The water of the Rhoyne was black as ink in the hour before dawn, slapping rhythmically against the wooden hull of the Sea Foam as the Lysene skiff fought its way upriver against the heavy, south-running current.
Daemon sat alone at the very point of the bow, wedged between a coil of stiff hemp rigging and an iron-ringed anchor. He had pulled his dark grey wool riding cloak tight around his chest, burying his chin in the heavy collar, but no amount of wool could ward off the cold that seemed to emanate from inside his own ribs.
He couldn't stop looking at his right hand.
In the faint, grey light filtering through the river fog, his knuckles looked clean. He had scrubbed them until the skin was raw, burning, and red, dipping his hands again and again into the freezing bucket of river water he'd hauled over the gunwale. But beneath his fingernails, in the fine creases of his skin, and upon the dark leather of his riding boots, he could still see the dark, rust-colored stain. He could still smell it: hot, thick, and metallic, suffocating the damp sulfur breeze of the river.
Every time he closed his eyes, the memory struck him with the sudden, violent clarity of a physical blow.
The sound. It wasn't the clash of longswords he had practiced for the past ten months in the courtyard mud with Ser Jonett—the grizzled Reachman knight who had tracked them to Volantis and laid his sword across his knees after seeking out the black dragon. It wasn't the noble ringing of iron on iron he had read about in the old chronicles of the Redgrass Field. It was a wet, heavy crunch—the point of his steel punching up through the soft, yielding throat beneath Qarro's jaw, sliding through muscle, tongue, and palate until it cracked against the base of the skull.
He remembered the sudden, terrible lightness that had come over the horse-broker's body as his eyes rolled back—the way a living, breathing man with grease on his chin and greed in his heart had turned into a hundred and eighty pounds of meat in less than a second.
I took his breath, Daemon thought, his fingers clenching into his palms until his short nails bit into the raw skin. He was standing there on the timber, thinking of silver, and then I ended him.
Ser Jonett had clapped a heavy, gauntleted hand onto his shoulder when Daemon had leaped aboard the deck, barking through his visor that it was a fine, quick strike—a true knight's reaction. His mother, Lady Daena, had looked down at the blood on his boots with a terrifying, radiant pride in her violet eyes, declaring that the dragon was finally waking in her son.
Neither of them had asked how his stomach felt. Neither of them knew the icy, hollow sickness churning in his gut, or the suffocating realization that he had left the last piece of his boyhood bleeding on the wet planks of the Volantene wharf.
The deck boards creaked softly behind him.
Daemon's hand went instinctively to the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, his muscles tensing before he recognized the light, rhythmic pattern of the footsteps. He didn't turn around. He couldn't bear for anyone to see the tremor in his hands or the wet heat stinging the corners of his eyes.
Sela knelt quietly in the narrow space beside him, her small frame wrapped tightly against the damp morning air in her faded grey linen cloak. She carried a small wooden bowl filled with warm, steaming water—stolen from the small charcoal brazier the Lysene sailors kept lit near the midship hatch—and a clean strip of torn canvas.
She didn't speak. She didn't offer the hollow, practiced platitudes Maester Caelen always used when speaking of fate and necessity, nor did she speak of royal blood, legacy, or the Iron Throne.
Gently, carefully, Sela reached out and set her warm hand over Daemon's trembling right wrist.
Daemon flinched, his fingers locking around the pommel of his blade. "Sela... don't," he muttered, his voice raspy and thin, stripped of the cool, aristocratic composure he had forced into his chest back at the estate. "Go back to the stern. It's cold up here."
"I know," she whispered softly, her Lysene accent hushed by the rushing sound of the bow-wave. "That is why I brought the water."
Without waiting for his permission, she reached down, her slender fingers gently uncurling his stiff grip from the sword hilt. Daemon let his arm fall, his shoulders sagging beneath the heavy mail shirt. He felt hollowed out, as if the steel he wore on his chest had drained every ounce of warmth from his blood.
Sela dipped the canvas strip into the warm water, wrung it out with her small hands, and took his right hand into her lap.
With slow, painstaking care, she began to wipe away the dark, dried crescent of blood he had missed beneath his thumb. Her skin was warm, roughened by work, but her touch was extraordinarily gentle. She worked in complete silence, cleaning between his knuckles, wiping down his wrist, and then moving to the dark leather cuff of his tunic.
Daemon watched her in silence, his chest heaving beneath his wool cloak. "I washed it three times. I can still taste it in the back of my throat, Sela. I can still hear the noise he made when the point went in."
