Stannis's completely bloodshot, feverish eyes were locked dead onto Melisandre.
His question proved that the absolute final psychological defense holding his sanity together was actively collapsing.
The sheer, apocalyptic temptation of the Iron Throne was simply too much!
This was especially true for a man as rigidly obsessed with duty and right as Stannis. In his absolute worldview, his older brother was dead; therefore, as the next eldest Baratheon, the undeniable right to rule the Seven Kingdoms fell directly to him.
He was the single, undisputed, legitimate heir!
Melisandre looked at his face—a face currently being violently tortured by absolute ambition—and a smile of profound, terrifying devotion spread across her lips.
"One hundred percent certainty," she stated, her voice radiating an absolute, ironclad conviction.
"If you sacrifice Princess Shireen, her royal blood will provide the ultimate, flawless fuel."
"Once that power is injected into those stone vessels, the true dragons that have slumbered for millennia will absolutely roar for you!"
She threw her arms wide open, exactly as if she were physically embracing an infinitely glorious, apocalyptic future.
"Just imagine it!"
"You will be mounted on the back of a colossal beast, looking down upon the entirety of Westeros from the heavens!"
"The impenetrable walls of King's Landing will be permanently reduced to dust before you! The lions of House Lannister will burn and scream under your dragonfire!"
"You will no longer be the pathetic Lord of Dragonstone commanding a miserable 5,000 men and mocked by the entire world. You will be the one and only True Dragon King of the Seven Kingdoms!"
True Dragon King!
Stannis's breathing instantly turned impossibly heavy and ragged.
Thick veins violently bulged against his rigid face, twisting his features into a mask of sheer, excruciating internal warfare.
He could practically see the exact image she painted!
He was riding a literal, burning dragon, violently crushing every single one of his enemies straight into the dirt!
He was going to completely achieve the absolute supremacy that even Robert had failed to reach!
He would officially become the absolute greatest King in the history of House Baratheon, and the entire history of Westeros!
But...
An entirely different face violently forced its way into his frantic mind.
Shireen.
His poor, fragile little daughter.
The little girl whose face had been half-consumed by dead, grey stone from greyscale.
The little girl who kept her head bowed in shame in front of the entire world, yet only ever showed her absolute brightest, most innocent smile to him—her father.
He was actually going to tie her to a sacrificial pyre with his own two hands?
He was going to stand there and watch her be brutally, agonizingly tortured to death by dark magic?
And then use her incinerated flesh and blood to buy his so-called throne and glory?
No!
A voice violently roared from the absolute deepest pit of his soul.
That is my daughter!
She is my little girl!
She still has so much life left to live.
"No..." Stannis violently stumbled a step backward, shaking his head aggressively as if physically trying to throw the psychotic thoughts out of his skull.
"No! I cannot do this!"
"And exactly why not?" Melisandre's expression instantly turned lethally cold.
"For the sake of one single, defective girl, you are genuinely willing to throw away the entire kingdom?"
"How many years does she even have left?"
"A true King absolutely cannot be chained down by pathetic, useless sentiment!"
"Shut your mouth!"
Stannis let out an apocalyptic roar!
He aggressively lunged forward, locking his hands violently around Melisandre's throat and slamming her brutally against the freezing stone wall!
"I will say this exactly one more time!"
Stannis glared dead into her face, his eyes violently ruptured with bloodshot vessels.
"Never! Do not ever target Shireen again!"
"Because if you do, I don't give a single flying fuck if you are the High Priestess of your bullshit Lord of Light—I will personally burn you to ash with my own two hands!"
Melisandre's face rapidly flushed a deep, suffocating red as her airway was completely crushed.
Yet, there wasn't a single shred of fear on her face.
Those dead, crimson eyes held absolutely nothing but profound, heavy disappointment.
Seeing that Melisandre refused to back down even as he practically strangled the life out of her, Stannis finally released his iron grip.
