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Cassana washes up on the beach and blinks seawater from her eyes, hacking air into her lungs.
She reaches for Steffon’s hand, and it is cold under her fingers.
It does not move. He does not move.
Patchface lost his mind, under the sea, and Cassana lost her heart - they are a matched pair, she thinks, and says as much to Robert when he presses her to send the poor fool away.
Robert thinks to send himself away, too, away back to the Eyrie, to a man not his father, and a man not his brother, when there are two boys here who have need of him, a castle that is his. It is more selfish than Cassana can bear, and she says as much to him, when he shouts at her that he is lord now, and he can do as he pleases.
Steffon’s remains, such as they are, are given to the sea, as generations of Baratheons before him have been.
Dying at sea does not hold the same terror for those of Shipbreaker Bay as it does for inlanders, and so Cassana is not so horrified by her husband’s passing as some of her friends think she ought to be. Steffon knew the risk of sailing into those clouds as well as she did, and his luck turned while hers held.
Still, it rankles, to give him fully to the sea that tore him away from her. She hopes that Durran Godsgrief’s curse will pass over her sons, now that it has claimed her husband.
Renly has grown so much that she can hardly believe him the same babe she left behind, but he still has long-gone Lord Lyonel’s laughing eyes, bright in his smiling face.
Stannis is unchanging, as ever. Her solid, serious boy, with so much of Lord Ormund in his frowns and shadows and fears. A mother should not have favourites, but Cassana does - Stannis is the most like Steffon, after all.
Robert storms about Storm’s End like a thundercloud, in sulks that last days at a time because he found his advisors in agreed - this is his home, not the Eyrie, and so here he should stay.
He lightens a little when she suggests that Lady Lyanna Stark, who is to someday wed him, come to foster under Cassana’s care - and sulks again when she laughs at this suggestion that the invitation be extended also to Lady Lyanna’s brother, who Robert so loves.
Robert and Stannis fight and fight and fight, and it takes Cassana’s tears to stop them.
She weeps for Steffon, for Renly who will never know his father, for Robert who is not ready for this and may never be ready for this, and for Stannis, who under Robert will never receive his dues. The boys flock to her, fluttering and anxious because they are men, and do not know how to understand this, and eventually she stops.
She writes to Rhaella in desperation, her oldest friend if not her dearest - the sea claimed her dearest friend, and her heart with him - and begs for help, for answers.
Rhaella responds with an invitation for Stannis to join the Crown Prince’s household on Dragonstone.
Perhaps she can keep a foot in either camp - Robert with the Starks, Stannis with Prince Rhaegar. Perhaps, whatever way the storm breaks, she can keep Steffon’s sons safe, as she could not save him.