Adrian Lannister
The corridors of Casterly Rock were exactly the way Adrian remembered them.
The same golden stone, the same torches in their iron brackets, the same faint draft that came from somewhere deep inside the mountain and smelled like salt and old dust and something sweet. His boots made soft sounds on the floor, and beside him, Red Rain's scabbard tip dragged along the stone with that thin, whispering scrape that had become as familiar as his own breathing.
Tyrion walked ahead, and Adrian followed, and Joy walked beside him with her hand wrapped around two of his fingers on his good hand, and she had not let go since the courtyard.
"So you really threatened the grain merchants?" Adrian asked, grinning.
"Threatened is a strong word," Tyrion said, not turning around but lifting one finger as if correcting a student. "I presented them with a series of alternatives, each one less pleasant than the last. The least unpleasant option happened to involve them selling grain at a fair price. They chose wisely."
"Tyrion said he would take their grain and give them nothing," Joy announced.
"That was the second-least unpleasant option."
"What was the worst one?" Adrian asked.
Tyrion glanced back over his shoulder. "I told them I would write to Father."
Adrian laughed. That was the worst one.
"And Joy," Adrian said, squeezing her fingers. "What did you do while I was...away? Besides drawing?"
"I learned to read a whole page by myself," Joy said, and the pride in her voice was enormous, as if she had conquered a castle. "Tyrion taught me. And I can write my name now. J-O-Y. But the Y is hard because it has a tail and the tail always goes the wrong way."
"She's not wrong about the tail," Tyrion said. "It's a difficult letter. I've seen lords twice her age with worse handwriting."
"And I helped in the kitchen," Joy continued, bouncing slightly as she walked. "I stirred the soup. And I dropped an egg, but Cook said it was fine because it was a small egg."
"It was not a small egg," Tyrion murmured.
"It was medium," Joy amended.
They turned a corner, and then another, and then they climbed a short flight of stairs that Adrian's legs remembered before his mind did, and then the library doors were in front of him, and Adrian stopped.
The doors were dark oak, heavy and old, with iron handles shaped like open books. Adrian had pushed through them a thousand times. He had pulled them open with both hands when he was small enough that it took real effort, and he had pushed them open with one hand when he grew tall enough that it didn't. He had run through them, walked through them, been carried through them on Tyrion's shoulders once when he was four and Tyrion pretended they were storming a castle.
Adrian pushed the right-hand door open and stepped inside.
It smelled like paper.
Not just paper. Ink. Leather. Dust. Candle wax. The faint, dry sweetness of old parchment that had been sitting in the same place for so long it had become part of the room itself. The library of Casterly Rock was not the largest in Westeros, Tyrion always said the Citadel's was bigger, and he sounded personally offended by this, but it was tall, three levels of dark wooden shelves rising toward a vaulted ceiling, with ladders on brass rails and reading tables scattered across the main floor, and the afternoon light came through the high western windows in long golden bars that made the whole room glow.
Adrian stood in the doorway and breathed in.
This is real, he thought. This is mine.
"Adrian, my boy."
Maester Creylen rose from a table near the east wall, where he had been bent over a book with a magnifying lens. He was old and thin and stooped, with ink-stained fingers and spectacles that sat crookedly on his nose because one arm was slightly bent. He smiled, and the smile reached his eyes, and he crossed the floor.
"Welcome home," Creylen said and placed his hand briefly on Adrian's shoulder. "It is very good to see you."
"Thank you, Maester."
Creylen's eyes moved to Adrian's left hand, and Adrian held it up without being asked. The bandages were clean, changed that morning on the ship.
Creylen unwrapped the outer layer gently, just enough to check the wound beneath.
"The stitches are holding well," Creylen murmured. "Maester Vyman did good work. How is the pain?"
"Fine," Adrian said.
"On a scale of —"
"Fine."
Creylen gave him a look that said he did not believe the word fine but would accept it for now. He rewrapped the bandage and straightened.
"You will need to keep this hand largely immobile for the better part of nine months," Creylen said. "No gripping, no heavy lifting. Light movement only, and even then, sparingly. The tendons need time, and if you rush them —"
"I know," Adrian said. "It's just a hand. I have another one."
Creylen nodded slowly.
Joy tugged on Adrian's sleeve. "What happened to your hand?"
The library went very quiet.
Adrian opened his mouth, and the library vanished like smoke.
The cut ran from the base of his thumb to the heel of his palm, and it was deep, deep enough that the Valyrian steel had gone through skin and muscle and scraped bone, and the blade had been so sharp that he hadn't even felt it at first, not until after, when the man was falling and the sword was buried in his belly and Adrian's hand was slick and red and the pain came all at once like someone had pressed a hot coal into his palm and held it there—
The sword had not cared that his hand was small. It cut through him the same way it cut through the man's armour. The same way it cut through everything.
