the fading autumn light filters through the high brick walls of the royal gardens, doing little to warm the grey, cooling stone. around the walkways, the summer blooms have long since withered into brittle husks, leaving only the resilient stalks of lavender and hardy lilacs to soften the odors drifting upward from the city below. you are walking with your hand lightly skimming the purple buds, running your fingertips over the small petals as if the texture could somehow ground you. your fingers close around a single sprig of lavender, plucking it to press the scent against your face, but it does nothing to clear the suffocating clutter inside your skull. had someone told you, over a moon ago, when you were still nested in the eyrie, what this kinsmoot would cost, you would have listened to your wife's reprove, burned the letter of lord alester's summons and never left the vale. your curiosity be damned.
another flower grazes your fingerpads. your throughts keep on drifting relentlessly. from jacks, to delfina, to lyanna, to the hightowers, to the citadel (and how your old classmates had likely been the ones reporting your vulnerability to oldtown), to your wife and the children you ought to adopt soon, and the names you had chosen for them in the quiet of your chamber: rowena for a girl, florian for a boy--- a pair of younglings who will never be truly safe as long as perceon sits so close to power, and he had already climbed too high, proclaming himself hand the moment alester left his seat unattended. then you think of what hira told you, then think of alysanne and willas' wicked betrothal. then donnel and davos. the burned. the physician you sent for, all the way from braavos. it is not enough, you know. there is always another fire demanding to be put out.
the voice shatters your stillness. you suffer a teeny-tiny involuntary jerk of your shoulders, before regaining composure. you turn your head, dragging your mind out of the trance to face lady sabitha tully. and as she speaks on, a quiet breath escapes you, something halfway to a laugh, though there is no mirth enveloping it. "no," you murmur, shaking your head softly. "i do not think it lent either of us the catharsis we had hoped for." all of this is a tragedy. you may have lost a powerful ally in the princess, but sabitha is facing something wickeder with the loss of her lady niece. four days of incessant scouring through the bay, and still no sign of the missing. there is a cruel, dark irony to a trout drowning in the water, as if she could not simply swim away from her own doom. looking at lady sabitha now, how dignified she still looked even through her grief, you believe every word spoken about her through amahle's lips, which only helped color her character all the more; stern, demanding and proud. yes, but there is a bridge there, a small thread of familiarity, woven by your wife's youth in riverrun, and you are ever the hawk--- taking whatever perch keeps your family safe.
you take only a single step closer, careful not to intrude upon what little solitude the woman had sought. "i am so very sorry, my lady." your voice drops into a lower, more guarded register. "the first true kindness shown to me upon arriving in king's landing came from lady amerei. i hope they find her well." pray. you should have said: i pray they find her well. that would have been the proper thing. somehow, whenever your words become genuine, you forget the gods entirely. the wind rustles the dead leaves along the gravel path, and your long raven hair with it; unbraided, loose and combed. you could not have forced yourself to sit still for your maids a minute longer today. softly, almost cautiously, you ask: "how is lord balan?"
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