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Chapter Text

The first thing the realm learned to fear was the color of fire.

Red, orange and yellow from the harbor as Manderly sails cracked and folded, men leaping like thrown stones into a night that smelled of pitch, salt and failure. A bell tolled from White Harbor’s lighthouse; it tolled again and again and then it didn’t as the fire consumed all who lived within it.

In the Reach, wheat bent like prayer and then broke. Lines of orange ran through the furrows as if someone had sewn the earth with coals. A girl with flour on her hands slapped at sparks on her dress; a boy with a threshing flail beat at fire as though it were a thief he could scare off. The wind ran laughing across the fields and made more work for their small hands. Beyond the hedgerow, riders with lit torches continued without counting. Without hearing the screams all around them.

The Riverlands took it next: a tavern painted with apples, the signboard spinning like a last thought while the rafters gave up. Chickens burst from a coop already burning. Roofs collapsed onto where people sat and slept. Children cried for their mother and father, only to be swallowed up by the black smoke. Caskets of wine and ale exploded, setting all who was near on fire. The smell of burning bodies carried in the wind.

On the Stony Shore, Ironborn came up from black water like old stories. Smallfolk met them with hooks and staves. One woman swung a split oar as if it were a banner and caught a reaver across the mouth. Blood went into the sea. The reaver laughed anyway. A boy with a rope halter around his wrist pulled a man backward into a tidepool and held him down by will alone. Clothes were ripped to shreds and men took turns with women and barely flowered girls. Blood seeped into the ground, melting the snow into rivers of red that dribbled back into the sea.

In the West, a lord with a lion on his cup roared at a joke. The table shone with fat and honey. Laughter rose and went on rising. A minstrel sang something about golden days and never leaving home again. His eyes shined, happy to be in The West and not anywhere else in the realm.

In King’s Landing, Joffrey Baratheon smiled around a meat bone while a man wept tied to a post. A girl begged and screamed as a Kingsguard whipped skin from bone off her back as Lords and Ladies wiped fingers on napkins from their dinner. Completely uncaring about the show taking place in front of them. This was a standard feature with every meal within the Red Keep. Within the streets men, women and children hung naked and rotting for all to see. Evidence of their new King’s ruling. No one was safe, not even the Septas and Septons. If a Gold cloak picked you, your fate was sealed. 

The colors of fire and blood were all the colors left within the realm. 

XXX

Six Moons Earlier…

Snow fell on Winterfell the way a secret falls on a house: softly, steadily, meaning to stay.

The King was set to arrive today and it was something that Ned Stark was not looking forward to. He had not seen his so-called chosen brother since the Greyjoy Rebellion and that was very much by design. He did not wish to interact with the man. He did not wish to have him within his home and around his children. Mostly, he did not wish the man to be within the same breathing space as his son Jon. Thankfully, Jon looked every bit like his mother and not the man that had sired him. Ned was confident that Robert would never suspect that Jon was of Dragon and Wolf blood. Still, he did not want the man anywhere near Jon and what remained of his sweet sister. The sister Robert claimed, still to this day, that was the love of his life, all the while he was screwing every girl he came across. Robert did not deserve to mourn Lyanna. He did not deserve to gaze upon her even in death. He most certainly did not get to look upon her son.

Ned was not a fool. He knew why Robert was coming all this way. It was not so they could mourn the death of their foster father, but so he could ask him in person and try to manipulate his recent loss. He wanted a marriage, something to bind their houses together like they should have been six and ten years ago. Robert was going to discover he would never get it. Even if Jon was not the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, he still would never link their houses together. Lyanna hated the man, the last thing he was going to do would be allowing his daughter, or sons for that matter, to be trapped with Baratheon blood.

“Line up, quickly.” Ned called out to his children as he had gotten word that the King’s banners were nearby. 

His wife stood to the right of him, as always, followed by Theon, Sansa, Arya, Bran and then Rickon. To Ned’s left stood Robb and Jon both. It was something that Ned had always done to showcase that Robb and Jon were vital to House Stark and either could be the next Warden of the North, should something happen to Robb. It was something that angered his wife, but she had given up that fight, for the most part. She still believed the next in line should be Bran, and she was not wrong. However, Ned knew how special Jon was. He was not going to tolerate Jon being sent away to the Citadel or even The Night’s Watch. Jon was of the North, he would stay as a Lord within the North. The only reason he would leave would be to run his own Keep or to rule on the Iron Throne. Either option Ned would support him on. 

Ned had made sure that Jon got the exact same education that Robb did. He made sure that Jon sat with the rest of his children at the table for all meals, even when Northern Lords visited. Jon was not kept to the back of the room, or to the back of the crowd when being presented. Jon was equal to all of his children and he made sure everyone knew it and he cared not for anyone that held an issue with it. If Jon was going to rule one day, he needed to have the confidence in himself to rule. Whether that was over Kingdoms or over a Keep. 

The king’s banners arrived first with his guards. Followed by Robert and a wheelhouse. Ned could not believe how much Robert had changed. He was almost as big as Lord Manderly. The Demon of the Trident couldn’t even get off his horse without help. He was a far cry from the warrior he claimed to be. Ned was already counting down the days before Robert would be gone.

“Winterfell is yours, Your Grace.” Ned said, as he got down on one knee, everyone else following his lead.

“Rise, rise, everyone.” Robert ordered and Ned stood up, followed by the others. 

“Ned, look at you. It is good to see you brother.” Robert said with a massive smile. 

“It is good to see you as well, Your Grace.” Ned said, making sure to be courteous. 

“Cat, you are looking more beautiful than ever.” Robert said, as he went and pressed a kiss to Catelyn’s cheek. 

“Thank-you, Your Grace.” Catelyn said with a warm smile.

“Ah, my namesake. Just as handsome as I am. How are you lad?” Robert asked, Robb. 

“I am well, Your Grace.” Robb said politely, as he took his first measure of the man. 

“And you must be the bastard.” Robert said to Jon. 

“My brother’s name is Jon, Your Grace.” Robb said with a slight edge to his voice. They did not tolerate anyone referring to Jon as a bastard. He was their brother and Robb was not going to allow anyone to treat him any differently. 

“Yes, well, he has the look of the Stark, doesn’t he.” Robert said and it was clear he didn’t care for Jon and that was perfectly fine with Ned. Robert moved on to the younger children. He kissed Sansa’s hand and mussed Bran’s hair. He ignored Arya or Rickon and Ned figured it was because they were not of interest to him. Ned focused on saying his hellos to the Queen and the Kingslayer. Ned was already counting down the minutes until they all left his home.   

“Show me your crypt.” Robert demanded to Ned.

“Oh Robert, must you do this now.” Cersei complained. 

“I came all this way. I want to see her. Bad enough I have to look at you.” Robert snapped back.

“Why don’t you show the Queen and children to their chambers.” Ned said to his wife and he could tell she was torn between being relieved to be away from Robert, but also annoyed that she was going to be stuck with the Queen. 

“Of course.” Catelyn said with a forced smile. 

Ned guided Robert towards the crypts and he had to remind himself that he was doing this to help keep Jon safe. As long as Robert was busy chasing ghosts, he would not look closer to his son. The torches burned lower as if they had learned the place’s manners. Stone wolves watched over stone lords. Lyanna’s statue did not look exactly like her, something that always bothered Ned.

“Tell me about Jon Arryn.” Ned asked. 

“One minute he was fine, and then… burned right through him, whatever it was. I loved that man.” Robert said with a slight shake of his head. 

“We both did.” 

“He never had to teach you much, but me… you remember me at six and ten?” 

They both gave a slight chuckle and Ned had to bite his tongue not to point out that Robert had only gotten worse, not better. 

“All I wanted to do was crack skulls and fuck girls. He showed me what was what.” Robert said proudly, as if he had changed even the slightest. 

“Aye.” Ned simply said, as he looked at Robert from the side of his eye. 

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not his fault I didn’t listen.”

They arrived at Lyanna’s statue and Robert lifted his hand and touched her cheek. “She doesn’t belong down here. She should be resting on a hill where the sunlight would always welcome her. Not down here in the dark.” 

“She’s my sister, Robert. She belongs with her family.”

