THE TWINS – RIVERLANDS

Ser Davos went for the Braavosi assassin, diving across the flames sword first. Dew gathered on the cold steel, running down its length mid-flight – boiling as the fire licked the surface.

The two men met in a series of vicious blows that rained sparks over the stinking marsh. Jaqen moved with sleek motions, slicing the air as if he were an apparition made of smoke. Davos lumbered, slipping before every strike which he made with both hands on the hilt, overwhelming the assassin with brute force. It was a dance of beauty and desperation that was suddenly torn three ways when Jon Stark struck out leaving Jaqen with an opponent on each arm.

Around them, the bodies of Jon's men were left to grow stiff in the mud. They became obstacles – falling foul to stray blades and fumbling feet. Reeds bent at the brush of their cloaks. Water-birds screeched and took flight into the dark. From the edge of moonlight, the wolves lifted their noses to the scent of blood.

Jon howled – thrusting Longclaw furiously toward the assassin's heart. The Valyrian steel begged for the kill but Jaqen sidestepped at the last moment. Jon missed. Set off balance, he tried to save his momentum but Jaqen followed with a blow to his back. The blunt force with the edge of his sword left a scar across Jon's leather armour and knocked the wolf king onto his hands and knees.

Davos mustered his strength and launched a vicious attack only to be beaten off by Jaqen's pair of swords that spun so fast they appeared as glittering orbs in the darkness. His leg. A shoulder. Davos gasped with the sudden cuts through his flesh before he slipped and fell. The assassin closed in to finish the old sea captain but Jon rolled through the mud and propelled himself back onto his feet – sword up and covered in mud. He panted heavily. His breath turned to mist where it sank toward the river with the rest.

"What quarrel do you have with me?!" Jon demanded.

Jaqen tapped Jon's sword away as if it were nothing. "Not with you," he replied darkly, "with your entire history. With every moment that led to your birth and each one since. With what will follow if you are allowed to live."

And that is how his eyes burrowed into Jon's – as though the entire lineage of hatred fuelled a fire between them – fed by both and owned by neither.

"There is no end to the souls that burned so that you could stand here, Jon Snow. They scream in the shadows between this life and the next. A man can hear them… Where the edges of the mountains touch the salt. That is where they lie. Bones which cannot rest."

"What?" Jon frowned in confusion, before their swords clashed again – the assassin's pair slid along Longclaw until they met the hilt, locked in a cross. "What business does a man of Braavos have in the West?"

"You are not from the West, Lord Stark – your blood owes mine vengeance. A man knows your real name and he wonders, do you?"

"Yes..." Jon breathed, swaying side to side like an adder. "And I have chosen to remain Jon Stark of Winterfell, bastard son of Lord Eddard and protector of the Northern lands." Boldly, Jon strode closer, putting pressure where their swords met. "King of the North and guardian of Winter. Whatever you think my blood will purchase, you are wrong. I am no dragon..." The last words came as a hiss. Jon had never felt so detached from himself.

Jaqen shook his head. "You are the King." He pushed sharply and their weapons parted with an explosion of sparks that died in the freezing mud.

Davos thrust his blade up from beneath, aiming a jab at Jaqen's hip. Mid-strike, the assassin shifted and Davos overshot. The Onion Knight recoiled at a boot in his stomach. Bone snapped. He gasped, reaching for is rib. Pain lurched from one side of his chest to the other. "Bastard!"

"Stay down..." Jaqen growled. "There are no bastards among us. Only lies." He waited as Jon approached. "Enough play..." he added, shifting away so fast that Jon was left grasping at mist. It was clear that he'd toyed with their hopes – dragged out the battle for his own amusement. Now, the moment Jon's back was turned, the Faceless assassin struck hard – driving both of his swords straight through Jon's back until they protruded from the Stark king's chest like fangs on a dragon. Sprays of blood showered the swamp grass, black in the moonlight.

"My Lord!" Davos rolled onto his side.

Jon's sword slipped from his hand. Shaking, he looked to his chest then lifted his hands, touching the bloodied steel. The silver points vanished, ripped back through his rib cage leaving fountains of blood streaming onto the ground.

Blackness edged at his vision.

The constant howl of the world faded into silence.

