The corridor stretches before me. Grey stone, grey light, grey fucking everything in this frozen tomb Ned calls home.
My legs carry me without thought. Past the solar where I left him—where I left everything, fifteen years of brotherhood bleeding out on cold stone floor. Past the great hall where servants scurry like mice, sensing something wrong, parting around me like water around a boulder. Past the kitchens that smell of bread and roasting meat, and my stomach should growl but instead it clenches, turns, rebels against the very thought of food.
My boots strike stone. Each step echoes off ancient walls. Each step drives the words deeper into my skull like nails.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years.
I can still see Ned's face. The way it crumpled when I demanded answers. The way his voice broke when he said her name—Lyanna—like he had any right to speak it. Like he hadn't been lying to me every day for fifteen years while I drowned myself in wine and whores trying to forget her.
"His mother was my sister."
The words echo. Won't stop echoing.
"She made me promise."
My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists, feel the bite of nails into palms, focus on the small sharp pain to keep from—
From what? Screaming? Breaking something? Going back to that solar and putting my hands around Ned's throat until he takes it back, until he admits it was a lie, until the world makes sense again?
The wine is waiting in my chambers. I know it's there—an Arbor gold, the good stuff, sweet and heavy and strong enough to make the thoughts stop. The sweet red oblivion that's been my closest companion since Lyanna died. All I have to do is climb the stairs, pour a cup, let the familiar numbness swallow the rage before it can—
No.
No.
A heat in my chest pulls at me. Not wine-heat. Not hearth-heat. This comes from somewhere deeper. Somewhere I buried so long ago I forgot it existed.
A hunger that won't be drowned.
The training yard.
My feet know the way before my mind catches up. Through the covered passage, past the armory, out into cold air that bites my face and fills my lungs like ice water. The shock of it—gods, I've been living in overheated rooms so long I forgot what cold felt like. Forgot what anything felt like that wasn't the blur of wine or the empty rutting with whores whose names I never learned.
The yard spreads before me. Packed dirt, hard as stone from the northern cold. Practice dummies lined against the far wall like condemned men awaiting execution. Weapons racks holding blunted steel for boys playing at war.
Boys.
Ned's bastard is fourteen. Rhaegar's bastard. The same age I was when I first hefted a warhammer and felt the world make sense.
The same age Rhaegar was when he won his first tourney. When the realm started whispering about the silver prince who would be the greatest king since Aegon the Conqueror.
The same age I was when I looked at that silver-haired cunt across a practice yard and thought someday I'll kill him.
I didn't know why, then. Didn't know about Lyanna yet, about the prophecy-mad fool's obsession with ice and fire and the prince that was promised. I just knew, bone-deep, blood-deep, that Rhaegar Targaryen and I would meet someday with steel between us.
And we did.
And I won.
"Your Grace?"
A squire. Skinny thing, maybe sixteen, with the wide eyes of a boy who's never seen real fighting. Never seen what a warhammer does to a man's chest when there's hate behind the swing. He's been cleaning equipment—there's oil on his hands, a rag hanging from his belt—and he's staring at me like I've grown a second head.
I probably look mad. Standing in a training yard in my court clothes, breathing hard, hands still shaking.
Good.
Let them see.
"Hammer." My voice sounds strange. Rough. Like something dredged up from deep water, scraped raw against barnacles and bone. "Bring me a warhammer."
"Your Grace, I don't—there isn't—"
"Then find one."
He runs. Smart boy.
I wait.
The cold seeps through my doublet, finds the sweat that's already prickling at my hairline despite the chill. My body feels wrong. Heavy. Alien. The weight I've packed on over fifteen years of feasts and whores presses down on my bones like a sentence. My knees ache from the stairs—stairs, gods, when did stairs become difficult? My back hurts from the ride north, from sleeping in beds that are too soft, from sitting in chairs while servants bring me food I don't need and wine I shouldn't drink.
My breath comes harder than it should just from walking across a castle.
This is what you've become.
I look down at myself. At the belly straining against my belt. At the thickness in my thighs, my arms, my chest—muscle gone to fat, strength gone to softness, the Demon of the Trident buried under years of indulgence.
