“Listen to her, the queen would have cried if she had her tongue. You still have time to flee. Run, you little fools!
…A lioness does not fear a frog, no matter how old and ugly she might be. She should have gone, she should have listened, she should have run away. Instead she took the dagger Maggy offered her, and ran the twisted iron blade across the ball of her thumb. Then she did Melara too.”
Maggy the Frog’s Prophecy.
But there is no pack, she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. I’m not even me now, I’m Nan. You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you. The wolf blood. Arya remembered now. I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.
“… And you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden’s cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back… why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright.”
The ceremony passed as in a dream. Sansa did all that was required of her. There were prayers and vows and singing, and tall candles burning, a hundred dancing lights that the tears in her eyes transformed into a thousand. Thankfully no one seemed to notice that she was crying as she stood there, wrapped in her father’s colors; or if they did, they pretended not to.
“What happened to the prince and princess, in the end?”
“Nobody knows. They disappeared after the seige at King’s Landing. Half the land says they’re dead - but the other half says they’re coming back for their brother’s crown, and they’re coming with an army. The little lion roars as load as his father, they say, and the little lioness - well, she’s got Tywin Lannister in her blood twice over, and rumour has it twice his cunning too.”
He’s me, Jaime realized suddenly. I am speaking to myself, as I was, all cocksure arrogance and empty chivalry. This is what it does to you, to be too good too young.
An ornate snake coiled around her right forearm, its copper and gold scales glimmering when she moved. It was all she wore.
Robb had melting flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried to make kept coming apart in her hands. It hurt to remember how happy she had been that morning. Hullen had helped her mount, and she’d ridden out with the snowflakes swirling around her, off to see the great wide world. I thought my song was beginning that day, but it was almost done.
[jumps through your window] DO YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT GRENN AND PYP AND SATIN AND DOLOROUS EDD
Valyria is a long-dead city of wonderment, and was once the capital of a great empire called the Valyrian Freehold. It was destroyed by a cataclysmic event known as the Doom of Valyria 100 years before Aegon’s Landing.
Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.
A Dance With Dragons