He could feel the handle in his right fist and the blade in his left and the way his arms shook as he ran forward and the sound it made going in, that soft wet pop that didn't sound like anything he had ever heard before or since—
"Adrian."
A hand on his shoulder.
Tyrion.
Adrian blinked. The library reassembled itself around him. The golden light. The smell of paper. Joy looking up at him with wide eyes and a crease between her eyebrows that meant she was worried.
"I cut it," Adrian said. "On something sharp. It will heal."
Joy studied him for another moment, then nodded. "You should be more careful," she said seriously.
"I will," Adrian said. "I promise."
He breathed. The library was still here. Tyrion was still here. Joy was still here.
"I want to read something," Adrian said and only now realised that his heart was beating on his throat.
"Name it," Tyrion said.
Adrian thought. He thought about the books he used to pick from these shelves, the ones about Aegon's Conquest and the Dance of the Dragons and the Blackfyre Rebellions, the ones full of battles and dragonfire and men who killed other men in clever or terrible ways. He had loved those books. He had read them over and over, memorising troop numbers and battle formations and the names of swords.
He did not want those books right now.
"Jaehaerys the First," Adrian said. "And Queen Alysanne."
Tyrion looked at him.
"Jaehaerys," Tyrion repeated.
"And Alysanne," Adrian said. "The part about how they ruled. Together."
Tyrion was quiet for a moment. Adrian knew why. He knew Tyrion was thinking that Adrian had never once asked for Jaehaerys. Adrian always asked for the wars. The Field of Fire. The Battle Above the Gods Eye. The Storming of The Dragon Pit. He asked for the blood and the swords and the burning, because that was where the exciting parts were, and Tyrion would read them to him with voices and sound effects, and Adrian would sit cross-legged on the floor with his eyes wide.
Jaehaerys's reign was fifty-five years of peace. Laws. Roads. Councils. A king who listened to his wife and built things instead of burning them.
Tyrion did not ask why.
He walked to the third shelf on the left wall, second row from the top, and pulled down a heavy volume bound in faded red leather with silver lettering stamped into the spine: Fire and Blood.
He handed it to Adrian.
Adrian took the book carefully with his good hand, tucking it against his chest. It was heavy and warm from the shelf, and it smelled like every other book in this room, like dust and leather and time.
"Thank you," Adrian said.
"You're welcome," Tyrion said gently
Adrian sat down at his usual table. Joy climbed into the chair beside him and pulled out a charcoal pencil and a scrap of parchment from somewhere and began drawing.
Adrian opened the book to the chapter on Jaehaerys's accession and began to read.
The golden light moved slowly across the library floor, and the dust danced in it, and Joy's pencil scratched softly on parchment, and Tyrion settled into the chair across from them with a book of his own, and nobody said anything for a long time, and Adrian read about a king who built roads and kept the peace for half a century.
And for a little while, the library was enough. For about an hour.
"This one is you fighting a kraken," Joy said, holding up a drawing with both hands. "See? That's you. And that's the kraken. It has eight arms."
Adrian looked at the drawing. The figure that was supposed to be him was twice the size of the kraken and appeared to be holding a sword that was longer than the entire creature. His hair was a scribble of silver and yellow, and he had what looked like a cape made of fire.
"I don't have a fire cape," Adrian said.
"I know," Joy said patiently. "But you should."
She set the drawing aside and picked up the next one. The pile beside her had barely shrunk. Seventy-three drawings was a lot of drawings.
"This one is Moonbeam." She held it up. The pony had five legs. "I gave her an extra leg because she's fast."
"That's not how legs work."
"It is for Moonbeam."
Adrian laughed. Tyrion sat across the table with his chin propped on his fist, watching Joy's presentation.
"Show him the dragon," Tyrion said.
Joy's face scrunched. "It's not ready."
"It's been ready for a month."
"It's not finished."
"Joy," Tyrion said gently. "It has wings and a tail and fire coming out of its mouth. What else does a dragon need?"
Joy considered this seriously for a long moment, then dug through the pile and pulled out a sheet of parchment that was slightly more crumpled than the others. She held it up.
Adrian looked at it.
It was, well, it was something with wings. The body was round, almost perfectly circular, and the wings stuck out at odd angles, like someone had jammed two leaves into a ball of dough. The fire was a zigzag of red charcoal that went sideways instead of forward. The eyes were two large dots placed too far apart, giving the creature an expression of permanent surprise.
It looked considerably more like an angry chicken than a dragon.
