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A shattered, white moon loomed giant in the sky, behind the rosy tail that had announced, a year earlier, the birth of little Aegon.
His eyes felt heavy, dry. Though she lay at his side, he had not slept that night.
Terrible, sweet Jenny haunted his dreams, showing him everything, telling him of his ruin, past and future. He knew what awaited him: But Lyanna had never seemed so beautiful to him, just as precious as that night itself, and that horrible, unjust world asleep beneath the stars.
Jenny danced and sang of love and death.
There had never been a night without her gaunt, sorrowful face, her eyes wide as twin ponds beneath the moon, without her heartfelt pronouncements.
She had not foreseen her, however. Lyanna had burst into his life, finally setting it in motion, and perhaps bringing it to its end. Only Lyanna’s caresses drove those nightmares away, shrinking them within his eyes.
Her eyes, with the greyness and eternity of a crumbling granite cliff, fixed themselves upon his.
The fire always burned in the hearth of the Tower of Joy, a place named after a newborn emotion in his life.
She lay beside him; over her naked body stretched the sheet, white as the moon.
He stroked her face with two fingers, as though playing his harp. Her delicate skin was still damp with tears. In spite of herself, a smile bloomed upon her lips, as swift as the anger that had flared within her moments before. Wolf’s blood, he thought—and thinking about it, Rhaegar Targaryen smiled inwardly, at how much he loved that part of her.
Her untamed soul, which had fought for others, wearing armors too heavy and ungainly, bearing a crudely painted shield—and yet, to him, she had seemed the very essence of what it meant to be a knight.
“You give me goosebumps,” her voice trilled. “But don’t think I'll forgive you so easily. Or that I wouldn’t fight for you.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
What a foolish, empty thing to say. Lyanna studied him with hard, loving eyes. “It never has been simple, for us. If you can’t say something better, at least do something.”
She said it, and pulled him into a kiss. As the first time he had met her, the prince surrendered.
A white flag, like the moon.
*
“Because you love him too. I know you do.”
“Beyond words,” Arthur said, more harshly than he had meant to. Lyanna, wrapped in sky-colored veils, kept one hand on her belly while the other clenched, as though she wished to grasp a sword.
“Then you should go with him. I do not need all this protection. After I have given birth to the child I will be able to fight alongside Ser Oswell and Ser Gerold.”
Lady Lyanna looked so young now. So small, and blissfully unaware.
“My lady—”
“Lyanna,” she roared, planting her blazing mist-colored eyes into his face, glittering with anger. “We have no need for formalities, among us guilty and damned and enemies of all.”
It was a fine morning in Dorne: strangely breezy, with pale, frayed clouds drifting across the blue, the singing of crickets.
“Rhaegar would never make empty promises. If he promised you he will return, then he will. He will come back and heal his realm, preparing for the coming of the Long Night. He will return to you.”
Arthur kept his eyes lowered as he spoke words he did not believe, words that turned to salt in his mouth.
Then he looked up. In her eyes lingered a hard, cold star, prematurely adult. “He did not promise me.” She hissed, and turning away she went back into the tower, graceful despite the weight of life in her womb.
*
“Arthur.” His tone was tinged with a pleading, fearful note. Rhaegar feared nothing, and he never pleaded. This terrified Arthur to the marrow of his bones. “There is nothing I love more than her. You must promise me you will keep her safe. Her and the child.”
And the day came, the dawn sharp and relentless as a blade. Dawn turned into dusk as the necessary preparations were carried out.
The setting sun lost its strength, thickened the shadows, and played upon their shields resting against the walls of the battlement walk. Now a blood-red hue spread over the keep called the Tower of Joy, and Arthur’s gaze snapped to his prince, his king, crowned with a radiant aura, the deep black of his armor blacker still, the ruby dragon gleaming like red wine beneath the light of a candelabrum.
He had to shield his eyes, raising a gloved hand. “But you will win, Rhae. You will protect them yourself, when you return…” And as he finished the sentence, he understood. His melancholy prince had been so close to all of them that day, so affectionate and energetic, almost cheerful. He had walked with Lyanna lightly, brushing her anxious face, looking at her with the feverish intensity of one who wished to cling to what was before him with all the strength of that final circuit of the Sun across the sky.