“She belonged with me.” Robert seethed. “Every night I kill him. Every night I kill him slowly. I make him suffer and beg for death. He took her from me. She belonged to me and he took her. He died far too quickly.” 

Ned had to fight himself to not point out that Lyanna didn’t belong to him, she didn’t belong to anyone. No wolf does. Lyanna was never going to marry Robert. She was disgusted by the very thought of him touching her. If she hadn’t fallen in love with Rhaegar, she would have fallen in love with someone else. 

“I need you, Ned.” Robert started, as he turned to face Ned once again. “Down at King’s Landing, not up here where you’re no damn use to anybody. You helped me win the Iron Throne, now help me keep the damn thing. Help me run it while I eat, drink and whore my way into an early grave. A grave worthy of a warrior like myself. We were meant to rule together. If your sister had lived, we would have been family. That is something we can do now. I have a son, you have a daughter. We marry them. We join our houses and you stand beside me as Hand of The King.”

Ned could see how pleased Robert was with his offer and he clearly expected for Ned to jump to agree. To thank him and feel honored to run the Seven Kingdoms while Robert continued to disrespect his sister’s memory. As if Ned would ever agree to bind Sansa to anyone with Baratheon blood, much less a false prince. Joffrey was not the true heir to the throne, that title belonged to Jon and Ned was not going to make reclaiming the throne more difficult for Jon should he wish for it. Ned took a breath that tasted of water and stone. “No.”

Robert’s laugh started like a bark and tried to find a road to gentleness, and could not. “No?”

“My place is here.” Ned said, quietly, because the dead did not like shouting. “Winterfell needs me. The North needs me. Robb is not ready to shoulder the Wardenship while I go chase coin ledgers and quarrels. And I won’t send my daughter south to be made pretty and breakable for a court that eats those it praises. None of my children will ever marry outside of The North. No Stark will ever live South.”

“The realm needs you.” Robert said, and the torch above them spat resin and quieted. “By the gods, Ned, do you think I like them? You think I sleep with lions?”

“You married one, Robert. Your children are half lion. How much coin have you taken from Tywin? How much debt are they owed? I will not have my children, my daughter, in that place. I will not allow her to be used as some pretty thing that can be placed on a shelf and told to shut up and be still. No Stark will ever live South of The Neck. I’m sorry Robert, but my answer is no.”

Robert stared at Lyanna as if she might turn and speak. “We’ll talk again.” He said at last. “You always were stubborn as winter. We’ll talk again when there’s wine and a fire and no ghosts listening.”

“As you wish.” Ned said, but he knew his answer would never change.

They did not look at each other when they climbed back out of the crypt. 

XXX

“You refused.” Catelyn said later, and her hands were busy with a folded cloth that did not need folding. “You refused the Handship. And the marriage.”

“I did.” Ned confirmed.

She set the cloth down. It lay as obedient as any defeated banner. “Our daughter could be queen.”

“Our daughter could be dead.” Ned said, not unkindly.

Catelyn flinched as if he had struck her, and then the flinch hardened into something older. “Your honor is an anvil you will break us all on.”

“My honor kept the North through two winters. Two wars.” Ned said, weary but standing. “It will continue to keep us. I will not marry our daughter to any Southron Lord, much less a Lannister Prince. I care not for the Baratheon blood within his veins. That Prince is a Lannister and comes with whispers of cruelty already. Our children will stay North, where they will be safe and can grow old with children and grandchildren around them.”

“She could be Queen. Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. It would be a dream come true for her and you would deny her it? You would deny the North a Northern Queen?” Catelyn could not believe this. It was something every parent would pray for and yet Ned was just going to throw it all away. 

“It is not her place. On this I will not be moved. Our children stay North, just like I will.” Ned said, and it was clear he was not going to be discussing this again. 

“What is that?” She asked, because he had lifted a small chest from beneath the bed.

“A gift.” He said. “For Jon’s nameday.”

Catelyn’s breath left her. The room held its own new weather. “Tomorrow, the anniversary of the shame that you brought to me and my family. And you…while the king sits our table…”

“We will not make a show of it.” Ned said. “But I will not let it pass as if he were none of mine. Him and I do something together every year, that will not change. Not for anyone.”

“He is none of mine.” She said, and there was the old heat, the one that melted nothing and burned all the same. “You spend more hours with that boy than with…”

“With all my children together?” Ned finished, gentle and implacable. “I do not. And if I did, I would have my reasons.”

“You always do.” She turned away so he could see the smooth fall of her hair and not her eyes. “Do what you like, Lord Stark.”

“I will.” He said softly, and picked up the chest.

XXX

Jon’s room was not in the family wing, but it was not a cell either. The shutters were well-made. The bed was good oak with pegs that had been sanded smooth; the blankets and furs were thick and washed to softness; there was a small shelf with multiple books and the knife Mikken had made him for his last nameday, dark steel with a white direwolf head for the hilt. Someone had set a small iron brazier near the hearth against the cold. The coals hummed. Ghost lifted his small head where he lay in front of the fire and thumped his tail once on the rushes.

Jon stood when Ned entered. Boys in Winterfell had learned early to stand. Men remembered.

“Father.” Jon said, then, seeing the chest, forgot all other words and looked young again, which is to say like himself.

“Sit.” Ned said, and set the chest on the bed between them after he closed the door. The iron hasps were old friends; they moved easily under his hands. For a moment he simply rested his palm on the lid as if it might gallop away. “Your nameday is tomorrow.”

“With the king here…” Jon began, awkward. “I didn’t expect…”

“I know.” Ned said. “I expect for you. That’s my work.” He said with a warm smile. He lifted the lid and knew that there was no going back now. 

Inside, wrapped in a cloth the color of moonlight on snow, lay a ribbon. It had once been blue as summer; time had washed it pale. Beneath the ribbon were three eggs, each the size of a small helm, each white; white as fresh milk, white as old bone, white as the inside of a drift when you cut a block with a shovel. They seemed to drink the lantern’s light instead of wearing it causing them to almost shimmer.

Jon breathed, and the breath hitched and found its footing. “What are they?”

“They are a gift from your mother.” Ned stated.

Jon’s eyes instantly shot up. He had been waiting his whole life to hear anything about his mother. Whenever he asked, his father always got this look within his eyes and said when you were older. Jon never actually expected to find anything out about his mother. He had tried to make peace with it, but it was hard when he didn’t know the woman. 

“Father?” Jon softly, asked. 

Ned had kept the shape of the lie for so long that telling any part of the truth felt like taking off a boot that had rubbed for years; there was relief and there was rawness. He told it the only way it could be told here: not with names thrown like knives, but with love put where it belonged.

“Your mother loved you beyond her last breath.” Ned started, and put the ribbon in Jon’s hands. “She asked me to protect you. She begged me to with her dying breath. I loved your mother with everything in me. She was beautiful, and fierce. It was that beauty that made men want her. It was her fierceness that made lesser men wish to tame her. Your mother was my sister, Lyanna.”

Jon felt like he couldn’t breathe. He looked over at the eggs, dragon eggs, he could see that clearly now. If his mother was Lyanna Stark, that could only mean.

“Rhaegar. He…” Jon started, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. He couldn’t seem to admit that he was a child of rape. 

“Loved your mother.” Ned reached into the chest and pulled out some papers and handed them over to Jon. “They married in front of the Old Gods on the Isle of Faces and in front of the New within a Sept at Harrenhal. You were born between a man and a woman who loved each other so deeply, they could not stay away from each other.”

“But Ellia.” Jon started, as he looked at the papers. 

“I do not know what happened between Princess Ellia and Prince Rhaegar. Your father would not have been the first Targaryen to take on a second wife. It is possible it was blessed by Princess Ellia. I am afraid that might be a piece of truth the realm will never know.”

“How did she die?” Jon asked, as the tears were already building within his eyes. 

“She died from a fever in her birthing bed. I arrived with my men just before you came into this world. I did not know the truth at the time. I did not know I was fighting your Kingsguard. I am ashamed to know that I killed three good men that were only doing their duty of guarding you and your mother. That you could have grown up with them in some capacity. Could have had that connection to Rhaegar.” 

Ned hated that he did not let cooler heads prevail that day. All he could think about was losing his father and brother. That he could not lose his sister as well. 