Adrian's mouth twitched. Then it twitched again. Then he pressed his lips together very hard because he could see that Joy was watching him with the kind of intensity that meant his reaction mattered enormously, and laughing would be wrong.
"It's wonderful," Adrian said.
"You're lying," Joy said flatly. "Tyrion made the same face."
"I did not," Tyrion said. "I made a very different face. Mine had more admiration in it."
Joy glared at both of them.
"It's the best dragon anyone has ever drawn for me," Adrian said, and this was true, because Joy was the only person who had ever drawn him a dragon. "Can I keep it?"
Joy's glare softened immediately. "You can keep all of them," she said. "I made them for you."
Her words made his heart melt. Adrian gathered the stack carefully with his good hand and pressed them against his chest. "Every single one."
Joy beamed. One of her front teeth was missing, and the gap made her smile lopsided and perfect.
The gardens of Casterly Rock clung to the western face of the mountain like a green hand gripping stone.
They were not like the flat, orderly gardens Adrian had seen in drawings of Highgarden or the Red Keep. These grew on terraces carved into the cliff, connected by narrow stone stairs and paths that wound between hedges and fountains and old fig trees whose roots had cracked the flagstones decades ago. The ocean was visible from every level, vast and glittering, and the salt wind blew through the leaves and made everything move.
Adrian sat on the stone lip of a fountain on the second terrace, his boots on the ledge and Red Rain propped beside him. Joy crouched near the fountain's base, trying to catch a small green lizard that lived in the cracks between the stones. The lizard was faster than her.
"Hold still," Joy whispered to the lizard.
The lizard did not hold still.
Tyrion sat on a bench nearby with a cup of wine that he'd taken from somewhere, Adrian wasn't sure where because Tyrion always seemed to have wine the way Joy always had charcoal pencils, it just appeared.
"His name is Ser Reginald," Joy announced, still crouching.
"You've named the lizard," Tyrion observed.
"He lives here. He needs a name."
"A knighthood seems excessive for a lizard."
"He's very brave," Joy said. "He sits on the hot rocks all day. That's brave."
"That's thermoregulation," Tyrion said.
Joy ignored him completely. The lizard skittered up the fountain and vanished into a crack. Joy sat back on her heels and sighed.
"He'll be back," Adrian said. "He lives here. You said so."
Joy nodded, accepting this, and came to sit beside Adrian on the fountain's edge. She swung her legs, her feet not reaching the ground. Adrian swung his too, and for a moment they sat like that, side by side, and the ocean crashed below them, and the fig trees rustled, and Adrian thought that this was the best he had felt in a long time.
He tilted his head back and looked at the sky. Blue and empty and very high up.
"Tyrion," Adrian said. "Did the sky always look like this?"
"It has been largely consistent for the duration of my life," Tyrion said. "Though I admit I don't check daily."
"It looks bigger," Adrian said.
Tyrion looked at him over the rim of his cup and said nothing.
Joy picked up a small stone and tossed it into the fountain. It made a soft plop. She picked up another and tossed it. Plop. She offered one to Adrian.
He took it with his good hand and threw it. The stone arced and landed in the centre of the fountain with a splash that sent ripples spreading out to the edges.
"I win," Adrian said.
"That wasn't a contest," Joy said.
"It is now."
They threw stones into the fountain until Joy declared herself the winner based on criteria she invented after the last throw, and Adrian argued that the criteria were unfair, and Tyrion ruled in Joy's favour because, he said, the judge had been bribed with the promise of a lion drawing, and the judicial system of Casterly Rock was deeply corrupt.
Adrian was laughing when the footsteps came.
Aunt Genna appeared at the top of the terrace stairs, slightly out of breath from the climb, which she would deny if asked. Her crimson dress caught the evening light, making her look like she was wearing a dress made of blood.
"There you are," she said, as if they had been hiding. "The three of you, sitting in a garden like you haven't a care in the world."
"We don't," Tyrion said. "It's wonderful."
"Enjoy the last of it." Genna placed her hands on her hips. "The feast begins in two hours. Your father expects every member of the family washed, dressed, and presentable. That includes you, Tyrion. Especially you, Tyrion. I've had clothes laid out in your chambers. They are crimson, they are silk, and you will wear them without complaint."
"I make no promises regarding the complaint," Tyrion said, but he was already standing.
"Two hours," Genna repeated. "Adrian, sweetheart, there's a bath drawn in your chambers, and the servants have your doublet ready. Your father wants you in Lannister crimson and gold, with Red Rain at your hip. He was... specific." She paused. "He is always specific."
"Yes, Aunt Genna."
