fly. This means the blockade is lifted.

Then, the raven approached the maester’s turret and circled once, twice – wrong flight pattern, too direct – before plunging toward the rookery. Not one of the Citadel’s trained couriers, then. One of his.

Shadow raven. One of the twelve he’d covertly acquired months before going to Harrenhal, their wings clipped just enough to limit range, their training different enough that they wouldn’t obey Citadel commands.

This one had made the brutal flight from the Eyrie. The only place Stannis had trusted to send half of his shadow birds, exactly for a time like this. It had been three days since he had sent a message. Three days of Aerys’ men hunting any bird not chained to a royal perch.

Suppressing the urge to sigh, he made his way to his quarters. It wasn’t long before he heard Maester Cressen’s chains clinking outside. The knock on the door barely resonating before Stannis told him to enter.

“From the Eyrie, my lord.” The old man’s voice was carefully neutral, but his thumb rubbed the wax seal – a feather – like a worrisome scab. A simple symbol that he and Sienna had chosen as Jon Arryn’s shadow sigil.

Stannis nodded, giving the maester permission. Cressen broke the seal, unfurling the scroll. He passed it to Stannis without so much as glancing at the words.

Jon Arryn’s handwriting was terse, ink blotted as if written in haste.

Assume His Grace still operates within the kingdoms’ norms. Trial by combat likely – Rickard may demand a champion. Brandon could yet be ransomed. The Vale prepares quietly. Awaiting Elbert’s return.

Stannis exhaled through his nose. Optimistic. The Lord of the Eyrie hadn’t seen Aerys’ madness firsthand as Sienna had. But it was impossible that Jon Arryn hadn’t watched the king’s nails claw grooves into the Harrenhal throne as he ranted about “traitorous knights.”

Arryn was worried about not having news from his heir. Stannis would too, from Riverrun to the Eyrie, one would take 10 days of fast travel. Elbert should have arrived before the ravens were grounded.

Still, Stannis couldn’t be certain, but he doubted Brandon’s companions didn’t follow him. Either out of loyalty or youthful bravado. The falcon might have lost its fledgling too- not just the wolves.

He didn’t know. But he expected to change that soon. Sienna had advised her shadows to be more active in their messaging.

Yet there was one line that mattered in Arryn’s reply: The Vale prepares.

Just like the Stormlands were.

----------------------

He found Robert in the training yard, shirtless despite the chill in the air, his warhammer glinting wetly in the torchlight. The leather war braid that Sienna had gifted him peaking beneath his fingers, wrapped around the weapon’s handle. The dummy he’d been brutalizing hung from its post by a single rope, straw guts spilling onto the mud.

“Jon replied,” Stannis said, the scroll already burnt to a crisp in his solar.

Robert didn’t pause. Crunch. The dummy’s head exploded in a shower of splinters.

“And?”

“He believes Rickard can demand trial by combat. That Brandon might be ransomed. And that Elbert is making his way back to the Eyrie.”

The hammer stilled.

Robert’s shoulders heaved, sweat carving rivers through the dirt on his skin. When he turned, his eyes were wild- not with rage, Stannis hadn’t seen that since their first talk about what was happening. No, his brother wasn’t furious, not yet – it was the quiet before the storm.

“You don’t believe that.” He said, staring into Stannis’ eyes.

“No.”

A muscle jumped in Robert’s jaw. Then-

CRACK.

The hammer split a nearby bench in two, sending splinters flying and tumbling into the dirt.

“Rhaegar takes Lyanna. Brandon rides to demand justice and gets thrown in the black cells. The king grounds every raven in the realm like we’re children to be punished-” His voice cracked like thunder. “This isn’t governing, Stannis. This is tyranny.”

Stannis let the silence stretch. Counted the breaths until Robert’s grip on the hammer loosened. Just like last time.

Stannis had chosen the moment with care- after training, after supper, when Robert's limbs were heavy with exhaustion and his belly full of venison. The solar smelled of smoke and spilled wine, the remains of their meal still scattered across the table.

It was rare for this to happen. Their dining together. Their routines were much different, and they often didn’t have time for that.

But Stannis had made time. It was needed.

“The ravens are grounded,” Stannis began, testing the waters.

Robert grunted, picking at a bone.

“Who does the mad fuck think is betraying him now?” His tone was more weary than enraged- good.

Stannis had hoped to maintain that measured calm. But then-

“Lyanna's disappeared. Likely with Rhaegar.”

The bone cracked in Robert's grip.

“What?”

“A sailor brought word. A message from Sienna confirmed it. And Brandon-"

Robert was on his feet before Stannis could finish, the chair clattering to the floor.

“Brandon what?”

“In the black cells. He rode to King's Landing demanding answers.”

The roar that followed shook the rafters.

“That dragon bastard kidnapped my bride, and his mad father throws my good-brother in a cell for demanding justice?!”

For three heartbeats, Stannis watched his brother become a storm given flesh- veins bulging, face purpling, hands searching for something to break. Then he moved, planting himself between Robert and the door like a bulwark against the tide.

It took hours. Hours of pacing, of curses that would make a whore blush, of Robert slamming his fists into the stone walls until his knuckles split. Only when the rage had burned down to embers did Stannis pull the letter from his sleeve.

Now.

Robert hesitated for a moment before taking it from him. Realization crossing his eyes when he recognised their sister’s handwriting.

The letter trembled in his grip, while his eyes and fingers – still shaking – traced Sienna's words like a prayer. His other fist clenched around the ends of the braided leather bracelet at his wrist. Always there when he wasn’t using his warhammer.

Then Robert frowned.

“What does she mean, ‘ask Stannis what we know’?” His thumb jabbed at the line. “She dated this from Harrenhal. What could she- you know about this back then?”

“The tourney.” Stannis had forced the words out like drawing arrows from a wound. “Lyanna and Rhaegar. They’d been meeting in the godswood.”

Robert went very still. Not even the paper moved.

“Sienna saw them. She tried to warn Lyanna.” Be kind, her written words sounding in his mind. “She thought- We thought the girl would refuse him.” He was in it as much as Sienna, he wouldn’t let her take any sort of blame from Robert alone.

 “Sienna knew Lyanna was in love with that bastard and didn’t tell me?” Robert’s voice was raw, stripped bare. Not the roar Stannis expected, but something worse- betrayal. “She let me believe Lyanna didn’t expect to be crowned?”

“She knew you’d get yourself killed if she did.”

“Damn right I would’ve!” Robert kicked the fallen chair. “But before I’d have split Rhaegar’s pretty head open right there in the-”

“And Aerys would’ve burned you alive.” Stannis stepped closer, the words a blade between them. “Sienna wanted you to have your wedding. She wanted you happy”, and his twin had tried so hard. They had failed, but they had tried. “If anything, she bought you time. Now you’re provoked. Now the realm sees it too.”

Robert had turned away, shoulders hunched. Then, so quiet Stannis barely caught it:

“Did he kidnap her? Or did she… go willingly?”

Be kind.

Stannis had to grind his teeth until his jaw ached to not say what he truly wished. It doesn’t matter.

“We don’t know.” He said instead. “But he broke the peace either way. She wasn’t his to take.”

“No.” Robert’s laugh was hollow. “Lyanna belongs to herself only.”

The words had hung between them- an admission Stannis never thought he’d hear from Robert’s lips. That Lyanna Stark was her own person, not something that soon would belong to Robert.

His brother unspooled the leather braid from the handle, only to wrap it back around his own wrist. Stannis had seen him touching that war braid more times than he could remember in the last week. He understood why, he almost always kept the ledger Sienna gave him close, and when it wasn’t her letter always was.

“We need to stop Rickard. He’s riding into a trap.”

“I’ll send another shadow raven to Jon. If we can intercept-”

“Call the banners.” Robert straightened, gripping his hammer with more strength. Not a request. Not even an order. A fact, as inevitable as the tide.

Stannis nodded.

“Quietly.” He said, it was something they had discussed at length. “And we will need ships to-”

“Sienna,” Robert said suddenly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Any word?”

Stannis thought of the smuggler’s letter hidden in his boot: The land of sun will receive two crates of Dragonstone’s best produce by week’s end. The rest of us are being taken to the Red Keep’s pantry.

He chose to give Robert the barest truth. The one that made his stomach churn and his few hours of sleep tumultuous.

“She’s going with Princess Elia and her household to King’s Landing. Under guard.”

Robert’s face darkened.

“She should’ve refused.”

“And branded herself a traitor? Aerys sent men to ensure compliance.”

“She’s like Brandon now.” Robert kicked the shattered wood. “Riding straight into the dragon’s den.”

Stannis almost smiled. Almost. “She will never be that foolish. She will survive us all.”

The ghost of a laugh escaped Robert. Then, he straightened, the hammer finding his shoulder like an old friend.

“Call the banners, brother.”

Stannis merely nodded, then started to repeat. “And we’ll need ships to-”

“Intercept Rickard if he moves by water. I know.” Robert’s eyes flicked to the sky, as if expecting to see something different then clouds and lightening blue. “But Jon’s wrong. There’ll be no trial. No ransom.”

A gust of wind howled through the yard, the smell of the sea reaching them afresh. A storm would come soon.

Still, Stannis heard what his brother didn’t say. There would be no trial. No ramson.

Only fire.

----------------------

(Jon Arryn’s POV – The Eyrie)

The granary smelled of damp barley and old wood. Jon ran a hand along the stacked sacks, counting silently.

“Winter stores”, he said to the castellan, loud enough for the servants to hear. “See that we double the usual reserves”.

The man nodded, scratching numbers in his ledger. Neither mentioned how the Eyrie's population couldn't possibly consume this much grain in three winters. Nobody but them need to be aware of that- nor of the real reason behind the new policies and investment.

Let people think it was because Jon was weary of the new winter wave after the false spring.

Let spidery spies tell that to their master.

Nestor Royce stood at Jon's elbow, bronze armour gleaming dully in the torchlight. “The Gulltown merchants will be pleased with their sudden windfall”, he murmured.

Jon hummed noncommittally. They'd been walking the storages for near a week now- ever since the that solo raven had arrived after the maester had told him about the King’s decree.

Outside, the sky stretched empty. No wings, shadowed or otherwise, broke the pale blue expanse as they made their way to the armoury.

The smithy rang with the sound of hammer on steel. The sounds reaching them before they stepped foot across the door. Jon watched as the captain of the guard – a grizzled Valeman of thirty years’ service – tested the edge of a newly forged blade.

“Rust prevention”, the head smith announced to the curious squires that didn’t dare ask the captain. “All arms must be kept battle-ready, lads.”

Jon exchanged glances with him, then with Nestor and the captain.

The lie would hold. These men had served House Arryn since the days of Jon’s father. They understood silence.

They understood loyalty and honour.

Jon and Nestor continued their rounds, making sure to appear their usual selves, talking and taking care of both important and irrelevant issues. But no ravens in the skies meant a lot of their routine was disrupted and – somewhat – empty.

Those first few days had been odd. But then, the maester had given him a small scroll that he had kept tucked in his breast pocket since.

The parchment in Jon’s hands felt too light for the weight it carried.

He sat at the solar’s window, the morning mist curling around the Eyrie’s towers like ghostly fingers. Below, the Vale stretched green and gold- his Vale, peaceful as a painted tableau. A lie.

The maester had brought the letter at dawn, its wax seal stamped with a ledger sigil. Stannis Baratheon’s shadow mark. Jon had needed half an hour with his codex to decipher it. Now the words lay bare before him:

Lyanna Stark missing. Rhaegar suspected. Brandon to King’s Landing- status unknown. No news about rest of party. The storms are ready to call heavy clouds to rain upon marching wolves. Prepare your preying birds.

Jon had been shocked, trying to grasp what he was reading.

His mind reeled back to that first day- the maester's nervous face announcing the ravens’ grounding. He’d assumed it was Rhaegar's doing at the time, some desperate ploy to contain his father’s madness. Not this. Never this.

Lyanna Stark? Of all the women in the realm – of all the disastrous choices – the Crown Prince had fixated on Ned's sister? A girl of five-and-ten, betrothed to Robert no less. Had the man learned nothing from the Blackfyre rebellions? And Lyanna – gods help them all – had she truly been able to blind the storm courting her? With nobody the wiser?

Brandon. That hot-headed wolf had clearly charged straight into the Red Keep, all fire and fury.  Jon could picture it too easily- the heir to Winterfell shouting threats at the very foot of the Iron Throne, playing right into Aerys' paranoia. Gods, boy, did you truly think the Mad King would heed you?

And Elbert... Jon's gut twisted. His nephew had more sense than Brandon, surely. But honour was a double-edged sword, and Elbert had been raised on the same tales of knightly virtue as the rest of them.

The Arryn words were As High As Honour. And he'd raised Elbert to uphold them, just as he'd taught his wards- even if Robert's honour roared where Sienna's slithered.

And, if Brandon had called for aid, if he'd framed it as a matter of justice...

He exhaled through his nose. Foolish, reckless children.

A knock. Nestor Royce entered without waiting, his bronze armour glinting even in the muted light. The man took one look at Jon’s face and closed the door with a quiet click.

“Bad news, then.”

Jon slid the letter across the table. Nestor scanned it, his frown deepening with each line.

“Brandon,” he muttered. “That impulsive halfwit.”

“And likely not alone.” Jon’s fingers drummed the armrest. “Elbert rode with him to Riverrun for the wedding preparations. If Brandon went to the capital…”

Nestor’s jaw tightened. Kyle Roycehad gone with Elbert- an heir and a main vassal of the Vale, vanished into the Red Keep’s maw.

“A trial, then.” Nestor’s voice was too controlled. “Rickard will demand one. Aerys may be mad, but he’s not fool enough to execute highborn hostages without-”

“You assume the king thinks like a rational man.” Jon rose, pacing to the window, remembering how Aerys had looked too far gone during the tourney in Harrenhal. Recalling the reports of his burning of people for reasons that only made sense to the monarch. The wind carried the distant clang of the smithy- more swords would need to be forged, more arrows fletched. “He locked down the ravens, Nestor. That’s not the act of a man planning fair trials.”

“We should tell Ned”, Nestor said. Jon could see his worry for their quiet wolf.

“Not yet”, he hesitated. Ned loved his sister. Jon couldn’t bear to have him ride foolishly after her, or worse… South. “Not until we know more.”

Nestor’s gauntleted hand clenched, eyes on the ledger sigil.

“Then we prepare. Quietly.”

They had started preparing on that same day. Making plans, wondering if they should send a rider to Riverrun. The quietness of House Tully unnerved him. Surely, Elbert and Brandon would have sent ravens to their Houses.

They might have been foolish, but they were not stupid. They knew Rickard and Jon would have needed time to prepare. To call their major houses, to plan to look for Lyanna, to get ready for the downfall.

Still, nothing. And when Jon had mentioned that to Nestor, he had grunted, calling Hoster Tully a spineless man. Ambitious, but his family and their standing in society were more important than anything else.

“And the Starks are not family to him”, Nestor had said through gritted teeth. “Not yet. He won’t risk siding against the Crown if there is any chance it will backfire against him.”

Jon knew it to be true, even if it made his stomach sour.

Their next stop was maester Upcliff’s chambers.

Jon had known him before he was a maester, when he was a young lad with a desire to know it all. When Steffon came to him with the idea of sending loyal houses to become maesters, Warrick Upcliff from Witch Isle had been one of the first candidates he sent. Almost 20 years later, and he was the main maester of the falcon’s nest.

Others like him have been put in posts in the major vassal keeps of House Arryn.

Now, he hoped to see his and Steffon’s planning pay off. Either the maesters were going to tell on their communication to the Citadel, or they would keep their council to the houses they served.

“Send a rider to Runestone”, he told the man, giving him a scroll, the wax seal already dry. “We need to tell Lord Yohn his cousin’s ships are needed for... wool transport.”

