Warning for a situation bordering non-con in some aspects in the last section of this chapter. If that disturbs you, stop reading at the end of Brienne's POV within this chapter.

Chapter 32

The Vows of Fire

Where the characters are not kind

xxx

Mance

"This thing about the dragons," the Hound told Mance Rayder in a flat tone and paused.

They were waiting for Sansa in the godswood of the Red Keep, a modest grove of elm and alder, with only a few trees, and no weirwood in its splendour of polished whiteness. The heart tree was an oak, a poor dwarf brother of the untouched forests of the north. Yet it was a wood still, where the old gods kept their eyes hidden so that one day they could open them, and see. Mance breathed in the smell, of the wet leaves in canopies after the rain, the scent of the trees untamed, even if they could envy the height of their mighty siblings far away. A red plant grew under the heart tree. Mance didn't know its name but its colour evoked the red blood of the earth: the core of the white weirwood lost forever to most of the lands in the south.

"What about them?" asked the King-who-lost-his-kingdom-beyond-the-Wall.

"A dragon has not hatched for a very long time." Sandor stated indifferently. "And not for the lack of trying. The last such attempt led to the fire in Summerhall. A Targaryen king and his heir died."

"I know by now you can read, Brother Sandor," Mance found it rewarding to try the Hound's patience. "But I never imagined you brooding over old history scrolls." I have to unhinge him only a little bit to read Rhaeger's role as he is able to, with no restraint.

"Believe it or not, I had lessons with a maester in my childhood. And those were more interesting than the simpering verses you prefer. The songs are for women, and for the weak."

It didn't work so very well that night. The giant man remained more imperturbable than a sentinel, or an inanimate stone.

"Yet a woman can sometimes be stronger than many a man," Mance said pensively, abandoning his effort of provoking the Hound, fighting to chase the memory of Dalla away from his awareness. I will live, she had told him, long ago, and if I don't, it will be as I have wanted it. My life for the life of my child. A small thing, in exchange. Mance was not a kneeler so he would never decide for his woman. She was free to make up her own mind. But lately when he could not sleep he wished he had tied her hands and made her swallow the disgusting tea brewed by the old peasant women south of the Wall. Or that he could steal a child, like Rhaegar did, to give his woman joy. But the old gods would frown at that and the white walkers were never very far away. Mance remembered losing faith fairly early in his childhood. Yet in the dire need, when the cold winds blew, he would fervently hope that he was wrong and that the old gods existed, at the very least.

And that just like the white walkers had woken, they could also be put to sleep.

"So, this thing about the dragons," Sandor Clegane slaughtered the words, one by one, doggedly, the man's curiosity, or perhaps his sigil's acute sense of scent never abandoning the trail. "It is not only Daenerys who wants them. You too. Why?"

Mance wondered if the Hound would have chosen a dog as his animal had he been a warg, or a skinchanger. Mance Rayder, he would have chosen an eagle. Except that the precious gift had never been his, an average son of a land full of wonders, some for good, and many more for evil.

"Once you asked me if I ran when I first met a white walker," he started explaining, more patient than his horse, the best way he knew how. "I told you I did not. We were looking for the fastest way out of the Fangs, Frostfangs as they are called on your maps, passing through a low stony valley, on whose slanted sides the pines evergreen grew high among craggy rock tops covered with never-melting snow. It was a few years after I ran away from the crows who had found me in the wilderness and raised me as one of their own. They taught me to read and they taught me of your customs in the south. There were men from all the Seven Kingdoms among them, the crooks and the unlucky ones in equal measure. I learned about all of them, sharing their fires during the summer nights on the Wall when no wildlings threatened it; for I was not yet their leader.

Anyhow, up in the mountains, I was returning to a large wildling camp with three fellow bear hunters, two men and a woman, all strong and seasoned, not an easy prey. The long summer still reigned beyond the Wall, or it should have been that way. But the snow fell down gently the night before, when we tracked the bear and killed it, painting a white layer all over the valley.