Genna looked at him for a moment, the way she had in the courtyard, checking that all the pieces were still there. Then she nodded and climbed back up the stairs.
Tyrion stretched and rolled his neck. "Well. A feast. There will be plenty of lords, if I had to guess. Plenty of people who want to talk, who want to be seen, who want to shake your father's hand and tell him how brave his son is." He looked at Adrian. "Plenty of wine, at least."
Adrian nodded slowly.
"I want Joy to come," he said.
Tyrion tilted his head. "Uncle Gerion will be there. He'll bring her. He always does, even when Father frowns about it, which is always."
"Good," Adrian said. He looked at Joy, who was attempting to coax Ser Reginald out of his crack with a piece of fig leaf. "Joy. You're coming to the feast."
"I know," Joy said without looking up. "Papa already told me. I have a dress. It's green."
Adrian smiled.
Then the smile slipped, just slightly.
"Tyrion," he said quietly.
"Hmm?"
"There will be boys there. My age. From the houses."
Tyrion understood immediately.
"There will be," Tyrion said.
Adrian picked at the edge of his bandage with his thumb. "They'll want to ask me things."
"They might."
"About the Iron Islands."
"Some of them."
Adrian stared at the fountain. The ripples from their stones had gone still. The water was flat and clear and he could see the bottom, smooth stones and a single copper penny someone had thrown in for luck.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said. His voice came out smaller than he intended. I'm a Lannister. Lannisters are not weak...
Tyrion was quiet for a moment. He stepped closer and sat down beside Adrian on the fountain's edge.
"Then don't," Tyrion said simply. "You are the heir to Casterly Rock. You don't owe anyone a story you don't want to tell. If a boy asks, you change the subject. Ask about his horse, his sword training, his father's keep. Boys your age love talking about themselves. Give them the chance and they'll forget they ever had a question."
Adrian looked at him.
"And if they don't forget?"
Tyrion met his eyes. "Then you look at them and you say, 'I'd rather not,' and you say it the way Father says it. With exactly that much warmth." He paused. "Which is none."
Adrian's mouth twitched.
"And if that doesn't work," Tyrion added, "I'll be at the feast, and I will talk so much and so loudly about subjects so tedious that every boy within earshot will flee for their lives. I have a lecture on the taxation policies of Maegor the Cruel that has been known to clear entire rooms."
Adrian laughed, and in that moment, Adrian loved Tyrion even more.
"Thank you," Adrian said.
Tyrion nodded once. Then he stood, brushed off his breeches, and offered Adrian his hand.
"Come on. We have two hours, and Aunt Genna was not making idle threats about the bathwater."
Adrian took his brother's hand and stood. Joy abandoned her lizard hunt and ran over, grabbing Adrian's other arm, the one with the bandaged hand, then correcting herself and grabbing the sleeve instead.
The three of them climbed the terrace stairs together, and the evening light turned the golden stone warm around them. Adrian told himself that the feast would be fine.
It would be fine.
Boys liked talking about themselves. Tyrion said so. Tyrion was the smartest person he knew.
He just had to get through the evening without anyone asking him what it felt like.
Tywin Lannister
The doublet was crimson silk with golden thread stitched into the shoulders in a pattern of roaring lions. Tywin fastened the clasps himself. He had always fastened his own clasps. A man who could not dress himself was a man who depended on others for the most basic function of his day, and Tywin Lannister did not depend.
He examined himself in the looking glass. The doublet sat well. The cloak, heavy crimson wool lined with cloth-of-gold, hung from his shoulders without a crease. His chain of office, golden hands linked one to the next, lay flat against his chest. His boots were polished to a dark shine. His hair, still thick and golden despite the grey creeping in at the temples, was combed back from his face.
Tonight, the lords of the Westerlands would see that heir. They would see Adrian standing at Tywin's side, wearing Lannister crimson, with Red Rain on his hip. They would see a boy who had been taken from them and who had fought his way back, and they would understand what that meant.
A Valyrian steel sword. One of perhaps two hundred left in the known world. House Lannister had not possessed one since Brightroar was lost with King Tommen II beyond the Smoking Sea. Centuries of searching, bargaining, and offering absurd sums of gold had produced nothing. And now a six-year-old boy had claimed one from a dead lord's hands with his own blood.
The irony was not lost on Tywin. He had spent decades trying to buy what Adrian had taken by force. There was a lesson in that, and Tywin intended to make certain the lesson was not wasted on the lords who would fill his hall tonight.
He adjusted the chain at his collar and turned from the glass.
