Tysha PoV
Tysha stood frozen in the doorway of Tyrion's chambers, the stack of letters in her hands growing damp against her suddenly sweating palms as she stared, mouth agape, at the sheer madness before her.
Lord Tyrion sat perched on the edge of his writing desk with his arms crossed and a broad grin plastered across his face, watching the strangest creature she had ever seen tear across the floor.
The beast was the size of a large cat, looking as though it had been fashioned by a madman with no regard for the laws of nature. Up front, an eagle's head merged into stubby wings of mottled brown and white down, while a pair of scaled forelegs ending in razor-sharp talons skittered awkwardly against the floorboards. From the ribs back, however, it bore the muscular, heavy-furred hindquarters and padded paws of a lion cub. Soft feathers dissolved seamlessly into a coat of honey-colored fur around its torso, and its face was dominated by a wickedly hooked beak.
Said creature was currently locked in mortal combat with a stuffed cloth dragon half its size.
Having pounced from behind a chair leg, it had sunk both sets of claws into the dragon's scaled hide and was now ferociously disemboweling it with a furious, chittering screech. Cotton tufts flew in every direction, drifting through the air like snow as the little monster shook its head violently from side to side.
It was, Tysha thought, the single most violent act she had ever seen committed by a creature that small.
"Isn't she adorable?" Tyrion asked.
He was leaning back near the hearth, chin propped on one fist, watching the carnage with a warm, misty-eyed pride.
"Look at her go. That's the spirit," he encouraged, gesturing grandly. "Tear its throat out, darling. Show the dragon who's boss."
The gryphon obliged, raking its hind claws across the toy's stomach and sending a fresh plume of cotton arcing through the air to land in the hearth. It let out another trilling shriek - this one distinctly triumphant, and began methodically dismembering one of the dragon's wings.
Tysha turned toward him jerkily. "Lord Tyrion," she choked out, "where... where did you find it?"
Tyrion's hand immediately went to his beard, his thumb and forefinger finding the central braid to smooth it down with a slow, deliberate stroke. He clearly intended to look wise, but Tysha had spent enough time at his heel to recognize the tell. His spine straightened by a fraction. His chin lifted. His eyes took on that particular, dangerous gleam that preceded either a stroke of brilliant insight or an outrageous fabrication.
Here it comes, she thought.
"Well." He steepled his fingers, looking immensely solemn. "It's rather a harrowing tale, if I'm honest. Not one I tell lightly."
The tone was unmistakable. It was the voice he used when embarking on a story that bore only the most tenuous relationship to reality, pitched somewhere between a dark confession and a theatrical performance, warm, conspiratorial, and utterly shameless.
He hopped off the desk and began to pace, hands clasped tightly behind his back.
"Milord—" Tysha began with a sigh.
"Sandor and I," Tyrion interrupted, riding straight over her, "were tracking a high-level smuggling ring out of the old sea caves past Lannisport. Dastardly business. Not your ordinary contraband, mind you, no silk or spice. No, these were traffickers of a far more sinister variety."
He paused for dramatic effect. Turning on his heel, he faced her with an expression of grave severity, one undermined entirely by the gryphon, who had managed to flip the stuffed dragon onto its back and was now standing victoriously on its stomach, screeching at the ceiling.
"Exotic beasts, Tysha," he continued, lowering his voice. "Rare creatures stolen from their natural habitats across the Narrow Sea, brought to Westeros for the amusement of men with more coin than conscience. Sandor received a tip from a contact, whose identity I cannot divulge for reasons of operational security - that a vessel had docked at the private quays beneath the Rock, unloading crates in the dead of night..."
Tysha's eyes drifted, against her will, toward the far corner of the chamber.
Sandor Clegane was sprawled in one of Tyrion's grander armchairs, his massive frame completely engulfing the seat. The piece was one of Tyrion's more indulgent creations - a magnificent plush armchair upholstered in deep crimson leather, its dark oak frame reinforced and fitted with a hidden lever that activated a series of padded wooden rollers to gently knead the occupant's back. Sandor had discovered it three days ago and had not relinquished it since.