Fat. Soft. A wine-soaked ruin wearing a crown.
Rhaegar would laugh if he could see you now.
That hits like a blow. I sway with it, catch myself, feel the rage surge up hot and sharp—
Good. Hold onto that.
The squire returns, breathing hard, a practice hammer in his trembling hands. Weighted wood rather than steel, but shaped right—the long shaft, the heavy head, the balance that settles into your grip and becomes part of you. He holds it out like an offering to an angry god.
Which I suppose I am.
I take it.
The weight settles into my hands.
And—
There.
The grip is familiar. More than familiar. My palms know this shape, this heft, this promise of violence. Fifteen years since I swung a hammer in anger. Fifteen years since the Trident, since Rhaegar's breastplate caved under my blow, since rubies scattered like bloody tears and the last dragon died in the water at my feet.
Fifteen years.
But my hands remember.
My hands remember.
I cross to the nearest dummy. Straw-stuffed canvas on a wooden frame, vaguely man-shaped, eyeless face staring at nothing. The kind of thing boys use to learn their forms, to build strength, to pretend they know what fighting is.
Boys don't know anything.
Fighting isn't forms. Fighting isn't strength. Fighting is hate and fear and the desperate animal need to make the other man stop breathing before he does the same to you. Fighting is looking into someone's eyes and seeing them realize they're going to die.
Fighting is what I was born for.
Rhaegar.
Silver hair floating in bloody water. Purple eyes wide with surprise—he hadn't expected it, hadn't expected me, hadn't expected that the demon in stolen Targaryen armor was actually the Baratheon lord he'd dismissed as a brute—
Rhaegar's son.
Alive.
Walking the earth, breathing air, while Lyanna—
I let the hammer fall back. Feel the weight pull at my shoulder, the head wanting to drop, wanting to swing, wanting like it's alive. The shaft settles into my grip. My back foot plants.
Then I drive.
Hips first. Always hips first—that's where the power lives, in the rotation of the body, the coiling and release. Then shoulders, unwinding, adding their force to the turn. Arms last, whipping the head forward at the end of the arc where all the speed gathers, where the weight means something—
CRACK.
The sound splits the air like thunder. The dummy doesn't just rock—it bows, canvas cratering inward, straw exploding through the tear in a spray of golden fragments. The shock travels back through the shaft, through my wrists, jars my elbows, rattles my teeth in my skull.
Gods.
The impact sings up my arms. That feeling—I'd forgotten that feeling. The way a clean hit resonates through your whole body, tells you yes, that's it, that's the one. The way the head wants to bounce back after contact and you have to catch it, redirect the momentum, keep control or let the weapon control you.
I remember.
I remember.
"Rhaegar's—"
Wind up again. The hammer falls back, head dropping behind my shoulder, and I feel my body settling into the stance without thinking about it—weight centered, knees bent, ready to explode. The way I learned when I was twelve years old and angry at everything and the only thing that made sense was hitting things until they stopped moving.
Full rotation. Hips. Shoulders. Arms.
The hammer describes an arc—heavy, brutal, inevitable—and I bring it down on the dummy's head.
CRACK.
The wooden frame beneath the canvas splinters. The head—such as it is—caves inward, and the impact jars through my arms again, harder this time, joints screaming at the abuse. But I feel it—feel the frame giving way, feel the wood breaking like Rhaegar's chest gave way fifteen years ago.
"—fucking—"
Another swing. Faster now. Sloppier. The rage is taking over, drowning technique in red fury, and I don't care. Someone's shouting—the squire, maybe, or guards drawn by the noise—but the sound is far away, meaningless, drowned by the thunder of blood in my ears.
My heart is pounding. Not from exertion—not yet—but from this. From the feeling of a hammer in my hands and something to destroy with it. From the rage finally finding an outlet after fifteen years of being drowned in wine.
"—SPAWN!"
The final blow catches the dummy at the joint of neck and shoulder. The whole frame wrenches sideways, tears free of its mounting, collapses into a heap of wreckage—straw and splinters and torn canvas scattered across frozen dirt like the aftermath of a battlefield.
Dead.
It's dead.
But not dead enough.