The matter of Adrian's squiring had occupied a corner of his mind for weeks now. Not urgently. The boy was too young and too injured. Around nine months until his hand was healed. Two years, perhaps three, before he was old enough and strong enough to serve as a proper squire. Nine or ten, the usual age. Time enough to decide. But Tywin preferred to plan early and act late rather than the reverse.
The Westerlands had capable knights. Ser Addam Marbrand was skilled and respected, and his loyalty to House Lannister was deep. A squireship under Marbrand would keep Adrian close to the Rock, within Tywin's reach, under Tywin's eye. There were advantages to that.
Ser Benedict Broom had a steady hand and a reputation for discipline. Ser Forley Prester was competent if unimaginative, but unimaginative men produced reliable squires. Ser Daven Lannister of Lannisport was too soft. Ser Harys Swyft was too stupid.
Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch did not enter his consideration. Tywin used blunt instruments when blunt instruments were required, but he did not forge his heir on an anvil made of cruelty and stupidity. Adrian needed refinement, not ruin.
Jaime was the obvious choice. The finest swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms, a member of the Kingsguard, and Adrian's brother. The boy worshipped him already. Under Jaime's tutelage, Adrian would learn the sword from the best living practitioner.
But Jaime lived in King's Landing. And King's Landing meant the Red Keep. And the Red Keep meant Cersei.
Tywin's jaw tightened.
He had watched Cersei carefully since the day he took Adrian from her arms. She had obeyed. She had stayed away. She had married Robert and borne his children and played the part of queen with the competence, if not the grace, that Tywin required.
If Adrian lived in King's Landing for years as Jaime's squire, Cersei would see him daily. She would watch him train in the yard. She would pass him in the corridors. She would sit across from him at feasts. And Cersei, who had never been able to master her own impulses when it mattered most, would eventually do something foolish. A lingering glance. A private word. A gift that carried too much love. The court was a nest of spiders, and any one of them would notice a queen who looked at a Lannister boy with a mother's eyes.
The risk was unacceptable.
Tywin set the thought of Jaime aside.
The Reach, then. The second wealthiest region in Westeros, fertile and powerful, with a tradition of knighthood that the Westerlands respected. A squireship in the Reach would broaden Adrian's connections beyond the western houses. It would place him among the families whose support could matter in the decades to come: Tyrell, Hightower, Tarly, Redwyne. Randyll Tarly was the finest military commander in the realm, a hard man with a hard reputation, and a squire trained under Tarly would learn discipline that went beyond swordplay.
Mace Tyrell was a fool, but his mother Olenna was not, and the Tyrells had wealth and ambition in quantities that Tywin understood. An alliance forged through squireship could become an alliance forged through marriage in time. Adrian was young still, but Tywin knew he would grow up to be good-looking, heir to the richest seat in Westeros, and now possessed of a Valyrian steel sword and a reputation that preceded him. The Tyrells would not refuse.
There were risks. The Reach lords were proud and insular and looked down on everyone west of the Mander. Adrian would need to navigate that pride without submitting to it. But Adrian was clever. Cleverer than most boys his age, cleverer than some grown men Tywin had dealt with. He would manage.
Still. A decision for later. The hand needed to heal first. The boy needed to settle.
A knock on the door pulled him from his calculations.
"Enter."
Maester Creylen stepped inside, his chain clinking softly against his robe. He carried a sealed scroll in his ink-stained fingers.
"My lord," Creylen said. "A raven from King's Landing. The royal seal."
Tywin took the scroll. The wax was black, stamped with the crowned stag of Baratheon. He broke it with his thumb and unrolled the parchment.
The handwriting was not Robert's. Robert's handwriting looked like a drunk man had fought a quill and lost. This was Jon Arryn's hand, though the signature at the bottom was Robert's, a heavy scrawl that took up more space than the rest of the letter.
Tywin read it once, quickly. Then again, slowly.
A Grand Tourney. King's Landing. In celebration of the Crown's victory over the Greyjoy Rebellion and the safe return of Lord Adrian Lannister. All Great Houses invited. All expected. Two weeks of jousting, melee, feasting, and pageantry. The King's personal request that Lord Tywin attend with his family.
Tywin folded the scroll and set it on his desk.
He had expected this. Robert Baratheon celebrated victories the way other men breathed. A Grand Tourney would drain the Crown's treasury, enrich the innkeepers and brothel owners of King's Landing, and produce nothing of lasting strategic value except an opportunity for lords to preen and knights to break their lances against each other.
But he could not refuse.
Joffrey Baratheon was the heir to the Iron Throne. His grandson. Tywin had never seen the boy. Reports suggested Joffrey was developing poorly but reports were not the same as observation, and Tywin preferred his own eyes.
