Headcanoned with an beta-ed by graceonce

Rated M for mentions of rape, mentions of child sexual abuse, war, death, gore, mutilation, and language.

"You two are showing nicely."

The Tattlers turned their dark gazes to their master, the young man (Man-boy, sister?) looking them over with a ravenous tint to his blue eyes.

"How do you feel?" he asked softly, almost caringly. He stepped closer to press the palm of his hands to their protruding belly, the digits of his fingers warm through their light shift. He'd had a servant make clothes before they'd left Qarth, clothes that would fit them as the months passed by and as the child that was inside them grew and grew and grew.

He'd ignored his mother's begging and his father's ghost's warnings and set sail for Astapor at daybreak after leaving Maggie Esmeralda's tent with the sun, light that she could not follow in. There he had bought the Unsullied and a galleon flying the colors of Qarth and his family, taken the staff that commanded the eunuch warriors bred to kill, and from there he'd set for King's Landing with his freaks.

He, after all, needed entertainment.

With his fleet of a considerable number following his flagship, each filled to the brim with Unsullied and his commanding officers, they had passed Sothoryos as soon as they had left the Jade Sea, the forests off their prow loud with bird cries, fog rising from the vined treetops. The freaks had stayed far away, darting gazes to the safe horizon to the west, but Dandy had climbed up the rigging to take the closest look he could.

It was the last piece of earth they saw on that side of the ship on the Summer Sea, Essos to the right and open waters now ending somewhere between the ends of the universes to their left. But Essos became islands, Slaver's Bay, and then it gave way to open waters and a craggle of rock hard to see even in the telescope, most likely Volantis.

Dandy took another step forward, wrapping his arms around their waist when they turned to face the water, hair tied back in tight ponytails against the rising winds. He pressed a kiss to Bette's cheek when she glanced back at him. "We're two weeks from Blackwater Bay, three from the iron throne, though I doubt it will take long to find and kill the Lannister queen." He splayed his fingers against their stomach again. "And in a month you'll have my child and we will have a true descendant to our new home."

Dot nodded softly, and Bette's hand met Dandy's when he giggled lightly, excitedly.

"He's kicking so strong, he's going to be just like his father, a champion of truth and justice and light. A god among men."

"What if he's-" Dot bit back a grimace. "What if he's not like you?"

"But like us?" Bette added.

"He won't be, not with my blood running through his blue veins. A god among men, my wives, a god among men." He kissed them both on the backs of their necks before stepping away, leaving them against the railing.

He passed Jimmy on his way to the captain's cabin, the boy pausing long enough to bow, mutilated hands hidden behind his back.

Though he wasn't the captain and though he knew next to nothing about sailing past what he'd learned the last months on board (a few knots, here and there), he'd taken the largest room on the galleon for himself and the Tattlers and Maggie when he needed her counsel. And she waited for him now, crystal ball catching the light filtering through the ship's tainted glass windows.

He entered and closed the door behind him with a flourish, throwing his cape onto the back of his chair before sitting down in it, raising his eyebrows as he smiled at Maggie. She smiled back briefly, tugging at the long sleeves around her wrists, and he motioned to her.

"Come on, let's get on with it."

"You have to close your eyes, I tell you every time." She bit the inside of her cheek. "Sir," she added.

He sighed and did as was told after grimacing, and she pressed her fingers to the glass in front of her, letting out a slow breath. Her hazel eyes stayed open and she gazed the man over.

Here on board she had no resources for her usual tricks, no traders or slaves or innkeepers to ask questions to or bribe for ideas or answers to questions asked, but she was nothing if not resourceful, and so she'd adapted as best as she could. She glanced out one of the cleaner windows, narrowing her eyes at the sunlight and the dust floating through it.

Dandy sighed. "And, Esmeralda?"

She hummed lightly and closed her own eyes, scared he would open his and see her gazing into the distance, and she cleared her throat. "I see rocks to our bow."

"Rocks?" he echoed. He shifted in his seat almost excitedly. "Yesterday all you saw was sea. All you've seen the last months is sea."

"And now I see rocks," she replied softly. "Earth will be seen by the morning, past the fogs the night brings. Your lookout will yell 'land' and we'll be a step closer to Westeros."

"My kingdoms," the man breathed.

She nodded softly. "Your kingdoms." She opened her eyes when he stood.

He stretched lightly. "I'll be happy to step foot on land. You, seer?"

She shrugged lightly. "I'm content with whatever makes my master happy." She thought of the twins, the child. "Masters."

"Masters," he repeated thoughtfully. "Do you have any idea of how to take care of children? I haven't the slightest clue. I'm going to need someone who can." He narrowed his eyes. "I should have brought Ethel along after all, she's dealt with a child. Or I could have asked Elsa, she took care of enough freaks who couldn't eat or shit by themselves. Remind me to have them sailed over when I sit on the throne."

"Wouldn't you want contact with your child?"

"If I remember, babies don't speak, what would I have to tell him? No, I'll wait until he can sit up by himself, then he'll learn to love me. Remind me, Esmeralda."

"I will, sir."

He threw her a golden coin, something she hadn't expected but caught nonetheless, hazel eyes wide, and she watched him walk away, a spring in his step. He slammed the door behind him.

She took a moment before she stood, knees aching even though she wasn't tall enough to have to bend over, her head far from threatening to hit the top of the cabin, and she went to the window to open it. Salt air hit her sinuses and she took it in, letting out a sigh when a gull cried overhead, flying down low enough that she could see it. She'd caught its shadow minutes before and she was glad she'd looked out through the grimy glass while Dandy meditated.

The girl crossed to the map of the known world at the back of the cabin and traced her fingers along the underneath of it. From where she was, she could smell the sweet perfume of lovers and poison coming through the window, and she took in a small breath as she rested the palm of her hand against the lowest of the free cities.

"Lys."

OOOoooOOO

Cordelia's entire side was damp with mud, her waist and her good cheek, and she dug her damaged side into Misty's back, tightening her grip on the girl's waist as she awoke, the horse's walk underneath them having lulled her to sleep when it'd only been dawn, the sun high in the sky now. The wild blonde glanced behind her shoulder at the Tyrell girl, letting go of the reins momentarily to intertwine her fingers with the ones against her navel.

She'd slipped when they'd ran, torn out of a warm sleep by the hurried Mudfish speaking incoherently about a plot and murder and she'd wanted to ask, but Misty had left no time for words. She'd grabbed what she'd could and thrown them into a knapsack, taking Cordelia's hand in hers and dragging her to her white horse, Misty tripping first in the rain and the older blonde falling after her, hair in front of her good eye.

The reality of them running away was hitting her hard now as she recognized Harrenhal's ruins, the Isle of Faces preceding it, the Kingswood far behind them. They'd left the main road hours ago from what it seemed, the beast beneath them waist high in tall grasses that itched at Cordelia's legs as they followed a tributary of the Blackwater Rush.

"I need to rest the horse," Misty whispered back to her. Cordelia moved to sit closer, chest flush to the girl's back. "I don't like the thought of stoppin' but it ran too long when we left the forest."

"There's a village on the other shore."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. If I'd been alone I could have pass through, but you're noticeable."

"Noticeable?" Cordelia echoed softly.

"Your eye," the wild blonde said. "If anyone came askin' questions, it'd be too easy to remember ya were there."

"I'm sorry."

Misty twisted in her seat, frowning lightly, and she pressed a kiss to Cordelia's temple before turning back to the front, covering the woman's hand with hers.

They rode for another half hour, the animal becoming slower and slower to where Cordelia thought it would die of exhaustion beneath them, but Misty pushed it to the edge of the God's Eye lake, the waters still underneath a cloudy sky.

The wild blonde dropped to the ground first and held Cordelia's waist in between strong hands to help her down after her, the woman tittering on weak legs. Misty helped her to sit in the grasses, shorter here, and took the time to bring the beast to the water's edge a dozen feet away, leaving Cordelia to eat whatever breakfast she'd hurriedly grabbed before they'd left the camp.

"Do ya need to sleep?" Misty sat beside the woman, eyes on the ruins across the way, the towers broken and cracked and melted together into masses of black stone.

"I slept," Cordelia replied. "Do you?"

"I'll be good, don't worry 'bout me. I've stayed up longer before." The wild blonde looked down at her hands, shame running through her veins and in her bowed head. "Delia?"

The blue and black eyed girl glanced at her, pausing between bites into staling bread.

"I'm sorry about this, about grabbin' ya and draggin' ya across the country. I don't even know why ya followed me, ya don't even know me." Cordelia sighed and let her forehead fall to a strong shoulder, rubbing there as she mulled over her thoughts. "You're not the one trying to kill me."

"I could be puttin' us in bigger danger."

"Oh, that's a given," Cordelia laughed lightly. "And I do know you, in a way. And I know that I'd rather be running around on a dying horse with you than be left to my mother and Chad Baratheon." She looked up into worried blue-green eyes. "Where are you taking us, Misty?"

"Riverrun would be too obvious, wouldn't it? They'd think we'd ran there, so we'd run to the Neck instead to try and lose them, to house Reed. But then they'd think of that too, they'd go there first and catch us," Misty murmured. She trailed her hand through grass, pulling and tearing at blades. "They'll go to the Neck, so we'll go to Riverrun."

Cordelia smiled softly. "This is well thought out."

"I've been runnin' all my life, I know how it works now," the wild blonde replied. She turned her gaze away. "I guess you'll be seein' my home after all."

"You thought I wouldn't have? You'd invited me over for the summer," Cordelia said gently.

"I thought ya were entertainin' me, I thought I'd leave King's Landin' and I'd never see ya again, whatever you might have told me last night."

"I meant it," the older blonde whispered. "I meant it all."

"I'm really sorry, this is all my fault." Misty's head fell in between her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks and down her arms. "I shouldn't have gone to the tournament, I shouldn't have met ya."

"The Starks would still be coming down from the north and my mother would still despise me," Cordelia soothed. She pulled Misty's hands away to gaze at her red rimmed eyes, passing her thumb over a wet jaw.

"Ya'd have married Hank Baratheon and you'd be safe."

"You think?" the older woman laughed. "You think he cared even an ounce for me? I was a prize, Misty, a prize with a name and a dowry."

"I don't care about no name, I don't care about no money," Misty murmured. "And I care for ya too much. It's my downfall, isn't it?"

Cordelia grimaced lightly, her nails raking down the back of the Mudfish's neck, and she leaned in to kiss her, something sloppy that didn't last long but that stopped Misty's whimperings enough that the older blonde could speak to her.

"Whatever happens, I'm grateful to have met you, I'm grateful that you'd put yourself in such dangers to save me, you could have run without me and been so much farther by now but you stayed back for me. I know you care, and I care too." She pressed another kiss to Misty's jaw. "Once we're safe, we'll talk about this, whatever this is."

"When will we be safe? Fiona Lannister will chase us to the end of the world," Misty said softly, mouth hovering above Cordelia's. "Maybe I want ya now."

Cordelia breathed against her, unable to answer her but for a shrug of her shoulders. She took a moment, her eyes closed. "Let's get to Riverrun first, Misty, please. I can't fall for you now."

"Too late," Misty whispered back. She kissed her and Cordelia embraced her back, arm wrapping around her neck and pulling her until the girl had to push her back into the grass. She dropped her head to the woman's shoulder, holding her close by her waist. "I'll keep ya safe, Delia." She looked up into mismatched eyes, finding them tearing up.

"I know you will, Misty, I know you will," the woman replied.

They fell asleep under the afternoon sun, wind howling past and with Cordelia flitting in and out of dreams, Misty hidden in the crook of her neck. She played with the scarred skin she could find, tracing the patterns the fire had left there, the girl fidgeting but not waking from her exhausted state, no matter her words minutes before.

Cordelia cried, the thought of the last two weeks too much for her to stay calm, and she let the tears fall between Hank and her mother and the Mudfish in her arms. It was too much, too quick, and she knew she was being selfish asking for safety first, but perhaps Misty was being selfish asking for love instead.

For all the words and declarations of caring and being grateful, she did love her back, and it hurt to think that she was choosing this girl she barely knew over a woman that had given birth to her and would perhaps never take her back into her good graces, no matter how she came crawling back. But the wild blonde was genuine in her quick tempered affections and it was too late now for her to back out, her heart was echoing Misty's drumming noise.

Misty's head snapped up minutes later, breathing hard through her nose, her fingers tightening around Cordelia's sides as she gazed around furtively, whimpering. The older woman sat up after her, trying to shush her, but the blue-green eyed girl turned to watch her, pushing her hands away.

"Do ya hear that?"

"Misty, hear what?"

"War drums."

OOOoooOOO

Lord Chad Baratheon did his best to ignore the pleas and wails of the wretched beneath his horse as he rode through King's Landing's River Gate. The smell of the city had been downwind and unbearable for hours, but here he wanted to gag, the smell of fish sure to imprint in his clothes. Beside him, the queen's sellsword held a handkerchief to his nose and mouth, one hand holding his reins as they followed Fiona Lannister and the guards surrounding her, the men on foot pushing citizens out of the way and calling out for freedom of the ruler's passage.

Fiona Lannister had been awkwardly silent from Kingswood on, the disappearance of both the Mudfish and her daughter throwing her into a cold rage that neither man wanted to try and warm. She'd sent men after the pair but no word had been heard from them and Chad was beginning to worry for her tension levels. It was what had killed his own father in the end.

That and the knife through his ribs.

The stag grimaced as they crossed into Fishmonger's Square, the smell here more pungent than anything before, the sounds of metal being banged on loud from the Street of Steel meandering off on the side. They took the Hook to Aegon's High Hill, the Red Keep overhead blocking the sun, making him shiver beneath his antlered crown.

The City's Watch loomed overhead on the keep's ramparts, watching as the group passed through the gate and into the castle's courtyard. One of the Goldcloaks broke from the line of soldiers and stepped up to take Chad's horse's reins, and the young man dropped to the ground, groaning when his sleeping foot smacked onto the sanded way. He looked up and found the queen was already on her way inside, yelling for their mounts to be taken to the stables, and he and her lover followed after her quickly, knowing they would be locked out if they weren't in her shadow. They were led to the council chamber through the Great Hall, their steps echoing on the marble floors and around the columned room, swords clinking against their chainmail.

Fiona threw her riding gloves onto the table and fell into the chair at the head of it, motioning for them to do the same. She glanced sideways at one of the servants. "Anything from the rookery?"

"The rookery, your majesty?" the boy asked. He scrunched his nose as he gazed around, a little lost. "I, I don't know, ma'am."

"Go find out then," she barked. "Faster!"

He scrambled out of the room, bare feet slapping on the floor and out into the hallway.

"Don't be so hard on him, we've only just arrived," the Axeman sighed as he sat.

"I was arriving and now I'm here," she replied. "Letters should be waiting and the fires should be roaring."

"The chimney's cold," Chad muttered. He stood and reached for the bottle of wine placed at the far end of the table, raising his eyebrows as he asked the queen and her man silently if they wanted to join in. He slowly poured the red alcohol into three glasses as he spoke. "My men will arrive by the end of the week, will you have room to house them alongside yours and the City's Watch? I am not poor in forces."

"They'll stay near the Iron Gate," Fiona said. "Ah, finally."

The servant came running back in, halting steps away from the queen to bow quickly. His arms were full of letters and he placed them on the table quickly, shaking off a raven feather as he did. The Axeman picked it up to twirl it in his fingers, lightly amused with the boy.

"Leave us," the queen commanded. The boy bowed again, then to the Baratheon lord, and finally to the Axeman, before leaving and closing the heavy wooden door behind him.

"Lots happened while we were in forests galore," Chad mused, eyeing the pile. "Is that grey and blue I spy?"

"Not the Stark wolf," the queen's lover said. The stag shrugged lightly as Fiona began to read her mail.

"We'll have to put your men outside the gates after all, Lord Chad," she muttered. "There won't be room now."

Chad's eyebrow raised and he bristled lightly. "Why?"