I'm breathing hard. Sweat trickles down my temple despite the cold. My arms are already starting to burn—soft muscles protesting, screaming for rest, begging me to stop—
I don't stop.
"Another," I rasp. "Bring me another."
They drag the second dummy into position while I catch my breath.
Not enough breath. Not nearly enough. My lungs feel like they're wrapped in wet cloth, each inhale a fight, each exhale a surrender. The fat around my middle presses against my lungs, steals space they need, makes me work for every gasp of cold northern air.
I ignore it.
The second dummy faces me. Fresh canvas, intact frame, straw-stuffed chest unmarked.
Rhaegar.
I see him. See the silver hair, the purple eyes, the arrogant tilt to his head that said I am a dragon, and you are nothing. See him sitting his horse at Harrenhal while blue roses fell into Lyanna's lap and the whole world shifted beneath my feet.
The hammer rises.
Falls.
CRACK.
This one I do properly. Plant, rotate, extend—the full sequence, the way it should be done. The head connects with the dummy's ribs, and I feel the frame flex, feel it absorb the impact and transmit it through, feel the whole structure shudder.
But it doesn't break.
Again.
Reset. The hammer wants to keep swinging after impact—that's the danger with a weighted head, the momentum doesn't stop just because you hit something—but I catch it, redirect, bring it back up for another strike.
CRACK.
The ribs cave. Straw sprays.
CRACK.
The shoulder joint separates, one arm dangling.
CRACK.
The head snaps back, canvas tearing, and the whole thing topples backward like a man taking a mortal wound.
I'm breathing harder now. Much harder. The burning in my arms has spread to my shoulders, my back, the muscles across my chest that haven't worked this hard since—
Since ever. Since I stopped being a warrior and started being a king.
"Another."
The third dummy takes longer.
My lungs are burning. Each breath scrapes in, scrapes out, never fills me. And my arms—
I wind up for the swing and the hammer wobbles. Muscles spasming. Grip loosening where sweat has slicked the leather. I squeeze harder, feel the strain in my forearms, and bring it down anyway.
The blow lands wrong. Glancing. Too much arm, not enough hip—I'm too tired to rotate properly, too tired to generate power from my core, so I'm muscling it with my shoulders, and the shoulders are failing.
The dummy rocks but doesn't break.
No.
Again. Reset. Plant the feet. Try to rotate.
The weight of my belly throws me off-center. I have to plant wider to compensate, but that costs time, costs leverage, makes the rotation awkward and slow. The hammer comes down with half the force it should.
CRACK.
Better. Not good. Better. The canvas tears, straw spilling, but the frame holds.
I suck air. Spit it out. Try again.
This time my grip slips at the top of the swing.
The shaft slides through my fingers—slick with sweat, or maybe blood from blisters I didn't notice forming—and for one terrible instant I feel the weapon getting away from me. Feel the head's momentum pulling it in a direction I didn't choose.
I clamp down. Hard. Skin tears in my palm—wet and hot and wrong—and I catch the shaft, redirect the swing, bring the head down on target through pure stubborn will.
CRACK.
The frame splinters. The dummy sags.
Halfway through the killing blow, I taste copper.
Not from biting my tongue. From somewhere deeper. From lungs or throat or wherever blood comes from when you push a body past what it can give. I spit. Red flecks the frozen dirt.
Don't care.
Keep going.
The third dummy dies with a sound like a man's ribs breaking—a wet crunch beneath the crack, the frame giving way entirely, canvas collapsing into itself. I stand over its corpse breathing like a bellows, hammer trembling in my grip, and my hands are wet.
I look down.
Blood. The blisters formed and burst sometime during the second dummy. Now the skin beneath has torn, raw flesh weeping against the leather wrapping, and I'm gripping through the pain without having noticed it was there.
It feels honest.
Pain always does.
"Another."
The fourth is when my body starts to fail.
I know it's happening. Can feel it happening. The way my vision narrows, the world shrinking to a tunnel with the dummy at the end. The way my heartbeat has gone wrong—not just fast, but irregular, skipping and stuttering like a horse with a broken gait.
Thump. Thump-thump. Thump.
Pause.
Thump-thump-thump.
Pause.
Wrong. That's wrong. Hearts aren't supposed to do that.