The maester’s quill hesitated. “My lord?”

“Wool tariffs”, Jon clarified. “The new ones.”

Understanding dawned in the man’s eyes. Wool meant war. And wool tariffs meant convert every merchant cog to warship.

----------------------

Jon stood at the edge of the training yard, watching Ned drill recruits with unusual ferocity. The midday sun painted everything in sharp relief- the sweat on brows, the glint of steel, the determined set of Ned's jaw.

My wolf cub, Jon thought. The quiet one.

He remembered how carefully he and Nestor had tried to make sense of the chaos before telling Ned anything. They had known only fragments: Brandon’s recklessness, Lyanna’s disappearance, the ravens’ silencing. But the heart of it – the why – had eluded them.

And Ned… Jon’s fingers tightened around the railing. His northern ward loved that sister of his more than life itself. More than the affection he held for Sienna since they met years ago under Jon’s roof. To wound Lyanna was to wound Ned twice over- once in his heart, once in his honour.

Stannis’ letter had been sparse, but Jon had read the unsaid between the lines. Lyanna taken? Unlikely. That girl had wolf’s blood in her veins- she’d have left claw marks down Rhaegar’s princely face if dragged unwilling. No, this reeked of something fouler: a girl’s silly trust met with a prince’s reckless desire.

Harrenhal. The pieces clicked together belatedly. Ned’s quiet distress during the tourney, his constant shadowing of Lyanna- not just brotherly love, but worry, guilt. Jon cursed himself. He’d been too wrapped in lordly negotiations to notice how Sienna’s sharp eyes had tracked the Starks and the royal family, how she had been whispering with Stannis about “stubborn wolves” and “delusions” when Jon had gone to talk to Robert after his melee’s victory.

Nestor would have seen it. Nestor, who’d always doted on Sienna like she was his own bronze-clad daughter.

The truth had come yesterday, slipped into Jon’s hand by an elderly maid who had served House Arryn since his boyhood. “From your youngster, my lord.” The parchment bore a smudged symbol- like an arrowhead, but actually the symbol of a squall. Sienna’s mark.

He had decoded it with shaking hands:

Lyanna and Rhaegar vanished. Brandon to KL, possibly with company. Aerys unhinged without Rhaegar’s restraint. No alert from rivers, do not trust the fish but the black one. The storms know. Call banners. Prepare for war. Elia’s household recalled- shadows will aid if possible. Please, father, keep Ned safe. Prepare him for sorrow.

Nestor had helped parse the mess, his fingers tracing the cramped script with something like pride. “She has positioned herself where she can do most good,” he had said when Jon voiced fears of Sienna becoming a hostage.

“She is a child,” Jon had protested, though the words rang hollow. Sienna had been a woman grown for years now, her betrothal to Ned all but certain, sharp as Valyrian steel.

Gods, would their betrothal even hold after this?, he had thought in the middle of it all.

The door had burst open then- Ned, wild-eyed, a twin parchment crumpled in his fist. “My sister, she’s been-”The boy’s voice died as he took in Jon’s face, the matching message on the table.

Jon could almost see his mind gluing together the latest changes, the way Jon and Nestor seemed to be preparing for something.

The wingless skies.

The pain and betrayal in Ned’s eyes would haunt Jon longer than any battlefield ghost.

Jon had found him hours later in the godswood. Sharpening a dagger with methodical strokes, the ring on his finger catching the light- wolves and stags intertwined. Sienna's gift from Harrenhal.

“You knew”, Ned had said without looking up.

Jon had sighed and sat beside his ward.

‘Not everything”, Jon had admitted. “Stannis sent a raven”, Ned had looked up then, curious. “A shadow one. The king has grounded the Citadel ones”, when understanding shone in the grey eyes, Jon had continued. “But it only spoke of Brandon’s folly and Lyanna’s disappearance."

Ned’s jaw had worked. His anger so much like the North, cold and unrelenting.

“And you didn't think to tell me my sister was-”

“I needed facts, not fears.” Jon had studied the young man's profile- so like his father's, yet softer. “Just as you have kept your own secrets. Harrenhal.” He had said on a whim, waiting to see if Ned would bite.

A flinch. Then the story came in ragged pieces – Lyanna’s masquerading as a knight, her and Rhaegar’s whispered meetings in the godswood, Ned and Sienna trying to make her see reason, Robert’s change and Lyanna’s refusal of the crown of flowers.

“I thought it was just... Childish fears of marriage, and her love for freedom and poetry,” Ned whispered. “If I’d told Father-”

“He'd have locked her in Winterfell. She would not seen anybody other than family until her wedding to Robert”. Jon had said, but he had refrained from saying that if Rickard had known, then this would not be happening. “And she would have hated you for it.”

“Better hated than gone”, Ned’s knuckles had whitened around the dagger.

Jon had placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. He needed to make his ward see all the possibilities.

“You assume she was taken.”

Ned had gone very still.

“You think she went willingly?”

Yes. Jon had thought, but chose his next words carefully. “Princes rarely need to steal what maidens freely give.”

The dagger embedded itself in one of the raised roots of the tree.

Ned had stood abruptly, his breath clouding in the cold air. “Then why ground the ravens? Why imprison Brandon?”

“Because Rhaegar miscalculated.” Jon had risen beside him, brushing bark from his sleeves. “And Aerys… Aerys sees daggers in every shadow.”

The silence stretched. Somewhere above, a falcon cried.

Now, watching Ned correct yet another soldier in training, Jon wondered if he would ever forgive himself for not seeing the storm sooner.

He looked south, toward where Rickard Stark rode blindly to his doom. Further still, to where Sienna – his little storm – was likely walking into the dragon's maw.

Ned had not mentioned her going to King’s Landing. And Jon suspected she hadn’t told him in her message. To save him from worrying even more about another loved one.

Nestor joined him, bronze armour warm from the sun.

“The rider for Runestone has left."

Jon nodded.

Somewhere in the Vale, men were quietly sharpening swords. Ships were soon going to be fitted for war. And high in the mountains, the clansmen would be stirring at long last.

Let the dragons come, Jon thought. The falcon is sharpening its talons.

----------------------

(Sienna’s POV – The Red Keep)

The towering oak-and-bronze doors stood before them, their surfaces carved with the conquests of Aegon the Conqueror- flames licking at kneeling kings, the Seven-Pointed Star shattered beneath Balerion's claws. Sienna’s stomach tightened as she studied the reinforced bands of black iron. Sturdy enough to withstand a siege, she thought, or muffle screams.

Her fingers tightened slightly around Rhaelle’s small hand – no, Rhaenys now, always Rhaenys – as the child gaped at the towering knights in their white, golden and black cloaks. The girl’s wonder was a blade to Sienna’s ribs.

Thank the gods, she thinks this is a game. Sienna thought, her gaze travelling the little girl and making sure everything was where it supposed to be. Perfectly braided hair, not one strand out of place. Her small black and red dress didn’t have any major wrinkles. Her little spine was as straight as possible for a child of barely two years of age.

Then, her eyes travelled to Elia. The princess stood motionless ahead of them, in a black and red dress akin to her daughter, but lighter and with more intricate details, with dragons along the bodice and sleeves- and hidden suns and spears in the hem and belt. The sleeping babe was cradled against her breast. His curls – pale as moonrise against her Dornish silk – caught the lights coming from the torches and through the tall windows. A calculated contrast. Let them see what they expect.

Let the king see what he desires. She prayed. A very Targaryen baby.

They had arrived almost a week before, escorted from Dragonstone by Ser Lewyn Martell and a handful of knights from houses loyal to the Targaryens. The sight of Elia’s uncle had brought momentary relief- until Sienna had noticed the dozen black-cloaked guards lurking behind him, their hands never far from sword hilts. Not an escort, she realized, a delivery.

Elia had embraced her uncle with trembling fingers, her smile not reaching her eyes as she had welcomed him and enquired why the king had recalled them to King’s Landing when she was still recovering from a difficult birth. Sienna remembered the terrible theatre of that afternoon in Dragonstone’s solar- the way Ser Lewyn’s voice had echoed too loud against the walls when he delivered the “news”.

Sienna had observed the Martell man for the other side of the solar. The way his face remained serious, but his eyes shone with compassion and love for his kin.

How to tell a beloved niece that her princely husband had ran away with a maid of five-and-ten?

“Elia... it's Rhaegar. He's gone.” Her uncle’s voice had cracked like dry parchment. “They say… There are rumour that he has taken Lyanna Stark.”

The princess’ performance had been masterful. A teacup shattering on the floor, her breath catching in that perfect imitation of shock. “No. No, it cannot be-” Sienna had watched, biting her tongue raw. “W-Why would he… He hasn’t even come to meet his son.”

They'd known for a week. Known since Maris’ brought word from their shadow in the Riverlands. But Elia’s gasp and tears had been so convincing even Sienna’s chest ached as her uncle tried to calm her down.

Those had been real tears, real painful sobs. Even if not for Rhaegar.

It had been only a day since the princess had kissed her true children goodbye as they slept in her and Ashara’s arms, their little faces slack with milk of the poppy.

Of course those were real tears. How could they not be, when the princess had to get used fast to cradling and loving strangers?

Still, she had succeeded. Even when she had to force herself to coo at Andrik – Aegon, always Aegon – when he fussed at the ship's rocking. And smile at Rhaelle – Rhaenys now, remember – as had clung to Sienna's skirts, wide-eyed at the shouting sailors. The girl’s excitement about “going to see the big castle” had been a small mercy, masking Elia’s red-rimmed eyes.

The journey passed in a haze of salt spray and stifled sobs. At King's Landing, they had been herded like cattle through postern gates, Ser Lewyn’s jaw tight as Aerys’ men shoved Elia’s litter too fast over cobblestones.

“I’ll guard your door myself,” he’d whispered once they had been unceremoniously dropped at Maegor’s Holdfast. And even when Ser Lewyn had kept his word, the king's men still flanked him, watching. Always watching.

Sienna had bit her tongue and the inside of her cheeks often during those days. She had seen mothers grieve stillbirths, but never one who had to mourn living children. To smile while your heart shattered- that was a pain no training could prepare for.

Yet, a week confined to Maegor’s Holdfast had been a blessing in disguise. Time for Elia to bond with the children. For her heart to mend at least a little. For little Rhae to forget she’d ever been called anything but “Rhaenys,” for the silver-haired babe – Aegon, Aegon, Aegon – to nestle into Elia’s arms as if he’d known no other mother. Time for Sienna to relearn the city’s fetid stench, its cloying heat, the way shadows clung thicker here than in Dragonstone’s volcanic gloom. Too warm. Too dangerous.

The herald’s voice boomed, bring Sienna’s mind back to the moment.

“Princess Elia of Houses Martell and Targaryen, with Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys!”

A hush fell. Sienna’s pulse roared in her ears.

Focus.

But her mind betrayed her-

-Robert’s laughter as he spun her in a Storm’s End courtyard, all four Baratheons together for once-

-Ned’s calloused fingers brushing hers beneath Harrenhal’s heart tree-

-Ashara’s tear-streaked face as the Dornish galley vanished into the mist, two trueborn babes hidden in empty wine barrels-

-Brandon, somewhere beneath their feet, rotting in the dark-

The game doesn’t pause for grief. Stannis’ voice in her mind, sharp as a whetstone, made her blink.

Rhaenys tugged her hand. “Lady Sienna? Are the dragons here?”

She forced a smile. “Only the stone ones, sweetling.” And one that loves fire.

The doors groaned open, revealing the cavernous maw of the throne room. Dragon skulls lined the walls like sentinels, their empty sockets watching as courtiers clustered in strict hierarchy- perfumed Reach lords nearest the throne, dour Stormlanders forced toward the rear, Dornish delegates conspicuously absent. The air hung heavy with incense and sweat, the high narrow windows doing little to dispel the cloying heat.

At the hall’s heart, Aerys perched on the Iron Throne like a mangy vulture, his cracked nails scratching into the blades as he rocked forward. His wild eyes on the princess and her charge.

To the king's left, Varys shimmered in lilac silks, his powdered hands clasped in false piety. The Spider’s web, Sienna thought, her skin prickling. She had spent the past week scrubbing the holdfast with Maris and other shadows for his little birds, finding two listening holes already.

To Aerys’ right stood Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull’s famed armour gleaming. His sword hand rested on his pommel- the same hand that had helped Queen Rhaella to her feet after... Sienna’s jaw clenched. What good is honour that bends to madness?

A flicker of movement close to the throne draw her attention: Queen Rhaella, her violet eyes hollow as a starved ghost, gripping Prince Viserys’ shoulder. The boy waved eagerly at Rhaenys, who beamed back but held the posture Sienna and Elia had drilled on her. Thank the Crone. The queen had wept when she first saw the children, pressing kisses to their brows. She doesn’t know. She can’t.

Elia lifted her chin and stepped forward.

Sienna exhaled – one breath for courage, one for vengeance – and followed her princess into the dragon’s den.

----------------------

(The Blackfish’s POV – Riverrun)

The Red Fork ran high with meltwater from the false spring, her currents slashing through the Riverlands like a blade through silk. Soon, she would meet her sisters and birth the Trident- triple-edged force fit to drown kings. Brynden Tully observed her as he stood at the battlements of Riverrun, his fingers drumming against the sun-warmed stone. The air smelled of wet earth and distant rain, the kind that promised a storm.

Fitting, he thought. The realm was drowning in madness, and his brother had chosen to let it.

He remembered the moment Brandon Stark had learned of Lyanna’s disappearance. The way the young wolf’s face had darkened, then twisted into something feral. The Blackfish had seen men go to war for less- had ledmen to war for less. But this? This was folly.

Lyanna hadn’t ridden south with Brandon’s party. Lord Rickard had insisted she follow later with a proper caravan- wheelhouses for her gowns, guards who wouldn’t let her slip away to practice swordplay. Let Lyanna spend time with her good sister, the Lord of Winterfell had written. Perhaps some Tully grace will temper the wolf blood before her wedding. Brynden had watched Catelyn fretting over the arrangements, stitching lace into shifts she hoped might please the wild northern girl.

Brandon had laughed when he had arrived.

“Father thinks a few moons in Riverrun will make her love needlework more than hawking.” He had said after being welcomed by Hoster and the rest of the family. “Though she does write Robert now. Says his letters are ‘less stupid than his speeches.’ High praise from Lya.”

Brynden should have followed his instinct and told him.

He still remembered the time he had found Lady Ashara close to Harrenhal’s godswood. He had seen her slip from the keep hours before one of the feasts. Her dark cloak covering her violet gown, blending into the the trees. He had followed, half-expecting to catch her in some Dornish tryst with Brandon- proof that her kindness to Catelyn was just honeyed deception. Instead, he had frozen behind an oak as he saw Rhaegar Targaryen near heart tree alongside Lyanna Stark. Too close to be proper.

“-the dragon must have three heads”, the prince was murmuring, his long fingers tracing Lyanna’s cheek. The girl stood stiff as winter stone, but her eyes- gods, her eyes burned. “You’d be no man’s broodmare. No one’s second choice.”

Brynden’s gut had clenched. He knew that look- not a maiden’s infatuation, but a caged creature seeing open sky for the first time.

Ashara’s hand had closed around his wrist like a manacle. He would have felt ashamed to be jumped by her, if he hadn’t been so stunned. Her stare had been deadly serious, as Brynden had never expected to see in a lady that had spent days laughing carefree with his niece.

He had stood frozen long after Rhaegar and Lyanna departed. Until Ashara had pulled him back towards the keep. His boots moved before his mind caught up- retreating with the numb steps of a man who’d taken an arrow to the gut but hadn’t yet felt the pain.

Ashara had been silent until they reached an empty corridor, her hand once more finding his arm and yanking him into a linen alcove. The scent of lavender and sweat clung to her as she crowded close, her whisper a blade at his throat.

