Daenerys?

  The stench of char filled the room as her Rhaellion breathed a pale gold flame the length of her hand. He soon devoured the thin strip of flesh, making a happy, crooning sound.

  Sometimes it was still hard to believe the sight in front of her. A dragon. Her dragon. Like in her dreams his scales were milk and honey, silver and gold.

  Now all the realm knew her as Princess Daenerys again, and her brother for a king with Aegon the Conqueror's own crown upon his brow, a thing of Valyrian steel and rubies. Prince Doran had made a gift of it the morn after.

  No longer were they but guests to wait on the generosity of a sorcerer.

  Though Viserys no longer cast blame upon her for it, a part of her was faintly aggrieved that her husband had yet to show any interest in consummating their union. It had been more than a year's time since she had escaped the clutches of the Blackfyres. She was no longer a girl, but a dragonlord of old.

  That despite her not being brave enough to demand it herself…

  She tugged on her curls as the last of the flesh was devoured. Solomon had called their hair back from smoke after the flames had taken every strand, and she had since styled it in the Dornish manner again.

  Rhaellion nudged his head against her palm when she raised it, the gold of his horns tickling her pale skin.

  It was for the mother she never knew that she had named him so. How she wished she could speak with her, if only once. Yet she had cruelly taken her with her first breath, a guilt that had gnawed at her heart since she was a girl.

  Her heart skipped a beat when a thought burned into her like a slaver's brand. Could she not?

  Rhaellion heaved himself upon her shoulder before she left her rooms. Ser Andrey Dalt met her at the door with an easy smile, the hem of his white cloak around his shoulders brushing the stones.

  "You seem to have a quarry in mind, princess."

  "In the shadow city, ser. The Sandstone Citadel." It was the name others had given the tower, for it seemed set to be a twin to the Citadel in Oldtown.

  Rhaellion tucked his head beneath her curls near the same color as him as they left Sunspear. He was a shy creature, unlike her brother's Balerion, who preened upon Viserys's shoulder for all the world to see.

  The tower seemed almost yellow under the noonday sun when they reached it. Though it would be some moons until it was completed, the lower levels already saw a number of occupants.

  Her husband she found with an archmaester, as well as a maester attainted who had returned to Sunspear with Prince Oberyn by name of Qyburn.

  Finally, her eyes caught on the third brother.

  If her Rhaellion had grown from a small cat to a Dornish hawk in the span of a moon, him with scales green as YiTish jade and eyes as yellow as a sorcerer's blood had grown thrice as quickly, circling her husband's form as if he were a serpent.

  Their eyes caught on her in the same breath, though it was Marwyn that spoke first. "Would you care to weigh in on our bickering, Princess Daenerys?"

  "Has the princess any interest in the nature of a man's soul?" Qyburn inquired softly. Though his demeanor was almost fatherly, something of him put her hairs on edge.

  "You must excuse me, maesters," Solomon next spoke in dulcet tones. A part of her was grateful that he understood.

  He took her hand gently and brought her to another room awash with the cold fire of some two score gemstones, a hoard of every stripe and color.

  "The Alchemists' Guild are undertaking experiments," he said by way of answer. "You've a wonder to you."

  "You had mentioned you had spoken to dragonlords dead centuries ago," she started. He had even shown her Valyria's hundred spires before the Doom had taken them.

  The words she would have said next caught in her throat as she remembered the day she had fed her blood into a sphere of dragonglass.

  At first she only watched his three eyes stare into it with nary a breath, the hours of the day passing between them quietly. Then his third eye had suddenly yawned even wider to show a river of yellow that seemed to go on forever. And then his head had turned to stone, something else staring out of him…

  The sight might have gone now, but it had never been far from her thoughts.

  A soft kiss to her knuckles drew her back. "There is none you could say that would spurn me."

  She idly noticed his dragon had separated from him to loom over the gemstones, and Rhaellion had joined him.

  Mustering her own courage, she spoke her wish at last. "I would speak to the mother who bore me the same way."