He looked like every single ounce of life force had just been violently siphoned from his body. He stumbled backward, heavily leaning against the Painted Table just to stay on his feet.
"Get out."
He pointed a shaking finger directly at the heavy oak doors, his voice absolutely saturated with sheer exhaustion and lethal finality.
"Get the fuck off my island."
Melisandre massaged her bruised throat, coughing violently.
She looked at the man who had just personally, actively thrown away his one and only absolute shot at victory, and the pity in her eyes permanently solidified into total, freezing apathy.
"You will profoundly regret this, Stannis."
She meticulously smoothed out her heavy crimson robes, her face effortlessly snapping right back into its unreadable, enigmatic mask.
"You have officially rejected the absolute grace of the Lord of Light, and you have actively destroyed your one and only path to the throne."
"Your pathetic excuse for 'fatherly love' will be completely, instantly vaporized the second you face your brother and Joffrey."
"Your younger brother, Renly, already secured the absolute military backing of House Tyrell from the very start. He commands an endless sea of bannermen, and right now, he sits on a massive, unified army of one hundred thousand men."
"Joffrey currently sits on the Iron Throne. All it takes is one single word from his mouth, and the entire realm will draw their swords against you."
"You have a miserable 5,000 men. Exactly how do you plan to survive?"
"Stannis Baratheon, you and your pathetic, laughable sense of moral stubbornness are going to be permanently ground into dust under the wheels of history!"
With that final, absolute verdict, Melisandre didn't waste another glance on him. She spun around and marched straight out the heavy doors.
She didn't even bother to pack a single piece of luggage.
An attending squire brought her a pitch-black horse.
Melisandre smoothly mounted the beast and spurred it directly toward the docks at a dead sprint, not looking back once.
She was riding straight for King's Landing.
She was going to find the absolute, true man chosen by the Lord of Light—the man who commanded a literal dragon and had emerged directly from the freezing North!
Back inside the chamber.
Stannis was slumped completely on the stone floor, his soul entirely hollowed out.
He genuinely didn't know if he had just made the absolute right or absolute wrong choice.
The only thing he knew for certain was that he had held the line. He had fiercely protected his absolute final moral boundary as a father.
---
At that exact same moment.
Storm's End.
Inside the massive, brilliantly illuminated royal pavilion.
Renly Baratheon—the self-proclaimed "Storm King"—was completely decked out in highly extravagant, gleaming gold armor, practically radiating sheer, arrogant triumph.
Standing right in front of him was his lover, the "Knight of Flowers" Loras Tyrell, and his most fiercely devoted personal guard, Brienne "The Beauty" of Tarth.
"Loras, tell me. Do you think my rigidly brain-dead older brother is currently hiding on Dragonstone, aggressively staring at a pile of onions in sheer despair?"
Renly held a heavy goblet of wine, his face plastered with naked, absolute mockery.
He had just received the official intelligence reports—the sheer size of his assembled army had officially shattered the one-hundred-thousand mark!
And on top of his own massive forces, he was actively receiving highly covert financial backing from Casterly Rock, along with several other incredibly powerful factions secretly funneling him support.
These lords were absolutely terrified of openly opposing Lynn, so they heavily invested their resources into Renly from the shadows instead.
Furthermore, Renly's natural, overwhelming charisma made him effortlessly universally liked; he could literally make friends with a brick wall.
Joffrey's psychotic madness was already a heavily established, terrifying fact across the realm, and Stannis was an utterly joyless, unbending relic. Therefore, practically everyone actively wanted Renly to take the crown.
The absolute majority of the nobility in the South had officially thrown their entire weight behind him.
As far as Renly was concerned, both Stannis and that rabid little boy in King's Landing were nothing more than pathetic, minor speedbumps.
A highly confident, arrogant smile played on Loras's handsome face.
"My King, he is not even worth a fraction of your attention."
"Stannis is exactly like a rock at the bottom of a latrine—foul-smelling, impossibly hard, and absolutely nobody wants to go near him."
"Haha! Perfectly said!"