“You're not the first to see. The storm twins have been tracking them since the joust. Oberyn’s been watching them and the royal party for any evidence of foul play. Even the quiet wolf knows- he begged her to stop, but she is stubborn.”

Brynden's pulse roared in his ears. “Lord Rickard must be told-”

“And then what?” Ashara’s laugh had been bitter as Dornish wine. “There are already whispers that Aerys already mutters about Stark ambitions. If this becomes public, who do you think the realm will blame? The crown prince who ‘lost his head to passion’?” Her nails bit his wrist. “Or the girl who ‘seduced him’ with her wild ways?”

The truth had settled like ice in Brynden’s veins. He’d seen it before- a lord’s daughter whipped for ‘leading on’ a knight, a merchant’s wife drowned for ‘tempting’ her rapist. The prince would be forgiven. Lyanna would be ruined.

Ashara had pressed closer, her next words warmer but no less cutting. “Ned’s terrified for her. Sienna has been talking to her, trying to make her see reason. Even Stannis-” A muffled footstep in the corridor made them both stiffen. When it passed, she finished. “-is doubling the stormlander guards around the tents under the pretext of new military drills. And they are all trying to keep Robert distracted. I’m making sure your niece and her betrothed spend more time together, to keep the wild wolf away from it all. We just need time.”

Brynden exhaled through his nose. Time. The one thing hot-blooded boys and doomed girls never had enough of.

He made himself useful in the ways he knew best. Stationed his most discreet men along the godswood paths, their reports passed to Ashara during stolen moments in the gardens- her fingers brushing his as she took the notes, the scent of lemon blossoms clinging to her hair. When Brandon swaggered into the training yard spoiling for a fight, Brynden gave him one- three hours of brutal drills that left the heir to Winterfell too exhausted to question why his sister seemed so upset lately.

Benjen Stark became his shadow. The boy had a wolf’s quiet fury beneath his courtesy, his wooden sword striking Brynden’s practice shield with surprising force. “She’s not a fool,” he’d muttered after their third session, sweat dripping off his chin. “She just thinks no one sees her.” Brynden had gripped his shoulder- the only comfort either of them would accept.

Ashara brought news when they would chaperone Catelyn and Brandon. Or when they would cross with each other. And Brynden found himself saving sweet oranges from his meals, knowing Dornish women favoured them.

Then the tourney ended. The prince rode south. Lyanna began answering Robert’s letters with less venom, even laughed when he sent a pressed blue flower from Storm’s End. Brynden had let himself forget. And hope.

Until the rider came.

The man stank of fear and old sweat, his story tumbling out in broken gasps. How Crown Prince Rhaegar had appeared on the kingsroad with three kingsguards. Lady Lyanna had frozen with the rest of her caravan. The prince’s words- “My lady, come with me. It’s time”. And how Lyanna’s face going pale as milkglass, but hadn’t retreated.

“She told us to stand down when Martyn Cassel drew steel,” the man had rasped, his almost dead horse being tended to. “Then the prince and his men cut through us like wheat. Lyanna screamed for them to stop, and when Wyl fell with his throat open, she-” A shudder. “She got on the prince’s horse herself. Told them to stop, that she would go if we were spared.”

Brynden had known then. The girl hadn’t been stolen.

She’d chosen fire.

And Brandon, who’d never understood subtlety in his life, had roared for blood.

“I’ll have Rhaegar’s head on a pike!” Brandon had roared, his voice raw enough to startle the birds from the godswood. The other young lads that had arrived for his wedding – Kyle Royce, Elbert Arryn, and the rest – had been just as eager, their hands already on their swords as if Rhaegar and his guards were about to cross the gates.

Brynden had stepped forward, his voice cutting through the fury like a honed edge.

“Think, boy. You charge into the Red Keep shouting threats, and Aerys will see it as treason before you can draw another breath.”

Brandon had glared at him, his chest heaving. “Then let him. My sister-”

“Will need you alive to find her.” Brynden had gripped the younger man’s shoulder, hard. “Send word to your father. To Jon Arryn. Let them-”

“Fine.” Brandon had shaken him off, turning to Hoster with a curt nod. “Good father, I ask to use some of your ravens. To Winterfell, the Eyrie, Storm’s End. I need to write and tell them what’s happened.”

Hoster had agreed. Smoothed his doublet, nodded like a man sealing a trade deal. “Of course, son.”

Brynden had believed him.

He should have known better.

The moment Brandon and his party had ridden out, the gates still shuddering behind them, Hoster had turned to Maester Kym. “Burn the messages.”

Brynden had stared at his brother. “You lying bastard.”

“I won’t doom our family for the foolishness of a wolf. We have sworn fealty to House Targaryen in perpetuity.”Hoster hadn’t even flinched.

“That wolf is to be your good-son!” He had felt his face get hot.

A thin smile. Eyes as ruthlessness as floods.

“A good thing he isn’t already.” His brother had said before turning to enter the keep, not one ounce of worry for Brandon – nor for Catelyn’s feelings and future – on his shoulders.

Catelyn had been waiting in his solar when Brynden stormed in, her hands knotted in her lap. At seventeen, she looked just like Minisa. Specially her eyes- wide, too knowing. “Will they kill him?” she had asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Brynden had forced his jaw to unclench. “Not if I can help it, sweetheart.”

But the ravens never flew. Even when he tried to send his own messages, the maester had denied him- Hoster had already alerted him and his pages that Brynden might try that.

And ten days later, the king’s decree had come: every bird in the realm grounded, the skies gone silent.

Now, standing on the battlements, Brynden watched the horizon with a soldier’s patience. Waiting for his scouts to come back from beyond the Crossroads Inn.

He had been at a loss of what to do and how to help the Starks for days after the ravens were grounded. Angry at himself for not doing more to stop Brandon and his party. For not jumping on a horse and going to Winterfell the instant his brother had told the maester to destroy Brandon’s messages.

Until the merchant from the Stormlands had arrived. His cart laden with barrels of salted fish and Dornish spices. A harmless trader- unless one noticed the way his fingers had lingered when passing Brynden a sweet orange. And a sealed letter.

The parchment was unremarkable. The seal was not. A half circle made of two lines with a star at its lowest point.

Brynden went to his bedroom, breaking the seal with his thumb. His pulse quickened as he saw the elegant slant of the handwriting. The solitary A as signature. Ashara.

Ser Brynden,

News reached us in Dragonstone. Brandon Stark is likely imprisoned. Aerys will see his rage as treason. No Rhaegar or Lyanna sightings. If possible, contact the storm twin. He and his sister are of one mind, and he will know what to do.

I trust you remember our last conversation in Harrenhal. We must end wars before they begin.

-A.

Brynden exhaled sharply. He did remember.

Ashara had said goodbye to Catelyn in her assigned rooms. He had offered to take her back to the royal quarters, where she was staying with the princess. As they walked, she had told him the latest news- of Lyanna and Robert exchanging letters, of the girl not seeking the prince in the last couple nights, and of her going to Dragonstone with the princess and her household.

He had already known of the first through his niece, and was glad to know that Lyanna seemed to be seeing sense- even if the extra patrols he had put on the way to the godswood might have been the cause. But knowing that she – and the princess, of course – wouldn’t be within the king’s immediate grasp made him thankful.

She had smiled when he just grunted his reply, both stopping near the hall that led to Princess Elia’s quarters. Getting a step closer, she pressed a handkerchief into his hand- white silk embroidered with the Dayne star just like the seal, and in one corner, a small black fish. A jest. A promise.

“We are peacekeepers, Ser Brynden. I hope we have stopped tragedy before it begun”, she had said with a small smile.

He had only stared at her for longer than he should have. And then slipped her a small letter.

“Can you ask Lady Sienna to give this to her foster father?”, he had asked, not knowing how to talk about her gift. “Tell her… Tell her the fishermen will follow him.”

“Of course,” she had said and then curtsied to him. “Ser Brynden, it has been a pleasure. Thank you for the escort.”

As she had turned to leave, something made him do it. His hand had held hers for a moment. “Lady Ashara, thank you. For the gift”, he had clarified.

Her smile had been blinding. “It’s a favour, Blackfish. You have mine.” She had said before turning around the corner and disappearing from his sights.

Folding the letter, he tucked it into his jerkin alongside the handkerchief. Then, he had gotten up and started to plan. He had no ravens. No allies in his brother. But he had a horse, a sword, a name and his own garrison.

Stannis Baratheon. He would soon receive a visitor in service of the Blackfish. And if the Storm Lord was half the man his sister and Ashara believed, he would already be moving.

The Blackfish had carefully chosen one of his own men to take a message to Stannis Baratheon. Ser Desmond Grell, veteran who had served alongside him in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. He had carried no sigil, no letter that could be intercepted- only a memorized message, coded in the language of supply routes and troop movements that Stannis would decipher at once.

The reply had come faster than Brynden had dared hope. Little more than a sennight later, under the cover of a moonless night, Grell had returned with a small stormlander escort- men who wore no livery and pretended to be a travelling guild, but bore the unmistakable bearing of soldiers who had trained under a commander who tolerated no sloppiness. The message was terse, delivered in a voice low enough that the castle walls could not whisper it back to Hoster.

“Lord Stannis confirms forces departed Harrenhal under Whent and royal banners, moving north to intercept Lord Rickard’s party near the Neck. He and Lord Robert ride with a vanguard of twenty- heavy cavalry, no sigils. They will make for the Crossroads Inn south of the Ruby Ford. Any forces you can divert to harry the royal escort would be of strategic value.”

Grell had hesitated, then added, “He said to tell you: ‘My sister trusts your honour. No other Tully need be involved.’”

Brynden’s mouth had twitched. Lady Sienna. Even from an island of stone and spies, her influence seemed to reach like a blade in the dark.

The timing had been tighter than he liked- less than a sennight to coordinate without alerting Hoster or his people. But it had to be done.

When the day came, two of his most trusted outriders – men who had scouted the Riverlands’ every bog and bend – slipped from Riverrun’s postern gate at first light. Their orders were clear: locate the Whent party’s position, assess their numbers, and mark any vulnerable points along their route. Speed mattered more than stealth; they carried no incriminating documents, only their wits and the Blackfish’s standing orders to report back as soon as possible.

Brynden continued to watch the horizon where his scouts would return. The river waters gleamed like polished steel, her currents swift and treacherous. The weather still held a chill, a good one for an ambush- specially during dawn when soldiers were still dazed with asleep. If Robert’s party struck at the crossroads, and Brynden’s men harried them from the rear…

Two specks appeared in the distance, resolving into horses at a hard gallop. Brynden’s hand tightened on the stone parapet. He didn’t know how this would unfold- whether Rickard could be extracted without slaughter, whether Brandon still breathed in some dark cell, whether Rhaegar’s actions would damn them all. But as he turned from his lookout, his palm pressed over the hidden weight of Ashara’s handkerchief – its embroidered star and black fish a silent vow – one truth anchored him:

Duty demanded he try.

Chapter Text

(Brandon Stark’s POV – The Black Cells, Red Keep)

Darkness was a physical thing here. It had weight, texture– a damp, suffocating cloak that clung to Brandon’s skin and seeped into his bones. Time had lost all meaning in the belly of the Red Keep. There was no sun, no moon, only the occasional flicker of torchlight from the corridor beyond the rusted iron bars of his cell, and the distant, maddening drip of water somewhere in the endless black.

He had been here for a moon’s turn. Maybe less. Maybe longer. He didn’t know how long, just that it was long enough for his beard to grow thick and matted, for the stench of his own filth to become a part of him. Long enough for the rage that had sustained him those first weeks to curdle into a cold, hard knot in his gut.

They had taken his boots, his cloak, the silver direwolf pin Catelyn had given him at Riverrun. “For luck”, she’d whispered, her cheeks flushed as pink as a winter sunrise, her eyes worried. Her fingers had brushed his as she fastened it to his tunic. He could still feel the ghost of that touch, a fleeting warmth in the perpetual chill.

He had screamed himself hoarse those first days, roaring Rhaegar’s name until his throat bled, demanding justice, demanding his sister, demanding to know what had become of his friends. Elbert Arryn had taken a deep gash to the thigh during the brief, brutal skirmish in the throne room.

Brandon had seen him fall, seen the blood pool on the marble floor. Had a maester been summoned? Or had they left him to rot in some other cell, to die of fever in the dark? The not knowing was its own kind of torture.

The guards never spoke to him. They would slide a thin gruel and a ladle of brackish water through a slot at the base of the door once a day- sometimes. In the beginning, it had been less. He had gone days without, his stomach clawing at his spine, his tongue swelling in his mouth. He had licked condensation from the stone walls, the taste of salt and mildew making him gag.

Then, two weeks ago, something had changed.

He had awoken – or rather, surfaced from a fitful doze – to find a small, cloth-wrapped bundle just inside the bars. Inside: a heel of coarse bread, a strip of dried meat, and a small skin of clean water. He had devoured it like a wild animal, his shrunken stomach cramping in protest.

Then, he had waited, listening, but heard nothing. No footfalls, no jingle of keys.

It kept happening. The mysterious parcels appeared during the moments he slept, no matter how he tried to fight it, to stay awake and catch his benefactor. Once, he had heard a faint scuttling, like rats, but quicker, lighter. He had hurled himself at the bars, his face pressed against the cold iron, but saw only the empty, torch-lit corridor and the long, dancing shadows.

Father will be coming, he told himself over and over again, the thought a fragile ember in the dark. He’ll have called the banners. The North remembers. Rickard Stark would not let this insult stand. He would be riding south at the head of an army, with Robert Baratheon’s fury at his side and Jon Arryn’s wisdom at his back. Ned would be there too, steady and reliable. And Benjen… gods, Benjen. He hoped the boy was safe in Winterfell, far from this southern madness.

And Lyanna. His fierce, beautiful, foolish sister. Was she fighting? Had she carved out Rhaegar’s eyes with her dinner knife? Or was she… He refused to finish the thought. She had to be alive. She had to be making that silver-haired bastard regret the day he had laid eyes on her.

His hand closed around the small, smooth stone he’d found in his cell weeks ago, its surface worn flat by his constant worrying. He thought of Catelyn’s hair, the colour of autumn leaves in the sun. He thought of her voice, soft and clear as she sang an old Riverlands ballad the night before he had left.

He had been so eager to be gone, to chase glory and vengeance.

I didn’t even kiss her hand goodbye, he thought bitterly. I will see her again, he vowed to himself, the stone biting into his palm. I will make this right. I will be a better man for her. He would put aside the Barbrey Ryswells of the world.

He would build a life worthy of Catelyn’s goodness.

A sound.

Not the heavy, booted tread of the guards. This was different. A soft, swishing whisper of fabric, and footsteps so light they were almost swallowed by the silence.

Brandon went still, every sense straining. A glow bloomed at the far end of the corridor, growing brighter. A torch. The light danced over the wet stone walls, chasing the shadows back.

He pushed himself to his feet, his muscles screaming in protest, and shuffled to the front of his cell, his chains scraping against the floor. He gripped the cold iron bars, squinting into the relative brightness.

A figure emerged from the gloom, hooded and cloaked in dark, nondescript wool, holding the torch aloft. It stopped before his cell.

For a long moment, there was only the crackle of the flame.

Then, a hand reached up and pushed back the hood.

Cobalt eyes, sharp as Valyrian steel, gleamed in the torchlight. Hair the colour of a stormy night sky was pulled into a tight, practical braid. Features he had last seen at Harrenhal, composed and cunning, now etched with a grim determination.

Brandon’s breath caught in his ragged throat. His mind, sluggish from hunger and despair, struggled to make sense of the impossible image before him.

“Little Storm?!” he rasped, the words tearing from his raw throat. “By the gods… Sienna?”

