Jaime had spent most of the wedding ceremony gazing at the coloured glass and seven-pointed stars above his head and wishing that he were in his chambers, asleep and undreaming. All night he had dreamt of Brienne; watched her as she disappeared behind a wall of men, and sent corpses flying away from her as though their deaths no longer required them to return to earth. There had been pain, then darkness, then light, then more pain, and his knees sore and bloody, and the Brotherhood silent (he might have preferred it if they had laughed) as Brienne's head was taken from her shoulders. 'Taken.' Some fool of a butcher who had never held a sword in his life had been elected executioner. It had taken him four swings to get the fucking job done.

But this time, unlike all the other times that he had dreamt of that day, it hadn't been her head that they had dangled in front of him, but Arya's; cut from Brienne's body, and still alive, and speaking to him as blood dripped from sliced and torn and severed skin: 'it's not my blood,' she said.

He had felt his mind attempting to push through the borders of his dreamworld and to take him to the Kingswood a fortnight ago, and to everything that he had felt there. But sleep had only let him see the very end of that day, when he had helped the maester's assistants to get Arya onto the stretcher. Her hand had still been clutched in his, cold and sweating, and she had screamed in pain when they had lifted her, and she had not let his hand go. And as they had set her down, she had whispered in his ear 'Keep the peace.'

He had wanted to snap her neck then and there out of pure rage and disbelief that she had not changed in her opinion of this…ridiculous plan for peace. And rage and disbelief, when wedded to his fucking memory of every fucking moment that he had spent with her, had soon transformed into panic at having been so stupid. He had let her…he had shown her…seven fucking hells, he had actually shown her what used to be his skin, before the Targaryens had decided to use it for fucking target practice, he had actually shown her…and still she could…you trusting bloody fool, what were you thinking...

And then, to add insult to injury, she had kissed him: without apologising, without blushing, without caring. And then, 'keep the peace?' What the fuck did that mean? Why kiss me in the first place if she wanted me to 'keep the peace?' Why? Why not push him away from her the moment it had started; why not have an attack of righteousness when she had heard the maester coming, instead of pulling her lips slowly away from his for what had felt like an eternity; inch by unhurried inch of skin; evading, delaying, prolonging, and almost making him love her in that moment; for her passion; for her guiltlessness?

So why tell me to keep the fucking peace?

It hadn't taken him long to realise why, of course. She had been badly hurt, and delirious, and afraid, and vulnerable; and even more so after rasping out the story of what those fucking Faceless shits had done to her. She had been so emotional after that that Jaime felt sure that she would have kissed anyone that had had happened to be there, if it would only bring her some semblance of relief.

She kissed me because I was there.

Realising that had seemed far worse in the dream than it had in reality, but still, he had dreamed on; his mind refusing to release him. The maester's assistants had lifted the stretcher; Arya's hand had been yanked roughly out of his, and Jaime had shrugged quietly to himself and wondered if the little bitch was in the right after all.

Why not 'keep the peace?' I'm obviously such an infernal idiot that my choice of wife is not likely to make much difference to me. So why not choose a woman that makes some difference to the realm? At least I will have done something right – or tried to.

By that time, it had felt as though he had been dreaming about death, daftness, decapitation and bloodied women for days and days, and he had wanted to wake up, or at least to dream of something else. But silk had turned to steel and locked him out of waking and dreaming, and he had been sent to the beginning again; to the nightmare; to Brienne; to the Brotherhood. And when he had started awake on the morning of his wedding; his dreams still clouding his vision like fever, he had realised that if the stupid, stubborn, blockheaded wench had still been alive, she would have wedded and bedded whomever the king had consigned her to if it had meant the slightest possibility of peace; and that if she had been here, with him, she would have caved his head in with something heavy and metallic and very likely unpleasant for refusing to do his duty. She was precisely that sort of imbecile. The same sort of imbecile as him, only uglier, and prouder to admit her own stupidity.

If she were here with me, she would be my wife, and this entire mess would never have happened. I would probably have asked at some point. I would have.

