The celebration lasted three nights.
By the fourth, the wine had thinned and the songs had grown repetitive, but the mood within Storm's End remained buoyant. The victory at sea had settled something raw in the Stormlords after Crow's Nest. Robert had answered fire with steel, and men preferred steel. It was visible. It bled in ways they understood.
Stannis preferred silence.
He stood along the outer battlements the morning Robert insisted on sailing again, the southern wind tugging at his cloak as he watched the fleet prepare for departure. The ships bore new scars now, darkened planks and fresh reinforcements hammered into hulls. Sailcloth had been replaced in patches, bright against older canvas.
Robert moved across the docks like a man fueled by purpose rather than glory. The cheering had not softened him. If anything, it had sharpened him. He spoke to captains with clipped efficiency, checked rigging himself, and carried the hammer at his back as though it were as essential as breath.
Orys remained in the courtyard above, speaking with Lord Steffon and two coastal lords about reinforcement schedules. His expression was unreadable, but Stannis knew him well enough to see the calculations turning beneath the surface. Robert's victory had strengthened morale. It had also deepened comparison.
The fleet departed under clear skies.
Stannis accompanied Robert this time.
Not because he enjoyed the sea, but because Lord Steffon had quietly suggested balance. If Orys held the land, Stannis would observe the water.
The second engagement came without warning.
They had tracked rumors of a pirate regrouping further east, near a chain of low-lying rocks known locally as Widow's Teeth. The waters there were deceptively calm in good weather and treacherous in poor. Robert had intended a swift strike before the enemy could consolidate.
Instead, they found themselves entering a narrow corridor between two outcroppings just as the tide began to turn.
The first sign was the sudden shift in current beneath the hull. The second was the whistle of arrows cutting down from high ground.
"Archers!" a lookout shouted.
Not from ships.
From the rocks.
Pirates had climbed the Teeth in advance, hauling bows and barrels of pitch upward under cover of darkness. From that elevated position, they rained death downward.
An arrow struck the man beside Stannis through the eye. The shaft punched through with a wet crack, driving bone fragments inward as the man collapsed without even a cry. Blood sprayed across the deck in a fine, warm mist.
Robert did not hesitate. "Forward!" he roared.
The fleet surged through the narrowing passage, hulls scraping dangerously close to jagged stone. Another volley fell. A sailor screamed as an arrow punched through his cheek and exited near his ear, teeth scattering across the deck before he pitched backward into the sea.
Pitch barrels followed.
They shattered against planks and exploded into flame.
The deck beneath Stannis's boots grew slick not only with seawater but with blood and melted tar. He moved with controlled efficiency, shouting orders to extinguish flame while raising his shield against the unrelenting hail from above.
Then the pirate ships emerged.
They had waited beyond the rock line, hidden from view until the Stormlander fleet committed fully to the channel. Three vessels drove forward at once, their prows reinforced for impact.
The collision was catastrophic.
Wood splintered inward, shards flying like jagged teeth. The force threw men off their feet. One was pinned outright as a broken spear drove through his abdomen, the wood protruding from his back in a grotesque parody of a banner pole. He clawed at it uselessly as blood poured down his thighs.
Robert leapt across the widening gap between hulls before the grapples had even secured. He landed amid a ring of pirates and swung without restraint. The hammer connected with the first man's helm and did not merely dent it, it collapsed the metal inward, the skull beneath giving way in a sickening crunch that sent fragments of bone and brain matter spraying across the deck. The body dropped in a twitching heap.
Another pirate lunged low with a hooked blade. Robert pivoted, the hook slicing across his thigh through mail, drawing a line of dark blood. He did not slow. The hammer reversed in his grip and crushed the attacker's jaw sideways, teeth and blood bursting outward as the man crumpled.
Stannis followed across the plank behind him. The fighting was close and merciless. There was no space for flourish, only survival. He drove his sword through a pirate's throat and felt the resistance of cartilage before it gave way. The man's blood spilled hot over his gauntlet, thick and metallic, as he yanked the blade free.
Above them, archers continued firing from the rocks.
Stormlander sailors climbed the Teeth in response, slipping on sea-slick stone as arrows thudded into flesh around them. One lost his footing and fell twenty feet onto the deck below, landing with a crack that bent his spine unnaturally backward.
Robert carved forward through the pirate line, leaving ruin in his wake. The deck beneath his boots grew treacherous with gore. He slipped once on a pool of blood but caught himself, turning the stumble into a brutal upward swing that tore open a man's ribcage. Ribs cracked apart, and something pale and glistening spilled through the gap before the body collapsed.
The second pirate ship attempted to disengage, but the tide betrayed them. Their stern caught against the hidden rocks of Widow's Teeth, hull grinding against stone with a splintering shriek. The ship tilted sharply, throwing men sideways into railings.
Robert saw the shift and pressed the advantage. "Drive them!" he shouted.
Stormlanders surged, forcing pirates toward the compromised edge. Several fell screaming into the churning water below, where jagged rock met them with merciless precision. One struck headfirst, the impact snapping his neck with a sound that carried even above the clash of steel.
The third pirate vessel managed to break free, but not before a Stormlander arrow caught its captain in the throat. He staggered backward, hands clawing at the shaft as blood bubbled through his fingers, then toppled overboard without ceremony.
When the fighting finally ebbed, the channel had become a graveyard.
Pirate ships lay shattered against the Teeth, hulls broken open like carcasses picked apart by scavengers. Bodies floated between the rocks, some face-down, some staring sightlessly at the sky. The water ran red where currents pooled.
Robert stood amid the carnage, blood running down his leg from the earlier wound. His hammer dripped steadily, the iron head dark and slick.
Stannis approached him carefully. "You're bleeding," he said.
Robert glanced down as though surprised to find it true. "It's nothing."
It was not nothing.
The cut along his thigh was deeper than he admitted, the mail torn and flesh beneath laid open enough to show muscle through blood. He had not felt it in the heat of battle. Now the pain began to register in sharp pulses.
They returned to Storm's End slower than they had departed.
By the time they docked, Robert's wound had stiffened his movement, and word of the brutality at Widow's Teeth had traveled ahead of them. Men spoke of crushed skulls and bodies dashed upon rock. They spoke of a channel turned red.
They also spoke of Robert fighting through blood without retreat.
The courtyard reception was quieter this time, more awed than jubilant.
Orys met them at the base of the steps. His gaze dropped briefly to the bandage around Robert's thigh before lifting again.
"You pushed too far," he said quietly, not as rebuke but as fact.
Robert managed a faint grin despite the pallor creeping into his face. "They won't use Widow's Teeth again."
No, Orys thought, they would not.
Maesters were summoned, and Robert was carried inward against his protests. The cut would not cripple him, but it would confine him to chamber and bed for weeks while the flesh knit properly.
That night, Storm's End was restless.
Victory had come again.
But this time it had cost something visible.
For the first time since the conflict began, the Stormlands would fight without Robert at its prow.