It became cold. Too cold. Our breath froze as it never did and despair took our hearts. I have never felt anything like it before. My companions thought we should make a camp for the night. I didn't trust the cold and I urged them to go on, I swear by the old gods that I did. When they decided against me, I sat next to the fire, poking it to grow stronger with a large stick of wood. When the snow crystals took a form of a terrible wrinkled figure, who killed all three hunters with its blue glistening sword as if they were softer than running water, I stood up to fight it with a burning stick. And I would have died right there because ordinary fire kills the wights, but not the Others.

But the summer storm had been drawing nearer all evening long, showering us with snowflakes mixed with rain. It turned less cold and the creature of ice seemed to waver in its form. A thunder stroke in the blade of a hunting knife of one of my fallen companions right under the monster's feet, setting them ablaze with flames so strong as only the gods could have made them. The walker fell apart, and I was on my living feet among the corpses, armed with a stick. There was nothing left but to burn them before they would return to life. For that wisdom had never been lost on my side of the Wall even when the walkers still slept."

"The songs forbidden in the south by Robert Baratheon speak of dragonfire of old. Of how its power rivalled the lightning sent by the Seven in all their might. Dragonfire could help the North," the Hound rightfully concluded.

Mance was too immersed in his memories to mock him about remembering a verse. "Not the North," he told Sandor Clegane. "The realm of men. For very soon there will be no north and no south. The old oath of the crows will apply, the one they had nearly forgotten: a vow to protect the realm of men. The barrier against the winter of the children of the forest we have seen at the High Heart is strong, and the Wall is standing. But when the winds blow colder still, the Long Night will come. It will cover all of Westeros in darkness."

The conversation was cut short by the incessant humming of the waves of blue silk on their way the godswood.

"The Elder Brother woke them up," Sansa said, excited about the good news, and part shocked at the same time. "Aegon was having a new bed installed in his chambers because they cannot be moved yet. Then a large… a large black something crawled out of the king's fresh linens. Aegon killed it and he said... he said... he hadn't thought to see one of those in Westeros. A manticore, he said."

"And you stayed with him this long to chirp at his pretty face," the Hound said placidly. "A handsome knight for a pretty lady."

"Isn't it wonderful?" Sansa continued with unstoppable eagerness, ignoring him. "That the young squire and Pia are alive..."

"What is a bit less wonderful," Mance observed, "is that someone is keen to end the young king's life very soon, and make it look like his aunt had something to do with it. They have both returned to Westeros from over the water. Lys is one of the Free Cities, and now the foreign creature of Valyria…"

Mance let the players glimpse his growing uncertainty. He would not hide it from people he began to trust. There was little time to finish his errand before someone succeeded in murdering either Aegon or Daenerys in cold blood, the dragonless noble bastard of Ser Arthur Dayne presenting a far more reachable target.

"I must needs ride to Highgarden, tomorrow night at the latest," he said, nervously. "And there is still plenty of reading to be done before the play will be ready."

"I will ride with you, singer," the Hound informed dryly. "It wouldn't do for you to get lost in the south. Who would then make the heads of the pretty ladies swell with pathetic songs just like stables are getting full of horseshit?"

"Maybe you could start playing the high harp," Mance retorted in the same vein. "You might make good coin as a mystery bard in the capital. They seem to be in demand. A singer with a broken voice! Who knows, it could help you bed the woman you want when you are too craven to steal her in the light of day."

"Think of what is in your own breeches, not in mine," the Hound spat venom but he also stopped speaking. Finally, thought Mance, tucking parchment in the players' hands.

He never had time to tell the Hound how the rare scrolls he read as a boy avid for knowledge in the Castle Black, half eaten by mice before they mostly died of cold, also spoke of dragons, and of dragonlords of old. And of the horns they used to bind the dragons to their will, bound in thick rings of red molten gold. There were preciously little writings preserved about the matter and only one thing was clear. Any man or woman who was not the rightful owner of the horn would die a terrible death only from touching it.

"What are we reading tonight?" Sansa's voice rang like a crystal, coloured with innocence and curiosity. "And when will you return from Highgarden? His Grace will not let me join you, I'm afraid."

"Soon," Mance said.

"Aegon's brats will look after you when I am gone... while we are gone," Sandor Clegane said with an unusual change of heart in the middle of the sentence. "They appear to be better than most."