"The Freys have joined the Boltons in their march south."

"Whatever for?"

"They seem to think that they'll receive better treatment and more land if we win." Fiona threw the letter back onto the table. "They've joined us in our plight."

The Axeman smiled. "So you're taking the Boltons on against the Starks after all. Not that you can ignore the northern devils. At least there's the Freys. More men can never hurt."

"I'll believe it when I see it. The twins agreeing with each other is-" Chad scoffed."Well, it'd be a miracle."

"The twins or the Twins?" the Axeman asked.

Chad held his glass out to him and they drank together. "You're popular with most of the northern families, at least. What's that?"

"It's word of the Eyrie from the lookouts." Fiona ripped the scroll open, scowling. "Knowing the Arryn bitch-" She paused as she read, and her fingers began to shake. She ripped the parchment apart, the pieces falling to the floor in tatters as the men watched, astounded. "She fights us. Dumb bitch is taking the opportunity to attack."

"They have ten thousand men at most, it's-"

"It's a liability!" Fiona snapped. Chad held out his hands, apologizing silently as he took a step back from the table. "They'll be a pain in my backside, as the Arryns have always been. I swear to the Seven that if they weren't hidden up in their towers, they'd be dead and thrown out their own sky cells."

"Once we eradicate them, we'll have all the time in the world to do that," the Axeman assured her soothingly.

The queen sneered. "You two do realize they'll arrive at King's Landing at roughly the same time? How do you plan on stopping them?"

"Easily," Chad said. "I stand at one gate with my men, you with yours at another, and the Starks and Arryns clash themselves against our shields. With the city at our back, we win." He drank again.

She narrowed her eyes, a dark smile overcoming her features as she placed her chin in her hands sweetly. "And the Targaryens? The Greyjoys? They're maneuvering at Dragonstone."

"Shit," the Baratheon lord said, looking to the ceiling. "I'd forgotten them."

The Axeman reached for the pitcher and filled his glass to the brim. "I'll take care of them."

"You think highly of yourself," Fiona scoffed. "What army will you run?"

"I'll think of something. The city watch, some sellswords. It'll be fine, darling."

Her sneer grew and she stood, ignoring the rest of the letters at her place, and walked away with her glass of wine. "Fetch me if you hear of my daughter." Chad turned to the Axeman, a small smile on his face as the man across from him shrugged.

The younger man reached for the last parchment. "She didn't quite finish her mail," he hummed. "Think she would mind?"

"Do you value your hands?"

"It's fine." Chad shook his head as he opened the letter. "If anybody's to be dismembered for stealing, it'll be the Tully girl first. I'll have time to escape."

OOOoooOOO

"Don't bite," Lana warned, glancing sideways at the blonde. Mary's blue eyes flashed as she grinned and brought her mouth to the brunette's elbow again, nipping lightly. The northern queen shifted against her, knocking her lightly in the teeth, trying to shake her off, and the girl scowled and burrowed into Lana's side, arm thrown over the woman's stomach.

The blonde had changed for the better, had come to the north as a girl unsure of herself, afraid of the light, and now as they descended south Lana couldn't help the way her heart swelled with pride at the sudden courage and self-worth the girl had for herself. She'd begun to fight back, little shows of strength that had the queen laughing in how, even though the fire burned in blue eyes, sweet the girl looked. She figured she'd marked her in the best of ways. She'd met the northern lord and in so retained her innocence, but her soul was ablaze.

Set free.

The brunette took a moment to look her over, wrist still moving over paper as she wrote. Though the girl was as naked as her nameday and as naked as her in their shared camp tent, she'd worn her fox furs to bed and over her shoulders. Lana hadn't even tried telling her not to, she'd been so ecstatic about shooting the animal down herself that the lord of Winterfell couldn't help but amuse her and let her wear them everywhere.

"You always work."

Lana laughed incredulously. "That's the biggest lie you've ever told, I hardly work because I'm always with you."

"Always isn't enough," Mary sighed. She pressed her face into the wolf furs covering them and let her fingers trail on Lana's burning skin. "Please?"

"We're at war, Mary, I have to get these letters signed to be able to send them." The brunette motioned down to the stack of parchments in her lap. "You can draft them all you want, but you can't forge my signature."

"I could try," Mary taunted. "And then it'd go faster. Why do you insist on reading everything before signing?"

"Who knows what the hell you wrote."

The blonde groaned and scowled when Lana pushed her wandering hand away. After a few seconds of impatience, she leaned up again and nibbled on an errant wrist, blue eyes fixed on black ones.

"I said don't bite."

Mary giggled against her skin. "I know you like it."

Lana sighed through her nose at her, but couldn't dispute the girl's comment. She moved her knee slightly, placing it against Mary's side, and pushed her as gently as she could so that she could finish, but the blonde latched onto her thigh. Her free hand ran to Lana's waist and pulled her closer.

Lana's hand pushed a stray lock of hair back behind Mary's ear, her thumb tracing circles into her jaw as her feather quill scribbled furiously.

"Five minutes, can you give me that?"

"Three."

"Mary."

"Fine, but make them quick."

The brunette did as best as she could, ink dribbling over the papers as Mary continued nipping at her side, having found her way to her ribs. As much as it annoyed her, she couldn't bring herself to push the girl off.

She finally threw her parchments down to the bottom of the bed after having blown air on the drying ink, and she yelped lightly as Mary pushed her back into pillows to straddle her and bite at the expanse of skin over her neck. Lana's black eyes closed as the blonde sucked on her pulse point, and her hands found their way onto stable hips.

"You're such an animal."

Mary grinned against her skin. "I have the best teacher." She went to kiss her lord, tongue darting out, but Lana pushed her back when someone called from outside, voice strong. She enveloped Mary in her arms and held her to the side, looking towards the tent's opening when a guard entered, eyes cast downward.

"Yes?"

"We've found two women moving inside the camp, my Lord."

"Whores," the woman replied carelessly.

"One's in armor."

"Shit," Lana sighed. She passed a hand over her forehead. "I'll be out in a minute, hold them inside the council room." The guard nodded and left, closing the flaps behind him and fastening them. She went to move but the blonde at her side held her back.

"Lana!"

"I'm sorry, I have to take care of this," the brunette murmured. She pressed a kiss to Mary's cheek, lingering there for a moment. "I'll be back soon, just go to sleep." The girl grasped for her arm, tugging her back down to kiss her again, whimpering, and Lana climbed back over her despite herself. She pulled away with a groan and Mary sat up after her.

"Can I come?"

"Can you keep your hands to yourself?"

Mary shrugged and Lana nodded back at her, smiling when the nude blonde stood and went over to her, reaching for the dress she'd left on the chair.

They didn't take long to dress and would have taken even less time if Lana hadn't held Mary to her, hands traveling down her back.

The northern queen's scowl was hard when they walked outside and into the cold night, the moon high in the sky, and Mary followed close behind, arms crossed over her chest to testament her now sour mood, eyes on Lana.

The council room held the table Lana ran her operations from, a map drawn in wood burns over a plank of dark oak and tokens in shapes of animals and sigils placed over it, chairs pushed in beneath it and the candles burning low. She'd left mere hours before and she hadn't been planning to be back before the sun was up.

Ser Kit was there already, his hand on the hilt of his sword as he spoke with the Karstark son, the father too old to fight and left at home, and he glanced at Lana, acknowledging her presence and Mary's. He had understood that the blonde should come, the lord of Winterfell too attached and bound to worry if she'd left the girl by her relative self, but he didn't quite understand why she sat in on the meetings. It occurred to him that she wasn't some fancy of Lana's, that she was being taught and that if the queen could, she'd let Mary rule beside her.

Not that anything could stop Lana Stark when she had an idea.

"The line guards almost let them through," he called. "They thought it was you, with the armor."

"And what made them pause?"

"The blonde curls."

They shared a smile and she came to stand at the edge of the table, Mary hovering over her shoulder, eyes narrowed on the map.

"Let them in, would you?"

Kit nodded and left the tent, coming back seconds later with two blondes surrounded by four guards, their arms tied behind them, the bottom of their clothes stained horribly with mud and torn in places. The two looked up, one with anger in her blue-green gaze and the other meek, something that reminded the brunette of Mary when they'd first met

Lana's eyebrows raised. "Lady Cordelia."

The girl with one dead eye winced lightly, turning her head. "Lord Stark."

"And here I'd thought I'd seen everything, but the princess of Westeros as a spy? Surely your mother wouldn't stoop this low."

The wild blonde beside Cordelia Tyrell glanced sideways at her companion. "You know her?"

"Is that envy or jealousy in your voice?" Lana asked. Next to her, Mary bristled openly. "I met her at her mother's second wedding. Or was it her third?" she mused, more for her blonde lover than herself.

"Second," Cordelia replied softly.

Lana nodded at the girl, and bowed lightly to the wild blonde. "Lord Lana Stark of Winterfell, queen and warden in the north."

"Misty Tully of Riverrun."

"The Mudfish?" the brunette wondered. "In front of me? I wasn't told you'd left the Neck."

"The Neck wasn't told I left the Neck," Misty admitted.

Lana watched her for a moment before turning back to Cordelia, the blonde shifting her weight. "Perhaps the chains can go?" She turned to Kit and he unfastened their wrists from their bonds. Exhausted, Cordelia fell into the chair the northern queen motioned to, but the wild blonde stayed standing. "What were you doing running around my camp?"

"We're-" Misty took a moment to look to Cordelia, but the blue and black eyed girl wouldn't meet her gaze. "We're trying to get to Moat Cailin."

"That's a little far from both your homes. What's in Moat Cailin?"

"Why are you so far south?" Misty asked back.

"You're sitting in the middle of fifteen thousand northern men, do you think your cheekiness will get you anywhere? Sit down."

The wild blonde did as she was told and glanced down at her feet, rubbing the heel of one boot against her other foot, scratching at the mud there. She only looked up when her initial blush had passed, the lord of Winterfell gazing her over with black eyes.

"We're in the south because we're at war, Lady Misty, though I'm sure you two are far from not knowing this." She looked to Cordelia. "Your mother wouldn't tell you anything? Wouldn't let you overhear?" The Tyrell girl glanced at Misty, the two unable to respond, and it was enough answer for Lana. "This wasn't meant to be more than justice, Lady Misty," she said softly. "Whatever the others may say. This was only me catching a serf that's broken his oath to my house, but I wasn't able to catch him and now he's two days ahead of us, three soon." She fingered the playing pieces, her thumb running over a wolf's ear.

"I don't consider you killing your husband justice," Cordelia murmured. "Perhaps you shouldn't have married him."

"You know nothing," Mary spit out.

"Peace, Mary."

Misty shook her head, reaching for her companion's hand. "We just need a way across, please, to the Neck. Back to the Neck."

"I can't do that for you," Lana said. "My army extends too far back and the Freys are running our tail ends as they too run to the capital for the queen's approval and a chance at my death, I have to send men there to keep our middle from being undone. You may go but if I remember well, you don't especially like the Freys, Lady Tully. No, I can't help you across the Twins, either of them. If you want to go, I won't stop you, but I can't give up men for your running away."

"We're not running away."

"Aren't you?" The brunette turned and reached for a slip of parchment, holding it up to the two. "They've put a bounty on your head, Tully, for the murder of Hank Baratheon and the kidnapping of Cordelia Tyrell. Are you a murderer and a kidnapper?"

"He fell and she came of her own free will."

"Then I'm not married to Oliver Bolton."

Lana had Ser Kit find the two blondes room to stay in until they took off in the morning again, herself leaving for her own tent with Mary in tow, hand reaching for the girl's in the darkness. From their place in the camp, Cordelia watched them disappear.

She turned to Misty and their tent flaps closed behind her. "We'll never get to Moat Cailin. Not with the Freys up in arms." She passed a hand through her hair as the Mudfish sat on a cot. "I have a feeling Lana Stark merely pushed through the bridge. She doesn't look like someone who would pay any toll to walk anywhere."

The wild blonde glanced at her, brow furrowed. "I know."

"So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Misty said. She rubbed her hands over her face, groaning lightly. "Why don't ya just run back to King's Landing with my head over your shoulder? It'd be easier for the both of us."

Cordelia growled deep in her throat but said nothing, sitting down beside the girl.

The Mudfish placed her chin in the palm of her hand and tilted her head to look at her. "I can't run away anymore, Delia."

"Misty-"

"No, no, Cordelia. I can't. I should be facin' my fears, like Stark. I want to be brave for ya, I want ya to be able to look at me like that girl looks at Lana."

"It's easier to do that if we're both alive." The woman took Misty's hand in hers. "We don't have to do anything, Misty. We don't have to be them, just us. And if we don't stay, we don't stay. Would you think I'd hold it against you? Your intelligence over your need to please your demons?"

"I'd hold it against myself," Misty murmured. "Your mother's wanted my family's demise for years, as anybody has. Your step-father and the Twins and every little shit house in the Riverlands."

"I'm not going to change your mind, am I?" Cordelia asked softly. "How long have you known you'd do this?"

"Delia-"

"Don't lie to me, Misty Tully. How long? How long has it been since you made up your mind?"

Misty looked away. "Since we left the Kingswood."

"The men of Riverrun?"

"On their way here." The girl laughed lightly. "Ravens fly fast." She shook her head. "I can't do this anymore. I stand and fight. I stand and fight and I'll be at Lana Stark's back."

Cordelia sighed. "Misty."

"When my men arrive, I'll have a scout party take you back to Riverrun, so that you can be safe. I'm not a complete idiot, I won't put your life in more danger than it needs to be now."

"You are an idiot," the older blonde snapped. "Because I'm not leaving your side. Fiona Lannister is your demon as much as she is mine. I'm done living in her shadow."

"The light might kill you," Misty said softly.

"Then so be it."

OOOoooOOO

"You said you'd take care of it, you said you'd investigate what'd happened and that we'd hang whoever did this!"

Tate Targaryen did a half turn on himself, his tongue tight against the insides of his teeth as he looked over his wife Violet with his black eyes. "I know," he said. His salt wife.

"And yet!" she laughed bitterly. "My mother is sitting in her room going crazy with worry, she can't leave her bed without thinking she'll be killed or assaulted again and my father won't do anything for it. And now you too? You promised me-"

"I can't just make a rapist out of thin air, Violet!" he yelled. He passed his fingers through his blond curls, breathing heavily. "I can't just find someone and make him up until your mother thinks she recognizes him!"

"I haven't asked anything of you, Tate, but for this," Violet said. She rounded their bed to stand before him. "Why can't you do what you said you'd do? It's been a month-"

"How do I even know she told the truth, Violet? She says one of my men, a man of Dragonstone, went and did this to her? Why should I believe someone would do that? How did he get in?" he asked. "You want to know what I think?" He stood flush to her. "I don't think she was assaulted at all."

"How dare you."

He held his hands out. "She's senile, obviously! She hasn't gotten fresh air since she got here-"

"She was raped, Tate! How do you expect her to function when what she was was ripped out of her?"

Her husband placed his hands around her neck, thumbs rubbing at her jaw, and he placed his forehead against hers, looking into a furious hazel gray gaze. He spoke softly. "She didn't want us married, that's all. She made this up and hoped we'd cancel the wedding, but now she's caught in her own lie and she has to keep it going."

She ripped away from him. "Then what did I see, Tate!"

"What you wanted to see!"

"Lord Tate-"

The two turned, the blond boy whirling around to stare the guard down. "What?" he yelled. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

The man bowed low. "Lady Constance and Lord Ben require you in the hall." He was motioned away and out of the bedroom by the young dragon lord with an angry flick of his wrist.

Tate turned to Violet as he reached for his cape, and she gazed him over pleadingly, fingers reaching for him. "You believed me before, Tate, what happened?"

He gritted his teeth at her, an inhuman noise ripped out of his throat, and she took a step back, the creature in his eyes something she'd seen before in the dark night, above her mother. "We'll talk of this when I come back. And when I come back, she's not staying for much longer. I rule, you rule. Not our ascendants."

