The Red Keep, King's Landing – Morning, Year 226 AC
The halls of the Red Keep were as familiar to Brynden Rivers as the lines of his own weathered hand. He had walked them since boyhood, stalked them as a master of whispers, and now strode them as the realm's most feared and formidable Hand of the King. Yet today, they felt strange—foreign, as though the very stones whispered of doom.
He moved without purpose, drifting through archways and colonnades like a shadow that had lost its owner.
His mind was elsewhere.
Snow.
A raven's wings.
Cold blue eyes.
The whispers of the dead in a land where the sun never rose.
A voice, distant, echoing...
"Lord Brynden?"
The voice was sharp this time, feminine—young but commanding.
"Brynden Rivers!"
His head jerked up. His pale eye blinked once, then twice, refocusing. Two women stood before him in the corridor, garbed in fine wool cloaks of black and red trimmed with white fox fur. Both were undeniably royal, though each bore beauty of a different cast.
The first was Princess Daella Targaryen, youngest daughter of King Maekar and the late Dyanna Dayne. Her hair was a pale sandy gold, her eyes deep lilac—the unmistakable marks of Dayne and dragon blood entwined. She smiled, though a crease of concern marred her brow.
Beside her stood Princess Rhae Targaryen, her elder sister, fair as a Targaryen dream—silver-blonde hair cascading like a river of silk, and eyes the color of dusk skies above Dragonstone. Her face reminded Brynden, painfully so, of his late full-sister Daenerys—the only kin he had ever loved without shame.
"You looked as though you were walking in your sleep," Daella said gently.
"Is something troubling you, my lord?" Rhae added, cradling a child against her side—a bright-eyed babe with a tiny wisp of silver hair.
Brynden composed himself in a breath, tightening the grip of reality around his thoughts like reins on a wild horse. He offered them a courtly smile, shallow but smooth.
"I was thinking of grain routes and tax levies," he lied. "The sort of things that haunt a Hand more than ghosts ever could."
That earned a laugh from Daella.
"Forgive our interruption, then," Rhae said, ever the poised elder. "We've come with our children to see our father. Is His Grace receiving visitors today?"
Brynden nodded. "The King is resting in his solar. But aye, this is a good day to call upon him—his council meets not today. He'll be glad for your company."
The princesses thanked him graciously and passed on, their children toddling or toddled along, giggling in their innocence. Their laughter echoed in the stone corridor long after they were gone.
Brynden turned, alone again, and resumed his steps. But now his stride had purpose.
The Godswood of the Red Keep
The white weirwood stood silent, its red eyes watching, its face older than empires. Brynden knelt beneath its boughs, where the pale leaves rustled softly in the cold breeze, and pulled from his cloak a scroll bound in black ribbon, sealed with his personal sigil—a single red eye.
He tied the letter to the leg of a raven perched nearby, a large black bird with a scar across its beak and a knowing look in its eye.
"To the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," he whispered. "At Castle Black."
He paused, then added in a lower voice, "Tell me what you've seen. Anything. Even the wildest tale."
The raven croaked and took flight, vanishing into the eastern sky.
Brynden watched until it was gone.
Snow still fell in his mind.
And in his dreams, the dead still marched.