“It’s not your fault. You did not know the truth. They did not fight a group of men looking to do harm to an innocent woman and child. They fought men that were fighting for family. There were no bad men that day. I could argue that they could have told you the truth. They had to have known that you were her brother and would never have harmed your sister. They chose to keep quiet and to fight. I do not know how they thought it would go if they had killed you. Killed my mother’s brother. It seems there were mistakes made on both sides.” Jon said, because he couldn’t blame Ned. He couldn’t blame either side really. Both were operating with limited information and both were running hot from the war. 

“A lot of mistakes were made. I would like to blame Robert for them, but I cannot. His attitude and actions did not help. But no one was truly innocent in any of this. Princess Ellia and her children were the only innocent ones. Your mother and father, they should have announced the marriage once it happened instead of keeping it a secret. Lyanna was promised to Robert; she should have told everyone the truth instead of running off. My father and brother never should have gone to King’s Landing to demand the head of Rhaegar to a King that had already gone mad. That was only ever going to end one way. Far too many mistakes happened on all sides and ultimately it was you and your siblings that paid for them all.” Ned said with deep regret to his voice.

“The past can’t be changed. Only the future.” Jon said, and Ned could tell this was a lot for him to take in. Not that he could blame him. 

“When I finally went into the Tower of Joy, your mother had just given birth to you. The wet nurse placed you in my arms and I loved you instantly. I had no idea that it was possible to love someone so deeply. You were the first child of mine that I had ever gotten to hold or look upon. I thought your mother would live. I thought we would go back to Winterfell together and we would raise you. Come up with a lie to keep you hidden. Only your mother was bleeding too much and struggling to breathe. She begged me to protect you and I gave her my word that I would. The last thing she said was your name. Aegon Targaryen. After your brother.”

“But he had just recently died.” Jon said, feeling uncomfortable being called the same name as his brother. A brother that would have only been less than a year from him. 

“I think she was trying to honor his life and tragic death. I cannot speak on that. I named you Jon, after Lord Arryn. I wanted to give you my name, call you a Stark, but I knew in order to sell the lie I had to give you a bastard name. I had to claim you as my bastard. I hated it, but it would help to keep you safe. I swore to myself that when you turned six and ten that I would tell you the truth and support whatever you decide. Technically, you are the true heir to the Iron Throne. If you wish to press that claim, I will stand with you. If you do not wish to press your claim, then I will stand with you for that as well.”

“I don’t know.” Jon said, and it was clear he was feeling very overwhelmed. All of this was mind blowing and he had no idea what he was going to do, what he wanted to do.       

“You do not have to know. Not right now. No matter what you decide, you are my son.” Ned said, and the words made a sound in the world as if a door had swung open on its true hinge. “Whatever else you are, before and after, you are that and you always will be.”

Jon closed his eyes and opened them and nodded once like a man agreeing to a sentence he could serve.

“I need a little time.” He said, voice low.

“You will have as much as you need.” Ned said, and did not reach for Jon though his hands wanted it. “You are not alone, even when you ask to be. I love you.”

“I love you, Father.” Jon said, because if nothing else, that was true.

When he had gone, the room remembered how quiet it was at this hour. The castle shifted its weight and lay still again. Snow licked at the shutters. Ghost put his head under Jon’s hand and then removed it because Jon’s palm had gone stiff and strange.

The eggs waited on the bed where Ned had left them, patient as stone.

Jon sat. He could feel his heart like something fighting a river. He put his fingers to the ribbon, Lyanna’s ribbon, a story he had been denied and had carried anyway, and untied it.

He lifted one of the eggs. It was not cold. It was not warm. It was what an animal feels like, asleep in its own heat. Up close, the white was not a color but a thousand of them, pearl on milk on clear ice, and between the scales faint lines like veins under skin.

His breath fogged the shell. The fog slid off as if the egg had decided it did not need it.

“This is madness.” Jon said to no one, and to the thing that had been walking behind his thoughts since boyhood and was suddenly not behind anything anymore. “This is…this is mine.”

Jon set the egg down with reverence and stood, the way he had for Ned. He went to the shelf, took the knife Mikken had made, held it, replaced it, took another, the small eating knife that did not ask to be honored, and came back to the bed.

“You will keep them safe.” He said to Ghost. It wasn’t a demand, but more of a known fact. Ghost would protect whatever came from this, assuming anything even did. 

Jon laid his hand on the shell of the smallest egg. “I am yours.” He said, and the words startled him because he had not meant them. “And you are mine.”

It was as if something had overtaken his body and he was helpless to stop it. He turned his hand palm up. The knife opened him cleanly, a line that flooded hot. For a heartbeat he simply watched the blood jewel on his skin as if it had not belonged to him before. Then he turned his hand and let it fall.

The first drop hit and was gone as if the egg drank. The second slid between the faintly overlapping scales and did not come back. Jon let more fall, three drops for three eggs, and then more because the line would not stop and because some part of him that had always loved rules wanted to make a new one.

The room seemed to narrow around the bed. The coals in the brazier trembled, or it was the air. He lifted each egg in turn and pressed his cut to it, and the sting he expected did not come; there was only a pulling, an old–new ache that felt like a path being cleared.

When he put the last egg down, the brazier breathed as if something had leaned close and given it courage. Jon moved without thinking, without knowing he had stood. He took the brazier tongs and fed the coals. He set the eggs within the shallow ring of heat, shells touching, his cut hand leaving a smear that already vanished.

He built the fire as he had seen Mikken build a tempering bed: not a bonfire, not a child’s heap, but a careful cradle, gaps for air, a place the heat could live. The flames licked pale, then higher, then steadier. The shells shone like packed snow in sunlight.

Nothing happened.

Jon sat, because you could wait better sitting, and because his legs had learned sudden honesty. The room grew very clear. He could hear the way the wind combed the wall-walk outside. He could hear Ghost’s breath. He could hear his own blood in his ears, and then he could not, because there was another sound now, small and certain.

A crack as thin as a hair drawn taut and made to sing. Another. The sound of a cup checked for flaws. The sound of the pond in the godswood when the first frost takes its surface and the second’s weight decides to stay.

The smallest egg moved. Not much. Enough to topple a single coal from the rim. Ghost stood with his hackles making him into a different wolf and did not growl.

A line appeared, a white-on-white difference, a seam finding itself. It ran a finger’s breadth, then more. The second egg answered like a brother called by name. The largest held the longest and then gave all at once, a crosshatch of lines like someone had drawn a map to what came next.

A piece of shell lifted as neatly as a scale. Then another. A wet, pale muzzle pushed into the world and opened on air with a sound like a sound you could not have imagined until you heard it: not a bird, not a cat, not a snake, but a small, offended dragon that had discovered the world was larger than the egg and meant to make it smaller again by knowing it.

The second egg tore along a seam and spilled a tangle of wings and tail and complaint. The largest split and delivered something with a heavier head and a temper like a bell struck soft and made to keep ringing.

They were white, not blank, but living white, with shadow where the skin folded and pearl along the edges of growing scales. The largest had very faint traces of soft blue when the light from the flames hit it. The second had almost a shimmer of gold when the light touched its scales. The third a very faint pale purple. To the untrained eye though, they were white. Their eyes opened slow, nictitating membranes sliding back like caution being put away. The eyes were pale as old ice with a rim of storm in them.

Jon laughed once, a crack in his own voice that he didn’t know how to fix. The sound came out of him like a secret being relieved of duty.

He reached.

One turned toward the blood-smell and climbed his wrist with feet that found purchase where they should not; another nosed his cut and blew a breath that made the edges of the wound sting and then cool as if winter itself had leaned in to kiss it better. The largest lifted its head and looked at him as if to say, I will be more than you know, and you will be more because of me.

Jon gathered them, careful as a man picking up three pieces of his own heart. Their bodies were heat and not-heat, alive and startling, and where they lay against his palms the cold from the shell gave way to the warmth of new breath.

Behind him, the brazier fire steadied. Outside, the snow kept its quiet promise. Somewhere in the crypts a drop of water found the floor and made a sound like the beginning of a name.

Ghost sat, as if to witness.

Jon looked down at the hatchlings. “All that I am.” He said, voice low so as not to frighten the world. “All that I am, I will keep you with.”

One of them, smallest, answered with a rasping chirr that felt like assent. The largest laid its head against his thumb as if claiming him in turn. The third blinked slow, memorizing his face.