Jon looked to The Trident where a faint halo of moonlight wept in its depths alongside ghostly fish. Death wrapped its claws around his knees – dragged him into the mud. Breath refused to come. He could not steal even a single heartbeat from life. Jon knew exactly how this was meant to end. It was familiar. The cold in the dark. His chest tightening.

Death, his old friend. They met a second time.

Davos watched Jon's body crumble face first into the mud. There he was left, cold and still – the North's last hope against the horrors of night and he was dead. Snatched away without splendour or ceremony. Killing a king was no different than the slaughter of a common man. Stannis was right. Men were twigs on a pine, snapped without a moment's notice when the snows fell heavy.

"You have no idea what you have done!" Davos hauled his body through the filth until he reached Jon's corpse. He rolled the Stark over and helplessly pressed his gloved hand over one of the wounds. The blood had stopped along with his king's heart. "This world will fall into a Winter that never ends."

"The fate of the world does not rest on one man's head," Jaqen replied coolly, wiping his swords clean on the grass. "Of that, you can be sure."

Jon already looked white as the moon. "It does this time." Davos brushed some of Jon's black hair from his face. It was clogged with mud as if the very ground beneath them was trying to drag him below the surface. The assassin did not appear to be in any hurry to leave, almost as though he were relishing the victory. "What about his blood?" Davos demanded, his eyes hot with tears that couldn't break. Jon was barely more than a boy. Even for a Northerner he was pale – almost as though he'd been pieced together from pieces of the stars.

Jaqen pried a bladder of water from one of the bodies and sipped. "Truly, you do not know?" He laughed into his drink. "He is a Stark, for sure," Jaqen assured the old man, "but he is no boy of Eddard's. The Lord's indiscretion never made it from the womb. The Daynes are ruled by emotion and equally swept away by it, like the tides around their shimmering towers."

Davos drew back. There were other Starks old enough to have adult bastards. Benjen, for one or – or Lyanna. Whisper and rumour rushed over his memory, assaulting Davos until finally he grasped the truth.

"Rhaegar's boy. Heir to th' Iron Throne. That's why you called him, 'king'." If the Lannisters knew, they'd tear apart the realm to kill him. No wonder Ned lied. "You were wrong. Jon did no' travel South ter seek a throne. He's here to beg help from the silver queen for the battle brewing in the North. You killed him for nothing. Go on, then. Finish me off. Make sure you burn the bodies or by gods I'll come back fer you. I'll not stop 'till I fookin' bury you! Yer hear me, Faceless cu-"

"Throne or no throne, a man won't rest until the last dragon is dead. Silver Queen and all her demon children, included. And you, ser… For all your rage you cannot drag yourself from Death's side. He looks on you kindly, with an air to make a friend. Venture carefully into the shadows, Ser Davos. We peel back Death's layers and look upon the faces of the realm. You'd not like the truth beneath the skin."

BONEWAY – STORMLANDS


Jorah was not sure what to do with the Stark girl. He kept an eye on Arya and noticed that her presence disturbed many of the soldiers. She walked between them like a ghost, spinning her slender blade through the mountain air – stabbing it into heshen bags as practice – sharpening it on river stones for hours while whispering foreign words to the blade. Often she'd catch birds by hand and pluck them at the fire when the others were heavy with drink. Then the nights came and he'd listen to her squirm and howl through dreams as if possessed by the god of Death himself.

"Arya is nearly wild," Daenerys remarked, joining Jorah outside the tent. The curtains of fabric whispered behind them, brushing their skin with silk embossed with silver thread. "She has Drogon's disregard for life and Rhaegal's wilful mind. I wonder how he is..." Daenerys thought of her dragon. She could do nothing to call him back.

"Keeping an eye on the lion and his spider..." Jorah pointed out. "Any excuse to wander over the sea. He is more serpent than dragon. They must have drowned his egg before you hatched it in the fire."

They had left the city and moved further through the last of the mountain passes. They made camp on the lower slopes, overlooking the dangerous road which they'd set upon tomorrow. It snaked across the violent landscape like a crack in freshly cooled magma.

"I sent ravens as you asked, my Queen," Jorah added. "None have returned."

"It is early, Ser. Your birds may return once they fight their way through the snow. I've not lost hope, neither should you."

Jorah did not share her faith. Inviting him back to the North was an enormous political risk for his cousin and the vulnerable Stark queen. "We should take care to remember that Arya Stark, despite her ways, is second in line to Winterfell and all its titles. She has the blood of kings in her veins and there is power in that – in the North – power we can't buy with gold."