But she wasn't here, she wasn't his wife, and he hadn't asked. So he had gone to the sept, and been wed, and the gods had smiled on him by ensuring that he had felt nothing during the entire course of the ceremony and paid almost no attention to what was happening around him and noted, with neither pleasure nor chagrin, that the tension in the sept had not changed at all; and that North and South were still glaring at each other as though they would prefer to face hellfire rather than reconciliation.

Night had fallen now, and Jaime was loitering in some ridiculous cloistered garden, drinking from one bottle of wine, gazing at the strands of moonlight that danced in the depths of the one that he intended to drink next, and listening to the sound of laughter, music and wedding guests getting drunk in the great hall. He was far enough away from the celebrations to avoid throwing up in sheer revulsion, and close enough to know when he would have to make an appearance again. He had already had more to drink than was wise, and he was now pondering the question of which prospect he found the most unappetising: another night of nightmares, or the idea of fucking Lady Sansa. Perhaps if he smothered her with a pillow and said that he had fucked her to death…

Jaime laughed aloud at the thought, tried to take a swallow of wine, and swore. The bottle was empty. He dropped it, took a thoroughly childish pleasure in the sound it made as it smashed, and reached for the second bottle that he had brought with him out of habit. Tyrion's bottle. One bottle for him, one for me, and then another, and then another, as it always was when they got drunk together. Now Tyrion would sooner drink Manticore venom than do so much as speak to him.

I can't blame him. I'd have put a sword in his belly had he done to me what I did to him.

As he put the bottle to his lips, and drank; the taste made his heart go black inside him: as black as it had been on the first day of the hunt when he had drunk from the skin handed him by his squire, and seen Arya crawling out of the trees.

The fear that he had felt at the sight of her, looking as though she had been dipped in a vat of blood….he had wrapped himself around her, and her body had been freezing…and the wound…the quantity of blood that she had lost…and yet she had still been capable of speaking; capable of being conscious...the maester had said later that the bite looked worse than it was. Jaime didn't know. Her face had resembled a map: lined on one side, blank on the other; a shield that she had raised and lowered, time and time again. And yet after a while, she had stopped trying, she had given up on guardedness, and told him what the thing was that he had always seen in her; the thing, a thing, one of many things, that made her just like him.

Much good may it do her.

Jaime forced down another mouthful of wine as he remembered the fury with which she had fought her own tears; as he would have done himself had their positions been reversed, but that he could not find the strength to condone in her. The wine danced softly on his tongue and sent a paralysing weakness into his limbs; as her lips had done, and he had wracked his brains in every moment that she had come into his mind since then – in the split seconds that lingered on the edge of his present desire to slit her throat – trying to remember who had started it, who had moved first, who was responsible, and he could not remember a thing. Only that it had felt good, and that the idea of thinking of another word for it made his head hurt.

A bird perched itself on a rosebush some three feet away from him and began to sing with an air of such decided spite that Jaime had half a mind to throw his dagger at the impudent avian idiot and see how well it could chirrup when speared into the opposite wall. The thought made him listen to the sounds around him for the first time in what felt like hours. What he heard drew him to his feet, and made his blood run cold.

He heard nothing but birdsong. No music, no laughter, no raucous conversation. Only pure and absolute silence: not the serene quietness that descended on a mind transfixed and set aglow by wonder, but the harsh and howling void that tore like wind across the patient, unbloodied space between two warring armies.

Perhaps Aegon has called for a minute of silence, Jaime thought with very little hope; his heart beginning to convulse in his chest.

He turned in the direction of the hall and strained his ears. The world was as silent as a crypt. His hand came to rest on his sword. And he realised that the sound he heard was not a minute of silence, but the sound of a thousand people holding their breath.

The grey Northern lord's dagger had pierced the yellow Southern lord's neck. The Southern lord was rasping like a landed fish; his gasps huge and eternal and louder than the scrape and rattle of wood on stone as guests rose to their feet to watch; some eager, some despairing, some disbelieving, all silent. Every pair of eyes in the hall, save one standing at the back, watched the yellow doublet turn slowly and gradually red, and the Southern lord wearing it tottering, and beginning to fall.

