Warnings: Implied SA scene, use of the terminology, traumatic death.

Chapter Eight
The Cold of the North

Her memories were soaked with blood and the stench of iron and sweat. There had been great, piercing screams that would break the soul of any man, but it was the silence that she feared, the empty void of a thousand terrible possibilities. It took shape in her mind, white tendrils that reached to her from the depths. They sought to steal her breath, her heart, her very life…

A twig snapped in the forest, and Elyse was dragged back to the present with a gasp. There was little to see, for the moon was dark and she'd strayed so far from the firelight that only the barest flicker of orange clung to the trees.

In her hands, carefully clasped behind her back like the proper daughter she was, Elyse's fingers toyed with the white stone of her necklace. She could not recall removing it; she could not recall coming to this place at all. When Daemon set Caraxes down in a field – she ought to have known they would not spend the night in a keep or even an inn – her joy abandoned her, and she lost track of all time and thought.

All those years, Elyse had foolishly believed herself brave, snapping at her father's orders and daring to talk back when obedience was demanded, but it was the inevitability of interaction that forced her to adapt, the knowledge that she was backed into a corner. She had been an animal, caged, fighting with whatever means she had to escape.

But these past few months, she had been free, and now the possibility of having to return weighed down upon her, crushing her spirit and her nerve. She was terrified of what awaited her in Winterfell, and had become a child once more, hoping to cling to Aemma's skirts for comfort.

"Do you plan on avoiding me all night?"

Elyse looked over her shoulder. Daemon was watching her, but he was little more than a silhouette, features marred by the darkness. She could not say what story his face would tell. It was never the same as his words or actions.

I ought to say something witty, she thought.

Quietly, Elyse tore herself away from the spot and joined Daemon by the fire. She sat across from him, allowing herself the silly comfort of keeping the flames between them, and observed what she could of the area. Though they had made a barebones camp in the copse of trees, Caraxes was not far. She could hear the creature breathing from beyond the depths of the night and, more obviously, his tailed snaked through the trees, managing to rest near Daemon. She wondered if dragons dreamed, and if the prince was setting himself up for trouble by lingering so close to it.

Even the thought of Caraxes accidentally knocking Daemon into the fire failed to bring a smile to her face.

"If I knew you were going to be this boring, I'd have left you in the capital."

I apologize that I exist to be something other than your entertainment.

Her mind spoke the words that her tongue refused, the part of her that was still alive and active, while her body and spirit began to cave in about her. Her fingers steadily held that rock while she stared into the flames. She wondered if the fire was warm; she felt nothing.

Daemon lost interest and wandered to the small bedroll he'd laid out, gracelessly flopping upon it. He was a child, the Rogue Prince.

"Get some sleep," he ordered, facing away from her. He was rather dull himself when they were well and truly alone. She wondered what sort of night it might have been, had there been a chance of discovery by another party.

Elyse continued to examine the necklace, noting all the imperfections that blemished its otherwise pristine surface. She was aware of the dagger at her side, gently prodding her hip, longing for attention much like its former owner. When she looked to the flames again, Daemon's form had shifted, shorter and stockier, the outline of Medrick. She frowned at the sight, and wondered what it was that made her prefer the company of a half-mad Targaryen.

"I've wanted my father dead for years." Her voice spoke without permission, but she did not have the heart to be upset by the action, or to stop it. "Ever since I was a little girl."

Elyse knew Daemon was awake. There was a tenseness to his shoulders that did not speak of a man asleep. After a time, a single, curious eye looked in her direction.

The fire suddenly felt hot, scalding, as if she had thrown herself into the flames though she had hardly moved. The crackle and whistles of burning wood turned into screams. She was there again, The Wandering Lady in a place she was not meant to be for the last time.

"Her name was Senna. She was a servant, and more or less my keeper. There was a quiet sort of beauty about her. Her hair was plain and her eyes were dark, but she seemed to glow and could tempt a smile from anyone."

Elyse waited for Daemon to mock her little story, produce a crude gesture or remark, perhaps bring the word 'boring' back around, but he had grown still, and she realized she had his full attention. But she could not hold his gaze and returned to the necklace.

"My father…I had always thought he was the honorable sort. You would think that is all we have the way everyone prattles on about it, but I believed it, fully and without question…" Her voice left her for a moment, and she thought it meant to shame her before Daemon. Instead, it was giving her a chance to take control, and she plunged in anyway. "I don't know why it happened. Perhaps he was frustrated by the lack of an heir or maybe he just liked the way she smiled…"

She wiped the tears away with a slap, frustrated that she would be so weak before him. Once had been more than enough.