He tightened his cloak around his shoulders and left their room, slamming the door shut behind himself before marching down the hallway, fingers raking through his curls. He willed his chest to stop heaving as he entered through dragon's teeth, and he sported a smile when he reached his mother and Violet's father, though Ben was far from smiling back.

The hall was empty but its fire lit even if they were alone, the three of them. Breakfast hadn't been cleared from the tables and the boy reached for a piece of bread, ignoring the cheese resting at the tip of a dagger set next to it. Constance slapped it out of his hand.

"Sit, Tate."

He did as he was told, scratching at his forearm idly as he waited and looked them over.

"Fiona Lannister is in King's Landing," Ben said. He held his cape in his fist, armor glinting in candlelight. "As is the Baratheon head of family."

"And?"

"And this is much more complicated than previously thought," Constance announced. "The Stark's and Bolton's personal war will spill over to the capital very soon, and the Eyrie marches down from the Mountains of the Moon."

"And?" Tate repeated.

Ben blew air out of his nose, the boy turning to look at him, fingers intertwined. "And we're going to hit them now, when she's too busy with the rest of these bastards, during the brawl. We have our men ready, we'll leave at dawn."

"Our forces," Constance added, "Will go on foot, through the coast and Duskendale, down to Rosby before King's Landing. Lord Ben will take the ships and the ironborn through to Blackwater Bay, hit them from the river in." She shifted her weight. "As reigning Dragon Lord, you'll lead the Targaryen army."

Tate sat up, grin wide. "An honor, mother."

Ben turned to his man-at-arm, the blond hadn't noticed Ser Travis had been standing there. "We have a lot of preparations to do, go to Violet and tell her I'm stealing her husband for the night. And until we come home victorious."

The man nodded and bowed to them before exiting the empty hall, steps echoing on the black tiles, but not before hearing Constance's "Don't get yourself imprisoned, Tate, or slit your throat if you do."

He shook his head as he made his way through the creature adorned keep, up to the tower where the boy and the girl's bedroom was. He found her sitting at her vanity, eyes on her reflection in the mirror, a hand passing through the tangles in her hair. He tried to ignore the bruise near her collarbone, the finger shapes it took.

"My Lady Violet, movements for King's Landing have begun. At dawn your father and husband will leave for King's Landing."

"And you?" she asked softly.

"I stay at your side."

"Right," Violet murmured. "You once promised my father to keep me alive, to protect me."

He shifted his weight. "Yes, my lady."

"Once you said you would kill for me."

Travis took a moment to answer, throat dry. "I did, my lady."

She turned to face him, hands in her lap. "I beg you, go to King's Landing with my father. And there, kill Tate. Kill him until he is anything but recognizable." She turned back to the mirror, gaze raking over herself and her flushed cheeks, red with shame and anger. "He was so disarmingly beautiful, but he has the sickness too. Kill him, Travis."

The man bowed.

OOOoooOOO

Billie Dean the Seer wondered, as she stood with her head tilted back, if the black liquid stains on the Bloody Gate belonged to the dead men who had marched afore her, steps measured and echoing down the valley. Wondered if they'd coated the stone walls with their blood before, whenever they'd been alive, some longer ago than others.

Though they made noise as they walked, the metal of their armor and weapons clanging and clinking together in a brouhaha so loud she'd had a headache their first hours, they made no other noise. They were silent. So silent shivers ran down her back with the howling winds. They said no words, made no noise. She hadn't expected this, not with the inhuman screams they'd let out in the Eyrie's hall, moon door beneath them and Ser Patrick with, at any point, the choice to open it and scatter them through the Vale.

They'd walked down from the Eyrie and through the mountains, Lady Hayden at the head of the procession on a horse silver like the moon, her cloak made of chainmail that echoed the sun when it managed to shine through the low clouds. She'd had a crown made for the occasion, something that she would surely wear on the iron throne with a certain glee. Falcon wings made of shiny metal atop a bandlet of gold, framing the sides of her face and arching for the sky. It suited her well.

If behind her was the army of the dead nestled between the men of the Vale and the clansmen, marching on, next to her was Marie atop a black horse as dark as her skin, and Ser Patrick on his gray stallion. Billie herself had fallen to the ground and given the reins of her common brown to a soldier. Hayden had called for the gate to be opened, voice carried in the wind, and now she watched as the blonde pressed the palm of her hand to the cool stones of the structure, gates disguised as a castle that restricted access in and out of the Vale.

The gate, a mesh of spike metal, stayed rusted shut, but a door off to the side opened and an armored man walked out, hands around a broad sword and with his blazon a yellow sun, a crescent moon, and a silver star, blue on white, on his chest.

He lifted his chin. "Who goes there."

Hayden's horse shifted, walking in place as she looked him over. "I do, Ser Carl Egen, Lady Hayden Arryn of the Vale, your queen of the Mountains of the Moon."

He bowed low. "You honor me with your presence, my Lady Arryn."

"And you do your capacities exceedingly well, Ser Carl, I commend you," the brunette said.

"By Day or Night shall I do the duty you appointed me to, my lady."

"Knight of the Gate, we wish to pass."

"You and your men?" he asked, gazing over the army extending back miles, the back still walking to catch up to where they'd paused.

"The Bloody Gate must open for the night," she replied.

"If it must be."

The blonde looked away, dark gaze back on the fingers against the blood coated mountain. Behind her the metal gate was raised by the men inside the keep and by the knight who had disappeared back inside, struggling with its own weight, and the army began to move again, Hayden leading them through with a flourish of her hand. The ground shook beneath them.

"Can you feel the dead in the rock?" Marie asked softly. Billie turned. The woman had appeared at her side, watching her from above and with her mount snorting cold air.

"I can hear them. Can you?"

"I can see them."

Billie's gaze slid to the ground. "You are brave for following your men to King's Landing."

"I am not just their chief, but their clansmen as well. It is not only expected but my choice," Marie said. "You are brave for staying at the Eyrie."

"You placate me."

"We all have our strengths. From the safety of your home you would still know of the tides of change. Perhaps that is braver, to know of the dying souls but to not be able to help?"

Billie bristled but she said nothing, and Marie smirked as she tightened her cloak around her shoulders.

"I do hope the winds blow in your favor, Billie Dean, and that the smell of tarnished blood doesn't keep you from sleeping."

"May they whisper at your back and keep you alive, Marie, daughter of Legba," the blonde replied.

"I will come home to claim my kingdom."

Billie gritted her teeth, black eyes flashing against Marie's occasional reds. "It shall be waiting."

The woman spurred her horse on and she passed through the gate with the passing dead men and her clansmen at her back and on foot, calling out their steps in grunts. Billie met Hayden's gaze when the brunette turned her horse on itself, and the Arryn nodded once before going herself through the Bloody Gate, leaving the blonde to go back to the Eyrie by herself, a party of five to escort her there.

The Knight of the Gate, from atop his twin watchtowers, had opened the narrow mountain pass to his lady and her men, and Billie watched them amble away.

Silent.

OOOoooOOO

The dirty blonde shifted in her seat, the crown atop her head pleasantly heavy, and she tightened her hold on her husband's hand, their fingers intertwined in the negative space between their thrones, a sun at her back and a spear at his.

Newly married and newly crowned, the princess of Dorne, Madison Nymeros Martell, watched her subjects come one by one and bow to her and Kyle, giving their allegiance, before taking a space at the edges of the room. The crowd slowly grew larger as the morning went on, beginning with the lesser houses and its people and ending with the uncles and aunts and cousins to the crown.

The princess dowager came last. Stripped of her functions but not her titles, Alicia had given her seat and crown and son to Madison, and now she knelt before them as she gave her life, too.

The wedding the night before had been a sordid affair for the couple, he'd known that she'd known of his mother's ill willed escapades from the way she'd looked him over as they stood beneath the sun decorated stained glass and said their vows (or, nodded to their vows, in his case). She hadn't brought the molestation up and he hadn't wanted to hear of them anyway, his gaze on the marble floor beneath them as they waltzed in hues of orange and yellow, her gown a deep burgundy, and the flowers from the gardens. Now the girl knew why Alicia liked the place and all the children inhabiting it.

He'd tried hard not to step on her feet while dancing that night, and when they'd been led to their room by the drunk guests, all hollering louder than the rest, she'd stayed far from him after closing the door. He'd been more than happy to take the couch and leave her the bed, and she hadn't been able act like she'd ignored his whimperings as the sun rose.

Madison blinked almost lazily as she watched Alicia kneel slowly before them, wincing when her knee landed on the floor, but she looked up with a smile tugging at her lips anyway as she addressed both them and the congregation. "Prince Kyle, Princess Madison, I vow my allegiance to you until the days where I can breathe no more. Until then I am yours, as is Dorne and her people, as is the sun we stand under."

"We take your allegiance, Princess Alicia," Madison replied, bowing her head lightly. She didn't want her crown to slide off her hair. Beside her, Kyle nodded shortly. "And we thank you for it."

Alicia's smile grew. "What would you have your first order as royalty of Dorne be, your highness?"

The dirty blonde shared a quick look with Kyle before sitting up in her throne. "Westeros."

A light murmur went through the hall, giggles accompanied with small conversation breaking out in pockets as the nobles waited for her to continue.

"We wish to take her." Madison stood, pushing the folds of her dress behind her. "The continent is at war with itself, this is the opportunity to run up the Prince's Pass and the Marshes and over the Torentine and retake the territories we have lost over the years to the king on the iron throne."

"We?" a voice sounded.

She ignored it. "Tomorrow we march from Sunspear with the men who are able to fight for their kingdom and their sovereigns. Word will be sent to Hellholt and to Sandstone so that they may be ready for our arrival." She took a step down from the dais. "The Lannister queen has removed all her forces from our borders so that she may save her own skin at King's Landing. We will be free to move into the Stormlands and the Reach."

The hall had fallen awkwardly silent, its people shifting on the balls of their feet as the orders sunk in, as they realized Madison, and in extent, Kyle, were far from joking.

Alicia began to stand. "Anything else?"

Madison smiled and stepped down to be level with her. "In fact, yes." She glanced at Zoe, Queenie, and Nan. "Too relaxed is your court, how many times have I thought it? Said it? In Castamere, criminals are taken care of. Thieves' hands are cut off and rapists are sent to the Wall to live in blistering cold until their cocks fall off. There's a lack of discipline here, criminals aren't taken care of when they should be. Something needs to be done, something like-"

"A hanging."

The room's eyes turned to Kyle, the boy with his chin in his hand and the words having left his lips. He lifted his gaze from the floor, shrugging lightly.

"A hanging would fix that," Madison said softly. "Yes."

"Hang who?" Alicia asked. "Who has not, here in Dorne, been dealt with?"

Madison's hazel eyes turned onto her. "You." she whispered. "In Castamere, we don't take child molesters lightly. I'd hoped when I'd come that you would understand what it means to have a Westerosi in your house, now maybe you will?"

"How dare-!" The guards stepped forward, spears tipped down as they encircled the former princess dowager. "Do you not have justice in Westeros?" Alicia demanded.

"Yes. And your crown prince finds you guilty."

OOOoooOOO

"I ain't strong enough to fight anyone by myself, but I can join ya. I want to join ya. I want to prove that I'm not who my parents were, lords and ladies run out of their own homes and made to live off another house's backs until they died. I want to prove that I won't be givin' up who I am, just as ya do now. And ya don't have to worry about me pullin' no move, I don't want no throne." Misty paused, looking away. "I just wanna be left alone."

Lana watched her, black eyes raking over the blonde as she shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the war table between them. "You would swear to me."

"I would. Me and the men of Riverrun, who are on their way here now."

The lord of Winterfell's eyebrows raised. "And Cordelia Tyrell?"

Misty wouldn't meet her eyes. "She supports me in this."

"She's stubborn?" Lana asked.

"Ya wouldn't imagine."

"I think I can," the brunette replied. She spared a look to Ser Kit who'd begun to laugh in the corner of the room. He turned away. "I appreciate the bravery, Lady Misty, but-"

"It ain't no bravery, it's my pride. Let me have this one thin', please."

"And if you die?"

"Then I'll die with my pride intact." Misty chewed at the inside of her cheek. "Or what's left of it."

Lana watched her for a moment, black eyes narrowed, before glancing back at Kit. "Did we bring all the sigils?"

"I brought it with me," he replied. He reached into his cloak and brandished a wooden token, painted black and in the shape of a trout. "I thought she might veer." Misty watched in disbelief as Lana smiled and took the fish to place it on the map, by the wolves and behind the flayed man.

"Ya knew?" she asked softly.

Kit smiled.

"Rest with your mind easy, Misty," Lana said. "You have a place in my army." She looked up, fingers leaving the map. "I've heard of your skills, I wish I could have seen them first hand before now, like Hank Baratheon did. A horse will be given to you, along with a battalion."

"Thank ya, my Lord Stark."

"Keep Tyrell on a short leash, I don't need another blonde running around camp with her head held high."

Misty bowed. "My Lord."

Kit held the tent opened for her as she left, nodding to her as she passed, chainmail clinking.

"How many men from Riverrun, do you reckon?" Lana asked. The man shrugged lightly, hands resting on his hips. She sighed lightly when he did, his hands slipping to the knots at the base of his back. "We move tomorrow for Sow's Horn. Bolton's at Brindlewood."

"Yes, my lord."

Lana rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "We need to catch up to him."

"We do."

"Go to bed, Ser Kit, I'll do the same. The gods know we need it."

He bowed to her before holding the tent flap open for her, and the queen in the north took the lead, giving him a soft 'good night' before disappearing through the camp, headed for her own quarters.

Mary, even though it was way past midnight, had stayed up waiting for her lover, sitting up in their bed and with a book in between her hands. Something about the families of Westeros. Lana pressed a kiss to her cheek before moving to remove her cloak and her chestplate, black eyes on the girl.

"You look angry," she said.

"I am."

The brunette's lips pursed as she placed Bone Shatter around one of the bed's post to hang in its scabbard. She reached for the bottom of her shirt. "Why?"

Mary snapped the book onto the sheets, looking up as she sighed, exasperated. "He's too far now, Lana. He's at King's Landing's doors. If you enter the city after him, we're lost. You tried to catch him, you didn't." She raised her book again, grimacing. "Give up."

"You didn't have any issues getting on that horse and following me down the Kingsroad."

"I thought we'd have caught him by now!" Mary snapped. She sat up on her knees and leaned in to face Lana, tugging her down to her by her collar. "Why are you going after him? He can't do anything to you from the capital while you stay in Winterfell. Go back now and he'll have to come home one day, you can get him then, absolve northern justice on his soul."

"And move the entire column back over the Green Fork? Do you realize what you're asking of me?"

"Do you realize what you're asking of me!" the blonde echoed. She made Lana face her. "You could die, Lana. There's nothing for you in King's Landing but cold bones and a lost cause."

"Did you know Spivey is with them? That he's running alongside Bolton?" Lana gritted her teeth. "Did you know your attacker is walking free?"

"You let him go free! So that you could get Oliver out of his hole! This was your idea!"

"You weren't complaining when I cut off his hands and made him crawl back to the Dreadfort!" The brunette pulled away. "If I remember well, you enjoyed the thought of it. I'm avenging you, Mary."

"You're avenging yourself," Mary spit. "Don't add me into your calculations, I took my revenge on Spivey. You're bloodthirsty now."

"For the man that raped me and took my child and who wore away at my father until he died, tormented and weeping. Would you do any less?" Lana looked her over. "Don't say you're not attracted to the idea."

Mary bit at the inside of her cheek, blue eyes sparking with anger. "You could die."

"I could, but I won't." The brunette leaned forward to knock her forehead with the girl's. "I need to do this, you know that."

The blonde sighed, the sound rattling in her throat. "I know."

"Are you still angry?"

"Your ambition will be the death of you."

Lana hummed, and Mary grunted back.

