Eyrie, 297 AC – 26th June
Alyssa
Every spring, the village nestled in the valley below the Eyrie swelled to nearly ten times its size for three days of remembrance. The women dyed wool and baked their dead grandmothers' recipes, while merchants traded fine thread, carved wood, and spring's first fruits. For three days, the Vale honoured its ancestors with quiet reverence and communal warmth. The festival, hosted by the Lord of the Vale, stretched back to a time long before Aegon the Conqueror set foot upon Westeros.
In her chamber high above the celebration, Alyssa studied her reflection in the mirror.
Her eyes, violet and vivid as twilight, met her gaze with a quiet defiance. They were not the cool, pale blues of House Arryn, but the unmistakable shade of Starfall. In them, she saw her mother. She saw Ashara.
Her mouth, the shape of her cheekbones, the graceful slope of her brow—all marked her as a daughter of Dorne. She was her mother's image reborn, the same fragile beauty wrapped in an armour of silence.
Allyria Dayne. Daughter of Lord Albert Dayne. Sister to Arwin Dayne, future Lord of Starfall; to Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning; and to Ashara Dayne, the most beautiful woman ever spoken of in courtly songs. A house of legends and ghosts—and her mother had walked among them.
At sixteen, Allyria had been wed to Elbert Arryn, Lord of the Vale, who had loved her at first glance during a diplomatic visit to Starfall. While her siblings became stories sung across the realm, Allyria had vanished into the mountains—kept not by duty, but by quiet despair.
The realm remembers Arwin as a wise lord, Arthur as a hero, Ashara as a tragedy. And Allyria? She is remembered, if at all, as a woman with lilac eyes and a melancholy air, tucked away far from the sunlit shores of her youth.
After Elbert's death and the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, Alyssa—barely two—was placed in the care of her grandmother, Sara Karstark. Upon her passing, Lord Yohn Royce of Runestone took her in. Her great-uncle, Jon Arryn, had gone south to serve as Hand of the King. Her mother went further south still—to Starfall—to drown in the sorrow of her husband's death, her brother's fall, and her sister's vanishing.
She never returned.
And Alyssa, who bore her eyes and her face, was left behind with little more than the echo of her name and the weight of resemblance.
After Robert's Rebellion ended, silence became the Vale's reply to loss.
When Alyssa was nine years old, word arrived from Dorne: her mother had died giving birth to a son. A boy named Arthur, after the uncle whose sword had once drawn starlight. A boy who bore no Arryn blood, but the fire of Dorne in his veins. He was the son of Prince Oberyn Martell.
In the wake of that final abandonment, Alyssa had done what no one asked of her—what no one expected. She took the child her mother had left behind, claimed him as her own kin, and made it her quiet mission to raise him as best she could. Though fostering Arthur in the Vale was impossible—Dorne would not relinquish the prince's son—Alyssa travelled to Starfall each year and stayed for two moons, just long enough to see to his well-being and remind him that he had a sister in the mountains, and that he was not forgotten.
And every year, she stood at the edge of Starfall's sea-facing terrace and honoured the memory of a woman she barely knew. A woman whose face haunted mirrors and dreams alike. A woman who had once held her, only to leave her behind.
Allyria Dayne—the forgotten, sorrowful beauty of House Dayne. A wife once, a mother twice, and now only a shadow cast by memory.
Alyssa saw her face in the mirror too often: the same curve of cheek, the same violet eyes like distant storms. But where Allyria's gaze had always been sad, Alyssa's eyes—though coloured by Starfall—held the quiet steel of the Vale. They were the defiant brown eyes of her father, of House Arryn, shaped by duty and sharpened by grief.
On this day, clothed in a soft purple gown made in the Dornish style, her dark hair braided with silver thread, Alyssa looked eerily like the mother whose face she wore. Yet she stood with a straighter spine. Her hands did not tremble. Her eyes did not drift to some faraway place.
Allyria Dayne had been sorrow personified. Alyssa Arryn was something else entirely.
Making her way down to her great-uncle's study—a room that, despite bearing his name, had long since come to feel more hers than his—Alyssa Arryn felt the familiar prickle of unease that accompanied Remembrance Day. It was a somber occasion, as always, yet something in the air this year felt heavier, less nostalgic and more foreboding. The wind whispered too sharply against the stone, and the halls seemed to echo too loudly beneath her feet.
When she entered the study, Jon Arryn was already seated, a goblet of dark red wine in hand. His face, lined with age and tiredness, turned up to greet her, and at once she saw something different. The composure, always so precise, had slackened. He looked as if he had aged years in a day.
"You reminded me of your mother today," he said softly, his eyes lingering on her. "In that purple dress. Purple and blue… they light up your face. They highlight your Dayne features. Allyria was a good woman, Alyssa. She loved your father. But she—may the gods keep her—was never made for the weight of responsibility."
Alyssa inclined her head, uncertain what to make of the compliment that seemed to carry the shape of a shadow. Her uncle rarely spoke of her mother, and never so plainly. She waited in silence as he drained the rest of his wine and placed the goblet down with a soft clink.
"You may look like her," he continued, "but your heart, your wit, your steadfastness—that is all Elbert. That is the blood of the Vale."
Then, his gaze dropped—not out of thoughtfulness, but shame. When he next looked at her, his eyes were damp and unguarded. For the first time in her life, Alyssa saw the man behind the mountain. And she knew something was about to change.