"I walked in on him raping her, and I wish that had been the worst of it."

The wind picked up, the howls through the trees morphing into screams as well. Every sound had become her voice, every smell the stench of death.

"She never wanted to have his child; she never wanted any child. The other servants had to hide her lest she burst into tears upon the sight of me. And when the time came, she died giving birth to his bastard."

The wails of her memory formed words.

"I don't want it!" Senna had cried above the coaxing words of the others, the midwife encouraging her to push. "Please, make it stop! Get it out!"

For hours, it had continued, and Elyse heard it all, huddled in a dark corner where no one could find her. But it would not have mattered if she stood in front of the door. No one dared walk down that hall, frightened of the sounds that echoed across the stone. Only she stood vigil in the final moments.

"My sister, Sara, is everything to me. I would die for her without a second thought," she continued, clutching the necklace tightly and shaking it in Daemon's direction. "But one day, my father will pay for what he did to Senna. Maybe it means nothing to you because she was a servant, but she was someone to me."

Elyse clasped the necklace around her neck. It felt heavier, larger, the weight of the world resting upon her chest. She was exhausted then, and collapsed upon her bedroll without another word. Facing away from Daemon, it was easy to let the tears flow. The darkness was not known to judge.

For his part, Daemon said nothing. He might have hummed, but the night was filled with many strange noises and tricks of the mind.

And despite the screams of her waking world, her dreams were blessedly silent.

A fog had crept in during the night, wrapping the world in gentle white when Elyse woke. Her eyes had swollen from the tears, leaving them heavy and painful to move, but she carried on without complaint.

The fire had long since died, and Daemon and his bedroll were nowhere to be found, but the tail of his dragon still wrapped around the site, a short but effective barricade. She briefly reached out to touch the scales, but thought better of it and moved to gather her things. Her mind was empty as she went to work, an exhaustion still settled over her that sleep could not cure.

When she walked to the edge of the trees, Caraxes looked impossibly larger, his frame so long that it disappeared into the mist. The heat of his body staved off the chill that had settled in the air, and Elyse found herself wondering if any animals lingered nearby, or if he'd cleared the area simply with his presence.

Daemon checked over the saddle, working quietly. If he was aware of her presence, he made no mention of it. She decided to keep the peace intact, watching quietly from the tree line. There was a strange delicacy in the way he worked, subtle movements and reassuring gestures to Caraxes that she would not have expected from a man of his temperament. Elyse found herself fixated on it.

It was the right thing, she knew, to tell him of the source of her hatred. Inevitably, conflict would arise at home, and Daemon Targaryen was the last man alive she wished to blindside. The more he knew, the safer they would all be. It was not a matter of personal investment, yet Elyse found herself waiting for a reaction, a word, any form of acknowledgement that he even recalled the night before. She did not dare bring it up again, lest it get away from her once more, so in silence she remained, hands clasped tightly behind her back.

When the prince finished, he turned and gestured for her things, entirely unsurprised by her presence. Elyse stepped forward and pathetically handed them over, still waiting for any sort of response from the oddly quiet Targaryen. At his failure to so much as sigh, she grabbed the leather strappings of the saddle and began to climb.

"For what it's worth, I understand."

Elyse looked down to find Daemon staring at her. His eyes were striking in the pale light that filtered through the mist. In that moment, she felt she could read him in his entirety, touch upon every decision, every memory, every piece of his soul that formed his very being, and in doing so, she knew herself to be a coward. She turned away from him, and hauled herself onto the saddle.

He followed not long after, settling down in front of her. This was not the first time they had been so close, but Elyse had never felt so aware of Daemon as she did now. The strain of his muscles beneath her hands as Caraxes climbed into the air, the way his Valyrian commands reverberated across his shoulders. These were childish thoughts that left her flushed, but she indulged them, if only because he could not see.

The world below may as well have not existed, the fog covered everything so fully. For hours, she and Daemon were the only beings left in existence. Here, she thought, it would be alright; here she could pretend she was not the woman she had been.

"Thank you," she said, a shout barely heard over the wind. He turned his head, nodded once, and they continued forward in silence.

When the sun broke free and restored the land below, the Kingsroad still carried northward below them. She recognized Moat Cailin as they drifted by, the solitary keep deep in the swamplands of the Neck. From so high up, it did not appear as sad a sight as she knew it to be, no longer a ruin half sunk in the muck, but just another creation of brick and mortar, no different from the others they had passed by.

