Jinx remained quiet for several moments after revealing what the egg had done to him, his eyes fixed upon the moss-covered shell while the others tried to understand that the horror at Castle Black had not been born from one endless hunger, but from two starving things feeding upon each other without either possessing enough sense to stop.
Then he pushed himself upright.
The chair creaked beneath the sudden movement, and Xuehara's hand immediately lifted as though she expected his legs to fail again, but the hour of feeding had changed him too completely for that. Jinx rose without assistance, rolled one shoulder beneath the loose black robe, and crossed the hall with slow, thoughtful steps until he reached the nearest window.
The ocean swallowed most of his reflection.
Dark water stretched away beyond the glass, filled with pale shafts of light and the slow movement of distant ruins. A school of silver fish passed close to the window, scattering for a moment when a broad grey shark glided from beneath one of the drowned arches. The creature moved without hurry, its shadow sliding across Jinx's face while strands of his black and silver-blond hair hung around him in dried, blood-stiffened knots.
He placed one palm against the glass.
"I've been to Yi Ti twice," Jinx said without turning around, his voice lower now, stripped of the sharp humor he had used whenever the conversation threatened to become too uncomfortable. "The first time was when I was born. I don't remember much of it—colours, voices, my grandmother's hands. Things that might be memories or might be stories Mother told me so often that they became memories."
Xuehara watched his back from the table, her earlier anger easing into uncertainty as soon as he mentioned her homeland.
"The second time was a few months ago," Jinx continued while the shark vanished into the blue darkness and smaller fish cautiously returned in its wake. "Oberyn came with me. We stayed for a month, perhaps a little longer. Long enough for him to offend three ministers, charm most of my grandmother's attendants, and become convinced that rice wine could not possibly make him drunk because the cups were too small."
Elia closed her eyes and rubbed two fingers against her brow. "He has made that mistake in Dorne with pear brandy."
"He made it repeatedly in Yi Ti," Jinx said, the faintest trace of amusement touching his voice before fading again. "The servants began changing the cups just to see how long it would take him to notice."
"That would only encourage him."
"It did."
The small warmth died from Jinx's expression as another shadow moved beyond the glass.
"For that month, I was treated like a god."
Rickard's brows drew together.
Jinx kept watching the water. "Not politely. Not the way smallfolk bow because someone wears a crown or carries the right name. I mean they knelt when I entered rooms. Men old enough to be my grandfather wouldn't meet my eyes. Servants walked backward rather than risk turning their backs to me. There were people who wanted to touch the ground after I stepped on it because I carried imperial blood."
Rhaegar listened more carefully now, his earlier fascination with Valyria momentarily displaced by the picture Jinx painted of another royal court.
"In Yi Ti, the imperial family isn't viewed the way Westerosi nobles view their kings," Jinx continued, his fingers spreading slowly against the cold glass. "It is closer to the way old Valyria saw dragonlords before the Dance broke the illusion. Blood above blood. Men and women born nearer to heaven than everyone else, at least according to those forced to kneel beneath them."
Greatjon grunted as he reached for his ale. "Sounds exhausting."
"It was." Jinx looked at the enormous shark returning through the ruins, its pale underside briefly visible when it turned. "I couldn't sneeze without someone deciding it meant the gods approved of a harvest."
Brandon leaned back in his chair. "You would hate being worshipped."
"I hated the kneeling." Jinx's thumb moved faintly against the glass. "The gifts were acceptable."
Eddard almost smiled, though his attention remained fixed upon his twin's posture. Jinx had not turned around once, and there was something in the careful stillness of his shoulders that warned the story was moving somewhere none of them expected.
"Inside the Golden Palace, things were different," Jinx said. "Still beautiful. Still covered in ceremony. But no palace stays holy once you walk far enough behind its walls. People argue, drink, sleep with whoever they shouldn't, and keep secrets that would crack the empire open if someone carried them into daylight."
Xuehara's fingers tightened upon the edge of the table.
Jinx noticed the movement in the dark reflection of the glass, yet he did not look back.
"My grandmother told me one of those secrets."
The hall became quieter.
Even Gehrman lowered his cup.
"It happened eighty-three years ago," Jinx continued, each word measured now as though he had repeated the story to himself many times and still had not decided what it meant. "In the aftermath of the Redgrass Field."
Rhaegar straightened so quickly that his chair gave a small scrape against the stone.
Barristan's face changed as well, the old knight's gaze sharpening with the recognition of a date every child of a noble house had been taught. Arthur looked toward Rhaegar, while Rickard's attention moved from Jinx to Xuehara and then back again.
"Eighty-three years," Rhaegar murmured, his fingers going still upon the table. "The First Blackfyre Rebellion."
Jinx's eyes remained on the water.
"My grandmother was young then. Younger than Mother is now, though she already had duties at court and enough freedom to wander beyond the parts of the palace where people watched every breath she took." A narrow smile without humor crossed his reflection. "She inherited that from her mother. A northern woman, apparently. Stubborn, curious, and entirely incapable of leaving wounded things where she found them."
Xuehara had gone very still.
Jinx continued before she could speak.
"One night, a ship reached one of the eastern ports under no banner anyone recognized. Most of the crew were dead. Those still breathing refused to say where they'd come from, and before the harbor guard could decide whether to seize them, a young man came down the gangplank carrying another man across his back."