----------------------

(Sienna’s POV – The Black Cells, Red Keep)

The torch in her hand did little to push back the absolute black that clung to these depths. It was a living thing, this darkness- thick and wet and hungry, swallowing sound and hope in equal measure. The air tasted of stale water, rust, and despair. Sienna pulled the rough-spun servant’s cloak tighter around her shoulders, the wool scratchy against her neck. It smelled of lye and someone else’s sweat.

A small price to pay for anonymity.

She had memorized the path, each turn and uneven step seared into her mind from the crude map one of her shadows had sketched in charcoal on a scrap of parchment. Left at the third sconce, down the slick staircase, right where the corridor narrows to a throat.

Even so, her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Every echo of her own soft footsteps sounded like a shout in the silence. She had wanted to turn back a dozen times, the primal urge to flee this stone grave nearly overwhelming her. But then her fingers would brush the cool metal of the bracelet around her wrist- Ned’s bracelet, the one he’d given her beneath the heart tree, each direwolf link a promise.

For the Starks, she told herself, pressing onward. For Ned.

The victory of getting this far felt hollow now, choked by the oppressive atmosphere. For a fortnight after arriving in the Red Keep, she had been a prisoner in silk, trapped within Maegor’s Holdfast. Her days were spent in a different kind of battle: coaxing a frightened little girl to accept a new mother, soothing a baby who fretted for a wet nurse he would never see again. The first time Rhaelle – Rhaenys, her name is Rhaenys – had called Elia “mama”, Elia had burst into tears, clutching the girl so tightly Sienna feared she might scare the little one.

It was a necessary lie, a shield woven from love and desperation. That shield had been tempered when Queen Rhaella visited, her own tragic eyes softening each time she held her “grandchildren”.

Prince Viserys, a lonely boy already sharp with his father’s paranoia, had latched onto the cheerful little girl with a desperate intensity.

A fly to flame, Sienna had thought, her heart aching for them all. A gilded cage was still a cage, even if its bars were made of familial affection.

While playing the devoted lady-in-waiting, she and Maris had mapped the Holdfast not for beauty, but for vulnerability. They found the gaps in the tapestry of spies- a forgotten alcove behind an arras where the sound was swallowed by thick stone, a disused garderobe shaft that could carry whispers away from prying ears.

It was in one such place she had learned of Brandon’s condition. The reports were grim. Isolated. Starved. Beaten. Raging.

She couldn’t break him out. Not yet.

The risk to Elia, to the children – both the decoys and the true ones on their way for Sunspear – was too great. But she could ensure he didn’t starve in the dark. Her shadows, chosen for their forgettable faces and silent feet, had begun the work. A crust here, a strip of meat there, left in the deepest dark when the guards’ rounds were known to be lax. It was a delicate operation, increasing the portions infinitesimally each time, rebuilding his strength without drawing notice.

Arranging this visit had been the true test. It required calling in favours from guards whose fathers had sailed with hers, men who remembered Steffon Baratheon’s fairness and now turned a blind eye to his daughter’s actions.

It had required waiting for the predawn shift, when the castle was at its stillest, and wrapping herself in a disguise of common wool.

And now she was here.

The man in the cell was a ghost of the one she remembered.

The Brandon Stark of Harrenhal had been all swagger and fire, broader than Robert and twice as loud, with a laugh that could fill a hall and a smirk that promised trouble. This man was hollowed out. His cheeks were sunk in, his beard a wild, matted nest. The eyes that stared at her from the gloom were the same grey as Ned’s, but where Ned’s were a quiet winter sky, these were a wild, crazed storm-clouded with pain, confusion, and a fury that had festered in the dark.

The resemblance to Ned was a physical blow, a sharp twist of grief in her chest. This was the brother he loved, the one he was certainly fearing for.

Reduced to this.

His shock was palpable, a raw, wounded sound in the thick air.

“Little Storm?! By the gods… Sienna?”

Sienna stepped closer, the torchlight catching the filth on his face and the hopelessness in his eyes. She forced her voice into a tone of dry practicality, a mask to hide her own revulsion and sorrow.

“I would have come sooner”, she said, her words echoing softly in the stone vault, “but you made sure to find residence in the deepest, most inconvenient part of this gods-forsaken keep. Next time, aim for a tower room. The view is better, and the air doesn’t taste of despair.”

A ghost of a smile touched Brandon’s cracked lips at her quip, but it was a brittle, broken thing. The sound that escaped him was not the booming laugh she remembered from feasts and tourney grounds, but a low, ragged exhalation, more pain than amusement. Then, slowly, his hand came through the rusted iron bars, fingers trembling slightly.

Sienna did not flinch.

She met him halfway, her own slender, clean hand closing over his calloused, grime-caked one. It was the first gentle touch he’d likely felt in a moon’s turn, and she saw the shock of it register in his desperate eyes, a sheen of unshed tears glistening in the torchlight.

“What are you doing here?” he rasped, his voice raw.

The question, so simple and bewildered, almost made her smile.

Of course he wouldn’t know. To Brandon Stark, she was Robert’s sharp-tongued sister, Ned’s quiet sweetheart, Elia’s lady. A peripheral figure. He knew nothing of shadows and strategies, of the web she and Stannis had spent the last years weaving.

He saw the courtly mask, not the commander beneath.

“The princess and her household have been… recalled to King’s Landing,” she said, her tone carefully neutral, diplomatic. “We were kindly escorted.” She let the emphasis on the word hang in the damp air, a silent testament to the armed guards and the lack of choice.

He blinked, processing. She could almost see the gears turning slowly in his mind, dulled by hunger and isolation. The implication – that Aerys was gathering all his potential hostages under one roof – seemed to dawn on him, and his grip on her hand tightened, his fingers surprisingly firm despite his state.

“My sister, she-”, he began, the words thick with a brother’s anguish.

“I know”, Sienna cut in gently but firmly. She couldn’t let him spiral; she needed him as focused as possible for they didn’t have much time. “But I have no news. They vanished. Rhaegar’s party was last seen near Harrenhal. The kingdom is in the dark.” It was a half-truth. The smallfolk might be ignorant, but the high lords were stirring, thanks in part to her own efforts. But he didn’t need that complexity now.

He frowned, confusion etching deeper lines into his gaunt face.

“I sent word. I told Hoster to send ravens. Robert, your brother, he must have-”

Sienna almost sighed. His world was still one of honour and open challenges, where messages flew true and lords answered the call. Oh, Brandon.

“Not every piece of information should travel by wing,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that echoed off the wet stone. “Wings are so easy to clip.”

He stared, uncomprehending.

“Did you see the ravens fly out, Brandon?” The question was a scalpel, precise and sharp.

Sienna needed him to understand where she was getting at.

He recoiled as if struck, his hand flying from hers to cover his own mouth. The horror of realization was a physical thing on his face.

“Hoster said…” he mumbled into his palm.

“Hoster Tully,” Sienna said, her voice cool and still low, her hand resting on a bar. If he needed human touch again, she wouldn’t deny him. “is a pragmatic man. He would not side against his king for a wedding that is not yet consumed, for a northern girl who is not his daughter.” She stopped, breathing in steadly. “Gods, if Rhaegar had set his sights on Lysa, or even Catelyn, instead of Lyanna, I suspect a bridal cloak would have been woven before sunset.” The words were cruel, but necessary. She needed to shatter his illusions of the riverlord being loyal to him.

Brandon was not family to Lord Tully. Not really.

He looked at her then, a flash of the old wolf in his eyes, wounded and furious.

She met his gaze steadily, though a part of her recoiled at her own cynicism. How to explain the calculus of power to a man who lived by passion? That Hoster’s love for his family was a deeper, more possessive thing than any abstract duty? That the Riverlands were a bloody crossroads, their loyalties fractured, their fields always the first to burn?

“The Tullys rule a kingdom of reeds, Brandon,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “They bend so they do not break. If-”, she stopped herself for a moment. “When war comes, it will not be the frozen North that drowns in blood and fire first. It will be the Trident. Hoster knows this. He will not leap into the inferno for a cause that is not yet his own.”

He began to pace then, the short length of his cell allowing only three frantic steps before he had to turn, a magnificent animal driven mad by its cage.

“My father,” he said, stopping abruptly. “He doesn’t know?”

Sienna took a measured breath. This was the news she was dreading to give him.

“He knows you are here. He is coming to King’s Landing to… negotiate with the king for your release.” She chose the word carefully, though it tasted like ash.

“Negotiate?!” The word was a roar, stifled by the thick walls but no less violent. “Lyanna is-!”

“Shh.” Her own hand shot up, finger pressing to her lips, her eyes darting down the empty corridor. The sound seemed to hang in the air, a dangerous ripple in the stillness. She lowered her voice to the faintest whisper. “I do not think he knows about Lyanna. I do not think the message he received spoke of anything but you… and your threats against the crown.”

She watched the devastating truth crash over him- the realization that his father was walking into a trap blind, that his own rashness had doomed them both. So, she told him everything she could to easy his mind at least a bit. He was already desperate, she shouldn’t pile on it.

So, she told him of the Whent escort meeting Rickard on the road, of her brothers’ fragmented plans to intercept-plans she knew were based on information days old, her own network struggling to make information travel faster, especially with the grounded ravens and heightened scrutiny of the capital.

“How… how can you know all this?” he asked, his voice now full of awe, and a dawning, unsettling respect in his eyes.

A brief, grim smile touched her lips.

“A lady has her ways.” From within her cloak, she produced a small cloth parcel and a waterskin, pushing them through the bars. “I will… think on a way to get you out of here.”

He shook his head, a stubborn set to his jaw she recognized from Ned, though it was fiercer, more reckless.

“I’m not leaving without my sister.”

A flash of pure, unvarnished impatience shot through her.

“Your sister is not here!”, she said through a hiss. “You will die in this cell before you ever see Lyanna again if you do not shed your foolish pride!” The words sharp and quiet as a dagger’s thrust. “Dead men rescue no one.”

He looked as if he wanted to argue, to roar again, but the fight seemed to drain out of him, leaving only a hollow exhaustion. He reached for the parcel, his fingers brushing hers again.

“My companions? Elbert? Kyle?”

Sienna’s resolve faltered for a heartbeat. She could lie. But he deserved the truth, however bitter.

“They are… housed together. Treated poorly, but not like you. But Elbert…” She shook her head, the image of the young Arryn heir shivering with fever in a filthy cell flashing in her mind, a report from a shadow that had turned her stomach. “His wound festered. It was not tended properly. The fever has him.”

“Will he make it?” The question was barely a whisper.

“I do not know”. She swallowed, the weight of his hope a heavy stone in her gut. All she could offer was honesty. “I’m making sure that they get food and clean water. It is… something.”

She made to leave, the need to be gone from this place of despair suddenly overwhelming. His hand shot out, gripping her wrist with a surprising strength.

“Don’t… don’t come back. It’s too dangerous. Ned would have my head if you were caught because of me”, he said with a small smile, but his eyes were serious.

The mention of Ned, here in this hellish place, was like a shard of light. It warmed her, steadied her. She offered him a true smile, small and sad.

“He will forgive us”, she said softly, giving his hand one final squeeze before pulling away.

She turned, lifting the torch, and began the long climb back toward the world of light and lies. Her mind was already churning with impossible calculations, her heart aching with the weight of promises she didn’t know how to keep.

----------------------

(Robert Baratheon’s POV – The Riverlands, near the Crossroads Inn)

The woods were a tangled, breathing thing around them, thick with the scent of damp earth, pine, and the distant promise of rain. Robert led his party of twenty – handpicked men, all seasoned riders who knew how to keep their mouths shut and their sigils hidden – at a pace that bordered on reckless. They had pushed their horses hard, riding through the last of the night and into the grey, misty dawn, eating up the leagues between Storm’s End and the Trident with a single-minded urgency.

Beneath him, his stallion’s sides were heaving, its dark coat lathered with sweat. Robert could feel the same frantic energy thrumming in his own veins, a storm barely contained.

He hated this.

The waiting. The not knowing. The feeling that events were rushing ahead of him like a river in flood, and he was just trying to keep his head above water.

His mind flashed back to the torch-lit yard at Storm’s End, the argument with Stannis that still rang in his ears.

“You’re not going,” Robert had said, his voice a low growl that brooked no argument.

Stannis had stood rigid as a sword, his face a mask of grim determination. “You’ll charge in like a bull. You’ll get Lord Rickard killed, or yourself, or both. Negotiation requires-”

“I know what it requires!” Robert had roared, the sound echoing off the stone walls. He’d run a hand through his already disheveled black hair, frustration a live wire under his skin. He had spent the afternoon in the training yard, reducing three practice dummies to splinters, but the rage still simmered. “I know you think I’m a brute and an idiot. And that I’m not strategic or practical like you. You are not wrong, Stannis.”

The admission had hung in the air between them, stark and honest. Stannis had blinked, thrown off balance.

“And I know you and the Blackfish were in the secrets at Harrenhal,” Robert had pressed, the old hurt of being kept in the dark – even for his own good – lending an edge to his words. “But somebody needs to be here. For Renly. For Sienna.”

He had stepped closer, staring into his brother’s eyes- so like Sienna’s it was a physical ache. “You know the network you built, the codes you created. I don’t. I know something but not all. What if- gods, Stannis, what if something bad happens? What if we all die?! If you are there, you die or are taken. And then we leave them unprotected. More than they already are.”

He had seen the argument hit its mark. Stannis’ jaw had tightened, but the relentless logic had pierced his stubborn resolve. Renly was just a boy. Sienna was in the lion’s den.

“If I fall, brother,” Robert had continued after a moment, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper, all bluster gone, leaving only raw intent, “it’s on you to get her back. To keep them safe. To see that justice is done.”

The respect in Stannis’s eyes then had been a foreign, startling thing.

The memory of their parting the next morning was bittersweet.

“Don’t get yourself killed,” Stannis had gritted out, looking profoundly uncomfortable as Robert’s men mounted up around them. “I won’t suffer being blamed for that if you do.”

Robert had thrown his head back and laughed, the sound too loud in the quiet yard, a brief release of the pressure building inside him. He’d fiddled with the leather war braid wrapped around his wrist- tangible piece of Sienna’s cunning and care. Then he’d pulled his stiff, resistant brother into a crushing hug.

“She would know it was on me,” he had muttered into Stannis’s shoulder, enjoying the way his brother went rigid. In the past weeks, they had become closer, and Robert was not going to let neither of them forget that. “Stay safe.”

Now, deep in the Riverlands, he pushed the memory aside, his senses straining.

The woods were too quiet. Every snap of a twig, every rustle of leaves, set his nerves on edge. He raised a fist, bringing the column to a halt. The only sounds were the heavy breathing of the horses and the creak of leather saddles.

He was about to signal them to move forward again when a figure detached itself from the shadow of a massive, gnarled oak.

Armour gleamed dully in the filtered light. A familiar, grim-faced man stepped onto the path, his hand resting casually on the pommel of his sword. Ser Brynden Tully’s gaze swept over Robert’s party, assessing, before settling on Robert himself.

A dry, humourless smile touched the Blackfish’s lips.

“Took your sweet time, Baratheon.”

Robert felt a wild grin spread across his own face, the tension of the ride momentarily forgotten. He leaned forward in his saddle, the energy that always crackled under his skin finding its outlet in sheer, defiant bravado.

“Because it’s much more difficult to come from a keep just down the Red Fork,” he shot back, his voice echoing through the silent trees.

----------------------

(The Blackfish’s POV – Crossroads Inn)

The common room of the Crossroads Inn was hazy with smoke from the hearth and thick with the smell of stale ale and roasting meat. Brynden sat in a shadowed corner, a tankard of something dark and dubious before him, looking for all the world like a weary lord taking his ease.