The blonde stayed sour through the night though she accepted Lana's displays of affection either way, the two keeping their voices relatively low all the way into dawn, into a cold sun that next morning. The dew had frozen in place, in blue whites, but now it was being trampled into shades of dark green that wet both boots and moods as the camp became alive.

Mary had followed Lana to her war council, a light frown thrown across her ivory features, as the captains of the woman's battalions trekked ahead of her, Ser Kit and the Karstark son, Luke, a young man with bright eyes and a charming smile, and Lady Misty followed by a nervous Cordelia, the blonde biting at the inside of her thumb.

The brunette took a seat at the head of the table, the rest doing the same as they waited for the lieutenants to filter in slowly, men from White Harbor and Ramsgate and Deepwood Motte who would lay their lives for the North, as she would for them. When the tent was filled to the brim, soldier spilling out the sides, Lana stood to mirror her men.

"We move past God's Eye today, following along the Kingsroad but staying off of it. We're too many to be invisible, but I don't want any poor farmer to see us coming as they're carting goods to the capital," she said. She looked up. "Where are my ends now?"

"They caught up at dinner last night," Luke replied. "They've had time to rest."

"You'll add the men of Riverrun to the flanks when they arrive, Lady Tully has been kind enough to join us. Until they arrive she'll run the men of Barrowton." She glanced at Misty. "The father could not come. He has gout." The blonde nodded. "Ser Kit?"

"If we march at double the pace, we can catch Bolton before Hayford Castle."

"But?"

Kit shook his head. "My Lord-"

"But," Lana repeated. "Ser Kit?"

The man shifted his weight, intertwining his fingers in front of his belt as he looked away. "But we can't march at double the pace, not if we want the men able to stand and fight immediately."

"If we follow at normal pace, we pass King's Landing's gates," Mary enunciated.

Lana glanced at her. "The direwolf does not back down," the brunette said harshly. "I am not letting him go. Not now, not this far. Step down, Septa Mary." Ice blue eyes sparked and she knew she would pay for it later. "If we run into the capital's streets, we do."

"What of Fiona Lannister?" Misty asked, fists against the table. "What of the Greyjoys and Targaryens?"

"I want Bolton's head on a plate, sooner than later," Lana said. "Do what you want with the rabble."

There was a flutter at the back of the men and they parted to let a guard through, panting. "Lord Stark-"

"Speak."

"A scouting party, outside the camp. To see you."

"Banners?" she asked.

"The red lion of Castamere."

The woman gritted her teeth as she dropped her head, shoulder blades knotted together. She took in a breath and stood to her full height, sparing a look at Mary. "Hold them there, I'll go." She pursed her lips as she flicked her arm out at Kit, and the young knight nodded and began pushing his way through the crowd, parting the men for her. Cordelia pulled Misty out of the brunette's way, wondering, working, eye on the woman. Lana paused long enough to place a stiff kiss to Mary's temple. The blonde pinched the small of her back, a reassuring nod exchanged between the two.

She took her horse, the mount fitted at all times now that they were so close to Bolton, and galloped her way to the outskirts of camp, a five minute ride that left the stallion winded as she thundered past her men, Kit following a moment later.

She looked down the nose of her horse at the lord of Castamere as she rounded him several times over, her men-at-arms with their spears down and encircling him. The man had come in full armor, sporting red on yellow, a distorted mirror to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock.

She narrowed her eyes as she came to a halt, pulling on the reins and the mount snorting. "Lord Charles."

He looked to the spears against his chest plate and nodded, light gaze finally looking up to the woman. "Stark."

"You're far from the Westerlands, why come all the way here?"

"The Westerlands have become a toxic environment, as it turns out," Charles said, bowing his head. He laughed lightly. "You wouldn't believe the amount of troops bearing the rose lion that have passed by our home."

"I can only imagine," Lana responded dryly. "Why are you here, Reyne?"

The man pushed at a metal tip with a finger, eyes on it. "We had to marry off our only niece to Dorne so that we could barely survive off of her dowry, under this Lannister rule. We've been bled dry, and yet all they do is stab us still." He looked away. "I regret it, I regret Madison, but I can't change her now. But I can change us."

"Speak quickly, Lord Charles, you've taken enough of my time already."

"We join you, my wife and I, and the men of Castamere."

She watched him, tugging on her reins as her horse whined and stomped the ground, before speaking. "If we lose, we die as traitors to the crown. You realize this."

"With all due respect, Lord Stark, I died a long time ago."

OOOoooOOO

"Repeat what you told me, please," the Axeman prodded. He glanced behind him. "The man received a raven."

Chad sucked at his bottom lip, scowling as he stood before the Lannister queen on her iron throne, the melted swords glinting in the light streaming through the seven pointed stars above them. She raised an eyebrow beneath her crown, chin in her hands and legs folded as she watched him from a height. Beside her on the dais, her lover glanced over the Baratheon lord.

"Well?" she asked. "Don't be wasting my time, Lord Chad."

"I've received word of the Vale from-" he paused and shook his head, "A little bird of mine."

"A little lover bird of his," the Axeman murmured.

Chad threw him a look, stiffening. "Lady Hayden is at Saltpans."

OOOoooOOO

Dandy breathed in the salty air, letting out a large sigh as he let his eyes rake over Evenfall Hall and the island of Tarth. He'd heard the rumors about this isle, all its riches in sapphires and mines, and he made a mental note to, once king, proclaim the precious stones as part of the crown's treasure.

He'd make a sword hilt.

Here in the Narrow Sea's channel, with Essos to their right and the seven kingdoms to their left, the waters were calm, though he knew that farther north, storms this late in the summer could be disastrous, turning into hurricanes at a whim.

From Lys they'd bordered the Disputed Lands into the Stepstones, pausing at the free city of Tyrosh to fetch fresh water, but not stopping long enough to be suspicious or be asked questions. He'd stepped off the ship, the Unsullied had not. The freaks hadn't left the hold.

They'd dipped into the Sea of Myrth, staying far from Cape Wrath and its lookouts, and passed Shipbreaker Bay slowly, light rainstorms making the waters choppy and giving the place its name as the morning light broke through thunderclouds. Maggie had seen it as a good sign and had proclaimed that fog would shadow their arrival to the capital, and to that he had grinned, throwing another gold coin to her. Nowadays she took them without flinching, adding them to a pile that only grew and grew.

He turned now to face the deck, leaning back on the rail and his fingers grabbing onto a rope. Sailors marched to and fro, watched over by Unsullied, and he'd had some of his freaks go and help swab around the main mast, his wives having vomited there earlier that day. Between the child and the ship's swaying, they'd been practically bed bound since the Grey Gallows.

He narrowed his eyes as he watched them come out of the captain's cabin now, stomach heavily showing beneath their light blue dress, purple bows in their hair, and he threw Dot an easy smile when she glanced over at him, Bette too busy looking towards the sun beginning to set to notice. He'd missed dinner again, both with them and the others in the galley, but he didn't care. They'd had company in the guise of Maggie who followed them out, gaze lowered as she breathed in and rubbed at her elbow, red blisters hidden when she pulled her sleeve back down and scowled at the horizon.

He began to move towards them, hand flicking out and Maggie pausing to give the twins place, head lowered, but he stopped and turned when he heard the hatch to the lower decks opening, rattling as wood dragged on wood, sound from the men coming up the stairs.

Jimmy clambered up onto the floor, barely missing the step as he groaned and took a moment to find his balance, a bottle in his hand. He threw back a holler down into the hatch, laughing when whoever down there was did too. He began to trip but the twins were there to catch him, and he gave them a 'thank you', passing his hand clumsily over Bette's shoulder blade. Dot grimaced lightly beneath Dandy's heavy gaze.

"Have Cookie lay him off the grog, will you?" he said dryly. "I wouldn't want him hurting himself."

"Oh, lay off," Jimmy slurred.

"Jimmy!" Bette chastised.

"Nah, nah," the boy continued. He waved vaguely at Dandy, the man watching him. "I can drink all I want, alright? It's down there, I can drink. Your little soldiers don't, it's gonna go to waste, you know? It's fuckin' simple."

"Simple," Dandy echoed, amused. "You're right."

"And hey," Jimmy grinned, his cheeks red. "I ain't the one carrying my child, yeah? I can drink."

"Pardon?"

"Oh, Jimmy."

Dandy took a step forward and lifted Jimmy to his feet, hand around his collar, and the lobster man's eyes bugged momentarily as he dry heaved against him. "Pardon?" he repeated. He slapped his cheek lightly, snapping his fingers in his face. "What did you say?"

"I just wanna drink, man-"

"Not that, freak, what you said afterwards. About my child."

"Your child?" Laughter bubbled out of Jimmy's throat and he began to cry lightly, fingers grasping at Dandy's as he continued to giggle. "What fucking baby is yours?"

"What baby is yours?" Dandy demanded back. He shook the boy. "Tell me!" Jimmy delicately pried himself out of his master's grip and he fell back against the railing. "That," he pointed to the twins, "Is mine, Master Dandy. That is mine." He laughed again. "I made that. With my cock. I made that and it's mine. I'm a daddy." He slowly fell down until he threw his legs out, back against the side of the ship, sobbing. "I'm a daddy."

Dandy's eyelid began to twitch and he closed his eyes, breathing in heavily. "Maggie."

The girl looked up, terrified, and she glanced quickly at the conjoined sisters. "Master?"

"Have you lied to me?"

"I never lied to you," the girl promised. "I swear, I only spoke of what I saw-"

"He's drunk, Dandy," Bette said. "He's drunk and he doesn't know what he's saying."

Dot took it up. "Look at him he's crying, he can't stand, he-"

"No man lies when he drinks," Dandy hissed back. "That's the beauty of it. You slept with him."

It was a statement.

The two looked away, their fingers intertwining on their belly.

The man laughed lightly, teeth showing, and he glanced back down at Jimmy. "Lobster boy, stand."

"I don't think I can."

"Stand!"

Jimmy struggled to his feet and he used the ropes to help and hold him up, sun falling behind him. He gazed over the man wearily.

"That child, inside there, is mine, Jimmy the Lobster Boy," Dandy enunciated. "At the next port we make, you will step off this ship and disappear forever. You will not come to my seven kingdoms, you will not see these girls again. Is that clear?"

The boy nodded, struggling to breathe with Dandy so close. "I'm, I'm sorry sir. Thank you."

Dandy smiled. "You're sober now?" Dandy leaned in to speak to him. "Good and sober?"

"Yes. Yes." the boy assured him. "Thank you sir, thank you."

"I like you sober."

"I like me sober too, sir."

"I'm sure you do."

Jimmy grimaced and began to speak, but his vocal chords were cut along with his jugular running red down his neck with his heartbeat and into his clothes as he struggled to hold his throat, slit from ear to ear.

Behind Dandy, Bette screamed with Dot, their pitches matching. Jimmy fell back, stepping and slipping in his own blood, and one gentle push from the Slave King had him falling over the railing.

He made a soft splash falling into the water, red running off the side after him.

Dandy turned to the twins, both sobbing now with their hands against their stomach, Maggie reaching for them, but the man pushed the younger girl away. "You betrayed me."

"Dandy, Dandy please."

"You betrayed me and I'm supposed to love you now? I do but I can't, can I? Sweet Bette, sweet Dot." He shook his head, reaching to run his fingers along their cheeks. "I love you. You betrayed me but I love you."

"It's yours, Dandy, it's yours, we swear," Dot assured him as Bette cried on, gaze on where Jimmy had last been. "He's yours, he's always been yours." Beside them, Maggie nodded rapidly, Bette's hand tight in hers. "I know, darlings, I know," Dandy cooed. "It couldn't be his, could it? Not that freak's?" They shook their heads together, Dot's fingers digging into the skin by their navel.

He stepped into their space, backing them until they could do nothing but hug him back as he embraced them, the baby between them as they cried silently. He glanced back at Maggie. "Stop shivering, girl, I'm not killing you today, I need you for now."

The splash they made was a little louder, and he wondered if at three, they would sink faster.

He rubbed his hands together, as if wiping away the feel of the twins, upper lip curled up in the hint of a sneer. He faced Maggie. "I don't need no wives to carry me a child that is not mine. I will bed whatever Westerosi whore I must to have my son, but you I cannot find again as easily." He pouted. "Don't disappoint me."

OOOoooOOO

Her armor was bronze, stiff against her skin and more for show than practicality, but it'd been a present of Kyle's along with the map of Castamere he'd drawn for her for their wedding, and so she loved it. He himself only wore a light shift, the cold metal too much for him to wear in both weight and mobility, but the sword at his side was very real, slapping against his horse's leg rhythmically as they rode, the two followed by an army of five thousand Dornish men, spears pointed to the sky.

Alicia had, after all, burned rather than hang, her screams silently delighting Madison more than seeing her turn blue would ever had, and the army had left Sunspear mere hours later, black smoke still rising against fluffy white clouds and Kyle with his mind clearer than it'd ever been.

Between his mother's demise and their take on the war reinvigorating him, he was the calmest she'd seen him since she'd arrived in the south.

Though the royal couple were at the forefront of the column, they'd left Zoe, Queenie, and Nan behind at the capital. After all, if something happened, Zoe's family was next in line for the throne, and Nan was a liability, Madison knew enough of her husband now that she didn't need help understanding him. The man could write if he needed to, anyway. As for Queenie, the dirty blonde just couldn't stand her.

They followed the Greenblood upstream, and at Godsgrace, a sight for her sore eyes, men were waiting to join the army already, pushing their numbers up by half a thousand, another half of thousand waiting at the junction of the Vaith and the river from the eponyme city further south. They would follow the tributary of the Scourge up to Yronwood, where the last of their eventual forces waited, promising seven thousand at their backs in all, more than enough to overrun an empty border. They were so light that they were taking no time at all to march through Dorne, the warriors a light infantry, and the thought of them running and jumping the Prince's Pass into Westeros had her giddy.

"I'm more than just my name," she'd told Kyle. "I'm more than a name and a face, I'm a conqueror," she'd added, squinting her eyes against the desert sun. "I'll show the Lannisters. I'll show my family."

OOOoooOOO

If a feast hadn't been prepared for that night days prior then Spalding and Lawrence Frey of the Twins would not have had the opportunity to sit across from Fiona Lannister in the Red Keep's hall, but for all they knew, the dinner had been made to honor their arrival into both King's Landing and the queen's armies, and so they sat both with large smiles on their faces, easily taking the plates placed in front of them in turn.

Lawrence talked a lot through the burns on his face, his dead eye shifting along with his working one as he ate heartily and chatted, something that annoyed Fiona deeply, but she figured he talked for both him and his brother. Spalding, older by seven minutes, or so they said, wasn't much of a talker when it came to anything but business matters.

The two Freys had inherited the Twins on the Green Fork and its toll road during her late husband's war campaigns, and from there they'd whole-heartedly embraced the idea of making passer bys pay for their use of their bridge. One brother held one tower, one brother the other, and together they'd doubled the toll. That they weren't appreciated was no news to anyone in the seven kingdoms.

She watched them, the Axeman to her left and Chad Baratheon to her right, the twins across from them. They'd arrived five thousand strong ahead of both the Boltons and the Starks, though the former were only two days away.

Lawrence hummed as he swallowed and reached for another bread roll. "You won't believe what our scouts saw as we were coming down."

"I don't think I would," Fiona replied dryly. She noted Chad hadn't eaten anything, his black eyes on the twins and his fork merely pushing around his plate. "Would you share?"

"It would be better to, we're in this together now, aren't we?" he said. He glanced at his brother and Spalding nodded, chin jutted out though his mouth was closed. For all the hair he had in greasy strings falling down from his scalp, Lawrence was bald from the burns he'd acquired so long ago, tufts of hair behind his ear and above one eye but not the other. He took a bite again. "No, us not saying would be crazy, and a waste of time."

"Then speak," the queen prompted.