A lone horn called out at the sight of them, but they had long passed before she could witness the reaction.

Her glimpses of the North were fleeting, the largest region in the kingdom disappearing in the blink of an eye. One could wander the lands for days without encountering another soul, and here, on the back of Caraxes, she saw them all. It both fascinated and frightened her, and she let a small prayer drift to her gods, thankful there were so few riders.

The sun was beginning to set again when she first spotted Winterfell; the castle was no more than a dot on the horizon, with spindly fingers that were the roads of Winter Town. Despite their height, her home loomed over her, and only now did regret begin to seep into her veins.

Caraxes landed on the edge of town to little fanfare. The commonfolk shrieked and ran, slamming their doors shut as if their homes of wood and stone could keep the power of a dragon at bay. A small child carrying wood fell over from the harsh wind kicked up by his wings, and a hound dark as pitch bayed precisely twice before retreating.

Elyse recalled watching the residents of King's Landing go about their lives as if dragons flying overhead were as common as the birds. Most did not even look up when Rhaenyra passed by on Syrax. For the simplicity of her people, and their understandable terror at the sight of such a creature, Elyse thought Daemon would spare a round of laughter, but from the prince, there was nothing.

It unnerved her.

When they'd dismounted, Daemon whispered to his dragon, a secret meant for no one but them, though one would be hard-pressed to find someone that spoke High Valyrian in the North. With a shake of his head, Caraxes stalked off and took flight once more. Elyse had dug in with her boot, and still felt the pressure pushing her along the ground. She watched as the creature disappeared over the Wolfswood, its great cries echoing thunder across the bleak landscape.

"He's not going to be feasting on our farmers, is he?"

"Only if they trouble him," Daemon replied, too matter-of-factly for her comfort.

They strode down the main thoroughfare, the end of the Kingsroad leading up to the main gates. All around them, eyes peeked out of windows and faces formed in the darkened doorways. Stark soldiers on patrol stood with their hands clasped to their swords, eying the prince as one would a common thief. An old man spat on the ground in front of his hovel.

"Your famed Northern hospitality at work. It's a wonder my brother wasn't all too eager to jump at the opportunity."

She hated how comforting it was to hear his bitter sarcasm return. "Being a Targaryen has made you shortsighted. Most people don't take well to dragons landing outside their doors."

"It was only the one, and it's far better than the alternative."

Elyse frowned, falling out of step. In an instant, the homes around her burned as easily as kindling, the stones melting in the extreme heat. Caraxes cried out above her, Daemon's bright hair flowing as he called for more destruction, his smile belonging to a crazed man finally unleashed upon the world. It was an image not out of the realm of possibility; it may have even been a glimpse into her future.

A small body running down the road caught her attention, smothering the flames of her worst fears. Sara's face was tinged pink from the cold of the evening air, her breath coming out in small puffs. Wildly, her hair flew behind her, half a braid, half a forest with twigs and leaves. She'd been hiding in the godswood again.

Skidding to a halt, Sara first gave Daemon a properly curtsy before running past him and leaping onto her. Elyse staggered back, a proper, full belly laugh escaping her lips as she wrapped her arms around her little sister to keep her from falling. She smelled of earth and wet and cold. It was the smell of home.

"You're so heavy now!" Elyse shouted, swinging Sara back and forth and finding herself winded. She put her back down onto the road, grasping her shoulders to get a good look at her. Her face was clean, eyes bright. Had anything happened to her, she was not showing it. "You've grown too much since I left."

"I haven't grown at all. Perhaps being around all those flowery lords has made you weak," Sara replied. To emphasize her point, she looked back at Daemon.

He raised a single eyebrow, hand resting too obviously on his sword. "This must be your sister. She has your predilection for contempt."

Elyse could only grin slyly at the beleaguered prince.

"Has the dragon gone?" Sara asked, searching behind her as if she'd hidden Caraxes in her pocket. "I'd have much rather seen that one."

Daemon let out the long-winded sigh of a man realizing how the next few days of his life were going to unfold.

Rickon Stark and a small retinue had managed to gather in the Great Hall by the time she and Daemon were escorted inside. The Master-at-Arms, Byron Hornwood, a beast of a man with a beard dark as night and hair paler than the morning fog, stood to his left. Maester Willem, his right, his bright blue eyes glowing in the candlelight. She could read every question and accusation in them. He'd not been taught to lie.

