Mei Ling
The storm had passed in the night, and the world felt washed clean.
Mei Ling rode along the waterline as dawn broke over the Jade Sea, her mare Zephyr picking her way through the foam-flecked sand with the delicate grace of a dancer. The typhoon had raged for two days, howling against the fortress walls until even the soldiers looked nervous, but now the sky stretched blue and innocent above her, as if the violence had never happened.
She was supposed to be with Master Zhi.
The thought brought a small smile to her lips, though she knew there would be consequences. Master Zhi would be sitting in the calligraphy hall at this very moment, his inkstone prepared, his brushes arranged just so, waiting for a pupil who had no intention of appearing. He would send servants to find her. They would search the gardens first, then the kitchens, where Cook sometimes slipped her honey cakes, then the armory, where she liked to watch the soldiers drill. By the time they thought to check the stables, she would be far away, riding where no one could make her sit still and copy characters she already knew.
"They'll scold us both," she told Zephyr, scratching behind the mare's ear. "But it's too beautiful to waste on calligraphy. Don't you think?"
Zephyr snorted, which Mei Ling chose to interpret as agreement.
The beach curved ahead of her like a golden ribbon, stretching toward the distant headland where the jungle pressed close to the water. To her right, the Jade Sea lived up to its name—that particular green-blue that she'd never seen anywhere else, the color of her mother's favorite pendant, the color of dreams. The morning sun painted diamonds on the gentle swells, contrasting sharply with the mountains of turbulent water that had been there yesterday.
Mother would have loved this morning.
The thought came unbidden, as such thoughts always did. Three years since the fever had taken her, and still Mei Ling found herself reaching for her mother's hand in crowded rooms, still turning expecting to see her face when she smelled plum blossoms. Father said the pain would fade. Master Zhi said grief was a river that eventually found the sea. Mei Ling thought they were both wrong. The pain didn't fade—it just became familiar, like an old scar you stopped noticing until something pressed against it.
She shook off the melancholy and urged Zephyr into a gentle canter. The mare responded eagerly, hooves throwing up small sprays of wet sand. Mei Ling laughed aloud at the speed, at the wind in her face, and at the simple joy of being ten years old and free, if only for a morning.
The wreckage appeared around the headland.
She slowed Zephyr to a walk, then stopped entirely, staring. The beach ahead was littered with the remains of a ship—or what had been a ship before the storm had its way. Broken timbers jutted from the sand like bones. Torn silk spread across the waterline in colorful shrouds, soaked and ruined. Barrels had burst open, spilling rice and spices that the crabs were already investigating.
A merchant vessel, she thought. The typhoon must have caught the merchant vessel in its grip.
It wasn't unusual, not really. The Jade Sea claimed ships every storm season, and the coast was littered with the evidence of her hunger. Father's soldiers would eventually arrive to rescue the salvageable and bury the unsalvageable. But something made Mei Ling dismount and lead Zephyr closer, picking her way through the debris with careful steps.
Bodies. There would be bodies.
She'd seen death before—she was a general's daughter, after all. She'd watched executions from her father's balcony, had seen soldiers carried home from skirmishes with bandits, and had even helped the healers once when plague struck the lower village. Death didn't frighten her the way it frightened the servants' children.
But it still made her sad.
The first body was a man, face-down in the surf, crabs already busy at his fingers. Mei Ling murmured a prayer to the Maiden of Light and moved on. The second was tangled in rigging, his features peaceful in a way that seemed wrong for a drowning death. The third—
The third was pale. Too pale. So pale that at first she thought it was driftwood, or a piece of sail, or anything but what it was.
A child. A boy, no older than her, lying face-up in the sand with his arms spread wide as if he'd been trying to embrace the sky when the sea spat him out.
Mei Ling's breath caught.
His hair was white.
Not grey, not silver, not the pale blonde she'd seen on Summer Islander traders. White, like snow, like clouds, like the robes priests wore to funerals. It spread around his head like a halo, tangled with sand and seaweed, impossibly wrong on a face so young.
For a moment, she was certain he was dead. He had to be dead—no one could be that still and live, that pale and breathe. But something made her kneel beside him anyway, made her press two fingers to his throat the way her father had taught her.
A pulse. Faint, thready, but there.
"You're alive," she breathed.