  A shadow of something passed over his eyes. "I see."

  Some of her courage already faltered. "Though I wouldn't want to insist…"

  "I only worry for your safety," he whispered. Those words she found sweet as honey. "But if we approach the matter carefully…"

  He brought her to seat the stones with him, the same black sphere placed between them.

  "We would only be visitors. Something to keep in mind."

  As soon as she gave a nod, his head yawned open again, his three eyes staring into her own. They lowered, and she followed, staring into the black depths.

  Suddenly she felt herself falling… falling…

  Sunspear had gone, replaced by a thousand mirrors that all showed her reflection. There was a thump, thump, thump like a heartbeat, her own perhaps.

  "Think of your mother," she heard. "Think of Dragonstone."

  Viserys had spoken to her his own memories of her and Dragonstone, and more recently had shown them. It was all she had to follow.

  Soon she was walking the length of a castle that seemed as if it had been carved from the corpses of dragons. Above her a storm raged, the crack of thunder as loud as the crack of dragons birthed from their eggs.

  She stepped into a solar warmed by a fireplace, its logs cracking and hissing. There she spied a woman with silver-gold tresses, her gown stretched at the seams around her gravid belly.

  "Mother?" she whispered in question. Her teeth snapped shut, but a queen had already heard. Her head crowned in silver and pearls turned to look at her as if she were a ghost. She thought to pretend to be another…

  A stubbornness took her as she approached anyway.

  "Must be I've fallen into a dream," her mother faintly spoke, her hands cradling her belly.

  "Tis no dream. I am Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aerys and Rhaella Targaryen."

  Thunder cracked over their heads again, the torrent of rain against stone loud enough to deafen all else.

  Her mother reached out to touch her cheek, her hand warm. "You're exactly how I dreamed you would be these past moons. Do you soar through the skies upon a dragon also, daughter of mine?"

  Her heart quickened. Had her mother dreamed as she did?

  "I will," she whispered. One day soon…

  "Then this war did not take you also…" Her haunting violet eyes so much like her own stared through her. "I know I will not survive the birthing bed. It is a bed of blood that awaits me beneath a storm as this."

  Hot tears fell down her own cheeks. For one mad moment she thought to try and save her somehow.

  "The winter that comes… I pray you will see past its end also. Your brother never listened, so sure was he. Now his blood waters the Trident, his son and daughter butchered by Tywin's monsters."

  Dany hugged her tight, trying to commit her scent to memory. "I named a dragon for you. I'll name my daughter after you also."

  Something in her head ached. Her husband spoke in her ear again. "It's time for you to return."

  Dragonstone fell away as one last tear trailed down her cheek. Not that her tears had not followed her back to Sunspear.

  Solomon wept also, though his tears were faintly yellow.

  "I am sorry I could not let you stay longer."

  She wiped at her own tears with a rueful smile. "You need not have entertained me at all…"

  "That would cast me as a poor man and a poorer husband." The black sphere vanished into the yellow again. "Perhaps we might break our fast together."

  Dany took his hand. The hours passed swiftly as they enjoyed another's company, and when she returned to her rooms to rest her head for the night, the dreams seared into her head with a heat she had never felt.

  A shadow with a mask cast in blood stood opposite her. It would whisper in her ear.

  A stag wreathed in forest met a stag wreathed in flames. Their antlers broke as they struck one another.

  A thousand ships met upon a sea beneath her, a sea that turned red with blood, then black with horror.

  A woman with sunlight in her hair stood above an army clad in gold, each face the same.

  Finally it was a familiar dream that found her.

  A dragon clad in ice and snow slept amidst a slaughterhouse, flowers blooming where the blood touched. Though they were not forget-me-nots as she thought. Solomon had told her they were winter roses.

  They were said to bloom only in the north…

  Jon?

  His sword found the heart of a man whose name he did not know. By the look of his eyes when they widened in surprise, an Essosi sellsword of some stripe.

  It felt as though he had been fighting for days, yet the sun and its twin in baleful red had barely moved in the sky.