Above the room, a castle of stone slept. Beyond the walls, a king snored on a borrowed bed. Far away, fields lay under frost, ships bobbed, men laughed at fires that weren’t theirs.

The North took a breath it had been holding for years.

And in a room that was not a cell and not a chamber of state, three white dragons opened their mouths to the air and learned it.

Chapter Text

Snow moved sideways across the Fist of the First Men, a steady hiss against iron and leather. The watchfires guttered low, smoke turning the wind sour, and every man held himself like a drawn bow. The talk that day had been hushed even for the Wall. Robb Stark was dead. The words had come crawling up the kingsroad on frostbitten tongues and now they lived in the spaces between breaths.

Jon had no idea how he was ever going to process the loss of his brother. It wasn’t even just Robb that was dead. Whispers had been heard that Bran and Rickon were dead as well. Theon had killed them. No one had heard from Arya since their father had been accused of treason. Sansa was most likely still being held as a hostage, there was no telling what was happening to her. Jon hated that he couldn’t do anything. He hated that he had given his vows to the Night’s Watch instead of staying in Winterfell. If he had stayed, he could have helped. He might have been able to prevent the death of his siblings. Jon couldn’t go back and change the past. All he could do right now was try to figure out how a dead man could come back to life. 

Ghost ranged ahead, a white thought flickering over dark stone. Jon tracked him until the direwolf vanished into the weather, then he looked back at the men; Grenn’s jaw working on nothing, Pyp without a quip in him, Dolorous Edd muttering to the snow about how it would bury them all one day and have the decency not to complain. Jeor Mormont stood with his hands clasped behind him, the Old Bear’s shoulders square to the cold as if he meant to lean on it and push it back. Alliser Thorne paced the fireline, eyes narrowed, mouth like a scar that had never quite healed.

“Keep your eyes open.” Jeor said. “And your feet under you. I’ll not have any man go over a rim because he forgot the world has edges.”

They were all thinking about edges. The Fist fell away on three sides to nothing; the fourth was only marginally less than nothing. The wind here made men honest.

The sound came like a pressure before it had a voice, a heavy hand on the chest, as if the night itself were drawing breath. Jon felt it first in his ribs, thrum, thrum, and then the world answered. The stars vanished. Three shadows boiled out of the sky.

Men stumbled backward, some going to swords, some to their knees. The Watch had faced giants, a wight, things with too many teeth and not enough eyes, but nothing like this. The shapes resolved as they fell: wings vast as ship sails, necks like swan-boned towers, bodies armored in overlapping plates that drank the firelight and gave back a sheen like oiled steel.

“Hold.” Jeor said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

They came in a wheeling spiral, each great beast taking the air left by the last. The first was pitch black, so dark the snow seemed to melt before it touched those scales. The second was a deep, arterial red, the color of heart’s blood under a lantern. The third, Jon had never seen a color like it, was the blue of ice seen from inside, strange and luminous, cold made visible. They touched down in a triangle that ringed the nearest watchfire, claws biting stone with the scrape of knives on slate. The wind of their wings knocked men sideways. Sparks went racing into the night.

Ghost flowed back to Jon’s side without a sound. The direwolf’s ears were forward, tail low, no growl; just that keen interest that said predator recognizing predator.

For a beat there was only the sound of three chests moving, in and out, in and out, the scale of it wrong for any world men were meant to inhabit. Then smaller shadows unhooked themselves from the shoulders of the great beasts and dropped lightly to the ground.

Hatchlings. They were hardly bigger than Ghost had once been, long in the body and bright as coins fresh from a smith’s quench. One was cinder-black with a threaded silver gleam along the edges of each scale, one was wine-red stippled with charcoal, the third was pale as frosted gold. They flared their frills at the cold, gave musical, piping sounds, turned their heads with the quick, avian snaps of curious things, and came directly to Jon.

The camp breathed in as one.

The nearest hatchling, black, like the giant that had landed first, stepped onto Jon’s boot and then onto his shin, claws pricking through wool, and climbed without ceremony. It nosed the leather at his hip, then his chest, a hot, damp investigation. Another pushed its head under his cloak, horn nubs rasping his ribs, and settled there like a cat that had chosen its man. The pale one went nose-to-nose with Ghost. The direwolf’s lips twitched, not a snarl, more an instinctive baring; the hatchling flared its frill and stood taller. For a moment Jon thought he’d have to intervene. Ghost huffed once, as if finding the entire business beneath him, and lowered his head to sniff the hatchling’s muzzle. Acceptance.

No one dared to speak. The whole situation was odd and not one they ever thought they would be in. Dragons were dead, long dead. It just wasn’t possible for there to be three grown and three hatchlings here. They had to have been dreaming or hallucinating. Some trick being played on them.  

Alliser Thorne was already moving, thin-lipped, eyes like thrown knives. He stepped into Jon’s space so quickly that the black hatchling lifted its head and hissed, a sound too large for its body.

“Your nameday.” Thorne said. No courtesy title, no softening. He didn’t look at the dragons. He looked only at Jon. “When is your nameday?”

The words jolted him. “The seventh day of the seventh moon.” Jon heard himself say, stupidly honest. “The year…”

“I didn’t ask the year.” Thorne snapped. “Your mother. Who.”

“I don’t…” Jon’s mouth was dry. The hatchling under his cloak pushed a warm weight against his ribs. “I don’t know my mother.”

“Where were you born?”

“Dorne.” Jon said. “Lord Stark told me so. He said…he said he would tell me the rest when he returned from King’s Landing.”

A shiver went through the half-ring of men around them, the kind of ripple that starts in a single mind and moves to many, pieces clicking, old stories taking on new teeth. Jon saw Grenn go pale. Dolorous Edd actually stopped talking long enough to swallow.

“You’re six and ten?” Jeor asked this time. 

“Aye.” Jon answered, but he still didn’t understand why it mattered. What was happening. 

“My gods.” Jeor softly said, as if he had just solved a puzzle that was never supposed to be solved. 

Thorne’s gaze cut once toward the great black dragon, then back. “Targaryens.” He started flatly. “Say a dragon’s eyes hold the past. Memory keeps in the flame and the egg, and their blood can read it. Old soldier’s talk from the Red Keep, but old talk has a way of outliving kingdoms.” His hand flicked, impatient. “Touch it.”

Jeor’s bulk filled Jon’s peripheral vision. “Ser Alliser.” The Old Bear said, iron softening the words. A warning, not a plea.

Thorne didn’t take his eyes off Jon. “He’s already been chosen. The beasts know their blood better than a maester’s book. Either he is what he is and we learn something before we all freeze, or we stand here pissing ourselves while the night looks on.”

Jon’s heart hammered. He could feel the hatchlings’ heat soaking into him, the little claws pricking, the odd comfort of weight that shouldn’t have been comfort at all. He looked at the black elder; at the breadth of its head, the armored brows, the slow flex and furl of the nostrils pulling cold into a furnace. It watched him with one great eye, the pupil a vertical knife, the iris a deep, unsettled gold that seemed to move even when the creature was still.

“Lad.” Jeor said, low. “You don’t owe this to anyone.”

Jon thought of the letter that hadn’t yet come, of a man who would never again be a boy in a hall in Winterfell, of a brother whose name the wind now carried like ash. He thought of the Wall behind him and the world in front of it. He stepped forward.

The dragon’s breath smelled of hot iron and something like the air before a storm. Snow hit its scales and vanished to steam, little ghosts fleeing into the night. Jon lifted a hand he wasn’t entirely sure he owned.

The skin at the dragon’s muzzle was a mosaic of plates, some the size of a thumbnail, some broader, all of them fitting together with a craftsman’s certainty. They were not smooth; they had a tooth to them, a faint rasp under his palm that dragged his skin when he pressed. Heat came up through his hand, through his arm, into the hinge of his jaw and the space behind his eyes. The great creature lowered its head by an inch, just enough to meet him there.

The eye widened, the pupil narrowing until it was a hair-thin slit, and then, widening again, swallowing torchlight, swallowing him. The world tilted, not as when a man falls, but as if the ground had decided to remember some older angle. Sound ran ahead of itself and came back, a layered thing: the hiss of snow, the crackle of pitch, the soft, compulsive keening of the hatchlings pressed to his body, Ghost’s weight touching his knee, his breath, his pulse.