More importantly, the invitation named Adrian specifically. Robert had taken a liking to the boy at the war council. The King wanted to see the "little lion" again, wanted to parade him before the court as proof of the rebellion's successful conclusion. Refusing would be noticed. Refusing would be talked about. And Tywin did not give his enemies — or his allies — anything to talk about that he had not chosen to give them.
There were also opportunities. The tourney would gather every major house in one place. Alliances could be assessed. Marriages could be discussed. Adrian could be presented to the full court, not just the war council at Pyke but the peacetime court, the one that mattered, the one where reputations were built and futures were negotiated.
And Adrian needed to learn King's Landing. Not to live there. But to understand it. To walk its corridors and breathe its politics and see the Iron Throne with his own eyes and understand what it represented. A lord who had never seen the capital was a lord who governed blind.
"My lord?" Creylen asked.
Tywin looked at him.
"Tomorrow," Tywin said. "We begin preparations for a journey to King's Landing. Inform Ser Kevan. I want an inventory of provisions, a travel roster, and a timeline on my desk by midday."
Creylen nodded. "The entire household, my lord?"
"The family. A suitable retinue. Adrian will attend." Tywin paused. "Have his wardrobe assessed. He will need new clothes. What he has is adequate for the Rock. It will not be adequate for the capital."
"Yes, my lord."
"And Maester."
Creylen stopped at the door.
"Have Red Rain polished. Not by the armoury boys. By someone who understands what they are touching."
"Yes, my lord."
Creylen departed. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Tywin stood alone in his chambers. The candles burned steadily. The looking glass reflected a lord in crimson and gold, prepared for a feast in his own hall.
He looked at the scroll on his desk. King's Landing. The Red Keep. The court. Cersei.
He would need to speak with Adrian before they departed. The boy would need to understand what King's Landing was: not a city, but a battlefield where the weapons were words.
Adrian had survived the Iron Islands. That was one kind of war.
King's Landing was another.
Tywin fastened the last clasp on his cloak, adjusted the chain of golden hands, and walked to the door.
He had a feast to attend.
Adrian Lannister
The Great Hall of Casterly Rock had been transformed.
Adrian had seen it dressed for feasts before; he remembered the harvest feast two years ago, but this was different. This was louder. Bigger. More of everything.
Long tables ran the length of the hall in six rows, draped in crimson cloth edged with golden thread, and the candelabras that lined them burned with so many flames that the whole room glowed amber. Banners hung from the vaulted ceiling, the golden lion of Lannister repeated over and over until Adrian lost count. The smell hit him before anything else: roasted meat, fresh bread, herbs, honeyed wine, the smell of every food.
Hundreds of people filled the hall. Lords and ladies and knights and their families, all in their finest clothes, all talking, and the noise was a wall of sound that Adrian felt against his skin.
He sat at the high table beside his father. Red Rain hung from the back of his chair because wearing it while sitting made the scabbard dig into his leg. His doublet was Lannister crimson with golden lion clasps at the collar, and it was new, and it fit him perfectly.
Joy sat further down the table with Uncle Gerion, her green dress slightly too big in the shoulders, her legs swinging because her feet did not reach the floor. She was eating a honeycake with both hands and had crumbs on her chin and looked perfectly happy.
Tyrion sat to Adrian's left, a cup of Arbor gold already half-empty. He leaned close.
"Lord Crakehall is to your right, three seats down," Tyrion murmured. "He will try to talk to you about his gout. Do not let him. Lord Yarwyck is near the second pillar. He will try to talk to you about grain prices. Also do not let him. If either of them corners you, look at me and I will create a diversion."
"What kind of diversion?"
"I have several prepared. My favourite involves asking Lady Crakehall about her singing voice. She is proud of it. She should not be."
Adrian smiled. The hall was very full and very loud, and people kept looking at him from across the room, and he could feel their eyes like small warm points on his face, but Tyrion was beside him, and Joy was eating honeycakes, and the food smelled good.
It will be fine, he told himself.
The first boy appeared before the main course.
He was around Adrian's age, dark-haired, with a round face and a gap between his front teeth that made him whistle slightly when he spoke. He came to the edge of the high table with his father's hand on his shoulder, and his father bowed and nudged the boy forward.
"My lord Adrian," the boy said, clearly rehearsed. "I'm Alton. Alton Brax. My father is Lord Brax. I wanted to say welcome home and... and that what you did was very brave."
"Thank you, Alton," Adrian said.
"Is it true you killed a man with a fish bone?"
Adrian's stomach tightened, but he kept his face still. "Thank you for your kind words," he said, and then, because Tyrion had told him to, he asked: "Do you have a horse?"