Mance stepped aside and left his characters standing under the tree with a long roll of parchment hanging from their hands. He yet had to find Ser Daven before departing and give him the entire play that had been read so that he could prepare as a new prompter. He would do better than Baelish at any rate. The brats, the Hound's words reminded him of the missing role. I also have to talk to the children when I return. With the horn. Returning empty-handed was not a possibility he cared to contemplate. Just like he never contemplated letting the Boltons live, or die with their skin intact, no matter how much the cruelty of what he did burdened him to this day.

Some things you have to do, and you regret them for all times, he thought, miserably, before forcefully returning his attention to the players.

xxxxxx

"Why ask me to meet you in the godswood, my lord?" Lady Lyanna asked of Rhaegar with a slight hint of confusion.

"You have called me Rhaegar before, my lady," he reproached her.

"I did," she said, "but every time I do so the lid on the box of the unseemly is open for one more inch, and my honour so much the lesser for it.

"Lady Lyanna," the dragon prince said, in a disguise of a large coarse man from the south whose words could still be gentle if he so wished. "We didn't make it to Starfall because the sellswords paid by my father and his Hand have closed all the ways. I don't know for how long you will have to hide in the Reach. The nobles have rebelled against the Targaryen rule. Men tell horrible stories of the fate of your father and your eldest brother. I wish not to believe what they say of my father, of how he took his pleasure in having them tortured and killed. Please, find it in your heart to understand that he has always been cunning. But he only became afraid and willing to strike at everyone who might betray him since he had been held captive in Duskendale. There is only one way to know for sure what has happened. I will have to reveal myself to him and ride to battle soon, if I don't want to see my own house fall into ruin, and my children dead or turned into hostages. There is only one way I could protect you, in the case that I would not return. Even my father wouldn't hurt you then, or so I believe. I thought you would recognise my noble intentions: I heard that you northerners take your vows in front of the heart tree."

"I see," she just said to the rather long account of all his reasons.

"She says that, and she continues to speak in a voice colder than ice," Mance instructed in front of the mute trees. "Like the first day when she believed to be kidnapped by him and expected to be raped."

"Would you take your vows out of duty or out of affection, my lord?" Sansa asked, the tone of her sweet voice frosty and detached.

"I would lay down a vow of fire," Rhaegar's rasp quivered with unmistakable desire, and Mance wondered how Sansa was able to ignore it, or if she simply didn't recognise it for what it was. Then again, they were both good at hiding their real thoughts from all the other kneelers. Mance doubted he would have ever noticed how it was between them it they had not travelled and read together.

Rhaegar repeated the sentence once again, before finding the guts to read on.

"I would lay down a vow of fire,

I would lay down a vow of blood,

I would vow to protect you until my early grave and beyond it.

And if anyone ever harms you on purpose, I would lay upon that man or woman alike, the justice of the First Men, gripping tightly the sharpest blade I could find. I would wield it as a treasure with my arms more used to strike the chords of a harp. The need made the Warrior who he is, they say, and maybe they are right.

I would do all that out of duty, for you have lost your beloved ones on my behalf, at the hands of my father, yes, but his blood runs the same as mine.

I would respect you, from a distance. You would go a maiden to your grave, or you would marry according to your choosing, when the war is over and it is safe to let you go.

The old law still allows the Targaryens to marry twice, just like it allows them to wed brother and sister."

"And I wouldn't accept any of those vows from you," Lyanna said cold-heartedly as the life on Rhaegar's face faded into bleak nothingness. "Do you think that you can break into my life, change it, and than release me to a life which you suppose should be my own?"

"It is the only way," Rhaegar said firmly. "If you accept me, I can command the Kingsguard to protect you when I ride off to war."

"Princess Elia will be your queen. The Kingsguard should protect her. All who know me harbour no doubt that Lyanna Stark can do well in protecting herself."

"It is not the doubt that I harbour in my heart," he said, grey eyes narrowing dangerously under the smooth white mask. Mance liked to imagine that the purple eyes of the real historic Rhaegar, long time dead, would have danced afire like the eyes of a living dragon should, when he finally confessed his love in words, and not only in deeds of utter folly.