"What would you give us for our information?" Spalding asked, voice harrowingly deep compared to his twin's high pitch.

She fell back into her chair, smiling. "Is this what it comes down to, our alliance?"

"If we come to die, then we want something back."

"If you want to die, only open your keep's doors. The people will take care of you in a matter of hours," Chad said. He reached for his glass. "I hardly think you'd fight."

"We'd need recompense for the death of our men, not ours," Lawrence explained. "I can't possibly fight, though wish I could. These scars," he grimaced as he shifted his shoulder, "These scars don't let me do much, unfortunately."

Beside Fiona, the Axeman grunted.

"But my men will want a reward," the Frey continued cheerily.

"Name your price before dessert, lest you ruin my night," Fiona said.

"We want the Riverlands, your grace." Lawrence said as he dabbed at the corner of his mouth. "Don't think we do this for free. If the Boltons get the North, we take our share."

"Is this blackmail?"

"It's collateral damage. It's a war. It happens."

"What did your scouts see, Lord Freys."

Spalding spoke. "The Targaryens have left Dragonstone by foot."

"And the Greyjoys have set sail for the bay."

"The dragon was seen leaving Duskendale a few days ago, he'll be near Stokeworth by now," the other added.

"Wonderful," Fiona replied.

"You look less than enthusiastic," Lawrence remarked.

"Would you be if your kingdom was threatened from the inside?" she snapped back.

The man held his hands up. "I'm just saying, that's all. Don't yell at me."

"Tell her," Spalding muttered.

Lawrence glanced at his twin before looking to Fiona. "The Riverlands, your grace?"

"Yours if you tell me," Fiona said. And if you shut up in the end.

"We have a few friends down south. For free passage through the Twins they keep us, let's say, in the loop." Lawrence quirked an eyebrow. "What do you know of Dorne?"

"I know some Castamere girl's become the princess."

"The dowager Princess Alicia is dead. The Crown Prince's new girl burned her."

Chad choked lightly on his wine and he waved his hand apologetically at the queen when she turned to him sharply. He laughed lightly. "Forgive me. I wouldn't have thought she'd have the balls."

"Prince Kyle sure didn't," the queen's lover said. "Talk about making your mark."

"What about Dorne, Frey?" Fiona asked, annoyed.

Spalding smiled, his voice rumbling in his throat. "They're at Yronwood. You moved all your troops away from their borders and they're taking the opportunity to raid the lands outside the Pass."

Fiona looked to the Axeman and the man nodded. "I'll send someone."

OOOoooOOO

No man had died finding their way down the mountains with the wind at their back, and to that Hayden Arryn was thankful. The ones who had fallen had gotten right back up, both the clansmen and men of the Vale, though many had injuries, and the dead who even if a limb came detached, kept right on walking. She half wished, in those moments of dangling arms and jaws, that she'd kept Billie Dean by her side. She wanted to know what they were saying between their grunts and groans. She wondered if they felt pain.

It was warmer here at sea level, and she'd shed her shadowcat furs and left them on top of one of the weapons cart, armor reflecting the light fully as they'd marched out of Quiet Isle the week before, having crossed the bridge of earth between it and Saltpans at low tide. The last of the column had had to wade and even swim, but they'd made it through in one go. From there they hadn't lessened the beat of their march.

With Ser Patrick calling out the orders for her, they'd passed Antlers and its hall, seat to House Buckwell, and in between Sow's Horn and Duskendale, using the large fields as their camping grounds as they stayed, now, away from any other home they might encounter. From their scouts she'd heard other halls were being used by other armies, and she had no want to meet them at the moment. She needed her men fully rested for King's Landing and her taking of the iron throne.

From where they rested now she could see the Red Keep, pink in the light haze of pollution, and she watched it as she ate dinner, the men at her back doing the same in their tents and around their campfires. She'd had someone cook for her, her chair and table set out to face the dying sun and the light breeze ruffling through the tall grasses.

"What gate shall we use?" she asked.

She turned in her seat, eyebrows up as she waited for Ser Patrick to answer her. He shifted his weight, eyes narrowed as he gazed at the horizon. "The Dragon Gate, my lady."

"And the dragon?"

"Will most likely use the same. It all depends on whether you'll want to go in for the first blow, or let them clash against the first waves of Lannister shields."

"Why should we tire ourselves? Let the Targaryen boy take the lead," Hayden said. "Sit, Ser Patrick, you make me nervous standing behind me. Eat something."

"Nervous how?"

She stared him down and he did as asked, pulling up a chair and taking the plate given to him by a servant and reaching forward into the pot on the table to fill it.

"They'll attack at dawn," he added.

"Who?"

"Anyone," he replied. "It'll be foggy, you can feel it in the air."

"It feels like home," Hayden sighed. "Are we looking at a bloodbath?"

"One of the best," he hummed back.

She looked back to the falling sun. "And so we too attack at dawn." She played with her spoon. "Tell the men of the Vale yourself, and have Marie tell the clansmen to rally. I don't think we need to relay the word to the-" She paused to mull over her words. "The dead men."

Patrick snorted. "Would they even understand?"

"Perhaps if you threw bloody meat into their midst they'd go into a frenzy. Like with sharks," she said softly. She shrugged, grimacing. "Dead sharks."

They ate silently, Patrick more than the girl who would anxiously ride her horse into battle, her armor being cleaned in her tent as they sat and dined. She wouldn't have dirt in between links or plates, not if blood was to mix in with the silver and steel.

The Redfort heir finally stood, bowing lightly as he pushed away from the table and placed his utensils by his plate. "I'll rouse the troops now, have them ready to march before they sleep. Rest well, your grace."

"And you, Ser Patrick," she replied. "Ser Patrick?" He turned and she spared him a glance. "Remember, the Baratheon lord is our enemy, and the throne is mine."

OOOoooOOO

"It's beautiful, quite honestly. The architecture is exquisite. Don't you think?" The boy turned halfway, feet firmly planted in the ground and his arms crossed over his chest. "It reminds me of home. Though there's not enough of home here for me. If Violet wishes it, I'll have the crown's seat moved to Dragonstone. There we can be left alone to rule." He glanced back at Ser Travis. "Well? What do you think?"

"The stone is red," the man answered, shrugging. "Though the cut is similar, yes."

"Details," Tate replied. He turned fully, black eyes pausing a moment longer on the Dragon Gate before he gazed upon the Targaryen army, black and red flags flying high above tents with three-headed dragons to the banners. From where he stood he could see campfires from both his men and another's, five miles off and twinkling in the dusk like a city. Whoever they were, the wind carried a horrid smell with them, like decaying and rotting meat. If at dawn the battle smelled like the death on the breeze, he wouldn't quite mind. "It is one of our colors, after all."

Travis bowed lightly. "My lord."

The boy hummed. "Are our men ready?"

"Polished and fed and rested."

"Who do you think they are?" Tate asked. Travis followed his gaze to the camp far behind them, narrowing his own eyes to focus.

"The Stark Lord would come off the Kingsroad, whoever they are they are not the wolf, they're too far east. The Vale most likely, my lord."

"They let us overtake them during the day?" Tate scoffed. "Cowards. Hiding in their mountains and hiding behind me." He shook his head. "I wish we'd seen them in daylight without their fires, perhaps we could have dented their armor as we'd passed by."

"I can have a troop hang back."

"Do so."

"I'll go relay orders for the morning."

"It'll be a dawn full of fog," Tate said softly. "Ser Travis?"

"My lord?"

"Why did you travel on land? I would have thought you'd have gone with your kraken lord and through the bay. You are, after all, born of the sea."

"I haven't felt true earth beneath my feet in a long time, Lord Tate, I'll be back on a ship soon enough, or a prince in the Drowned God's palace, whichever comes first. I am of the sea even here. What are you of?"

Tate smiled. "The Drowned God, as you."

OOOoooOOO

"Seven hells, you're tense."

"You should be, too," Lana said. She groaned, her head falling forward when Mary pressed into her shoulder blade with the heel of her palm. The girl left a kiss to the brunette's temple as she dug into the knots along her spine, the woman grimacing. She pushed the blonde away. "I give, I give. I'd rather be knotted up."

Mary's fingers raked down the brunette's back but she yielded, leaning forward to rest her chin on the woman's shoulder. "What if you pull something?"

Lana shook her head. "I don't think I'll notice. The feeling of war is-" She paused to think. "It's something else entirely. You don't feel tired, or pain, or the sweat rolling down your back. It's when it stops that you want to throw up." The blonde's eyebrow raised and Lana laughed lightly. "Excited yet?"

The girl didn't respond, instead sitting up on her knees to embrace the woman from the back, wrapping her arms around strong shoulders. "I want to experience it."

"You're lucky I didn't leave you in Winterfell."

"Only because you were worried."

"I won't have you fight."

"Then why have bows manufactured for me?"

The Lord of Winterfell turned to watch the blonde, black eyes narrowed.

"Let me fight, Lana."

"You won't be safe."

"Give me Ser Kit then." Mary moved to sit at the woman's side. "I can find a rampart to hide behind. I'll be safe."

"War isn't safe."

"Life isn't either."

"Wise words from a septa who's only just experienced it."

The blonde cocked her head to the side, gaze narrowed dangerously on the woman, and Lana finally shook her head. "I don't want you hurt, Mary."

"You can't keep me contained forever, Lana," the girl warned.

Lana sighed as she reached up to push a strand of hair behind Mary's ear, resting her fingers against the nape of the blonde's neck. "I know."

"I'd find my way into the fight anyway," Mary added.

"I know," the lord laughed. She dropped her forehead to the girl's. "Gods, I know."

Mary flashed a little smile, kissing her lover in the process, hands finding their way into chestnut strands.

"Lana?"

"Mary."

"What will you do once you have your son back?"

Lana grimaced as she pulled away, upper lip curled back. "Let's not have this conversation."

"Let's. You obviously haven't thought about it." Mary followed Lana as she moved to sit back against the headboard.

"No, I have. He can go to the Wall."

"He's three years old!"

"Then he'll make a fine warrior, being trained from so early on." Lana scowled. "Don't look at me like that, I want nothing to do with him. He's not mine."

"You may not want him, but he doesn't deserve your contempt."

"Doesn't he?"

"He's innocent, Lana," Mary snapped.

"And what would you have me do? Take him in? Raise him as my son?" Lana demanded. "He's a bastard. He's a Snow, and I won't have a Snow at Winterfell."

The blonde stuck her chin out. "Then let me have him."

The queen stared her down, fingers intertwined with Mary's tightening until they were both fighting a grimace. She looked away. "You'd raise him."

"Gods, no, Lana. What would I do with a child? I can barely take care of myself." Mary shook her head and tugged Lana closer, the brunette coming to her reluctantly. "Send him to Oldtown. He can become a septon."

"Because that worked well for you?"

"As a bastard he'll be thankful for the chance he's gotten. It's a high honor to be trained as one." Mary sighed. "And if not septon, then maester. He can pick if you don't want to pick for him."

"Do whatever you want with him when we fetch him."

"But you will," the blonde prompted. "Fetch him, I mean." She followed Lana's gaze.

"I don't want him," the queen growled back. "But I won't leave him to the Boltons. He's not my son," she added. "But," she paused, unsure of herself, "He is family." Mary's shoulders softened and she leaned forward to press a kiss to the brunette's cheek.

"Save him and I'll take care of the rest. He'll have a good home. I promise you."

Lana watched her. "Why do you care so much?"

"Because I care about you." Mary shrugged. "Because I love you. And I'll be at your side tomorrow when the sun rises and the fog falls-" She laughed when Lana pulled a face, but the woman didn't try to fight her. She kissed her. "And we'll save the North."

OOOoooOOO

With their army at her back, Madison Nymeros Martell looked into the abyss that was the Prince's Pass. Dark clouds had accumulated overhead and shadowed their walk for days now and it darkened the path ahead too, the cliffs throwing hard blacks and grays across the chasm. But she'd raised her fist in the air and Kyle had done the same and behind them the Dornish had stopped, coming to a halt in a rush of clanking metal.

Five hundred meters off and standing in the Pass's way stood a battalion, banners flying the lion and its rose held by the men on horseback, a thousand at the least, two at the most, and all richly equipped. Kyle turned to Madison when he understood the Lannister lion being flown, his frown heavy, but she didn't meet his gaze, hazel eyes on the man preceding the troops instead.

She broke from her ranks and rode her horse forward as he did, the two meeting halfway away from their troops, and he circled around her as they watched each other. The man towered, as did his mount, and in how young she was, he was old. He stared down at her from his crooked nose, his head uncovered from his strong helmet that otherwise hid his bald dome that she knew so well, and finally he sneered as he came to a stop before her, horse snorting.

"Ser Arthur Clegane," she remarked. "I wouldn't have thought they'd send you here, not with the war in King's Landing,"

"I thought I'd be at the capital too, being a seasoned soldier, but the queen saw the opportunity to send me here. She knows how I love my Dornish pets," he enunciated, smiling. He shifted his mount forward as he rose in his seat. "Though I will admit I didn't quite believe her when she suggested that a faction of Dorne would dare rise."

"A faction?" she echoed. "All of Dorne rises."

"You rise, silly girl. They simply follow because you command. You have no man at your back." Ser Arthur laughed lightly. "I can see your Martell from here, antsy and itching to go home." She fought to keep her gaze forward, fingers tied around her reins. The man shook his head. "The borders are closed, Lady Madison. Return from where you came."

"I roam where I will, I am crown princess of Dorne," she replied, rising her head. "Remove yourself from my path."

"Return peacefully and no harm will come to you," Ser Arthur echoed. He grimaced. "Go home, you would only find death here if you would move forward."

"Not enslavement?" she asked. "You surprise me, Ser Arthur."

"The idea had crossed my mind," he admitted. He cast a long look over her shoulder. "Such fine specimens your army holds."

"And such specimens your hold will not know. We are seven thousand strong, you less than two."

His grin grew, amused. "How many of yours are trained soldiers? Soldiers of profession? I have been a bred for war since birth. You only now wear a toy sword at your hip." His mount took a step forward and hers one back, almost as if cowering. "Go home," he thundered.

"We fight," she snapped. "And you will regret this, enemy of Dorne." She spun her mount around, watching him for a moment longer before letting out a 'hyah' and pressing her heel into the horse's flank, pulling away.

He watched her ride her mount away, back to momentary safety. A man came to him from behind, a Tarly lieutenant. His gaze ran over the girl too before he turned to Arthur.

"Ser, what shall we do?"

The Clegane sighed as he pulled on his armored gloves. "Notch an arrow into her back. Kill the rest."

OOOoooOOO

They'd sailed down Blackwater Bay silently, a galleon and half a hundred other ships with their sails brought in and their oars pulled into the holds, the current driving them closer and closer to the capital.

Dandy had wanted them to be as invisible for as long as they could afford it, and the fog Maggie Esmeralda had promised was turning out to be most useful in his endeavor. The sailors allowed on deck were unable to see a gull flying by their head unless it cawed or ruffled the tops of their scalps. He himself paced the length of the ship from the bow to the stern as he looked to where King's Landing would have been if he could see it. Beneath him, in the hold, the Unsullied waited, fully armored and itching to leave their wooden prisons. The freaks, meanwhile, shook where they sat, where he'd left them. None would dare move without his word now.

He turned when the hatch to the lower decks opened and the captain of his Unsullied came out, helmet low on his brow and fingers tight around his spear. Wooden Doll was his name, as he'd muttered to his master when he'd first been asked. Trained from infancy on in forms of short sword, shield, phalanx strategies, and various lengths of spears, Dandy had no qualms about the army he'd bought for what seemed like the lowest of prices. Wooden Doll bowed lightly as behind him came the captain of the ship itself, the hatch closing behind him.

"Well?" Dandy asked. He knew he should whisper in the carrying dark but he didn't have the patience.

"We drop anchor here."

"There's no port," the young man replied. "We're still miles off the capital."

"We swim," Wooden Doll said.