They had not wasted much time outside one another’s arms.
Arthur understood, even before Rhaegar gently shook his head, plucking a violet from a cluster of flowers growing from the stone of the bastion, turning it between his long, elegant fingers so as not to look at Arthur.
I do not believe I can return alive, someone said, with the voice of Rhaegar Targaryen—the voice of a man who once sang him songs beneath the stars of Summerhall, saying, See, are the stars staring at us without purpose? I believe there is one: to protect life, in the face of death.
Arthur must have babbled something, because his friend cast him a vexed look, the kind one gives a pupil who fails to grasp a formula the Master has already explained once before.
“I dreamed it, Arthur, last night,” he sighed. “I saw myself dying by Robert’s hand. I don’t know why now…”
A cold shiver ran down Arthur’s spine and lodged in his throat, tightening it. The question he asked next came out shrill. “One of those dreams, Rhaegar?”
The prince nodded, letting a wavy lock of silver-gold escape his tiara.
“Jenny was there,” he said simply, as though that alone explained everything.
Arthur did not understand why Rhaegar was doing this. He had always been so certain, so convinced of his victory over the rebels, sure he would set everything right. His mad father. His true love. Their champion against the Long Night.
Arthur Dayne felt strange, unmoored from himself.
“A ship awaits you at Dragonstone, should things turn ill. With my mother, my brother, Elia, and the children.”
Arthur shook his head. Rhaegar’s face was unperturbed and calm, his tone practical and measured, as always—as if he were speaking of the weight and balance of a tourney lance. His eyes held the rare hue of an autumn twilight when the first evening star appears. Arthur felt as though his ears were stuffed with wool, his mouth thick, muscles slow to obey his commands.
“You have misread your dreams before… You yourself have said it—sometimes metaphors and symbols hide behind concrete things. Daemon Blackfyre at Whitewalls—he dreamed of a dragon that was not truly a dragon, did he?” His own voice sounded pathetic and desperate.
Rhaegar bent his lips into a bitter smile. “There was very little metaphor in this.”
Arthur felt a weight at the back of his neck. He felt heavy. He bowed his head, and when he raised it, he found himself pinned by the prince’s solemn eyes.
“I will die by my cousin Robert’s hand, Arthur,” he said, with unnerving calm. Arthur wanted to strike him.
A sound that could not be his forced its way up his throat. “No.”
“Believe me, I do not want to die. In my life I have never wanted to die less than I do now. But this is how it will go. I have no regrets. I have been happy. So happy…” he murmured, as though he wished to test the feel of a seldom-used word upon his lips, turning to look at the Tower.
The prince’s figure blurred now, a wavering of black and silver. The ash-grey world that risked losing Prince Rhaegar trembled beneath the wet veil of Arthur’s tears.
They do not deserve him. And now they want to take him from me.
He blinked hard to clear his vision. “You cannot. How do you think she will go on? She will be shattered. You know it. Do you not care?”
“She is stronger than you think.” In Rhaegar’s tone dwelt all the sweetness and pride that could be heard only when he spoke of Lyanna, his irises a shade lighter. There was no offended note in his bearing, though the way he spoke skirted lèse-majesté, despite the nature of their bond. He was always Rhaegar—serene, certain, speaking in that ethereal, tenor voice of inescapable facts already written, laid like tiles before a fool who thought he walked upon his own ground, by his own steps.
“And I?” Arthur heard himself say, and cursed himself for it. A petulant, lost child—not a member of the Kingsguard, valiant Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, confidant and right hand of the heir to the Iron Throne. That was what he sounded like.
Rhaegar did not scold him. He never reproached weakness in others, nor even in himself. Arthur heard the sound of his sad smile, and before he saw the arm extend toward him, he felt the warm, smooth hand—bare of its gauntlet—take his cheek, fingers spreading along his face.
Arthur looked him in the eyes. Rhaegar had always had the same gaze: at ten years old, at eighteen, at twenty-four. He had been born with those unfathomable, wounded eyes. He had never been a child, nor a youth.
Arthur turned his head to kiss his palm, took that beautiful white hand and pressed another kiss between the knuckles, hard, before stepping back and bowing. Dawn was so heavy upon his back.
Not even the privilege of dying at your side.