Sara clung to her arm, her grip ironclad and determined to keep them from being parted again. Together, they walked to the side of the chamber, taking their places amongst the audience. A few men and women of noble birth were gathered inside, having simply visited at the right time. She spotted a burly Mormont and a wispy Reed. A Bolton watched the gathering from the doorway, his dark eyes drinking in the scene. Bennard stood in the far corner, his scowl deep and his eyes shadowed. Her cousins were gathered around him, wearing similar looks that made them childlike in her eyes, sons trying too hard to be like the father.

"My Prince," her father spoke, his voice ringing clearly through the room. He bowed his head, and at once the others followed, murmured words cascading across the space. Elyse did the same, eyes watching her uncle all the while, but he and her cousins played their part. Sara, she noted, had remained silent. "Forgive me for not presenting you with a finer welcome. We did not realize that you would be joining us. I only just started correspondence with King Viserys."

Daemon smirked, his attempt at false pleasantry never quite able to live up to the real thing. "I decided to come not three days ago. They haven't found a raven yet that can fly so fast as a dragon. Perhaps I should be asking you forgiveness, Lord Stark, for intruding so suddenly."

A tense silence fell upon the room. Daemon's kind words always did sound like a vague threat. No one knew the strange little nuances that guided the words of the Rogue Prince. She wasn't certain many in King's Landing knew either.

And you know him so well, do you?

Elyse bit down on her tongue, as if it had spoken the words aloud, but the voice had been Aemma's.

Daemon glanced around the Great Hall, his lone figure appearing to tower over them. He knew the exact tone of the room, and seemed to revel in it.

"I come on behalf of my brother," he continued, head still on a swivel. Daemon Targaryen was looking for his enemies. She wondered how many he'd spotted. "As you well know, Queen Aemma is with child, and he dare not leave her side at this time. He asked that I might send his well wishes in his stead with the promise of renewed kinship with the great houses of the North. The Crown has been remiss in its duty to all its people, and seeks to rectify it."

There was a strange sincerity to his words. It was not meant for her father, nor anyone else in the room; it was the tone of a little brother trying to impress the elder. Yet if Viserys had been in the gathered crowd, Daemon might have spat at whatever praise he offered.

Her father nodded. "And I would thank him for it, and you, My Prince, both for your words, and the safe return of my daughter."

Briefly, their eyes met, and a white-hot anger ignited in her that she fought to control. She had been afraid to return, and could still feel its cold grip, but it was quickly melting away under the sensation she'd hidden behind all those years.

"Lady Elyse would have elected a more practical return, but I believe she was concerned about my lack of etiquette."

There was an exchange of barely passable smiles, and another stretch of silence. Someone coughed. Elyse searched the room herself and found her uncle's cool gaze upon her. There would be many conversations to look forward to, it seemed.

"My Prince, I cannot offer you much this evening," her father started, taking a piece of parchment from Maester Willem. "But I can provide my welcome and a fine room to spend your days in. And on the morrow, we will host a splendid feast."

Daemon nodded once in thanks, allowing himself to be guided out of the room by the castle steward. Soft murmurs erupted in his wake, a held breath released, and Elyse realized that the arm Sara clung to had started to tingle.

Her father finally sat at his chair, a defeated man shrinking in on himself, but the voice that boomed from his lips belonged to someone stronger. "Clear the room."

There was no need to say her name. Elyse and everyone present knew she was the exception to the command. Even Sara, who reluctantly set her free and disappeared with her cousins out the door. Only Bennard remained a moment longer, eying the two of them as though steel were about to be drawn, before retreating with the others.

Elyse remained in the wings, waiting for her father's next command. He did not look at her, or at anything in particular. There was a far-off look in his dark eyes, but he breathed heavily, the anger rolling off of him in waves. It was a wonder it had not been obvious when he spoke with Daemon, but her father had become proficient in lying about many things.

When he did not speak, she went to him, eager to get the confrontation over with. Clasping her hands behind her back as she always did, Elyse stood in front of the lord's table. She did not offer any words, and deigned only the top of his head worthy of her gaze. His hair was thinning, revealing freckled skin beneath.

"A whore," her father breathed, the words ragged and forced. "That is what they will call you."

She had considered all the words he might throw at her. That had been one of them. During her silent flight from King's Landing, she'd mulled them over in her mind, hearing them as best she could in his voice, her mother's, Bennard's, until they'd blended together into one. Perhaps if she heard them enough times before she arrived, they would not sting as much.

Elyse had not expected to feel nothing at all.

"I expect they will call me many things," she replied, surprised by the bored tone in her voice.