He had been here for a day before the Whent party’s arrival, and his plans were holding. Thanks to the innkeeper- a man whose loyalty had been purchased years ago not with gold, but with Brynden’s men riding out to find his daughter when she’d gone missing.

When the Whent guards had clattered into the yard, their royal standard furled but visible among the black-bat-against-yellow banner. The innkeeper had played his part perfectly.

“Apologies, ser,” he’d told their captain, a man named Ser Desmond, with a wringing of his hands. “The upper floor is near full. A party of river lords, headed home from… well, from dealing with some trouble down in Maidenpool.”

He’d gestured vaguely, and Brynden, from his table, had given a curt, acknowledging nod. The story was thin, but it served. It explained the presence of his own men, who looked every bit the part of dusty, tired riverlanders.

The innkeeper had proceeded to give them the key to the available room upstairs, and Brynden had held his breath in hopes that Ser Desmond would bite the bait. Then, he had made himself scarce for almost an hour, giving the Whent garrison a sense of control and privacy they really didn’t have.

Now, Brynden watched Ser Desmond. He remembered him from Harrenhal- competent, not overly imaginative, loyal to Lord Whent, now to Lady Shella since the late lord’s death three moons prior. The captain’s shoulders were tight with the strain of – and the Blackfish could only guess – a command he didn’t fully understand.

Pushing himself up from his corner table, Brynden ambled over, a friendly, slightly confused expression on his face. “Ser Desmond? Brynden Tully. We crossed lances in the tourney at Harrenhal, if you recall.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed for a heartbeat, then cleared. “Ser Brynden. Aye. You unhorsed me.” There was no malice in it, just a soldier’s recognition.

“A lucky strike,” Brynden said with a dismissive wave. He gestured to the bench. “Join me. You look like you’ve ridden hard. What brings the Whents from the north? My brother didn’t mention any trouble near the Green Fork the last I heard of him.”

He let his tone drip with casual, lordly curiosity. Hoster was Lord Paramount of the Riverlands, and House Whent was his bannermen. It wouldn’t be uncommon to sound curious about their coming and going so far from home.

Ser Desmond sat heavily, accepting a fresh tankard.

“King’s business,” he said, the words clipped. But his eyes were troubled, as if begging Brynden help to unburden himself.

And the Blackfish was going to make sure he looked nothing but helpful.

“Ah.” Brynden nodded as if that explained everything. He took a long drink, letting the silence stretch. “Saw Lord Stark’s banner outside. Trouble that far up?”

The captain shifted uncomfortably. “Just an escort. Seeing him safely to the capital.”

Brynden leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.

“Must be a delicate matter. To require an escort from the Crown itself.” He shook his head, feigning a weary understanding. “The things we are asked to do. My lot was chasing some bandits near Maidenpool. Nasty business. You look like you’ve had it worse. Your men are bone-tired.”

It was the right button to press. Ser Desmond’s defensiveness softened a fraction.

“Aye. Pushed hard up from Harrenhal to the Twins. Orders from the king, through Lady Shella. Just to ensure there’s no… interference on Lord Rickard’s way south.”

“Interference?” Brynden chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “From who? Lord Rickard’s honour is as solid as the Wall. Whatever this is about, he’ll see it done rightly.” He took another swig. “Look, my men and I are headed back to Riverrun. We had some rest already. Let us lend a hand. Post a few of my lads with yours on the watch. Give your boys a chance to get a proper night’s sleep. No sense in all of us being run ragged.”

He saw the temptation war with duty in the man’s eyes. The promise of real rest was a powerful weapon. After a long moment, Ser Desmond nodded.

“Aye. Could use it”, the captain said with a weary sigh. “One of your men can take the post outside Lord Stark’s door with one of mine. The others can join the rotation”, he continued and Brynden tried to not hold his breath. “But no one goes in. King’s orders.”

“Of course,” Brynden said smoothly, keeping his expression serious. “No one goes in.”

----------------------

Few hours later, his most discreet man – a fellow who looked like a simple rustic but had the lightest touch in the Riverlands – was leaning against the wall next to the Whent guard outside Rickard’s door. Brynden watched from the shadows of the hallway as his man offered the guard a pull from a skin of “fine Dornish red”- a vintage Brynden had specifically brought, fortified with a potent, fast-acting sleeping draught sent by Robert’s brother for a ‘just in case’ event.

It was a tense wait.

Brynden had retreated to the room he had rented for ‘himself’. Robert was a looming presence in there, a storm contained by four walls. He had been pacing like the great stags of his house’s sigil from the moment Brynden had told him to get in and stay quiet.

Finally, a soft birdcall – a nightjar’s cry – echoed in the hall.

It was the signal.

Brynden cracked the door. The Whent guard was slumped against the wall, snoring softly. Brynden’s own man gave a sharp nod.

“He was tired, ser,” the man whispered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Must have dozed off for a moment. Nothing to report.”

Brynden gestured to Robert. Together, they moved silently along the hall. Robert, for all his size, moved with a predator’s quiet grace. Brynden didn’t bother knocking. He turned the handle to Lord Rickard Stark’s room and slipped inside, Robert a shadow at his back.

The Lord of Winterfell stood at the window, his back to them, staring out at the moonlit crossroads. He turned slowly, his face a mask of grim composure. He showed no surprise, only a deep, weary calculation as his ice-grey eyes took in the Lord of Storm’s End and the Blackfish of Riverrun standing in his chamber.

The door clicked shut, sealing the three of them in a silence that was about to be shattered.

----------------------

(Rickard Stark’s POV – The Crossroads Inn)

The kingsroad stretched south from the inn like a pale scar through the dark flesh of the riverlands. From his window, Rickard Stark watched the moonlight bleach it to the colour of old bone. It was a road that led to answers, to his son, to a confrontation with a king whose mind was said to be unspooling like a frayed rope.

It was a road that felt, in the profound silence of the night, like a path into the belly of a beast.

A moon’s turn. It had been a moon’s turn since the world had gone quiet.

The silence had been the first bad omen. The ravens had stopped flying. The maester’s saying that, per royal decree, all ravens were supposed to stay grounded.

For a Lord of Winterfell, a man accustomed to the constant whisper of wings bringing word from White Harbor to the Wall, the empty skies were a wrongness that grated on the soul. The Old Gods spoke through the wind in the leaves, the crack of ice, the howl of a direwolf- not through this suffocating, realm-wide hush.

But he had ignored his instincts and chosen to believe grounded ravens meant the Crown Prince had put his plans in motion.

Then, the royal summons had come. Delivered by a royal raven, the only one seen flying in several days. The penned words were dry, formal, and chilling: his presence was commanded in King’s Landing to answer for the actions of his son and heir.

Brandon.

Who was supposed to be at Riverrun, finalizing the marriage pact, weaving the Tully trout into the direwolf’s coat. Not in the capital. Not answering for actions.

His first, furious instinct had been to send a raven to Hoster Tully. What happened under your roof? Where is my son? The perches remained as they were. The silence mocked him. Why had Hoster not sent word? The question was a splinter in his mind, festering. Had the Tullys already bent to the crown’s pressure? Had the alliance he’d so carefully built to protect the North from southern follies cracked at the first test?

He had left Winterfell with a cold dread settling in his gut, a cold deeper than any winter he had known. He’d gathered his party- loyal men, northmen who looked to him with faith in their eyes, a faith that felt like a weight. He had looked at Benjen, his last boy at home. The boy’s eyes, usually so clear and bright, had been shadowed, his farewells too quick, his embrace too tight.

There was a secret there, a guilt Rickard had no time to pry loose.

The wolves will guard him, he had told himself, looking back at the great stone direwolves flanking the gate. The North will endure.

The journey south had been a descent into a stranger, softer land. The air lost its bite, the trees their hard-edged defiance. And then, at the Neck, the Whents were waiting.

Ser Desmond and his garrison, their banners displaying the black bats of Harrenhal, stood arrayed across the causeway. The royal standard among them. Not as enemies, but as a royal escort. The cold in Rickard’s heart had turned to ice. An escort was for honoured guests, not for lords summoned to account for their children.

It was a gilded chain.

Yet, the respect they showed him was genuine. Ser Desmond had bowed his head, his tone firm but not disrespectful.

“Lord Stark. By the King’s order, we are to ensure your safe passage to the capital.” The men under his command followed suit, their gazes holding a wariness, but also a trace of sympathy. They did not treat him as a prisoner. They treated him as a dead man walking.

The not knowing was the worst of it. Was Brandon injured? Imprisoned? Had he truly committed some act of treason? Why? Why would he go to King’s Landing leaving is betrothed and his sister behind?

The pieces would not fit together, and the silence from all quarters offered no solution.

Arriving at the inn, he had seen a familiar face- ser Brynden Tully, the Blackfish. A flicker of hope. If any Tully had honour, it was him. Perhaps he had answers. But the man had offered only a neutral, courteous nod from across the common room, and the word among the Whent guards was that the Blackfish had been away, dealing with trouble on the Maidenpool.

He knew nothing.

The hope died, leaving only the cold certainty. He was alone in this.

He kept staring out of the window, the weight of his years and his title heavy on his shoulders. He was a Stark of Winterfell. He would face what was coming with the grim dignity of his house. He would find a way to protect his children, to salvage what he could from this southern madness. He would bear it. He always had.

The door to his chamber opened without a knock.

Rickard turned, his face a mask of stern composure, ready to dismiss whatever guard had overstepped.

But it was not a guard.

The Blackfish slipped inside, his expression grim and intent. And behind him, looming in the doorway like a storm given form, was Robert Baratheon. The young stag’s face was uncharacteristically sober, his usual boisterous energy replaced by a focused, furious intensity.

The cold in Rickard’s heart did not just tighten. It shattered.

His mind, always so logical, so deliberate, made the connection with the speed of a lightning strike. Robert Baratheon. Here. Now. With the Blackfish. Not in the Stormlands. Not at Storm’s End.

Lyanna.

The name was a silent roar in his skull. This was not just about Brandon. It had never been just about Brandon.

The world narrowed to the two men in his doorway, and the devastating truth their presence revealed.

----------------------

(The Blackfish’s POV – Lord Rickard’s room, Crossroads Inn)

The door clicked shut, sealing them in a silence that was thicker than the castle-forged steel of Brynden’s breastplate. The room was sparse- a narrow bed, a washbasin, a single chair. A lone oil lamp on the small table cast a frail, golden pool of light, doing little to push back the shadows crowding the corners. A chill seeped from the stone walls, though Lord Rickard, standing by the shuttered window, seemed not to notice it. To a man of Winterfell, a Riverlands night was a gentle spring evening.

Robert stood beside him, a mountain of contained fury. Brynden saw the young lord’s chest swell, his mouth open to unleash the torrent of words that had doubtless been building on the hard ride here. But then, astonishingly, Robert stopped.

His jaw snapped shut with an audible click. He tilted his head, as if listening to a voice only he could hear- a ghost of reproach from a stern younger brother, perhaps. He took a sharp, steadying breath, and when he spoke, the booming voice that could rally armies was gone, replaced by a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated with a painful, forced control.

“Lord Stark,” Robert began, his eyes fixed on Rickard with an unnerving intensity. “I don’t know what lies the king’s men have told you, but I rode here to tell you that the Red Keep isn’t seeking your counsel. It’s seeking your head. And your son’s.”

Brynden’s own breath caught. It was brutally blunt, a warhammer blow where a surgeon’s scalpel might have been wiser. He watched Rickard Stark closely. The Lord of Winterfell did not flinch. But a subtle pallor crept beneath his weathered skin, and the lines around his eyes seemed to deepen in the lamplight.

For a long moment, Rickard said nothing. The only sound was the sputter of the lamp. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm, a lord meticulously choosing his words in a room that might have ears.

“You speak of treason, Lord Baratheon. I am riding south to answer my king’s summons and settle a matter regarding my son. Nothing more.”

Brynden understood instantly. This was not denial. This was a probe.

Rickard was testing them, fencing with careful words to see if this was some elaborate trap set by the Crown to trick him into confessing to a rebellion he hadn’t even known was brewing. He was trying to control the flow of information, to give away nothing until he knew exactly what game was being played.

Robert’s face darkened, but to Brynden’s surprise, the young stag did not roar. He bit back his initial fury, his jaw clenching.

“Treason is what the king is doing,” Robert countered, his voice a low, heated rumble. “In breaking the realm’s peace. And treason is the charge Brandon faces for calling him out on it.”

Brynden’s sharp eyes caught it- the way Robert’s sentence clipped short, the way he swallowed the rest of his thought. He had the distinct impression Robert had been about to say more, to barrel on about Lyanna, about Rhaegar, about the full, damning truth. But Robert stopped himself. He had looked at Rickard’s guarded, confused expression and realized the same thing Brynden had: the Lord of Winterfell was in the dark. He knew of Brandon’s arrest, but he had no idea of the cataclysm that had provoked it.

“Treason is a sharp charge, Lord Baratheon,” Rickard said, his voice like the steady crunch of snow underfoot. “What are my son’s alleged crimes? And why does the Lord of Storm’s End involve himself in this… southern matter?”

Robert’s face contorted, a mask of anguish and rage. He looked as if he wanted to put his fist through the wall rather than answer. His gaze flickered to Brynden, a silent, desperate plea for aid.

This was his cue.

The Blackfish stepped forward, his voice taking on the measured, report-giving tone he’d used with countless commanding officers.

“The crime was a threat against the crown prince, my lord. Spoken in the throne room before the king himself.” He kept his eyes on Rickard, watching for the telltale flicker of confusion. It was there. Rickard Stark knew nothing. “Brandon and his companions arrived in King’s Landing demanding Prince Rhaegar ‘come out and die’. Aerys obliged him. But not in the way he wished.”

He let that hang, a death sentence in the still air. Rickard’s composure finally cracked. A faint, ragged inhale.

“Why?” The word was a whisper, stripped of all its lordly authority. It was just a father’s plea. “Why would he do that?”

This was the moment. Brynden felt the weight of it, the ugly truth a stone in his throat. He saw the rider from Lyanna’s escort again, smelled the fear-sweat on him, heard the man’s voice break as he described the scene on the kingsroad.

“Because he believed his sister had been stolen,” Brynden said, his words precise and cold. “A rider from Lady Lyanna’s party made it to Riverrun. He spoke of Crown Prince Rhaegar intercepting them on the road with three Kingsguard. He described the prince’s words: ‘My lady, come with me. It’s time.’” Brynden paused, seeing the scene unfold in the stark room. “He said Lady Lyanna went pale as milkglass. But she did not retreat. When your master-at-arms, Martyn Cassel, drew steel, she ordered her men to stand down.”

He could feel Robert’s coiled tension, a spring about to be released. Rickard was statue-still, his world narrowing to Brynden’s every word.

“The prince’s men cut through her guard. When a guard, Wyl was his name, was killed… Lady Lyanna...” Brynden’s voice softened, almost against his will, laced with a soldier’s pity for a tragic, tactical error. “She mounted the prince’s horse herself. She gave her word to go with him if her remaining men were spared.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Brynden watched the truth, terrible and complete, dawn in Rickard Stark’s ice-grey eyes.

It wasn’t an abduction.

It was a catastrophe of choice.

His daughter had chosen fire, and his son had charged headlong into the inferno to save her.

The Lord of Winterfell did not cry out. He did not rage. He simply… folded. His shoulders, so straight and proud, slumped as if under the weight of a glacier. He took a single, stumbling step backward and sat heavily on the edge of the narrow bed, the frame groaning in protest. He looked not at the two men in his room, but through them, into a future that had just collapsed into ash and ruin.

The silence reigned absolute.

The only sound in the room that of their breaths.

He saw – through the corner of his eye – Robert’s hand curling around the tips of the braided leather around his wrist. Lord Stark was not the only one affected by his words.

This was the first time Brynden had recounted the events of that fateful day.