"What are you saying?"

"Nothing..."

"Part of me wishes that I could live as Arya does. Roaming the Great Grass Sea on horseback was..." She trailed off. The Dothraki had awakened a primitive yearning in her which she could only indulge in now on dragonback. Violence was part of her soul which she kept shrouded from Jorah. To him – and now to Westeros – she was a mythical queen, pure and deserving of her father's stolen crown.

Her reality was somewhat more bloody. She dreamed of her face awash with blood and flayed Lannister skin hanging from the walls of the Red Keep.

"You are hoping to keep Arya Stark for political gain. Rear her like one of my dragons until we can slot her back into polite society but I caution you, Ser..." Daenerys warned. "I hear her whisper lists of names as she wanders through camp. She is dangerous."

"Dangerous is that young dragon living in your tent."

"Ash is calming down..."

"It nearly burned your tent to the ground last night. Twice. You will not be able to shrug these things off for much longer."

"In two days we won't have to lie." Daenerys assured him.

Jorah wasn't pleased. "Perhaps not but we'll still have a small, volatile nightmare in tow. What are we going to do with it when we reach King's Landing? Leave it in the care of the maester-in-training and the drunken whore-monger? Soon as that dragon gets a few feet of breadth in its wings, it'll turn on us."

Daenerys sharpened her tone. "The others didn't..."

"Khaleesi, they were yours. The bond you share with those dragons is lodged deep in a magic no one can ever hope to understand. You are their mother. Ash is not your child. She was born wild. Only the gods know how long that egg has waited or where it came from. What if she is a dragon that can't be tamed like one of the original monsters brought back by the Valyrian Freehold?"

"I hope that is true," Daenerys snapped, defiant. "For she will be unstoppable and all the Houses of the realm will crumble before us."

"Before fire and destruction," Jorah corrected. "Use your dragons carefully. Your father proved that there is no purpose ruling an empire built on fear."

"And my brother proved that softness of heart is an invitation for death."

They drew quiet at the impasse. Daenerys stared back towards the South. They were so deep in the mountains now that she could see little but uneven, black peaks. It was inconceivable that the glorious deserts of Dorne lay beyond.

"You've been thinking about him more, since Dorne..." Jorah added, carefully.

"There were times when I thought I could see Rhaegar wander along the stone walls with the sea wind at his back, singing one of his songs… I understood what he found in the sand and sea. Freedom."

Jorah discreetly laid his hand on her back. "You were going to marry into Dorne, as he did."

"There are times when I wonder if that alliance hastened my brother's death."

"Rhaegar was the Crown Prince. Drawing breath was enough to condemn him. The same is true for you. If you do not fight for your birth rite, you'll be killed for it. That is not all… I see something else, wading in your eyes, Khaleesi."

"I am afraid..." She whispered. "To set foot in King's Landing. To stand at the throne I have seen a thousand times in my dreams. To walk the crypts where my family rest as bone and dust. I have seen it, Ser, and every time the dreams end the same."

The Queen faced her knight – her eyes unnaturally dark.

"Always. The throne is a charred wreck. Ash and snow rain through the crumbled ruin. Something terrible is going to happen when we ride into King's Landing and once it's done, our path will be set."


"What's that?" Gilly shuffled closer to the smoking fire, wrapped in blankets adorned with snarling dragons. Sam had Little Sam swaddled in his arms while Marwyn fussed about with the fire, prodding it with a stick until one of the glowing coals tumbled free and hurtled down the slope into nowhere as nightfall thickened.

"Lightning." Marwyn replied, as another branch of light cracked into a dozen fractures, striking several rocky peaks ahead. "It starts near every night – rolls in from the sea o'er there and breaks the sky apart. One of the Baratheon maesters said it has something to do with the mountains. A certain kind of rock – it draws the anger of the Storm God. That's why these here are the 'Storm Lands'."

"We'll be walkin' that road tomorrow..." Gilly startled when a boom of thunder reached them. It shook the bedrock. "Is it safe?"

"Safe enough. Many walk the Boneway."

