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The Tyrell family now stood at the very eye of the storm.
Ever since the disaster with House Tarth, the illusion of harmony that had been carefully constructed through their alliance with Renly Baratheon had completely shattered. Whatever warmth or civility had once existed between them was gone. Renly no longer spoke to Margaery Tyrell, nor had he made any attempt to see Ser Loras Tyrell.
He still needed the strength of House Tyrell, and although that remained true, his trust in them had already been broken beyond repair.
After all, forging royal orders in his name, and dispatching his sworn bannermen to assassinate Stannis's child… that was not something Renly would ever have done.
The most repulsive part of the whole affair was that the Tyrells had acted entirely on their own. And when the plan fell apart, when it all went wrong, Renly had been forced to clean up their mess.
What choice did he have?
Was he supposed to turn his back on House Tyrell and, with them, the entire Reach?
Every morning now, Renly stood in the Great Sept of Baelor, staring across the short distance toward the Red Keep that crowned King's Landing. With the capital so close, he could feel its weight pressing on his shoulders, reminding him that he needed to hold together every ounce of power he could still claim. He couldn't afford to cut off his own limbs.
But even so, the damage was done. And its consequences ran deep.
Among the highborn, war often came cloaked in civility. Yes, they killed one another, but even then, there were rules. Silent agreements existed, and no matter how bitter the conflict, certain lines were never meant to be crossed.
For instance…
You didn't harm the families of your enemies. At worst, you took them as hostages. Killing them was rare.
But now, looking from the outside in, the picture was grim. To everyone else, it looked as though Renly had betrayed those unspoken laws. Worse yet, the one he had supposedly struck against, Stannis, wasn't just his rival.
He was his elder brother!
And the child who had vanished, Shireen Baratheon, was his own niece.
His kin!
Was this really someone who could be trusted to lead? Someone who could raise his hand against his own blood?
If a lord like that sat the throne… who could ever follow him with a clear conscience?
What if one day the same thing happened to their family?
The stench of it all was unbearable.
Renly, desperate to hold House Tyrell close and keep them as allies in his fight for the crown, had no choice but to pretend none of it had happened. He suppressed the scandal as quickly as possible. Ignored House Tarth's explanations entirely. Delivered swift judgment and punishment, then sealed the matter as if it were nothing more than a minor breach of protocol.
To the lesser lords and knights beneath him, those who remained ignorant of the foul politics behind the scenes, Renly Baratheon now seemed like a cold and ruthless man who showed no mercy, allowed no explanation, and condemned one of the realm's great noble houses… without even granting them the chance to speak.
And besides, anyone with a bit of sense could see it. Without an order from above, who in their right mind would dare take action against the kin of Stannis Baratheon?
Who else could have mobilized the forces of House Tarth, if not Renly Baratheon himself?
Even though Renly vehemently denied any involvement, he went so far as to frame the punishment around a laughable charge — something as absurd as "dereliction of duty in guarding a military outpost." But everyone knew it was nothing more than a paper-thin excuse.
No one even understood what this supposed dereliction was meant to be guarding in the first place.
Among the lower ranks of nobility, all they could do was sigh. Their view of Renly Baratheon had plummeted, their respect quietly eroding. But what could they do beyond that?
After all, this was a family matter within House Baratheon. What right did they have to interfere?
But for the high lords, those who had caught wind of the truth behind the scenes, the picture was far grimmer. They understood clearly that between Renly's Baratheons, perhaps even the entire Stormlands in the future, and the Tyrells, who were shaping up to be the greatest contributors to Renly's war effort, a rift had opened. One that could never be mended.
The Tyrells had masterminded the whole incident. And now, with a single cold denial, they had washed their hands of the affair completely, leaving Renly's reputation in ruins while driving an unbridgeable wedge between him and Stannis.
They had made it so Renly could no longer even consider making peace with his brother. He had no choice now but to fight to the bitter end.
To fulfill their ambitions for the Iron Throne, House Tyrell would stop at nothing.
————————————————————
And in a way, they had succeeded.
Because the moment news of the disaster on Dragonstone reached Stannis Baratheon, now seated upon the Iron Throne, there was only one name that came to his mind: his dear younger brother.
"How dare he? How dare he!"
Stannis's voice trembled with disbelief, the words caught between fury and heartbreak. He had never imagined, not even once, that Renly would raise a hand against his family.
Back when Robert was still alive, Renly had often mocked Stannis, calling him a block of rotting stone. But even then, he had always shown kindness to Shireen.
And beyond that, there had always been a line between them, a silent understanding that no matter how bitter the struggle between men became, women and children were never to be harmed. That quiet truce had held from the very beginning of the war.
But now, once again, Stannis found himself paying the price for trusting too much in what he believed to be true.