Sela's grip tightened on his wrist, grounding him against the steady sway of the skiff. She didn't recoil, nor did her eyes widen with the revulsion he had braced for. "I was watching you from the hatch," she whispered, her hazel gaze holding his without a flicker of doubt. "I saw his fingers touch that brass horn, my prince. One sound, and they would have killed us all. My breath froze in my throat—I thought we were lost."
"I killed him," Daemon said, the word sounding heavy, alien, and terrible on his tongue. "He didn't even have his blade drawn. He was reaching for a brass horn, and I..." He swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash. "I didn't think, Sela. Ser Jonett always told me strike before they breathe, and my hand just moved. I didn't feel like a prince. I didn't feel like a dragon. I just felt like a butcher."
"If your hand hadn't moved," Sela said softly, her thumb tracing the red, scrubbed skin over his knuckles, "Qarro's horn would have sounded across the quay. The tiger-guards would have dropped the portcullis. Ser Jonett would have been pulled down by six pikes, your mother would be in a stone cell beneath the Black Walls, and I would be sold to the slave-flesh markets of Old Volantis by dawn."
She squeezed his hand—hard enough to force him to look at her.
"You didn't kill a man for gold, Daemon," she whispered, dropping the formal 'My Prince' as she so rarely did, her voice laced with a fierce, protective intensity. "You killed a vulture who was about to sell us to our graves. You saved my life. You saved all of us."
Daemon looked at her small, pale face, framed by dark hair damp with river mist. For the time she had been in his mother's household, she had been the only person in the sprawling estate who had never looked at him as a political bargaining chip or a tragic, exiled heir to a fallen dynasty. To his mother, he was the instrument of House Blackfyre's resurrection. To Jonett, he was a squire to be hammered into a weapon. To Caelen, he was a living chess piece to be moved across the maps of Westeros and Essos.
Only Sela saw the boy who stayed up late reading forbidden Valyrian poetry. Only Sela knew how much his shoulders throbbed after hours of longsword drills.
"I felt... cold," Daemon admitted, his voice dropping so low it was almost lost to the rush of the river. "When he fell, I stood there looking at him, and for three seconds, I didn't feel sorry at all. I just wanted to strike his bodyguards too. I wanted to kill all of them so we could get away. That's what frightens me, Sela. What if the dragon inside my blood isn't noble? What if it's just... bloodthirsty?"
Sela lowered the cloth back into the wooden bowl. She reached up with both hands, placing her palms gently against his cheeks, her warm skin pressing against his cold jawline.
"A monster wouldn't be sitting in the bow of a ship crying over a dead horse-broker," she said softly, her eyes holding his without a flicker of doubt. "A monster would be down in the cabin boasting to his mother about his first taste of steel. You are scared because you know what a life is worth. Don't ever lose that, Daemon. Promise me."
Daemon closed his eyes for a long second, leaning his head slightly into the warmth of her hands. The icy, suffocating knot in his chest began to yield, dissolving into a deep, aching fatigue.
"I promise," he whispered.
He reached up, placing his hands over hers, feeling the steady, reassuring pulse in her wrists. For a few quiet minutes, as the Sea Foam cut through the rising river mists and the first pink rays of dawn touched the eastern banks of the Rhoyne, neither of them spoke. They simply sat together in the bow, sharing a quiet, unspoken warmth that belonged only to them.
"Stealing the slave-girl's warmth won't keep the rust off your steel, lad."
The harsh, raspy voice broke the quiet morning like the crack of a whip.
Daemon opened his eyes and turned his head. Standing five paces behind them, leaning his heavy frame against the mainmast, was Ser Jonett Peake.
The old Reachman looked tired, his grey-bearded face lined with deep crevices of exhaustion, but he had already unbuckled his plate armor. He wore a heavy wool doublet stained with old grease, his longsword strapped back across his shoulder, and a damp rag in his right hand. His dark eyes flicked from Sela's hands on Daemon's face to the wooden bowl on the deck planks, but he offered no rebuke about decorum.
Sela quickly withdrew her hands, bowing her head respectfully as she stood up. "I will take the bowl back to the brazier, Ser," she murmured, giving Daemon's shoulder one final, reassuring squeeze before slipping quietly down the narrow gangway toward the hatch.
Jonett watched her go, then stepped forward, his heavy leather boots thudding against the deck. He reached down, grabbed a wooden sea-chest, and dragged it over, grunting as he sat down opposite Daemon.
