# Dorne - The Water Gardens
The morning sun poured into the Water Gardens like molten gold, striking the shallow pools and sending ripples of light across tiled mosaics so ancient that no living soul remembered the artisans who had set them with such loving care. Fountains sang their eternal songs, crystal water tumbling from stone dragons whose scales caught the light like emeralds, from mermaids whose marble hair flowed in carved waves, from heroes of the Rhoynar whose names had been worn smooth as river stones by the passage of centuries. Beyond the latticed windows, Dornish children shrieked with delight in the sun-drenched courtyards, their laughter bright as temple bells while their mothers watched with half an eye, gossiping beneath colonnades of rose-colored stone, their voices carrying the musical cadence of the desert, sharp as the jewels that adorned their throats.
But within the private chambers of Arianne Martell, heir to Sunspear and the burning sands beyond, the symphony of water and joy faded to nothing more than distant whispers.
The woman—for she had long since ceased to be merely a girl—sat rigid upon the edge of her bed, dark hair spilling in waves about her face like ink poured over silk. Her skin held the golden glow of desert sun, luminous as burnished bronze, yet beneath that warmth lay a pallor born of shock. Her eyes, large and expressive, the color of coffee touched with honey, fixed upon something that defied every law she had ever known.
Her wand.
Not just any wand, but *hers*—rosewood the color of dried blood, nine inches of perfectly balanced wood that had chosen her in a shop that smelled of dust and ancient magic. Unicorn hair at its heart, responsive as a lover's touch, crafted for precision and grace. It lay across the carved cedar of her bedside table like some sacred relic offered upon an altar, humming with power that made the very air shimmer.
*Padma Patil,* the name whispered through her mind like incense smoke, cutting sharp and cold through seventeen years of Dornish dreams. *I am Padma Patil. I died in London, died walking through an archway of crumbling stone where the voices of the lost still echoed. I died because breathing without Harry Potter was no life at all—only flesh pretending at meaning while the heart lay buried.*
The revelation struck her like a physical blow, memories crashing against the walls of her consciousness like waves against a seawall. Two lives overlaid upon each other—Padma, the studious Ravenclaw twin, measured and methodical, whose pride had been her books, her careful notes, her quiet brilliance. And Arianne, born of heat and sand and the whispered desires of men, a creature forged in the crucible of Dornish politics.
She remembered her childhood with painful clarity now—*Arianne's* childhood. The round-faced girl with dimpled cheeks and soft curves, mocked by her sharp-tongued cousins for her appetite, for the way she reached for sweetmeats to fill the hollow spaces inside her. Until one summer she had discovered other hungers, more dangerous ones, and learned that her body could be weapon as well as weakness.
The transformation had come slowly, like fruit ripening under the desert sun. Baby fat melted away, replaced by curves that made grown men stumble over their words. Her face had refined itself, cheekbones emerging like carved marble, lips growing full and inviting. The girl who had once hidden in corners became the woman who commanded every room she entered.
*Wanton,* they whispered behind fans and goblets of wine. *Whore. Seductress.* Never to Prince Doran's face, of course—Areo Hotah's presence ensured that particular courtesy. But the words followed her through the halls of Sunspear like perfume, clinging to her reputation even as she carefully preserved what they all assumed she had long since bartered away.
Virgin in flesh, shameless in deed. She had learned the art of seduction from the Sand Snakes—Nymeria's clever tongue between her thighs, teaching her the geography of pleasure. Tyene's honeyed mouth, showing her how a kiss could be both promise and threat. Sarella's whispered secrets in the dark, mapping the territories of desire without ever quite surrendering the castle itself.
*The same soul,* she realized with crystal clarity. *The same hunger. Padma wanted knowledge above beauty, meaning over safety. Arianne chose power through desire, weapons forged from want itself. But both of us—we would risk everything for connection rather than endure eternity alone.*
Her chambers reflected this duality—rich YiTish draperies in shades of amber and gold, catching the morning light so they seemed to pulse like a beating heart. Books lined the walls in careful arrangement, not mere decoration but chosen weapons: treatises on governance that could slice through a man's arguments, histories of Queen Nymeria's conquest that reminded visitors exactly whose blood ran in her veins, philosophical works that proclaimed her mind as dangerous as her beauty. Even her sanctuary had been crafted to seduce and intimidate in equal measure.