Dandy laughed lightly. "You swim? I didn't know they had pools where you're from." He sobered. "Do what you will as long you get it done."

"We swim, we walk to King's Landing, we take the Iron Gate. We will be inside the city wall for the dawn."

"Is that gate the closest to the Red Keep and the iron throne?"

The ship's captain nodded.

The Slave King's eyebrows raised. "Then swim, little eunuch, swim."

Though they didn't speak, Dandy could hear from where he was at the bow, watching the waters beneath, the thousands of Unsullied rising from his ships' holds and lowering themselves into the bay with soft splashes into the waves. From there, the warriors walked the shores with their weapons above their heads to the beaches. They didn't stop to make camp or to breathe, only began marching once the ships were empty.

He came off last. His horse, unsteady on its legs now after months at sea, fought for a moment but finally let him on, stepping to and fro. He looked to where Maggie was, the girl watching with her arms crossed over the furs on her shoulders, shivering in the coming dusk.

"Will you come?" he asked. "We have no time to lose now, the sun is coming and I want to catch Westeros by surprise."

"What of the-" She looked behind her at the ships in the river, ghostly still. "What of the rest of your slaves?"

"Oh, don't worry. I have an Unsullied staying behind to take care of them when the time comes. They won't be trouble for us once I'm on the throne." He pushed his heel into his horse. "Keep up, girl, the army waits for no one."

She took the reins that were offered to her by a soldier and she threw her leg over the mount, gaze on the galleon still. The tips of her fingers flitted with her pockets, full of golden coins.

She turned her horse around and followed Dandy.

OOOoooOOO

"Empty, my lord."

Ben Greyjoy scowled, gray eyes on the galleons from another world left on the Blackwater Rush. Too clean to be ghost ships, he mused.

The Iron Island's fleet had sailed from Dragonstone to Rosby's coasts and further on, disembarking about twelve miles from King's Landing and behind a bend and going off of foot from there, a day and some into their march now, but the sight of ships from Essos had made Ben pause. There were too many, all too big to be mere trading boats.

He'd sent men to climb up their sides expertly as the rest of his fleet continued down the road, and his lieutenant stood before him now, out of breath and as confused as he.

"Completely empty?"

"There's dead bodies, some freakish things. A woman with," the man glanced back at his soldiers, "With three breasts, and a man with stunted arms. But nothing else. Traces of horses, tools. The coals were still warm." He shifted. "Whoever they are, they're gone."

"Sir!"

Ben turned abruptly, watching as a boy ran his horse down the column, hair flying. The young scout jumped off before his mount had time to stop, the reins caught by another man, and he took a knee before Ben, chest heaving.

"Speak, Amir."

"An army, off the road and headed for King's Landing, two miles ahead and two off the city."

"Banners?"

"They fly none, my lord."

The kraken lord turned back to gaze at the ships. "What have we here, an invader?"

"Well timed, don't you think?"

"It is, Ser Jason. Can we catch them?"

Amir spoke. "They're heavy infantry, sir. Phalanges."

The lieutenant looked to the horizon, the fog heavy still. "We can catch them in the hour then."

"Have the war drums beat faster. Amir, have a raven sent to Tate Targaryen, now." Ben glanced to Jason. "Let's find out who these Essosi are, shall we?"

They rode hard ahead of the men hurried behind them by a frantic drum beat, gazes cutting through a fog that didn't let them see more than fifteen paces ahead. They made good time, no matter that Ben's horse threatened to break its leg more than once over the harsh terrain walked over too many times by carts and farmers. By now they could hear whoever's drums beating too, and the ground shook between both their marchings.

Amir ran ahead on foot, disappearing in the low clouds and running tracks between both armies repeatedly and hiding out of sight, but the men made so much noise that they wouldn't have heard the Greyjoy fleet in any case.

Proven when Ben spied a row of horses preceded by armored warriors walking tightly together. He looked to his lieutenant.

Ser Jason knocked an arrow into his bow, cocking the string back, and he let it fly into the Essosi.

Dandy whirled on his horse, the animal sent into a frenzy as the Unsullied turned and became one unit, spears raised and waiting for orders.

Their master pushed his way through them, Maggie following closely behind, yelling out in a language Ben wouldn't understand. "Push the first half forward onto King's Landing," he yelled at Wooden Doll. "Have the rest kill these Westerosi dogs!"

OOOoooOOO

"I hear them, but I don't see them. Why haven't they rushed the city yet?" Hayden demanded. Ser Patrick looked to her, he too on his mount and both animals itching to move. "What is the dragon doing?" she asked again. "What do they know that we don't? The sun is rising!"

"Give it time, my lady," he replied. "Their fires have been doused, they'll move soon enough."

"Sooner than later would be nice," she growled back. She twisted in her seat to look over her shoulder. "Where's Marie? I had her fetched a half an hour ago."

"She's coming. The column's long, my lady, and you placed the clansmen far back."

"Don't patronize me, Ser Patrick!"

He shook his head and turned his gaze back on the capital, silent in the distance. "Do you think Fiona Lannister had the city evacuated?"

"Knowing her and her interests, I wouldn't think so," she replied. "Where is that infuriating woman?" Her horse stepped back and forth beneath her, as restless as its rider. "I swear to the gods she'll be as dead as the rest of them if she doesn't come faster." She raised herself in her saddle, overlooking her army standing at attention, some leaning heavily on their spears as they waited impatiently. Far off, she spied the black sorceress and she rode to meet her, Patrick following after a moment, exasperated.

"Where is the minotaur?" Hayden demanded.

"With my men, as he should be," Marie replied. "Why?"

"I will have him at the forefront, pushing through first."

"So that he may do your work."

"Fetch him, Marie," the brunette snapped. "As soon as the Targaryen boy goes, then we do too."

"Will he?" Marie asked. "Ravens flew here from the East. Hurried birds on the wings of the wind."

"I thought we'd left Billie back at the Eyrie," Ser Patrick remarked dryly, eyebrow raised.

Hayden ignored him. "What of these ravens? Just messages."

"Then they would have attacked already," the woman replied. "Something is wrong."

"And you can't tell what?" the knight asked.

"Why don't you go find out? I'm not your dog."

Patrick bristled but Hayden only gave a click of her tongue, calling him down.

The three turned, the brunette pulling on her reins, when there was a series of shouts and a deafening bang from behind them, the heavily clouded sky turning orange and yellow in the distance, smoke rising with the flames from King's Landing. The camp came alive.

Hayden pulled her horse's head down before it reared. "What the fuck-!"

Ser Patrick's head turned left and right as his mount stepped forward and backward, spooked. "That came from the Iron Gate, my lady-"

"The Iron Gate! No one's at the Iron Gate!" she yelled back. "Only the Baratheon forces and the city watch are there and they're inside the walls, are they setting fire to themselves now!"

"Something's wrong," Marie said. "The dragon knew-"

"Knew what, seven hells!" Hayden turned. "Ser Patrick, we're moving now."

"The Targaryens-"

"I don't give a fuck about the Targaryens, first one in is the first one up the Keep's steps, get me in there!"

She rode up the column and towards the city catching on fire from the Iron Gate in, and Ser Patrick followed, yelling orders to the army that had woken from boredom with the noises, grips tight around their weapons. The dead's smell wasn't masked by the smell of fire and cinders coming down in the wind. They were the first lines, moving steadily down the hills to the Dragon Gate five hundred meters off, and the Lady Hayden preceded them, crown around her temple and light blue cape tight around her shoulders. But the heavy footsteps behind her made her turn in her saddle, and she watched as the minotaur ran through the lines of the dead men, pushing them aside as it roared and took its place ahead, double-bladed ax swinging with his each footstep. It continued to bellow, making enough noise for the rest of the army, pulling them in behind them and driving them forward. Hayden spared Marie a glance and a nod.

He broke through the gate like it was mere matchsticks, the ax splitting the wood in a short minute, the city watch at the top of the rampart moving away from the walls and down the stairs, yelling and screaming when shortbow arrows from the clansmen shot them through the armors from farther in.

The creature didn't care who it massacred as it ran through his first streets of King's Landing, soldier, man, woman, or child making the mistake of stepping out of their homes at the first sounds. Hayden's horse was already stepping on bodies as she unsheathed her longsword and hacked her way farther herself, the city watch falling beneath her and Ser Patrick and Marie with her club, her swings as wild as the minotaur's.

From where the smoke of the flames traveled through the streets came men armored from head to toe, their skins as dark as earth, and their shields before them, spears down. They advanced as one towards the dead who were unorganized, their jaws wide as they yelled and ran. Hayden's horse reared as the Unsullied crashed into the Vale's dead.

OOOoooOOO

Tate grinned, watching with unhidden glee as a man screamed in horror as his body was engulfed by flames, the boy's dragon screeching overhead as it flew away, spewing fireballs at the ants crawling beneath it. His horse tittered as the man ran past, but it'd been trained on Dragonstone to ignore smoke and fire. He'd allowed himself to be the first of the Targaryen to enter the city, pet perched on his forearm and screaming to fly, talons digging into the grooves it'd dug for years in Tate's skin.

He'd received the Greyjoy raven and done as asked by the kraken lord, waited. But watching the Arryn girl go in (she was pretty but not as pretty as Violet, he figured he'd married the right one) with that creature, had made him envious. Jealous. The throne would be his, and he'd made a mental note to remove her from the battle in the history books. None would know that King Tate I had been second into the capital after a woman from the Vale.

He'd thrown his arm back and then forward, the dragon taking off like an eagle into the sky with a high pitched cry torn out of its throat, and he'd ridden after it through the gate, Dragonstone men following with war filled yells. The smell of decay was stronger here, mixed with burning houses and the army Ben had described shortly in his message, dark skinned and expertly trained.

But whoever the Vale had employed or trained did not step back in front of career soldiers, instead moving forward in a frenzy that Tate could only call insane. But he yelled for his own men to follow and they did, the Westerosi and Essosi crashing along the edges of Rhaenys's Hill, the Dragon Pit's charred ruins above them throwing shadows as the sun rose higher. He pushed his horse up the hill, sword and reins tight in his grip, and looked back behind him, finding the foreign warriors deep in battle with men of both red and blue. Black was being added to the mix, black and gold from the Greyjoy fleet flooding through the system of streets from the direction of the Iron Gate.

But though Ben pushed forward from behind, the Essosi did not stay to fight. They moved forward too, pushing at the Targaryens and Arryns, and the boy realized that they were being pulled away from the north of the city and into it's center, farther from the Red Keep.

His chest boiled with rage at the invaders, whoever they were to take the opportunity that had so readily been offered to him, and he traveled back down the hill in a fury, dragon before him and opening his way as he reared into the warriors, sword stabbing into the crevices between their shields.

A short sword hacked into his horse's flank and the animal fell forward, Tate falling with it and landing hard on his knees, his teeth rattling inside his helmeted head. He raised and used his foot to wrench the sword out of the horse, yelling as he threw it back into the soldier's face. He grabbed at his own Valyrian steel and hacked into the men nearest, trained warriors and men of the Vale alike, ignoring the green blood that vomited the latter.

Something grabbed at his raised arm and he whirled, elbow ready to snap into whoever's temple, but he paused, Ben's eyes staring him down from beneath his own helmet.

"We have to push them back to the Street of Sisters! There's too many!" the man yelled.

"Take your own fleet there!" Tate replied harshly. "I push for the Keep-"

Ben pulled him back. "No, you don't. Get the Essosi farther from the hold, whoever is running them is running for the throne too."

"Who told him!" Tate screamed back. "Who told this dog he could come into our country, my country, and bring these fucking-" He turned and stabbed a man, the soldier's yelling cut through. "-Bastards-!"

The kraken lord rapped at the top of the boy's head. "Street of Sisters, now!"

Tate roared out as Ben moved away, grabbing for his horse, and he turned on himself to grab at the nearest lieutenant, barking out his orders. He glanced back to the kraken lord, about to yell for him back, but his voice caught in his throat.

The Arryn creature he'd seen earlier from afar stood at the end of the alley, taller than he'd previously thought, taller and larger and more menacing. It loomed over Ben, the kraken lord looking up into red eyes. And as the man raised his sword, the monster's hand reached out and grabbed at the lord's arm.

Ben was lifted into the air, another clawed hand grabbing at his waist, and Tate watched as, with a bellow, he was ripped limb from limb.

The boy turned, fear gripping at his insides as he heard the minotaur drop the pieces of Ben's body to the ground, roaring with its muzzle and forearms wet with blood, the sounds smacking and wet. He turned and slammed into Travis, the knight's gaze slipping from Tate to his kraken lord, and his kraken lord. And his kraken lord.

Tate gripped at the man's chest, trying to push him out of the way and to pull him along, but Travis held him tight in his grip, watching over his shoulder at the monstrosity that continued to smash through soldiers.

"Travis, go, go-!"

The man grabbed the Targaryen boy and brought him closer, their chest plates hitting each others, and Tate let out a gasp, slumping against the Greyjoy knight. He pawed at his side as he wriggled, knees threatening to give out beneath him, and he yelped out as Travis dug the knife a little farther between his ribs, twisting the blade. He was let go and he fell to his knees, breathing out as the world began to swim in his vision.

Travis's foot raised and landed on his shoulder and he was pushed until he fell onto his back, slumping against cobblestone. He watched the knight grimace, blood on his knife and hand, and disappear from view.

His breathing was shallow and he waited to die, his hearing going before his eyes did, the world suddenly muffled and dangerously silent. He winced when something brushed against his fingers and he was worried that it was the minotaur come to finish him, but when he raised his dark eyes he stared into a woman's face. He would have guessed a wife of King's Landing, but she was too pretty, too calm for the mayhem, and he couldn't have said how old she was.

He laughed lightly, blood welling at the bottom of his throat. "Have you come to take me?"

The dark haired woman, her lips pursed, nodded. "I have, dear boy."

"Well fuck." He smiled bitterly. "And here I thought I wouldn't have been good enough for the Stranger."

"I don't judge."

"You're so beautiful," he murmured. "Your statues don't do you justice."

"Will you kiss me, Tate Targaryen?"

"Have you kissed Lord Ben?"

"Every part of him."

"Then kiss me."

OOOoooOOO

Lana cursed the uses of gray in the north as she watched the direwolf men crash into Boltons and Freys from where she was on Visenya's Hill, in the Great Sept of Baelor's shadows.

It'd been more than a few hours, but she couldn't tell how long exactly, since they'd broken through the gate and pursued the first of the northerners they'd seen, her at the forefront. She'd killed however many Boltons, each looking more and more like Oliver but none being him, but her horse had broken its leg and after she'd ended its life with a clean death, she'd retreated to the hill until she could find another horse, Bone Shatter red with blood and dripping onto the pavement.

She marched through the sept, the building's maze-like hallways used as headquarters to Misty's insistence, the septons and septas and silent sisters cowering behind statues and going unattended save for Cordelia trying her best to calm them down, murmuring to each and kneeling before them. Mary had fought to step outside, but Lana'd had Ser Kit attached to her hip since they'd walked into the city, walling him and her into the sept.

Beneath the high dome she found her wounded men. She wanted hard to pause to speak to every one of them but she only stayed a moment by those who wouldn't see the next dawn or Winterfell again, the others healthy enough in her eyes. She pushed through to the animals standing beneath, ironically, the Warrior's statue, with her throat tight but she turned when her name was shouted, her lover finding her way through bleeding soldiers.

The Queen in the North accepted the embrace that was given to her with her free arm, holding her dirtied sword at a distance from the girl, and she pressed a kiss into golden curls before pushing Mary away, eyeing the blood that had transferred from her armor to the girl's own and not enchanted by the look of it.

"I don't have time."

"Lana, please-"

"Where's Kit?"

"Looking for me elsewhere," the girl said. "Take a moment to breathe, please."

"There isn't time." The brunette grabbed the nearest horse she could, swinging herself over the back of it. "I have a little boy to find."