Arya, standing unarmoured behind the queen despite having been commanded off duty, scanned the room for Ser Barristan and Loras; though she knew that they had left the hall to escort Aegon to his chambers only a short while ago. Her eyes shot calmly and systematically from one gap in the crowd to the next and did not find them. She stepped quietly up to Daenerys' side, her hand on her sword, and joined the rest of the hall in watching the yellow Southern lord breathe his last.

He hit the ground; blood spraying the floor around him, and the taut, brittle, dreading silence did not become questioning, or hesitant, or stronger with calls for calm and reason from either North or South. Figures rose up around Arya, and from the tables below and with them the sound of war; and silence was annihilated as hundreds of wilful and eager butchers hurled themselves across the hall like armies to rip flesh from the bones of men and women both; throats gouged out, limbs removed, entrails expelled and heads cut from bodies, all in a matter of seconds counted out in the roaring of curses, war cries and fulfilled vengeance.

Arya pushed Daenerys' chair backwards, onto the floor and out of the line of fire; almost growling aloud in impatience at the resulting cry of pain as she pulled Daenerys roughly out of the chair and onto the ground.

Honestly.

Then the dagger appeared in her sight, buried up to the hilt in the queen's thigh, and Arya realised, with a sudden, seething understanding, that the weapon's not being similarly buried in Daenerys' throat was only a matter of the unexpected change in position across the few seconds it had taken for the chair to fall.

Fuck.

Daenerys' face contorted in pain and turned the colour of snow as Arya shielded the queen's body with her own and crouched in front of her like a cat, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, painfully aware of what her present strength and the lack of armour on her back meant for Daenerys' longevity as she faced down the evening's first two idiots; her sword slicing through the ankles of the first fool and her dagger through the balls of the second. The bodies fell bleeding and screaming to the floor, Arya moved once more to her place in front of Daenerys, and a sudden flash of blood-stained white and silver came over the maimed men before her as Ser Barristan and Loras rapidly speared their swords through her assailants' throats.

'What in seven hells have you done to her?' Loras demanded, staring at the queen.

'Pick her up and shut up!' Arya shouted; looking about her and realising that she could not see Sansa.

'Take the dagger out,' Daenerys commanded through gritted teeth; her voice echoing menacingly off the stone walls of the secret passage, 'take it out!'

Loras, who had been commanded by Ser Barristan to sit on the floor next to Daenerys and ensure that she did nothing of the sort, graciously presented the half-delirious queen with his deepest regrets that he was unable to obey her.

'If I remove the dagger, Your Grace,' he said, 'you will bleed to death.'

'Far worse will befall you if you do not do as I say, Ser,' Daenerys snapped stubbornly; sweat beading on her forehead as the fever began to take her.

'Explain yourself,' Ser Barristan gruffly demanded of Arya, 'why push her chair over when pulling her out of it would have worked just as well?'

'The dagger would be buried in her throat had I taken that course,' Arya replied quietly, 'which of course is what Aegon wants.'

'Lady Arya,' Ser Barristan warned sharply.

'Take it out, please,' Daenerys rasped; trying to take hold of the dagger and growling when Loras prevented her.

'There is absolutely no proof that the king was responsible for this,' Ser Barristan continued.

'Then why retire so early?' Arya hissed; wishing for the first time that Daenerys had allowed her to take the Lord Commander into her confidence, 'why retire before midnight on the day the Seven Kingdoms are finally united; on the day he supposedly sees his life's purpose fulfilled? What sort of monarch does that?'

'Careful, little lady,' Ser Barristan snapped, 'what you say is treason.'

'I am a traitor's daughter,' Arya shrugged, 'it must run in the family.'

'Gods be good, must I slap you?' Ser Barristan hissed.

'Who guards the king at present, Lord Commander?' Arya asked, with rather more cheek than was respectful.

'Ser Rolly,'Ser Barristan replied; his voice beginning to turn grey with doubt.

'Gods be good,' Loras growled in disbelief.

'Lord Commander, we cannot disregard this!' Arya insisted.

'I will burn…them…all…' Daenerys grimaced, 'I will take what is mine…'

'I will not believe that a son of Rhaegar Targaryen would compromise the unity and peace of his kingdom merely in the name of assassinating his queen,' Ser Barristan declared, 'the notion has no sense in it.'