He was currently reclined at a near-horizontal angle, one hand wrapped around a hollowed-out coconut filled with mead. A carved wooden straw protruded from the top at a jaunty angle.
He did not so much as glance up as Tyrion recited his tale, taking a long, slow pull from his straw in absolute, unbothered bliss.
Tysha looked between the two of them, the dwarf mid-flourish, gesturing at an imagined cave mouth in the middle distance, and the towering, scarred brute sipping a tropical drink in a massaging chair, and felt a sudden wave of faintness.
"We descended into the caverns beneath the Rock," Tyrion pressed on, blithely ignoring both his co-conspirator's silence and his assistant's growing exhaustion. "The smugglers had established their base in a disused mining tunnel, brilliant, really, using the Rock's own infrastructure against it. Sandor and I moved through the darkness like shadows. Well... I moved like a shadow. Sandor moved like a very large, very angry shadow with a broadsword."
He paused, holding up a finger. "There were six of them. Hardened men, fully armed. They fought like cornered rats, but Sandor dealt with four before I'd even drawn my blade. A spectacular display, truly, the sort of thing bards will sing about for generations."
He stepped closer, lowering his tone to a theatrical whisper. "In the final chamber, we found the cargo. Cages stacked floor to ceiling, filled with creatures I had only ever read about in the most obscure Valyrian texts. A basilisk hatchling - small, thank the Seven, barely the size of a hound. A clutch of wyvern eggs, still warm. And in the farthest cage, the most wretched of them all..."
He gestured grandly toward the gryphon, which had abandoned the thoroughly mangled dragon toy and was now attempting to scale the leg of his writing desk, its tiny talons scrabbling uselessly against the polished oak.
"...was this magnificent creature. The last of her kind, Tysha," he declared, pressing a hand to his heart. "Stolen from her nest in the high peaks of some distant, nameless mountain range, destined for the private menagerie of an Essosi magister who would have kept her chained for the rest of her days."
"Lord Tyrion," Tysha tried again, "that is—"
"A tragedy, I know!"
"I'm sure it was," Tysha said, her voice drier than Dornish sand.
She set the stack of letters down on the nearest table with a flat, deliberate thud, then crossed her arms over her chest.
"And what of the rest of the cargo, milord? The basilisk? The wyvern eggs? Where are they now?"
Tyrion's pacing faltered. His foot caught mid-stride, and for a single, exquisite second, his entire performance teetered on the brink of collapse. He recovered with a short, nervous laugh a pitch higher than his usual register.
Clearly, he had not anticipated being cross-examined.
"Ah. The rest. Yes... the rest of the cargo." His hand darted to his beard, fingers stroking the braid with renewed, frantic vigor. "Well, you see, the smugglers' vessel had developed a rather catastrophic structural issue. A hole. A large one... in the hull. Water was pouring in at an alarming rate, and we could only carry out this poor, defenseless creature. The rest were tragically lost to the depths. A terrible shame, really. All of them... devoured by the sea."
He offered a solemn expression that might have passed for genuine regret, had she been blind, deaf, or exceptionally gullible.
The gryphon, having abandoned her assault on the desk leg, had turned her attention to a hanging curtain tassel. She batted at it with both foreclaws, chittering in savage delight, entirely indifferent to the tragedy of her fallen comrades.
Tysha crossed her arms and let the silence stretch until Tyrion began to fidget awkwardly. She glanced over at the Hound.
Sandor had not moved from his vibrating armchair. He took a long, leisurely pull from his coconut, his scarred face utterly blank, and said absolutely nothing. The silence was its own form of testimony.
"Milord," she said, turning back to Tyrion, her voice going entirely flat. "That is, without question, the single most ridiculous story I have ever heard."