"Have you no shame?" he hissed, clenching the parchment in his hand. Had he memorized this one too? "Have you no understanding of what you have brought upon our house?"

"What I have brought is the man who will gleefully raze our house to the ground should we fail to stop the war," Elyse countered. "Get to know him well, for his face may be the last many of our people will ever look upon."

"Yes, yes, you alone stand to hold back the tide of war. Elyse Stark, the only Northerner with a mind for anything political while the rest of her kin play with sticks in the mud," her father grumbled, standing once again. He had to lean on the table for support, his leg unable to bear the weight for long periods of time. "Tell me, since you're keen on such things, how a house should take the slight of a young woman betrothed to their heir absconding with the wed dragon prince?"

He threw the crumpled parchment onto the table for effect. Elyse could see the coiled wax bearing the sigil of House Manderly upon it.

"That is from Lord Desmond, offering congratulations on the union of our two houses," he continued, spitting the words out as if they burned him. "I received it three days ago, and I thought 'the girl finally did something right.' Yet here you are, a mockery of everything in this letter. Do you expect House Manderly to remain sated? Do you think a Targaryen castoff is a worthy wife?"

"I am not his to use, nor have I ever been. I'll fall upon my knees before Lord Desmond and beg for his mercy, if it would please him," Elyse replied, looking away from the letter. She could see Medrick's foolish smile in the writing. "But I was not about to remain in King's Landing while Daemon Targaryen was here."

Her father was silent for longer than she was comfortable with, gaze piercing her, and Elyse feared he saw something that wasn't there.

"You will remain here when the prince departs," he commanded, his voice quiet, anger spent. "And you will repair the damage you have done."

The feast was small, and possibly quaint by some standards, but the way the voices rose together in a single drunken chorus left Daemon questioning if he'd really left the capital. If he turned away or closed his eyes, the morose nature of the North melted away into something familiar, a tourney dinner in one of the Red Keep's many dining halls or a rare family gathering on Dragonstone, where the laughter boomed as loud as the crashing waves.

He kept quiet for the most part, content to observe the goings-on. As the night wore on and the people fell deeper into their cups, Daemon became another face in the crowd, silence granting him anonymity, and thus tongues began to loosen. A slip of a word here, an inconsequential look there, and a picture suddenly began to form in his mind. Elyse had ideas about the nature of things, but he would form his own opinions before anything went further. If it was already too late, Daemon saw no issue in giving the North a fiery warning. The Council had heard the words of treachery being thrown about, and there was more than one solution to that particular problem. Viserys may not like it, but his brother would forgive him. He always did.

That is what Otto wants, and you know it.

Daemon frowned. The voice sounded like her.

Elyse Stark sat at the far end of the lord's table, dutifully ignoring both him and her father. Her head was held high, back straight, hands clasped around her goblet with white knuckles, a statue fit for her family's crypts. He followed her gaze across the hall, past the sea of drunken lords and ladies who had taken it upon themselves to shove the tables aside and start a strange dance he doubted anyone south of the Neck had ever witnessed, to the man on the opposite end. Her uncle, if memory served correctly. Their gazes were fixed upon one another, opposing forces locked in battle amidst the revelry.

A man stumbled over his feet in the center of the room, taking many of the others with him. There was a moment of stunned silence, before cups were raised and shouts cried out. Half a dozen more drunken revelers joined the fray, attempting to dance whilst tripping over those who had fallen, creating an endless cycle of idiocy that managed to amuse him.

The moment broken, Daemon watched as Elyse stood, accepting the hand of some other lord who looked a little too happy to be sober. He half-dragged her into the chaos, and they began to dance. Her uncle, Benny or something like that – he hadn't been paying attention during introductions – departed the room then. He was the one Elyse insisted was the source of all their problems.

Might be there was a solution for that as well.

He'd half a mind to follow the would-be traitor when another body shuffled over to him. Lord Rickon Stark, Elyse's father and source of all her bitter ire, took a seat next to him, grunting as a man his age would when the bones did not cooperate as they once had. He was a man plagued by many afflictions, a suitable metaphor for the state of things.

"Prince Daemon," he offered in greeting. Daemon gave him little more than a hum as he took a drink of his mulled wine. Its taste was much like the feast, outlandish and dull all at once. "I hope that our simple feast does not bore you."