'There is perfect sense in it!' Daenerys growled with a sudden, feverish lucidity; trying to get to her feet and yanking Loras' cloak by means of demanding assistance, 'since the son of Rhaegar Targaryen is lying dead with a crushed skull in whichever ditch Tywin Lannister tossed him into thirty years ago. Aegon has plunged the entire realm into anarchy for ambition…orchestrated a bloodbath…a false dragon who thinks he can slay a true one through trickery and dishonour –'

'Your Grace?' Ser Barristan interrupted.

'I will hear no…more…talk…of…peace and quiet,' Daenerys spat, 'if my husband wants a war, he has more than earned one –'

'Your Grace, please,' Ser Barristan pleaded, 'you are in no fit state to –'

'I will decide what state I am in,' Daenerys snarled; looking like a blood-stained corpse in the darkness, 'we will make for Dragonstone at once…my armies will come to me there…I will call for allegiance across the whole of Westeros, and then I will come back here and rip that fucking impostor's throat out with my own teeth!'

'Your Grace, there is no –'

'Silence!'

Ser Barristan fell silent.

'Ser Loras,' Daenerys said, her skin starting to turn grey from shock and her face convulsing from the effort of hiding her pain, 'I shall need you to carry me; we'll move faster that way. We'll take the passage under the serpentine to the Mud Gate; I doubt the fighting has spread that far yet. Ser Barristan, Lady Arya –'

'We will provide cover, Your Grace,' Ser Barristan declared.

Arya, nodding, said nothing; her right arm beginning to throb severely as Loras scooped Daenerys up and began to walk; Ser Barristan guiding their passage from the front and Arya bringing up the rear. The narrow passageway echoed with no other sound but that of their footsteps, and the ghastly, involuntary groans of pain that came bubbling up from Daenerys' throat. The queen's head hung limply back, and her breathing was shallow and cruel. Her earlier outburst had taken strength and reality from her, and in a matter of minutes, she began to whisper deliriously, and her hair to veritably glisten with sweat.

'My children,' she whispered, 'my children – '

Arya looked to Ser Barristan for orders.

'No, Arya,' the old knight said pointedly.

'My children…' Daenerys whispered again, beginning to struggle in Loras' arms, 'where are they; I want them –'

The whispers soon became cries, then piercing screams as the idea of leaving the dragons behind penetrated Daenerys' blood-clouded mind, and she began to thrash about and fight as both Loras and Ser Barristan attempted to restrain her and reason with her and prevent their voices being heard by any passing little birds. But the dragons had become the only thought in her head, and the thought renewed her strength.

'I cannot leave without my children; let go of me, if I leave them behind he'll have them; I'd rather see them dead; I'd rather be dead – '

'Your Grace, please,' Loras pleaded; trying to stop her from kicking as her bleeding worsened; her struggling dislodging the blade and cutting deeper.

'Put me down, make yourself useful and find Tyrion!' Daenerys half-screamed, half-begged, 'he'll know what to do; he'll find a way; I know he will; he'd never ask me to leave them; he'll find a way – '

In a corner of Arya's mind, she thought that she ought to be doing something to help: seizing an arm, clapping a hand over Daenerys' mouth, knocking her unconscious, trying to think of the last time she had seen Tyrion; whom she cared for, but whom she had not sworn to protect with her life. But in that moment she felt Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion in the earth beneath her feet and imagined them bound to Aegon. She remembered what Aegon had used them to do; Casterly Rock; Lannisport after the sack; survivors exterminated in their homes with dragonfire; the screams, because Jaime had refused to swear allegiance; refused to succumb quietly to what had already happened –

Oh gods. Jaime.

'Seven gods, where's Tyrion?' Daenerys was screaming; her delirium escalating to full-on hysteria as the full implications of the dwarf's absence became clear to her, 'what have they done with Tyrion; why isn't he here; take your hands off me; Tyrion…TYRION!'

Arya ran.

She could hear Ser Barristan and Loras shouting after her as she hurtled back the way they had come. She could feel blood soaking into her shirt sleeve from where her stitches were no doubt coming undone, and the pain coming with it. But the heart in her chest no longer pumped ice. She had a name, she had a face, and when she flung open the hidden door, she entered the light without hesitation.