While Florissax was unwillingly occupied by the prince’s intrusion, Steffon rode within the carriage alongside Hadwyn and his wife, Lady Ranni Caria, just as he had since their departure from Highgarden.
Hadwyn sat across from him, posture relaxed, one arm resting lazily against the side as he looked out through the window with mild interest. Steffon had long since grown accustomed to his presence, many conversations between them making the Stormlander at ease around the Elden Lord. Hadwyn Caria, for all his power, for all the impossible feats Steffon had already witnessed or heard described, felt like a true Baratheon at his core, his character not out of place when compared to Steffon’s own relatives.
Ranni Caria was harder to be accustomed to, as the woman was simply too alien for a simple man like him to fully understand.
The body she inhabited—a doll she seemed to have crafted herself—held itself with an eerie precision, every motion measured. The faint outline of her second, spectral visage lingered just next to her face, always visible regardless of the angle. In her hands rested a book—one of Westerosi make, if Steffon recognized it correctly—her eyes passing over the pages at a steady pace. Now and then, she would glance toward Hadwyn and Steffon, her expression carrying a familiar blend of quiet amusement and faint exasperation that Steffon would often see on Cassana’s face.
Somehow, the last one, more than anything else, slightly grounded the strange, distant figure into something he could almost comprehend.
As the carriage rolled deeper into the Stormlands, the terrain outside shifting into the harsher, wind-worn landscapes of his homeland, Steffon shifted slightly in his seat. His posture remained straight, as befitted his station—but there was tension there, subtle yet persistent, like a knot that refused to loosen.
It had been there since they left Summerhall.
The ride should have been pleasant. Familiar lands, good company—by all reasonable measures, there was nothing to trouble him.
And yet there was always that unwelcome and constant possibility that Prince Rhaegar might decide to visit at any moment, guided by one of his whimsical bouts of fancy.
Steffon exhaled slowly through his nose, his gaze drifting briefly toward the carriage door, as though expecting it to open then and there.
It did not, fortunately.
While Hadwyn had handled the prince’s relentless curiosity with welcome patience, it did not make the situation any less awkward. Rhaegar’s fascination was not the fleeting kind. It was the sort that rooted itself deeply, that pushed and pushed until something gave.
On his own, Steffon would not have minded the boy’s company overmuch.
Rhaegar was… difficult in some regards, yes. Intense in a way that could wear a man thin, conversations with him rarely simple, often turning into winding paths that left one.
But he was also a brilliant youth, sharp-minded and thoughtful beyond his years. There was something there—something more than promising, the kind of spark that, if tempered correctly, could forge a truly great ruler.
It was enough, to excuse some of his more trying tendencies, especially since he was still very young. Many great men had been strange in their youth—restless, searching, ill-fitted to the world around them until time and experience shaped them into something truly remarkable.
Then again, the same had once been said of Aerys.
“…While I have said it before, I would like to once again apologize for Prince Rhaegar’s behaviour.” Steffon said at last, breaking the silence that had settled within the carriage. His tone was measured, but there was a stiffness beneath it. “The boy is… wilful, particularly when it comes to his… eccentricities. And he has yet to learn where boundaries lie.”
Across from him, Hadwyn shifted slightly, turning away from the window through which he had been idly observing the passing landscape. The foreign lord’s posture was relaxed, one arm resting against the side of the carriage.
Ranni, by contrast, did not move at all. She remained seated beside him, utterly still. Her pale eyes moved across her book with mechanical precision, never once lifting or acknowledging the conversation unfolding mere inches away.
He had come to understand that this, apparently, was normal.
Hadwyn let out a short, amused snort at the apology.
“That’s an understatement,” he said, the words light, corners of his mouth lifting slightly as he leaned back into his seat. “Five minutes after I met him, I was already drafted into his grand design. Apparently, he and I are twin souls—both burdened with some glorious, world-saving purpose.”
Steffon flinched despite himself, assaulted by a bout of a second-hand embarrassment.
“…Yes,” he admitted after a moment, slower this time, his voice weighed down by a quiet resignation. “That does sound like something Prince Rhaegar would say.”
He exhaled through his nose, gaze lowering briefly before returning to Hadwyn.
Rhaegar’s tendencies were… difficult to justify. They painted the boy in a strange light against foreign guests the Seven Kingdoms could never afford to antagonize. And yet…
It was hard to entirely blame the boy for reacting so intensely, given that he had spoken with precisely the sort of figure that could be considered a crystallization of all his fancies, a man who claims to be a divine champion—one whose strength makes that claim difficult to dismiss.
“I did attempt to dissuade him,” Steffon continued, his tone turning slightly defensive. “Though, unfortunately, my position does not grant me the authority to command him in such matters.”
A faint grimace touched his lips.
“Advising a prince is one thing,” he went on. “Rebuking him directly, particularly over matters that do not strictly concern me, is… another entirely.”
Steffon’s gaze drifted, unfocused for a moment, before sharpening again.
“While I am certain I could explain the situation to Aerys—” he added, then amended with quiet precision, “—the King, that is… I would very much prefer not to. The King is in a… delicate mood at present, something I imagine you have already gathered from his letter.”