Certainly, the first time the stormlord heard of it so directly.

Suddenly, Rickard’s eyes, wide with the horror of Brynden’s story, narrowed slightly. A lord’s practicality reasserting itself through the shock.

“A rider made it to Riverrun. Why did no word reach Winterfell? Where are my men?”

Brynden made sure his expression remained still. Like a complex tapestry of frustration and a soldier’s grim understanding.

“Your men are at Riverrun, Lord Stark. Fed, housed, and healing from their wounds. My brother sees to their comfort himself. The bodies of the fallen have been treated by the Silent Sisters, they will be sent North to be put to rest.”

He let the statement hang, watching Rickard process the kindness that was, in truth, a cage.

Brynden saw the exact moment understanding dawned. It was not a slow dawning, but a sudden, brutal winter frost. The grim composure on Rickard Stark’s face shattered, replaced by a flash of pure, hot indignation that was just as quickly frozen over by a cold, terrifying fury. His eyes, pale as a winter sky, seemed to sharpen, focusing on a point far beyond the inn’s walls- on the twin castles of Riverrun and the Red Keep.

“He chose-” Rickard started to say, the words not a question but a low, dangerous statement. The calm was gone, scraped away to reveal the steel beneath. “Your brother heard the account of my daughter’s abduction. He knew my son rode to his doom. And he chose to keep me in the dark. He held my men, and he held his silence, and he left my children to the dragon’s mercy.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. This was no longer about politics; it was a blood betrayal between would-be allies.

“I won’t condone my brother’s action, Lord Stark,” Brynden confirmed, his voice low and hard, matching the Lord of Winterfell’s icy rage. “He acted with a surplus of caution. Hoster heard the same account I did, but he looked at it differently: a Crown Prince who steals a daughter, a King who burns men alive for a misspoken word, and a Stark heir riding directly into their jaws. He did the math of a man who rules a kingdom of farmland, not ice and stone. He calculated the cost of a war that would drown the Riverlands in blood, and he found the price too high to pay to start it.”

“Telling my daughter was taken and my son had gone to demand her release from his king was too much for him?”, Rickard’s voice was laced with indignation.

“He believes he is protecting his people.” Brynden’s mouth twisted, still feeling the sour taste of disbelief about his brother’s actions and understanding. “He believes that by holding your men close and burning the messages Brandon sent, he is keeping the riverlands safe. That when the dust settles, the Tullys will still stand, and he can present your household to you and Eddard as a token of good faith. He is not betraying you, Lord Stark. In his mind, he is sacrificing your son to save your house. And his own."

The revelation was perhaps more devastating than simple betrayal. It was politics. It was the cold, logical evisceration of honour for the sake of survival. Brynden watched the truth settle on Rickard Stark’s shoulders- the understanding that his son and heir had been written off as a lost cause by a potential ally before he had even reached the capital.

----------------------

(Robert’s POV – Rickard’s room, Crossroad Inn)

The silence in the room stretched anew, heavier than any armour Robert had ever worn. It was a physical weight, pressing down on them all.

For a fleeting, painful moment, Robert saw Ned in the man’s face- the same stark features, the same deep-seated concern for family that was the core of them both. But where Ned’s worry was a steady, grounding force, his father’s was a bottomless pit of cold fury and despair after knowing what happened to his children, to part of his household.

Robert wasn’t fooled by Lord Stark’s stillness.

He could feel it, a simmering ice rage lurking beneath the surface, trapped and directionless under the weight of too many catastrophes. His daughter, gone. His son, in the black cells of a mad king. His allies, silent. The man was drowning, and he didn’t even seem to have the strength to thrash.

Gods, Sienna, Robert thought, a desperate ache in his chest. You’d know what to do. You’d know the words to shake him out of this. She could navigate these murky waters of grief and politics. He was a hammer, and this required a scalpel. I should have let Stannis come, he thought next, the admission bitter. His brother’s dry, pragmatic voice would cut through this emotional morass. He’d list the facts, the options, the cold, hard logistics of survival.

But Stannis wasn't here. Sienna wasn't here. He was alone with a shattered lord and a grim trout, and the weight of the next move was on his shoulders.

He couldn’t stand the silence anymore. It was the silence of a tomb. He had to fill it with action, with purpose.

“We need to break you out of here,” Robert said finally, his voice too loud in the small room. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a declaration, a plan forming from sheer force of will. He took a step forward, his fist clenching once more around the leather war braid on his wrist. “You need to call your banners, my lord. It’s time the dragons understand they are not gods.”

Lord Rickard’s head shifted in his direction; his grey eyes clouded with a torment so profound it made Robert want to look away.

“Call my banners?” The words were a rasp, scraped raw from his throat. “If I do that… if I raise one sword in rebellion… it is Brandon who will pay. His blood will be the first spilled. I will not sign my son’s death warrant.”

And in Robert’s mind, two voices answered, clear as a bell.

And there it is. The hope of a father, Stannis’s voice, cold and factual.

He still believes he can bargain with a monster, Sienna’s voice completed.

They merged into a single, devastating truth.

Robert looked the Lord of Winterfell in the eye, his own gaze hard with the painful clarity his siblings had forced upon him.

“With respect, my lord,” he said, the words feeling like gravel in his mouth. “Brandon is already dead. Even if he still breathes.”

He let the horrific truth hang in the air between them, the final, necessary blow to shatter Rickard’s last illusion.

The time for hope was over.

The time for war had begun.

Chapter Text

(Robert’s POV – Woods outside the Crossroads Inn)

Dawn bled a dull, grey light over the kingsroad, illuminating the tail end of the Whent and Stark party as it disappeared south, a serpent of muted colours and clinking steel winding its way toward the dragon’s maw. From his hiding place within the tangled woods, Robert watched them go, a knotted, sick feeling tightening in his gut.

It was all for nothing.

The thought was a poison, seeping into the cracks of his resolve. The hard ride, the clandestine meeting, the desperate, furious words- all of it, for nothing. Lord Rickard Stark, in all his northern honour and paternal love, was still marching placidly to his own execution. Robert had come to save a father and instead felt like he’d handed the man the final confirmation of his doom.

All for the cruel hope of saving his son.

Gods, he thought for a moment. It’s not like I don’t want to do the same thing and take Sienna from there.

But Sienna was not an outright hostage. Nor was she locked away in a cell- she was an esteemed guest, lady-in-waiting to the future queen. She was not in danger like Brandon was. That gave Robert and Stannis time. Space to breath.

If she had been in the same situation as Brandon… Robert would already be dead by Aerys’ fire, no matter what Stannis tried to do or tell him.

So, he could not begrudge Lord Rickard for his choice.

His hand, resting on the rough bark of a pine, curled into a fist. He wanted to smash something, to roar his frustration into the quiet morning and scatter the birds from the trees. He had never felt so powerless. This was not a foe he could meet with a warhammer. This was familial love, a force as immovable as the Wall.

Then, he felt it. The crinkle of parchment pressed against his chest, tucked safely inside his doublet.

No.

The word was a quiet ember in the cold ashes of his disappointment. He pressed his hand against the papers, feeling their shape. Lord Rickard’s sealed letters to Jon Arryn and Ned that he would send with a rider to the Eyrie as soon as the Blackfish’s men came back saying all the group marching towards King’s Landing was truly far away.

And one more, a smaller, more personal scroll. The marriage pact. The official, signed blessing for Ned and Sienna.

Not for nothing.

Even as Rickard had chosen honour and a father’s love, he had also, with a clear and tragic mind, chosen the future. He had chosen life. He had entrusted Robert with the seeds of the rebellion to come and the last, best hope for his son’s happiness. The weight was immense, a lord’s mantle Ned had never asked for but now had to bear.

Robert closed his eyes, and the memory of the night before in the cramped inn room crashed over him.

Rickard Stark looked up from where he sat on the edge of the narrow bed, and the raw, shattered despair in his eyes was suddenly forged into something harder: a patriarch’s defiant resolve. The slump left his shoulders, replaced by the rigid bearing of the Warden of the North.

“You expect me to leave my son in the bowels of the dragon, my daughter in the hands of another, and rebel against the sovereign House Stark swore fealty to in perpetuity?!” His voice wasn’t a shout; it was the low, dangerous rumble of an avalanche starting on a distant peak.

Robert opened his mouth to argue, but the words died in his throat. He saw the chasm between them. Lord Rickard was thinking of rescue, of vengeance, of smashing the problem. Rickard Stark was thinking of glaciers moving, of generations yet unborn, of a promise made to Aegon the Conqueror that weighed more than any single life- even his son's.

“Right now, Brandon is in trouble,” the Lord of Winterfell pressed, his voice gaining a desperate, logical fervour. “But Aerys and his council are not calling for war. There is still a path for talk, for negotiation. There are still laws-”

“What laws?!”

The words exploded from Robert, a half-roar he barely stifled. The image of Brandon rotting in a cell, of Lyanna at Rhaegar's mercy clueless to her brother’s fate, of Sienna’s cleverness being used to survive a mad king’s court- it smashed against Rickard’s cold pragmatism.

“The laws that let a prince steal a daughter? The laws that let a king throw a man in a black cell for demanding justice? The laws that let them ground every raven in the realm?” He was breathing heavily, his fist clenched so tight around Sienna’s warbraid the leather bit into his palm. Be good to Stannis. Listen to him. Her ghostly advice in that letter and a cough from outside the door were the only things keeping him from truly shouting.

He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a furious, passionate whisper. “You think this is about pride? This is about survival! Your son’s! Your daughter’s! Yours! You ride to King’s Landing, you walk into that throne room, and you are never walking out. Don’t you see? The trap is already sprung!”

From the corner of his eye, Robert saw Ser Brynden shift. The older knight had been a silent statue by the door, but his presence was a steadying force. Robert wasn't alone. He had the Blackfish, who knew the truth. He had Stannis’s voice in his head, whispering cold, hard facts.

“You already chose a side, Lord Stark,” Robert said, the words feeling like a betrayal even as he spoke them. “At Harrenhal. You, Jon Arryn, the rest… you backed Rhaegar. Even if you weren’t there in person. You thought to swap a mad king for a sane one. I know it. My brother knows it.” Sienna knows it.

He saw the flicker of confirmation in Rickard’s eyes. He had known.

“But that was politics!” Rickard insisted, a flicker of the wolf’s anger finally in his gaze. “That was within the game. This… this is treason.”

“No,” Robert said, the grim certainty his siblings had given him settling like a mantle. “This is the only move you have left. Supporting Rhaegar was a gamble. Aerys just flipped the table and set it on fire. The game you knew is over.”

The silence stretched for a long time. Robert opened his mouth again, the tud-tud-tud of his pulse in his ears propelling him. There was another hot retort on his lips, but the Blackfish cut in, his voice the calm, steadying rasp of a whetstone on steel.

“The question is not of laws or perpetuity, my lords,” Brynden Tully said, his gaze sharp as it flicked between them. “It is of a simple fact: Aerys Targaryen believes you are already in rebellion. Your son’s actions have convinced him. You can walk into his throne room a loyal subject. You will not leave it alive.”

Robert watched the truth of it land on Rickard Stark like a physical blow. The man’s jaw tightened, the ice in his eyes glittering with a fury so cold it could freeze fire.

“If I do not appear,” Rickard said, his voice clipped, each word chipped from ice, “then the King will have all the grounds he needs to execute Brandon for certain. My absence would be a confession of guilt for my entire house. No one will rise against King Aerys if they believe I am a guilty coward.”

 Then, his gaze settled on Robert, and for the first time, it held something other than political calculation. It held a father’s weary apology.

“And Lyanna… I know you are angry, Robert. What she did… What you say she did… It is a deep insult. I should have been more attentive”, his words were sincere, but it was clear he still couldn’t believe that his daughter had gone on her own volition. “Your betrothal is clearly undone now. I failed to see the storm brewing in my own hall. For that, I am sorry.”

Lyanna.

The name was a spark to tinder in Robert’s mind. He saw her then, not as a stolen prize, but as a girl with a fierce, challenging light in her eyes. He saw them riding together at Harrenhal, her laughter ringing out, bright and free, as her falcon dove. He saw the few, carefully penned letters they’d exchanged in the past months, where he’d tried, truly tried, to be the man she might want- writing of Storm’s End, of his hopes, in his rough script. He’d thought he’d seen a glimmer of something real.

All a lie?

He kept recalling how Sienna had told him in Harrenhal it would be kinder to break his and Lyanna’s betrothal after Rhaegar had crowned the she-wolf. He’d been too proud to entertain the idea, too stubborn and too captivated by the wild Stark to listen.

He’d raged for days after learning the truth from Stannis, the betrayal a hotter fire than any battle-lust. But now, standing before her father, the fire was banked, leaving only the cold, heavy ashes of resignation. He still believed what Rhaegar had done was an abomination, a violation of every law of gods and men. He would still go to war to get her back from the bastard, to restore the honour she’d so carelessly tossed aside.

But he was starting to see the truth his clever siblings had known all along. His relationship with Lyanna had been doomed from the beginning. He was too loud, too brash, too… much. He flaunted his infidelities like badges of honour, a fool boasting to a girl who valued loyalty above all. He was trying to be better – gods, he was trying, thinking before he charged, listening to Stannis, feeling the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders – but it wasn’t enough and it was too late.

A fleeting thought of Mya, his little girl in the Vale, crossed his mind. Stannis, with his typical dry disapproval, had mentioned once or twice that Sienna wanted her brought to Storm’s End. “She wishes to know her niece,”Stannis had said, as if reading from a ledger. But he’d always added the caveat: “It would not be… prudent, with Lady Lyanna’s feelings.” Another thing Lyanna would have hated. Another way he was not the man she wanted.

Lyanna’s betrayal was a fresh wound, but looking at Rickard’s shattered composure, Robert felt a strange, unwanted kinship. It must be a far worse feeling for a father to realize he never truly knew his own child.

The words came out quieter than he intended, stripped of their earlier heat. “What Lyanna did is wrong, my lord.” He felt a phantom presence then, Sienna on one side, Stannis on the other, their silent, steadying influence holding him upright. “But Rhaegar is the one at fault here. He seduced her. He saw a highborn girl starved for agency and promised her freedom and the future she wanted.”

He took a step closer, his voice earnest, willing the older man to understand. “It would have been a terrible slight, to have our betrothal broken. A blow to my pride, aye. But if he had come to you… if he had done this the way a crown prince should, with honour and negotiation… then we would not be here. Brandon would not be in a cell. You would not be riding to your death.”

He saw Rickard’s eyes flicker, the first crack in the wall of despair. The logic was sound, shifting the blame from his daughter’s recklessness to the prince’s unforgivable manipulation.

Robert took a breath, the next words feeling like both a sacrifice and a liberation. “When this is over, my lord, and if I’m still alive… if I have any power in whatever comes next… I will see that she is returned to the North. She will not be chained to me for a promise she never wanted to keep.”

Then, the final piece, the offer born from his own lost future and his fierce, unwavering loyalty to the one person who had always seen the man he could be. “But Sienna and Ned,” he said, his voice gaining strength. “Give them your official blessing to marry. Let that be the pact that binds our houses. Let them have what has always been meant for them.”

It was a plea, a promise, and a memorial for a dream that had died in the southern heat of Harrenhal. Even if it could never happen now, he wanted it acknowledged. He wanted Rickard to know that the better future, a truer alliance, was still within their grasp.

Robert blinked, the memory fading, leaving him once more in the chilly, silent woods. The last of the banners had vanished from sight. The road was empty.

He took a deep, steadying breath, the knot in his gut loosening, replaced by a cold, clear purpose. He turned from the tree.

“Godric,” he barked, his voice cutting through the morning quiet.

“M’lord?” One of his riders, a very skilled man Stannis made him take, nudged his horse forward.

“Bring the cage. It’s time.”