He didn't respond. His eyes were closed, his lips cracked and bleeding, and his skin was so cold it made her fingers ache. She could see his ribs through his torn shirt—too many ribs, protruding too sharply. Bruises covered him like a second skin, purple and yellow and green, layered on top of each other as if he'd been beaten many times over many months.
And on his shoulder, visible through a tear in his sleeve, was a scar that made her stomach turn.
A brand. Burned into his flesh in the shape of something foreign—a creature with wings, clutching coins in its talons. She didn't recognize the symbol, but she recognized what it meant.
A slave. He was a slave.
Mei Ling had heard of slavery, of course. Master Zhi had taught her about the cities of Slaver's Bay, about the Dothraki who sold captives to the highest bidder, and about the evil that men did to each other across the sea. But Yi Ti had no slaves—it was forbidden by the God-Emperor's ancient decree, punishable by death. The idea that someone had done this to a child her age...
Her hands shook as she touched his shoulder gently.
"Can you hear me? Hello?"
His eyes opened.
Grey. His eyes were gray—the color of storm clouds, the color of the sea before rain. They were empty at first, unfocused, seeing something that wasn't there. Then they found her face, and she watched awareness dawn in them—confusion, then fear, then something she couldn't name.
He tried to speak. His mouth moved, but only a rasp emerged, dry and broken.
"Don't try to talk," Mei Ling said quickly. "You've been in the water too long. You need help."
His hand moved. Not grabbing, not grasping—just reaching. Toward her. Asking.
She didn't think. She took his hand.
His fingers were ice-cold and bent wrong—some of them, anyway, twisted at angles that made her wince. But they wrapped around hers with a desperate gentleness, holding on like she was the only solid thing in a world of water and chaos.
"I'll get help," she promised. "Don't worry. You're going to be all right."
She didn't know if he understood. His eyes were already drifting closed again, consciousness slipping away like sand through fingers. But something in his expression shifted before the darkness took him—relief, maybe, or just the simple comfort of not being alone.
Mei Ling looked down at their joined hands, her tan fingers interlaced with his pale ones, and felt something settle in her chest. Something important, though she couldn't have said what.
Then she was on her feet, running to Zephyr, mounting in one fluid motion, and wheeling the mare toward the fortress. She rode faster than she'd ever ridden, faster than was safe, her father's name on her lips and her heart pounding with an urgency she didn't fully understand.
"Hold on," she thought, directing her thoughts to the boy on the beach. I'm coming back.
The soldiers would rather not help.
Mei Ling found the morning patrol half a mile from the fortress, four men on horseback making their usual sweep of the coast. She rode straight at them, Zephyr lathered and blowing, and she pulled up so sharply that the mare nearly sat on her haunches.
"There's a boy," she gasped. "On the beach. Shipwreck. He's alive—barely. You have to help him."
The patrol leader was a man named Sergeant Wei, grey-haired and scarred, with eyes that had seen too much to be surprised by anything. He looked at her with the particular expression men reserved for children who thought they knew better than their elders.
"A shipwreck, young mistress? The storm claimed several vessels, we're told. Nothing unusual."
"I'm not concerned about usual! There's a child dying on that beach, and you're going to help him or I'll—"
"Easy, girl." One of the younger soldiers laughed. "Storm washes up all sorts. He's most likely dead by now. The sea spits out what it doesn't want."
"He's not dead. I checked. And he won't die if you stop talking and move."
Wei exchanged glances with his men. "The young mistress is... passionate. But what she's found is likely a foreigner, possibly a criminal given the brand she describes. Such matters require—"
"What is required," Mei Ling interrupted, her voice turning cold in a way that even surprised her, "is for soldiers to obey their general's daughter. Or do you want me to tell my father that you refused my direct order? That you left a child to die because he wasn't Yi Tish enough for you?"
Silence. The men shifted uncomfortably on their horses.
"The white devil," one muttered. "Bad luck. The sea didn't want him. Why should we?"
Something snapped in Mei Ling.
"He's a child." Her voice rang across the beach like a temple bell. "He's hurt and alone and dying, and you're talking about luck? What kind of men are you? What kind of soldiers?"
She met each of their eyes in turn, channeling every lesson her father had ever taught her about command, about authority, and about the weight that came with a name like hers.
"You will bring him to the fortress. You will do it now. Or I will make certain my father knows exactly what kind of cowards he has in his service."