  They had met Grafton's host at Runestone as they expected, yet it was a host closer to thirty thousand men than twenty. Then his bastard's luck had seen him lose his horse in the first shock of spears, mooring him in the thick of the melee.

  If not for Ghost, he might well have died there also. Jon had lost count of how many throats his direwolf had torn out, a year's time seeing him grow tall as a pony. He found Wal also, the Giant of Winterfell shading him from the sun.

  "Do you see Robb?" he asked faintly.

  "I see his wolf, m'lord. Must be he's close by."

  He already knew it was fruitless to remind him he wasn't a lord of any stripe. "Where?" he asked instead. All he spied were men hacking at one another astride a field of corpses.

  "West, m'lord."

  Where the corpses stood highest. He sighed.

  "Then west we go, Wal."

  The northmen were not hard to rally. The sight of Ghost stirred their hearts as much as Grey Wind.

  The sellswords flying a naked maiden on their banners were already set to break when they smashed into them, and break they did. His arms felt lead and stone more than flesh after he had carved through a man's ribs to open his heart and lungs.

  Wal had slain five men in that time with his misshapen sword as tall as a man and then some. War had made monsters of them all.

  It was Grey Wind he would spy first, maw red with blood as he tore the arm clean off a man with seashells in his hair.

  The sight of Robb after tugged a ghostly smile on his lips. A dozen sons and heirs from Karstarks to Umbers followed, and even a daughter in one Dacey Mormont.

  "You didn't come all this way for a bastard, did you?"

  His half-brother barked a laugh still from his Stark grey stallion. "As if you gave me a choice." A sigh left his lips also, his Tully hair stained with sweat. "Grafton's proved a craven. I can't say what game he's playing at, but it seems he would sooner watch his men be slaughtered than take to the field himself."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  If this continued, the day would be theirs, and they would march on Gulltown soon after.

  Why, then, would its lord dally?

  "Mayhaps he sees his cause is hopeless?" Theon suggested in a drawl, golden kraken smiling down at him. "The fewer sellswords that remain, the lighter the cost to his coffers, surely."

  "It would not be the first such ploy that sellswords see," Jon argued. "Yet they fight still."

  Something of a boyish smirk cut across Robb's lips. "Perhaps we should ride Grafton down and ask. His men are like to flee with him if he turns tail."

  Another horse was found for him when he spied a queer sight, banners cresting the horizon west from whence they'd come. Waynwood, Corbray, Melcolm…

  A mare red as blood found them. The Heir of the Dreadfort's pale eyes seemed haunted. "They had slain our scouts for a hundred leagues on a fever march. My father suspects they were betrayed."

  "Naked treachery," the Smalljon rumbled, the only man he had seen besides the Greatjon near as tall as Wal. The Karstark brothers and Daryn Hornwood shouted much the same.

  Robb's boyish smirk had died with the sight, replaced by something their lord father might have worn. "Theon, rally the archers," he cooly whispered. Grey Wind rumbled deep in his maw as Ghost and he circled their gathering. "Likely Lord Grafton will seek to engage now. Ser Robar, warn your father likewise."

  The Greyjoy and the Royce knight with a shimmering rainbow cloak around his shoulders separated from them as Robb's hand tangled in his hair. Jon did not envy his position.

  "We find my uncle. We'll need to ready a countercharge."

  "A melee as this turns a man's wits to water," Domeric voiced in a whisper. "Ten thousand lances are about to fall upon us east and west like hammers upon an anvil."

  "What choice have we?" Robb returned hoarsely. "Harrold Hardyng can only inherit over my cousin. Aunt Lysa would never allow it…" He shook his head as they thundered to the Tully ranks.

  "Nephew!" Ser Edmure shouted as they neared, the chivalry of the riverlands with him. "Seems we've company."

  "The Lady Anya Waynwood thinks to marry herself to a cause doomed," the Lord of Stone Hedge opined, his greathelm fashioned in a red stallion's head.