When her fingers finally closed around the rosewood, the world *ignited*.
Power surged through her like strong wine after years of thirst, a torrent of liquid fire that lit every nerve in her body. The magic recognized her, welcomed her, filled the hollow spaces she had carried for seventeen years without understanding their shape. The chamber itself responded—silks rustling with phantom winds, candles guttering as though some invisible storm had swept through, the golden morning light fracturing into rainbow prisms that danced across the walls.
Her breath escaped in a shuddering moan, part sob, part ecstasy. "Oh," she whispered, and the word held the weight of revelation, of homecoming, of a key turning in a lock she had not known existed.
This was what had been missing. Not simply magic as tool or trick, but magic as extension of self, as natural as breathing. Padma's precise incantations merged seamlessly with Arianne's intuitive understanding of manipulation and control. The cold stones of Hogwarts rose in her memory alongside the sun-baked courtyards of Sunspear. The scent of old parchment and fresh ink mingled with orange blossoms and desert spices.
In the polished bronze mirror across the chamber, she saw herself as if for the first time—features that could have graced the silver screen, all high cheekbones and expressive eyes, skin that glowed like burnished gold. Both scholar and temptress, both shy twin and dangerous princess, fused into something entirely new.
And through that fusion, she felt *him*.
North and west, a signature as familiar as her own heartbeat. Harry Potter, blazing like a star against the magical darkness. His essence tasted of lightning and determination, of that maddening nobility that made him throw himself before curses meant for others. Protective to the point of self-destruction, brilliant in ways that made the impossible merely inconvenient.
But twined with his power, wrapped around it like silk threads through gold, was another presence. Allure that shimmered like heat-haze over sand, potent as siren-song, woven through with devotion that pulsed steady as waves against shore.
Fleur Delacour.
The name struck her like a blade between ribs, bringing with it a smile that was equal parts bitter and wistful. Of course. Of course Fleur had found him first. They had died for each other, burned together in war, been forged by shared tragedy into something unbreakable. What was she against that? A girl who had loved him in silence, too careful to speak, too afraid to risk the friendship they had built.
If she wanted Harry—and oh, how she *wanted*—she would have to face Fleur as well. The thought terrified and thrilled her in equal measure.
Her pulse thundered like war drums in her ears.
Then—
Another presence, moving through the Water Gardens like heat-shimmer given form. Power radiated from this one like forge-fire, purposeful and controlled. Her enhanced senses caught the signature before her mind could process it, and when recognition struck, it nearly brought her to her knees.
*No,* she thought, panic and impossible hope tangling in her chest. *That cannot be. He died. I *saw* him fall through the Veil, chasing after Bellatrix while Harry screamed his name.*
Footsteps echoed in the corridor beyond her door, measured and confident. Not the hurried pace of a servant bearing messages, but the deliberate stride of a man who expected the world to wait for his convenience.
The carved cedar doors swung open without ceremony.
Prince Oberyn Martell entered like embodied flame, all lean grace and predatory elegance. At forty-one, he remained beautiful in the way that dangerous things were beautiful—sharp edges softened just enough to draw you close before they cut. His silks were sunset colors—orange and gold and deep crimson—cut to flatter his form while never quite concealing the weapons that rode at his hip. Steel kissed by poison, sheathed with such casual arrogance that lesser men broke into cold sweats just watching him walk.
But it was his eyes that had always undone her—liquid dark, bright with intelligence and mockery and hunger, the gaze of a man who saw through pretense as easily as breathing. They swept her chamber now with lazy thoroughness, cataloguing the scattered silks, the carefully arranged books, the rosewood wand still humming in her grip.
When his attention finally settled on her, she felt the weight of it like sunlight concentrated through glass.
"Niece," he said, and his voice was honey poured over steel, musical with the accent of Dorne. His smile curved like a scimitar blade. "I trust you slept well? Though I must confess, your awakening was rather... dramatic. The very foundations of the Water Gardens trembled. Some of the children thought we were under siege by dragons. Poor things went quite pale—well, as pale as Dornish children can manage. And all without so much as a warning for your poor, devoted uncle. Quite inconsiderate of you."
She forced her features into the mask she had perfected over years of court intrigue—lazy innocence touched with just enough sensuality to make men stumble over their thoughts. But inside, Padma's heart hammered against her ribs like a caged bird.