"Blade," Jonett barked, extending a calloused hand.
Daemon hesitated for a fraction of a second, then unbuckled his sword belt and handed the scabbard over to his master-at-arms.
Jonett drew the steel halfway out of the leather sheath. His sharp, experienced eyes scanned the length of the blade, catching the dim morning light. Near the ricasso, where the steel met the crossguard, a faint, dark smudge of dried blood had settled into the fuller.
Jonett let out a low, disapproving grunt. He reached into his belt pouch, pulled out a small horn bottle of render's fat and a piece of coarse oiled rag, and tossed them into Daemon's lap.
"Corrosive stuff, blood," Jonett grunted, pointing a blunt, scarred finger at the smudge. "Leave it on the steel for half a day, and it'll pit the iron deeper than salt water. Clean it. Properly this time."
Daemon took the oil rag and bottle, drawing the blade fully from its scabbard. He set the flat of the steel across his knees, pouring a few amber drops of lard onto the metal, and began to rub the rag firmly along the fuller. The smell of oil and old steel filled his nose, masking the lingering scent of the river.
Jonett watched him work in silence for a long time, his arms crossed over his thick chest.
"You're thinking about the way his eyes looked when he went down," Jonett said flatly, not asking a question, but stating a fact.
Daemon didn't stop rubbing the steel, though his fingers stiffened slightly. "I'm thinking he was an unarmed man."
"He was an armed man the second his mouth opened to scream for tiger-guards," Jonett countered, his voice hard as river granite. "In war, lad, a tongue can kill three hundred men faster than a longsword. If Qarro blows that horn, Malaquo's guards don't come to take us to a formal duel. They come with heavy crossbows and iron chains. They shoot the horses, they drag your mother into a dungeon, and they put a pike through your belly before you can tell them your royal name."
"I know," Daemon said quietly, rubbing the rag furiously against the stubborn dark spot on the fuller. "I know why I did it. It doesn't mean I liked the sound it made."
Jonett let out a short, rough laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over stone. "If you liked the sound, I'd throw you over the rail right now and tell your mother you fell in, because I'd know I was raising a madman like Aerion Brightflame."
The old knight leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes boring into Daemon's face with intense seriousness.
"Listen to me, Daemon," Jonett said, his raspy voice dropping low so it wouldn't carry toward the aft cabin. "I've been killing men since the Peake Uprising. I was fourteen years old when the King's men stormed the breach at Starpike. A Royal man-at-arms—a boy from the Marches with a purple lightning bolt painted on his shield. He came over the rubble, and I drove my steel through his ribs because my father told me to hold the wall."
Jonett reached down, pulling back the heavy wool of his sleeve to reveal a long, jagged white scar running from his wrist up to his elbow.
"I didn't sleep for three moons," Jonett continued softly. "Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the shaft of that weapon shivering in my hands as he died. I thought I was damned. I thought the Seven were going to strike me down with lightning."
Daemon stopped rubbing the blade, looking up at the old knight. "How did you make it stop?"
"You don't make it stop," Jonett said flatly. "You carry it. Killing a man isn't something you wash off with river water or forget over a mug of spiced ale. It stays in the pocket of your mind forever. But a true knight—a true king—doesn't kill out of hatred, or cruelty, or joy. He kills because he stands between the people he protects and the wolves at the gate."
Jonett pointed at the blade in Daemon's lap.
"You didn't strike Qarro because you wanted his silver or liked his blood," Jonett said. "You struck him because your mother, your maester, and that Lysene girl were standing behind you, and you were the only one with a sword in your hand. That wasn't a murder, lad. That was a shield. Remember the difference."
Daemon looked down at the steel on his knees. Under the firm friction of the oiled rag, the dark smudge of blood finally dissolved, leaving the metal bright, clean, and gleaming in the morning air.
"A shield," Daemon repeated softly, testing the weight of the word.
"Aye," Jonett grunted, standing up from the sea-chest with a crackle of his stiff knees. "A shield. Now finish oiling that edge, put it back in the leather, and come down to the stern. Your mother and Caelen are opening the map-chests, and if I know Lady Daena, she's already planning how to conquer the Free Cities before midday."
The small aft cabin of the Sea Foam was cramped, dark, and suffocatingly hot, smelling of damp oak timber, tallow grease, and the sharp, vinegar scent of ink.
