"The dragon carried her away," Lyanna said softly, her voice roughened by the telling. "After Daenerys' lover put a knife in her heart, Drogon came to her. He melted the Iron Throne until it ran red and bright like a forge, and then he took her body in his claws and vanished into the east."
Silence followed. Not the patient silence of listeners waiting for the next line. This was the silence that came after a storm broke a tree and men stood looking at the splintered trunk, measuring what the world had just lost.
Rhaenys sat very still, black kitten forgotten in her lap. Her dark eyes were wide and fixed on Lyanna, not with fear but the kind of wonder children felt when a tale was too large for their own mind. Elia had gone thoughtful, one hand laid over the other, gaze lowered as if weighing each piece of the story and where it cut nearest to truth. Rhaella had not moved at all.
Only two thin tears slid down the queen's cheeks.
Lyanna had seen men and women cry before. She had cried a couple herself in recent moons. Yet there was something terrible in the quietness of Rhaella's grief. No shaking. No sobbing. Just tears falling from a face that had learned too much discipline to plead with the world.
At last Rhaella spoke. "Why are my children alone at the start of her story," she asked, her voice so low it seemed to catch on the edges of the chamber. "A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing."
Lyanna's hands clenched against each other. Of all the questions the queen might have asked, this was the one she had feared most.
"I did not see every moment of this future," she said carefully. "Only fragments of several years ahead." She swallowed. "I have no details to share of how your children lived before they ended up in that magister's mansion."
Rhaella's fingers pressed into the arm of the chair. "But you know why she is alone."
Lyanna looked at her, and for one heartbeat she wished she was a liar. But no, she was a northerner and deceit was not her way. Rhaella needed the painful truth. "Because you are meant to die in childbed."
The words fell hard. Rhaenys drew in a quick breath. Elia closed her eyes. Rhaella did not move at all.
"I have tried to think of a way to save you," Lyanna said, hating the helplessness in her own voice. "Yet I am not a maester or midwife. I do not know how. I only know that your daughter lives, and that the cost is…" She looked away. "You."
The queen's face tightened with a deep, old weariness. Not a crone in age, but in spirit.
Rhaella put one hand to her swollen belly and bowed her head. When she spoke again, her voice trembled, but only once. "Then I must make plans before I am gone."
Elia rose at once and went to her. She knelt awkwardly because of the cane and the pain in her side, but she still went. Her hand came to rest over Rhaella's.
"We have time yet," Elia said, though she did not sound certain.
"Perhaps," Rhaella answered. "Perhaps not. My daughter will come when she wants, not when I do." Her mouth curved in something too bitter to be called a smile.
A knock sounded at the chamber doors.
All three women started, pulled out of grief by the ordinary interruption of a servant doing his duty. It was almost absurd enough to laugh at. The world ended, prophecies spilled across years, mothers learned of their own deaths, and still someone had to knock and ask permission.
The servant entered only when bidden. He kept his eyes lowered. "Your Grace," he said, "there are more noble visitors from Saltpans here to see you."
Rhaella lifted her head. Her tears were still visible, but she wiped them away with the heel of one hand before anyone outside the room could witness them. "Give us a few minutes," she said.
"Yes, Your Grace."
When the doors shut again, Rhaella rose with visible effort. Her pregnancy made every movement careful, every shift of weight something measured and endured. She crossed back to the dais with a slow, proud waddle, and when she sat upon the chair beneath the dragon wings once more, she looked every inch a queen again.
Elia returned to her place at the queen's right, Rhaenys beside her clutching Balerion. Lyanna moved to the side of the hall, not hidden, but no longer at the center. She felt oddly hollowed out. Sharing the dark future didn't feel good, but the weight of it was no longer Lyanna's alone, and for that she was grateful.
The doors opened, and an unfamiliar nobleman entered first, face drawn and grey with exhaustion. His fine cloak was salt-stained now, the dignity of his station hanging on him like something borrowed from a better day. Behind him came Lyanna's sworn protector.
For a heartbeat Lyanna forgot the queen, the hall, the dragons on the walls, all of it.
"Dacey." Protocol vanished. Lyanna crossed the room in three strides and threw her arms around her.
Dacey caught her with the ease of long practice, solid and warm and real. Lyanna held tight, face pressed against damp wool and leather. The relief that struck her was so sharp it hurt. She had not let herself believe Dacey dead, but some part of her had been bracing for it all the same.
"I missed you," Lyanna said, and one traitorous tear escaped before she could stop it. "Gods, I missed you."
Dacey's hand came up to the back of her head, steady and sure. "I noticed," she murmured. "You squeeze like a vice."
A pointed cough sounded from somewhere in front of them.
Lyanna jerked back, the heat of embarrassment flooding her cheeks so quickly it almost saved her from crying harder. She had just embraced her companion like a village girl greeting a relative, in front of the queen no less.
Dacey, maddeningly unbothered, inclined her head toward the dais. "Your Grace," she said. "I am Dacey Mormont, sworn shield to Lady Lyanna Stark." Then she jerked her chin toward Lord Cox. "And this is Lord Quincy Cox, if the smoke and misery haven't changed him."
Dacey guided her firmly back to the side of the chamber with one hand at her elbow, as if nothing had happened at all. Lord Cox stood alone below the throne and bowed low, though there was little grace left in him.
"Your Grace," he began, voice strained, "I have always served House Targaryen loyally. My town opened its gates to Lord Connington because he came bearing dragon banners and a prince's body. I thought…" He swallowed. "I thought I was receiving battered friends. Instead I delivered my people to slaughter."
Rhaella's face tightened. "Speak plainly."
Quincy did. He spoke of chains drawn across the harbor, of gates shut, of men turned back at spearpoint. Of warehouses torched. Of the sept burning. Of women and children trapped within walls while flame took the roofs over their heads.
"I should have rallied the town guard, few through they were." Lord Cox said, his voice cracking at last. "I should have died before I let such a thing happen in Saltpans. Instead I lived. I fled. I left them." He bowed his head. "I have been a coward, and I think the Seven will know it when I die."
Rhaella looked stricken. Elia put a hand over her mouth.
Dacey stepped forward before the queen could answer. "It wasn't just murder," she said. "There was something wrong in the air. Magic, hot and ugly. I've felt the sorcery of my Old Gods before. This was the opposite of that. I think Connington and his red priests were doing some kind of dark ritual."
The words had barely left her mouth when white wings flashed through the doorway.
Dijkstra came in like a beam of moonlight, circled once beneath the rafters, and landed squarely on Lyanna's shoulder.
"Beware R'hllor," he croaked.
Everyone in the room froze. The bird fluffed his feathers, red eyes bright with smug urgency.
"Beware R'hllor," he repeated, louder this time like a town crier.
Rhaenys clutched her kitten tighter. Quincy Cox crossed himself with the sign of the seven. Even Dacey's brows went up. Lyanna, strangely, felt her spine straighten.
The words were dark. The room was full of grief, prophecy, and smoke that still clung to travelers' clothes. The future ahead was likely worse than any of them yet understood.
And yet Dacey was here. Elia and Rhaenys were alive. Queen Rhaella had believed in her greensight. Even Dijkstra's insolent little weight against her shoulder felt like proof that the world had not yet fallen wholly into shadow.
Not everything was lost.
Lyanna lifted her chin and brushed her hand lightly over Dijkstra's back, grounding herself in the warmth of living feathers and the presence of those she had managed, against all reason, to gather around her.