Barristan's hand tightened around his goblet.
"The one walking called himself Brynden Rivers."
The name struck the table harder than Greatjon's fist had.
Rhaegar's lips parted, but no sound came immediately. Arthur turned sharply toward Barristan, whose expression had become unreadable beneath the candlelight. Eddard looked from one face to another, knowing the name well enough from history but understanding from their reactions that Jinx was about to pull something far stranger from it.
"Bloodraven," Brandon said, disbelief flattening his voice. "You're saying Bloodraven went to Yi Ti?"
"I'm saying my grandmother met a pale young man with one eye, a red birthmark across his face, and a voice like he hadn't slept since leaving Westeros," Jinx replied. "What name history gave him later isn't really in doubt."
Rhaegar leaned forward, forgetting the food, the bloodwine, and almost everything else around him. "Who was he carrying?"
"My grandmother didn't know."
The answer left the table hanging.
Jinx watched the fish pass between the drowned towers, his reflection divided by the shifting blue light. "The other man had been wrapped in a torn cloak. There were arrows in him, pieces of mail driven into his flesh, and wounds that should've killed him before the ship ever reached open water. Brynden carried him from the deck himself and put him at my grandmother's feet."
Barristan shook his head faintly. "That makes no sense."
"No," Jinx agreed. "It doesn't."
"Brynden Rivers fought for Daeron," Rhaegar said as the pattern began forming behind his eyes. "He commanded the Raven's Teeth. He—"
"Let him finish," Elia murmured, catching Rhaegar's wrist before his questions could scatter the story.
Jinx's palm remained against the glass.
"Brynden begged her to save the man," he continued. "Not commanded. Begged. My grandmother said he was covered in blood that wasn't all his, and whatever had happened between the two of them before reaching Yi Ti had left him half-mad with exhaustion. He wouldn't give the wounded man's name. He only kept saying that he couldn't die there. Not yet."
Greatjon's gaze narrowed. "And she listened to some stranger who arrived with a half-dead man and a ship full of corpses?"
"My grandmother was northern," Xuehara said before Jinx could answer, though her voice sounded distant now, her attention fixed upon her son's back. "She was raised to believe that refusing shelter to a dying man offended both gods and ancestors."
Jinx finally turned his head slightly, acknowledging her without fully facing the room. "That's what Grandmother told me. Kindness was the first lesson her mother gave her and the one court never managed to beat out."
His hand dropped from the glass.
"She hid them."
Rhaegar's breath caught faintly.
"Brynden stayed only long enough to know the wounded man would survive the night," Jinx said. "Then he left. My grandmother never told me where he went or what he said before leaving, only that he looked back at the room three times before walking away."
Barristan's expression had tightened with something between disbelief and unease. "And the wounded man?"
"He lived."
Jinx turned from the window at last.
The ocean's blue light fell behind him, turning the loose robe around his pale body almost black while silver-blond strands caught against the darkness of his hair. He looked first at Rhaegar, then Barristan, and finally his mother.
"Not well," he continued. "The healers removed what they could, but some of the arrowheads had broken too deep, and whatever magic had kept him alive long enough to cross the world didn't repair what had already been done. He never regained all the strength he'd lost. Some mornings he could walk the gardens. Some mornings he couldn't leave his bed."
Xuehara's face had begun to pale.
"He stayed in Yi Ti for five years," Jinx said.
No one moved.
"Five years hidden inside the Golden Palace, known only to my grandmother, a handful of healers, and the servants trusted to carry food without asking questions. The wounds never truly closed. They worsened every winter until his body finally stopped fighting them."
Rhaegar looked down at the table as though calculating dates he did not want to calculate.
"Redgrass Field was in one hundred and ninety-six," he murmured. "Five years would place his death…"
"Two hundred and one," Barristan finished, his voice low.
Jinx nodded.
Xuehara's hands had left the table. One had risen slowly toward her mouth, though she seemed unaware of it.
"There was a night before he died," Jinx continued, his tone becoming more careful now, each word chosen not to soften the truth but to keep it from cutting his mother more than necessary. "My grandmother had been drinking. So had he. She told me it wasn't romantic, whatever singers would try to make of it. Two lonely people, both frightened for different reasons, and one of them already knowing he didn't have much time left."
"Jinx," Xuehara whispered.
He stopped.
For the first time since he had walked to the window, uncertainty entered his face. Not fear of her anger. Something quieter and more painful.
"I'm sorry, Mother," Jinx said as he looked directly at her. "I didn't know how to tell you. I'm not sure she ever wanted you to know."
Xuehara's throat moved, but she could not seem to find words.
Jinx continued because stopping now would only leave the blade halfway in.
"My grandmother became pregnant after that night. He died before the child was born, and she never told her daughter who her father had been."
The meaning moved through the hall slowly.
Rickard looked toward his wife.
Brandon's mouth fell open before he shut it again. Eddard stared at his mother as though trying to find something unfamiliar in the face he had known all his life, while Greatjon lowered his ale without drinking. Arthur and Barristan exchanged a brief look, both men understanding the bloodline before anyone dared name it.
Rhaegar's face became almost completely still.