Wei held her gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"As the young mistress commands."
They made a stretcher from cloaks and spear shafts, and Mei Ling watched as the soldiers lifted the boy onto it with more gentleness than she'd expected. Up close, he looked even worse—the bruises darker, the bones sharper, the strange white hair more shocking against his ashen skin.
"What is he?" One soldier whispered to another, not quietly enough.
"Westerner, by the look. Sea people, maybe, or from one of the Free Cities."
"But that hair..."
"Cursed. Has to be. No one's born with hair like that."
Mei Ling rode beside the stretcher all the way back to Tianlei, her hand occasionally reaching down to touch the boy's shoulder, as if to reassure herself that he was still breathing. The soldiers walked in uncomfortable silence, shooting looks at their burden like he might explode at any moment.
The fortress appeared above them on the cliff—grey stone walls and curved roofs, military banners snapping in the morning breeze. This fortress had been home for Mei Ling for as long as she could remember. Her father had commanded this posting since before she was born, and the salt air and stone corridors were as familiar to her as her reflection.
But today the fortress looked different somehow. Today, she was bringing something new through its gates.
"To the healing wing," she ordered as they passed beneath the main arch. "Find Master Zhi. Tell him it's urgent."
Wei nodded and sent one of his men running. Mei Ling stayed with the stretcher as it wound through corridors she'd walked a thousand times, past servants who stopped and stared, past soldiers who muttered about bad omens.
Let them mutter. Let them stare.
She'd found him. He was her responsibility now. And she wasn't going to let him die.
Jon
The fever dreams were worse than the drowning.
At least in the water, there had been something to fight—waves, currents, the simple physical reality of survival. But in the dreams, Jon fought nothing and everything at once. He was in Winterfell, watching Lady Catelyn's face twist with hatred. He was in Yunkai, feeling the brand iron press into his flesh. He was on the Jade Serpent, watching Tsura disappear beneath tons of broken mast. He was somewhere else entirely, somewhere Marcus remembered, fighting demons that dissolved into ash when you cut them right.
"Wake up," a voice said. You have to wake up.
He couldn't tell if it was his voice or Marcus's. They'd blurred together so completely now that the distinction seemed meaningless. He was Jon Snow with a dead man's memories. He was Marcus Chen, inhabiting the body of a child. He was neither, or both, or something new that had no name.
Hands touched him. Not unkind hands, but clinical ones, probing his ribs, checking his pulse, lifting his eyelids to peer at his pupils. He tried to fight, instinct screaming that touch meant pain, but his body wouldn't respond.
"Severe dehydration. Malnutrition. Three ribs cracked, two more bruised. His lungs have been compromised due to aspiration of seawater. Multiple lacerations, none life-threatening. And these older injuries..."
The voice was old and male, sounding clinical like that of a scholar.
"Yunkai mark," the voice continued, and Jon felt cold fingers trace the brand on his shoulder. "Whip scars. Deliberately broken fingers, healed poorly. This child has been through horrors."
Another voice, younger, female, urgent: "But he'll live? He has to live."
"He should already be dead. The fact that he's not suggests either remarkable will or something else entirely. I'll do what I can, young mistress, but the rest is up to him."
Up to me, Jon thought through the fever haze. It's always up to me.
The hands withdrew. Blankets settled over him, warm and soft—the first warmth he'd felt in what seemed like years. Someone lifted his head, pressed a cup to his cracked lips, and trickled water into his mouth.
He swallowed convulsively, the moisture shocking after so long without. More water came, then broth, then water again. His stomach clenched and rebelled, but whoever was feeding him was patient, waiting out each spasm before trying again.
Time blurred. Day became night and became day again. The fever spiked and broke again, wringing sweat from him until the sheets were soaked. In his lucid moments, he was aware of faces hovering above him—an old man with a thin beard and sharp eyes, servants who flinched when they looked at his hair, and always, always, the girl.
She was there every time he surfaced. Dark hair and bright eyes, sitting in the corner with a book or standing by the window watching him breathe. She spoke to him sometimes—quick, musical words in a language he shouldn't understand but somehow did, fragments of meaning floating through the fog.
It's all right. You're safe. Don't give up.
Once, in the depths of night, he opened his eyes to find her asleep in her chair, a blanket draped over her shoulders and a book fallen open in her lap. The moonlight made her look like something from a story—a princess, maybe, or a spirit from the old tales.
