Before a great feast, the Red Keep always changed its smell first—crushed sweet-rushes and hot beeswax rising through the stone galleries, masking the sour tang of road-wool and horse sweat from the yard below.
Otto watched the inner bailey fill from the high gallery, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Going down to the gate for lesser lords would have smelled of eagerness; standing at the rail above meant every arriving bannerman had to crane his neck to find the Hand.
Below in the queen's hall, Alicent held court beside the dais, greeting each arriving lady with a brief smile and a polite word about the Kingsroad that required no real answer before the next woman stepped forward.
Beside her, nearly six-year-old Daeron sat straight-backed in pale grey and gold, reciting the courtesies she had drilled into him all week. Now and then, however, when an older lady praised his growth, the careful mask slipped into boyish warmth.
"Tessarion has grown half a span since autumn," Daeron told Lady Redfort, leaning forward slightly on his bench. "She's blue as cobalt. Not scarred and crooked like Caraxes."
"Indeed," Lady Redfort murmured, hiding a smile behind her fan.
Alicent rested two fingers lightly against Daeron's shoulder. He stiffened at once, coloring faintly as he remembered himself and inclined his head with stiff, belated formality.
The sails of Driftmark appeared off the river mouth on the third afternoon.
Meleys came first—dropping out of the pale autumn glare toward the Dragonpit with a thunderous rush of scarlet wings that rattled shutters across three districts and sent carriage horses rearing in their traces along the Hook. Rhaenys rode into the Red Keep an hour later behind a royal escort, her silver-white braids wound tight as a crown, receiving the trumpets and bowed heads of the outer ward as no more than her birthright.
Corlys docked at the river quay before dusk. Even at sixty-odd years, the Sea Snake walked down the gangplank in sea-green wool and salt-stained leather with a heavy authority that made armed men shift back without being told.
Otto met him in the outer ward—not at the harbor gate, which would have looked like supplication, yet close enough to signal proper honor.
"Lord Corlys," Otto said smoothly.
"Lord Hand."
The pause between them lasted scarcely a heartbeat, with little warmth to be found in it. Neither man glanced toward Rhaenys's Hill, nor spoke the name of the beast stabled in the Pit beneath it.
"His Grace is eager to receive you," Otto said. "He asks that you attend him in the throne room once the major houses have arrived."
Corlys held Otto's gaze steadily. "We shall not keep the King waiting."
Night settled over the Blackwater with the Velaryon ships anchored thick along the quays, their seahorse lanterns bobbing against the dark tide.
When morning broke pale and brisk over the city, the rest of the realm's banners began pouring through the gates in earnest.
Ser Harwin Strong rode through the Bronze Gate shortly after the third bell. He had shed his gold cloak for plain brown wool with no house badge at his throat. Half a pace behind him, Larys eased himself down from a dark palfrey, his clubfoot locked rigid into a shortened iron stirrup as his mild, unreadable gaze swept the gallery rail above.
Otto watched Harwin dismount from the gallery window and made a silent note of where the man stood. Alicent saw him cross the courtyard once and didn't look a second time.
Corlys saw him at midday in the lower hall.
He was seated at the high board speaking evenly with Lord Rowan about winter tariffs in the Stepstones when movement beneath the far archway caught his eye. Harwin Strong stepped into the light, bowing slightly to a steward as he searched the tables for his place.
Corlys didn't look away or break his cadence, answering Lord Rowan with the same smooth courtesy as before, though his thumb stopped moving against the rim of his silver cup.
Across the board, Rhaenys had seen the archway too. Her violet eyes flicked from the doorway to Corlys's still hand, then up to his face—a silent caution before she resumed her meal.
That night, in their chambers overlooking the dark bay, Rhaenys set her silver comb down on the dressing table and looked at her husband standing motionless by the window.
"Harwin Strong has entered the lists," she said quietly.
Corlys didn't turn from the glass. "A brave man."
"A fool," Rhaenys corrected evenly. "And if you set one of your knights to unhorse him tomorrow, you will look a bigger one. Every eye in the gallery will be watching the Velaryon box when he rides out, Corlys—Otto's most of all. Do not hand him the scandal to celebrate. It is to be Daeron's nameday, not his."
Corlys stood silent for three slow breaths, watching the distant riding-lights bob on the black water below—out toward the mouth of the Gullet, where the sea-lanes from Dragonstone met the bay. "They have not arrived yet."
"No," Rhaenys agreed softly. "They haven't."
The royal reception took place the following afternoon beneath the vaulted ceiling of the throne room. Viserys climbed the iron steps slowly, gripping the rail with his scarred left hand, yet his jaw was set cleanly and his breathing came even—a good day, Alicent noted as she took her place beside the dais.
Corlys entered first, walking the length of the hall without the stiff, self-conscious posturing of lesser lords. He knelt cleanly before the steps, and when he rose, his dark eyes met the King's head-on.
Viserys smiled with a warmth he reserved for the dwindling handful of men whose company caused him no pain. He leaned forward over the armrests, forgetting royal stiffness entirely. "Corlys. You look well, old friend."
"Your Grace is generous," Corlys answered smoothly. "You look well yourself."
