NO SECRETS ARE KEPT IN SHADOW AND BLOOD
Prologue
Death comes for all
— Words of House Gloamwood
I have had nine thousand years to remember.
Long enough for memories to become more familiar than reality.
Long enough that I no longer recall the sound of rain falling on the roofs of the Shadow Valleys, yet I remember the exact look on Brandon Stark's face when he betrayed me.
Some wounds fade.
Others settle into the bones.
The dark beneath Winterfell is patient. It strips away distractions. It leaves a person alone with what matters most and what hurts most until the two become impossible to separate.
Nine thousand years is enough time to know every corner of your own grief.
So let me tell you what I know.
My name is Aenylavhar.
I was born in the Shadow Valleys of the Wolfswood, in lands my people had ruled since before the First Men finished crossing the Arm of Dorne.
My house was Gloamwood.
We were sovereign.
We were old.
And for a very long time, we believed we would remain so.
The Shadow Valleys were not truly dark. Outsiders imagined endless night beneath the mountains, but they were wrong. Light reached us. It simply arrived softened by towering pines and steep cliffs. Morning came late. Evening lingered. Dawn and dusk seemed to stretch forever.
That was the meaning of my name.
The hour between darkness and daylight.
The space belonging fully to neither.
My father always said it suited me.
I think he was right.
My father was the Gloamwood King.
By the standards of men he was ancient beyond comprehension.
By the standards of my kind he was simply old enough to have learned what mattered.
He had ruled for twelve centuries.
He carried a massive black-bladed greatsword that most warriors could not have lifted from the ground, let alone swung. He wore dark armor that had seen more battles than some kingdoms. Children feared him. Enemies feared him.
I never did.
Because I knew the man beneath the armor.
He was not gentle by nature.
He was gentle by choice.
There is a difference.
One is easy.
The other costs something.
Every day he chose it anyway.
When the Long Night came, he entered the breach.
History remembers the Long Night as a war.
History lies.
Wars have rules.
Wars have objectives.
Wars end.
The Long Night was something else.
The dead walked.
The cold learned to think.
And an ancient hatred decided the living had existed long enough.
When Brandon Stark shattered the Walker line and opened a path through the heart of the enemy host, my father led twenty-two of our kin through it.
Twenty-three entered.
Four returned.
One of those four died before sunrise.
My father was not among them.
I remained outside the breach.
Not because I lacked the strength to enter.
Not because I lacked the courage.
Because my father ordered me to stay.
I was stronger than any mortal on that battlefield.
Faster.
Harder to kill.
Young by the standards of my people, but hardly helpless.
None of that mattered.
He was my king.
He was my father.
And for perhaps the last time in my life, I obeyed him.
I watched him disappear into the storm.
Then I felt him die.
Not with my eyes.
With my blood.
Those bound by blood know such things.
One moment a presence exists.
The next it does not.
No sound.
No warning.
Only absence.
A hole where something irreplaceable used to be.
Nine thousand years later I still remember that feeling more clearly than I remember his face.
That is what grief does.
It steals details and leaves scars.
Only four of us remained when dawn finally came.
My grandfather, Vaethoryn.
Nearly five thousand years old.
Veteran of more wars than any living creature should witness.
He returned from the breach drenched in blood that was not entirely his own. A terrible wound ran from shoulder to hip, yet he stood straight beneath the morning sun.
I never saw him lean.
Not once.
Not even then.
Then there was Korath.
My cousin.
My king.
He had lost his sword arm during the Long Night.
He had inherited a crown three days earlier when my father died.
He carried both burdens with equal acceptance.
Lastly there was my aunt Caelith.
One eye.
Missing fingers.
Battle scars covering half her body.
The most dangerous person I have ever known.
She no longer feared death.
That made her terrifying.
And then there was me.
Not yet fifty years old.
The youngest by centuries.
The only one who had never entered the breach.
The one who survived untouched.
At the time I thought that was mercy.
I would learn otherwise.