What had been meant to last two nights and a day ended up being a four day long stay as Arya and her friend had managed to wound the prince and run away before nightfall the first day.
Four days they stay they searched for her before she was found, though the search party had been divided into three very different groups, one that seemed to want to kill the girl for the act, made up mostly by Lannisters, the group Lyanna would soon have to call her family, then there was the family she had been born to that had worried about her and wanted her found. The amused ones who had found the whole thing rather funny, if a bit tedious as time had worn on, made up the third group. Thankfully the King seemed to have sided with the latter group, and not that of his wife. Leaving Arya no worse for wear than when found after being scolded.
All was not as lucky; the King ordered Lady's death as compensation for the part Arya's missing direwolf had played in the prince's injury. Leaving a distraught Sansa, and a furious Arya.
"Stop them," Sansa pleaded with their father, "don't let them do it, please, please, it wasn't Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can't, it wasn't Lady, don't let them hurt Lady, I'll make her be good, I promise, I promise..." She started to cry.
Their father took her in his arms and held her while she wept. He looked across the room at the King. His old friend, closer than any brother, and pleaded. "Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please."
The king looked at them for a long moment, his eyes lingering on Lyanna, then turned his eyes on his wife. "Damn you, Cersei," he said with loathing.
He would do nothing.
Her father stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa's grasp. All the weariness of the past four days evident on his face. "Do it yourself then, Robert," he said in a voice cold and sharp as steel. "At least have the courage to do it yourself."
The King gave him a flat look, dead eyes, and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as lead. Silence filled the hall.
"Where is the direwolf?" The Queen asked when her husband was gone. Beside her, Prince Joffrey was smiling.
"The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace," Ser Barristan Selmy answered reluctantly.
"Send for Ilyn Payne."
"No, if it must be done, I will do it."
The Queen regarded him suspiciously. "You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would you do such a thing?"
"I believe it is the old way." Lyanna heard Ser Jaime say, speaking for the first time since she had entered with her father. He was looking at her, a curious look on his face. At least until his sister drew his attention.
"The old way?"
"Well, I would assume." He said, his usual light tone back. "It wasn't explained on how to adapt it to animals or when the man who gave the order refused to carry it out himself. But as his hand I would assume…"
Surprisingly it was Sansa who took word and finished the explanation, her tone dull and lifeless. "She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher."
No more than eight days later did they ride into King's Landing and through the towering bronze doors of the Red Keep. Lyanna was tired, sore, and irritable as they did so, and she feared no member of her family felt any different. Ever since Lady's death, Sansa's lies in regards to the events that led up to it, and Arya's fight with the prince, none had been very pleasant company. That the Grand Maester Pycelle of the Small council wanted to convene an urgent meeting where the honor of the Hand's presence was requested as soon as they arrived, forcing their father to send his daughters ahead without him, did not help matters.
Their new home, the tower of the hand, was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes, and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen from the Summer Isles. The walls were hung with tapestries from Norvos and Qohor and Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in black marble faces. But by the time they reached it Lyanna did not care. She simply wanted to get away from her sisters' bickering; it made her think longingly of her silent and comforting twin somewhere on top of the wall. The thought did not help her mood improve. She could only hope sleep would.
When a smiling Septa woke her up the following morning Lyanna rose from her bed with a hesitance she had not felt for years. Something that made her old septa smile at her could not be good. When mountains of different fabrics, in every imaginable color, greeted her she knew she had been right.
"What is this?"
"The Queen has sent her own seamstress to see to your wedding gown. " Septa preened. "She understands how hectic things are for your lord father. You should follow her example, you and your half-sisters, and leave this business with lady Sansa's wolf behind you." Lady Sansa, always lady. Arya rarely got a title before her name, and the only title Lyanna got was 'miss Snow' when the woman was unusually displeased with her.
"How kind of her." She replied drily.
"Do not even think of refusing, it would be an insult to the crown." She warned sharply, as if reading her thoughts.
"I had no such inclinations." She lied.
"Good, it will be a grand celebration." Septa said, suddenly almost dreamy, "I imagine the Queen sees it as a trail run for Lady Sansa's and Prince Joffrey's wedding. Your dress must of course be in the color of your lord father's house but-"
"Septa Mordane, as much appreciated as your advice is, I feel you are much more needed by my sister. Sansa is still much upset, as you know, and I worry."
"Of course, miss Snow." She replied coldly before leaving the room, knowing she had been dismissed and being non-too-pleased about it. Though Lyanna imagined it was the fabrics more than Lyanna's company that had made the woman want to stay. Never had she seen such color or felt such fine textures, and Septa was far more interested in such than Lyanna.
"I truly detest that woman, though I fear she detests me even more." She thought out loud as the door closed, earning a soft giggle from one of the maids. She immediately took a liking to her and spent much of the fitting asking questions about the city and life in the Red Keep.
While the arrangements for her wedding seemed to move flawlessly Lyanna saw little of both her lord father, and of her intended, in the coming days. In fact she last saw Ser Jaime the night Lady been killed. Hence when she found herself in much the same position with him as she had with his brother as she sent her dagger sailing next to his head and inserting itself in the doorframe all she could do was stare in horror.