Why are you here? he wanted to ask. What do you want from me?
But his voice was gone, lost somewhere in the storm, and she wouldn't have understood anyway. So he just watched her sleep, this strange girl who'd pulled him from the sea, and felt something crack open in his chest that had been sealed shut for longer than he could remember.
Hope, he thought. That's what it feels like.
He'd almost forgotten.
Master Zhi
In sixty years of service to the Empire, Master Zhi had seen many things.
He'd seen the Azure Emperor's court in its full glory, all jade and gold and schemes within schemes. He'd seen the Civil War that followed, blood running in streets that had known nothing but peace for generations. He'd seen plagues and famines and the thousand small cruelties that men inflicted on one another in the name of survival.
But he'd never seen anything quite like this boy.
The physical injuries were extensive but explicable. Shipwreck survivors often looked worse—the Jade Sea was not gentle with those she chose to spare. The slave brand was troubling but not unusual; Yunkai's reach extended even to these shores, and escaped slaves sometimes washed up with the tide.
No, what puzzled Zhi were the impossibilities.
The boy's lungs should have killed him. The amount of seawater he'd aspirated should have caused fatal inflammation within hours, but instead the tissue was healing at a rate Zhi had never observed. His core temperature should have been fatally low after so long in the water, but it had stabilized on its own before Zhi even began treatment. Moreover, the boy's endurance was remarkable; he had survived injuries that would have killed grown soldiers, yet he was still breathing.
Then there were the words.
The first time Jon spoke in his fever, Zhi dismissed it as delirium. But by the third day, he'd started paying attention. The boy muttered in languages—several of them, cycling through what sounded like Common Tongue and High Valyrian and something else, something older, something Zhi couldn't identify.
And then, just before dawn on the fourth day, he spoke in Yi Tish.
Not the market pidgin that foreigners sometimes picked up, but formal classical Yiddish, the language of scholars and poets. He recited a poem Zhi himself had learned as a boy—the Jade Sage's meditation on impermanence, in its original cadence and rhythm, as if he'd studied it for years instead of never having set foot in the Empire before this week.
How does a Western barbarian child quote the Jade Sage?
Zhi didn't believe in magic, not the kind the common people whispered about. He believed in knowledge, in observation, and in the patient accumulation of facts until patterns emerged. But this boy defied his patterns.
He reported his observations to General Kai that evening in the general's private study, where maps covered the walls and strategy games gathered dust on shelves. Kai listened without expression, as was his way—a military man who'd learned that showing his thoughts was the same as showing weakness.
"So he's unusual," Kai said when Zhi finished. "Damaged but valuable, you say. Worth saving."
"Worth understanding, at least. I've never seen healing like this. And the languages—"
"Could be coincidence. Trauma does strange things to the mind."
"Perhaps." Zhi stroked his beard thoughtfully. "But I think not. This boy has been shaped by something, General. Forged, if you will. Whatever he's endured, it's left marks deeper than flesh."
Kai was silent for a long moment. Then: "My daughter hasn't left his room in four days."
"I know."
"She's commanded servants like a general. Threatened soldiers. Barely eaten or slept. All for a foreign boy she found on a beach."
"She has her mother's heart."
Something flickered in Kai's face—pain, quickly suppressed. "So she does. The question is what to do about it."
"What do you want to do?"
Kai stood and walked to the window. Beyond, the fortress spread out in ordered rows—barracks and training yards, gardens and kitchens, the whole small world he commanded. And somewhere in the healing wing, his daughter kept vigil over a boy who should have died.
"I want my daughter to smile again," he said quietly. "I haven't heard her laugh since her mother died. Not really laugh, the way she used to."
"And this boy?"
"She laughed this afternoon. I heard it from the corridor. She was reading to him, something from her mother's book of tales, and she laughed at the funny parts even though he couldn't understand."
Kai turned back to face Zhi. "I don't know what this boy is. I don't know where he came from or what he can do or whether he'll survive this week. But my daughter laughed today. And that... that matters."
"So he stays?"
"He stays. For now. Let her visit him—supervised, of course. We'll learn what he is in time. And if he proves dangerous..." The general's face hardened. "Then I'll handle it myself."
Mei Ling
On the seventh day, he woke.