Tyrion pressed a hand to his heart. "Tysha. You wound me."
"I'm serious." She uncrossed her arms only to plant them on her hips. "You expect me to believe that you and the Hound stumbled upon a smuggling ring trafficking exotic beasts, fought off six armed men single-handedly—"
"Sandor fought off four. I was merely providing moral support and strategic oversight."
"—and rescued a gryphon from the clutches of a nameless Essosi magister, while the rest of the cargo conveniently sank to the bottom of the sea through a conveniently timed hole in the hull?"
Tyrion opened his mouth, then closed it. He opened it again, then seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say.
"Convenience is the engine of history, my dear. Ask any maester."
Tysha exhaled slowly through her nose. Her eyes tracked back to the gryphon, which had now pinned the tassel beneath both sets of claws and was methodically shredding it into golden threads with its beak.
"And what happens," she asked, "when that thing decides to maul some unfortunate guard who wanders into the wrong corridor? Those talons look like they could open a man's throat."
Tyrion gasped theatrically, his hand flying to his chest. Spinning on his heel, he crossed the room in three quick strides and swept the gryphon up from the floor with both hands.
The creature went from contented to blind, shrieking fury in the span of a heartbeat. Both sets of claws viciously raked at his forearms, scoring deep furrows across the linen of his tunic. Its beak snapped shut on the meat of his thumb, then his wrist, then the soft flesh between his fingers, biting with the frantic strength of a wild animal seized against its will.
Tysha flinched, her hand flying to her mouth.
Yet somehow, the talons could not pierce his skin. They tore the fabric to ribbons, leaving pale threads hanging from his sleeves, but beneath the ruined linen, Tyrion's arms remained unmarked. The beak clamped down again and again, but the flesh beneath it did not yield.
Tyrion seemed entirely unbothered. He nuzzled the top of its fuzzy head with his nose and held it up against his chest like a father cradling an infant.
"There, there," he murmured, his voice dropping to a low, crooning register. "There's my fierce little darling. Yes, you're terrifying. Absolutely lethal. The deadliest creature in all the Seven Kingdoms. Who's the deadliest? You are. Yes, you are."
The gryphon's fury, as if on cue, began to subside. Her beak released his thumb and pressed instead against the crook of his elbow, nuzzling with a soft, trilling coo that vibrated through his chest. Within moments, the creature had gone from murderous rage to purring contentment, curled against him like a domestic housecat.
Tysha's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. She looked from the shredded tunic to the unmarked skin beneath it, then to Tyrion's beatific expression, and finally to Sandor, who had cracked one eye open from his chair to observe the proceedings with weary resignation.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "You're not going to explain that, are you?"
"Explain what?" Tyrion blinked at her with an expression of such pure, guileless innocence that it could have fooled the Crone herself.
She let it go. She had learned, over the past three moons, that pressing Tyrion Lannister on the subject of his inexplicable capabilities was a conversation that went nowhere.
"Fine," she said, taking a deep breath and surrendering to the inevitable. "What's her name, then?"
Tyrion's entire demeanor shifted. The casual warmth drained from his face, replaced by something graver and far more solemn. He drew himself up to his full, modest height, squared his shoulders, and held the gryphon before him with both hands, presenting her to Tysha as though delivering a royal proclamation.
"I have given her name great thought," he said, his voice dropping to a reverent, almost ceremonial register. "Not a name chosen lightly, Tysha. Not some common, tossed-off epithet. This creature deserves a name with weight. With history. With meaning."
Tysha waited.
"In a land far, far away," Tyrion began, his eyes going distant, "beyond the Narrow Sea, beyond the shadows of Asshai, beyond even the shadow of the Bone Mountains, there existed a kingdom of the sky. A realm where the eagles ruled the high peaks, sovereign and ancient."
From his chair, Sandor released a loud snort.