The man nodded, dismounting and lifting a small, covered cage from a packhorse. He pulled back the dark cloth. Inside, a large raven stood on its perch, its black eyes glaring out with an intelligence that was almost unsettling. It cocked its head, fixing Robert with a look of profound, feathered annoyance.

A sudden, unexpected smirk tugged at Robert’s mouth. The bird, with its stern, unblinking stare and rigid posture, looked just like Stannis.

He could almost hear his brother’s voice, dry and impatient when he had left Storm’s End. “The bird is faster than a rider. The codes are secure. Do not delay, Robert. Time is a luxury we cannot afford.”

His brother thought of everything. It was as annoying as it was awing.

Reaching into his pocket, Robert pulled out a small, tight roll of parchment, covered in the coded ciphers Stannis had drilled into him for days. He’d grumbled, he’d cursed, but he’d memorized them. There was no risk of the message being read if the bird was lost.

Loyalty isn't declared- it's proven in blood and silence, Sienna’s voice whispered in his head. This was his silence. His part to play.

He took the bird from Godric, its weight surprisingly solid in his hand. He tied the tiny scroll to its leg with practiced efficiency, the raven submitting with a disgruntled rustle of its wings.

“It’s your turn now, little fella,” Robert murmured, his voice low. He thought of Stannis, probably hunched over a ledger in the predawn dark at Storm’s End, waiting. He thought of Sienna, trapped in the Red Keep, her mind her only weapon. He thought of Ned, his good, honourable brother, who would soon have his world shattered. “Fly fast. Tell my brother the quiet wolf is coming home, and the stag is ready for the hunt.”

He opened his hands and tossed the bird into the air. With a powerful beat of its wings, the raven shot skyward, a black dart against the grey sky, heading south and east, toward coming grey clouds. Robert watched it until it was a speck, then vanished.

He turned to his men, his face set. The time for watching was over.

“As soon as the Blackfish’s men give the signal, Godric and Ormund will go to the Eyrie”, he told all of them, knowing full well that only Ormund would make the track give the letters to Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. Godric would go south, passing the Whent and Stark delegation to King’s Landing.

He was Stannis’ man, which meant he was Sienna’s shadow.

Nobody else needed to know that though.

“The rest of us”, he paused for a moment. “To Storm’s End,” he commanded, his voice once again the boom that could rally armies. “We have a war to prepare for.”

----------------------

(Sienna’s POV – The Red Keep)

The scent of lemon trees and climbing jasmine did little to mask the underlying stench of King’s Landing. Sienna sat on a stone bench in a secluded corner of the royal gardens, a book of Seven-pointed star verses open but unread on her lap. It was a prop, a shield of pious normality. Her true focus was on Princess Rhaenys, who was chasing a brightly painted wooden wheel under the watchful eyes of two nursemaids a dozen yards away. The girl’s laughter, a bright, silver bell in the heavy air, was both a balm and a blade.

A month.

A full turn of the moon trapped in this gilded cage of a keep. A month of smiling at the Queen’s hollowed-out kindness, of soothing Elia’s silent, screaming grief, of ensuring the little ones, little Rhaenys and Aegon, did not fuss in the oppressive heat. And a month of waiting. Waiting for news, for a sign, for the other shoe to drop.

She had known it was only a matter of time before the keeper of this particular web came to inspect the new, curious fly.

Sienna heard him before she saw him- the whisper-soft tread of slippers on gravel, a sound deliberately quiet yet unmistakably present. A performance of approach.

She did not look up from her book, her finger tracing a line about the Maiden’s mercy. She kept her breathing even, her posture that of a lady lost in contemplation. Only when his shadow fell over the page did she glance up, allowing a flicker of polite surprise to cross her features.

“Lord Varys,” she said, her voice a model of courteous neutrality. She made to rise, a gesture of respect for the King’s councillor.

“Please, my lady, do not trouble yourself,” he demurred, his hands fluttering in a dismissive gesture. His smile was a bloodless thing, his voice a soothing, high-pitched hum. “I did not mean to intrude upon your solitude. It is merely such a fine day, and one so rarely finds a moment of peace in this bustling keep.”

“It is a welcome respite,” Sienna agreed, gesturing to the space beside her on the bench. “I find the gardens help Princess Rhaenys sleep better. The sea air on Dragonstone was sharper, but this… this has its own sweetness.” She kept her gaze partly on him, partly on the child, the picture of a devoted lady-in-waiting.

Varys settled beside her, the lavender silk of his robes rustling softly. He followed her gaze to the princess. “A delightful child. So full of life. It is a blessing, in these trying times, to see such innocence.”

“It is,” Sienna said softly, her heart tightening. Innocence traded for innocence. A princess for a princess. A prince for a prince.

“It must be a great comfort to Princess Elia,” Varys continued, his eyes like pale, curious lilacs. “To have such loyal companions about her. You have been a steadfast presence, my lady. Through the… upheavals.”

Here it was.

The first delicate probe. Sienna offered a small, sad smile.

“Though, one cannot help but note the absence of another.” He continued, reading her smile as a form of acquiescence. “The Lady Ashara was a fixture at the Princess’s side after Harrenhal, was she not? It strikes me as… curious, that she would depart Dragonstone so abruptly, and not rejoin the household here. A Dornish lady, leaving her princess at such a time? The threads of loyalty can sometimes fray in unexpected patterns.”

Such a time. That could mean many things. From the state of the princess pregnant or after birth, to what Rhaegar had done.

Still, the mention of Ashara was a needle, expertly aimed at a seam Sienna had thought perfectly concealed. For a heartbeat, her mind was flooded with the memory of a moonlit dock at Dragonstone: Ashara’s face, a mask of tear-streaked resolve in the cold salt air. The frantic, silent loading of the Dornish galley, the two small, sleeping forms hidden in barrels that reeked of sour wine, their breath slowed by milk of the poppy. The agonizing wait for a coded message, finally delivered by a Driftmark sailor only in the past week, that the ‘precious vintage’ had been safely unloaded in Doran’s solar in Sunspear.

That same night the little girl chasing daisies only meters from her, and her ‘brother’, were taken to live with their new mother.

Sienna gave him another small smile, layering genuine sorrow for the entire, painful situation over her feigned innocence.

“Where else would I be? The Princess has shown me nothing but kindness. My place is with her.” She let a tremor of genuine emotion into her voice- the fear was real, even if its source was a secret triumph, not a helpless dread.

“As for Lady Ashara… it was a terrible blow for her to leave.” She forged on, as he had done. “But a raven arrived days before from Starfall with word of her father’s failing health. She left in such distress, hoping to see him one last time. Duty to one’s blood must sometimes take precedence, even over the heart’s desires.” She paused, tilting her head as if a new thought had just occurred. “I often wonder if Ser Arthur also received the message. Or perhaps he was no longer at the Red Keep to receive it when it came.”

The comment was a perfectly weighted stone dropped into the pond, a lady’s idle musing that carried the sharp edge of a reminder: the famed Sword of the Morning was conspicuously absent, his loyalty to his prince seemingly outweighing all else.

“Of course,” Varys nodded, his sympathy as finely woven as a master tapestry. “Such loyalty is commendable. And you paint a touching picture of familial duty. A daughter’s flight to a father’s bedside… it tugs at the heartstrings. It is a pity the ravens are so grounded; one hopes Lord Dayne recovered, or that her journey was not in vain.”

The comment was a velvety trap, questioning the veracity of the story without outright accusing her of lying. He let the unspoken question – how convenient, that message arriving just before the abysmal silence they were all in – hang in the perfumed air before smoothly continuing.

“It reminds me of Harrenhal,” he said, shifting the thread of his inquiry. “You were ever at the Princess’ side there, too. Or… nearly ever.” He let the pause hang, a spider letting out a new strand of silk. “I recall you often found time for the company of the Starks. A curious choice, for a lady of Storm’s End. Though, not so curious, given your fostering, I suppose. And as for the whereabouts of the Sword of the Morning… a knight’s vows are a complex tapestry. Some threads lead to the throne, others to the prince who holds it. It is not for us to say which is the truer colour.” With this, he deftly acknowledged her dig about Ser Arthur while simultaneously dismissing its significance, framing it as a matter of knightly nuance rather than a telling absence.

Sienna met his gaze directly, her expression open and slightly puzzled, as if trying to follow his meandering path.

“The Starks? Well, yes. My brother Robert was betrothed to Lady Lyanna, and Lord Eddard… he is a dear friend. We were raised together in the Vale, as you know.” She gave a light, self-deprecating laugh. “And my twin brother, Stannis, was there. I’m sure you noticed him, Lord Varys. He is rather difficult to miss, though he tries his best to blend into the tapestries. I spent many hours trying to coax him from his ledgers. I miss him dearly.” She infused her voice with a sister’s fond exasperation, turning his implication of a singular interest in the Starks into a simple tale of family.

Varys’s smile did not waver, but his eyes sharpened minutely. “Ah, family. Indeed. It is the cornerstone of all our troubles and all our joys, is it not? I could not help but note, however, during that unpleasantness when His Grace informed the Princess of Brandon Stark’s… predicament… you seemed remarkably composed. Many ladies would have swooned at such news. You, however, seemed to possess a certain… fortitude.”

A deeper probe.

Sienna’s mask of pleasantry solidified into one of pained dignity. She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.

“The news was not new to me nor to the Princess Elia, Lord Varys,” she said, her voice dropping to a confidential murmur. “Ser Lewyn told us on Dragonstone. The shock… the horror of it… We experienced it then, in the privacy of the Princess’s solar, where we were free to give vent to our feelings. To hear it announced so publicly, so cruelly, by the King… what good would a swoon have done? It would not have freed Brandon Stark from the black cells. It would only have given the court another piece of gossip and distressed the Princess further. My duty is to be a pillar for her, not another weight.”

It was a perfect, reasonable, and utterly human explanation. She had grieved already; now, she endured. She saw a flicker of reassessment in his gaze. He had expected a girl, perhaps a cunning one, but not one with such controlled resolve.

“A most pragmatic view,” Varys murmured. “And a heavy burden for one so young. These are dark days. The realm holds its breath. A spark in the wrong place, and all we hold dear could be consumed by fire.”

Sienna looked out across the garden, where Rhaenys was now trying to crown a nursemaid with a chain of daisies.

“Fire is a fearsome thing,” she said quietly. “It can warm a hall or burn a kingdom to ash. It all depends on the hand that holds the torch.” She turned her head back to him, her cobalt eyes meeting his without flinching. “I pray for the realm’s peace, Lord Varys. As I am sure you do. We must all hope that wiser heads prevail, and that the storms gathering on the horizon pass us by without breaking.”

She was speaking his language now- the language of implication, of the great, silent game that thrummed beneath the surface of courtly life. She was acknowledging the danger without confessing to any part in it. She was a loyal lady, a worried subject, praying for peace.

Varys studied her for a long moment; his head tilted like a bird’s. He had come to unmask a player and found, instead, a deeply composed young woman whose allegiances were perfectly aligned with her station and her sex.

Or so she willed him to believe.

“A noble prayer, Lady Sienna,” he said at last, his voice once again a soft, unthreatening hum. “Let us all offer such prayers to the Seven. The realm has seen enough broken kingdoms.”

Just then, one of the nursemaids approached, curtsying.

“My lady, the Princess is expected for her tea with the Queen and Prince Viserys shortly.”

Sienna nodded, a picture of relieved duty.

“Of course.” She rose smoothly, closing her book. “You must excuse me, Lord Varys. A princess’s schedule waits for no one, not even for illuminating conversation.”

Varys rose and gave a shallow bow.

“The pleasure was mine, Lady Baratheon. I hope we may speak again. The views from the garden are… most enlightening.”

As she walked away, collecting a chattering little princess into her arms, Sienna could feel the weight of his gaze between her shoulder blades. The encounter was a draw. He was not convinced of her innocence, but he was no longer certain of her guilt. He knew she was intelligent. He did not yet know she was a commander.And in that sliver of doubt, she had all the space she needed to move her next piece. The game was indeed afoot, and for the first time in a month, Sienna Baratheon felt the faint, cold thrill of the hunt.

----------------------

The air in Maegor’s Holdfast was always still, thick with beeswax, dried roses, and a dread no perfume could mask. Sienna moved through the gilded corridors like a ghost in silk, the whisper of her forest green damask gown the only sound she made. She had just spent two hours with Princess Elia performing the intricate dance of normality: reviewing household accounts, discussing Rhaenys’s lessons, cooing over Aegon. All while the spectre of the princess’s absent husband and the king’s mounting madness hung over them, a sword suspended by a rotting thread.

Elia had refused to let the children sleep in the nursery since their arrival. The fear in her eyes was a palpable thing, a mother’s terror that if they left her sight, they would vanish. So, the large canopied bed in the princess’ chambers often held three: Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon. Sienna slept in her own adjacent room most nights, a luxury of space she didn’t deserve, but sometimes, when the silence became a scream, she would bring a pallet into Elia’s room. They were two women clinging to a raft in a stormy sea, their shared vigilance a feeble shield.

She had visited Brandon Stark two more times since that first, shocking descent into the black cells. Each visit was a calculated risk that tightened the knot of anxiety that was becoming permanently lodged between her shoulders. Each time, he always told her not to come back, his voice a ragged command.

Still, she went.

The relief in his eyes when she appeared was a language only they understood. She brought him more substantial food, clean water, and company- as little as that was. His cheeks were less sunken now, the feral gleam in his eyes banked to a smouldering coal of resentment. He was a man waiting, and the waiting was honing him. She knew what – who – he was waiting for. And the knowledge was a sour taste in the back of her throat.

‘My companions?’ he would ask, his list a litany of doomed youth: Elbert, Kyle, Ethan, Jason. She tried to be truthful, but the truth was a shifting, horrible thing. Elbert’s fever waned and spiked, a fragile candle guttering in the dark. It was hard. It was all so hard.

And Lyanna… Rhaegar… Their silence was a void that unnerved her more than any shout. Where were they? Had they simply vanished from the world? The not-knowing was its own torture.

She had hoped for more time. Time to weave a more elegant solution, to find a crack in the dungeon’s defences wide enough to spirit an heir to Winterfell away. But time, it seemed, was a currency the gods were no longer minting.

Entering her chambers, Sienna found Maris waiting, a statue carved from silence. She didn’t speak, merely extended a hand. In her palm lay a single, tight roll of parchment.

Sienna took it, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. She moved to the window, where the fading afternoon light spilled across the Myrish carpet. She broke the simple seal – a smudge of wax with no sigil – and read the coded message. It was Stannis’s work, the ciphers as clean and efficient as his ledgers. It confirmed what she already feared: Rickard Stark was coming, and he was coming with a royal escort. He knew the danger and was walking into it anyway.

But at the bottom, scrawled in a bold, slashing hand that broke from the neat code, were four words.

I’m listening to him.

The breath left her in a soft, shuddering exhale. Robert. It was his voice, captured in ink. A promise. A confession. He had read her letter. He was trying. Through all the anger and the pain of Lyanna’s betrayal, he was heeding her, he was working with Stannis.

A fragile, desperate hope bloomed in her chest. If her brothers were united… Robert meeting Rickard, Stannis preparing for war… and Renly, her beautiful little brother – gods, let Stannis find a way to keep him safe – perhaps not all was lost.

“Godric delivered it,” Maris whispered, her voice barely stirring the air. “He also bore a verbal message from Lord Stannis. ‘The storms are brewing. We prepare. Be safe.’”

Sienna nodded, her thumb tracing Robert’s words.

Be safe. As if it were that simple.

“We don’t have time to do all we want to do, my lady,” Maris stated, the truth a cold blade.

Sienna’s eyes drifted from the message to the dancing flames in the hearth. “They won’t go down without a fight, one way or another,” she said, the old, tired argument hanging between them.