My vision greys at the edges.
"Your Grace—" Someone's voice. Close. Concerned. The squire, or maybe a guard. "Your Grace, perhaps you should—"
"Don't."
The word comes out as a snarl. I plant my feet—they don't want to stay planted, my legs are shaking now, joining my arms in rebellion—and raise the hammer.
It takes everything I have.
The head wobbles. My shoulders are screaming, my back is a solid knot of fire, and the weight that felt so natural twenty minutes ago now feels like lifting a boulder. I can see the hammer shaking in my grip, see the tremors running through the shaft, see everyone in the yard seeing my weakness—
Don't. Care.
I bring it down.
CRACK.
The impact sends lightning up my spine. My knees buckle—actually buckle, actually give way beneath me—and for one terrible moment I think I'm going to collapse. Going to fall in the dirt in front of everyone. Going to prove that the fat king is exactly what they all think he is.
I don't fall.
I lock my knees. Plant my feet. Force my body to obey through pure fucking spite.
Raise the hammer again.
My arms don't want to lift it. The muscles are beyond burning now, into a deep trembling weakness that says we're done, we have nothing left, stop. My grip is slick with blood and sweat, the shaft sliding in my palms.
I lift it anyway.
CRACK.
And again.
CRACK.
The fourth dummy dies, and I'm standing over its corpse with my heart pounding wrong and my lungs refusing to fill and grey creeping in from the edges of my vision.
Maybe you'll die here.
Calm. Clear. Like it's happening to someone else.
Maybe your heart will give out and you'll drop dead in a practice yard, and that will be the end of Robert Baratheon. Fat king, dead of overexertion, killed by his own rage.
What would Rhaegar think of that?
I wait.
The grey swells. Recedes. Swells again.
My heart stutters. Races. Stutters.
Then—slowly, grudgingly—finds its rhythm again. Ragged. Exhausted. But steady.
Not today.
Not until this is finished.
People are watching.
Guards. Servants. A few of Ned's household knights who've drifted over to see the commotion. They're standing at the edges of the yard, careful not to get too close, faces caught between fascination and horror.
The young ones—the boys who've never seen real war, never stood in a shieldwall, never watched men die screaming in the mud—they look confused. Uncertain. One of them is smirking, elbowing his friend, and I can almost hear what he's saying: Look at him. Fat king playing soldier. Belly swinging with every swing. Is that really the man who killed Rhaegar Targaryen?
But the old ones.
The men who were at the Trident. The men whose fathers stood in the shieldwall when the dragon prince charged. One of them—grey-bearded, weathered, a scar running from temple to jaw—has gone still. His hand rests on his sword hilt. Not threatening. Remembering.
His lips move.
I can't hear him across the yard, but I can read the shape of the words. See the way the young guard beside him goes pale. See the smirk die on that young face like a candle blown out.
That's him, the old soldier is saying.
That's the one who killed the dragon.
The young guard looks at me. At the wreckage. At the blood on my hands and the murder in my eyes.
He doesn't look like he wants to laugh anymore.
Good.
Remember this.
Remember what I was. What I am. What I'm going to be again.
I lower the hammer. Roll my shoulders—feel them scream in protest—and taste copper at the back of my throat. Blood or bile, I can't tell anymore. My legs want to buckle. My arms want to drop. Every part of me that's gotten soft and weak over fifteen years is begging me to stop, to rest, to go back to the wine and the warmth and the slow comfortable dying.
Tomorrow I'll barely be able to move. The day after will be worse.
I don't care.
"Same time tomorrow," I announce. My voice is hoarse, scraped raw by heavy breathing, but it carries. Commands always carry. "And find me a proper warhammer. Steel, not wood." I scan the watching faces, find the squire who started this. He's pale as milk, eyes huge, probably wondering if his king is about to drop dead at his feet. "If I'm going to train, I'll train with the real thing."
He nods frantically. "Yes, Your Grace. Steel. I'll find one."
"Good."
I don't drop the practice hammer. Keep it in my grip, feel the blood-slick shaft warm against my torn palms. The weight feels right there. Feels like something I should have been holding all along, instead of wine cups and whores and all the other soft things I used to bury myself alive.