At that, Hadwyn laughed. It was not a restrained chuckle nor a polite, courtly exhale—it was an open and genuine laughter, warm and careless.
“Ah, apologies,” Hadwyn said after a moment, the grin still lingering on his face. He lifted a hand in a loose, dismissive gesture. “It’s not that your situation is amusing. It’s just that… I can’t say I understand the notion.”
He leaned back slightly as he spoke, posture relaxed as ever, one arm draped lazily while the other moved faintly with his words.
“I mean,” he continued. “Marika ruled the Lands Between for millennia, and I don’t think anyone ever concerned themselves with her reaction when challenging or insulting her children.”
Steffon blinked, for a moment certain he had misheard.
“…How could that be?” he asked at last, the question leaving him before he could stop it. There was no mockery in his tone, only genuine confusion. “Surely… they were still her heirs and blood. Was there no reverence? No fear of reprisal?”
The very idea unsettled him.
In Westeros, such a thing was unthinkable. A prince was not just a man- he was an extension of the king’s will, a living symbol of the crown’s authority. To insult him was to invite not only his wrath, but the king’s, and through him, the full weight of the realm. Power did not exist in isolation- it was layered and inherited, reinforced by expectation and tradition.
He understood, at least in part, that the Lands Between operated differently. He had gathered as much from their conversations. Strength there seemed to stand above birth, authority earned rather than simply inherited.
But even in such a world, he would have expected some measure of deference. If not out of respect for the children themselves, then for the one who ruled them.
To disregard that so casually…
His expression must have betrayed his thoughts, because Hadwyn laughed again.
“Ah,” the Elden Lord said cheerfully. “then I believe you misunderstood me.”
His tone then shifted—not losing its lightness, but settling into something with more weight.
“It’s not that people weren’t afraid of Marika.” Hadwyn continued, his gaze settling fully on Steffon now. “They were terrified, in fact. Fanatically devoted and just as intensely afraid.”
For a brief moment, something flickered behind his eyes, something older and heavier. His gaze drifted to something long past and deeply unpleasant.
“For good reason,” he added, quieter now. “Considering the sheer amount of death and suffering that deluded madwoman caused in her attempts to ‘fix’ the world.”
The words landed harder than Steffon expected.
He felt something tighten in his chest—not quite fear, but something uncomfortably close. And yet, he found himself compelled to ask, for Hadwyn’s words did not answer the question.
“…Then?” Steffon prompted after a short pause, unable to leave the contradiction unresolved.
Hadwyn’s expression shifted again. The weight vanished, just like that, replaced by something lighter—something almost fond.
“I simply mean,” he said casually, “that anyone who challenged or insulted one of her children didn’t worry about Marika’s reaction because they didn’t need to. They worried about the child in front of them.”
A faint smile graced his lips.
“They weren’t people one could afford to betitle safely, fragile children protected by a meagre title.” Hadwyn continued, his tone taking on a note of nostalgia. “Each of them was a force, a singular being capable of destruction on a scale that made their mother’s response… redundant.”
Steffon said nothing. He could not, for the image forming in his mind was… deeply unsettling.
“To challenge them,” Hadwyn finished, a grin now breaking fully across his face, “was to be either immensely powerful or immensely stupid.”
A quiet beat passed, then—
“And thou art both, my dear consort.” Ranni’s voice slipped into the conversation without warning, the first time she had spoken since they had left Summerhall.
She did not look up from her book, her pale eyes remaining fixed upon the page, one slender finger tracing a line of text with quiet precision.
Hadwyn huffed softly, the sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.
“Yeah, well.” He said, giving a small and easy shrug, entirely unbothered. “That was never really in question.”
There was no offense in his voice, only easy acknowledgement.
Steffon looked between the two of them, his gaze drifting from Hadwyn’s loose posture to Ranni’s unreadable stillness, unsure whether to feel dread or amusement. There was something profoundly unsettling about the way they spoke of such power and destruction, and yet the weight was dulled by the strange, domestic ease these two beings displayed.
“…Well,” He said at last, settling on what felt like the safest possible response. “it must have been a grand affair when the war finally began. To fight for Lady Ranni in a war of succession against other contenders… and to secure for her something as… profound as divinity, must have been an unforgettable experience.”
Though the pair in front of him didn’t speak much of it, they told him of the Shattering, of a war between Marika’s children, each vying for supremacy.
His mind reached for comparison, easily grasping something familiar.
“The only comparable conflict in Westerosi history would be the Dance of the Dragons,” he continued, more confidently now. “And even that—” He hesitated, recalling what he had witnessed at the tourney. “—even that was likely not fought on such a scale.”
Hadwyn gave him an odd look.
“I… didn’t really fight in that war.” Hadwyn said after a moment, a faint frown appearing on his face.
There was something almost petulant in his tone, as though he were admitting to missing out on something extraordinary that he would have genuinely wanted to be a part of.
Steffon blinked.
“…I see.” he said carefully. “And why was that?”
Hadwyn shrugged, and then—
“Because I was dead at the time.” he said casually.
Steffon stared at him in silence, not entirely sure how to react to such a statement.