Xuehara sat pale beneath the candlelight, her fingers pressed against her lips as pieces of her life shifted into unfamiliar shapes around her.
Jinx gave her several breaths.
She did not ask him to continue, but she did not tell him to stop either.
"Before I left Yi Ti, my grandmother came to the docks herself," Jinx said as he moved away from the window, though he did not return to the table. "No attendants. No ministers. Just her, me, and Oberyn pretending he wasn't listening from behind a stack of cargo."
Elia breathed out through her nose. "He was listening."
"He was terrible at pretending otherwise." Jinx's gaze remained upon his mother. "Grandmother told me there were two swords. One had gone east, somewhere deep in Essos. The other had vanished beyond the Wall."
Rhaegar's eyes moved immediately toward Dark Sister where it rested within sight of the dining hall.
"She said both were mine by right," Jinx continued. "Not because anyone would hand them to me. Not because blood alone makes steel obey. She said if I wanted either one, I would have to find it, survive whatever guarded it, and be strong enough to keep it afterward."
Rickard's brows drew together as the second blade became obvious. "One beyond the Wall was Dark Sister."
"Yes."
"And the one in Essos?" Brandon asked, though from the way Rhaegar's face had changed, he already suspected the answer.
Jinx did not respond immediately.
He remembered the docks, the smell of salt and incense, his grandmother standing beneath a silk umbrella she had dismissed every servant from holding. He remembered her catching his wrist before he stepped onto the ship and pulling him close enough that no one else should have heard.
"When I boarded," Jinx said, his voice quieter, "she called me back. I thought she meant to warn me again about Valyria, or tell Oberyn not to gamble away the ship before we reached open water."
Elia muttered something beneath her breath that sounded suspiciously like agreement.
"She told me the eastern sword had a name," Jinx continued. "One that had belonged to kings before the Iron Throne existed and had started a war the realm still hasn't forgotten."
Rhaegar did not blink.
"Blackfyre," he said.
The name seemed to darken the candles.
Jinx nodded once.
Xuehara lowered her hand from her mouth, though her face remained bloodless. "Why would she tell you it was yours?"
Jinx looked at her for a long time.
When he answered, the lazy humor, cleverness, and deflection were all gone.
"Because the man Brynden Rivers carried out of Westeros wasn't some wounded soldier."
Rickard rose slowly beside his wife, one hand finding the back of her chair without touching her. Eddard's eyes moved from Jinx to Xuehara, while Brandon seemed to forget how to breathe.
Jinx crossed the final distance to the table and stopped beside his mother. He did not reach for her until she turned her hand over, fingers trembling faintly against the wood.
Then he took it.
"The man who spent five years hidden in the Golden Palace," Jinx said as his thumb moved gently over her knuckles, "the man who died before you were born, and the man my grandmother said was your father…"
His gaze remained locked upon hers.
"…was Daemon Blackfyre."
No one spoke.
Outside the windows, a shark passed slowly through the blue darkness, scattering the silver fish before disappearing among the drowned towers.
Rhaegar remained frozen with both hands against the table, staring at Xuehara and then Jinx as the history of his family rearranged itself in front of him. Barristan's lips parted, but whatever protest rose in him found no voice. Arthur's hand had gone still beside Dawn, while Greatjon sat with his ale forgotten between both palms.
Rickard looked at his wife as though expecting the revelation to change her face.
It did not.
She remained Xuehara—his wife, the mother of his children, the woman who had crossed half the North prepared to tear apart anything standing between her and her son—but beneath that familiar face now rested the blood of the man who had raised the Black Dragon against the Iron Throne.
Xuehara's fingers closed around Jinx's.
"My father," she whispered, the words barely more than breath. "Daemon Blackfyre was my father."
Jinx lowered himself beside her chair, keeping hold of her hand while the room waited around them. "That's what she told me."
"Did she…" Xuehara stopped, her eyes closing as the question failed before it formed. When she tried again, her voice came rougher. "Did she say anything about him? Anything that wasn't swords and wars?"
Jinx's expression softened.
"She said he hated being confined to bed," he told her as he rested one arm across the edge of her chair. "He argued with every healer, cheated at tiles, and complained that Yi Ti tea tasted like boiled flowers no matter how much honey they put in it. She said he laughed loudly when he forgot he was supposed to be hiding and went quiet whenever anyone mentioned Westeros."
Xuehara bowed her head.
Jinx continued more gently. "She said he spoke about his sons. About a brother he hated and loved in equal measure. About a field covered in red grass and a choice he kept trying to decide whether he regretted."
The words reached back across the conversation they had only just survived.
Greatjon looked toward Jinx.
So did Eddard.
Jinx did not appear to notice. He remained beside his mother, hand wrapped around hers while Xuehara struggled to absorb a father she had never known had existed.
Across the table, Rhaegar's gaze drifted from Dark Sister to Jinx and then toward the direction of the dragon egg. The pieces of leverage Jinx had spoken of no longer looked like desperate boasts. A Stark prince carrying the blood of Daemon Blackfyre, holding Dark Sister, possessing a claim by descent to Blackfyre itself, and offering a road into Old Valyria was not merely a weapon Aerys might fear.
He was every old wound of House Targaryen given a living face.
Rhaegar slowly leaned back in his chair, whatever question had first risen dying unspoken when Elia's hand settled over his.