“Jon.” Someone said. Sam, maybe. The name seemed to come from a long corridor.

He pressed his palm harder. The heat answered him like a living heartbeat. It was not pain; it was insistence. A door opening.

The wind went quiet. The smell of iron deepened, undercut by salt that had no business on a frozen hill. The faintest vibration moved through bone and blood, a purr big enough to be a mountain’s.

And then the eye was no longer an eye. It was a dark well with a sun at the bottom. It took him, and the Fist, and the Watch, and the night…

…and the world let go.

XXX

Warmth before language. Pressure on all sides, not crushing, holding. He is not a boy; he is a curve of shell and a ribbon of spine and a slow, certain pulse. The world is red and dark and full of steady thuds, three rhythms braided: his own, and two others close enough to be kin. They answer him without words. A woman’s laugh filters through liquid like light in deep water, and he knows, without knowing how, that laughter belongs to safety. Outside the shell, something large moves. Song without sound; wings he has not yet earned answering a music older than snow.

The heat changes. A hand turns the egg. Another hand follows, careful, reverent. The three pulses continue: self / sister / brother, or not those names, but the nearness that will become those names later. He dreams of a sky he has never seen and somehow remembers.

Darkness flexes, and the dark becomes a room.

White cloths, pale ribbons like shed bark hung in an arch. A small fire snaps, more for light than for warmth. Rhaegar stands there, not the painted knight of songs but a man whose sleeplessness has worn a fineness into him. Lyanna is a winterflower and wild honey, hair loose, cheeks bright with certainty. He sees their hands, not their crowns: fingers trembling, fingers steady, fingers lacing as if they had done this a hundred times in other lives.

They speak vows softly, not for an audience, for each other. There is no gold here, no perfumed septa, only a small ring, plain as bread, that Rhaegar slides onto Lyanna’s finger. She breathes out, a sound like a promise kept. The weirwood-bough arch creaks as if listening.

Paper. Coarser than a lord should use, creased, stained by the hand that held it. A voice reads; Jon does not know who holds the letter, only that the words are Robert’s. The sentences have the weight of a swung hammer. Return. Mine. He will take what he calls his, and if he has to, he’ll do it by force, by tying a woman down to an idea and beating an heir out of her as if a child were a coin you could strike from a die.

Lyanna’s color falls away. Rhaegar’s face empties of music and fills with purpose. The letter lowers. Fire throws shadows that look like bars across the walls.

Steel planted in earth, not raised. Night on the edge of a desert, stars tight as frost on black cloth. Ser Arthur Dayne stands with his hand on Dawn’s pommel, not touching the blade, only the story of it. Rhaegar says: “You must keep them safe—her and the child. At any cost.” Dayne nods once, a man cutting his own tether. “At any cost.” No thunderclap, no chorus. Just the quiet of two men who know the ceiling of their choices and intend to live there.

Rushes on a cold floor. A basin steaming faintly. Lyanna sits on a low bed, one hand curved over the swell of her belly, the other wrapped around Rhaegar’s fingers. Her voice is the soft ache of certainty: “The prince that was promised. The song of ice and fire.” She says it with the plainness of a farmer naming weather. Rhaegar answers without flourish: “Our child will save the realm.” Not a boast, an accounting. Outside, unseen snow begins.

Blood, hot and copper-sweet, the way it smells in a practice yard when a nose breaks. A room gone small with pain. Hands working with the rough tenderness of people who cannot afford to fail. Lyanna’s hair pasted to her temples, eyes too bright. Ned kneeling at the bedside, his mouth a riven line, his hands steady because they must be. The world narrows to a cry that is his, that is him, the shock of first air, the unfairness of it. Lyanna smiles with everything she has left and places the new weight in her arms. 

“His name is Jaehaerys Targayen. Protect him. Promise me Ned, promise me.” She whispers, and the name settles over him like a cloak warm from a fire.

Ned bends close, the smell of sweat and cold and horse on him, and promises with his whole spine, eyes glistening with tears. “I will. I promise, I promise.” Lyanna’s fingers catch Ned’s wrist like a snare finally sprung; she breathes one last rose into the world and is gone. Ned’s face does not move, because if it moves it will break.

A different room; rushlight, the hiss of damp wood. Three eggs in a bed of ashes glow like banked coals. Ned watches them the way a man watches a cliff in fog: knowing it is there, not sure how far it falls. Howland Reed stands on unsteady legs, clothes damp with blood, eyes like the pools that remember the sky. Ned’s voice is low, carrying weight into the corners. The words are not the ones Jon has heard, not promise me, Ned, but their echo lives here all the same. Howland answers, a man making a pact with water and secrets. “Greywater will hide what the world would murder.”

Cracks like thin ice under a boot. Shell gives way. Heat and wet and the first foolish ungainly scramble into air. Hatchlings spill out, sneezing smoke, trilling at the shock of being. Howland laughs once, the sound of a reed pipe at dusk, then quiets, because laughter is a luxury where you mean to keep anything alive.

Years pull like oars through heavy water. Greywater Watch shifts; halls unmoored, doorways that are not where they were yesterday. Children grow taller; the dragons grow faster, their wings outpacing their bodies for a while, then catching up, then outpacing again. Fish clatter into baskets; frogs sing; sometimes, when the fog lies thick, you can hear a dragon’s breath like a bellows under it, and the mist rolls like a thing that dreams. Arrows are loosed at shadows and sink into wet wood. Songs are not sung, because songs leave footprints.

Then a day comes when the house-that-moves has moved as far as it can and not far enough. The mists are too thin to shoulder the weight of what they’ve become. Howland stands on a causeway with his children at his side and looks at the sky the way a man looks at a road he won’t take. “One day your rider will find you. Be good for him. Make him proud. You will meet again. I promise you.” Howland says. The dragons step into the shallows up to their knees and then, with a shrug that breaks the world, rise. They climb above the sawgrass and the mangroves and the slow, breathing water, and the marsh lets them go without a sound.

Cold. Not the honest cold of snow on the tongue; the old cold that silences. A line on the horizon that is not weather but an argument the world is losing. The Night King moves like a thought you don’t want to have. His army does not march; it accumulates. Men fall, and then men stand, and the standing men do not breathe. Blue fires catch in the sockets of the dead and stay. Banners freeze in the act of trying to flutter. There is no triumph in any of it, only hunger perfectly expressed. The living run and are caught because cold travels faster.

On some windless height, three dragons hold in air. The black one tilts its head like a hawk; the red one’s chest beats with furnace rhythm; the ice-blue one watches with eyes that reflect a light that isn’t there. Somewhere not made of stone or sky, a line draws between them and him, between blood and need. They turn. Not to the dead. To him. To the boy in the shell, to the boy in the bed of rushes, to the man with a wolf and a sword and a name that has just been spoken inside his bones.

There is no language to the call. There is only rightness. The curve of a path that was drawn before ink was invented. They bank together, three arcs folding into one intention, and the wind takes the snow sideways.

The sun at the bottom of the dark well flares, and everything contracts; rooms to points, years to a stitch, faces to the hooks they have left in him. Heat becomes weight becomes breath…

…and the night rushes back in with the sound of fires and men and the low, bell-metal rumble of three colossal chests rising and falling. The eye is only an eye again, gold and knife-pupiled and close enough for Jon to see his own reflection stretched thin across it like a man painted on a coin. The hatchlings whir under his cloak, frantic and relieved. Ghost leans harder into his knee, a white anchor in a world that has too much sky.

The vision breaks cleanly, like ice under a sure boot. The Fist is back. The men are waiting. The dragons breathe. Jon’s hand is still on hot scales, and his mouth is full of a name that tastes like iron and winter and lamplight: Jaehaerys.

The cold hit first, then the weight of his own body. Jon’s knees wanted to go. Ghost shouldered into him and the world steadied, the direwolf’s warmth a tether back to the hill and the men and the fire and the three shapes that should not exist.

The hatchlings were half frantic under his cloak, little bellows working against his ribs, claws pricking as they tried to get closer. The great black dragon breathed out, and the breath rolled over him like a forge opening.