Alton Brax's eyes lit up like someone had set fire to them. "I have a chestnut mare! Her name is Bramble and she can jump a fence this high —" He held his hand up to his chest.
Adrian nodded and asked more questions about Bramble, and Alton talked about his horse for a solid five minutes, and then his father pulled him away, and Adrian breathed.
More came.
A Marbrand boy, twelve, who asked Adrian if Red Rain was really Valyrian steel and could he see it. Adrian said yes to the first and not right now to the second. A Lydden girl, nine, who curtseyed and told him she had written him a poem about lions, which she then recited in its entirety while her mother beamed. A Swyft boy who stared at Adrian's bandaged hand and asked what happened, and Adrian said, "I cut it on something sharp," the same thing he had told Joy, and it worked again.
Then came the lords.
Lord Crakehall approached the high table, and he did not talk about his gout. He talked about the Greyjoys.
"A fine decision, my lord," Crakehall said, his thick hand wrapped around a wine cup. He had a voice like gravel rolling downhill. "The Greyjoy line ended on that floor, and rightly so. Every man in the Westerlands sleeps easier knowing you had the steel to make that call. Your lord father must be proud."
Smiling in that moment felt like drinking poison.
"Thank you, my lord," Adrian said.
"The boy, the Greyjoy boy, what was his name —"
"Thank you, my lord," Adrian said again, and Crakehall paused, and then nodded, and moved away. Adrian realised his good hand had closed into a fist under the table.
Tyrion refilled Adrian's water cup without being asked.
More lords came. They shook Adrian's good hand. They praised his courage. They used words like justice and strength and legacy. Ser Addam Marbrand, who Adrian liked because he was honest and did not talk too much, simply clasped his shoulder and said, "Glad you're home, lad," and walked away. Adrian liked that best.
The girls were different.
The younger ones mostly stared and giggled and ran away when Adrian looked at them. One brought him a flower she had picked from the garden, a small yellow thing with a bent stem, and she placed it on the table in front of him and then fled as if she had done something incredibly dangerous. Adrian put the flower in his pocket next to Joy's wooden lion and Balerion.
The older girls were stranger. The copper-haired Lannister girl from the docks, he still did not know her name, appeared near the high table in a gown that was even more revealing than what she had worn earlier, green silk that showed her shoulders and collarbone and the place where her neck met her chest. She smiled at Adrian and said something about how strong he looked in crimson, and her voice did something odd, it got lower and softer, and she looked at him through her eyelashes, and Adrian had absolutely no idea what was happening.
"Thank you," Adrian said, because he did not know what else to say.
She lingered. She said something about swords. She touched her own collarbone while she talked.
"I think she likes you," Joy announced loudly from down the table.
The girl went pink and retreated. Gerion laughed into his wine. Tyrion closed his eyes slowly in the way that meant he was trying very hard not to laugh.
Then he saw Rollam.
Rollam Westerling stood near the third table, beside a woman in black who held his shoulder. His mother. She wore mourning colours, and her face was thin and tired, and she held Rollam close.
Rollam looked the same. Almost. He was the boy from Lannisport, the one who liked horses and swords, the one Adrian had talked to at the festival before everything went wrong. But he was thinner. His eyes were older. He stood very still, the way Adrian stood when he was trying not to feel things.
Their eyes met across the hall.
Rollam did not come to the high table. He just looked at Adrian for a long moment, and Adrian looked back, and neither of them smiled, and neither of them waved.
Rollam's father had died in the attack on Lannisport. Cut down by a Greyjoy axe. Adrian had ordered the people who did it executed.
He wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.
Rollam finally nodded once. Adrian nodded back.
Then Rollam's mother guided him toward their seats, and Rollam went, and Adrian watched him go.
The feast continued. More food came. More wine. More laughter. A singer in the corner began playing "The Rains of Castamere," and the hall quieted to listen, and Tywin's expression did not change but his chin lifted slightly.
Then a servant appeared at Adrian's side.
"My lord," the servant said, leaning close. "Your special feast is being prepared. It will arrive shortly."
Adrian frowned. He looked at Tywin.
"Father? What does he mean?"
Tywin did not look at him, but there was a strange look on his skin, and for a moment, he looked made of gold. "A gift," Tywin said. "For the guest of honour."
Adrian opened his mouth to ask more, but a sound behind him made him turn.
The Greyjoy girl walked toward the high table.
She was smiling. The biggest smile he had ever seen. She wore a plain grey dress, and her hair was loose, and she carried a silver platter covered with an ornate cloche, and she walked through the hall as if every person in it had turned to smoke and she could see only Adrian.
Adrian's breath stopped.
This is wrong, he thought. This is wrong.