"It serves its part, have no worry there," Daemon replied, watching one of the lords pull a serving wench into his lap. In another corner, a hunting dog stole a honeyed chicken from one of the tables, to the entertainment of everyone still seated. Elyse was still dancing. They'd managed to form a line of some sort, exchanging partners at a dizzying rate that left men and women falling out of it more often than not, but the onlookers were quick to push them back in.

The continued silence told him that their pleasantries were at an end. Daemon placed his goblet down gently, turning to face Rickon fully, taking in the withering gray-white hair and sunken eyes of a man seeking to live past his time.

The lord cleared his throat. "It is not that I wish to question the word of my daughter, but…"

"I haven't fucked her, if that is what you're asking," Daemon said, cutting him off. He smiled at the way the lord blanched. "Forgive me, I was told people of the North preferred the straightforward approach. Perhaps I was misled."

"No, My Prince, I thank you for answering a father's fears," the man staggered through the sentence, thrown off-balance by his words. "But I must then ask why you brought her at all."

Why indeed? Elyse's voice returned. He could hear the wicked grin she wore, though the young woman herself was still dancing, completely unaware of their scrutiny. Do I entertain you so, My Prince? Do you have need of me?

Daemon frowned, unwilling to answer to either of them. "Tell me, do you respect her opinion on things?"

Rickon watched him a moment, then her, before sighing. "She cares deeply about the North; I will give her that. Sometimes, she might even have the right idea, but Northern matters are for the North to decide. I'd hardly expect you to call for our opinions on a family dispute."

"A family dispute is a funny name for civil war."

"There is no war here."

Daemon could not help the laughter. "Even as an outsider, I can see the battle lines drawn in this very room. You can lie to yourself, Lord Stark, but don't take me for the gullible fool. Should this farce continue into something bloody, the Crown will need to take action."

"To save face only. A Northern war with an heirless king would look like quite the weakness to your enemies."

His dagger slammed into the table, carefully resting in the space between Rickon's splayed fingers. The vibration knocked his goblet over, spilling mulled wine across the surface, the blood he had not shed. Oh, but how he'd wanted to, how easy it would have been. Swords would have drawn and fire would have melted the stone, and it would have been a sight to behold.

Viserys had stayed his hand this time, but only this time.

"Clearly, my lord has had too much to drink. I would hate to think you meant such treasonous words," Daemon said quietly, though his heart thrummed in his chest, eager for battle and the ring of steel. His eyes noted the people who had stepped away from the table, those still sober enough to understand what was happening. Elyse was not one of them, too far away to hear, and just this once, he allowed himself to be disappointed by it.

He carefully plucked the dagger from its resting place and returned it to his belt. "Until Queen Aemma bears a son, I am my brother's heir, and I do not tolerate insults so quietly as he. I'd suggest you remember that. Surely holding your tongue is preferable to losing it."

Rickon's hand had curled into a fist, but it was as steady as the gaze the Northern lord leveled on him. Daemon could almost respect it.

"I can see why my daughter wishes to stay close to you," Rickon said, looking out over the dancing fools. A man thrice the size of Elyse had taken to spinning her, her hair flying haphazardly about her. She nearly toppled over when he'd finished, laughing until she was red in the face as she leaned against him. "You're just like her."

Daemon laughed then, full and hearty. It made onlookers watch him fearfully, which only served to make him laugh harder.

"She controls it better than you, but there is a monster living under all that decorum," Rickon continued, unfazed by his jovial reaction. "I used to be a strong man, the kind that ended disputes simply by standing. That was how much others feared the prospect of fighting me. And then when she was ten, Elyse drove a spear into my leg. It crippled me, and I have looked the part of a man dying since."

Elyse was dancing with her younger sister, her head down to watch their feet as the young girl attempted to learn. His mind drifted back to the night beneath the weirwood, and a dagger that flashed in the moonlight.

"Tell me, Lord Rickon, was that before or after she caught you raping one of your servants?" Daemon glanced over at the man, watching the most ridiculous look slowly form upon his face, a tinge of red crawling up his neck and into his sallow cheeks. "One almost wishes she'd managed to do more."

She was looking at him now, suddenly aware of his presence again. Her face was flushed from drink, hair cascading about her in chaotic dark waves, but she was sober enough to understand that something had transpired. Those gray eyes questioned him, and they saw far too much.

Daemon stood then, excusing himself from the feast before he decided that blood truly needed to be spilled.

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I will admit, not my favorite chapter, but conversations needed to be had, explanations needed to exist, and pieces needed to be moved. We needed to strike at the heart of Elyse, and it was never going to be a pleasant time. Next chapter should be a little nicer.

Thank you for reading!