The bay lies flat, barely breathing. A lantern creaks on its hook, throwing pale rings across the water.
Rhaenys sits against the stern rail with a blanket pulled close. She isn't talking to me so much as letting words slip out because silence is worse.
"Wind's gone dull," she murmurs. "We'll round the point by dawn, if it decides to move."A small smile. It dies too quick."Those eel pies… gods, I shouldn't have eaten them."A long, thin breath. "The city smells the same. And not. I don't know which is worse."
She stops there. Holds the rest tight.
I hop onto the little deck table beside her. Scarred wood under my claws, familiar.
No tricks, no nudging. She doesn't need the old comforts.
"Garrad says wait a day," she mutters. "He's right. I hate that he's right."Her fingers rub the blanket's frayed edge."If I walk in… I might not walk out."
Then we don't walk in.
I drag one claw across the tabletop slowly. Wood curls up in a thin shaving.
She startles at the sound. "Velmir? stop, zaldrīzes." She says it soft, but tired.
I draw another line. And another. I don't rush.
She leans in, frowning. "What are you..."
She cuts off when she sees it. Just stares at the carved grooves as if they might slide into different shapes.
GO WINTERFELL.
The lantern swings. Something creaks above. Neither of us moves.
Rhaenys blinks once. Hard. Her mouth parts like she means to speak, but nothing comes. She looks at me, then at the board again, as if one of us will explain it.
Her hand rises halfway, trembling, and she presses it over her mouth to stop whatever sound might escape.
Her eyes say everything she can't: How?
Bootsteps thud on the deck. Garrad appears in the doorway, squints at her hunched over the table, then at me. Something in his face tightens. He decides he doesn't want to know and moves on without a word.
Rhaenys doesn't even notice him go.
She keeps staring at the carved letters like they might shift if she blinks. Her mouth is open just a little, enough to show she forgot she had breath at all. One hand lifts toward the G, hesitates, falls back to the blanket. Whatever sound she meant dies somewhere behind her teeth.
I drag my claw once more just enough to draw a short line pointing north. No more. Too much and it stops being clear.
I leave it at that.
I step up onto the rail. One beat of my wings and the deck drops away, the lantern shrinking to a fleck.
"Velmir…"Not quite a question. Barely a word.Just my name, said like she isn't sure the world has edges anymore.
I don't look back. The night takes me north, then west.
Behind me she stands there, still holding the breath she forgot to release, the carved word in front of her, the sea shifting under the hull, and the shape of her life suddenly cracked open in a way she never imagined.
........
North. Winterfell.I lift off before she can ask the question I know is coming.
Cold air in my throat. Quiet wings. The world below goes dark until the treeline breaks, and then I see it all at once- fire spilling across the road, men shouting over one another, horses screaming as they pull against snapped reins. Carts overturned. Iron cages half-split. The panic and shit and blood.
Yoren's on his knees in the dirt, mouth torn open with blood, still spitting curses at the men circling him. Good man. He won't get up again.
I drop lower, branches scraping my wings. The firelight gives me all I need.
The first man never sees me. My wing catches the edge of his gorget; the sound is a sharp metal kiss. He folds before he even knows why.
Another group turns toward the flames. I let heat roll off me- hard, bright, meant to blind and blister. Bowstrings twist and snap. Hands fly open. Someone screams and drops his bow in agony.
A horse rears, white-eyed. I strike its shoulder as I pass; the beast tumbles sideways into two men, their spears clattering as they go under. The line buckles. Someone yells to fall back, but panic outruns the order. They break. Good.
The cages burn hotter now. Three men inside. One sits too still—half red, half white hair, eyes like nothing in him moves but thought. Wrong kind of calm.Jaqen H'ghar.If he walks free tonight, strangers die tomorrow. I don't know their faces yet. Doesn't matter.
He's prey.
I rake a tight spiral of heat over the cage roof. Hold it. Hold it until the iron turns cherry-glow. Heat drips between the bars like molten rain. Screams rise.Jaqen only watches me, head tipped, as if weighing the shape of my fire. Then his eyes close, slow.
The other two claw the bars, but I keep feeding the heat. The road has enough wolves already.
[New Skill Unlocked: Aerial Ace]
A banner flashes in the corner of my sight. The world blinks once.
The cloaks who came for chasing the bull-helm boy see me coming and try to run sideways. Wrong direction.I hit them in a straight line, speed turning bone and wood into the splinters.The cart explodes under us.
....
Yoren dies on his knees but facing the road. That's the best the night leaves him.
A girl stands near the wreckage, staring straight up at me.Hard eyes. Too sharp for her size.Arya Stark.
She doesn't scream, she just freezes, mouth half-open, like her mind hasn't caught up with what she's seeing. Then the sound starts to form.
No.
I drop low and catch her by the back of her tunic and belt, lift her clean off the ground. Not high. Just enough. She kicks, elbows, curses something half-formed. Her shoulders jar against my grip.
The bull-helm boy lunges after her. Misses.I look at him, one flat look.Stay.
He does. Trembling, but he stays.
I take the hedges first, low to the ground, then skim the dark fields where the grass bends in my wake. Ditches. Marsh. The river.Hours scrape by. The burning road falls away behind us.
Water opens beneath.The sky starts to pale.
Garrad's ship cuts the tide where I left it. I land on the foredeck and put Arya Stark down. The deck takes her harder than I do. Knees, palms, jaw. Her shoulder screams at her and she grits a breath through her nose.
She snaps at me empty hand swinging where she thinks a blade ought to be. Fabric tears. She bares her teeth at me like a cub that hasn't learned fear yet.
"Gods save us," a deckhand mutters, already backing away. The others follow him. They know better.
Arya eyes the rail. Measures it. Rejects it. She curls around the ache in her shoulder, glare fixed on me like she thinks it might land.
Boots on the ladder.Rhaenys steps down slow, empty-handed, as if walking toward a wild thing she doesn't want to startle. Three paces out, she stops.
The space between the two of them holds its breath.
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