"My awakening?" She let the words roll off her tongue like wine, rich and dark. "Uncle, you flatter me beyond measure. I slept dreamlessly as a babe. Perhaps what you felt came from the fountains? The wind was fierce this morning, and stone can play the most peculiar tricks with sound."
Oberyn's laugh was soft velvet over sharp steel. "The fountains, sweet girl? How fascinating. You must forgive my confusion, but I was unaware that Rhoynish engineering could so perfectly mimic the resonance of a woman rediscovering magic she has not touched since—oh, what age would you have been? Seventeen? Eighteen?" His teeth flashed white in his dark face. "If our ancestors possessed such skill, I really must commission a more generous offering at their shrines."
She arched one perfect brow, lashes lowering like shutters over her eyes. "Perhaps your senses begin to fail you, Uncle. I hear that happens to men of a certain... vintage."
"Oh, strike true!" He pressed his hand to his heart in mock anguish. "You wound me deeply, child. Alas, I remain cursed with the most irritating clarity, particularly regarding matters others prefer to keep hidden." His gaze dropped deliberately to the wand in her hands. "That wood was not cut in any forest of Dorne. Nor in Essos, nor in any land I have wandered—and I have wandered many. Yet there it rests, singing like a serpent ready to strike, in the palm of my innocent niece who insists she knows nothing of such things. Forgive me, Arianne, but if this is your idea of sleep, I should very much like to observe you fully awake."
The fusion of Padma's caution and Arianne's boldness produced something sharper than either alone. She let the wand spin lazily between her fingers, the gesture careless despite the power that crackled around it.
"Perhaps," she said with silken smoothness, "what you felt was not awakening, but simply *me*. You forget, dear uncle—I am heir to Sunspear. Kingdoms tremble when I stretch."
Oberyn's grin widened, delighted as a cat with cream. "Ah, there is the niece I know and adore. Always ready to wield words like poisoned daggers. But these particular daggers glow with light I have never seen in all my travels, through all my wars and whores and wine-soaked adventures." He leaned closer, close enough that she could smell the spiced wine on his breath, the hint of steel oil and exotic perfumes that clung to his skin. "Tell me, sweet child of my heart—when did you become a sorceress?"
The silence stretched between them like a bowstring drawn taut.
Padma's instincts screamed for concealment. Arianne's pride demanded display. Together they produced a smile that was dangerous as a naked blade.
"Perhaps," she murmured, her voice dropping to honey-thick whisper, "I always was one. Perhaps you simply never bothered to look closely enough."
Oberyn threw back his head and laughed, the sound bright as steel ringing against steel. "Seven preserve me, Arianne! You are the only woman alive who could tell such an outrageous lie while making it sound like divine prophecy. I would very much like to know the truth of it."
She tilted her head, letting her hair fall in a dark cascade over one bare shoulder. "And if I choose not to tell you?"
His smile softened into something almost tender, though his eyes remained keen as falcon's. "Then I shall simply enjoy watching you try to keep it from me. It should prove most entertaining."
The chamber fell quiet save for the distant music of fountains and children's laughter. Oberyn lounged against a carved pillar with practiced grace, but there was something in his posture that spoke of coiled tension, of energy held barely in check. She studied him with new eyes, seeing past the familiar beauty to something that made her breath catch.
The way he held himself. The angle of his head. The restless drumming of his fingers against his thigh.
*No,* she thought, the word a prayer and an accusation both. *It cannot be.*
"Who are you?" she asked suddenly, her voice stripped of all artifice, all seduction. Just a demand, raw and desperate. "Who are you really?"
For a heartbeat, Oberyn Martell's mask slipped entirely. She saw not the Red Viper, not the prince whose appetites were legend throughout the Seven Kingdoms, but something else entirely. Something wounded and weary and achingly familiar.
His hand moved with deliberate slowness, trembling as it closed around something at his belt. When he drew it forth, her world tilted on its axis.
A wand. Eleven inches of dark wood, scarred with use and time, humming with power that made her skin prickle. Not shadow-binding or glass candle work—this was something older, truer, *right*.
The whisper escaped her like a prayer torn from her lungs: "No."