“Snow?” Grenn’s voice, too loud because he was trying to make it normal. “You… you all right?”

Jon pulled air into a chest that felt borrowed. He took his hand from the dragon’s muzzle. It tracked the movement, slow as a tide.

“What did you see?” Alliser Thorne’s tone was a blade laid flat. No pity. No scorn, either. Not now.

Jon swallowed. The name was still in his mouth, too heavy to carry alone. He made himself meet the Old Bear’s eyes first, because that was the order of things. “They were married.” He said. The words rasped. “Rhaegar and Lyanna. In secret. A ring, vows. Robert wrote he’d chain her to his bed and force an heir if he got her back.”

A ripple moved through the half-circle of brothers, the kind men make when a story stops being just a story and starts looking back at them.

“Ser Arthur Dayne swore to keep them safe.” He could still see the sword point in the earth, could smell the star-cold night. “They said their child would be the prince that was promised. The song of ice and fire.”

“Child.” Pyp echoed, voice gone thin.

“Me.” Jon said, and the saying of it made it more true. “I was born in blood and rushes. My mother named me Jaehaerys. My…Lord Stark, swore to protect me.” He forced his voice steady. “The dragons hatched when I was born. Howland Reed took them to Greywater Watch. He hid them until they were too large to hide.”

He lifted his chin toward the three giants around their fire. “They left the swamps for the mountains and Beyond the Wall. They came back for me.” He didn’t mean to add, they knew me, but it was there in the way his mouth tightened.

“And the dead?” Jeor’s tone didn’t tremble. It thickened.

“I saw… an army.” The words made his throat raw. “The Night King. The dead rise and they come. They’ll come until there’s no one left to rise.” He looked at the Old Bear. “They’re moving.”

Snow hissed in the fire. The dragons’ breathing was the only other sound for a long heartbeat.

“All right.” Thorne said, in that same stripped-down voice, as if they’d just inventoried a larder and found rats. “Then leave.”

Grenn swore under his breath. Someone else said, “What?” like a man stepping into a hole he’d known was there.

Thorne didn’t look at them. He kept his eyes on Jon. “If you are a Targaryen with the North in your bones and dragons on your leash, you don’t belong in a black cloak. You belong where banners move and lords listen.” He jerked his chin at the black dragon, as if it were a horse and not a mountain. “Go claim what’s yours and buy us an army before winter buys us all.”

“Ser Alliser.” Jeor said, and there was iron under the name that would have bent a lesser man’s spine.

Thorne’s mouth twitched, not quite a sneer. “I’ve no love for a Stark, Lord Commander. I’ve less love for dying on this hill because we kept him to polish latrines and forget his name. He’s a Targaryen King. He doesn’t belong here.” He finally glanced away, toward the ring of men. “You think the vows keep the Others out? Oaths are good rope. Rope won’t hold back a tide.”

Jeor stepped forward until the firelight took his face whole. “The boy who swore.” He said, slow so the words would sit where they landed. “Was called Jon Snow.” He shifted his gaze to Jon, and the years in it felt like a weight a man chose to carry. “The man standing here is not. If you staying dooms the realm, you will not stay.” He didn’t want to see Jon leave, but Thorne was right. Jon might be the only hope they had to defeat the Night King and his army.

A murmur, low and unhappy. Dolorous Edd sighed like a bellows running down. “Always knew I’d see a prince someday. Just didn’t expect he’d look like Snow with worse news.”

“I don’t know how to be a King. I don’t want to be a King.” Jon said, because this was insane. He swore oaths in front of a heart tree. It didn’t matter what his name was, he still swore those oaths. 

“Neither did your father.” Thorne said, as he looked at Jon. “He didn’t want to sit on that throne and wear the crown. But he knew he would have to in order for his people to live. Some of the best Kings have all been ones that didn’t want it. It’s not about what you want. It’s about what your people need. And they need a King that can rally them. That can stop their enemies and unite the realm for the real war to come.”

“I don’t know how to do that. Where to start.” Jon admitted, because this was all just too much for him. All his life all he wanted to be was a Stark, only he never could have been. “All I ever wanted was to be a Stark.”

Sam edged up with a kind smile. “You are a Stark. Whether you are a Snow or a Targaryen, you will always be a Stark. Your mother was Lyanna Stark, the fierce She-Wolf. Her blood runs through you, just as your uncle Benjen and your father Ned Stark, for he loved and raised you when your real father couldn’t. Learning this truth does not take away anything you have from growing up. It does not take away your family and your siblings. It does not take away from who you are. This is just another piece of yourself.”

“I don’t know how to be a King, Sam.” Jon said, just sounding lost. 

Sam gave him a warm smile. “But you know how to lead. You know how to make men who are cowards brave. You know how to make men loyal. That’s half the job right there. The rest is politics, and that is what advisors are for.”

Jon gave a deep sigh. He wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. None of them would let him and part of Jon hated them for that, but another part also appreciated it. 

“What do I do, Sam?”

“You go to The Reach.”

Jon blinked at him. “I would have figured North.”

“Not yet. The Northern army is disconnected. If you show up on dragon back, they will be more focused on the dragon half of your blood then the wolf. They also will be exhausted and in need of rest and food. You need a fresh army, one that will stand by you. Go to Highgarden. House Tyrell will want a Queen from you, but they will also come with a hundred thousand men, food, weapons and ships. From there you can win the North back. Lady Olenna Tyrell, is also a master of whispers of sorts. She will know exactly what happened to the Northern army and your siblings. If for some reason she will not help, then go to my father, Lord Randyll Tarly in Horn Hill. My family has been loyal to yours since the very beginning. He will get The Reach’s army, even without the support from Highgarten.” 

“Sam.” Jon said, and found he could say his friend’s name without his voice breaking. That helped. “You should have been a maester.”

“Maybe one day I will be.” Sam said with a kind smile. 

Jon looked past him at the brothers he’d bled with and laughed with and stood freezing beside for too many nights to count. Grenn. Pyp. Edd, already composing a grievance to tell the snow. Men he’d saved and men who’d saved him. He looked at Jeor, whose nod was almost a benediction and almost a sentence. He looked at Thorne, who would rather bite down on his own tongue than call this mercy.

“You need to get back to Castle Black. Spread the word, no ragging Beyond The Wall. I’ll fly to speak with Mance Ryder first. Get him to agree to a parley at Castle Black. The North won’t like it, but we need to make a deal with the Wildlings. The Night King already has an army hundreds of thousands large, we can’t risk him getting more. We need the Wildlings on the other side of The Wall. Have them set up in the New Gift. They can farm the lands and keep the peace as long as they agree to help fight when the time comes.” Jon said to Jeor. 

“Men won’t like that. But you aren’t wrong. We cannot beat an army of the dead without an army of the living. I’ll parley and see what we can agree to.”

“Thousands of years the Night’s Watch have done everything we can to keep the Wildlings on their side of The Wall. Never thought I would have to fight beside ‘em.” Thorne said and it was clear he wasn’t happy, but he also wasn’t going to go against Jon. Jon was his King, his dragon blood made it so.  

“We’re all on the same side now.” Jon said.

“How can we be?” A brother tossed out. 

“We’re all breathing.” Jon said with a pointed look. 

He put his palm to Ghost’s head. The direwolf leaned into it, eyes half-lidded with trust. “Keep them alive.” Jon said to Sam, and meant all of them.

“We’ll try.” Sam said, and meant we will.

“I’ll send word and have you go to the Citadel. If I have to be stuck in King’s Landing, so do you.” Jon said with a small smirk before he turned and started to walk towards the black dragon.

The black dragon lowered its head until the scarred plates of its muzzle were level with Jon’s chest. It didn’t bow; it made a place. Up close, the heat coming off it was a weather of its own. The other two great beasts shifted, sending little avalanches of cinders through the fire ring.

“Lords don’t get to decide who their Maester is.” Sam called back. 

“Good thing I’m a King then.” Jon called back. 

Jon stepped to the shoulder where the scales ridged like the roots of an old tree. The tack they had was watch leather and rope, nothing meant for this, but the dragon’s back took the harness as if it had always been there waiting. Jon got one knee up, then the other, found a notch for his boot and a handhold like a ridge built for fingers. Ghost gathered himself and leapt with the easy power of a hunter, landing behind Jon’s hips. Jon reached back, gripped a fistful of pelt, and pulled a fold of his cloak over the direwolf’s flank, tying the cloth off under a strap so the wind wouldn’t take it.