A single iron lamp swung gently from the low ceiling beam, casting long, erratic shadows across the narrow wooden table where Maester Caelen had unrolled a massive parchment chart of the Essosi interior and the Disputed Lands.
Lady Daena Blackfyre sat on a low, velvet-cushioned bench at the head of the table. She had removed her heavy fur-trimmed traveling cloak, revealing the close-fitting purple gown beneath, though her silver-gold hair remained pinned in its tight, majestic crown. Before her sat the dark red cedar heirloom box, its lid pushed open to reveal the velvet-lined trays containing the silver seal-rings, the line-charts of their royal blood, and the dark leather pouch containing twelve hundred Volantene gold honors.
Beside her, Maester Caelen was dipping a quill into an ink-horn, making meticulous notations in a leather-bound ledger.
"Daemon," Daena said as her son ducked his head to step through the low cabin doorway, followed closely by Ser Jonett. She gestured gently to the empty space on the bench beside her. "Come sit by me, Daemon."
Daemon walked over and sat down, his heavy mail shirt clinking softly against the wooden bench.
"How is your arm?" Daena asked, reaching out to stroke his silver hair, her cool fingers lingering near the scar on his jaw. "Ser Jonett said you struck with great force last night. A clean thrust."
Daemon swallowed the lump in his throat, remembering Jonett's words on the deck. A shield. "My arm is fine, Mother. The blade is cleaned."
Lady Daena leaned in, the swinging tallow lamp catching the silver-gold sheen of her hair, but her violet eyes bore no lingering softness. She did not name the battlefield or the red dirt where it had happened—locations were for maesters' scrolls and traders' maps. To Daena, there was only the myth and the bloodline.
"Your father was twenty when he took his first life," she said, her voice dropping into that dark, hypnotic register that made even a cramped river-cabin feel like the hall of a dragonlord. "Twenty, Daemon. A man in his full strength, with shoulders broad enough to carry a warhammer and armor that shone like polished silver. He did not strike in the dark on a damp wharf. He rode straight into the center of the shield-wall, his banner flying high, and ran his steel clean through a knight of the realm."
She reached up, her cool fingers cupping Daemon's jaw and tracing the thin, pale scar left by Ser Jonett's steel. Her touch was firm against his cold skin, lifting his chin until he had no choice but to look her in the eye.
"And when it was done," she continued, her voice rising with a terrible, beautiful pride, "he stood over the fallen and held the line until the sun broke. He threw up his meal behind the supply wagons afterward—not out of cowardice, but because the fire of first blood burns so hot it purges everything lesser from a man's belly. It was the dragon waking inside him, Daemon. It was the fierce, agonizing birth of a warlord."
She smiled then, a cold, glorious curve of her lips.
"Do not mourn the quiet boy you left on that pier," she whispered, her thumb brushing over the faint ridge of his scar. "Your father felt the sickness in his chest, but when he wiped his mouth and stepped back into the camp, every man who looked upon him knew they were standing before a king who could deal death. You are twelve, and you have already claimed your first. You are not a butcher, my son. You are the blood of the dragon."
Daemon felt the fierce, heavy weight of her words sink into his marrow, burning away the hollow sickness that had lingered since dawn. He breathed out, nodding slowly. "I understand, Mother."
Daena gave his shoulder a firm squeeze before turning her eyes back to the map spread across the oak table, her voice returning to its steady, command-ready cadence. "Where are we, Maester Caelen?"
Caelen tapped a gaunt, ink-stained finger against the parchment, pointing to the blue thread of the Rhoyne running north toward an inland trading post, then tracing a solid black line running westward through the Disputed Lands toward the Sea of Myrth.
"We follow the river north to Selhorys," Caelen explained, his dry, calculating voice filling the cabin. "There, we disembark under cover of darkness, buy fresh horses, and take the old Valyrian road west across the Disputed Lands directly to Myr."
Daemon frowned slightly, tracing the road westward from Selhorys with a calloused thumb. "Overland through the Disputed Lands? That territory is a bloodbath for every free company in Essos. Why risk the high road to Myr when we could stay on the water?"
"Because the Company of the Rose will not wait in the mud outside Myr forever," Daena replied, pointing her slender finger at the crest of a thorned stem stamped near the harbor. "Lysene gold proved worthless to them, but Malaquo's silver will secure their allegiance."
"Three thousand Northmen," Daemon murmured, remembering their council back at the estate. "Exiles who hate dragon-lords."