It was a discussion they’d had in hushed tones a dozen times. The impossibility of a mass breakout. The necessity of triage. Her heart screamed to save them all- Brandon, Elbert, Kyle, all the young lords rotting in the dark for Brandon’s folly. But her mind, the cold, political engine she’d cultivated, knew better.

The falcon has only one fledgling, her mind whispered. A simple statement of fact. The wolf has spares.

Sienna’s fingers clenched, the parchment crinkling in her fist. She wanted to hiss I know that, to rail against the brutal calculus of it. But she contained the outburst, the heat of it turning inward to burn in her gut. Nobody in that room was the enemy. Not her, nor her mind. Definitely not Maris.

The enemy was a mad king on a twisted throne and a crown prince who thought with his prophecies instead of his head.

“If Brandon is not here when his father arrives… the chaos it will be,” Sienna muttered, pacing the length of the rug, her mind becoming a frantic whirlpool of half-formed plans and dead ends. “But at least… at least he would live.”

The thought was a betrayal. It was failing Ned, failing the quiet, steadfast love that felt like a lifetime ago. How could she face him, if she saved his brother by sacrificing his father? How could she not, if it meant saving his brother at all? And wouldn’t Lord Rickard prefer that? Wasn’t that clearly the reason why he was coming after being warned? To try and save his child even if that meant death to himself?

Then her thoughts turned to Elbert Arryn.

Sweet, gentle Elbert, who had visited her in the Eyrie, who had listened to her childish prattle with the same patient attention their mentor, Nestor Royce, afforded Jon Arryn. She had seen him in his cell just days ago, his face gaunt, his body wracked with a fever that clung to him since his wound festered. Her shadows had been smuggling him milk of the poppy and dreamwine, enough to keep the pain at bay and let him sleep, but he was so weak. So very weak. It pained her, this helplessness. She had to do more. She had to save him, she had to-

Stop it.

The voice in her head was Stannis’s, cold and sharp as a shard of ice. Sentiment is a luxury. It will only get you and those you care about killed faster.

She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists at her sides. Maris stood before her, a silent monolith, waiting.

A strange, forced calm descended upon her, the kind that comes when all other options have been exhausted. It was the calm of the executioner, the general sending a battalion to its doom. It was about doing what you could, even if it was terrible.

“We will continue as we planned,” she said, her own voice sounding distant to her ears. “No deviations. No rushing.”

Rushing led to mistakes. Mistakes led to heads on spikes. And after her encounter with Varys, she had ordered Maris to have their shadows be doubly careful, to look for little eyes and ears in the Princess Elia’s rooms every single day. The Spider’s gaze was a physical weight on her neck.

Maris gave a single, sharp nod.

Sienna walked to the hearth. With deliberate care, she tore the small strip of parchment containing Robert’s message. She tucked it into a hidden seam of her bodice, a secret warmth against her skin. The rest, the coded report, she held to the flame. She watched the fire lick at the edges, the paper blackening and curling in on itself until it was nothing but ash, its secrets swallowed by the light.

The night was fitful. She dreamed of stormy seas and sinking ships, of Ned’s face dissolving into mist, of Brandon’s laughter echoing from the bottom of a well. She woke before dawn, her skin clammy, and performed her prayers with rote, empty motions. The words were ash in her mouth.

She dressed with mechanical precision, allowing her maid – Bessa, stormlander like her, into the shadow web as well – to lace her into a gown of deep blue velvet. Armour, of a sort. When she was presentable, she left to attend the princess for the breaking of their fast.

She entered the sunlit solar to find Princess Elia and Ser Lewyn standing together. They turned as one, and the looks on their faces – Elia’s filled with a profound, weary sorrow, Lewyn’s with a grim resignation – stopped Sienna in her tracks. The pit in her stomach yawned wide open.

“Your Highness?” Sienna’s voice was a thread. “Ser Lewyn? What has happened?”

Elia was already moving toward her, her hands outstretched. “Oh, Sienna…” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. She took Sienna’s hands in her own, her grip surprisingly strong. “I am so sorry, sweetling. It’s Elbert Arryn.”

Sienna’s mind went blank, then raced. This was it. The moment was here.

“He is dead,” Elia finished softly, her dark eyes searching Sienna’s.

Sienna had known this moment was coming. She had helped to orchestrate it.

And for all her planning, for all her cold pragmatism, Sienna Baratheon could not hold back the tide. The tears came, hot and sudden, a sob wrenching itself from her throat. She collapsed into Elia’s embrace, her shoulders shaking. She cried for the terrible game she was forced to play. She cried for Brandon, as good as dead. She cried for Rickard Stark, riding to his doom. She cried for Ned, who would lose so much. She cried because she was ten and eight, trapped in a gilded cage, trying to outmanoeuvre monsters, and the weight of it all was crushing the girl she used to be – wanted to be – into dust.

Sienna wept, and Princess Elia held her, mistaking the storm of grief for a young woman mourning a friend, not the cost of a calculated choice and the future she was forced to sacrifice.

----------------------

(Stannis’ POV – Storm's End)

The wind off the bay was a constant, keening presence, a whetstone that sharpened the air and the nerves of those who lived within the drum-tower’s shadow. Stannis stood on the battlements, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fixed on the southern horizon. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue, the colour of a faded banner, offering no answers. He had been there since the pre-dawn watch, a silent sentinel willing a dark speck to appear against the vastness.

He was not a man given to prayer. The Seven were distant, fickle entities, and the gods of sea and storm his ancestors had worshipped were little more than stories to explain the capricious violence of nature. Yet, in the quiet of his mind, a single, relentless thought repeated itself with the rhythm of the surf below: Let the bird come through.

Not just any bird.

The shadow raven he had entrusted to Robert. One of those that had come from the Eyrie with coded messages from the falcon- a bird that only knew one home: Storm’s End. Its flight path would be a dangerous track from the Riverlands to the soaring cliff face of his home, a path no Citadel-trained bird would take. Every moment it did not appear was a moment it could have been spotted, shot down by one of Aerys’s men, its tiny, coded scroll plucked from its leg and delivered to the Spider. The plan, their hopes, Robert’s fate, all resting on the fragile wings of a creature he’d personally overseen the training of once it had been acquired.

It was an irrational variable, and he despised it.

He turned from the parapet, the salt-sting of the wind a welcome distraction from the coil of anxiety in his gut. The business of the day could not wait on a single bird, no matter how critical.

In the lower bailey, the air thrummed with a muted, purposeful energy. The call had gone out, quietly, to the major bannermen: Estermont, Tarth, Selmy, Caron, Wylde. Riders had been dispatched not with shouted proclamations, but with sealed letters and terse, verbal instructions. The banners were to be called, men and supplies gathered, but with a show of normalcy. No great musters in open fields. Let the movement of men look like the shifting of garrisons, the stockpiling of grain like prudent preparation for a long winter. Deception was the first weapon of war.

He found Maester Cressen in the granary, the man’s face illuminated by a single lantern as he ran a finger down a ledger column. The scent of dry barley and old wood was thick in the air.

“My lord,” Cressen said, not looking up. His chain clinked softly with the movement. “The estimates from Greenstone have arrived. Lord Estermont sends his regards and… confirms the additional shipments we discussed.”

Shipments. A code for the first wave of men-at-arms, to be ferried across the strait under cover of trade.

“And the totals?” Stannis’s voice was flat.

“Sufficient for six months. Eight, if we implement rationing immediately and the harvest from the southern villages is not… disrupted.” The maester’s pause was heavy with unspoken meaning. Disrupted by war. By fire.

“Implement it. A ten percent reduction across all households, starting with our own. Let no one say the Baratheons feast while their people tighten their belts.” It was a practical measure, but also a political one. Loyalty was bought with bread as well as blood.

“It will be done.” Cressen made a note. “The shipwrights report the galleys will be ready within the fortnight. The Fury leads the repairs.”

Stannis gave a curt nod. His father’s flagship. It felt like a lifetime since Steffon Baratheon had sailed for Volantis, leaving his three sons and his daughter behind. The memory was a cold stone in his heart.

Somebody had to stay here to protect Renly, his mind kept repeating, the voice too much like Robert’s.

His last words to Stannis, blunt and true, had been the final nail that kept him from riding out. Duty was a chain, but it was a chain he had chosen to wear. Sienna’s letter, tucked always against his skin, had whispered the same plea: Keep him safe. Love him as I do. Please, brother.

As if summoned by the thought, the clatter of small, running feet echoed in the yard. Renly burst through the doorway, his black hair a mess, a wooden sword in one hand and the other clutching the knight doll Sienna had sent him. Ser Stefannis, he had named it. A foolish, sentimental name for a child’s toy, but Renly carried it everywhere, a tiny, fabric-clad guardian.

“Stannis! Look! Ser Cortnay said my grip is getting better!” the boy exclaimed, his face alight with the simple joy of a lesson well-learned.

Stannis looked down at his youngest brother. The weight of the coming storm felt impossibly heavy in that moment.

“A firm grip is the foundation of a sound defence,” he stated, the words coming out more stiffly than he intended. He saw the eager light in Renly’s eyes dim slightly. Be kind, Sienna’s ghostly voice chided. He forced himself to continue. “After your afternoon letters, you will join me in the solar. We will… review the defensive layout of the castle.”

Renly’s face brightened anew. “A strategy lesson? Truly?”

“A lord must know his stronghold,” Stannis said, and that, at least, was a truth that required no softening. He watched the boy run off, Ser Stefannis bouncing at his side, and felt a pang of something sharp and unwelcome.

It was not just a castle he had to protect.

He was about to turn from the door and resume his discussion with Cressen when a man approached, his gait rolling with the unmistakable rhythm of a sailor. He was not one of theirs. His skin was darkened by a fiercer sun, his tunic a vibrant, impractical orange. A Dornishman.

“Lord Baratheon,” the captain said, his accent a melodic drawl. He bowed with a flourish that Stannis found unnecessarily theatrical. “I am Captain Uller of the Sand Pony. I bring gifts from my prince, Doran Martell.”

Stannis’s blood went still in his veins. He kept his face an impassive mask.

“The Prince of Dorne is generous to think of Storm’s End,” he said after a glance to the master that kept his eyes averted, but his ears open.

“The prince does not forget a kindness,” Uller said, his dark eyes knowing. He presented a package wrapped in oiled cloth. “He sends this text on Dornish naval manoeuvres from the time of the Conquest. He said your sister, the Lady Sienna, mentioned you had an… academic interest in the subject. A token of thanks for the recent shipment of Stormlands amber. The prince finds its clarity… unparalleled.”

Amber. One of the codes Sienna had devised for the children. Clarity. They had arrived, safe and unmistakably themselves. Stannis took the book. It was heavy, bound in worn leather.

“The Prince’s gratitude is noted,” Stannis said, his voice betraying nothing. “Maester Cressen, see that Captain Uller and his crew are afforded the full hospitality of Storm’s End. Bread and salt. See their ship is re-supplied.”

“Of course, my lord.” Cressen’s eyes met Stannis’ for a brief moment, full of understanding. The Dornish connection was the most dangerous thread in their web, and Sienna had just pulled it taut.

Stannis did not wait. He turned and strode towards his rooms, the book a burning weight in his hands. He climbed the steps to his solar, the familiar, sparse room with its great map-strewn table and unadorned hearth. He closed the door behind him.

His fingers, usually so steady, fumbled slightly with the oilcloth. The book inside was indeed a historical text. He opened it, the pages smelling of dust and sandalwood. He did not have to search for long. Tucked into a chapter detailing the Rhoynish tactics against Valyrian sea-dragons was a single, fine sheet of parchment.

He unfolded it. The handwriting was elegant, precise, each letter perfectly formed.

Lord Stannis,

Lady Ashara has arrived with the gifts you and your sister have sent us. They are invaluable, and we are forever in your debt, particularly as we were blind in this enforced silence. Your gifts have given my family a much-needed distraction and respite.

I have been fully informed by Lady Ashara of all that has transpired.

Your sister sent a separate letter, bearing a pretty depiction of a squall. She asked, if the opportunity arose, that I explore a business venture with you. My ports and merchants are at your disposal to facilitate any such trade, should you find it advantageous.

I hope to hear from you soon and that we may feed this blossoming friendship to our mutual benefit.

Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne

Stannis read the words once, then again, committing them to the infallible ledger of his memory. Forever in your debt. Dorne was with them. Not just sympathetic, but committed. Blind in this enforced silence. They, too, had been crippled by the grounded ravens. A pretty depiction of a squall. Sienna’s sign. She had told Doran everything he needed to know in the letter she sent. Ports and merchants at your disposal. A direct offer of alliance, of safe passage, of a southern flank secured.

The implications unfolded in his mind with breathtaking speed. The Reach would certainly side with the Crown; they were too entwined with the Tyrells’ ambition. But with Dorne as an ally, the threat of a southern naval blockade was halved. They could trade, they could communicate, they could manoeuvre. And Renly… if Storm’s End was besieged by land, he could be sent to Sunspear. He would be safe behind the mountains and deserts, guarded by the one kingdom that had never bowed to the Conquerors.

A pressure built behind his eyes, a hot, unwelcome sting. He thought of his twin, surrounded by enemies, playing a game where a single misstep meant a fiery death, and yet still finding the focus, the sheer audacious cunning, to secure this for them. To secure a future.

Even from afar, she keeps shipwrecking storms at bay, he thought.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum, feeling the crinkle of her hidden letter through the wool of his doublet. For a single, unguarded moment, he allowed his head to bow, the weight of the relief and the fear for her a physical ache. He battled the emotion down, forcing it back into the iron box where he kept all such weaknesses. There was no time for it.

He had just drawn a fresh piece of parchment, his quill poised to begin the intricate task of drafting a reply to Doran Martell, when a swift, urgent knock echoed through the solar.

“Enter,” he commanded, his voice rough while covering the prince’s letter with the book.

Maester Cressen opened the door and approached, his face ashen. In his hand was a small, tight scroll. The wax seal was intact and Stannis could see the impression it had left: a warhammer.

Robert’s shadow sigil.

“A message, my lord,” Cressen said, his voice barely a whisper. “From your brother.”

Stannis’s heart hammered against his ribs, a traitorous rhythm of dread. He took the scroll and broke the seal. He didn’t need the codex. The message was short, brutal, and written in the simple cipher they had drilled for days. His eyes moved over it, translating them instantly into a devastating reality.

Rickard rides on. The wolf chooses the fire. The stag is returning. Prepare the storm.

The words were a final, hammer-blow of certainty. The last, fragile hope – that a father’s love might be bartered, that a lord’s honour might be appeased, that the realm might yet be spared the conflagration – crumbled to ash. Jon Arryn’s steadfast belief in law and negotiation was not just optimism; it was a delusion that Rickard Stark seemed to share.

How could they not see what he saw? What Sienna saw? There would be no trial, no ransom. Only the king’s pyre and the smell of burning flesh.

A cold, sharp image of his twin, surrounded by that same madness in the Red Keep, tried to spear its way to the front of his mind. The fear for her was a physical pressure behind his eyes and against his temples, a weakness that threatened to crack his resolve. He could not afford it. He forced the thought down, shoving it into the deepest, most disciplined part of himself, locking it away with the same finality as the gates of Storm’s End. To dwell on it was to break. To break was to fail them all.

Stannis lifted his head, his face a granite mask. He passed the scroll back to Cressen, who read it, his old shoulders slumping.

“Prepare the riders, Maester,” Stannis said, his voice cold and sharp as Valyrian steel. He looked towards the window, towards the south, where a brother was riding home to war and a sister was trapped in the lion’s den. “We will not wait for the leisurely arrival of our vassals. Send the word. Every man, every ship, every sword. They must be made ready now.”

The time for quiet preparation was over. The storm was no longer brewing. It had made landfall.