Memory slammed into her with the force of a physical blow. *The Department of Mysteries. The Veil of Death hanging like torn silk between ancient stones. Bellatrix Lestrange's manic laughter as she sent curse after curse toward Harry's unprotected back. And Sirius—dear, reckless, beautiful Sirius—throwing himself between them with a shout of defiance that rang like a bell in the darkness.*
*You're dead,* she wanted to scream. *You fell through that cursed archway while Harry begged you to come back. We mourned you. We lit candles and carved your name in stone and carried the weight of your loss like chains around our hearts.*
His eyes—Oberyn's eyes, but not Oberyn's soul—softened with recognition and something far more fragile. Hope.
"Hello, Padma," he said, and his voice cracked like stone under pressure, rough with seventeen years of silence and grief. "It's been a very long time."
Her knees nearly buckled. "*Sirius?*"
The name broke from her throat like a sob, reverent and desperate and impossibly real.
He laughed then, and it was not Oberyn's velvet chuckle but Sirius Black's bark of bitter amusement—sharp, wild, like flint striking stone. "Sirius Orion Black, at your service. Late of Azkaban prison, late of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, late of a world where my godson was the only thing worth living for." His smile was crooked, painful. "I thought I was finished, Padma. I thought death had finally claimed the prize it had been stalking for so long. And yet... here I stand. Wearing another man's face, living another man's life, playing another man's games."
She began to circle him, silk whispering against silk, her movements predatory and assessing. Her eyes never left his face as she studied the familiar stranger before her.
"You expect me to believe," she said, her tone dripping with honeyed skepticism, "that my scandalous uncle—whose legendary appetites for wine, women, and revenge are whispered about in brothels from Dorne to the Wall—is nothing more than an elaborate disguise? That beneath all *this*—" Her gesture swept over him with deliberate provocation, lingering at the strong line of his throat, the lean grace of his form. "—lives a gaunt, bitter ex-convict whose greatest talent was making spectacularly bad decisions and calling them heroic?"
His grin was pure Sirius Black wearing Oberyn Martell's beautiful face. "Bad decisions? My dear girl, you wound me to the quick. Every single one of them was absolutely glorious at the time."
She snorted, a sound that managed to be both unladylike and utterly charming. "Glorious? You mean catastrophically idiotic."
"I prefer 'heroically stylish,'" he countered, twirling the wand between his fingers with practiced ease. "Oberyn and I find ourselves in complete agreement on that particular point. Style matters, even in disaster. Especially in disaster."
Despite everything—the impossibility, the fear, the world-shaking implications—she felt her lips twitch with the ghost of a smile. That shameless arrogance, that refusal to bow before despair, that maddening charm that made you want to throttle him and kiss him in the same breath. *That* was Sirius Black, unmistakably, impossibly alive.
"Seventeen years," she whispered, and her voice held all the weight of loss and longing. "Seventeen years we believed you gone forever. And you return to me as my own uncle? The gods have a twisted sense of humor."
"I didn't choose this particular jest," he said, his voice gentling. "But the soul wearing this face—that's mine. Still mine, despite everything. And it seems even death itself couldn't keep me from finding someone who remembers what I used to be."
Silence settled between them like silk over skin. Outside, the desert wind sang against the shutters. Inside, two impossibilities faced each other across a chasm of years and worlds.
"How long have you been here?" she asked at last, abandoning all pretense. Her voice was low, intent, hungry for answers that might remake everything she thought she knew.
Sirius—though he wore Oberyn's face like a mask—settled into a chair with boneless grace, one leg hooked over the armrest in a pose calculated to scandalize any proper lady. But his eyes held no prince's lazy amusement. They burned instead with the weary bitterness of a man too long alone with his ghosts.
"Since the beginning," he said, and each word fell like stones into still water. "Since the night I fell through that damned Veil, fighting that mad bitch Bellatrix, trying to shield Harry from her killing curse. I woke not in whatever afterlife awaits broken dogs like me, but in this body, with Oberyn's memories flooding into my skull like wine into a cracked cup."
His hands, elegant and clever, clenched into fists. "Seventeen years, Padma. Seventeen years of being him and being myself, both and neither. Seventeen years of searching this world with every scrap of magic I could master, chasing whispers and rumors and the faintest hope that I wasn't alone."
She leaned forward, caught despite herself. "And you found nothing? All this time, and no trace?"