Mary sneered lightly, hands tight around the reins. "You're not tugging at my heartstrings with that."

Lana smiled and leaned down, fingers tangling into the curls at the nape of the blonde's neck and pulling the girl up onto her tiptoes to close the distance between them, kissing her. She let go but Mary's hand found hers.

"Don't let him get to you," she pleaded softly. "Come back to me."

The brunette nodded and dug her heel into the horse's flank, the animal's hooves clacking on the marble floors as she rode through the sept and back into blinding sunlight, soldiers calling out her name in her wake. Mary turned, a hand at her elbow, and looked into Ser Kit's dark eyes.

"I hate it when you give me the slip," he said.

"I had to see her."

"I know." He moved aside and waved his hand out, motioning her forward and back to where she'd escaped from upstairs. The blonde nodded and the knight led the way, hand on the pommel of his sword and itching to go out and use it, but he'd made a promise to his lord. He glanced back over his shoulder as they went up the stairs, making sure she was following.

The rooms they'd found to use belonged to one of the senior septons, the windows high and wide and the smoke filtering in easily. Kit watched the blonde cross to the bed and sit, head between her hands, and he shifted awkwardly, heart beating as fast as hers. The girl moved to rest her chin in the palm of her hand, fingers laced over her nose as she winced, listening to the sounds of war outside. The morning sun reflected in her worried eyes in golden hues.

"She wouldn't want me saying this," he started. She glanced sideways at him, waiting for him to continue. He shook his head. "Those windows are quite large, Mary. They give quite a nice view on the city. A rounded view. One could easily use a bow to help, as if on a rampart. It's quite common for a keep."

"Are you suggesting I run a rampart by myself?"

"It's only an observation." He looked away. "It's an honor to be keeping you safe, but if you don't mind me saying, I'd like to help her, too."

She tilted her head sideways. "Do you know how to use a bow, Ser Kit?"

"Would you like the short or long?"

He was quick to fetch her instruments, the both of them settling their quivers at their hips for easier access as they took to the windows, staring down at colored military units. Mary didn't wait for Kit to ask, instead cocking back the short, faster, bow to strike a man too close to the hill for her liking. He let out a whistle before pulling back the long bow, reaching a man farther off with a powerful thwang of the elk intestine string.

Mary reached for her fourth arrow. "What color is black and yellow?"

"Black on yellow," he paused to shoot a man down, aiming," Or yellow on black?"

"Black on yellow."

"The Baratheon stag," he replied. "Go ahead. Lana doesn't like stags."

Down below Lana turned, surprised, when the man in front of her fell screaming, a silver arrow in the middle of his chest and ripping through the fabric of the deer on his sigil. She snapped her head up, looking to the sept's windows, and scowled.

The blonde lowered her arms and she reached for another arrow.

OOOoooOOO

The thought of Cordelia ran in the back of the Mudfish's mind as she walked through a back street of King's Landing, occasionally shoving a citizen back into their home and closing the door before them. She hadn't wanted to leave the blonde princess at Baelor's Sept, but had had no choice. She was safer there.

Misty was no good for tactical wars, never had been much use to a unit of soldiers (she'd been alone for so long she couldn't imagine teamwork, much less being a leader), and she'd broken from her ranks quickly after entering the city, heading for the back bones of the capital. She'd talked it out with Lana Stark, and the brunette had quickly ceded to her demands. She would break away from her battalion from Riverrun, leaving it to Luke Karstark to run, and would hit from behind. If a leader went down, the army would fall apart around them. Lana had called her a sneak but she hadn't taken it as an insult.

The queen hadn't meant it as such.

The Freys were pouring out from the Hook and down the Muddy Way to the Guildhall of the Alchemist's and she followed quietly behind, a hundred meters off, lizard lion's maw closed around her sharp gaze and her grip tight on her seven foot spear, her metal meshed net hanging off her belt. She'd found the Lord Freys on their matching horses, once more taking the name of the Twins too literally. Lawrence Frey had managed to find a helmet that threw shadows on his scarred face, gleaming silver and his armor never used, while Spalding had donned his old plates, banged up and older than her. She'd noted that he stayed in the heat of the battle while Lawrence was far at the end of the column, horse tittering as he watched the men of the Green Fork fight.

He, unlike her, had apparently not recovered from the sacking of Riverrun.

And he was, unfortunately for him, too easy to catch up to.

She shadowed for a long time, unwilling to merely run into him, but it didn't take a long time for the man to suddenly be alone. Their soldiers turned a sharp corner, Lawrence taking a moment as screams rung out and bodies fell before he turned it too, but Misty's net caught him around the throat, negative spaces falling around his helmet, and she tugged until he fell off his mount. The animal reared and took off and she pulled him backwards, the man thrashing in his malleable prison. She let him go, snapping his head back when he fell onto his spine, and he looked up at her.

"You-!"

She grimaced back as she reached for her short knife.

"Let me go now, and I'll make sure you live when your Stark is defeated." "Ya said the same to my parents," she replied shortly. "But you found them anyway, didn't ya?"

He began to yell and scream and thrash and she began to panic, hearing men coming back from the street perpendicular to theirs, and suddenly a horse stared down at her, its rider doing the same from a height.

Spalding's eyes hadn't changed since her childhood. She lowered her spear, foot firmly on the net so that Lawrence couldn't run.

He held up his hand and his soldiers paused behind him, waiting. "Misty Tully."

"Lady Misty Tully," the girl growled back. She dragged her foot back a few inches and Lawrence gasped beneath her, net tightening around his neck.

"Let him loose, girl," Spalding said.

"Come get 'im."

"So keen to sign your death warrant." He unsheathed his sword. "Perhaps I should teach you the lesson my brother failed to, all those years ago?"

Misty bent down and tied a knot in Lawrence's net, blue-green eyes fixed on Spalding, before she raised and lifted her spear tip off the ground, removing her weight from the man's cage. "Ya can try."

Spalding sneered, upper lip curled up, and he fell to the ground, a man grabbing at his horse's reins. Lawrence had fallen awkwardly quiet and sat up as best as he could, watching with something akin to a grin on his face.

The Frey reached forward and Misty parried the blow easily with the wood of her spear. She raised the butt of the lance and hit the man square in the chest with it, the sound hollow. He fell back lightly. He struck again and she stepped back, the sword falling short.

She had her height, and the even taller lance, and he was quickly realizing it.

The blade to her spear was curved at the end, resembling a sharp fishing hook, and with it she reached for the man as he fell forward, missing his target yet again, and she pulled him towards her, grabbing at his throat with her free hand. She turned with a grunt and slammed Spalding against a house wall and with nimble fingers pried his mouth open as he groaned against the intrusion, slapping at her sides wildly.

The spear clattered to the ground and she sliced his tongue out with her short knife, blood spurting onto her lizard lion jaw. He began to howl and turn red from pain and his own fluids and she whirled the man around and held him to her chest, arm around his neck as she stared their men down, as he thrashed weakly against her.

"Move and I kill him. I'll do it," she warned. "Tell them to let me go safely, Frey."

"Kill her!" Lawrence shrieked, and the battalion began to run forward. "Kill her!"

The Frey men were moving in quickly, a wall of soldiers waving through the thin street and she took a step back, knife slipping in her bloody grip. At her feet Lawrence was shouting for her head, in her arm Spalding was becoming lethargic and heavy, and she glanced quickly between them and the battalion as she began to walk backwards, breathing heavy.

She dropped Lord Spalding Frey to the ground and raised her arm and threw the knife, the blade embedding itself in Lord Lawrence Frey's skull, between his eyes, and she began to run.

OOOoooOOO

This horse was slower than her poor Dornish warhorse, unused to being driven hard and jittery around weapons and fire, and Lana's heart ached at the thought of the mount she'd raised from infancy now dead in the streets of King's Landing where she'd left it, its leg broken and her sword driven through its heart.

She ran the off white animal clashing with her colors down River Row after smoke, chasing Oliver Bolton's shadows from Flea Bottom to the west of the city, him free of his men and her alone, his armor dark as night and his horse too, always a stain in an otherwise northern white wilderness. She'd fought his soldiers through the morning, killing more than she could ever count and thinking with every silver arrow she pulled out of a man that she couldn't spend much more time fighting his clones. A scout had finally spotted him in King's Landing's slums and she'd ridden after him almost immediately.

He was a street ahead at every moment, turning a corner when she went into the alley he'd previously engulfed himself in, more than once finding a dead end herself and having to backtrack when she took the wrong one, when she thought there could be a short cut. A wild game of cat and mouse and with him winning.

She quickly realized that he was running further and further from the battle, from the crowds, from his men and the Essosi she'd heard of but not seen and from the Vale's more than peculiar army.

She turned into the Street of Steel, pulling on her reins until the horse came to a skittering stop, hooves echoing on the cobblestones. Here it was awkwardly silent, quiet from its usual clamor and din, her nerves on fire and her fingers tight around her saddle. She looked to the end of the street, finding the man's gray warhorse attached to an inn's wooden post, flank heavy with sweat and its eyes rolling with exhaustion.

She descended from her own mount there at the opening to the road, unsheathing Bone Shatter from its scabbard when her boots hit the ground, and she made her way down the row of smithy shops, residual heat blasting at her sides from the stores that only a day before had still been in full swing. Now its citizens were gone, shoppers and forgers alike. The lord of Winterfell took a moment to stare Bolton's horse down, and she noted it too would have to be put down. The thought made her smile.

She pushed into the inn, the place deserted and dark when the door closed shut behind her, hinges creaking. It wasn't a grand place, obviously a stable before becoming a shop. Hay on the floors masked the smell of food and drink left on the tables, dirty rags splayed on the counter. She turned, finding dark eyes settled on her figure from a corner of the room.

Oliver Bolton was splayed in a chair in the shadows, back to the wall and his sword leaning on his thigh, and he'd had the time to find a bowl of something that looked like blackened pistachios and placed it in front of him with a tankard of ale. He smiled at her, lips curled up into a smirk, and she couldn't help the sneer she gave back, the snort that escaped from her throat.

He motioned to the chair across from him and reached beneath the table with his foot to push at it, throwing it back, the wood scraping on the floor with a horrible noise. She took it, sword tip pointed to the ground but her grip not lessening. She watched him drink, beer dripping into his slim beard.

"Whose finger did you send me?"

He cracked into a nut, shaking his head. "Some dead child's." He looked up, disarmingly charming as he'd always been, and smiled. "I love my son, Lana. Our son. Why would I mutilate him?"

"Where is he, Bolton."

Oliver grimaced. "Johnny," he enunciated. "Is home, at the Dreadfort, with his grandmother. Your mother-in-law. Where he should be." He shrugged. "You should visit sometime, he asks for you, poor boy."

"I'm as much his mother as I am your wife," she snapped back.

The man ignored her. "He thinks you don't care, isn't that sad? A boy crying out for his mother but not being able to see her?"

"You stole him from beneath me," she said.

"You'd have snuffed his little life out with a pillow if I'd left him with you, wouldn't you have, Lana?" he asked, looking up. "You didn't want him, even when I gifted him to you. Johnny Bolton is fine with me."

"He's nothing but a bastard, Johnny Snow is fine."

Oliver shifted in his seat, grimacing. "Why do you care, Lana? You never have. You're a shit mother and a shit lord, just like your father was."

She leaned forward as her scowl deepened and her voice became frighteningly quiet. "I'm going to fetch him, Oliver, I'm going to fetch your boy at the Dreadfort and I'm going to kill your mother, I promise you that. She could run to above the Wall and to the Land of Always Winter and I would find her and kill her. I will burn your keep to the ground and burn it again until the ashes that were left the first time around are literal dust in the wind. And I will filet you from groin to mouth and hang you up to dry like the pig you are, ribs split opened and organs on the floor."

Oliver took a moment to react, his cheeks flushing with an emotion she wouldn't dare decipher, and finally he grinned. He too leaned forward. "Let's play a game."

"I don't want to play a game unless it involves me feeding you your balls."

He stood and rounded the table, leaving his sword on his chair, and came up behind her. He rested his weight on her shoulders, his mouth by her ear. "It might, if you win." He stepped back and she turned and stood too, sword scraping along the floor and creating sparks in the hay as she followed him.

"I've missed you, Lana, after all these years," he said. He grabbed for a half empty horn of beer, tipping it back. "Gods you were perfect."

"Forgive me if I don't take your compliments," she replied. "Drunken or not."

"I mean them all, Lana." He turned to her and sighed, leaning back on a table. "I loved you."

"Until you raped me?"

"Especially then." His eyes closed. "You were so tight, so warm."

"When's this game commence?"

He looked up. "You don't know much I needed you then, or how much I need you now. How much our boy needs us."

Lana took the remaining steps forward between them. "Need me so much that you ran like a little child to our mother, Fiona?"

He sighed, sifting his fingers through her hair. "I had to, I had to see you again. One last time before you died." The man smiled lightly when she fastened her hands around his chest plate, thumbs running back and forth on the metal, and he looked down at her sweetly as she gazed up at him the same way.

"Oliver?"

He nodded lightly, delightfully content with how she raked her black eyes over his fit form. She shook her head almost apologetically and he ducked a little to catch her sigh, looking into her face questioningly.

"You left your sword on the table," she said softly. "Your knives on your horse."

He winced lightly, feeling the tip of her own short blade against the tip of his member. Her eyebrows raised.

"Like a pig, Oliver," she echoed. She dug a little farther.

He bled silently, gritting his teeth as she shoved the knife into his lower belly, and she flushed angrily when he didn't scream or yell like she had. She tugged the blade up harshly, hitting organs and bone and she pushed a little farther, higher, until she felt his intestines spilling out and then he gasped out, yelped her name and screamed shortly and she closed her eyes as she cleanly cut through his ribs. But there it stuck and though she tried her best, she couldn't quite move it anymore.

She sighed, annoyed, but let go of the blade, leaving it there as he tried to yell past the pain, as he stood past his legs shaking. She pressed her hands to his middle, hands turning crimson as he died leaning on the table and as she debated whether to pull out his insides or shove them back in.

"So tight," she hashed out, lisp heavy. "So warm."

OOOoooOOO

They'd caught a sneak of Hayden Arryn on a steed much too large for her, cape flying and stained with discolorations that would turn any stomach, had seen Lana Stark ride by and leading an army of wolfmen more terrifying than the trained Essosi from the harbor, but their queen, their hazel eyed lion, was nowhere to be seen. The woman had hidden somewhere.

And Chad Baratheon was not taking it well.

He turned to the Lannister's lover, the Axeman having, in the end, found the sellswords he needed to complete his army of city watch soldiers. Both watched from a high point as Westerosi men marched and died in droves, from both their side and the enemies'. Chad figured they were hiding, the Axeman wanted to hear none of it.

"There's something to be said for a queen," the man'd told him. "And there's something to be said for being alive." The stag had taken his horse and ridden away then, stomach heaving when he thought he'd spotted Ser Patrick Redfort's shadow somewhere in the battalions. Traitor, the man is a traitor.

He killed Essosi easily. Though the soldiers were expertly trained, they didn't quite know what to do when a horse reared past them, hooves clacking down onto shields and helmets, the mount armored as much as its rider. He quickly noticed that for every man he killed, two took his place, and he couldn't help but curse at their leader, a boy too small for his breeches even from afar.

He struck a man through the side of his chest plate, where it didn't quite link together, and watched him fall. Beside him, a Baratheon soldier fell, felled from an arrow from above. He let out a high pitched groan as he pushed an Essosi out of the way with the flat of his shield, grabbing him as he tilted backward and turning him to use him as a body shield as another arrow fell from the sky. He was tired of having them rain down sporadically from above, men dying randomly at his sides all morning, the aiming careful and calculated for killing shots. He left the soldier's bodies to be trampled by incoming armies.

He spied a girl as he turned and slashed into an Essosi, the man falling with a short scream. He watched her run through the street, hands at the sides of her dress and hiking it up. He marched through the alley after her, passing through untouched, ignoring and stepping sideways when needing to.