"In this kingdom," Tyrion continued, undeterred, "there lived a king among eagles. The greatest of all the eagles that ever were or ever would be. His wingspan could blot out the sun. His cry could shatter stone. He was called Thorondor, and his name was spoken with fear and reverence across every mountain range from the Frostfangs to the Red Waste."
He paused. The gryphon, sensing the gravity of the moment, had gone still in his hands, her amber eyes fixed on his face.
"Her name, in remembrance of such a king of the sky," Tyrion said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction, "shall be Thorondiel."
In response to the dramatic naming, the gryphon's head snapped up. Her amber eyes went wide, and she let out a sharp, piercing trill that rang off the stone walls.
She scrambled out of Tyrion's arms with frantic, clawing urgency, using his chest as a springboard and anchoring her talons first in his shoulders, then his hair, until she perched atop his golden head like a living crown.
Throwing her head back, she screeched. A high, keening cry that echoed through the passage and sent the torch flames guttering in their sconces. Her stubby wings spread wide, feathers fluffed to twice their normal size as she stood atop his head, chest puffed out and beak wide open, shrieking her name to the rafters with raw, defiant pride.
Tyrion beamed, one hand braced on his hip and chin lifted, entirely unbothered by the talons currently anchored in his scalp. Gryphon and dwarf stood framed together in the firelight like some absurd little coat of arms.
"Thor, for short," Tyrion added, grinning cheekily.
Tysha stared at the pair before she closed her eyes and pressed the heel of her hand against her throbbing temple. The headache that had been building since Cleos Frey's leering face materialized in the courtyard had reached a crescendo, making her skull feel three sizes too small for her brain.
I desperately need a drink, she thought despondently.
________________________________________________
Cleos Frey PoV
Cleos Frey was dreaming of a meadow.
It was a fine meadow, where the sun hung warm overhead, and the grass beneath him was cool and soft against his back. He lay sprawled on his back with his arms behind his head, staring up at a perfect blue sky. For one fleeting moment, everything was perfect.
The soft earth beneath his back hardened in a single heartbeat. The tender grass blades stiffened into sharp spikes that bit through his tunic. Overhead, the sky darkened in a violent convulsion, the blue swallowed by bruised, rolling clouds as a low boom of thunder cracked like a whip.
He tried to sit up, but his body refused.
Move. Move, you useless thing. Get up.
His muscles strained, but nothing answered. The stone held him fast while the sky churned to pitch. The first cold drops of rain struck his cheeks, and the thunder broke directly above him...
And his eyes flew open.
For a single, disoriented heartbeat, he had no idea where he was. The darkness was around him was opaque. His heart hammered against his ribs with such violence he could feel the pulse humming in his throat, his teeth, and the tips of his fingers.
He tried to move his arms, but they were fastened by stone to the platform beneath him.
He tried again, straining to bend his elbows or kick his legs, but every movement met the same unyielding resistance. Bound at the wrists, bound at the ankles. It wasn't rope holding him, nor was it iron chain, but it didn't give a fraction of a millimeter, no matter how savagely he pulled.
A scream tore from his throat. "Help me! Help! Someone, help—"
The sound bounced off unseen walls, coming back to him in tight, overlapping echoes. It was a small room - cold and damp.
"Help! Guards! Anyone!" He thrashed against his bonds, his voice rising in panic. "I'm a Frey! I'm Lord Cleos Frey! My mother is Lady Genna—"
"No one can hear you, cousin."
The voice came quietly from the darkness near the corner.
Cleos's head snapped toward the sound. His eyes, straining against the gloom, finally picked out the silhouette of a heavy chair, and within it, a smaller shape, sitting utterly motionless.
Tyrion Lannister sat with his legs crossed at the ankle and his hands folded loosely in his lap. His eyes, usually so bright and mocking, were cold and still.
"Cousin." The word came out as a wet, desperate whimper. "Cousin, please... help me out of this. Whatever joke this is, I can't move. I can't—"
Tyrion said nothing.