The storm had sent the queen's dragons into hiding. They found homes in caves and settled for the night among the charcoal bones of their kills. Like the monstrous cats of the Dothraki grasslands, the dragons existed in a permanent balance of feast and fast. For the past week they'd ravaged their way through the mountains consuming human and animal alike when their mother wasn't looking. Stories of their horror had already begun to make their way North toward the capital.


"Come here, girl." Daenerys beckoned Arya toward her.

Arya's hair had grown longer. She swept it up into a rough ponytail with a few stray patches that refused to be tamed. Cautiously, Arya sheathed Needle and approached the Targarayen Queen. Even the way her feet picked timidly through the dirt was like a wolf.

"Ser Mormont tells me that you have spent time in King's Landing."

Arya nodded. "Ay. I was there."

"And that you know your way around the Red Keep – particularly the tunnels that meet the sea?"

"I used to chase cats," she replied. "The tunnels are full of rats and dragon bones." The Queen's head tilted. "The corpses of all the old dragons are buried in the catacombs. They're left in corners. That's how I knew they were real. One had jaws so big I walked through them. Father said they used to decorate the Throne room."

Daenerys tried not to imagine the bones in the dark. The Red Keep was a mausoleum. Daenerys was ready to face the Iron Throne but she didn't know if she was prepared to stare into the ghosts of her past. "Lady Stark, do you remember the way through the tunnels? Good. I'd like to offer you a deal."

"You'll take me home to Winterfell?"

"Oh..." Daenerys opened her arm, inviting Arya to sit with her. "I already intend to return you home. My knight has made me swear to that. He honours the families of the North and so, too, must I. No, my offer is… Not for my knight's ears but for yours alone."

Arya's eyes took on an alarming shine. "You believe there is something else I want?"

"I think you want to hold that sword of yours to a Lannister throat… That is something I can arrange."


Ser Jorah watched Daenerys trail through the camp with the sky breaking apart behind her. He'd not felt this way about the world since Asshai. The gods were wakening and they had a temper in their throats. This violence was only an opening note and it gave gravity to the Queen's fears.

"What was that about?" He asked, holding out his hand to help her up the last rocky ledge where her tent perched.

"Nothing that concerns you. Oh – do not look so alarmed, Ser." Daenerys leaned into him for a moment as they ducked under the tent. "Women's business. Arya is older than she looks. Where is Ash?"

"Over here..." Jorah had to dig the dragon out from a pile of silk cushions. It was building a nest out of whatever it could find and spent its days sleeping. "I can't work her out. She is nothing like your dragons. See?" Jorah ran his finger carefully down a newly emerged set of spines. They were curved and sharp as needles. "I'm certain she can't be ridden."

"Is the cage finished?"

"Yes. It's built for ravens but I had it re-enforced. It'll hold long as all she does is sleep like this."

Daenerys eyed Ash warily. "Better she be raised in captivity than allowed to roam. Imagine what kind of monster she might become without guidance."

"I am moved to wonder why the lands outside Asshai are covered in dragon bone instead of thick with winged monsters."

"You felt the air – it was poisoned by magic and now anything with magic dies at its touch."

THE TWINS – RIVERLANDS


"It is frost," Davos explained, as Jaqen bent down and ran his hand over the crisp swamp grass. "Not meant ter be this far South so soon. Next it'll be snowin' at The Twins and soon after that they'll be walkin' across that there river an' there'll be an end to Frey's tolls. The borders of the realm are vanishing."

Jaqen had no cause to kill Davos and no desire to run from the scene either. He lingered at his victory, comforted by the body of Jon Snow. "The air is – strange..." He admitted. "A man has heard of the Northern Gods."

"This isn' the North," Davos warned. "Those gods only whisper 'ere. They live in the blood trees and scream out from the faces in the wood."

"The Bone Wood?"

"Weirwood? Indeed. Each tree is a window through which magic may look. Jon he-" Davos had to pause when a lump lodged at the back of his throat. He wiped a damp cloth over Jon's cheek, cleaning away the mud as they had done at Castle Black the last time he'd died. As much as he despised the Red Witch he longed for her spells now. "He taught me how to listen."

"A man has heard stories too, of two trees – white and black – Bone and Iron – one with flaming leaves, the other blue. Those are the colours they burn. Fire and Ice. Two sides of the same coin." Jaqen flipped one of the Braavosi coins, sending it toward Davos who caught it and stared at the sigil of the House of Black and White. "Wood gifted by the gods, some might say." Jaqen continued. "We tore it down and fashioned these gods to our will. They are all the same to us. One god who looks through different eyes at the world."