  "Not so doomed, perhaps." The Lord of Raventree Hall was bedecked in burnished scarlet plate that carried a pale weirwood upon its breast, a raven-feather cloak around his shoulders. "The Martells and the Targaryens have given the board a happy shake."

  He received a scowl for it. The Brackens and the Blackwoods were both river kings once, and feuded to this day.

  Grey Wind's howl broke the air, Robb staring at their westmost flank. Jon's eyes followed Lady Anya Waynwood's knights thundering down the hill, but that was not all. The Templeton banners had turned on the Lord of the Dreadfort's line from behind.

  His son and heir turned even paler upon his red mare.

  "Uncle, ready a charge." Robb's voice was cold as winter. "We will repay Ser Symond Templeton in kind. Lords Royce and Redfort will have to weather Lord Grafton for the moment. Ser Garlan also."

  Though he was the elder, Ser Edmure did not argue. "So be it. Treachery can only be repaid with blood," he shouted louder, his river lords soon shouting the same.

  They were not quick enough. Roose Bolton and some five thousand of their foot were smashed between as many knights and the black stars of Templeton. A slaughter ensued.

  They crashed into the Templeton flank after. There was no telling north from south now, the foot of the Waynwood host also joining in the ensuing melee. His leaden arms reminded him he wasn't fresh as he opened the throat of a Corbray man-at-arms. A Corbray knight soon met him upon a destrier.

  "The Bastard of Winterfell! You dealt me an insult a moon ago. I think I'll take your head for it."

  The sight of Lady Forlorn told him who it was as much as the voice thick with venom. Ser Lyn Corbray. The Valyrian steel heart-peel shimmered with a smoke-dark ripple, hungry for a bastard's blood.

  "Come and take it then," he shouted back braver than he felt.

  The slender man's lips curved into a crueler smile as he stirred his mount, the sword in his hand drinking in the sun and slaughter around them.

  Ghost had not the weight to lay low a knight upon a destrier. When they met, Jon's sword struck only steel. He felt a rush of hot blood down his cheek in the same breath, from a cut he hardly felt.

  "I think I'll make a fine cloak from your wolf also," his foe crowed from a distance. "Doubtless I'll be the first with such a pelt in an age."

  The Vale knight was his better with the horse and sword. But their duel was soon interrupted by a hail of arrows. One grazed Corbray's cheek, to which the knight spat on the ground 'fore he retreated.

  Theon gave a bow from his black courser behind him, and his eyes soon turned on their southerly and easterly flanks. Grafton's knights had smashed into both beneath the shadow of Runestone.

  The tides had turned with such suddenness that it left him light of head. A retreat was like to be so bloody as to threaten desertion, but to stay would see the same.

  All he could do was fight until his sword fell from his hand for lack of strength, which might be sooner than later.

  He had found Robb again in the thick of the slaughterhouse.

  "We cannot leave and we cannot stay," he heard him mutter, the cast to his eyes an angry, bitter brew.

  Jon ignored how they reminded him of Lady Catelyn to touch his shoulder. There wasn't anything to say.

  It was then he spied another queer sight, a mist as thick as a snowdrift sprawling over the mountains far to their west. It was not long that it swallowed the sun and slaughter alike in white and grey.

  Yet he had never seen more a miracle, and Robb saw the same. "Smalljon… sound the retreat. We won't get another chance as this."

  "Aye," the giant rumbled from within the mist. A horn soon carried through the air, a mournful sound to herald the dead as much as the living. Then it sounded a second time for a retreat.

  What sounds of fighting survived the mist died quickly. In a mist as this, you couldn't be sure the man you put your sword through was friend or foe.

  It was three uneasy nights until they reached the Redfort red as its name again. There was more than one grim expression on the faces of those around him. They had lost thousands today, with naught to show for it. Lord Yohn Royce he spied with the temperament of an aggrieved bronze bear, his sons at his back.

  Runestone was unlikely to hold out more than a few moons longer.