"Fragments," he said, voice rough with remembered frustration. "A flicker of unusual magic in Yi Ti that died before I could reach it. Strange lights over the Summer Isles that vanished like morning mist. A dozen false hopes that crumbled to dust in my hands." His laugh was bitter as wormwood. "I told myself each disappointment would be the last, that I would stop chasing shadows and accept this beautiful prison Oberyn's life had become. And still I searched."
Her smile was sharp with understanding. "Prison? With silks and courtesans and the finest wines in the known world?"
The look he gave her was pure Oberyn—half sensual invitation, half open wound. "Don't mistake golden chains for freedom, sweet girl. A man can rot as surely in perfumed captivity as in iron cages. I've had seventeen years to perfect the art."
She rose and began to pace, silk flowing around her like water. "But now you can sense him. You know Harry is here, in this world."
The transformation was startling. Joy blazed across Sirius's stolen features like sunrise over a battlefield. "North and west," he breathed, wonder making his voice young again. "In the cold kingdoms where winter winds blow. His magic burns like a beacon fire, calling to everyone with eyes to see. I would know it across galaxies, across the spaces between stars. My godson. My boy. *Harry.*"
"And Fleur is with him," Padma said, her voice carefully neutral though her eyes glittered with secrets. "Her power twines with his like lovers' fingers. Whatever cruel fate scattered us across this world, they found each other first."
For a moment, Oberyn Martell's beautiful mouth curved in Sirius Black's reckless grin. It was radiant, joyous enough to shame the sun streaming through latticed windows. "Of course she did. Of course they did. Love that survived the war, death itself, the sundering of worlds—how could anything so powerful not remake itself wherever it landed? I should have known. Should have trusted that Harry's heart would find its match."
Padma's laugh was low and dangerous, musical with Dornish honey. "Then steel yourself, my dear uncle. For they are not the only prizes fate has plucked from beyond the Veil. Susan Bones. Hermione Granger. Daphne Greengrass. Luna Lovegood. All of us who loved him enough to follow him into death—we are here. Scattered like seeds across this strange world, but alive. Each carrying our magic, our memories, and our inconvenient hearts."
For the first time since she had known him—as uncle or as the ghost of a dead fugitive—Oberyn Martell looked genuinely shaken. He slumped in the chair as though the weight of revelation had stolen his strength, his elegant fingers drumming restless patterns on the carved wood.
"All of you," he murmured, and his voice held the breathless quality of a man witnessing miracles. "Not just me. Not just Harry burning bright in the northern cold. All the women who loved him enough to walk into darkness at his side." He looked up, meeting her eyes with something approaching awe. "Death itself couldn't keep you from him."
"Some bonds," she said softly, settling onto the cushioned bench across from him with liquid grace, "are stronger than flesh, stronger than time, stronger than the spaces between worlds. We are bound to him—to each other—by something that makes the gods themselves take notice."
Silence stretched between them, heavy with implication and possibility. Then Sirius shook himself, Oberyn's languid elegance overlaying the restless energy that had always defined him, and leaned forward with eyes that glittered like dark stars.
"Which raises the delicate question," he said, and there was steel beneath the honey of his voice, "of how exactly we approach this reunion. How do we explain to Fleur Delacour—who has presumably built a life with the man she died for—that five other women from another world have arrived to complicate her happiness? How do we manage dimensional romance, political consequences, and the minor matter of avoiding civil war? The logistics alone are staggering."
Padma smirked, one perfect eyebrow arching with wicked amusement. "Very, very carefully. And with considerably more tact than you have demonstrated in either of your lives, combined."
His laugh was sharp, sardonic, utterly Sirius. "No pressure at all, then."
"None whatsoever," she agreed with mock solemnity. "Just the small matter of navigating love across worlds, managing the hearts of heroes, and ensuring we don't accidentally topple any kingdoms in the process. Even you couldn't possibly make a disaster of something so simple."
He raised an invisible goblet in salute, Oberyn's theatrical elegance wedding Sirius's insolent charm. "Challenge accepted, my dear. Watch me work."
Her laughter rang like silver bells in the morning air. "Seventeen years alone, and you're still the same magnificent fool."
"Would you truly have me any other way?"
Her smile curved like a blade drawn from silk, dangerous and beautiful and absolutely devastating. "Never. The world has quite enough sensible people already. It needs at least one glorious disaster."