Davos tried to move, leaning toward a bag of water but his shattered bone dug into flesh leaving him wretched next to Jon's body. Jaqen was curious, moving the water within Davos' reach. "I don't understand you. Why not kill me?"

"Your name is not on my list." He took up a seat nearby after stoking the fire to life. The other bodies he had pushed into the river lurking nearby where they were sucked beneath the surface. "Tell me about your Gods..."

"My gods are the Sea and the Storm. That's all there is when you're on the water and the horizon becomes oblivion." He looked North. "Even the waves are tamed by Winter. They freeze into land and continents become one mass. Soon, your palace in Braavos won't seem quite so far away. Our gods will become your gods and I promise you, they are monstrous."

CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL


"Fuck the bear and all its cubs!" Dacey nearly dropped her sword at the sight of rougher-than-Ironbark Wilding strutting through the gates, dragging his weary horse behind. The poor creature was thin as bone, eyeing off the piles of hay as the convoy from Winterfell flooded into the yard.

Tormund was buggered from the walk. He hadn't been this thin in the face since his miss-spent youth but at least the thick scrub of orange beard covered the worst of his sunken cheeks. His dead stare toward the mud was interrupted by a snapping growl, raised from the past like a rift of frost cracking away from the Frost Fangs. He lifted his head and found a middle-aged woman wrapped in furs, staggering down the steps. She sheathed a dragonglass sword and focused a scathing glare that he'd earned a lifetime ago.

Fuck. He would know that woman anywhere.

"Dacey…?" He fished the name from memory. Tormund was answered with a slap so hard it knocked him right into the cold mud. His knee cracked a layer of ice. Water seeped into the cloth as he stumbled back to his feet, using his horse as leverage. A layer of laughter settled in the air from the Night's Watch. "Yer remember me, then."

"Piece of shit!" Dacey had not finished with the Wilding King. She struck him again but this time Tormund managed to stay on his feet. Just. The woman had paws for hands and the force of the North wind. "I told you I'd take your fuckin' head if I ever saw you again, Wilding scum!"

Melisandre eyed the exchange from atop her horse passively. She was more interested in the castle rearing out from the ice. Winter had thickened its hold since she'd last laid eyes on the fortress. It was as though The Wall itself was starting to consume them, freezing them alive. At the same time she could feel the Lord of Light's magic growing. The closer she got to the North, the stronger it became.

"Mind if I feed this 'orse and take a place by the fire? You can follow me around for all I care." Tormund grunted at the bear ambling after him.

"Damn right I will." Dacey growled.

"Aren' yer meant ter be dead?" Tormund added, giving his horse a gentle nudge.

"You hoped, you skinny little shit. You fucking prayed."


"Old friend of yours?" Asked Lord Commander Thorne, leaning over his wine in the main hall when Tormund and his party finally sat down for a sad offering of rabbit and crow soup. A particularly unattractive leg was poking out of his bowl. The supplies from the South were in the process of being unloaded into the granaries. Tomorrow there'd be bread but this lot were so hungry they'd eat the bloody stones right out of the walls. "I didn't think your lot mixed with the Wildlings..."

He and Dacey occupied the official table at the front of the hall, separated from the others. It was so cold inside, even with the fires lit, that everyone kept their furs on. They were running out of kindling unless a few brave souls felt like a stroll toward the Haunted Forest.

"We don't." Dacey replied sharply, before she was forced to amend her reply with a scattering of truth. "Not usually. Only the young and stupid mess around with Freefolk." She tried not to allow her thoughts to wander to Mance. Those nights in the Winterfell crypts were something she had difficulty explaining to herself let alone anyone else. It seemed like every time she set foot in this place she was forced to relive her mistake.

"I know you… There's a story in those eyes."

Dacey searched the Lord Commander's face but found nothing there but curiosity. At the ends of the realm, perhaps that is all he had left. "I guess there is nobody left to reprimand us… and we are not children anymore." Dacey sighed and slid her wine away, losing interest in the sickly liquid. Seeing Tormund again had dredged up thoughts of her past she'd left safely buried. "Occasionally Wildlings rowed to our shores for reasons other than plunder. They were after conquests of a different kind."

