In the parlor, the brass bowls hit the floor with a rhythmic, percussive finality. The rich scent of butter and oxtail lingered in the air, now tainted by the metallic tang of panic.
The neurotoxin of the blood-spot mushroom was a patient killer. It did not strike with the dramatic convulsion of the Strangler or the swift paralysis of the Tears of Lys; instead, it waited until the victim had consumed a lethal dose before systematically shutting down the nervous system.
The cook was the first to succumb. She clutched her throat, her eyes bulging with a frantic, silent question. A thin, strangled shriek escaped her lips before her knees buckled, and she crashed into the table, sending the remaining soup sprawling across the stone. The laundress and the doorkeeper followed shortly after, their bodies twitching in a grotesque, uncoordinated dance of death.
The steward stood amidst the carnage, his face ashen. He tried to pound his chest, to force air into lungs that were rapidly turning to lead. He felt the coldness creeping from his heart to his extremities, an icy petrification that no amount of greed could thaw.
He looked up as Viserys stepped out from the sickroom. The boy stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the flickering candlelight of the dying knight's chamber.
"It's... you," the steward wheezed, pointing a trembling, accusing finger.
"It is me," Viserys replied, his voice devoid of tremor or malice. "Viserys Targaryen, third of my name. The killer you didn't see coming."
The steward's eyes flared with a final, bitter realization. He had spent months mocking the "Beggar King" in his mind, convinced he was stalking a cicada, only to find himself in the web of a spider he had mistaken for prey. He collapsed, his body hitting the floor with a heavy thud, his fingers still clawing toward the room where the gold was hidden.
Viserys stood alone in the silence of the parlor. His heart was a drum in his ears, and his stomach churned with a sudden, violent nausea. In his previous life, he might have been a man of words and empty threats, but the world of ice and fire demanded more. To survive, he had to be more than a prince; he had to be a predator.
He did not call for Rhaenys or Daenerys. The path to a throne was paved with corpses, and this was a burden he would carry alone for as long as he could.
Returning to the sickroom, he found the atmosphere had shifted. The air was colder now, the scent of medicine replaced by the heavy, unmistakable stillness of the end.
Ser Willem Darry opened his clouded eyes one last time. He had heard the clatter in the hall, the sounds of a struggle he could no longer join. "What... was that?" he rasped. "The horn of death?"
"The servants are gone, Ser Willem," Viserys whispered, taking the knight's withered hand. "The poison worked. They will not trouble us again."
Daenerys looked at her brother with a flicker of horror, her young mind struggling to reconcile the gentle brother she knew with the cold-eyed sovereign standing before her. But Ser Willem's eyes seemed to ignite with a final, dying spark of pride.
"Good," the knight breathed. "You have the iron in you... after all."
He looked toward the bedside cabinet, his voice failing. "Take care of them... my little princesses. Forget the revenge... forget the Iron Throne. Just live. Hide. Escape the dragon's shadow..."
With those final, contradictory instructions, the light left Ser Willem's eyes. The hand in Viserys's grasp went limp, the warmth receding like the tide.
The master-at-arms of the Red Keep was gone. The last man who had known Viserys as a child, who had protected him when he was nothing but a frightened exile, had finally found his peace.
Daenerys's sobs filled the room, a raw, primal grief for the only father figure she had ever known. Rhaenys, however, remained dry-eyed. She walked to the cabinet and pulled it open, revealing the small hoard of gold and silver that had cost so many lives. Beside the coins lay a single, fine steel dagger.
Viserys searched the room for something else—the secret pact signed in red ink by Oberyn Martell and witnessed by the Sealord. It was nowhere to be found.
He realized then that Ser Willem must have destroyed it. The old knight had seen the shifting tides of Braavosi politics and the silence from Sunspear. He had wanted Viserys to be a survivor, not a martyr to a marriage alliance that might never be honored.
Viserys looked down at the old man's peaceful face. The world expected him to run, to hide, to beg until his name was forgotten. But as he felt the weight of the steel dagger in his hand and the cold strength of the Glutton thrumming in his veins, he knew he would do no such thing.
"I will not shy away from my war," Viserys promised the silence. "I will let the world burn before I let it forget who I am."