For once, she did not need to pull his sleeve or warn him with a look.
Even his curiosity understood that the next words belonged to Xuehara.
Xuehara did not release Jinx's hand.
For several breaths she sat completely still, staring at their joined fingers while the underwater light drifted across the table in wavering blue patterns. Nothing visible about her had changed—her dark hair remained pinned in the careful Yi Tish style she favored, her back stayed straight, and the same quiet authority that had carried her through both the Golden Palace and Winterfell remained wrapped around her—but everyone could see that something inside her had been torn loose.
"My mother knew," she said at last, the words coming slowly, as though she had to test each one before allowing it to become real. Her thumb moved over Jinx's knuckles, tracing newly healed skin she had seen shredded only an hour earlier. "All those years. Every letter, every visit, every time she looked at me…she knew who my father was."
Jinx remained kneeling beside her chair, his other arm resting loosely across one raised knee. "Yes."
"And she never told me."
There was no accusation in Xuehara's voice at first. That came afterward, gathering beneath the softness until her fingers tightened around Jinx's hand. "She let me grow up believing he was some nameless courtier who died before I was born. She watched me marry, watched me carry children of my own, and never once thought I deserved to know."
"She was afraid," Jinx said, though he spoke carefully, already seeing the answer harden her face.
"Of me?"
"No." He caught her hand more firmly when she tried to pull it away, not imprisoning her, only refusing to let the hurt carry her somewhere alone. "For you."
A short, bitter laugh escaped Xuehara as she turned toward the dark water beyond the windows, blinking hard before the moisture gathering in her eyes could fall. "People always say that after choosing someone else's life for them. They were frightened. They meant well. They wanted to protect you." She shook her head, mouth twisting around the words. "What they mean is that they didn't trust you with your own pain."
Rickard's hand settled on the back of her chair, but he did not touch her immediately. For once, the Lord of Winterfell appeared uncertain whether offering comfort would steady his wife or only make her feel surrounded.
Jinx looked up at her. "You don't have to forgive her."
Xuehara's gaze snapped back to him.
"You don't have to be grateful either," he continued, his voice quieter now, stripped of the lazy humor he usually used whenever the room became too serious. "She had reasons. Good ones, perhaps. That doesn't make the choice yours."
Some of the fury in Xuehara's face weakened, not because it had left her, but because Jinx had refused to explain it away.
"What reasons?" Rickard asked as he remained beside his wife's chair, one hand still gripping the carved back. "A secret kept for decades usually survives on more than fear."
Jinx shifted his weight and glanced across the table toward Rhaegar and the Kingsguard. "Daemon Blackfyre's children were hunted, watched, used, and feared long after Redgrass. Some of his sons kept fighting. Their sons fought after them. Every king who sat the Iron Throne learned to hear the name Blackfyre and reach for steel before asking who carried it."
Barristan's mouth tightened, but he did not deny it.
"My grandmother was an imperial princess carrying the child of a man Westeros had named traitor," Jinx continued. "If anyone in Yi Ti learned enough to speak, she risked dragging the Golden Empire into a war it had no reason to fight. If the Targaryens learned Daemon had left a daughter, they might've sent spies, assassins, or a marriage offer with a knife hidden inside it. And if the surviving Blackfyres found out, they might've come looking for a sister they could turn into a banner."
Xuehara stared at the dark bloodwine spreading through the cloth near Jinx's abandoned place. "So she hid me from everyone."
"She hid the truth," Jinx said. "Not you."
"That sounds like something she told you."
"It was."
"And you believed her?"
Jinx's mouth pulled faintly to one side. "I believed that she believed it."
Xuehara gave him a long, wounded look, understanding the difference too well.
Eddard had remained quiet since the name Daemon Blackfyre entered the room. His fingers curled around the edge of his plate while he watched his mother, trying to fit rebellion, dragons, and a dead pretender into the face he had known all his life.
"Was he buried there?" Eddard asked, his voice soft enough that everyone else had to quiet down to hear him. "In Yi Ti."
Jinx looked toward his twin. "There's a grave inside the imperial gardens. No name, no dragon, nothing that would make anyone stop and ask. Just a slab of black stone beneath a white-flowered tree."
Rhaegar's gaze sharpened immediately, but for once he held his tongue.
Xuehara did not. "She buried him in the palace?"
"He asked not to be sent back." Jinx's thumb moved gently over his mother's knuckles. "He thought Westeros had taken enough from him."
Something in Rickard's face changed at that. His hand left the back of the chair and settled at last upon Xuehara's shoulder, broad and careful.
She did not lean into him immediately.
After several breaths, her free hand rose and covered his.
Brandon watched the movement, then turned his attention back toward Jinx. "You've known this for months."
"I have."
"And you said nothing."
"It wasn't mine to tell."
"You just told everyone sitting at this table."
Jinx raised his eyes toward his elder brother. "Because it stopped being only Mother's secret when Aerys became part of the problem."
Brandon's brows lowered. "That's a very convenient line."
"No, convenient would've been keeping my mouth shut and letting Rhaegar ride home without understanding why his father might suddenly decide the entire Stark family needs burning." Jinx's voice remained level, though weariness had begun creeping back beneath it. "This is ugly. It isn't convenient."