"I've never been with any other woman but Elia," the other Rhaegar rasped on. "I loved her tenderly and in peace even when I was not allowed in her bed any longer. The maester said she would die if she carried another child, and there was only one way to prevent that for certain. How easily I could go on to my grave without a woman's body joining mine! There were books to be read, people who needed help, and plenty of wrongs that required attending to in all the Seven Kingdoms. As soon as we had Aegon, I set out to know them all as the future king ought to.

But when I came north and when my eyes wandered all the way to you, I was rewarded with suffering, and yet how I treasured my growing pain!

I silently swore my love to you in the woods of Winterfell, on the battlements of Queensgate, under the dead white tree of the old gods in Raventree and on the tourney grounds of Harrenhal.

Lyanna, I have loved you from the moment I have first seen you."

"You do not quite understand me, my lord," Lyanna spoke, and Sansa spoke with her, both to Rhaegar and to the man reading his role, Mance was certain. The words rolled from her tongue easy and proper, like a bird's flight. "If you truly wish us to exchange vows, I will not have you as my protector."

"As you wish, my lady," he said, bitterly. "Forgive me for daring to propose so unseemly a thing."

"Rhaegar," Lyanna finally pronounced the words that have sealed the fate of many, bottom lip trembling. "The only vow I would accept from you would be a vow of love."

The line came from the incredible tale Mance finally learned in its entirety from Howland Reed, months ago, in the lost marshes of the Neck, in the forsaken bogs where only the lizard lions and the crannogmen could find their way. Lyanna had said it, and Mance would not touch upon it by any elaborate fabrication of his own.

And just like that, with no instruction on the parchment, which lay abandoned on the ground, Rhaegar went on one knee like a proper knight, grasping the lady's ivory hands insistently with his own, in the most chaste of ways, an ideal of courting from the tapestries and the stories. Her eyes were roaming cautiously over his kneeling figure as she continued her confession, the rest of it, that Mance did write, for no one alive knew what Lyanna had said afterwards.

"In my dreams I always see the grief of Princess Elia," Lyanna's voice shook. "And I'm terribly afraid that an affair such as ours should attract the anger of the gods. A maiden to marry a man already wed."

"Yet I would still have you, Rhaegar, as my husband and my man," she answered his vow with her own. "I would not go a maiden to my early grave and I would bear you children if the gods allow. And I would hope we would go to our grave together, in old age, after many winters."

So it was how it came to pass that Rhaegar Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone and the Lady Lyanna Stark exchanged their marriage vows, in an unnamed godswood deep in the Reach. No one would ever know in which place it was, to carve a statue, or simply to remember them.

Some places are best left unknown, Mance thought as he clapped his hands, good for both lute and sword, to wake up the players from their trance. "Very good, done with dignity," he told them. "Off to bed you go. The new day is almost upon us. I'll tell the others about the horn as soon as the sun rises. And at sunset I hope to start riding to Highgarden."

There had been a single spy lurking behind the heart tree all the time. Or the only one Mance could see. He chose not to sharpen his longsword on the spy's neck, considering that most people who had spies in the Red Keep already knew about Lyanna and Rhaegar. And whether they consumed their relationship by marriage or by rape mattered little and less in the game of thrones.

All that the spy would take to his master would be a collection of simpering words, as the Hound rightfully called them, and timid gestures of affection, confirming that Mance's song was what it should have been, an insipid insignificant tale for silly ladies shedding tears for the woes of the characters who lived only on parchment.

Brienne

The great Hall of the Guild of Alchemists stood peacefully on the low slope of Visenya's Hill, undisturbed by the autumn rain.

The Guild occupied the space just below the Great Sept of Baelor, not far from the Dragon's Pit and Shae's Manse, where they had left Mance Rayder's gift in chains with the amber- skinned woman who brought it. Brienne tried to forget the destiny Qyburn faced in a brief time Jaime and she succumbed to sleep again. The building was low and wide, following the descent of the hill, guarded by an opulent wooden door.