Rhaegar's son is running.
Clear and cold through the fire in my muscles.
He's running, and you're standing here.
Do something about it.
"SELMY!"
My voice cracks across the yard like thunder. Heads turn. The old soldiers straighten—they know that voice. Remember it from the war, from the days when I gave orders that meant blood and fire and the end of dynasties.
"Someone bring me Ser Barristan fucking Selmy! NOW!"
A guard sprints for the castle. I wait in the yard, hammer in hand, blood drying on my palms in the cold air. The sweat cools on my skin, turns clammy, makes me shiver.
The fire in my chest doesn't cool at all.
Barristan arrives in minutes.
I watch him cross the yard—the measured stride of a man who's seen everything and fears nothing. Past sixty and still the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms. White cloak pristine despite the speed of his approach, catching the grey northern light, making him look like something from a song. Armor gleaming. Face carved from stone.
He was Aerys's man, once. Stood outside the door while the Mad King burned lords alive, while Rhaegar rode off to his tower with my betrothed, while the realm tore itself apart. He was Rhaegar's man, in the end—I know that, have always known it, can see it sometimes in the way he looks at me. The disappointment. The unspoken comparison.
Rhaegar would never have let himself go soft like you.
Rhaegar would have been a better king.
Rhaegar, Rhaegar, always fucking Rhaegar—
I pardoned him after the Trident. Kept him on when I could have sent him away—could have given him to the Silent Sisters or let him take the black or simply put his head on a spike beside the other Targaryen loyalists. I kept him because he was the best, because a king needs the best, because some part of me wanted to prove I could command the loyalty of a man who'd served dragons.
Fifteen years, and I still don't know if I succeeded.
He's the one.
He has to be the one.
"Your Grace." He stops at the edge of the destruction. Takes in the shattered dummies, the scattered straw, the blood on my hands, the hammer I'm still holding like I've forgotten it's there. His face shows nothing—the white knight, the perfect servant, the sword without a will of its own. "You summoned me."
"There's a Targaryen alive."
The words come out flat. Hard. Drops of poison hitting stone.
The yard has gone quiet around us—guards and servants straining to hear, the old soldiers watching with hunger in their eyes. A Targaryen. The word spreads through them like ripples in still water. I can feel the tension rising, feel the weight of history pressing down.
Let them hear. Let them all hear.
"Rhaegar's son." I taste the words like copper and ash. Like blood in the back of my throat. "Raised as Ned's bastard. Ned lied to me, Barristan. Fifteen years, and he lied."
A twitch at the corner of Selmy's eye. A slight tightening around his mouth. If I weren't watching for it, I'd miss it entirely.
But I'm not watching for it.
I'm watching the hammer in my hands, the blood drying in the creases of my palms, the wreckage of the dummies that weren't Rhaegar but let me pretend.
"He's fled. Taken Ned's daughter and Manderly's granddaughter with him." I step closer. Close enough to see the lines around his eyes, the white of his hair, the pale blue eyes that have seen more death than most men can imagine. "You will take six men. You will find him. You will kill him."
I let the hammer's head drop, rest it against the packed dirt. Feel the weight settle, the balance shift.
"Kill anyone who stands with him. I want his head."
A breath. Almost too quiet to hear. If I weren't standing this close, if my ears weren't still ringing from the sound of shattering wood, I might miss it entirely.
"Your Grace... the girls?"
"Bring them back if you can." I hold his gaze. Let him see what's looking out through my eyes—not the fat king, not the wine-soaked ruin, not the failure he's served for fifteen years. Let him see the Demon. The thing that killed Rhaegar. The thing that's waking up after fifteen years of sleep, hungry and cold and ready. "But the boy dies. Whatever the cost."
Silence.
The yard holds its breath.
Barristan stands perfectly still. Not a tremor. Not a flinch. The white knight, the perfect servant, receiving orders as he's received a thousand orders before. His face shows nothing.
But his eyes—
No. I'm imagining things. Seeing ghosts that aren't there.
"As you command, Your Grace."
He bows. Deep. Formal. The kind of bow you give a king, not a friend. When he straightens, his face is stone—whatever I thought I saw is gone, buried beneath sixty years of discipline and duty.