The reminder pulled the room back toward the danger waiting far beyond the sanctuary.
Rhaegar leaned forward, but whatever question first reached his lips died when he saw Xuehara's face. He took a slower breath and tried again, his voice quieter. "Lady Stark, I know this is not the moment you would have chosen to hear any of this, but Jinx is right about the danger. If even a whisper of Daemon Blackfyre's survival reaches my father—"
"My father," Xuehara corrected, turning toward him so sharply that Rhaegar stopped.
The prince inclined his head. "Your father."
The acknowledgment did not soothe her, but it kept the conversation from breaking.
"If Aerys learns Daemon lived after Redgrass and left a daughter," Rhaegar continued, "he will not see buried history. He will see a bloodline hidden from the throne, and every silence around it will become proof of conspiracy."
Greatjon dragged one thick thumb along the rim of his ale cup. "Mad king hears the Starks carry Blackfyre blood, and suddenly every northern sword looks ready to march south."
"Aye," Barristan said reluctantly, the word carrying the weight of a man who had spent too long learning the shape of Aerys's fears. "And Prince Jinx already possesses Dark Sister."
Arthur's gaze shifted toward the Valyrian blade resting beneath the Stark banners.
"And he knows where Blackfyre may be," Elia added, watching Jinx closely. "Or believes he does."
Jinx rose from beside his mother, though he held her hand until the last possible moment. His restored leg carried him easily now, and he crossed back toward the windows while gathering the loose robe around himself.
"Grandmother didn't hand me a map with a black sword drawn in the middle," he said as he stopped before the glass. "She gave me a trail. Old ports, a merchant house that no longer exists, two captains who changed banners more often than shirts, and something about a vault east of Volantis. It may lead to Blackfyre. It may lead to an empty chest and a corpse who enjoyed telling lies."
Rhaegar watched him carefully. "But you believe the sword is real."
"I believe she believed it."
Barristan's jaw tightened. "If you recover Blackfyre, you will become the most dangerous symbol in the Seven Kingdoms."
Jinx glanced back over one shoulder. "I'm already a Stark prince carrying Daemon's blood, Dark Sister, a dragon egg, an army of Hunters, and enough magic to frighten the Wall. We passed the point where the symbol problem could be prevented."
"That is not amusing," Rickard said.
"I wasn't joking."
Xuehara rubbed one hand over her brow, trying to absorb too many impossible truths at once. "You're not going after Blackfyre."
"Not soon."
"That is not what I said."
"It's the answer you're getting while you're angry."
Her chair shifted sharply as she began to stand.
Jinx lifted one hand at once. "Mother, we've already established the throat is forbidden territory."
"I have other ways to hurt you."
"You see? This is why I added the qualification."
Eddard lowered his head to hide a smile behind his hand, while Brandon gave up and let out a brief snort. Even Elia's mouth twitched, though Xuehara remained entirely unimpressed.
Rhaegar did not join them.
He kept looking at Jinx with a concentration that had become almost uncomfortable, the distant calm falling from his face as he worried at the political shape of what he had heard. "You called this leverage against my father," he said, leaning forward until both forearms rested against the table. "I understand Old Valyria. I understand what even a handful of relics taken from those ruins would mean to him. But your descent from Daemon Blackfyre gives Aerys more reason to kill you, not less."
"It would, if I walked into the throne room and handed him the truth without telling him what it means first." Jinx turned away from the glass, his reflection briefly swallowed by the shadow of a shark gliding beyond the window. "I'm not going to announce that Mother is Daemon Blackfyre's daughter and stand there while your father decides whether to burn me before or after supper. I'll frame it in the only way Aerys is likely to find comforting."
Rhaegar's eyes narrowed. "Which is?"
"As another chain he can pretend he's put around House Stark."
Rickard's expression hardened at once. "House Stark wears no chain."
"I know that. You know that. The North knows it." Jinx began walking back toward the table, his bare feet making almost no sound against the polished stone. "Aerys doesn't need to know."
His father's gaze remained cold, but he allowed him to continue.
"Most of the south already thinks northerners are simple," Jinx said, stopping near his displaced chair without sitting. "Honest when they mean stupid. Stubborn when they mean too slow to understand court. Barbarians whenever we don't cover murder with silk and call it justice. Half the southern houses probably think we spend winter eating horses, marrying our sisters, and killing our own family for whatever gold they hid beneath the floor."
Greatjon snorted into his ale. "We don't marry our sisters."
Brandon turned toward him. "That was the part you objected to?"
"The rest depends on the winter."
"That," Jinx said, pointing loosely toward Greatjon, "is exactly the problem."
Greatjon showed his teeth but allowed him to go on.
"The stories aren't entirely wrong," Jinx admitted, and the humor left his voice. "During the worst winters, old men have gone hunting without any intention of returning. Mothers have fed children while pretending they'd already eaten. Families have sent one person into the snow so the rest might live. Sometimes northern men have killed their own kin for greed, but more often the south hears about something that was actually mercy—ugly mercy, but mercy all the same."
Eddard lowered his eyes, remembering servants' tales about winters that lasted years and families who entered them with six children and emerged with three.