Mance sought them out in the early hours of the dawn at the fishermen's house, just like Septa Tyene predicted, so Jaime and Brienne went there before the first light to meet the others. Gendry was of an opinion that no metal would be safe enough to hold a horn Daenerys requested when Mance described what it could be like. Most metals would bend or melt under enough heat. And none of them was certain what the horn would do to a person who would dare touch it. Except that it wouldn't be pretty and that it may have something to do with fire. A crude thick iron basin wrought of scraps from the smithies in haste, from which animals would then drink water in the south would do better in Gendry's opinion, but it would also prove way too heavy for any form or carriage. The Elder Brother remembered the studies he had heard about in the Citadel; there were ways to enhance Myrish glass, more famous for making lenses, and to transform it into a substance that could withstand almost any attempt at breaking it, and yet remain unchanged.

As a result, Brienne and the Elder Brother ventured into the Hall of Alchemists in the first hour of the morning, carrying a bag of Lannister gold Jaime's little brother buried in Shae's Manse. Jaime was left to wait and brood on the outside with his only possessions, the candle and the book he retrieved from the fisherfolk, much to his liking. A wanted man, a runaway and a traitor to the new Targaryen rule.

Once more, Brienne didn't know what to think of him. Of us, she thought with irregular warmth spreading in her heart. Whenever she would determine she understood what he expected, his meaning would escape her. When she resigned herself about loving him, and about him desiring her body, unlikely as that had seemed at first, at least until he would be reunited with his sister, his sincere embarrassment and rejection when she suggested she would agree to such a thing puzzled her no end. Brienne was glad that a new quest worthy of pursuing came their way. She imagined the horn, ominous and heavy, bound with gold. As she imagined herself, a true knight, laying it at the feet of Daenerys Targaryen, asking her to spare Jaime's life, and the lives of his children and his sister in return. Cersei, Myrcella and Tommen did not kill anyone, she thought. Daenerys has to understand.

A quiet man in dark orange robes and restful brown eyes approached them immediately, inquiring of their interests.

"If it please you," Brienne said, "we would need a vessel of improved Myrish glass large enough to contain the greatest war horn designed by human hand."

"We may have what you seek," their host said, careful in his bargaining, "but it is precious to us. It comes at a price of more golden dragons than a modest lady and a servant of the Faith would possess."

"Could we see it, please?" Brienne asked, noticing a veiled woman who crawled after them into the den of the alchemists, hiding an empty wine flagon in the folds of her lavish dress, an effusive fabric of purple, brown and red, unrevealing of her true identity.

"Good man," the new visitor called in a familiar feminine voice, used to being obeyed. "I have brought you another item for my private collection."

"In a moment, my lady," the alchemist, or the seller, decided to ignore her, focusing instead on a strange duo obsessed with horns. "This way," he told them, and they followed through a narrow corridor to a long room where different shapes of glass, panes and lenses, vials and platters, leaned neatly on the walls, the smaller ones safely stored on a range of low shelves. In the corner of the room there were three large containers, standing upright, bigger than wooden wine barrels, even if somewhat narrower.

"One of those should do," Brienne said and the Elder Brother nodded under the cowl.

"Splendid," the alchemist said, "but the price of one would be a purse of hundred golden dragons. They say that the king himself has not such quantity in his treasury, indebted as the Iron Throne is to the Iron Bank of Braavos and to the late Lord of Lannister."

"A hundred, you said," Brienne repeated meticulously, opening the bag of coin. As soon as she sorted out the first golden dragon from the crimson and golden lion pouch, a fury of nails, silk and female hair was at her throat, the sudden onset toppling Brienne to the ground despite her greater physical strength.

Brienne was quickly losing air.

And it was from sheer surprise that the unlikely truth dawned in her honourable mind. Perhaps the simple reason for all Jaime's behaviour towards her might have been that he, too, has grown to love her, in his own way. His kindness piercing a deeper wound in her body's armour than his mockery ever did.

A plea left her lips, "Jaime…"

Serving only to increase the blind rage of her attacker. Brienne's eyelids became heavy. They were about to close when her windpipe went open again, at once. Her lungs widened joyfully, and she had to blink several times to see what saved her.

