The torches burned low in the eastern wing of the Tower of the Hand, casting long shadows across the hallways. Few dared walk those halls after dark, and even fewer were allowed past the black oak doors carved with ravens in flight. They opened soundlessly at Brynden's touch.
He stepped inside his private chamber, weary from blood and wrath. The door shut behind him with a hollow thud.
She was already there.
Shiera Seastar, beautiful as moonlight on water, lay draped across his bed like a queen upon a throne, the dark blue of her sheer gown rippling around her body like seafoam. Her long silver-gold hair spilled across his pillows, and her mismatched eyes—one a haunting amethyst, the other bright green like wildfire—sparkled with amusement.
"Well," she said, her lips curling into a smirk, "that's quite a bruise, my love. Were you brawling with sellswords? Or did our good King Daeron finally trade in his quills for fists?"
Brynden did not flinch.
"Shiera," he said evenly, his voice low as the wind beyond the battlements. "You're back."
"I never truly left," she said, lounging like a cat. "Not really."
He stepped forward, slowly, removing the battered gloves from his hands, tossing them on the table. His posture remained rigid, even here, even with her. "Where were you during the battle?"
She rose from the bed with the grace of a shadow in candlelight. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders from the front, her silk-clad form pressing against his armor-padded chest. She looked up at him with playful defiance. "You already know," she whispered. "Why ask?"
His one red eye narrowed, and he reached to brush a silver strand of hair from her cheek. "The Tyroshi never came. Their ships never reached Westeros. The Blackfyres expected them, counted on them… and yet they vanished like morning mist. Sabotaged, or misled."
She tilted her head and smiled like a fox who'd caught a hare. "Do go on."
"You sailed to Lys, didn't you?" Brynden said. "Your connections there, the magisters, the courtesans… You sowed the seeds before the war began. The Tyroshi never stood a chance."
"Clever boy," she purred. "Even now, with a swollen lip and an empty eye, you still see more than half the court combined."
He did not smile.
"You risked much."
"So did you," she replied, her lips brushing against his jaw as she spoke. "Do you suppose our sweet King will burn your head alongside Daemon's? Just to show the world that even his bastard kin are not above justice?"
Brynden's mouth twitched faintly at the corner. "He won't."
"Oh?"
"He's angry. More than I've ever seen him. But Daeron is no fool. He might wish for justice in the eyes of the Faith… but he knows the realm needs my mind intact. Better I live and bear the whispers of kinslayer than he rule without me and suffer the price in coin, blood, and secrets."
Shiera laughed, warm and rich and dangerous. "Gods, how I do love when you talk like that. So clever, so cold. So sure of your place in the world."
"Not so sure," Brynden murmured.
"Liar." She rose up on her toes and kissed his mouth, her hands pulling him down to meet her height. He did not resist. For a moment, the shadows softened.
She kissed the scar across his cheek, the skin around the patch, the tired edge of his mouth.
They said Shiera Seastar was a sorceress, a siren born of moonlight and forbidden blood. But in that moment, she was simply his—his twin flame, his twin wound, the only soul in all of Westeros who could touch the icy armor around his heart and not be burned.
Their kiss deepened, and her hands tangled into his white hair. The weight of the war fell away, just for a moment, as she pulled him down onto the bed.
The raven's shadow passed over the moonlit window.