Thorne had developed a disconcerting curl to his cracked lips. "I was young once and I've chased enough Night's Watchmen from the brothels to know that rules aren't necessarily rules."

"Were you chased, Commander Thorne?" Dacey paused long enough to see a patch of light in his eyes. "Your new Wildling King thought he'd try his luck on one such night. He ended up mounting something that nearly took a piece out of him." Tormund still wandered around with the scars from the encounter.

"You and-"

Dacey repulsed before Thorne could finish. "I'd rather fuck his horse. No. But he earned his beating earlier."

"Do me a favour, Lady Mormont," Thorne implored her, "don't go tearing his throat out over ancient history. Snow sent him to us ter keep the peace."

"Stark..." she corrected. "King of the North, as it should 'ave been."

"I forget your lot are the loyalist fuckers in all the kingdom."

"Small island," Dacey cut back, almost fondly. "Not much else to do."

Thorne knew their loyalty ran deeper than that. "Yeah well, he'll always be fuckin' Snow to me. A pup scratching at the ice."

"Is it true – you tried ter kill him once?"

"I'll not apologise," Thorne warned her. "The situation was complicated. Still fucking is. Now, Snow has to live. I'll fight for him – so will my men – so will those fucking Wildlings. That's all that matters."


Melisandre wandered through the camp at Castle Black until she found a place where The Wall met stone. Up close it was simply ice – like that beneath her feet and the daggers clinging to the rooves. She reached out – laid her hands upon the surface followed by her head. Melisandre could hear a song rustling beneath. Like holding a shell against her ear there were static murmurings but no matter how long she lay there she could not make them out. They were outside her understanding. Pieces of truth behind a veil. The ramblings of ice were beyond her. All she had was the hissing voice in the flames.

Her hands brushed the surface, shifting a layer of snow that covered the ancient blocks. Spider web threads of silver lived within, as though lightning had been locked inside. Weirwood roots… Fused with The Wall. Stories of their power were writ in forbidden volumes. She had read them in the Free Cities by dwindling candlelight.

Follow them.

Melisandre turned and headed toward the gates.

THE TWINS – RIVERLANDS


It was near dawn. Davos had propped himself against a misplaced bolder and sat draped in blankets while the Faceless assassin knelt at the edge of the river. The dawn hadn't settled on a colour yet leaving the surface of the water silver. Jaqen whispered ancient prayers, dipping his hands into the water.

Davos turned to Jon. His body was pale blue with black lips. In the light he could see tears of his flesh poking through his breast plate. If he lived, Davos knew he'd have to find a way South. Sansa's future depended on the support of the Targaryen queen. He couldn't leave Lady Sansa in Winterfell surrounded by hostile armies intent on taking her head at the first sign of weakness.

Jaqen turned suddenly, eyes fixed on Jon's corpse. The world was perfectly silent. Mist whispered over the surface in arcing curls, like slow moving waves and yet he'd heard something move behind him. It couldn't be the sailor. He was immobile and bleeding internally.

"Something wrong?" Davos asked, as the assassin left his prayers and wandered back to the smouldering camp.

Jaqen paced around the coals a few times before replying. "A man will bury him," he nodded at Jon. "You can say the prayers of his gods."

Davos shifted. "Yer don' give a bugger about our customs. What do yer think is going to happen? Are you worried he'll wake up if we don' put him five feet down?"

"As you said," Jaqen replied calmly. "He rose from the dead once."

"With a Red Priestess hissing over his corpse. Was her magic brought him back. There's nothing 'ere but Death."

Jaqen looked away.

CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL


The Red Priestess sank to her knees in the soft snow. Her hands dug through the powder, clawing at the base of The Wall frantically like a wolf after a squirrel. She was beyond the gates of Castle Black, a few hundred feet but its dark body loomed. She scratched furiously until she found ice. It met her hands like steel.

Brushing away the loose snow, she was left with a patch of solid ground that was blue with huge bubbles of air trapped beneath the surface like pearls. A snap freeze. Between the bubbles were more hairline roots. They reached well beyond the edge of The Wall toward the Northern lands.

Blood dripped onto the ice.

Melisandre gasped. Lifted her hands. Blood ran over her fingers. She touched her face and found hot liquid running from her eyes like tears. They vanished into the ice and evaporated – instantly boiled to nothing.