The Elder Brother held the veiled woman firmly to the ground, his clean long-fingered hands of a healer closed tightly around the woman's neck, as if a force stronger than his own directed his movement to an inevitable conclusion of squeezing out the woman's life. The brown cowl faced the purple veil as a harbinger of certain death.

Brienne stared in disbelief at the show of raw strength in an otherwise peace loving monk. It was worse than when he fought Robert Strong. Uncalled for. Ruthless. "Elder Brother," she called him to his senses. "We had best pay and leave, please!"

The woman balbutiated almost incomprehensively on the ground.

"She robbed it," she said. "She deserves to die. That gold is mine by right, it is mine!"

The woman spoke in throes. "But you are not my valonqar," she said, sounding crazy. "Maggy… She was wrong… She was so wrong in the end…"

Her voice faltered as the air was leaving her body. "My valonqar," she whispered, admitting defeat, "the prophecy… Maggy…"

"Elder Brother!" Brienne cried out and finally stood up to take action and overpower the monk before he would murder the woman in cold blood.

Her effort was wasted for the woman's last words woke up the servant of the Seven from his state of affliction. Shaking, he released his almost victim. He stood two steps away from her and stated, as if he was affirming a certainty learned with great pain:

"The prophecies, the foretelling of fate, they are all lies, the ultimate deceit for the weakness of the human heart. We choose to make our own destiny. That is how the gods have made us. Free to decide what we will do, and not bound by the doom foreseen."

The alchemist cowered in the corner all that time, next to the three long barrels of glass. He hurried to accept Brienne's coin and send his strange customers out. It wouldn't do if they would break all the expensive artefacts in their wrath.

The huge glass jar was surprisingly easy to carry despite its size, a gracious empty casing of low weight. Brienne thought it beautiful as she held it to her chest, with great caution. Soon they were in the streets with Jaime, the crazy woman forgotten behind them.

"How did it go?" Jaime asked.

"Good," Brienne told him, leaving to the Elder Brother to explain more if he so wanted. But the monk kept silent and to himself.

"Let's find some horses now," Jaime said, his commanding spirit back with the light of the day, and a new task at hand. He cheerfully guided them to a place where in his opinion the best horses in the capital were sold, pretending to illuminate their way with the purple glare of a burning glass candle.

xxxxxxx

Shae's Manse, Mance thought, wondering who Shae was, standing in front of the door of the inconspicuous city house near the walls, where Brienne and Jaime had brought him.

They didn't tell him what to expect, they just exchanged confused glances, one blue, and the other green. A single look when he opened the door told it all, more telling than any words.

A lifeless body of a black-haired man in dark robes hung from the chain made of many different metals, high up from the ceiling, attached to a hook that could be used to support a carcass of a deer being cut into parts for cooking. It looked like his dying had not been pleasant.

The bothersome quick-tempered septa paced back and forth near the hearth. The head of Ser Bonifer Hasty watched the King-beyond-the-Wall, from the powerful body which was not Ser Bonifer's, never his to start with, never burnt as it should have been, on a leash wrought of chains which was not his. A cry of outrage to the broad skies above.

"He should have been burnt," he stated, silently, "the knight of your Faith of crystals and lamps, not turned into a monster."

It was the only sacred thing in common to all the free folk beyond the Wall, from the organised Thenns to the unruly but sensitive giants. Even for those who inhabited the coasts facing Skagos, and on whose eating habits Mance didn't want to dwell. In the real north you burned your dead friends and enemies alike. Even the crows.

"They are both dead already," the septa said practically, holding the monster's chain. "Why should you die too if you can use this creature to do Daenerys' bidding?"

"It is for me to choose what I want to die for," Mance said, "not for you, nor for anyone, to decide."

The cold rage rose in the pit of his stomach like when he had single-handedly gutted one of the former Magnars of Thenn for needlessly maiming some of his own people. Those who wanted to follow Mance could keep to their customs, eat shit or the flesh of the dead if they so wanted, but no fighting among the living, or unnecessary cruelty, was allowed. The stupid woman had no idea what she did and what could happen to the dead unburned when the cold gale from the Wall would strike all the lands.