She reached the table. She set the platter down in front of him. The silver was polished to a mirror shine, and Adrian could see his own face reflected in the curve of the cloche, distorted, stretched, wrong.
"Your food is ready, my lord," the Greyjoy girl said. Her voice was sweet. Poisoned-sweet, like the drug Euron had pressed over his face, like perfume hiding rot. "Prepared with care. Just for you."
She lifted the cloche.
The Greyjoy boy's head sat on the platter.
The eyes were open. They stared at Adrian. The mouth was open too, frozen mid-scream. Please. I'm sorry. Don't kill me.
The hall noise vanished. Adrian's hands went numb. His chest locked. He could not breathe. He could not move. He could not look away.
"Enjoy what you did," Asha said, leaning close. Her breath was hot against his ear. "Eat your glory, little lord. This is what you wanted. Every bite. Every bone."
"I didn't—" Adrian's voice broke. It came out thin and cracked, like glass under pressure. "I didn't want—"
"You did," Asha whispered. "You pointed at a ten-year-old boy and said kill him. And they did. You watched. Remember?"
Adrian's chest heaved. The room tilted. The head on the platter was bleeding, dark blood pooling on the silver, dripping over the edge onto the crimson tablecloth, and the eyes moved, they looked at him—
"I didn't—"
"Leave Egg alone."
The voice came from everywhere. It was not the girl's voice. It was not Tyrion's or Tywin's or anyone's he knew.
Adrian blinked.
The Great Hall was gone.
He was standing in a room.
Small. Very small. A bedchamber with a narrow bed pushed against one wall and a wooden floor and a single window that let in light the colour of twilight. The ceiling was low. The walls were plain. There was a chair, a small table, and nothing else.
Everything was covered in shadow.
Adrian's heart hammered. His hands shook. The panic was still in his chest, hot and tight, and his breathing came in short, sharp gulps.
He looked down. Red Rain was gone. His doublet was gone. He wore simple clothes, a tunic and breeches, and his left hand was bare, no bandage, no wound, and when he turned his palm over, the skin was smooth and uncut.
The door opened.
A girl walked in.
She was around his age. But he felt that he was older than him; he didn't know how, since she had no face to show her age. Her body was wrapped in shadows the way the room was, shifting and thin, like smoke clinging to her shape. He could see the outline of her, the length of her hair, which fell past her shoulders, and the way she moved, almost like a cat.
He could not see her face.
"Who are you?" Adrian asked. His voice sounded strange in this room, muffled, like speaking underwater.
She said nothing. No words came from her mouth. She stood in the doorway with her shadow-covered face tilted slightly, as if she was looking at him the same way he was looking at her.
"I'm Adrian," he said. "Adrian Lannister. I live at Casterly Rock. My favourite food is honeycakes. My best friend is Joy Hill." He paused. "I'm seven years old. Almost."
The girl stood still. The shadows moved around her, slow and soft, like leaves in water.
"Do you want to be friends?" Adrian asked.
She nodded.
Something in Adrian's chest loosened.
"What should we play?" Adrian asked.
She tilted her head again, and then she sat down on the floor cross-legged, and she patted the space in front of her, and Adrian sat too.
She held up her hands. Adrian looked at them. Shadows curled around her fingers.
She clapped twice, then held her right hand out, palm flat.
Adrian stared. Then he understood. He'd played this before, with Joy, with the kitchen children at the Rock, slapping hands, guessing hands, the silly games that children play when they have nothing else and need nothing else.
He clapped twice and held his left hand out.
She tapped his palm. He pulled it back too slowly. She tilted her head, and even though he couldn't see her face, he knew she was grinning.
"Again," Adrian said.
They played. She was faster than him. She tapped his palm three times in a row, and each time he was too slow, and each time the knot in his chest loosened a little more. They switched to a guessing game, one hand behind the back, and he won twice and she won four times, and by the end he was laughing, a small, breathless laugh that didn't echo in this strange room but sat in the air around them like warmth.
She won the last round. She held up both hands in triumph, fingers spread, head thrown back, and even without seeing her face Adrian could tell she was delighted.
"You're very good at this," Adrian said. "Too good. I think you're cheating."
She shook her head vigorously.
"You are definitely cheating," Adrian said, smiling.
She shook her head again and then, without warning, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him.
Adrian froze. For one heartbeat, his muscles locked and his hand reached for a sword that wasn't there and his mind screamed danger, grab, fight —
And then he breathed.
She smelled...sweet. She filled the air with sweetness.
Adrian closed his eyes.
He hugged her back.
He held on, and she held on, and the sweetness filled the air between them.
And for the first time since the cell, Adrian felt safe.