His grip in her blonde hair stopped her running and she yelped tightly as she fell backwards and into him. He tightened his hold on her and hissed into her ear as he dragged her away from the immediate danger. "Yellow and green colors, you must be insane to be running through a troop of Baratheon men, Tyrell."

"I'm not-" She let out a gasp when he pulled. "I'm not a Tyrell! I'm not anything! They're just colors!" She began to cry. "Let me go, please."

Her sobs doubled as he took his time to answer, eyes narrowed as he breathed heavily. "Who are you, what are you."

"Maggie Esmeralda of Qarth!" she gasped out. "Of Essos!"

"You're with the warriors."

"Unsullied," she answered. "No, no I'm not I'm-" she took in a shaky breath. "I'm not with them. I was brought against my will as a seer. Please let me go-"

"Shut up!" Chad growled. "Seer?"

"Yes, yes a seer!"

He tightened his grip on her throat. "Where's Misty Tully."

"What?" she asked. "What are you-Misty Tully?"

"The Mudfish, seer," he enunciated. "Where is the Mudfish. Figure it out or I slit your throat."

"Mudfish!" she yelped. "The one with the lizard lion mask! Sept, the sept, on the hill, with the bell towers! The wolf woman too, please, please," she begged. He let her go and she scrambled away from him, threatening to trip. He watched her turn a corner and disappear and he sneered lightly as he glanced back over his shoulder at Visenya's Hill.

He found the Axeman with his chestplate clean, the man on the ramparts and watching with a critical eye. He looked to Chad, amused.

"They took Baelor's Sept as headquarters."

"Who."

"Lana Stark, Misty Tully. Whoever they're running with. I'm going in."

The Axeman's eyebrow raised. "For your brother?"

The Baratheon lord grimaced but said nothing.

"Do what you want."

He took the men he needed, a group of ten elite that worked well in close quarters, and the streets he needed, back alleys left (so far) unscathed from the war. Citizens ran from the battle but he and his soldiers ignored them as they made their way through River Row. He noticed two horses by their lonesome selves but ignored them, passing by on his own.

From the top of the sept arrows flew but he ignored those too, merely glancing up to make sure he wasn't skewered before he arrived to Baelor's steps. From there his soldiers broke into the monument, murdering anyone who crossed their path, quickly and efficiently.

But inside he did not find Misty Tully, or Lana Stark, only cowering servants to the New Gods and a blonde that was trying so hard to hide behind the silent sisters and the statue of the Mother.

He dragged Cordelia out from behind the sculpture by her hair, pulling her to the middle of the domed hall and tugged her head backwards until she could do nothing but show her throat to him, gasping.

"Where is she?" he yelled. "Where's the Mudfish?" She didn't answer, mismatched eyes boring holes into him, her fingers tight around his own. He shook her violently. "Goddammit girl, don't die for someone who doesn't give two shits about you, where is she? Tell me!" He raised her until she stood on her own feet, glaring back at him.

She reached up and slapped him, angle from up to down, nails scratching at the side of his face until it bled, and he turned his face with the blow of the smack. It echoed throughout the room.

"You little bitch," he murmured. She began to stammer but he pulled her down and she yelped when she hit the floor, ribs cracking onto it. She turned onto her stomach and struggled to stand, struggled to claw away, but he caught her with a strong hand to her thigh and he pulled her back. The palms of her hands squeaked across the marble.

He flipped her onto her back and straddled her, fighting with her until he had her wrists flat on the floor. "You're going to regret doing that." He slammed into her stomach with a closed fist when she tried to rise and she fell back, crying.

He reached to his belt, pulling out a dagger. "I always hated those eyes of yours. It's unnatural, just like Hank had said." He pressed the tip of the blade to her cheek. "He'd have found joy in killing you if he hadn't died. But he is dead. So I'll take the pleasure instead."

She screamed, shaking beneath him but unable to throw him off, when he dug the knife into her black eye, twisting until she was pouring crimson over her face and his hands and her hair. He popped it out easily with a sickening sound and watched it roll away on the marble floor, his free hand keeping Cordelia down. He bent the blade into her throat.

"Baratheon!"

He turned, finding Misty walking towards him. The wild blonde raised her arm back, lance in hand, and threw it as hard as she could, foot twisting cleanly on the marble floor and into the throw.

The tip went through his throat, his neck, six inches going in and six inches coming out the other side, and he breathed out blood, the liquid bubbling around the mortal wound, before falling to his side.

She ran and fell to her knees, sliding into the red coating and dripping onto the marble beneath, and fell to Cordelia's side, wrapping her arms around the woman's back and raising her to hold her, back to front. She pushed strands of blonde hair turned crimson from the older blonde's face, crying as she faced the woman's gaze, a blue eye and a missing eye. The Mudfish pressed her fingers Cordelia's cheek gingerly, hands shaking as she reached down to tear at the woman's dress and to fashion a bandage as the Tyrell girl bled and bled. "Stay with me, Delia, Stay with me, it's fine." She bit back a sob when Cordelia grunted back, a high pitched whine falling out of her throat at the pain, body thrashing in Misty's grip. The wild blonde began to fasten the cloth around the woman's head, tightening it and watching as the white cotton over her eye instantly turned red. "You'll be just fine." She raised her head, yelling out for help as she brought Cordelia closer to her.

She could have sworn the sept was crawling with men before. Now they were horrifyingly alone as Chad's body watched them from feet away. No one answered her pleas.

"M-"

"No, no, don't speak it's-" Misty shook her head wildly, tugging Cordelia up her chest as the woman began to fall against her. "I should have been here, seven hells. Keep your strength, darlin', keep your strength. Everythin'll be fine, I promise ya."

Cordelia pawed at her blindly, crying from one eye and bleeding from the other, her fingers scratching at Misty's mail and skin and armor. "Mama-"

"No, baby no," Misty cried back. "It's me, it's me." She smoothed the woman's hair, lips to the blonde's temple. "Please stay with me, please." She thought of the irony of delusional pain, thought of asking the older blonde how many fingers she was holding up. Hallucinations could lead to death if the wound wasn't taken care of. Cordelia's grip on her wrist tightened and she shook her head, voice trembling. "You're fine, darlin'. We'll get Mary and she'll fix ya up and we'll go home to Riverrun and we'll swim and we'll eat so much fish in a day you'll hate it for the rest of your life. You're so strong, baby, just stay with me. Mary's comin'."

"But Misty," Cordelia rasped as she succumbed to pain. She smiled as if she was thinking of the funniest thing in the world, grin wide through her hazy mind. Her fingers traced over Misty's jaw before her hand fell back to her chest, limp with exhaustion. "I'll never see Riverrun now."

OOOoooOOO

"We're losing, Lady Hayden. We can't hold the gate anymore. The Targaryens have disbanded and the Starks are too far and the Unsullied are moving too fast," Ser Patrick gasped out, winded. "Your dead men aren't rising anymore. We can't fight, we'll lose."

The lady of the Vale turned on her horse, once silver armor turned black with dried blood. "I'm not giving up, not after all this, Ser Patrick!" He grimaced at her from below her, horse long gone and grooves cut deep into his face, slashes that would scar. If he lives past the day, Hayden mused. "Then we advance for the Keep. Let us finish this. Fetch the minotaur!"

They took the remaining dead of the Vale, most of the foul smelling men limping as best as they could, groaning along, and used them as body shields (whatever soldiers of theirs that had been alive were not anymore). Hayden rode a horse she'd found after hers had died, arrow through the flank and jagging in deep, and Ser Patrick opened the way. Whatever men they met he struck down as they made their way to the Red Keep from Flea Bottom, the sun slowly beginning to reach its breaking point as it began to fall in the afternoon sky.

Marie's creature stomped through a nearby alley, fur covered in blood and guts, snouts wide as it breathed, and it pushed walking corpses aside as it joined Hayden's makeshift guard. The girl's horse reared back, frightened, but she pulled it down into submission, grimacing when Ser Patrick glanced back at her. Marie was not following it.

Though her cape was dotted with blood and things she didn't want to over-analyze, her crown was gleaming like it had that morning at dawn, polished to a silvery shine that reflected the setting sun as they moved through the slum's narrow streets to Aegon's High Hill. She'd wanted, before, that her sword did the same, but the latter was off colored now, with no time to be cleaned. She hoped that it brought fear upon the others despite her small stature, her hollow, fragile, bones. She wanted to soar with them.

And she would.

The Axeman stood before the keep's Great Hall's doors, leaning on his sword unapologetically, Tyrell and Lannister men at his back. Hayden's horse snorted into his face.

"Move," she demanded.

He raised an eyebrow, a smile tugging at his lips despite him.

She groaned out and flicked her wrist and the men of the Vale yelped out as they ran forward, jumping the steps and attacking the breathing soldiers. Hayden dropped off her horse and let Ser Patrick lead the way through the assassination happening all around her.

When the Axeman surged forward to run his sword through her, the Minotaur's backhand hit him square in the jaw, sending him flying into the hall's door. The man crumpled to the floor. Hayden opened the hall's doors, kicking him aside, and the remaining men shadowed her as she strode through the high-ceilinged room.

It was silent here, the room empty and her and their steps echoing off the floors. The Lannister lions, holding roses and with crowns to their brows, hung off the walls in woven tapestries, the things twenty feel long and placed in between dragon skulls that the previous owners of the Red Keep, the Targaryens, had put up. Fiona hadn't apparently wanted to redecorate, the creatures threatening enough to be her own now.

The woman herself sat on the iron throne, ten feet high in the air and barbed swords at her back and her sides, beneath her, as she sat cautiously. She was entirely alone, in an armor she'd only used once or twice before, her longsword by her knee as she leaned on it, the pommel a wilting rose. The burnt swords didn't reflect light like her crown did.

"You've come for me," she said. "I hadn't expected it to be you, though."

"This can be done easily, Lady Fiona," Hayden replied. "Simply step down from your throne. You will be treated well."

"My husband used to say the same to his enemies before he killed them," the blonde murmured.

Ser Patrick stepped forward. "Step down, Lady Fiona."

"I am your queen." The lion stood to her full height and began going down the throne's sword-shaped stairs. "Not any less. Speak to me as so." She raked her hazel eyes over the shorter brunette, her man-at-arms, the creature at their side, and the dead men behind them, her grimace widening. "Not any less," she repeated.

"You've lost," Hayden said. "Your men are dead or have deserted. I am not your husband. Stand down."

"No song will be written for you, Arryn," Fiona murmured. "There is no bravery to marching to my hall and demanding I kick my crown across the floor to you. There is no bravery in joining so many others in breaking me down all at once. You and the Stark woman and Ben Greyjoy. That man from Essos, whoever he is. Nice timing, isn't it? That he'd show up like this? I heard he'd left his ships farther up the bay." She turned on herself, scowling. "You've all disbanded from the throne after all I and my husband had done for you. You are alive today, Arryn, because I allowed you to be, and all you have to show for your gratitude is this? You've disbanded and you dare call yourself queen? They all dare call themselves queen? Queen in the North and Queen of the Riverlands and Queen of the Vale. Even that idiot Tully has started calling my daughter the Queen of the Reach." She lifted her sword off the floor. "The Reach is mine. Westeros is mine!"

"Not anymore, Fiona," Hayden murmured. "Westeros is for the young." She flicked her head, chin motioning out, and Marie's creature rumbled past her, stepping up the short steps at the end of the Great Hall.

Fiona's eyes bulged when the minotaur grabbed her by her throat, the creature squeezing tight as it lifted her off the floor with one arm. She grappled at it, fingers scratching at its hands, but it would not let go, and Hayden looked away as the woman began to gargle for air.

Hayden gasped when she was pushed sideways, tripping on her own feet and falling to the floor, knees taking the brunt of the impact. She looked up, alarmed, and watched as the Axeman ran past her and jumped on the minotaur's back, screaming inhumanly. He stabbed the creature's skin with a short knife, plunging the blade over and over.

The minotaur howled and the queen fell to the floor, gasping for breath, and the creature grasped for its back, moving wildly as it tried to throw the woman's lover off it.

The Axeman finally slipped off, front soaked with blood and hands unable to hold on anymore to wet fur, and he fell to the floor, watching with wide eyes as the minotaur turned and stared him down, eyes full of rage. It grabbed the man and shortly raised him up before smashing him back into the marble continuously, roaring.

The stone began to crack beneath the Axeman's broken body.

The minotaur flung him across the hall, and this time the man would not stand back up.

It reached for Fiona again, the woman having failed to raise, and it squeezed her throat until her heart had stopped beating.

OOOoooOOO

The girl's, a tiny brunette thing, fingers faltered on the crown on the floor when he burst through the hall's doors, Unsullied at his back filtering through the open double doors and moving out from his sides to attack the brunette's men. They were captured easily and he smiled as he strolled through the room, his warriors now waiting for his next orders, swords to exposed throats. Wooden Doll grabbed onto the girl and held her the same way, blade to her neck and digging in deep as the minotaur roared down on the floor, soldiers putting him into submission beneath nets and knees.

Dandy watched the creature, aloof as he mulled over his thoughts, and finally he shrugged. "Kill it."

It was stabbed through the heart and after it painfully twitched, groaning, it died, eyes open wide as Dandy watched, fascinated.

He turned to the brunette. "Who are you, putting your hands on my crown?"

She quickly glanced at the throne, at the man in the same position as hers a few feet away, and she gritted her teeth before settling her gaze back on the man. "Hayden Arryn, queen of the Vale and the Mountains of the Moon."

Dandy's eyebrows raised. "A queen?"

"One of them, yes," Hayden replied.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The Essosi turned to her man-at-arms. "Dandy Mott of Qarth, your new king."

"Like hell you are." Ser Patrick spit at his feet and the Unsullied holding him dug his short sword deeper into his throat, drawing a line of blood.

"Be nice, I might use you!" Dandy said cheerfully. He reached for the crown on the floor, sparing a disgusted look to the blonde turning blue a few feet away, and raised it up to his head, trying it on as he hummed. He used a shield as mirror as he grinned. "Yes, I do like this. This will fit quite nicely." He looked to his men, speaking to no one in particular. "Dandy the First has a nice ring to it, no?"

"I do wish more of you Westerosi were here to see me ascend the throne," Dandy admitted. "Wished they would see me pick my sigil. I should perhaps have thought of it before." He looked to Hayden, pouting lightly. "I would have asked my seer for advice but she seems to have gotten lost somewhere. What would you pick as your symbol if you had to?"

"I don't have to," she snapped back. "I was born into mine. I was born of Westeros."

"Me at the helm of your kingdoms can do nothing but good. See how easily you were taken over." He cocked his head to the side. "I do have you to thank though, you and your splintered nations. It won't be so fragmented beneath me."

He walked to the throne, eyes scanning it as he fixed the crown on his head, placing it properly on his hair. "Here will be my words." He glanced back over his shoulder, smiling giddily, voice mockingly childish. "I Win, You Lose."

He began to sit on the throne, inches away from placing his backside on the melted swords, but he looked up and froze, lightly bewildered, when the Great Hall's doors opened and a woman stepped through, shouldered by a wild haired blonde and a tousled brown locked knight, each more bloodied than the next.

He stood straight and stepped down a step. "Who are you? Do you come to see me crowned king of your kingdoms?"

The brunette in the lead grimaced as she walked across the hall. None of the Unsullied moved to stop her, and Dandy watched her, puzzled and fascinated, as she marched to stand before him. He wondered if the black blood down her front, the sticky bits of guts and the broken bones, were hers. She unsheathed her longsword as she walked and climbed up the stairs, and with a slick move she drove it into his lower stomach, the hilt hitting his armor with a dull ting, feet of Valyrian steel coming out of his back. He gurgled against her and she pushed him off her body, off her blade, and he fell to the floor, crown slipping off his head and running in circles on the marble. She stopped it with the flat of her foot and reached down and picked it up.

And Lana Stark sat upon the iron throne.