THE TWINS – RIVERLANDS


The grave was dug. Jaqen grabbed Jon roughly by his arm and hauled him toward the shallow hole in the mud. Davos could barely bring himself to watch. Jon was a king. A good man. He didn't deserve to be buried in an unmarked ditch. This isn't what all those men had fought for.

Thud.

"Go on then, say what you want to say." Jaqen sat down on the grass to catch his breath.

Davos could barely crawl but he did, kneeling at the edge of Jon Stark's grave. "Forgive me, M'Lord..." He whispered, closing his eyes as a tear slipped over his cracked cheek.

CASTLE BLACK – THE NORTH


The Red Witch fell backwards with a scream that echoed all the way along The Wall. She clawed at her chest, gasping violently as blood drained from two holes in her breast. Her eyes rolled into her head. Their whites reflected the horror as her lips formed words she didn't understand.

Something had taken possession of her and it came from deep beneath the frozen ground. She could feel it, snatching her soul right out of her heart while it was still beating.

A passing horseman reared his animal and rode hard toward the woman in the snow. He rolled off the horse before it had stopped, tossing the reigns over its head and leaving it to wander as he approached the woman.

Dorin swept his cloak from his shoulders and laid it over the woman. Next he slapped her hard across the cheek, trying to snap her out of the seizure that had taken control of her limbs. The shock of it worked. The woman sat up, clutching violently at Dorin with nails as long as claws.

'What's dead may never die!' She gasped, rasping for breath. She felt as if she were breathing in the frost and exhaling petals of the Winter Rose. "What's dead… What's..." Her mind began to return and she was covered in petals but they were black and dead. Her clothes were drenched in blood and yet the snow was clean. She pushed the cloak away and searched her chest but the wounds had closed. "Who are you?" Melisandre finally whispered.

"A friend..." Dorin replied carefully. "On my way to the castle. Are you from there?"

Melisandre glanced over her shoulder at the black walls and nodded. "I..."

"What are you doing ou' here all alone? There are wolves about an' they'd take a moment to rip your pretty little throat out."

He was the most Northern thing she had ever come across and all she could do was nod and allow him to lay her across his horse. The priestess faded out of consciousness and Dorin was left to continue on to Castle Black on foot leading his horse.

THE TWINS – RIVERLANDS


Jon Snow gasped – mouth wide – dragging in his first, icy breath. It came as a cry. A howl. As something unearthly. He reached up and wrapped his hands around the sword laying across his chest as though the steel itself had called him out of the darkness.

"Jon!" Davos shouted, forgetting his injury as he groped at the hole, reaching for his lord.

Jaqen stumbled backwards as the body of Jon Targaryen re-animated. He'd seen the dead walk before – worn as shadows but never had he witnessed a life renewed. It knocked him completely off guard. He kept retreating, heading toward the water's edge as Jon's hand reached the edge of his grave. Fingers curled in the soft mud. Tugged at the long, thin grass. Then the man himself appeared and crawled out of the hole in the earth that had failed to hold him.

Jon's face was cracked and marred by his hours spent in death but this was a brief venture compared to the last time. Standing on the bank, he touched his chest where his wounds remained, partially closed. He nodded at Davos, who could barely find a word and then turned to the assassin.

"You worship Death," Jon had to hold his throat to make the words out. "Well, I have met your god."

Snow entered the air around them in chaotic flurries. Ser Davos could feel its freezing touch settling over the world. "My Lord..." he pointed to the water behind the assassin.

Jaqen, who had said nothing, turned. Behind him, the sun had risen over the edge of the world and revealed the true colour of the waters. The Trident ran red, clogged with corpses drifting South. Men. Women. Children. Wolves… Bloated and staring with grey eyes, the bodies moved toward them. Jaqen took a measured step away from the water. The horror was almost too much to behold.

Jon did not avert his eyes. He fixed them on the water. "I saw them," he whispered. "They were down there, in the darkness, chased by the wolves. They have come out of the woods to feast."

And Jon was a wolf. Jaqen could see that now.

"Aren't you going to try and kill me again?" Jon asked, opening his arms out to the man.

Slowly, Jaqen shook his head. "A man gives a name to his god but his god does not want this name..." Then he did the unthinkable. He knelt beside the river and bowed his head to the Wolf king.