Having served for many years as Master of Ships for all Seven Kingdoms, Stannis knew better than anyone the real state of Westeros' naval forces. He understood every dock, every fleet, every weakness… and every lie.
Renly's official explanation was that pirates were to blame. But rumors had already begun to spread in whispers, murmurs carried by the wind: it was the bannermen of House Tarth, loyal to Renly, who had acted.
And Stannis, of course, knew exactly who had done it. That knowledge only made Renly's refusal to admit the truth all the more infuriating.
"I want to know where my daughter is! If that bastard Renly really laid a hand on Shireen, I swear I'll take his head myself. I'll make him pay for what he's done!"
His voice thundered through the throne room, echoing beneath the vaulted stone ceilings. Seated upon the Iron Throne, Stannis struck the armrest in fury. The sudden jolt caused one of the throne's jagged blades to slice his palm. Blood welled up instantly and dripped down the side of the black iron seat, its deep red gleam catching the candlelight with a strange and haunting beauty.
"Find out! Go to Renly, demand my daughter's return! Tell him this… if he does not hand her over, then I will bring him down with me, and I will burn this cursed place to the ground until nothing remains!"
He shouted at the nobles gathered below, men who had sworn loyalty to him, who now stood frozen in silence, too frightened to speak.
None of them had ever seen Stannis like this.
The Stannis they knew, for all his infamous temper and granite-hard stubbornness, rarely let it boil to the surface. Most of the time, his icy glare alone was enough to strike fear into those who stood before him.
But this time was different. This time, the fury had broken through.
Shireen was his only soft spot… the one thing that made him vulnerable. He had never chased women, never cared for gold or feasts or glory. Everything he had ever done, everything he fought for, was for the throne and nothing more.
And it was precisely that kind of man who was the most terrifying, because there was no way to sway him. He could not be seduced, bribed, or tempted. There was nothing to exploit. Nothing to offer.
But now someone had struck his one weakness, torn into the one place where even Stannis Baratheon bled like any other man. If he were not furious now, that would be the real surprise. After all, Shireen was not just his daughter… she was his only heir.
He had told his men, not just once but many times, that if anything ever happened to him, they were to raise Shireen Baratheon to the throne. She was to carry on his legacy, to sit upon the Iron Throne as his rightful successor.
But now, that last fragile hope had been ripped away. And if it was gone, if Shireen was truly dead, then what did it matter even if Stannis won the war?
What would be the point of claiming the crown, only to die alone on the Iron Throne decades later, as friendless and unloved as Maegor the Cruel, only to have the kingdom he had bled for handed off to some stranger the moment he drew his final breath?
All the fighting, all the killing, all the blood spilled across the land… for what? In the end, it would all amount to nothing but ash and silence.
No. He refused to let it end like that.
That was why, right now, Stannis had only one thread left to hold on to, one last desperate prayer, that Shireen was not dead, merely taken. That Renly had stolen her away, and if that were true, then maybe, just maybe, there was still time to bring her back.
If she was alive, then it wasn't over. If she was alive, then there was still hope.
He looked down at the nobles gathered beneath the throne, all frozen in place, their eyes darting back and forth, searching each other's faces for an answer. No one moved. No one dared take the first step.
Blood was still running down from the gash on his palm, soaking into the fabric of his sleeve. The sight of it, and the pain he no longer even seemed to feel, only made him look more unhinged, more terrifying.
The rage twisting inside him now felt less like anger and more like madness.
"GO!" he bellowed again, his voice cracking like a whip through the vast chamber.
That second roar shattered whatever courage remained in the room. No one wanted to tempt his fury a moment longer. They exchanged brief, frightened glances, and then one by one, they turned and hurried from the throne room like birds fleeing a burning tree.
No one dared look back.
And yet, as they passed through the towering doors and crossed the threshold into the corridor beyond, someone, no one knew who, murmured a single line under their breath. The words drifted out like a ghost:
"Our king… really does seem like a mad one now, doesn't he…"
The moment those words reached the ears of the others, they turned almost as one, casting glances back through the long, dim hall.
Through the flickering candlelight and the wavering shadows, they saw him — slumped on the Iron Throne, his chest rising and falling with ragged, furious breaths. The blood glinted red against the cold steel of the throne, pooling beneath his hand as if the throne itself was bleeding.
And somehow, for reasons they couldn't quite explain, some of the older lords found their minds reaching back… back over the years, back to another time, another figure seated in that same cursed chair.
They saw two images slowly overlapping in their thoughts.
Alone. Desperate. Burning with rage. Teetering at the edge of sanity.
It made their skin crawl. A chill slipped down their spines.
It was a terrible feeling.
