Loras stood completely still in the stable, the only sound left being the heavy howling of the night wind.
He stared into the absolute darkness where Brienne had vanished, looking exactly like a man who had just had every single bone violently ripped from his body.
Renly was dead.
The man he loved more than absolutely anything in the world had just died right in his arms.
And he couldn't even avenge him. He was completely, utterly powerless, forced to actively help the only living witness escape.
An impossible amount of time passed before Loras finally forced his leaden legs to move, slowly and mechanically trudging back toward the pavilion that no longer had a King.
The absolute second he pushed the heavy flaps aside.
Shhhnk!
Over a dozen highly polished steel longswords were instantaneously leveled directly at him.
The guard captain stood at the very front, his face violently warped by rage, his eyes locked dead onto Loras.
"Lord Loras. You've returned."
Loras didn't say a word. He just stared back at them with dead, heavily bloodshot eyes.
"Where is the traitor?" the captain demanded.
"Gone." Loras stated the absolute, flat truth.
"Gone?!"
The guard captain aggressively lunged forward, pressing the razor-sharp tip of his sword directly against Loras's throat.
"You let her escape?!"
"I did."
"You actually dared to release Lord Renly's assassin?!"
"You were working with her!"
"Loras Tyrell! You are a fucking traitor too!"
A chaotic, violent chorus of roaring accusations completely flooded the pavilion.
Loras just smiled.
It was a smile saturated in bottomless despair and absolute, hollow self-mockery.
He looked at the mob of brain-dead grunts completely blinded by their own psychotic rage.
Explain?
Explain to them about a literal monster crawling out of the shadows?
They absolutely wouldn't believe a single syllable.
They only believed what they could physically see.
And they only wanted a convenient conclusion.
"Do it."
Loras slowly closed his eyes.
Renly was dead. What the hell was the point of living anymore?
Going down to join him sounded like a perfectly fine option.
"Seize him!"
At the captain's roaring command, several heavily armored guards aggressively charged forward, violently tackling Loras and pinning him face-down against the hard floor.
"You cannot execute him!"
Right at that exact second, an elite knight bearing the golden rose sigil of House Tyrell violently shoved his way into the pavilion, throwing his body directly between the swords and Loras.
"He is the son of Lord Mace Tyrell! He is the undisputed heir to Highgarden!"
"If you murder him, you declare absolute war on the entirety of the Reach!"
The guard captain completely froze.
He looked down at Loras, who wasn't offering a single ounce of resistance, and then at the fiercely loyal Tyrell knight. A heavy, highly complicated struggle flashed across his eyes.
He knew exactly what the apocalyptic fallout of executing Loras would be.
But Renly's murder absolutely had to be answered with blood!
"Throw him in the dungeons!"
The captain finally made a highly calculated concession.
"We will hold him until a full investigation is complete, and then he will face a public execution!"
"I am going to make absolutely certain the entire world sees exactly what happens when you betray Lord Renly!"
...
The news sprouted wings and flew like a swarm of ravenous crows, violently sweeping through the entirety of Storm's End before rapidly exploding outward across the realm.
Dragonstone.
Davos gripped a small, tightly rolled piece of parchment he had just ripped from a raven's leg, practically sprinting into Stannis's heavy study.
"Your Grace! Your Grace!"
"Urgent intelligence from Storm's End!"
Stannis was standing rigidly in front of the massive Painted Table. He didn't even bother to turn around; he simply kept his fingers meticulously tracing the carved wooden marker of Storm's End.
"Renly is dead?"
Davos completely froze, visibly entirely caught off guard.
Stannis slowly turned around. He shot Davos a brief look before lowering his gaze to stare at his own hands.
He remembered the utterly sickening, bizarre ritual. He remembered that shadow crawling straight out of Selyse's body.
A massive wave of pure physical disgust violently surged in his gut, but it was almost instantaneously completely overwritten by a freezing, intoxicating thrill of absolute victory.
Davos looked at him, his eyes heavy with highly complicated, deep horror.
"Your Grace... that... that was your own flesh and blood! Your brother!"
"Brother?" Stannis let out a lethally cold, mocking scoff.
"A filthy traitor who actively attempted to usurp my rightful throne deserves to be called my brother?"
"He is dead. And it is absolute, undeniable justice."
Davos stared at Stannis's dead, freezing face, and he felt every single drop of blood in his veins turn to solid ice.
Was the man standing in front of him truly the same Lord Stannis he had known? The man who, while rigidly stubborn, possessed an absolute, unbreakable sense of true justice?
How the hell had he mutated into something so completely cold-blooded and utterly terrifying?
"What is the current status of Renly's army?"
Stannis completely ignored Davos's paralyzed shock, snapping his sharp gaze right back down to the map.
"They are completely leaderless. The encampment has entirely devolved into absolute chaos," Davos swallowed hard, forcing the words out.
"Excellent."
Stannis's eyes instantaneously flared with a brilliant, aggressive light.
"Issue my absolute command!"
"Mobilize the entire garrison immediately! We set sail for Storm's End at once!"
"I am going to personally inform those leaderless, masterless dogs exactly who their true King is!"
"They will bend the knee and swear absolute fealty to me, or they will fucking die!"
His voice was a sledgehammer of absolute, irrefutable authority and crushing oppression.
Davos knew right then and there: an infinitely more massive, apocalyptic storm was about to violently crash down on Westeros.
"Where is the red woman?"
Stannis suddenly demanded.
Davos's heart violently skipped a beat.
"Melisandre... she took a ship and departed at first light."
"Where?"
"King's Landing."
"Good. Excellent."
"I am going to personally show that venomous witch that I do not need a goddamn dragon to take the Seven Kingdoms!"