There were many things he had learned about the Inbetweeners, many things that stretched the limits of reason, but this felt like something else entirely.
“…Eee… what?” he managed at last, the sound slipping out before he could shape it into anything more dignified.
He knew the Inbetweeners wielded strange powers, but… raising the dead?
Hadwyn waved a hand lightly, seemingly acknowledging that an explanation was, perhaps, required.
“As you know,” he began, his tone easing into something more explanatory, “I was part of Lord Godfrey’s host, with Lord Godfrey himself having been the First Elden Lord.”
That much, at least, Steffon did know. Hadwyn spoke of the man often enough, always with deep respect. It was clear that that Godfrey had been a figure of immense importance to him.
Hadwyn continued.
“So,” he said, settling slightly deeper into his seat, “there was this war against the Fire Giants. Big, nasty things—last real threat to Marika’s rule. All of us fought in in, led by Lord Godfrey.”
A faint curl of disdain touched his lips.
“And after we won…” he added, voice flattening slightly, “It turned out that a bunch of free-spirited warriors who spent most of their lives fighting weren’t exactly suited for the ‘new peaceful era’ Marika wanted to build.”
His mouth twitched slightly.
“So she took our grace—” He made a small, vague gesture with his hand. “—which was a divine favour she used to grant her warriors. “And then she banished us, sending us on the Long March. An endless campaign with no return or rest, commanding us to keep fighting until we all died.”
Hadwyn nodded once.
“Naturally, we succeeded in our mission.” Hadwyn said. “All of us died eventually, Lord Godfrey included, with our bodies scattered across the foreign lands.”
Steffon opened his mouth, then closed, then opened it again.
Nothing came.
“As I later learned, the whole thing had been planned by Marika and Lord Godfrey beforehand, as part of her scheme.” Hadwyn continued, making the whole thing even less comprehensible. “I won’t bore you with the details, but eventually she set the Shattering in motion, making her children fight among each other for the supremacy. And when none of them managed to win after thousands of years of fighting, she called us back as her backup plan.”
There was a small pause as Hadwyn considered his words.
“Well—‘called’ is a little misleading, perhaps.” He said cheerfully. “It was more that she had used her divine power to resurrect countless Tarnished—members of Lord’s Godfrey’s host, as well as their descendants—giving us back our Grace and telling us to have fun and kill all her children.”
There was another pause. Then, as if remembering an afterthought—
“Oh,” Hadwyn said. “And whichever of us succeeded would get to marry her.”
Silence fell over the carriage. Steffon sat very still, his mind utterly overwhelmed and struggling to properly grasp what madness he had just heard.
He tried to make sense of it, he truly did.
A king sending men to die? That was no novelty. Every war in Westeros had been built upon such decisions. A ruler sacrificing armies for a greater cause? That, too, was known. It was tale grimly familiar to all who had learned Westeros’ history.
But this? This was something else entirely.
“…That is…” Steffon began, his voice faltering almost immediately.
He stopped, as he realized he had no idea what to say. What was it? Madness? Blasphemy? Something else entirely?
“…I do not even know what to call that.” he admitted at last, the words quiet.
Across from him, Hadwyn tilted his head slightly, as though genuinely considering the question.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “I think I’d call it a hunt.”
Steffon blinked.
“A… hunt?” he repeated, his voice hollow.
Hadwyn nodded, apparently satisfied with the term.
“Yeah. It doesn’t really qualify as a war, does it?” he continued, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “We’d simply go from place to place, stronghold to stronghold, and cut through whatever followers the demigods had gathered. We would break their defences, kill anything that stood in the way and then, at the end, kill the demigod. So yeah, a hunt.”
Steffon stared at him.
“What in the Seven Hells…” he muttered under his breath.
His hand rose slowly, dragging down his face as a very unpleasant thought appeared in his mind, not letting go despite his efforts.
“So you were…” he began again, slower now, forcing each word into place with effort. “An invading army, then? Cast out… only to return and reclaim what you considered to be once yours?”
Comparison coiled in his mind, Steffon unable to stop it.
“Hadwyn…” he said, quieter now, his voice faint. “Are you…are you and your fellow Tarnished Blackfyres of the Lands Between?”
Hadwyn blinked once, then shook his head almost immediately.
“No, no,” he said, quick and dismissive. “I don’t know who those are, but… no.”
He leaned forward slightly, as if to correct a misunderstanding that, to him, seemed obvious.
“We were no longer an army once we had returned to the Lands Between.” He clarified, his tone light. “Each of us came back on our own, abandoning our ranks and command structure.”
A faint smile appeared.
“At most, you’d run into another Tarnished out in the wild or see them at the Roundtable Hold.” He then shrugged. “No, we all invaded the demigods’ territories alone.”
The words were simple, yet all the more unsettling for it.
“Each of us,” Hadwyn went on, almost cheerfully now, “would walk into enemy territory on our own, fight through everything they had and kill a demigod before another Tarnished could do that.”
He leaned back again, utterly at ease.
“A very different situation, don’t you think?”
“…indeed.” Steffon replied after a moment, his voice flat and hollow.
And truly—
He did not know what else there was to say.