"I'll select the men immediately. We ride within the hour."
"Not ride. Sail." I've been thinking about this since the solar. Since Ned's face crumpled and the truth came pouring out, since I stood there with the world tilting beneath my feet and had to think—had to plan—even through the rage. "He's heading for Essos. White Harbor first, then across the Narrow Sea. Take a fast ship. Beat him there if you can."
"Yes, Your Grace."
He turns to leave. His steps are measured. Even. The steps of a man who has received orders and will carry them out, because that's what he does. That's what he's always done.
The white cloak catches the dying light.
But—
No. Nothing. Shadows that aren't there.
"Barristan."
He stops. Doesn't turn.
My hands tighten on the hammer's shaft. The torn blisters scream. I welcome the pain—it keeps me sharp, keeps me present, keeps me from thinking about what I'm asking him to do. Hunt down a boy. Rhaegar's boy. The last living trace of the prince he served, the prince he loved, the prince whose death still haunts him after fifteen years.
"Don't fail me."
A pause. Barely perceptible. The length of a heartbeat. The span of a breath.
"I never have, Your Grace."
He walks away.
The white cloak disappears into the castle, and I'm left standing in the ruins of practice dummies with blood on my hands and murder in my heart and doubt coiling in my gut.
He'll do it.
He has to do it.
He's Barristan the Bold, the greatest knight in the realm, sworn to my service. When I give him an order, he carries it out. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.
So why do I feel like I just made a mistake?
Lyanna.
Her name, filling the silence as the yard empties. Guards returning to their posts. Servants scurrying back to their duties. The old soldiers drifting away with backward glances, hope or fear in their eyes—I can't tell which.
The show is over. The fat king made his spectacle, gave his orders, and now everyone can return to pretending nothing has changed.
But everything has changed.
Lyanna.
I can still see her face. Not the corpse—I never saw the corpse, Ned made sure of that, brought her bones home wrapped in silk without letting me look—but the living woman. The girl at Harrenhal with her wild northern beauty and her laugh that cut through every other sound in the crowded hall.
Gods, that laugh.
I fell in love with that laugh before I ever saw her face. Heard it from across the feast hall, this bright fierce sound that had nothing of simpering or seduction in it, just pure wild joy. And when I looked up and saw her—dark hair, grey eyes, a smile like a blade—I knew.
I knew.
She was mine. Would be mine. The gods had made her for me, put that laugh in the world to lead me to her, arranged the whole fucking universe so that Robert Baratheon and Lyanna Stark would find each other.
I was a fool.
The betrothal was easy. Her father wanted the alliance, my father wanted the alliance, everyone wanted the fucking alliance. And I wanted her—wanted to wake up next to her every morning, wanted to make her laugh like that every day, wanted to fill Storm's End with children who had her fire and my strength.
I told her that. At Harrenhal, in the gardens, while the torches burned and the music played. Told her everything I was feeling, everything I wanted, every dream I'd built around her since the moment I heard her laugh.
She smiled.
Not the wild smile. Not the real one. A polite smile. A dutiful smile. The smile of a highborn girl doing what's expected of her.
"You honor me, my lord."
That's all she said. You honor me. Like I was any other lord making pretty speeches. Like I hadn't just offered her my whole heart.
I told myself it didn't matter. Told myself she'd learn to love me. Told myself that once we were married, once she saw how devoted I was, once she had my children—
Then Rhaegar crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty. Blue roses falling into her lap. The whole realm watching. And I saw her face when she looked at him.
I'd never seen that face before.
I never saw it again.
"She wasn't kidnapped," Ned said. "She went with him willingly."
No.
No.
The hammer's shaft creaks in my grip. The torn blisters scream. I welcome the pain—need the pain—let it drown out the thought before it can—
He took her. Rhaegar took her. Carried her off, raped her, kept her prisoner in that tower until she died birthing his bastard. That's what happened. That's the truth. That's the truth. That's why I killed him—smashed his chest in, watched the light leave his eyes, stood over his body while rubies floated away in bloody water and thought this is for her, this is for Lyanna, this is justice—
He took her.