————————————————————
Not long after the news from Dragonstone reached King's Landing, the brutal, bloody battle that had engulfed the city's long streets suddenly came to a halt.
Renly Baratheon issued the order himself: cease all attacks at the front lines immediately. His army pulled back, retreating from streets and neighborhoods they had only just claimed.
When House Tyrell stormed in to confront him, burning with fury and disbelief, Renly met their outrage with a long, cold stare. He said nothing. Not a single word.
And in the face of that silence, an expression so full of contempt and weariness, the proud knights and lords of Highgarden lost their nerve. One by one, they backed away in awkward silence, shame flickering across their faces, and left Renly standing alone, guarded only by his Rainbow Guard.
There he remained, this self-proclaimed King of the Seven Kingdoms.
Isolated. With no one left he could truly trust. No one he could confide in. No one who might understand the storm raging inside him.
The same kind of solitude. The same kind of silence.
————————————————————
"What now, my lords? Do we really do what His Grace Stannis said? Are we actually going to send someone to negotiate with Renly?"
Outside the throne room, gathered in the tower that had once been Tywin Lannister's favored seat of power, the Hand's Tower, the nobles who had just slipped away from the King's fury were now huddled together, whispering urgently.
No one wanted this task. No one was foolish enough to believe it was a simple matter.
Because if it really was Renly who had done this… if he truly was behind the disappearance of Shireen… then he now held Stannis's only heir in his grasp, and that gave him a terrifying amount of leverage.
And them? Who were they to think they could simply appear before him and demand her return?
What kind of face did they think they had to bargain with someone like Renly? That all it would take was a polite request and a bit of noble pride?
More likely, they'd need to offer something real. Something big. Like handing over the Iron Throne. Like asking His Grace Stannis to take off his crown, kneel, and surrender everything he'd fought for.
And even that assumed Renly had the girl in the first place.
There was still the chance she wasn't with him at all. That, wherever Shireen Baratheon had gone, she was already beyond their reach. In which case, this whole mission would be a waste of time. After all, not even Renly could conjure the dead back to life.
Then there was the darkest possibility. That Shireen had already met some terrible end. And if that was true… well, then it might be time to start thinking about pledging themselves to another Baratheon.
That thought flickered, unspoken, through the minds of the gathered lords.
They didn't say it aloud. They didn't have to. The silence between them said enough.
It was simple, really. If the man you followed had no heir, then your little political circle had no future. And what was the point of loyalty without a future? Who wanted to back a dying branch?
Before, as long as Shireen Baratheon was still alive, they had at least something to anchor their loyalty. Yes, she had that cursed disease, greyscale, but she was still the king's blood. His flesh and bone. His rightful daughter. That had been enough to keep them in line.
But now… now things were different.
If she was truly gone, then it was only natural that their thoughts would start drifting elsewhere. No one could blame them for it. Not really.
"What else can we do?" one noble finally said, his voice calm, clear, and a little sharper than the rest.
"We're sworn bannermen of King Stannis. Rescuing Princess Shireen is our duty, plain and simple. If she's already gone to the gods, then fine… at least we'll have peace of mind. But right now, whether we like it or not, we have to go."
It was the voice of someone still thinking clearly… someone who understood just how dangerous things had become.
Because Stannis was on edge, and they all knew it. The man wasn't stupid. He understood as well as any of them that without an heir, his claim to the throne was hanging by a thread. He wasn't young anymore. He didn't have decades left to try again.
He'd spent half his life fighting wars, and now he was growing old. Expecting him to father another child at this stage was… wishful at best.
And in this moment, this precarious and fragile moment, if they hesitated, if they dragged their feet or tried to delay, he would see right through them. He would know exactly what they were thinking.
After what they had witnessed today in the throne room, that manic and terrifying side of him breaking through, none of them dared to find out what might happen if he truly snapped.
What if he decided to follow in the footsteps of the Mad King?
What if he turned on them, one by one?
With Renly's army camped outside their walls and no heir left within, Stannis Baratheon was a man with nothing left to lose. That made him more dangerous than ever.
A man like him, so rigid, so unyielding, could just as easily be described another way… fanatical. And once a man like that truly believed everyone had abandoned him, there was no telling what he might do.
Who could say? Maybe he'd set the Red Keep ablaze, just to keep it from falling into anyone else's hands.
Maybe he'd turn to them in his final hour and declare:
"If I, Stannis Baratheon, cannot protect my brother's throne, then none of you shall have it either."
It wasn't a stretch. In fact, it was a disturbingly logical conclusion.
"Then let's not waste any more time," someone said at last, sighing as they looked around at the others.
"Get moving, all of you. Go make contact with Renly's side. Talk to them. Once we know where he stands, we'll figure out the rest."
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[Chapter End's]
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