And so they sat beneath the gold-spilled light of a Dornish morning—two souls wrapped in impossible flesh, bound by love and loss and the miraculous discovery that they were not alone. Neither could see how their reunion would ripple outward like stones cast in still water, touching not only Harry and Fleur but kingdoms, dynasties, the very balance of power in a world that had never seen magic like theirs.
But for this moment, there was wine-sweet air and desert sunshine and the fragile, precious joy of recognition. Two hearts that had found each other across death itself, ready to begin the delicate, dangerous work of rebuilding everything they had lost.
—
# The Citadel - Oldtown
The stair wound tight about itself, a coiling serpent of black stone so ancient the novices whispered it had been laid by Valyrian hands in the days before Aegon's conquest. Each step was worn smooth as glass, polished by centuries of feet—acolytes scurrying with scrolls, maesters bearing secrets better unspoken, and the rare visitor whose business could not bear the sun's light. The walls themselves seemed to breathe with accumulated knowledge, their stones darkened by lamp smoke and the exhalations of ten thousand hushed conversations.
Alleras climbed two steps at a time, her breath steady despite the long ascent. The rough weave of her acolyte's robe scratched against skin that had never known such coarse cloth in her father's palace, but she had grown accustomed to discomfort. The binding beneath pressed down what no boy carried, tight enough to ache but loose enough to breathe—a careful balance she had perfected over two years of practice. Ash smeared beneath her eyes hollowed her face into angles sharper than her own, while soot darkened her olive skin to something more common, more forgettable.
Sarella Sand had died at the Citadel's gate, her silks traded for roughspun, her jewels for chains yet to be earned. Only Alleras remained—the Sphinx, whose riddle was herself, whose very existence was an answer to questions no one thought to ask.
At the landing, she paused to adjust the leather thong that bound her dark hair back. Through the great oaken door came voices—Marwyn's familiar rumble, but also something else. A low humming, like the sound of distant thunder or waves against stone. The door gaped half an inch, and golden light spilled through the crack like wine over stone, but this was no ordinary lamplight. It sang against her hidden senses with a resonance that made her teeth ache—magic's own frequency, sharp and sweet as the sound of glass struck by steel.
She pushed the door wide and stepped into chaos.
"—told them all, didn't I? Stupid, hidebound fools with their talk of 'unlit for centuries' and 'mere curiosities of the ancient world.'" Marwyn's voice boomed across the chamber as he gestured wildly at a tower of precariously stacked tomes. "But would they listen? Would they consider that perhaps—perhaps!—their precious texts might be incomplete?"
The chamber looked as though a hurricane had swept through a library. Scrolls unrolled across the floor like papyrus serpents, their contents spilling secrets in a dozen tongues—High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari, the flowing script of Yi Ti. Books towered in leaning heaps that defied gravity through what could only be stubborn will or sorcery. Strange contraptions of brass and crystal occupied every surface—astrolabes, alchemical distilleries, devices whose purpose she could only guess at. Glass spheres filled with swirling colored smoke sat beside telescopes pointed not at windows but at mirrors, and everywhere the scent of parchment mingled with something sharper, more electric.
And at the center of it all, Marwyn the Mage strode back and forth like a caged bear, his grey-streaked beard bristling, eyes shining with the particular fever-bright gleam of vindication. His robes, once black, had faded to a charcoal grey and bore the stains of countless experiments—wine, ink, substances best left unidentified.
On the table, upon its silver stand wrought in the shape of twisting dragons, the glass candle burned.
Not with flame, but with its own cold fire. The obsidian crystal, black as a winter night, glowed from within with light that rippled like waves on a midnight sea. No shadows danced—rather, the chamber sharpened in its radiance, every detail rendered with supernatural clarity. The inked letters upon scattered parchments stood darker and more defined than seemed possible, as though the candle's light revealed not just what was, but what should be.
"Alleras!" Marwyn barked, spinning toward her with the enthusiasm of a child who had just discovered his name day gifts. His broad, weathered face split in a grin that would have been unsettling on a man with fewer teeth. "By all the gods of this world and the last—look! Look at it, boy, and tell me what you see with those clever Dornish eyes of yours!"
Alleras stepped nearer, though every instinct inherited from her father's line urged caution. The Dornish knew of magic—the old blood ran strong in some lines, and Oberyn had taught all his daughters to trust their senses. She let her dark gaze rest upon the candle, noting how the light seemed to bend around it, how it cast illumination without casting shadows.