The alternative—
The alternative means she chose him. Chose the silver prince over me. Looked at everything I offered—love, devotion, a crown, my whole fucking heart—and decided she'd rather have Rhaegar.
I can't.
I can't.
The hammer rises. Falls. Splinters what's left of the nearest wreckage into fragments too small to hit.
He took her.
And now his son has taken another.
The parallel burns through me like wildfire, spreads through my veins like poison. Rhaegar and Lyanna. Jon and Arya. Father and son.
Dragons stealing wolves. Again. Always.
Ned's daughter. The wild one. The one who looks like Lyanna, who has that same fire in her eyes, that same wolf-blood that won't be tamed. I saw her when we arrived—darting through the yard, hair escaping her braids, laughing at something one of the stable boys said. For a moment I thought I was seeing a ghost.
Eleven years old.
Eleven years old, and Rhaegar's bastard took her in the night.
The rage is a living thing now. It fills my chest, swells against my ribs, burns in my throat and behind my eyes. It drives my arms—another swing, another piece of wreckage dying, splinters spraying like blood—and burns away the fat and the wine-fog and the wasted years until nothing remains but fury.
Pure.
Clean.
Hungry.
If another dragonspawn is coming—if Rhaegar's rape-bastard thinks he can crawl out of whatever hole Ned hid him in and play at his father's games—
Then Robert Baratheon will meet him the same way he met his father.
I killed the sire.
I'll crush the son.
My warhammer hasn't tasted Targaryen blood in fifteen years.
It's thirsty.
The sun is setting by the time I stop.
My arms hang useless at my sides, dead weight, trembling so badly I can barely hold the hammer upright. My back is a solid knot of agony—every breath sends fire racing up my spine. My legs have gone past burning into a deep grinding ache, muscles pushed beyond their limits. Blood drips from my ruined palms onto my breeches, and my hands—
I don't want to look at my hands.
I look anyway.
Raw meat. That's what they look like. The blisters burst hours ago. Then the skin beneath tore. Then that started bleeding, and I kept swinging anyway, and now my palms are a mess of blood and fluid and exposed flesh that screams at the cold air.
I've destroyed four dummies. Turned a fifth into kindling with the wreckage I was too angry to stop hitting. The sixth stands across the yard, waiting.
Tomorrow, then. And the day after. And every day until my body remembers what it was—until the fat burns away and the muscle comes back and the Demon of the Trident stands ready to finish what he started.
The squire approaches hesitantly. He's been hovering at the edge of the yard for hours—I noticed him watching, noticed him send other servants away, noticed him standing guard over his mad king like a faithful hound. Smart boy. Knows when to stay and when to flee.
"Your Grace?" His voice is barely a whisper. "Should I... the wine is—"
"No wine."
The words surprise me. The shape of them in my mouth, the way they come out without thought, without hesitation. The squire's eyes go wide—confusion replacing fear—and I've just refused wine for the first time in years.
For the first time since Lyanna died.
"Your Grace?"
"No wine." I straighten. Feel my spine creak, my shoulders scream, every muscle in my body protesting. Don't care. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until this is finished."
The wine is what killed the Demon. Drowned him in sweetness and fog, buried him under years of indulgence until I forgot what I was. What I could be. Every cup was a shovelful of dirt on his grave. Every feast was another nail in his coffin. I drank him to death and called it grief.
No more.
"Bring me water. Bread. Meat if the kitchens have it." I roll my shoulders—or try to, my arms won't move properly—and wince at the fire that shoots down my back. "And send word—I want a smith. I need a warhammer forged. Steel. Real weight. The kind I used at the Trident."
"Yes, Your Grace. Right away, Your Grace."
He scurries off. Good boy. Useful boy. I should learn his name.
I stand alone in the yard, surrounded by splinters and straw, and I look up at the darkening sky.
The stars are coming out. Cold northern stars, bright and hard, nothing like the soft southern sky I've lived under for fifteen years. These are Stark stars. Winterfell stars. The stars Lyanna grew up under, the stars she probably wished on as a girl, dreaming of—
What? What did she dream of?
Not me. Never me.