The silence stretched out, long and suffocating. Cleos could hear his own ragged breathing, and beneath it, the low, rhythmic thrum of the sea grinding against the base of the Rock.
He's going to kill me.
The thought hit him with the clarity of ice water.
He knows. He knows about the girl.
The memory flared with sickening vividness: the courtyard, the rookery, the blistering heat that had scorched his hand when he grasped her arm, and the sheer, unadulterated contempt in her eyes.
She told him, he realized, panic surging in his throat. The little whore ran straight to her master.
"Is this about the girl?" The words spilled out in a frantic, babbling rush. "Cousin, I swear to you - I swear by the Seven, I didn't touch her! She attacked me, Tyrion. Look...look at my hand!"
He tried to raise his arms to show the angry welts, but the invisible restraints held his wrists pinned to the stone. He could only twist his palms upward in the dark, exposing the swollen, weeping blisters on his fingers.
"The marks, cousin! Look at the marks!" He twitched his wrists, his voice cracking into a shrill register. "She's some kind of witch, she had a charm, she burned me! I have proof, Maester Creylen saw it himself—"
Tyrion still said nothing. He sat unmoving, his gaze cold and unwavering.
Cleos shifted tactics. In twenty years of being Genna Lannister's least favorite son, he had learned one reliable truth: when reason failed, weep.
"Tyrion, please." Tears welled in his eyes, hot and genuine. "My mother... think of my mother. What will she say if she learns you had me killed? She'll never forgive you, Tyrion. She loves you...she's always loved you—"
"It is due to your mother," Tyrion cut in softly, "and the love I hold for her, that you are not already rotting in the deepest cavern beneath this castle."
Cleos's sobbing caught in his throat.
Tyrion unfolded his hands, placing them flat on his knees as he leaned forward into the faint light. "Genna Lannister," he said, his voice measured and dangerous, "is one of the few people in this family who ever looked at me and saw something worth loving. She held me when I was born. She defended me when my father would not."
He leaned back into the shadows, the movement fluid and deliberate.
"I would sooner cut off my own hand than cause that woman a moment of grief," Tyrion said flatly. "And so you live. For now. Because the alternative would break her heart, and I will not be the instrument of that."
Cleos's mouth worked soundlessly. Tears still tracked through the grime and sweat on his face, dripping off his chin to pool in the hollow of his throat.
"Understand something, Cleos." Tyrion's voice dropped lower, the cold in it acquiring a sharp, deadly edge. "The protection your mother's love affords you is not infinite." He stepped away, adjusting his tunic. "It is a thread. A single, fragile thread, and you have been pulling at it far too long."
Tyrion crossed the distance between them, and for the first time in his life, Cleos Frey understood what it felt like to be prey.
He's going to kill me, Cleos thought hysterically, his chest tight with panic. He's going to kill me, and no one will ever find the body. The Rock has a thousand tunnels and ten thousand holes.
Tyrion knelt beside him, his mismatched eyes impassive. The silence in the chamber stretched, heavier and far worse than any scream. Gently - frighteningly so, the dwarf reached out and took Cleos's left wrist. He turned the hand palm-up, exposing the blistered, weeping welts that marred the skin.
Cleos could not even whimper. The sound caught in his throat, locked behind a wall of terror.
And then he lost control of his bladder. Warmth spread through his breeches in a sudden, humiliating flood, soaking the wool and linen against the cold stone. The sharp, acrid stench rose instantly. Cleos felt the wet heat press against his thighs, his stomach clenching in sheer disgrace.
A flicker of disgust crossed Tyrion's face, the corner of his mouth pulling downward before his expression smoothed over.
"Pathetic," Tyrion murmured.
He released Cleos's wrist, reached into the pocket of his doublet, and produced a ring. It was a thick band of gold set with a dark red ruby that seemed to pulse with an internal fire, catching the dim light in sharp, bloody flashes.
It's beautiful, Cleos thought, the absurd realization floating through his panic. A hysterical laugh threatened to tear free. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and he's putting it on me while I lie in my own piss.