"And what pray tell have I done to offend my intended so that she would try to kill me?" He asked, with his usual undertone of amusement, as he tore the dagger out from the doorframe. "Valerian steel, a good weapon." He commented, looking it over before handing it back to her.
"It was a gift from Lord Tyrion. In case he is late for the wedding. What brings you to the Hand's tower?"
"Why, I hear that you have been kept busy by my sister. I thought I would save you for today before she comes up with more useless tasks for you to preform. I fear the King is giving her too little to occupy her time."
"And how, Ser, do you intend to save me from the whims of the Queen?"
"I hoped my presence would be enough, I am a member of the Kingsguard."
"I am afraid it may not discourage them, they have become much too brave. I dare say I nearly frightened the seamstress to death when she found a dagger strapped to my calf the first day. Now, however, nothing I do or say seems to even make them falter in their tasks. They have grown as used to my scare tactics as my old septa. Throwing my dagger was my last line of defense. It usually makes her leave to complain to my father, I hoped it would merely scare the Queen's messengers away. I fear I shall be known as the Mad Lannister by the end of our wedding, for your sister is slowly driving me to insanity." She informed him with a smile.
"Then for the sake of your sanity I shall keep you safe, if only for today." He promised. "Perhaps I may show you the King's castle?" She looked at him a few seconds without saying a word.
"Will you show me the dragon skulls?
"Not the gardens? They are quite popular with the ladies of the court."
"No, the skulls. I would imagine them quite beautiful."
"Beautiful?" He echoed, sounding somewhat intrigued. "I suppose that is one way to describe them, most would use the word frightening. The mad King was quite fond of them."
"I have always been fascinated by dragons, my brother Brann is as well. Now that he has woken I feel I have to see them and write to him about it." She smiled.
"Yes, I heard the good news." Jaime admitted. "Does he still not remember what happened?"
"He does not. But I fear his lady mother is not giving up as easily. She has never been able to find fault in her children and will want to lay it at someone else's feet. I pity her target, she has quite the temper at times. If it was not for our father I fear my brother and I would always have been blamed for their indiscretions. I imagine she is on a warpath in Winterfell."
Lyanna was surprised to find the sculls hidden away deep in a dank cellar under the castle with no light to aluminate their beauty except the torch Jaime had brought, and which she quickly took from him as she moved closer to explore them closer.
They were not frightening at all, they were in fact even more than beautiful than she could have dreamed, they were perfection, and she could not phantom why they were hidden away in such a place.
There were nineteen skulls, all in all. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half. The most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than mastiffs skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had not lived very long.
From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old. The singers had given them the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar. Lyanna could only stand between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. One could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar's gullet, although one would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.
Lyanna could only stare at Balerion's huge, empty-eyed skull, trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine how it must have looked when it spread its great black wings and swept across the skies, breathing fire.
King Loren of the Rock had tried to stand against the fire when he joined with King Mern of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen conquest. That was close on three hundred years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and not mere provinces of a greater realm. Between them, the Two Kings had six hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten times as many freeriders and men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers said, and most of those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain, their loyalties uncertain.
The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden fields of wheat ripe for harvest. When the Two Kings charged, the Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run. For a few moments, the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an end... but only for those few moments, before Aegon Targaryen and his sisters joined the battle.
It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were all unleashed at once. The singers called it the Field of Fire. Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern of the Reach.
Biting her lower lip in excitement Lyanna thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and marveled as the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind her. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When she had moved away, Lyanna could have sworn that the beast's empty eye sockets had watched her. It made her feel safe. She was strange that way. Jon had told her it was foolish when she claimed their mother might be of the dragon bloodline when they were younger, since the thought of dragons and fire had always been comforting to her. She had even sworn that fire couldn't touch her. She had also attempted to prove it to Jon once as a child, it was the only time her twin had hit her, shaking her as he yelled. She had never touched fire again. Not after she had seen her brother take it up on himself to prove to her how dangerous it was by putting his hand over the flame after she had done so. He hadn't been able to use the hand for week, he still wore the scars, all to prove to her that it had been a fluke, that it could burn her, and to make her promise never to do so again.
His action had quickly crushed any fantasy she had of being a descendent of the Dragon. She and Jon were twins after all, they were the same, and if he could not touch it, then they were not of the dragon bloodline. But it had not lessened her fascination with the creatures, or stopped her from spending hours staring into fires when she was thinking, looking for her answer in the flames.
"I dare say you are not disappointed" the ever-amused voice of her intended said form the dark shadows, making her blush. In truth she had completely forgotten about his presence. She, however, could not school her expression, despite her effort, as she turned to look at him with the widest grin he had ever seen.
"Why would the King hide these? They are far more beautiful than any jewel or adornment I have ever seen."
"They are a the relics of a dead dynasty."
"Then he should change how people view them and make them his trophies instead. It should be a crime to have them hidden down here." She added, unconsciously tracing the jaw of one of the skulls with her hands as she spoke.
TBC…