Rhaenys made her own obeisance a moment later, received with the slightly guilty eagerness Viserys always offered kin he knew he had wronged. "Cousin," he said warmly. "It does my heart good to see you back at court."
"And you, Your Grace," Rhaenys replied.
Viserys stood and descended the iron steps one at a time, signaling to every watching lord along the walls that ceremony was giving way to kinship. He caught Corlys by the forearm, drawing him aside in the low, earnest murmur of two old allies putting their friendship on display for the hall.
Alicent mirrored his actions, stepping forward to greet Rhaenys. "Princess. We are glad you made the crossing."
"Your Grace," Rhaenys returned evenly. "The feast already does you credit."
"Daeron will be honored to have you at the high table tonight."
"We look forward to it."
Behind Alicent, her children stood arranged like a painted tableau: Aegon, fourteen and lounging with practiced, fragile boredom; Aemond, rigid as an iron spear, the black leather patch strapped tight across his empty socket as his single violet eye fixed unblinkingly on Corlys; and Daeron, watching the Sea Snake with open, boyish curiosity.
Then Viserys drew Corlys toward Lord Rowan and the Reachmen gathered along the pillars, weaving Driftmark seamlessly back into the fabric of the court.
Alicent stood watching them across the polished marble floor.
She thought of Corlys in his stifling solar at Driftmark, with blood on his hands and steel in his eyes. She compared that man to the polished, measured lord standing ten paces away now—trading warm pleasantries with her husband, smiling easily beneath the banners of the house that had stolen his son's dragon.
He spoke easily in the light. He gave no sign that the dark had ever happened at all.
Alicent wondered, with a sudden tightness under her ribs, if he looked across the hall at her and thought the exact same thing.
When the lords finally dispersed and Viserys came to her side, his shoulders sagged with visible relief. "That went well," he murmured, glancing toward the far doors where Corlys's sea-green cloak was disappearing. "I am glad they came."
"As am I," Alicent said softly.
Hours later, after the torches in the gallery had burned down to stubs, Corlys sat alone before the dying coals of their hearth while Rhaenys poured two cups of hippocras at the sideboard.
"He is diminished," Corlys said at last.
"Yes," Rhaenys replied quietly. "He seems to fade faster with the passing days."
"He meant it," Corlys murmured, frowning slightly into the fire. "The warmth."
"He always means it," Rhaenys said. "That is precisely what makes him so perilous to trust. Viserys means everything he feels in the exact moment he feels it. Then the moment passes, someone else whispers in his ear, and he means the opposite just as sincerely. He is the kindest man in the Seven Kingdoms—and the most dangerous for that exact reason."
Corlys let out a low, dry breath, his gaze dropping back to the embers. "A costly lesson to learn at sixty."
"Better late than never."
A faint smile touched his mouth as Rhaenys crossed the floor, laying her hands on his shoulders and letting the quiet settle between them.
"They still haven't arrived," she said softly.
Corlys stared into the last red glow of the embers. "No," he murmured. "And by tomorrow night, the hall will decide whether that was caution—or contempt. Either way, we should prepare to bail the water out of whatever boat they rock."
On the morning of the feast day Otto walked the empty throne room alone before sunrise.
He liked the hall best before the crowds poured in, when a man could still see the clean bones of the room: vaulted stone, long oak trestles set with silver, and the three-headed dragon banners hanging straight and motionless above the high dais.
Rhaenyra and Daemon had not arrived.
Otto stood near the steps for one quiet heartbeat, allowing himself to picture the empty chairs beside the King tonight—the whispered questions among the lords, the quiet, undeniable victory falling straight into the Greens' laps without him lifting a finger. Then he smoothed his doublet and walked out, refusing to let even a shadow of hope alter the set of his shoulders.
Morning dragged into afternoon with no sign of sails from Dragonstone. By the time the sun began to sink toward the western hills, turning the sky over the city to bruised violet, the silence from the harbor had begun to feel final. Servants moved through the hall lighting wall-torches against the gathering dusk, their orange flames flickering warmly over an absence.
Otto stood at his solar window watching the river mouth, letting out a slow breath.
Then, high above the western clouds, two shadows tore across the dying sun.
Caraxes announced himself over King's Landing with that shrill, discordant shriek that had no equal in the world—a sound like silk being rent apart across the sky. Horses bolted in the outer bailey; conversations died mid-word across three wards as every face tilted upward. Then, behind the Blood Wyrm, broader of wing and gleaming heavy with gold in the last light, came Syrax—flying unburdened alongside the black-and-red royal galley rounding the river bend below, carrying the Princess of Dragonstone and her children up from the harbor.
The dragon's cry pierced straight through the thick stone of Otto's casement. He stood motionless for a single heartbeat, then straightened his collar, settled the heavy golden chain of the Hand across his shoulders, and walked calmly toward the stairs.
They had come.
His face showed nothing—it hadn't shown anything in forty years. Yet his boots clicked slower down the spiral steps toward the torchlit ward, buying himself a few extra heartbeats to measure what their arrival would cost the night.
Finally he emerged into the outer courtyard just as the heavy iron gates groaned open to receive the heir to the Iron Throne.