Tyrion took his left hand again. Cleos offered no resistance; there was nothing left in him to fight with. With steady, warm fingers, the dwarf worked the band onto his ring finger. The metal slid into place with a soft, definitive click, as though forged for him alone.
It fit perfectly.
The gold rested warm against his skin, the ruby heavy on his knuckle. For one mad, desperate second, Cleos wondered if it was a peace offering, the sort of extravagant gesture Lannisters made to buy forgiveness.
"This is my gift to you, cousin." Tyrion's voice was quiet, almost tender. "You shall never be able to remove this ring. Not by force, not by blade, not by any means you possess or ever will possess. It is yours until the day you die."
He paused, letting the silence carry the weight of his words.
"And should you ever raise your hand," Tyrion continued, "or attempt to touch another in anger without their consent, man, woman, or child - you shall feel a sharp pain lance through every nerve, every muscle, every bone. You will understand, in that moment, exactly what it feels like to be helpless."
Cleos opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
"I shall show you once," Tyrion offered, his courtesy so grotesquely polite it made Cleos's stomach turn. "As a kindness. So there is no ambiguity."
The dwarf pressed his thumb against the ruby.
A white-hot spike drove through Cleos's hand, shooting up his arm, into his shoulder, and exploding outward through his entire body. His back arched violently off the stone. Bound limbs strained against invisible restraints as a ragged scream tore from his throat.
When the pain finally released him, he lay shuddering, his vision swimming with dark spots that pulsed in time with his racing heart.
"Please," he whimpered, the word broken and barely human. "Please, cousin. I promise. I swear by the Seven, by the old gods... I'll never do it again. Never. Please."
Tyrion regarded him for a long moment, then smiled. The smile reached his eyes, but it held no warmth.
"I believe you, cousin." The gentleness in his tone was worse than the cruelty. "And should you ever think to tell anyone about what happened here tonight," Tyrion added, his voice light and almost conversational, "I shall know. The ring will tell me. And the next demonstration will not be a courtesy."
Cleos nodded frantically, his neck cracking with the force of it. Tears streamed freely now, mixing with sweat and snot.
"Now sleep." Tyrion pulled a small glass vial from his tunic, uncorked it with his teeth, and pressed it to Cleos's lips. "It's time we got you back to your bed."
The liquid was cloyingly, impossibly sweet. It poured down his throat before he could fight it. A thick warmth spread through his chest and limbs, and the darkness pressing at the edges of his vision rushed inward like a tide.
The last thing Cleos Frey saw was Tyrion Lannister watching him with cold eyes, and the ruby on his own hand glowing faintly in the gloom.
Then nothing.
...
Cleos woke panting, completely disoriented. Above him hung the familiar carved oak beams of his guest chamber in Casterly Rock, draped with the crimson-and-gold canopy of his bed.
His bed. He was in his bed.
He sat bolt upright, heart hammering against his ribs. The sheets were soaked through, clinging to his skin with a cold, clammy weight. His nightshirt was plastered to his chest with sweat, his breath coming in shuddering gasps that fogged in the morning chill.
A dream. It was just a nightmare. Tyrion couldn't have... he wouldn't—
His gaze dropped to his left hand.
The ring sat squarely on his finger, gold and ruby, catching the light of dawn.
The blood drained from Cleos's face, and he began to shake, curling forward to pull his knees tight against his chest.
It wasn't a dream.
He sank back against the pillows, staring at the ring, unable to look away, unable to stop the shivering.
What sort of monster are you, Tyrion Lannister?
_______________________________
Our baby gryphon's a girl, so had to give a little twist to her name! And Tyrion teaches Cleos what happens to those whom Tyrion treasures!
Check out the image of Tyrion and our baby gryphon for free on (linktr. ee/DarkeBones.)
If you want to read TWO chapters ahead of my public release, please see:
linktr. ee/DarkeBones.