He was truly awake, in contrast to the feverish murmurs and half-conscious flickers of the past week. Mei Ling was reading by the window when she heard him stir, and she looked up to find grey eyes watching her with startling clarity.
"Oh!" She dropped her book, then felt foolish for it. "You're awake! You're really awake!"
He blinked at her, confused, and she realized she'd been speaking too fast. She slowed down, enunciating carefully the way Master Zhi had taught her.
"You're in Tianlei Fortress. Jinqao Province. You've been ill for seven days, but the fever broke last night. Do you understand?"
He watched her mouth as she spoke, and she saw him working through the words. Then, slowly, painfully, he croaked, "...Water?"
She beamed despite herself. He understood! She poured a cup and helped him drink, supporting his head with one hand, watching his throat move as he swallowed.
"More?"
He shook his head, exhaustion already creeping back into his features. But his eyes stayed open, studying her face with an intensity that should have been uncomfortable but somehow wasn't.
He's trying to figure me out, she realized. Trying to understand why I'm here.
"I'm Mei Ling," she said, pointing to herself. Then she pointed at him, eyebrows raised in question.
He hesitated. Something flickered across his face—caution, calculation, a weighing of options that seemed too old for a child. But finally, almost reluctantly:
"...Jon."
"Jon," she repeated, trying out the foreign sounds. It didn't quite fit in her mouth—Yi Tish had no equivalent—but she could approximate. "Jon. That's a strange name."
Something shifted in his expression. He may have shown a hint of a smile, or perhaps he simply relaxed from the wariness that seemed to inhabit him.
"So is Mei Ling."
She laughed before she could stop herself—the surprise of him speaking her language, however roughly, and the small joke in the midst of so much suffering. It felt strange to laugh here, in the healing wing, with this broken boy watching her with his storm-colored eyes. But it also felt right somehow. Natural.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
He didn't answer. The wariness crept back, a door closing behind his eyes.
She didn't push. Master Zhi had taught her that pushing was rarely effective—people revealed themselves in their own time, like flowers opening to the sun. Instead, she told him where he was.
"You're in Yi Ti. The Golden Empire. We're on the coast, near the Jade Sea." She gestured toward the window, toward the distant glimmer of water beyond the fortress walls. "The storm brought you here. Our ships found wreckage everywhere, but you were the only survivor we found."
Something changed in his face at that. Relief, she thought, though she couldn't understand why.
"Yi Ti," he breathed. "I made it?"
"Made it? You were trying to come here?"
He didn't answer that either, but his eyes had gone wet, and she realized with sudden sharp clarity that he was trying not to cry. This boy, who'd survived slavery and shipwrecks, and gods knew what else, was fighting back tears because he'd reached his destination.
She pretended not to notice. Turned to the window, giving him a moment to compose himself.
"You should rest," she said finally, still facing away. "You've been very ill. Master Zhi says you need to sleep as much as you can."
When she turned back, his eyes were closed. But his hand was stretched toward her, just slightly, the same gesture he'd made on the beach.
She took it. His fingers closed around hers, cold but less cold than before, and she felt the tension drain out of him as sleep claimed him.
He trusts me, she realized. Even though he doesn't know me. Even though he doesn't trust anything else.
She sat back down in her chair, his hand still in hers, and picked up her book. But she didn't read. She just watched him breathe, this strange white-haired boy from across the world, and wondered what would happen when he woke again.
The days that followed fell into a rhythm.
Jon woke for longer periods each time, his strength returning with a speed that made Master Zhi shake his head and mutter about impossibilities. Mei Ling came every morning after her lessons—she'd made a deal with Master Zhi, extra calligraphy in exchange for supervised visits—and stayed until the servants shooed her away for supper.
They talked. Or tried to talk, anyway. Jon's Yi Tish was better than it should have been—much better, improving daily in ways that defied explanation—but he still struggled with certain words, and Mei Ling found herself speaking slowly and clearly, filling gaps with gestures and expressions.
He told her nothing about his past. He revealed nothing about his origins, including where he came from or how he ended up branded, scarred, and floating in the Jade Sea. But he listened when she talked, really listened, with attention that made her feel seen in a way she hadn't felt since her mother died.
She told him about the fortress, about her father, the general, and about Master Zhi's endless lessons. She told him about her mother—a little, carefully, testing to see if it hurt. He watched her with those grey eyes and didn't offer meaningless comfort, just let her speak and feel and remember.
