For half a year Arthor moved through court like a ghost learning to haunt the living. He did not disappear all at once, but faded by increments. He spoke less. Smiled rarely. Ate little, and when he did, only bread and boiled greens. He came to sept each morning with red eyes and bowed head, and lingered after the bells had ceased, as if hoping the statues might answer back.
When his mother asked why he’d grown so thin, why he muttered prayers in his sleep, he only said, “I’m trying to be good.”
He had done his penance. Or tried to. He’d knelt before Vaella and Rhaena both, and even the old maester who had once found him drunken and sniveling in the library stacks. He’d hired a bard in Maidenpool to rewrite the tale, gild it with nobler lies. Letters had followed, and parcels, and coin—so much coin. He’d written to men he hated and men he feared, and offered apologies he did not always believe. He’d done everything he could, save dig up the bones and bury them deeper.
He took care. He took pains.
And he took nothing for granted.
Her future had been arranged with the same careful dread he used to arrange his own. He had begged Rhaena Targaryen for the favor beneath a dying tree, their shadows long across the marble balcony, and she had granted it with something like pity. Or mercy. Perhaps both.
It wasn’t perfect. But it was an escape.
The letter pressed to his ribs was proof of that; sealed with wax, signed in ink, and smoothed twice already for fear of creasing it. As if the maesters at the Citadel might read failure in the folds.
Six months of labor. And now, just steps. Quiet, steady steps toward the harbor, and the ship that would take him to Oldtown.
Away. Gods, let it be away.
He kept to the back corridors, where torchlight filtered through the colored glass in wavering shades of green and gold. His boots scuffed softly against the sandstone floors. His heart was hammering. It felt shameful. It felt brave.
He slammed into someone turning the corner. The letter slipped from his grasp and spun through the air like a startled dove before landing in a crumpled heap.
“Gods, I’m—” he started, but the stranger caught him by the arm. “Looking for me? Tell me, have we ever met?”
Arthor was taller, but still felt like a scolded boy. The septon had always warned him: your tunnel vision will be your end. So this time, he looked.
The man was a stranger. Dark-eyed. Angry. Ah.
The one people whispered had been charmed by Vaella. Larissa had mentioned him just the other day over tea. He had probably come to knock Arthor’s teeth out.
Lovely, he thought bleakly. He had no doubt Doran Yronwood could do it, and neatly. And worse: what would the maesters at the Citadel say about a busted lip and bruised eye? What questions would they ask?
“I care for her. I know it's none of my business what happened between you but could you try to discourage the rumors? Whatever problems the two of you had, she doesn’t deserve to be spoken of so crassly.”
He reached out, clutching Doran’s sleeve like a drowning man clings to driftwood.
“No… no, that’s wrong, I paid for it to be buried,” he said, the words tumbling over each other. “It was meant to be about me. I made sure of that. I—I hired the bard, the little birds, I—”
The panic came fast, like a rush of cold water. His chest tightened. His breath caught. He could feel it slipping again, all of it. Months of care, lies wrapped in silk, bribes offered with trembling hands.
“Seven hells,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “No, no, who was it? If you have names—if I can just speak to them—please—”
It was only then that he noticed the letter, crushed in his fist. The fine parchment now wrinkled, the seal beginning to crack.
Call the hells, and the devils will answer.