It was better this way—eyes fixed on the sun-scorched grass and the line of knee to boot, rather than on the composure with which his sovereign and dearest friend took his leave to walk willingly toward death. The wild violets growing there seemed utterly senseless to him, stubbornly reaching toward air and light on the evening he departed to die.
When he lifted his gaze, the tower loomed behind Rhaegar. A small blue-and-grey figure leaned from a mullioned window, striking him with an accusatory look Arthur imagined as hard as granite. Yes. I deserve it.
Rhaegar followed his gaze, and his face melted into a radiant smile—one of those smiles that had not existed before Harrenhal, for which Arthur would be forever grateful. Lyanna’s furious stare slipped away from him.
“Go to her, my prince,” Arthur managed to say.
Rhaegar gave him a long, affectionate look Arthur could not return, then nodded and set off toward the tower entrance, to meet Lyanna who was undoubtedly rushing down the cold, high steps.
To protect life…
He would do it. But at what cost?
A noose tightened around his parched throat; his gaze darted away like a hand recoiling from a naked flame.
*
He was beautiful—so beautiful it hurt her to look at him. And it hurt her even more that she would no longer be able to look at him.
His beauty, known from Arbor to the Wall, had reached her eyes at once, but her heart only in time. Eyes between deep blue and violet, long silver hair, finely carved features, full lips, a slender height, the gaze of one who lingers in a world he does not wholly recognize as his own. He would have had strength enough in his arms and in his name to take what he wanted without asking, and yet his movements were gentle, settling upon objects as though to greet them, gliding over the harp strings like water, telling of his sorrow, his ardor.
They had both grown up loving an instrument the world deemed wrong for them. She, the sword. He, the harp. They were broken by a world that did not understand them and did not want them, and only together did they feel the roundness of the whole.
He was everything she had not expected. That was why she had followed him, had drawn him after her, had surrendered to the way it made her feel to hear him speak her name, stunned by the knowledge that those beloved lips had shaped themselves to her sound.
Ly-anna. What a beautiful name she had, and she had never noticed!
She lifted her skirts to hurry down, as best she could, the narrow grey stair. When she reached the lower floor she saw him pass beneath the arch from which the stairs still descended, ducking his head by a full measure, tall as he was.
“Lyanna.”
Ly-anna. Such a marvel.
The anger she felt toward Arthur gave way to something else—an indefinable whirl of anxiety, tenderness, and desire. She let him come closer, the armor chiming, and slid her hands into his, which she found as always warm—so warm.
She began to speak of other things, to hold back time and delay the moment when they would have to say farewell.
She spoke of every possible trifle, her eyes lowered to their intertwined hands: a swallow had built its nest beneath the tower’s beams, its swift flight and arched tail so taut and elegant, black as his armor, and it had chicks, chirping loudly in the morning at the first ray of Sun. She thought she had seen some farmers pointing at their tower—or were they river fishermen? The days seemed to have shortened, though it was spring… because it was still spring, wasn’t it?
Rhaegar listened to her, as always, without interrupting, and she felt upon herself that gaze. At Winterfell she was constantly interrupted by those who believed they knew better than she did, but he never had. He turned her hands over within his fingers, contemplating them, running his thumb over her sword-calluses—calluses any other man would have hated, but not him.
Lyanna did not want to cry. She would not cry.
“My love,” he said, making her heart skip a beat. “I must go. Time has come.”
Her fingers slid over the rubies of his armor, tracing the outline of the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen: they were cold, hard, glimmering faintly with their deep, extinguished garnet glow. They held none of the warmth and life of the chest that breathed beneath them, upon which she had slept so many nights in peace, lulled by that heartbeat.
Lyanna had sworn she would never beg anyone—least of all her man—to stay. She liked knowing she did not need someone to keep her upright, that she was enough for herself, and she had comforted herself in the thought that she would not depend on anyone.
That had been before.
She felt alien to herself when she said, “Stay,” with tears lodged in her throat—but she said it all the same.
He caressed her hair gently, sighing, remaining silent for several minutes. The Sun was slipping out from behind the mountains, and soon the sky would lose its light. His fingers—those precise harpist’s fingers—curled through her locks, sending shivers through her despite everything.
Why must it end? Why must all of this end?