"The south doesn't understand that," Jinx continued. "They only hear that northerners kill their family when the cold becomes harsh enough. Aerys will hear it too, and he'll fit it into whatever fear is already living in his head. He distrusts the North. He distrusts Dorne, the Reach, the Vale, the Westerlands. At this point, he probably distrusts his own shadow when the candle moves too quickly."
Barristan's face tightened at the disrespect, but the old knight did not deny the truth beneath it.
"If he learns Mother carries Daemon's blood," Jinx said, "he may decide it gives him something he didn't have before."
"Control," Rhaegar murmured.
"The feeling of it," Jinx corrected as he finally lowered himself into the chair. "That's usually enough for men like him."
Xuehara stared at him. "You intend to tell the king that my blood makes us obedient?"
"No. I intend to let him tell himself that." Jinx met her eyes, his voice softening despite the cold shape of the plan. "Through Daemon, we're related to House Targaryen. Distantly, awkwardly, but enough for Aerys to claim kinship. He can tell himself that he has pulled a lost Valyrian line back beneath the dragon without arranging a marriage."
Rhaegar followed the thought. "He could present it as reconciliation."
"He'd present it as conquest," Jinx said. "He'd enjoy that more. Daemon's hidden daughter revealed, her children acknowledged, House Stark tied to the throne by blood that was there all along. No negotiations. No dowry. No lord asked whether he wants the honor. Your father gets to announce that the wolves always belonged beneath the dragon and pretend he discovered the leash himself."
Rickard's hand tightened against Xuehara's shoulder. "House Stark belongs to no dragon."
"I know, Father." Jinx's expression did not change. "That's why I said pretend."
"And when he begins making demands because of this imagined bond?" Rickard asked, his restraint barely hiding the offence beneath it. "When he decides kinship gives him leave to command Winterfell like another tower of the Red Keep?"
"He already believes the Iron Throne gives him that right. This merely gives us something he values enough to bargain against."
Rhaegar's fingers began tapping softly against the table. "You also called your family the only line."
Jinx nodded. "Father's siblings died during the last hard winter, twenty years ago. No uncles. No aunts. No close branch sitting in another keep with enough Stark blood to confuse anything. Father and his children are the line."
Rickard's face shifted at the memory, grief passing through too quickly for anyone but his family to catch.
"That makes it simple for Aerys," Jinx continued. "He won't have to wonder which branch carries Daemon's blood and which doesn't. It's all of us. One family. One line he can imagine binding all at once."
Barristan leaned forward, both hands resting on the table. "You place a great deal of faith in His Grace choosing pride over fear."
"I'm not relying on pride alone."
Jinx's gaze moved toward Dark Sister.
"There's Blackfyre."
The name drew the room tight again.
Jinx rested his forearms against his knees, eyes moving briefly toward Ice where the enormous ancestral blade stood within Rickard's reach. "Blackfyre isn't merely another Valyrian sword. To House Targaryen, it's kingship turned into steel. Aegon the Conqueror carried it. Every king after him understood what it meant, whether he held it or not. Daemon being given Blackfyre was half the reason men decided he should've been king."
Rhaegar's mouth tightened around that familiar wound.
"For your house," Jinx continued, "Blackfyre is what Ice is to mine, only worse. Ice tells the North a Stark still sits in Winterfell. Blackfyre once convinced half the realm that the wrong dragon sat the Iron Throne."
Rickard glanced toward Ice, his expression unreadable. "You intend to give the sword to Aerys."
"I intend to return it to the king."
The wording was deliberate enough that Rhaegar noticed.
"And some of the treasure found during the search," Jinx added.
Xuehara gave him a disbelieving look. "You haven't found either."
"No, but the hunt starts the moment anyone hears the sword may still exist. I'd rather lead that hunt than have every sellsword, merchant prince, exile, and ambitious fool in Essos chasing Blackfyre without me."
Rhaegar looked down, already imagining the court's reaction. "If you recover Blackfyre and place it in my father's hands, he will believe the gods themselves have confirmed him."
"Exactly." Jinx smiled faintly, though there was no warmth in it. "Aerys will see Daemon's hidden descendant kneeling before him with the sword that once challenged his family. The Black Dragon's blood surrendering Blackfyre to the Red Dragon. He'll have singers writing the song before I've finished standing."
Elia rested her chin against one knuckle, her eyes sharpening. "And while he is looking at the song, he won't be looking too closely at you."
"That's the hope. Add treasure to it—gold, old Valyrian work, perhaps some lost object with a king's name carved into it—and reason won't have much room left. He'll see a Blackfyre line too weak to take the throne, rich enough to reward him, useful enough to keep, and apparently willing to place every old symbol of rebellion at his feet."
Barristan's gaze remained troubled. "You say too weak to claim the throne as though strength is the only thing preventing it."
"It isn't." Jinx looked toward him. "Memory is."
Barristan went very still.
"The War of the Ninepenny Kings wasn't ancient history," Jinx continued. "Men still holding high positions fought in it. You did. Lord Tywin did. Steffon Baratheon did. Half the realm's great houses either lost men there or grew up listening to the stories. Before Maelys came rebellion after rebellion, and every one dragged the Blackfyre name through more blood."
Greatjon grunted and took a long drink. "Not much love left for the black dragon."