"I promised your grandmother," he began, "after Allyria went back to Starfall, when you were just a babe—when you were named heir—that I would personally look after you, raise you, and take care of you as if you were my daughter. And I did. In whatever capacity I was able, I tried to raise you well enough that you would prosper and bloom—and become the young woman I see before me now."
He paused. His voice trembled. A beat passed in silence.
"But today, I must do something that would dishonour the vow I made to your grandmother."
Alyssa blinked, her lips parting slightly in confusion. Her great-uncle stepped forward then, closing the space between them with quiet reverence. He took her hands gently in his—his aged, calloused fingers folding over hers with a sorrowful tenderness—and when his tear-stained eyes finally met hers, he uttered one single sentence that shattered her heart into pieces:
"You are no longer the heir to the Vale."
The breath left her lungs. Her knees nearly buckled beneath her. The words, though spoken gently, crashed like thunder across her chest.
"You will be betrothed to Robb Stark of Winterfell," he added, voice breaking on the final syllable. "The engagement to Ser Harwin is annulled."
Alyssa stood frozen. A beat of silence passed, then another. "I—I beg your pardon?" she whispered, barely hearing her own voice above the roaring in her ears.
Jon could not meet her eyes. "You must understand… the realm is shifting. The King is ill-tempered. The Queen is vigilant. Your rule would not be tolerated. But as the Lady of Winterfell—"
"—I would be tolerated," she finished bitterly.
He nodded.
"You promised me—" she began, her voice cracking under the weight of fury and grief. "You gave me to the Vale. You prepared me for this. You made me a ruler."
"And you would have been," he said softly. "You still can be—just not here."
She stared at him for a long moment, searching for the man who had been her father in all but name. But she no longer recognized him. Only a lord bowed beneath the weight of kings and crowns, choosing safety over promises made to a grieving woman long buried beneath Eyrie snow.
"Then may the Seven bless you, Lord Arryn," she said at last, her voice cold and level. "For you have given me nothing but duty, and taken everything else away."
And with that, she turned. The echo of her footsteps was the only sound that followed her out of the room
She remembered walking—no, storming—through the white halls of the Eyrie, her eyes fixed ahead, her mouth set in a silent line, her hands trembling at her sides. But it wasn't until she shut the door to her solar that she let herself feel it. The door closed with a soft click, and the weight of it all collapsed upon her shoulders.
She pressed her back against the wall and slid to the floor, the cold stone grounding her in a way her thoughts could not. Her purple skirts pooled around her like spilled wine. And then, the silence broke—first with a shaky breath, then a sob. Then another. Until she was gasping.
He had taken everything. Her future. Her title. Harwin.
Harwin.
She clutched at her chest, as if the act might hold the pieces of her heart together. She had loved him all her life. Since the days when she still held a wooden sword half her size and chased him through the snow-covered courtyards of Runestone. Since the first time he'd shielded her from a charging goat. Since the first time he called her "my lady" with a teasing grin but meant it with all his heart.
She was nineteen now. She had loved him for over fifteen years. And now that love was being cast aside like her inheritance, as though neither ever belonged to her.
Alyssa buried her face in her hands, shaking, furious at herself for the tears, furious at her uncle for the betrayal, and furious—most of all—at her mother.
Allyria Dayne. The quiet beauty of Starfall with violet eyes and a sorrowful smile. Her father, Elbert Arryn—the noble heir of the Vale—had died before Alyssa was even born, murdered during the last days of King Aerys. Her mother had never recovered. She fled south to Dorne when Alyssa was still a babe, broken with grief, where she fell into the arms of Oberyn Martell—a man whose fire consumed what was left of her. And then she gave birth to a son, Arthur, and died before Alyssa ever had the chance to ask why.
Why did she leave?
Why was I not enough?
She had lived her whole life with that question unanswered. Raised instead by Lord and Lady Royce, who had shown her a colder form of duty than love, who had shaped her into a lady of the Vale when her own mother had left her to become nothing but a story whispered behind silks.
Only Harwin had ever truly known her. Only he had seen the cracks and loved her still. And now, that was being taken too.
"I was the heir," she whispered to the empty room, her voice splintered and raw. "I was the heir. I was—"
She stood, dizzy and wild-eyed, and knocked over the chair by her writing desk. Her fists pounded once—twice—against the stone as if sheer will could alter fate. When the pain bloomed beneath her skin, she stopped.
She needed air. She needed to leave.
Within minutes, she tore off her formal gown and threw on a riding cloak, breeches, and boots. Her hands still shook as she fastened her dagger at her belt and tied her hair back. There was no destination, only escape.
She raced through the stables, startling the stablehand who rose quickly at the sight of her storming in like a tempest. "Ready my horse," she ordered, voice sharp as steel. "Now."
The boy did not question her. He knew better.
Moments later, her mare—a dapple-grey named Veilwing—was ready. Alyssa mounted without a word. The moonlight cast a ghostly hue over the courtyard as she rode hard, faster than was safe, past the gates and into the mountain path below. The Eyrie shrank behind her with every gallop, and yet her pain clung tight, buried in the folds of memory and duty.
Tears streaked down her cheeks as the wind howled in her ears. Her grief had no shape now, no direction. But she would ride until the mountains gave her breath again.
And maybe—just maybe—when she returned, she would no longer be the girl who lost everything.
She would be something else entirely.