“You understand that I cannot stay. You know why. If I stayed you would be calmer, but I would no longer be able to look at myself in the mirror—and worse than anything else, I would lose your esteem. No—do not deny it, I know it is true, and I love you for it as well.”
His voice was calm, rocking her, as always. But the words were true—and terrible. His fingers slipped from her hair, and she protested inwardly at the loss. He placed his hands about her waist, drawing her to him.
Lyanna lifted her gaze to meet his. The sadness had returned to his eyes—or perhaps it had never left. The eyes of her life, the same deep, velvety indigo as the petals of certain pansies, framed by lashes the color of ancient silver.
There was nothing to say. She felt the rubble-sounds of her broken heart shifting within her as he embraced her, cautious, so careful not to hold her too tightly at the level of her womb—but she wanted more, and held him tighter, pressing herself against him.
“Forgive me,” he said to her.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head in his embrace. “Never!” She felt like a child, but she did not care. She was breathing hard now, and could no longer keep the burning tears—sharp as lemon juice—from falling.
He kissed the dark crown of her hair, where those ice-blue roses had rested, the ones that now adorned their chamber everywhere, spreading their sweet, piercing scent whenever the wind entered through the arrow slits.
“I will try to return, with all that I am. That I can promise you. I have something Robert will never have.”
Their hands met upon her belly. A life stirred beneath the ivory silk of her dress. Their life. According to Rhaegar, the life of the whole world. She did not know if that was true, and she did not care: it was their child, and for that alone it was already special.
She sought his lips and found them, warm and inviting, and her mouth blossomed beneath his, swift and ravenous.
She felt his despair, his fear and torment—everything his voice would never tell her, to protect her. She felt dizzy, her knees unsteady and her heart pierced, yet she welcomed it all, even the rending pain of that knowledge: that too was them. As she clung to the cold armor, she slid her hands into the hollow of his neck where she loved to hide her face.
When they parted from the kiss, the light of sunset returned to them, merciless.
Rhaegar looked at her as he never had before and said, “Remember: my future is yours. I love you.”
Lyanna waited a few seconds, trembling in the indigo world behind her dark lashes, remaining there as long as she could.
“My future is yours,” she echoed. She swallowed, then: “I love you.” More than anything in the world, she would have liked to add—but her eyes said it for her.
More than my own life, his fingers told her, as he caressed her chin with the back of his hand.
Then he turned away, without looking back again.
Lyanna was deprived of the sight of his face and now saw his back, the cascade of white-gold waves of his hair spilling over armor black as jet. She turned and climbed to the highest level of the tower, where the crenellated crest opened onto the valley, to watch him go.
*
Distant—ever more distant—now anonymous, unrecognizable, a small elongated figure of black and silver, one among many.
Lyanna waited still.
The sunlit clearing of short grass stretched before her, crossed by wooded bands of beeches and oaks; the shining bend of the Torrentine River gleamed like the shields of the Dornish garrison following Rhaegar. She was grateful the red mountains lay behind them, or she would have lost sight of him far sooner, hidden by a narrow, bare, copper-hued valley. She would have lost precious minutes in which the two of them still shared space, in which they could still be perceived.
Now he was no longer the tall, slender, strong human form she had clung to so many times as though her life depended on it, with passion and desperation, but a black dot, like a drop of ink escaped from an inkwell.
A moment more. Just one more second.
The black dot galloped away, slightly ahead of the group of soldiers in grey and bronze armor. Black and red banners, orange and gold. The sun and the dragon.
Lyanna’s hands clutched the stone, her knuckles white. Yet they did not tremble. Her gaze was dry, steady, and proud.
Still. Stay with me. Stay with me.
When the black dot vanished behind the beechwood, Lyanna withdrew her hands and stepped back. Her heart clenched as though seized by an invisible hand, swift as a dove’s beat, cold. The same dull, vague pain, the same stab of inexplicable longing that had seized her the first time she had seen the prince galloping along the walls of Harren the Black’s fortress with his retinue—she standing upon the battlements with her skirts tied at the knee, Benjen trying to pull her down, while she remained there, nailed in place, dazed by a vertigo, a moment that had then passed like clouds before the Sun.
Now it would never pass again.
Lyanna went back into the tower knowing that from there she would never leave.