"Master," she said, letting her voice fall into the carefully modulated cadence she had perfected—a boy's breaking voice, uncertain on the edges but trying for authority. "It burns. Truly burns. The glass candle, said to be lifeless these hundreds of years past." She tilted her head, allowing the ghost of a smile to touch her lips—not Sarella's knowing smirk, but something more boyish, more uncertain. "Though the texts all insist—"
"The texts!" Marwyn exploded, throwing his hands skyward with enough force to send a brass orrery spinning. Papers took flight like startled ravens, settling on surfaces already buried in scholarship. "Parchment penned by blind men scribbling in the dark, the lot of them! What do maesters know of truth when they spend their days copying other men's ignorance?"
He swept toward his desk, knocking over an inkwell that had been precariously balanced on a stack of treatises. The black liquid spread across wood already stained by countless such accidents, but he paid it no mind. "They bury knowledge beneath chains and call it wisdom. Lock away the dangerous truths and hand out safe lies like bread to beggars. I have told them, again and again: the candles answer to magic. Not tricks, not sleight of hand, not the mummer's art—but true sorcery. Blood and fire, dream and death. The kind that sings in the marrow and sets the very air to humming."
Alleras picked her way carefully through the debris field of learning, noting how her feet found clear spaces as though the chaos had arranged itself around invisible paths. "And yet this one has been dark for—what did Septon Barth write? Three hundred years?"
"Barth!" Marwyn spat, though his tone held grudging respect. "At least he had sense enough to record what he saw instead of what he thought others wanted to hear. But three hundred years, four hundred—what does it matter? Time means nothing to such things. They sleep, they wake. They wait."
He leaned closer to the candle, his eyes reflecting its cold fire until they seemed to hold winter stars. "And now it answers. For seven days it has flickered, like a babe drawing its first breath. Weak, uncertain, barely more than a spark. But since dawn—ha! Since dawn it blazes like a beacon calling ships to harbor."
"Or rocks," Alleras murmured, earning a sharp look from the maester. She spread her hands in mock innocence. "Forgive me, master. I only meant that beacons can warn as easily as welcome."
Marwyn's laugh boomed off the stone walls. "Spoken like a true Dornishman! Suspicious of gifts and wary of Greeks bearing them, eh?" He waggled a finger at her, his grin widening. "Your father taught you well, boy. Question everything, trust nothing that comes too easily."
The casual mention of her father made Alleras's pulse quicken, but she kept her expression neutral. Marwyn had never directly acknowledged who she was—or rather, who she had been—but sometimes his comments danced close to truths that should have been buried with Sarella Sand.
"My father taught me many things," she said carefully. "Chief among them that when old powers stir, wise men take shelter."
"Wise men, yes. But we are not wise men, are we, sphinx?" The nickname rolled off his tongue like honey, and there was something in his eyes that suggested depths of knowledge carefully concealed. "We are curious men. Hungry men. And hunger has ever been wisdom's greatest enemy."
She bent low to examine the candle more closely, letting her hair slip forward to partially obscure her face. The binding beneath her robes pulled tight, reminding her of her deception even as the strange fire seemed to whisper truths in languages she almost understood. This close, she could feel it—the taste of other worlds on her tongue, the scent of places where different stars wheeled overhead.
"What could wake it so suddenly?" she asked, straightening slowly. "If it has slept for centuries, what manner of disturbance could rouse it now?"
Marwyn's expression grew serious, the boyish glee fading into something more thoughtful, more dangerous. He stroked his beard, fingers catching in the grey-streaked tangle. "Something vast has stirred. A tide turning, a storm gathering. Power older than Oldtown, older than the Wall, older perhaps than the first men who walked these shores." His voice dropped to a whisper that seemed to echo in the crystal's depths. "Something—or someone—has come back into the world. And the candle sings to them."
"To them?" Alleras caught the plural, filing it away with all the other small details that might prove significant later. "More than one?"
"Dragons come in clutches, boy. Magic returns as it left—not in drops, but in floods." He gestured broadly at the glowing crystal. "This is no gentle awakening. This is rebirth through violence, power through pain. The old ways returning whether the world is ready or not."
Alleras folded her arms within her rough sleeves, feeling the reassuring presence of the slender blade hidden there—another gift from her father's teachings. She let her mouth curve into that sphinx's half-smile that revealed nothing while promising everything.