"Renly died directly by her hand. I absolutely will not allow the realm to discover that I utilized dark magic to assassinate him."
"Track her down. And make absolutely certain she is permanently silenced!"
Stannis felt a massive, highly toxic surge of regret for letting the woman walk off his island alive.
Davos looked at the absolutely ruthless, unrecognizable man Stannis had become, and the profound tragedy weighing on his heart grew infinitely heavier. He hesitated, desperately wanting to say something, but ultimately swallowed the words.
He let out a heavy, exhausted sigh, turned around, and walked out of the chamber.
...
King's Landing.
The Tower of the Hand.
Lynn had just received the intelligence.
Varys, the bald eunuch, had personally delivered the news of Renly's assassination practically the absolute second it happened.
"Renly is dead?"
Lynn glanced at the parchment in his hand, his face showing absolutely zero surprise.
Everything was playing out exactly according to his meticulously calculated script.
Stannis, that deeply unhinged, rigid bastard, had actually taken the ultimate shortcut and used the shadow assassin to butcher his own little brother.
Tsk. Absolutely ruthless.
However, this was an incredibly favorable development for Lynn.
A massive, highly powerful Renly was a minor inconvenience.
A slightly beefier Stannis who had just absorbed Renly's army was also a minor inconvenience.
But a Stannis currently in the highly unstable, chaotic process of absorbing an army that didn't fully trust him? That was a highly exploitable, absolute golden opportunity.
Lynn actively wanted the entirety of Westeros to completely devolve into apocalyptic chaos. It was the only way he could manufacture the absolute perfect justification to violently enter the war himself.
"My Lord, the nobility in the Stormlands are currently entirely consumed by panic," Varys's highly calibrated voice drifted from beside him.
"A faction of them are fully prepared to bend the knee to Stannis, while the rest are holding their ground, actively watching to see which way the wind blows."
"Watching?" Lynn let out a dark chuckle.
"Watching exactly who?"
"You, My Lord."
A highly loaded, deeply meaningful smile spread across Varys's face.
"You are, undeniably, the single most powerful entity currently breathing in Westeros."
Lynn offered absolutely no verbal confirmation or denial.
He knew exactly what those pathetic, spineless lords were thinking.
These Southern nobles weren't like the fiercely loyal, straightforward Lords of the North. Their brains were meticulously structured honeycombs of pure, highly calculating self-interest. Even if he violently forced them to kneel, they would constantly be plotting treason behind his back.
Take House Tyrell, for example. Securing their absolute backing was theoretically a done deal, yet Mace Tyrell had actively continued heavily funding the already-allied Renly, and not even the Queen of Thorns could fully rein in her aggressively idiotic son.
And the rest of the Southern nobility were infinitely worse.
Lynn was currently heavily debating whether he even wanted to accept their so-called "surrender."
He had never actually unleashed his absolute, apocalyptic fury on them, and in their deeply ingrained, power-worshipping brains, they clearly hadn't fully grasped exactly how terrifying he truly was.
Thinking about this, Lynn decided it was time to radically adjust his political strategy. He was going to give them a highly intensive, exceedingly bloody demonstration of absolute reality.
"There is one additional variable," Varys continued.
"Renly's personal guard, Brienne of Tarth, was officially framed as the assassin. She managed to escape, actively aided by Loras Tyrell."
"The guards at Storm's End have currently arrested Loras. They are officially charging him as a co-conspirator and are actively preparing to execute him."
"Oh?" Lynn's eyebrows slowly rose.
Now that was a highly entertaining, entirely unexpected variable.
Not Brienne, but Loras.
If Loras was actually executed, House Tyrell and the entirety of Highgarden would absolutely go to apocalyptic, blood-soaked war against the Stormlands!
A pack of rabid dogs violently tearing each other's throats out.
He absolutely loved watching that kind of theater.
"Ignore them completely," Lynn casually waved a hand.
"Let them slaughter each other."
"As you command, My Lord." Varys offered a deep bow and smoothly exited the room.
Right at that exact second.
A Gold Cloak guard stepped through the heavy doors.
"My Lord."
"There is a woman here requesting an audience. She explicitly claims to be a High Priestess of the Lord of Light."
The highly toxic, highly amused smirk on Lynn's face widened significantly.
She was here.
She had moved incredibly fast.
It looked like the massive, highly deceptive hook he had planted during that "divine vision" had been swallowed absolutely whole.
"Bring her in."
"Yes, My Lord."
Moments later.
A woman with an incredibly striking, flawless figure, draped entirely in flowing crimson robes, slowly glided into the chamber.
Her hair was a vibrant, burning red, heavily contrasting with her completely snow-white skin.
Her crimson eyes felt like they could effortlessly, violently strip away every single deeply buried secret in a man's soul.
It was Melisandre.
The absolute second she crossed the threshold, her gaze aggressively locked dead onto Lynn sitting at the head of the room.
Her eyes were heavily saturated with intense scrutiny, deep curiosity, and a terrifying, almost psychotic level of fanatic devotion.
She walked directly to the center of the chamber. She didn't bow. She didn't speak a single word.
She just stared at Lynn with those bottomless red eyes, not blinking once.
"So, you are Melisandre?" Lynn fired the first shot.
"I am."
Melisandre's voice carried a highly unique, deeply hypnotic cadence, almost exactly like a song.
"And you are Lynn?"
"I am."
Melisandre slowly, deliberately closed the distance, stopping mere inches from Lynn. She leaned in, dropping her lips right next to his ear.
A highly exotic, intoxicating scent of heavy spices violently mixed with burning fire completely flooded Lynn's senses.
"The flames have spoken directly to me."
"You... are the Prince That Was Promised."