"She would have liked you," Mei Ling said one afternoon. "She liked unusual people. She said that unusual people were the only ones worth knowing.
Jon's mouth twitched. "I'm unusual?"
"Your hair is white. Your eyes are grey. You speak languages you shouldn't know and heal faster than anyone Master Zhi has ever treated. Yes, I think you qualify as unusual."
He looked away, toward the window. "I wasn't always. Unusual, I mean. I used to be... ordinary."
"What changed?"
There was a prolonged period of silence. Then, quietly: "Everything."
She didn't push. She never pushed. But she filed the moment away, another piece of the puzzle that was Jon—this boy who'd crossed the world and somehow ended up on her beach, in her fortress, in her life.
On the tenth day, he stood for the first time. Master Zhi supported him on one side, Mei Ling on the other, and together they walked him to the window. His legs shook, and his breath came hard, but he made it.
"There," Mei Ling said, gesturing at the view. The Jade Sea spread before them, blue-green and glittering under the afternoon sun. Beyond it, barely visible in the haze, the coast curved toward distant mountains.
Jon stared for a long time. His hand found the window frame, and he steadied himself against it.
"Beautiful," he said.
"This is my favorite view in the whole fortress. I come here when I'm sad occasionally. Mother used to bring me here when I was little. She'd tell me stories about the sea, about the dragons that used to fly over it, about all the places I could go if I was brave enough."
"Dragons?"
"A long time ago. They existed even before my great-great-grandparents. They say Yi Ti fought them once, when the world was different." She shrugged. "Just stories now."
Jon's expression shifted—something complicated moving through his grey eyes. "Sometimes stories are true."
"Do you believe in dragons?"
"I believe in... impossible things."
She studied his profile, the sharp lines of cheekbone and jaw, and the strange white hair that still shocked her every time she saw it. "You're very mysterious, Jon."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I like mysteries." She smiled. "Master Zhi says I ask too many questions. He says curiosity is beneficial, but patience is better."
"Master Zhi sounds wise."
"He's old. Sometimes that's the same thing."
Jon made a sound that might have been a laugh—his first, as far as she knew. It was small and rusty, like a door that hadn't been opened in years, but it was there.
Progress, she thought. That's progress.
Jon
The night before his first real meal in the dining hall, Jon lay awake watching moonlight move across the ceiling.
He'd been in the fortress for two weeks. His body was healing—faster than it should, the breathing techniques working even in his sleep, knitting bone and repairing tissue at a rate that made Master Zhi frown with scholarly confusion. His mind was healing too, though more slowly. The flashbacks came less often now, and when they came, they were easier to push through.
But he still didn't know what to do with Mei Ling.
She was kind. Genuinely kind, not the transactional kindness he'd grown used to—kindness that expected something in return, kindness that was really just investment in future favors. She visited him every day, talked to him for hours, and held his hand when he needed anchoring. And she asked for nothing.
What's the price? He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. What does she want?
But the shoe never dropped. She just... cared. She cared about a stranger, a foreign boy with a slave brand and suspicious origins, for reasons he could not understand.
Maybe that's what kindness actually looks like, Marcus's memories suggested. When it's real.
Jon had seen so little real kindness. Dalla's on the ship, maybe. Tagan in Braavos. But even they had wanted something—labor, loyalty, proof that their investment wasn't wasted. Mei Ling wanted nothing but his company.
It terrified him.
Not because he feared her. She was ten years old. She was sheltered, bright, and utterly harmless. But he feared what she was making him feel. Hope. Trust. The dangerous belief that maybe, somewhere, there were people who helped simply because helping was right.
He'd believed that once, in Winterfell. He'd learned better.
But this region is different, a small voice whispered. This place is different. These people are different.
"That's what you always think," another voice answered. Right up until they betray you.
He pushed both voices away and focused on breathing. Simple breathing, no technique, just air in and out. The most basic act of survival.
Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow I'll eat with them. I'll meet the general. I'll see what this place really is.
And then... he'd decide what to do next.
The moonlight shifted, painting silver patterns on the walls. Somewhere in the fortress, a night bird called. And Jon Snow—bastard, slave, survivor, mystery—closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
When he woke, hours later, gray dawn was breaking over the Jade Sea.
And Mei Ling was there, as always, reading quietly in her corner, waiting for him to wake up.