"Perhaps it sings to fools," she said lightly, watching his reaction.
Marwyn threw back his head and laughed, the sound rich and unrestrained. "Then I am the greatest fool alive, boy, and gladly so! I have waited half a lifetime for this moment, suffered the mockery of lesser men, endured their sneers and whispered doubts." He spread his arms wide as though embracing the chaos of his domain. "And when the world wakes from its long sleep of ignorance, those who mocked me will crawl through mud to kiss my boots!"
"Best polish them then, master," Alleras replied, her smile widening just enough to show teeth. "I suspect the world is already stirring."
"Stirring?" Marwyn's eyes glittered with dark merriment. "My dear boy, the world isn't stirring—it's screaming. Can you not feel it? The very stones of the Citadel vibrate with it. The maesters' chains grow heavy with portent. Even the ravens speak differently, as though they carry messages in tongues we've forgotten how to hear."
He moved to the window, pushing aside heavy curtains that had been drawn against prying eyes. Beyond the glass, Oldtown sprawled in the afternoon light, its towers and markets seeming almost mundane after the strange radiance of the chamber. But even the ordinary world looked different now, as though the candle's awakening had shifted the very nature of reality.
"I've sent messages," he continued, his voice carrying an edge of excitement barely held in check. "To certain individuals who might find this development... interesting. Old friends, old students. Some who wear chains, others who have cast them aside for different sorts of binding."
Alleras joined him at the window, studying his profile in the ordinary sunlight. "And what do you expect these friends to do with such knowledge?"
"Do?" He turned to her, and his expression was that of a man who had spent decades planning for a single moment. "They will come, of course. As moths to flame, as iron filings to the lodestone. And when they do..." He trailed off, grinning like a man privy to the greatest jest in the world.
"When they do," Alleras prompted.
"When they do, my sphinx, the real education begins." He returned to the table, circling the burning candle like a predator studying prey. "All this time, all these years of careful study and patient waiting—it has all been preparation. The glass candles were never mere curiosities, never simple tools for lighting dark chambers. They are windows, boy. Gateways. Instruments of communication across impossible distances, through barriers that should not be crossed."
The implications settled over Alleras like a cold cloak. "Communication with whom?"
Marwyn's smile was answer enough, but he provided words anyway. "With those who understand that knowledge is the only true power. That the future belongs not to kings or priests or soldiers, but to those who can see beyond the boundaries of what lesser minds accept as possible."
She watched the play of light across his weathered features, noting the hunger there, the desperate ambition barely leashed by years of forced patience. This was why she had come to the Citadel, why Sarella Sand had died so that Alleras could be born. Not for the chains of a maester—those were mere camouflage. But for moments like this, when the careful masks slipped and revealed the true nature of power in the world.
"You're planning something," she said. Not a question.
"I'm planning everything," he replied. "The game is larger than kings and queens, boy. Larger than the squabbling of great houses or the prayers of septons. It encompasses worlds—plural. Times and places where different rules apply, where the very foundations of reality bend to will and knowledge."
The candle pulsed brighter, as though responding to his words. Alleras felt a chill run down her spine, the kind of cold that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with proximity to forces that should remain sleeping.
"And if you're wrong?" she asked quietly. "If whatever you're calling back into the world proves less... manageable than you expect?"
Marwyn's grin widened, showing too many teeth. "Then we'll have a very interesting time finding out just how wrong I can be."
Outside, a bell began to toll—not the measured sound of canonical hours, but something urgent, discordant. Other bells joined it, creating a cacophony that spoke of news arriving, of messengers with tidings that could not wait for proper ceremony.
Both of them turned toward the sound, and in that moment the candle flared so brightly that the chamber was washed in cold fire. When their vision cleared, they saw that the flame had changed—no longer steady, but dancing, writhing, forming shapes that might have been letters in a script neither of them recognized.
"It begins," Marwyn whispered, and his voice held equal measures of triumph and terror.
Alleras—Sarella—sphinx—watched the dancing flames and wondered what her father would have made of this moment. Oberyn had always said that the most dangerous enemies were those who convinced themselves they were heroes. Looking at Marwyn's enraptured face in the light of impossible fire, she began to suspect she was in the presence of the most dangerous kind of enemy of all: one who might actually be right.
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