"Exactly. If I walked into King's Landing carrying Blackfyre, wearing Daemon's crown, and shouting that the throne was mine, most lords wouldn't see a king. They'd see another Blackfyre rebellion asking them to bury their sons."
Rhaegar did not appear entirely convinced. "Men have rallied behind worse claims."
"When the claimant offered them something they wanted." Jinx lifted one hand, counting the problems with his fingers. "What do I offer the south as king? Northern rule? Old gods? Magic they're frightened of? A mother from Yi Ti, a father whose bannermen they call savages, and a recent history that includes eating the Night's Watch? I'd be lucky if they waited until I finished the second sentence before drawing steel."
Elia gave him a searching look. "You've considered it."
"I consider every dangerous possibility."
"That wasn't a denial."
"No," Jinx said without embarrassment. "It wasn't."
Rickard's eyes narrowed, but Jinx kept speaking before his father could drag them into another argument.
"The Reach won't rise for another Blackfyre after Maelys. The stormlands remember too much. The Westerlands have no reason to gamble on me. The Vale is tied to Father through friendship, not some dead claimant. Dorne would sooner support Elia's children than a northern cousin who collects cursed objects and sleeps through meetings."
Elia's mouth curved slightly. "At least you know us."
"Oberyn explained it with more swearing."
"That also sounds like us."
Jinx returned his gaze toward Rhaegar. "So Aerys sees no obvious downside. I can't realistically take his crown. My family gains nothing by raising the Black Dragon except a war the North doesn't want. Meanwhile, he gets kinship he can boast about, Blackfyre returned, treasure from the hunt, the promise of Valyria, and a weapon he thinks he can point at his enemies."
Barristan set his cup down, his expression growing heavier rather than reassured. "And you believe all of that will outweigh the terror you inspire."
"For a while." Jinx did not pretend certainty. "Long enough to make him hesitate. Long enough to get close. Long enough to learn what he wants, who keeps whispering in his ear, and how quickly his fear can be turned."
Rhaegar watched him across the table. "And when he realizes you are not controlled?"
Jinx's fingers settled around the stem of his goblet as another shark drifted beyond the windows and cast a long shadow over the hall. "Then I make certain he fears what happens if he kills me more than he fears what happens if I live."
Barristan released a slow breath and leaned forward, his scarred hands flattening upon the table. "You speak as if fear can be measured and placed wherever you choose. It cannot."
Jinx's attention shifted fully toward him.
"I will not pretend His Grace's mind is what it once was," Barristan continued, every word carrying the pain of a knight admitting that the king he served had become something he could no longer defend with simple loyalty. "Nor will I call him harmless. But you know fear in battle, Prince Jinx. Steel in front of you. Death close enough to taste. Aerys's fear is different. It sits beside him while he eats. It wakes with him. It grows in empty rooms until an imagined insult becomes more real than any oath ever sworn."
Rhaegar lowered his eyes.
Arthur looked toward Barristan, understanding that the old knight had already said more than he intended.
"You believe you can offer him one thing he wants and make him forget the rest," Barristan said. "Perhaps you manage it once. Perhaps twice. But the king remembers threats long after he forgets bargains. Every treasure you bring him will become proof that you kept greater treasures hidden."
Jinx leaned forward, elbows resting against his knees. "Then what would you do?"
There was no mockery in the question, and Barristan seemed to recognize it.
"I would keep you in the North," the old knight answered after a moment. "Deny the worst reports. Let distance and uncertainty weaken the rest. Give His Grace no living target upon which to fix his terror."
"He'll send people."
"Aye."
"Spies first. Poison if they find an opening. A royal summons once that fails. Hostages if someone useful falls within reach." Jinx looked toward Rhaegar. "And if the prince rides home without me, Aerys will ask why."
Rhaegar's jaw tightened. "He will."
"If you tell him I'm too dangerous to approach, he'll think you're protecting me. If you say I'm too wounded to travel, he'll wonder why you stayed so long. If you lie badly, he'll decide the lie proves treason."
Rhaegar did not answer because every path sounded plausible.
Elia turned her goblet slowly between her hands, thinking. "Then perhaps the mistake is giving him one story."
Everyone looked toward her.
"Aerys distrusts anything presented too cleanly," she continued. "So don't give him certainty. One account says Jinx died after Castle Black. Another says he fled beyond the Wall. Another says the Watch exaggerated the entire matter to hide its own failure. Let the stories fight each other until the court cannot decide which one to fear."
Rhaegar's fingers resumed tapping, slower now. "And while my father argues over which account is true, we choose what truth to reveal."
Elia glanced toward him. "You choose less than you think. That is part of the problem."
His fingers stopped.
Jinx's mouth twitched faintly.
Elia pointed one finger at him without looking away from Rhaegar. "And you do not get to enjoy that. You are the larger problem."
"Fair."
Rickard sat straighter, his attention moving between them. "If we scatter false reports, Aerys may send more men simply to learn which one is true."
"He probably will," Rhaegar said. "Spies can be watched. An army cannot move north without every house between here and the Neck knowing."
Greatjon grunted. "Let him march. We'll see how long southron horses last once winter bites."
"No," Rickard said immediately, the single word carrying enough authority that the Umber looked toward him. "We do not invite war merely because the snow favors us."
Greatjon's jaw shifted, but he inclined his head.