The hatchlings worked themselves into every hollow they could find. The cinder-black curled under Jon’s right arm, spine warm against his ribs. The pale gold nosed into the small of his back, wedging itself between Ghost and Jon, a vibrating, contented weight. The red made a loop of its own neck across Jon’s chest like a living torque, talons pinning into boiled leather. They went silent as soon as they were pressed to him, the way children do when the road finally smooths.

“Your…” Grenn started, then choked on it. “...Jon.” He lifted a hand, then thought better of it and shoved it into his belt.

Jeor stepped close enough that the dragon’s heat touched the silver in his beard. “You bring back more than banners.” He said. “Bring back something worth swearing to.”

Jon nodded once.

“You were born to be a King. Never forget that.” Thorne said and Jon could see he was struggling with this. He had hated the Starks for years and now he was discovering his Targaryen King was half Stark. It was a lot for one more to take. 

Jon gripped the ridge of the dragon’s neck. The scales under his hands thrummed. He didn’t need to speak. He didn’t know the words, and it turned out there weren’t any. The black dragon knew. It gathered itself, a muscle the size of a hall coiling. The world dropped.

The first downbeat of the wings was a punch in the lungs. Snow and cinders exploded outward. Men flung arms over their faces. The watchfires flattened and then sprang tall. The red and the blue shot up on either side, a perfect flanking pair, the air under them cracking like canvas in a gale.

The Fist fell away to toy-size; men like cinders, fires like buttons, the old stones suddenly no higher than a man’s knee. The wind tried to tear Jon off his seat; the make-shift harness bit and held; Ghost pressed hard into his spine and steadied him. He kept the dragon climbing, higher and higher, until the camp below was only a bruise of orange in the black, then a smear, then gone into the cloud’s belly.

The sky up there was a different color, a purple so dark it was nearly black, the moon a cold coin the dragons brushed with their wingtips. The air was thin, knife-clean. Jon set the black on a southerly line that hugged the spine of the night, a road only birds and gods used. No torch would find them. No watchman would mark three shades moving through shade.

The red kept to his right, close enough he could feel the heat of its passage on his face in pulses. The ice-blue held the left, wings cutting the air with a sound like silk torn by strong hands. The hatchlings slept in pieces on him, small, heavy, breathing piles of certainty. Ghost’s heart beat against his back, steady, his own answered it, steadier.

The Wall and the North and the men he had been shrank behind him until even memory had to squint to see them. Ahead lay dark country that had long since been forsaken. He knew he had to go South, but first he had to go even further North to strike the first match in the war to come and hope that he would be able to secure the Wildlings in The North, before the ice took them.

Chapter Text

Winterfell’s yard breathed like a great animal in the cold; steam from horse nostrils, the rasp of whetstone on steel, men’s voices rising and falling in the rhythm of work. Jaime let the sound fold over him as he stepped out beneath the gallery, a lazy prince in beaten gold among sober northern grey. Sun slid along his scabbard. Somewhere a hammer struck, regular as a heart.

It had been years since he’d stood inside these walls. They were as he remembered and not: plainer than Lannister marble, but more honest; the sort of stone that would fall on you if you lied to it. He drew a breath and tasted iron and smoke and pine-sap. Honest air. He smiled to himself. Honesty had never saved anyone.

In the yard, two boys circled with blunted swords. The red-haired one, Robb, the young wolf, carried himself like a lordling eager to please. The other wore no lord’s colors and no father’s name, only a bastard’s plain jerkin and a quiet he hadn’t earned yet. Snow, they called him. Jon Snow. He held his blade with his wrists loose and his feet not quite where Ser Rodrik would have put them, but where a fight would want them.

Jaime drifted into the shade of a buttress and watched, hands clasped behind his back as though he were an indulgent uncle. Robb came on with a brave, square-shouldered rush. Jon gave ground half a step, then turned the rush with a neat inside parry and a pivot that spent none of his own breath. The movement reached something old in Jaime like a finger pressed against a healed scar.

Not Stark-stiff, he thought. The Starks clove straight to their troubles and broke themselves on the rock. This boy read the weight first and put his feet where the blow would not be.

He had seen that before.

The yard noise thinned for him, or perhaps he simply ceased to hear it. He saw sun on a river and men screaming and rubies tumbling bright as berries. He saw a prince drop the tip of his sword because a song had come to him in the midst of death. The world had been young and foolish and doomed.

Seven save me, he thought, colder than the air deserved. Of all ghosts to pick a northern yard to walk.

A shadow bulked at his shoulder. Sandor Clegane, sour as old beer. “You’ll be wanting a turn, I don’t doubt.” The Hound said, watching the boys the way a dog watches hens. “Teach these pups what a proper cut feels like.”

“They’re not my pups.” Jaime said lightly. “My only investment in them is whether they trip me when I walk.”

Sandor made a noise that might have been a laugh and might have been a stone stuck in a dog’s throat. “One’s the Lord’s son. The other’s nobody.”

“Mm.” Said Jaime, and let his gaze ride Jon’s blade as it kissed Robb’s guard aside with the smallest possible stroke. Listening first, the movement said. Answer second.

Ser Rodrik Cassel saw him then and came bowing across the yard with whiskers bristling. “Ser Jaime.” He said, equal parts pride and worry. “An honor to have a swordsman of your… ah… reputation in our humble yard.”

“Your boys don’t look humble.” Jaime said. He tipped his chin at the ring where Robb and Jon had broken to catch breath and grin at each other. “They look hungry.”

“They’re Starks.” Rodrik’s bristle smoothed into a fondness that didn’t match the iron in his voice. “Hungry’s good. Keeps them keen.”

“Does it?” Jaime said, already stepping toward the ring, because there was only so long a man could hold the leash on his curiosity. “My lord Robb. Bastard.”

That got him the looks he wanted. Robb bristled and swallowed it, holding to a lordling’s manners. Jon looked at him the way a quiet dog looks at a stranger, measuring the space between teeth and hand.

“Ser.” Robb said, polite as a prayer.

“Ser.” Jon said, because he was no knight and that was the proper address anyway.

Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. “If the Kingslayer would do us the honor, the boys could use another eye.”

“An eye?” Jaime said, drawing one of the yard’s blunted swords and feeling its tired balance. “Let’s give them a hand instead. Snow.” He flipped the blade hilt-first and Jon caught it without fumbling. “Show me.”

Robb started to step forward, eager, but Ser Rodrik’s fingers caught his sleeve. The old swordsman knew what he’d seen, even if he didn’t have a name for it.

Jaime stepped in. Jon brought his blade up. The first contact rang up Jaime’s arm into the old marriage of bone and steel that was the only vow that had ever entirely made sense to him. He pressed three tempos, high-low-thrust, a simple tourney pattern that taught men to trip on their own pride. Jon did not meet it with pride. He met it with absence. He let the high glance, bled the low off with his wrist, and moved his ribs half a hand’s breadth without surrendering the ground. The thrust kissed air.

“Again.” Jaime said. He laughed when the boy obliged. The laugh came out warmer than he meant. Gods, but it was a pleasure to set a good rhythm and feel a better one come back.

They moved a little. Not far enough to show off, not fast enough to draw a crowd more than the yard already had, just a slow complication of angles, a turn of waist, the sound of breath. Jon’s eyes never left Jaime’s. Not the lion’s head on his shoulder, not the golden pommel, not the watching gallery. Jaime tasted the oddest thing: respect.

Jaime turned a cut that could have bruised a rib into a tap and stepped away. He could feel Sandor’s stare on his back and Ser Rodrik’s relief, but those were distant, trivial things. What mattered stood in front of him with the sword point low and a frown of concentration on his mouth, and it had a name he would not say.

A smudge of white slid between them. Jaime looked down into eyes the color of fresh blood set in a face white as another life. The direwolf pup regarded him without fear or bristle and put its muzzle against Jon’s knuckles. It did not growl. It did not need to. The gods of this place had never had much to say to him, but something old leaned forward in that look as if to take his measure.

“Nice dog.” Jaime said to keep his voice doing something other than confessing. “Try not to let him eat any kings.”