Renly threw his head back and laughed loudly. He yanked Loras in close and planted a highly affectionate kiss right on his cheek.
Standing quietly off to the side, Brienne watched the intimate exchange and silently lowered her gaze to the floor.
A deeply suppressed, agonizing flicker of absolute heartbreak passed over her harsh, un-beautiful features.
Right at that exact second.
"My Lord, look out!"
Brienne violently snapped her head up. She ripped her heavy longsword from its scabbard and aggressively threw her massive body directly in front of Renly.
As an absolute elite warrior, her instincts had just picked up a highly lethal, unprecedented threat!
"What is it, Brienne?"
Renly casually waved a hand, completely unbothered.
"Relax. You're far too tense."
The absolute second the words left his mouth.
Deep in the darkest corner of the massive pavilion, a dense patch of shadow suddenly began to violently warp and writhe!
A towering silhouette literally phased straight out of the physical darkness!
The figure was massive, dressed in a highly utilitarian, unadorned grey tunic.
And his face...
"Stannis?!"
Both Renly and Loras let out identical, completely paralyzed gasps of absolute disbelief.
The face staring dead back at them was the exact, undeniable visage of Stannis Baratheon!
What the actual fuck was he doing here?!
Storm's End was heavily fortified and locked down! How the hell did he bypass the entire army without making a single sound?!
And why the hell did he look like a literal, shifting shadow?!
Brienne let out a bloodcurdling, furious roar and aggressively charged straight at the shadowy figure, her sword raised high!
But she was a fraction of a second too late.
The "Stannis" shadow didn't show a single ounce of emotion on its face.
It simply raised a single hand.
Shhhhk.
A heavy, sickening sound of flesh tearing.
A lethal dagger, entirely forged from pure, solid darkness, had just been violently driven straight through Renly Baratheon's back, cleanly piercing his heart!
The arrogant smile on Renly's face instantly, permanently froze.
He slowly looked down, his eyes wide in absolute, horrified shock, staring dead at the pitch-black point of the blade violently protruding directly from his chest.
Dark, heavy blood immediately began rapidly sliding down the lethal blade, violently splattering across his pristine, gleaming gold armor.
"Uh..."
Renly opened his mouth, desperately trying to force words out, but all that escaped was a heavy, wet spray of dark blood.
The vibrant, arrogant light in his eyes rapidly, permanently extinguished.
The shadow assassin, having flawlessly executed its absolute command, instantly dissolved into a wisp of dark smoke and completely vanished into the air.
Exactly as if it had never been there in the first place.
"NO—!"
"Renly... "
"My Renly! AAAAAAAGH—!!"
Loras let out an ungodly, completely soul-shredding shriek of absolute agony. He violently threw himself forward, desperately catching Renly as his body heavily collapsed toward the ground.
Brienne stood completely, utterly paralyzed.
She had just stood there and actively watched the Lord she had sworn her absolute life to—the single man she loved more than anything in the world—be brutally butchered right in front of her eyes!
And she had been completely, utterly powerless to stop it!
"Guards! Assassins!!"
Loras's hysterical, bloodcurdling screams violently alerted the heavy security detail posted outside.
Dozens of heavily armored guards violently smashed into the pavilion within seconds.
And they instantly walked into a scene that completely shattered their reality.
Renly Baratheon was completely covered in dark blood, heavily collapsed on the floor, seemingly dead.
And Brienne of Tarth, the King's highly trusted personal guard, was standing dead still right next to the King's corpse, holding a heavy longsword violently dripping with fresh blood!
When Brienne had aggressively charged the shadow, the arterial spray from Renly's heart had violently splattered directly across her drawn blade!
The entire scene looked exactly like she had just personally, brutally assassinated her own King!
A guard captain raised a violently trembling finger, pointing it directly at Brienne.
His eyes were completely blown out, saturated with sheer shock and apocalyptic rage.
"It was her!"
"She murdered the King!"
"Seize the traitor!"