It was still grey and dark when the meeting finally ended. Varys scurried off alone, his soft slippers whisking along the floor. The Lannisters lingered a moment by the door. “How comes your chain, brother?” the queen asked as Ser Preston fastened a vair-lined cloth-of-silver cloak about her shoulders.
You did not wake me,” Maester Aemon replied. “I find I need less sleep as I grow older, and I am grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts, remembering times fifty years past as if they were yesterday. The mystery of a midnight visitor is a welcome diversion. So tell me, Jon Snow, why have you come calling at this strange hour?
When he asked her what was wrong, though, she only shook her head, leaving him to find answers of his own.
Yes, but I’m the king. Margaery says that everyone has to do what the king says. I want my white courser saddled on the morrow so Ser Loras can teach me how to joust. I want a kitten too, and I don’t want to eat beets.” He crossed his arms.
But it did no good to brood on lost battles and roads not taken. That was a vice of old done men.
Another black dragon, he thought. Another Blackfyre Rebellion. And soon another Redgrass field. The grass was not red when the sun came up.
So many vows... they make you swear and swear. Defend the King. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak... what if your father despise the king? what if the king massacres the innocent? Its too much. No matter what you do, your forsaking one vow or another.
Snow still chose to dwell behind the armory, in a pair of modest rooms previously occupied by the Watch’s late blacksmith. Perhaps he did not think himself worthy of the King’s Tower, or perhaps he did not care. That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride. It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.
The crown was the only offering she’d kept. The rest she sold, to gather the wealth she had wasted on the Pureborn. Xaro would have sold the crown too – the Thirteen would see that she had a much finer one, he swore – but Dany forbade it. “Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this one, so men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.
If I do not go, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I had.
Sand dogs must eat and feed their pups.
The Freys are prickly where marriage contracts are concerned.
Aegon had made the seven kingdoms one with fire and blood.
A daughter.” Brienne’s eyes filled with tears. “He deserves that. A daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name. Galladon drowned when I was four and he was eight, though, and Alysanne and Arianne died still in the cradle. I am the only child the gods let him keep. The freakish one, not fit to be a son or daughter.
Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength.
I’m free of Tysha now, he thought. She’s haunted me half my life, but I don’t need her anymore, no more than I need Alayaya or Dancy or Marei, or the hundreds like them I’ve bedded with over the years. I have Shae now. Shae.
Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.
All that winter the crannogman stayed on the isle, but when the spring broke he heard the wide world calling and knew the time had come to leave.
I have no lands nor wife to forsake, and who’d care if I.
Ser Gregor the Mountain,” she said softly. “Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” It made her feel queer to leave out Polliver and the Tickler. And Joffrey too.