  A room was found for him and a bath drawn. The heat of the water burned his thoughts away, leaving him at peace for the first time in days…

  He found himself hunting a deer, her scent tickling his snout. Soon her blood filled his maw as he snapped her neck with ease.

  His grey brother joined him to feast, his gait unsteady for the injury naked steel had dealt him. They left the rest for their lesser cousins, watching them from moonlit shadows.

  Another scent caught on the wind. Men, coming down from the mountains, to the great stone den where…

  Jon stirred, the water cool against his skin now. A cold wind tangled in his hair. A white raven had met them at the Redfort the last time they were here, marking the end of the long summer.

  He dressed, his thoughts weighing heavy again. Though he wasn't the only one.

  Domeric sat near to Robb staring at nothing. He was Lord of the Dreadfort now, Roose Bolton having perished on the march from his injuries. And just as like he had lost two fathers, for his foster father in Lord Horton Redfort had been cut open by a Grafton knight. The late lord's eldest son was now lord of the castle they held council in.

  He spied Wal nearer to the commons, or Ser Walder now, as the old lord of Longbow Hall had newly knighted him for bravery.

  There was much bickering and recrimination, as could be expected when the king at whose pleasure they served was far and away in King's Landing. Ser Garlan Tyrell seemed to bear a pensive frown as he read a letter surrounded by a small cohort of summer knights.

  "To make common cause with a murderous fleshmonger as Baelish is to be near the same yourself," the Lord of Runestone boomed. "I'd sooner set Runestone aflame myself than see this Harrold Hardyng sit the throne of the Eyrie."

  The sentiment was echoed by the other Vale lords. Near the dais, a Redfort man-at-arms approached Lord Jasper Redfort, whose face soured as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

  A stir crossed the room as men and women shrouded in shaggy furs passed the doors. A woman led them, standing no taller than Sansa when last he'd seen her. In the torchlight her hair fell to her waist like a mane of flames. Black paint shadowed her eyes and lips.

  It wasn't until she chewed on a hunk of bread, staining it the same black, that she spoke. "You and your kin have knelt to Artos Arryn's heirs for o'er a thousand years. What makes this new usurper any different?"

  The bronze lord did not stir to anger, though there were jeers and insults enough from the rest of the hall. They might have seen worse had words not reached them from Strongsong that they had found Bran hale and hearty.

  "Oh, aye, we're savages! Wildlings! Not fit to shine your steel!" She spat the black-stained tack on the stones. "Yet look where all your kneeling's left you. You would be no better than hounds left out in the rain if not for the succor I sent your way, your fancy castles offered up to second and third sons."

  The Vale lords looked as sour as the new Lord of the Redfort now.

  "Sent our way?" Her eyes, wicked as her smile and green as moss, turned on Robb for the question.

  "A feat as that can only be paid in blood. The Kings of Winter did not shy from that truth."

  "Witchery," one of the river lords accused.

  "Why?" Robb asked again.

  "S'no secret, that. You lot can't kill any Andals if their trickery's already sent you to your graves." Her tongue wet her coldbitten lips. "Just as like I've annoyed a mockingbird."

  Ghost had returned as she spoke, resting his heavy bulk next to him. He touched a hand to his snowy crown, the softest of whines leaving his bloody maw.

  The Lord of Runestone's expression remained queerly serene. "If you speak true, then we owe you a debt."

  "Aye, 'tis true enough."

  "And who are you?" He was surprised to have asked that question himself.

  "Morna of the White Wood." Her moss-green eyes seemed to look past him as a cold wind blew through the hall. "I'll not see you forget it, Snow."

  "And could you repeat such a feat?" Domeric softly asked, his pale eyes stirred back to the world.

  The witch's smile stretched wider. "Just the question for a spawn of the Red Kings to ask. Aye, I could."

  The words drew glances from those in the room, even the river lords. But then they had all lost kin or friend these past few days…

  "How soon?" Robb finally asked.

  "A moon, or near enough."

  Those words saw the hall descend into a storm.