Jinx glanced toward the dragon egg resting in its padded cradle. "That's why Valyria matters."
Xuehara made a sound of immediate disgust. "We have not finished being angry about that."
"We can be angry and useful at the same time."
"You have rarely managed usefulness by itself."
Jinx placed a hand over his chest. "Mother, that was cruel."
"It was earned."
He accepted the blow with a slight tilt of his head before looking back toward Barristan. "If I offer Aerys the chance to send men into Valyria and bring them back alive—with treasure, records, proof that it can be done—he won't kill me before he learns whether I can deliver."
"Unless he decides to tear the method from you," Barristan said.
"He can try."
Xuehara's eyes narrowed.
Jinx caught the look. "Not a joke. Also not permission to strangle me again."
Rhaegar barely heard the family exchange. "What proof could you offer before an expedition? My father will not stake ships and men on theory."
"The egg."
Every gaze turned toward the moss-covered shell.
Jinx leaned back, watching it across the hall. "If I'm right and it's alive, I can prove that. Not immediately. I need to understand how it feeds, how much power it took from me, and whether removing it from the Dark around it will kill whatever has survived inside."
Rhaegar's breathing slowed as he stared at the egg. "And if it hatches…"
"A dragon born from an egg recovered beyond the Wall would make Aerys listen to almost anything."
"It would make him claim the dragon," Arthur said.
Jinx looked toward him. "He can claim the moon too. That won't make it come down."
"That confidence may not survive the king's chains."
"Then I won't wear them."
Barristan gave him a tired look. "Chains rarely ask."
Jinx's grey eyes brightened faintly, not with humor but with something colder. "Most chains are made for men."
The warmth seemed to leave the hall despite the great fire still burning.
Eddard watched his twin closely, recognizing the darkness beneath the answer even if he could not sense it as Gehrman did. "You're already planning how to escape the Red Keep."
"I plan how to escape every room I enter."
"You never used to."
"I did." Jinx glanced toward him. "You assumed I was searching for somewhere to sleep."
"That explains far too much," Brandon muttered.
Xuehara sank back into her chair, anger and exhaustion tangling across her face. "I have learned that my father was Daemon Blackfyre, my son intends to bargain with a mad king, and there may be a living dragon inside that filthy stone. All before the food has gone cold."
"The food reheats itself," Jinx offered.
Xuehara stared at him.
He lowered his eyes toward his goblet.
Rickard sat beside his wife and placed one hand over hers where it rested against the table. "Nothing leaves this room regarding Daemon," he said, his gaze moving across every face before stopping on Rhaegar and Elia. "Not a word to King's Landing. Not to Dorne. Not in a letter carried by the most trusted raven alive."
Elia inclined her head first. "You have my word."
Arthur followed. "And mine."
Barristan hesitated, the white cloak upon his shoulders turning the silence into something heavier. When he finally spoke, strain showed clearly in his face, but his voice did not waver. "I will not carry this secret to His Grace."
Rhaegar remained silent.
Xuehara's fingers tightened beneath Rickard's hand.
Jinx watched the prince without blinking.
Rhaegar looked toward Elia, then Barristan and Arthur, and finally at Dark Sister resting beneath the direwolf banners. "If my father learns this from another source, my silence will be called treason."
"Yes," Jinx said.
"That does not trouble you?"
"It troubles me quite a lot. I'm simply not pretending there is a painless answer."
Rhaegar leaned back, his gaze settling on Xuehara. She had raised no Blackfyre banner, claimed no sword, and made no move against the Iron Throne. Until tonight, she had not even known what blood she carried. Yet speaking the truth to Aerys would place every one of her children, Winterfell, and perhaps the whole North beneath suspicion.
"My father will not hear it from me," Rhaegar said at last, each word carefully chosen. "Not unless keeping it hidden places the realm in greater danger than revealing it."
"That sounds like a door left open inside an oath," Brandon said.
"It is honesty," Rhaegar replied, meeting his eyes. "I will not swear something absolute and later break it while calling necessity an excuse. You deserve to know where the boundary is."
Rickard studied him for a long moment before nodding once. He did not like the answer, but he respected its shape.
Jinx did too.
"Good," he said as he reached for the meat pie he had abandoned earlier. "Polished lies are exhausting."
Rhaegar gave him a flat look. "You have spent the last hour explaining how you intend to deceive my father."
"Yes, but I never claimed it was honorable."
Eddard rubbed one hand over his face.
Across the table, Xuehara looked toward the dragon egg again before turning back toward her son. "You said it was feeding from you to keep itself alive."
Jinx stopped with the pie halfway to his mouth.
"If it still needs that power," she continued, fear slowly replacing the anger in her voice, "what happens now that you are no longer carrying it?"
Every gaze returned to the shell.
For several heartbeats, nothing moved.
Then one of the pale fungal growths clinging to the egg's surface shrivelled inward with a faint, brittle crack.
Jinx slowly lowered the pie.
The candles nearest the hearth bent toward the egg, every flame stretching sideways as though pulled by a wind no one else could feel. The moss upon the shell darkened, thin streams of magenta light flickering briefly beneath the scales before vanishing deeper inside.
Xuehara rose halfway from her chair.
Rhaegar forgot to breathe.
From within the egg came a single, heavy knock.