"In my home," he said, willing to offend her, as she did him with her meddling, "the unattended corpses spring to life. Have you seen them, septa? Or are you not a septa, but what you kneelers call a whore, waiting for a wealthy guest? Should I pay you, or would you do it willingly? Should I pay you more if I am rough in taking my pleasure? I heard that in your brothels they charge more to men from faraway lands with foreign tastes…"

"My name is Tyene," she said, black-looking eyes ablaze with inner thunder, "and I will lay with whom I will."

After that, she eyed him as if he was a sweet pie served after dinner on the king's table, a treat she would gladly consume. With curiosity and meaningless pleasure.

"You are nobody to me," he told her, humiliated, with cold certainty, "do you understand?"

"And who, pray, are you?" she exclaimed. "I will burn this one if you so will!" she said pointing at the hanged man. "It was him who made Ser Robert Strong! What is done is done, and now it can be of use. Have you burned every corpse that you ever made in the place you are coming from? Was there not a single one that you just left to rot in the sand?"

Mance turned his back on the woman, her pet monster, and the hanging corpse, unhinged by her words more than he expected. Provoking the Hound to bite came back tenfold, and the King-beyond-the-Wall longed to grunt like a wild boar. Memories he buried deep, too deep, whirled in his mind like a snow storm. The real Lyanna, short, hair colour of ash, and already beautiful; a little girl who visited the Wall, and to whom a young crow apprentice, not much older than herself, gifted an obsidian dagger he had carved to be sharp, hitting stone with stone during the solitary nights in his small room, glowing blue from ice hanging from the window frame. Mance often wondered what had happened to the knife he had given her. He liked to imagine she took it with her when her destiny led her to Dorne. Then there were Lyanna's brothers, the fierce one who died bravely, the long faced self-righteous one for whom Mance sang in Winterfell, even more brave in his own silent right, as the King-beyond-the-Wall had a chance to learn only much, much later. And finally the younger brother, the youngest one… who took the black and went to the Wall. And Jon, Mance's friend, whom he would have killed if he didn't listen to Tormund Giantsbane for the first time in his life.

All the Starks he met were better people than him, Mance Rayder, a wildling, and a wicked bastard. A man who once thought he could do what needed to be done. A man who had learned better.

Some things you did, and you could not undo them. And they haunted you forever.

"In the snow," he confessed, exposed as he rarely would allow himself to be, "some people I killed, I have left them to rot in the snow… Had no strength to burn them, even knowing that I should…"

The woman touched his shoulder in an odd gesture of approval, and it was the last thing that she should have done. In a second, he had her pinned on the floor. Bringing her down as far away from the dead as possible the only concession granted to gentleness. The headdress of the septa fell first, revealing long raven dyed hair, and skin so dark and amber as he had never seen before. Dornish, he remembered. Ripping the rest of the dress came as natural as skinning a bear. Her body shone like amber in all places, unblemished and younger than his own. But he was too far gone to notice her youth, and to step back, yanked off his inner limits by the flood of his regrets.

"You asked for this," he told her. "You wanted this before and I denied you. This is what it would be like if I would steal you," he lied.

The monster yawned in the corner, staring peacefully, despite that no one held its chain.

The woman didn't quail, just pushed her hips up towards him in a way that left no doubt about her wishes. She didn't know what was coming her way.

He did it immediately, just like some of his wildlings would copulate with any wild or domestic four-legged animal when the need was great, the women scarce, and the other man were not looking. There was no proper beginning, and there would be no good end. Only a forced connection, the violent emptying of his body. Her hips surged up again, responding. An illusion that she might have found joy in it, despite all, crossed his clouded judgement, making him finish everything sooner than a young boy would.

He pushed her away like a rag, towards the monster she had made for him, and snarled the words he did not mean at all, "Keep your creature, burn it, or gift it to someone else. I will not have anything more to do with it, or with you. Others take you!"

Rejection was easy, and weakness something he could not afford. Not before the mummery played out, to whatever end.

With that he pushed the door wide open and ran into the streets, relieved and ashamed of what he had done in too great a measure. He wouldn't turn back, but he still heard her, somewhere on the inside: huddled, hurt, weeping, begging for him to leave, or for him to come back.

He would saddle his horse and go. The horn to bind dragons was waiting.