“He only bites when he’s hungry.” Jon said, even as his hand stilled on the wolf’s head. The words ought to have been a jest and weren’t.

“Then we must see him well fed.” Jaime passed his blade back, let his fingers brush the flat on the way, a benediction that wasn’t one. “Good.”

He meant form. He meant blood. He meant: I see you.

“Again.” He said to Robb without looking at him. “Lighter on the heel. You’re telling your intentions to the flagstones.”

“Yes, ser.” Robb said, eyes narrowed at Jon for a heartbeat, then grateful for the note, the way boys were grateful for anything that made them better.

On the gallery above, Tyrion’s voice came like a bell with wine in it. “Brother. Am I to understand you’re laboring without a cup? The North is crueler than I had heard.”

Jaime glanced up. Tyrion leaned on the rail with a flagon and a look that held both amusement and the sharper thing that made him dangerous.

“Little brother.” Jaime called, pitching the words just above the yard’s hum, just where they would carry to the right ears and stop. “The bastard handles a blade. Try not to ruin him with your counsel.”

Tyrion’s brows climbed. He looked down at Jon with new interest, then back at Jaime with the tilt of mouth that meant a later conversation. “I’ll endeavor to be kind, since you ask so sweetly.”

Jaime let his gaze wander past him and found Lord Eddard Stark on the walkway, moving like a man who had learned to carry grief the way other men wore cloaks. Their eyes touched. There was no flinch in Stark’s face, and none in Jaime’s, but something passed between them, a thin blade slipped between plates. Jaime’s mouth smiled. His hand settled against his hip where his sword hung, more habit than threat. Ned Stark kept walking.

Under the gallery, a Lannister guardsman spoke low. “Ser. If the Queen…”

“If the Queen asks about boys with sticks.” Jaime said, not turning his head. “You tell her they bored me so badly I cut my own throat to escape. Do you think you can manage those words without putting them in the wrong order?”

The guard shut his mouth on whatever he’d been about to say. Sandor snorted. “She won’t be bored long.”

“No.” Jaime said lightly. “She rarely is.”

Jon handed the practice blade back to Ser Rodrik and stooped for a strap fallen from a battered post. He tightened it with a quiet competence that put a small, stupid warmth in Jaime’s chest. One saw in men the ways they chose to keep their worlds from wobbling, some with money, some with prayers. A few with leather and patience.

Jaime drifted nearer without thinking about it. “You fight like a man who listens first.” He said, and saw the boy’s shoulders tense at being addressed again.

“In the North.” Jon said after a breath. “Steel talks loud.”

“Everywhere.” Jaime said. “Men mistake the shouting for the killing. Keep listening.” He tapped the flat of Jon’s blade with two fingers. The wolf pup watched his hand like a judge. “And fix your left foot when you turn to the outside. It will save you a bruise and make your enemies miserable.”

A corner of Jon’s mouth went up and died again. “Yes, ser.”

The word did something foolish in Jaime that he would have mocked in another man. He stepped back. The yard swelled around him again, laughter, the hiss of straw, a boy grunting when a wooden blade found a padded shoulder. The hammer beat resumed behind his ribs.

He could tell Cersei. He could bring that secret to her as he’d brought her every pretty bauble of gossip since they were young enough to believe knowledge meant power and power meant safety. She would take it in her clever hands and press until it bled. It would not save anyone.

He could tell Robert. He imagined saying the words—Your Grace, the boy is Rhaegar’s—for there was not a single doubt in him that Jon was Rhaegar’s and Lyanna’s. The way he moved, the way his eyes held a slight purple hue to them when the sun hit them just right. He knew Rhaegar, he knew the prince and princess, he could spot one of Rhaegar’s children anywhere. He pictured the way the king’s face would change, not into thought but into the thudding rage that had carried him down a river to smash a man with a hammer and turn rubies into a rain. Robert would not hear songs. Robert did not listen first.

He could tell Ned Stark. He looked up to the walkway again, though Ned had gone, and pictured the face that did not know how to be other than it was. Ned would keep a vow even with his teeth broken. He would do the one thing left to him that made the most sense. He would send the boy to a place where oaths were heavier than crowns.

All the roads ended in the same place if you took them loudly. If you spoke.

He did not speak. It was almost easy, there in the clean air with a wolf pup looking through him.

“Ser?” Ser Rodrik hovered, anxious. “If you had any notes for the boys…”

“I’ve given them.” Jaime said. “You keep them well, Cassel.”

Rodrik colored at the praise and hated that he did. Jaime found he did not mind. He adjusted the strap Jon had tightened by another finger’s width, not because it needed it but because the gesture soothed an itch in him that he did not care to scratch with a sword today.

By the postern that led to the kitchens, a pair of girls flickered past in a flutter of laughter and braids, the Stark daughters with a Septa in tow. The younger one looked back bold as a cat. The older kept her eyes on the ground until they found his, and then she flinched and looked away. The North breathed. The world held, for the moment, its shape.

Tyrion came down the stairs with his cup and his curiosity. “That was generous of you.” He said quietly when he reached Jaime’s side. “You don’t usually give away compliments for free.”

“Am I in arrears?” Jaime said.

“You are always in arrears.” Tyrion said pleasantly. He sipped. “The bastard’s interesting.”

“Mm.” Said Jaime. He let his mouth say something unserious and his silence carry the weight. “Try to keep him that way. Don’t teach him to talk as much as you do.”

“I feel targeted.” Tyrion said, amused. “Should I be?”

“Not today.” Jaime’s eyes tracked the boy as Jon resumed drills with Robb. A small knot of northmen watched with the possessive pride of men who had sworn their lives to cold and wanted proof it had made them hard. Ghost settled against Jon’s calf with the regard of a familiar, not a pet.

“Do you know.” Tyrion said, mildly. “That there’s a legend that the old kings of Winter could drive a man mad just by looking at him long enough? Something about their eyes being the color of the heart of an icicle.”

“Who told you that?” Jaime asked.

“A drunk in a tavern by the Dreadfort.” Tyrion said. “He was missing two fingers and any sense of proportion.”

“Then it must be true.” Jaime clapped him on the shoulder. “Come. If I don’t put wine in you, you’ll start educating people again and then I shall have to duel you for their honor.”

They turned toward the shadowed passage that led to the solar where Robert would be sweating and roaring over maps and Ned Stark would answer him in a voice like winter rain. Jaime let himself be led and let his mind stay in the yard a few moments longer.

A boy who listened first. A wolf who watched without blinking. A stone keep that did not forgive liars. He had killed a king so a city would not burn. It had not made him clean. But perhaps there were other things a man could kill that left fewer corpses; messages mislaid, curiosities dulled, a queen’s appetite starved. The work was smaller. The work might save more than it seemed.

In the cool throat of the corridor, torchlight licked the walls. Ahead, Ned Stark’s dark shape resolved out of shadow. Their footsteps drew them into speaking distance and neither man yielded the way. Jaime tipped his head and smiled a little.

“Lord Stark.” He said, voice easy as a card tossed on a table. “Your castle keeps good boys.”

Ned’s eyes were the color of the yard’s stone. “They try.”

Jaime rolled a shoulder. “Try harder.”

They drew level beneath the torches.

“My men keep a tidy yard.” Ned Stark said.

“One of your boys listens before he swings.” Jaime replied. “I knew a man who fought like that.”

“A northern man?”

“Not exactly.” Jaime said, light as a flicked card.

Ned’s mouth did something that wasn’t a smile and wasn’t far from one. He moved on. Jaime watched him go and thought about what men kept close and what they chose to put in the ground and pretend was safe.

“Coming?” Tyrion asked.

“In a moment.” Jaime said, and stepped back toward the yard long enough to catch Jon Snow’s eye once more. The boy had just turned to the outside on a parry and put his left foot exactly where Jaime had told him. The movement made a bruise for someone else, not for him. Ghost’s ears pricked. The pup raised his muzzle and sent a soft, questioning howl up into the winter-blue slice of sky.

“Not today.” Jaime said under his breath, an oath to no one and everyone. He let the words steam and vanish, as if the gods of cold places might like them better that way.

Then he turned on his heel, slung the lazy smile back over his face like a cloak, and went to Robert Baratheon to ensure he avoided the boy at all costs.