Somewhere out there, Ned is in his solar with his dying rose and his broken heart. I was his brother. His closest friend. The man who would have been family if Lyanna had lived—if Rhaegar hadn't stolen her, if the war hadn't happened, if everything had gone the way it was supposed to.
I've lost him.
That lands like a blow. Duller than the rage, but deeper. Cutting into places the anger can't reach. Ned is gone. Whatever we were—brothers, friends, the men who won a war together—it died today in that solar. Killed by fifteen years of lies. By a promise he had no right to make. By the choice he made to protect a dragon over honoring his king.
I've lost him forever.
And I'm alone.
The crown is a prison. Has been since the day they put it on my head—all those lords cheering, all those swords raised, and all I could think was I don't want this. I never wanted this. I just wanted her.
The queen despises me. Cersei with her golden hair and her cold green eyes and her frozen cunt—fifteen years of marriage and I've never once seen her smile at me the way Lyanna smiled at Rhaegar. Never once heard her laugh with joy instead of malice. Never once felt anything from her but duty and contempt.
My children are strangers. Raised by septas and maesters and wet nurses while I drowned myself trying to forget. Joffrey with his cruel streak, Myrcella with her nervous courtesy, Tommen with his soft heart—I don't know them. Don't know how to know them. Every time I look at them I see Cersei looking back, and I can't—
My council are schemers. Varys with his whispers, Littlefinger with his smiles, Pycelle with his feigned doddering. They don't serve me. They serve themselves. They serve the power they can extract from a crown I never wanted.
The one man I thought I could trust—
Alone.
I've been alone since Lyanna died. Since they brought her bones back without letting me see her face. Since I realized that the future I'd dreamed of—children with her dark hair and my blue eyes, a life at Storm's End or wherever she wanted, love and laughter and her—was gone forever.
I've been alone for fifteen years.
I just didn't know it until today.
But the loneliness doesn't drag me down this time. Doesn't send me reaching for the cup, the oblivion, the slow drowning I've been choosing since I was too young to know better.
Good.
Let it burn.
Let the loneliness and the loss and the betrayal burn like fuel on a fire. Let it feed the Demon. Let it forge me back into what I was—what I should have stayed—the man who smashed the Targaryen dynasty and won a war with nothing but fury and a hammer.
I've been soft too long.
That ends now.
The stars emerge one by one as darkness falls over Winterfell.
The wolves are howling somewhere beyond the walls—four voices rising in the cold, mournful and strange, calling for pack members who won't answer. Six wolves when we arrived. Four now. Two gone with the children who fled in the night.
Rhaegar took Lyanna.
Jon took Arya.
Dragons stealing wolves. Again. Always.
I stand in the training yard with blood drying on my hands and murder in my heart, surrounded by the wreckage of my rage. My body is broken—arms useless, back screaming, hands torn to ruins. Tomorrow I won't be able to move. The day after will be worse.
I'll move anyway.
I'll train anyway.
Because somewhere across the Narrow Sea, Rhaegar's son is running. Young and fast and burning with whatever Targaryen madness passes down through that cursed bloodline. Maybe he'll find ships in White Harbor. Maybe he'll sail for Braavos or Pentos or Volantis, all those Free Cities that love to harbor exiles and pretenders.
It doesn't matter where he runs.
Barristan will find him.
And when he does—
I close my eyes. See Rhaegar on the Trident. Silver hair floating in bloody water. Rubies scattered like tears. The look on his face when my hammer connected—that single moment of surprise, of recognition, the instant when he understood that all his prophecies and all his pretty songs and all his stolen Northern girls couldn't save him from me.
I killed your father, boy.
Caved in his chest while he choked on his own blood.
Watched the light leave his eyes and felt nothing but satisfaction.
And if somehow you survive—
I'll do the same to you.
I lift the hammer. Feel the weight one last time.
Then I set it down—carefully, gently, like laying a child in its crib—and turn toward the castle.
Water first. Food. Rest.
Tomorrow I train again.
And the day after.
And the day after that.
Until the Demon is ready.
Until the Demon is hungry.
The wolves howl in the darkness.
Four voices, where there should be six.
I walk toward the light and I make myself a promise:
I'll add another absence to that count.
Rhaegar's son will die.
And then maybe—just maybe—I'll finally be able to sleep.