"And care nothing for Blackfyres," Ser Jonett added from the doorway, leaning against the frame with a grunt. "They're cold, stubborn bastards, Lady Daena. They won't bleed just because a boy carries royal blood."
"They care for honor, iron, and a leader who does not cringe from blood," Daena countered, her gaze turning to Daemon. "They will not follow a name on a scroll, Ser Jonett. They will follow a dragon who brings them a chance to march home to Westeros with steel in their hands. Daemon will give them that chance."
Daemon looked down at the mark of the thorned rose on the parchment map, feeling the weight of the moment.
"We take the silver from Malaquo," Daemon said quietly, "and we buy the Rose."
"Yes, my son," Daena whispered, her smile sharp as a razor. "We buy the Rose."
By mid-afternoon, the oppressive heat of the lower river had yielded to a cool, stiff breeze blowing down from the northern highlands.
The Sea Foam had left the immediate hinterlands of Volantis far behind. The high red-brick walls and sprawling olive groves of the city were replaced by vast, wild stretches of tall river reeds, ancient stone watchtowers long since abandoned to moss and ivy, and small, isolated fishing villages built on wooden stilts over the muddy water.
Daemon stood near the starboard rail, watching a flock of pale river-herons rise from the marshes as the skiff glided past.
He had shed his heavy mail shirt for the afternoon, wearing only a thick grey linen tunic and his wool trousers, though his sword belt remained strapped firmly to his hip. The physical relief of taking off thirty pounds of iron felt glorious, allowing the cool river wind to soak through his sweat-dampened clothes.
A quiet step sounded beside him.
Sela walked up to the rail, holding a basket of hard river-bread, dried figs, and salt-mutton the Lysene cook had handed out for the midday meal. She set the basket on a wooden barrel between them, pulling a dark fig from the pile and breaking it in half.
"Ser Jonett said you were down in the cabin for two hours," Sela said, handing him half the fig. "Did your mother speak of the kingdom?"
"She always speaks of the kingdom," Daemon said with a faint, weary smile, taking the fig and chewing it slowly. The sweet, dense fruit tasted rich after the sour, metallic taste that had lingered in his mouth all morning. "We are riding west from Selhorys to Myr."
Sela paused, her hazel eyes widening slightly. "Myr? Across the Disputed Lands to the sellswords?"
"The Company of the Rose," Daemon said, looking out at the rushing brown water. "Three thousand Northmen, Sela. Men whose ancestors crossed the sea because they refused to kneel to dragons."
Sela looked down at her small, calloused hands, her brow furrowing in quiet thought. "Three thousand Northmen sound like a great deal of trouble, My Prince. They say men from the cold North eat raw flesh and break steel with their teeth."
Daemon let out a quiet, huffed breath, a genuine, albeit small, smile touching his lips. "Ser Jonett says they're just stubborn bastards. But my mother thinks they will fight for us."
"And what do you think?" Sela asked softly, looking up into his dark indigo eyes. "You don't look like a boy planning to command three thousand Northmen, Daemon. You look like you're carrying the whole river on your back."
"You see too much, Sela," he murmured.
"Someone has to," she replied with a fleeting, playful smirk that lit up her pale face. "Ser Jonett only sees your sword arm, your mother only sees your crown, and Maester Caelen only sees his ledgers. If I don't look at your face, who will?"
Daemon felt a sudden, deep warmth swell in his chest—a feeling entirely different from the fierce, demanding pride his mother gave him. It was a quiet, comfortable warmth that made the vastness of the river and the terrifying uncertainty of the road to Myr feel manageable.
He reached into his thick grey tunic, unbuckling the hidden inner flap Sela had sewn into his cloak lining the night before. He carefully pulled out the smooth, dark oilskin tube containing Lord Aenar's Valyrian scroll and set it gently on the wooden barrel between them.
Sela's eyes brightened with curiosity. "You brought it."
"I told you I would," Daemon said. He uncapped the oilskin tube, carefully sliding out the yellowed, ancient sheepskin. He unrolled the top section, pinning the corners down with a salt-mutton bone and his small leather belt pouch so the river wind wouldn't catch the delicate parchment.
The High Valyrian script was written in dark, faded red ink, executed in the sweeping, elegant calligraphy of the Dragonlords before the Doom.
Sela leaned over the barrel, her dark curls brushing Daemon's shoulder as she stared at the ancient runes. She had learned to read basic Valyrian from the estate maesters, but the high, poetic stanzas of old Valyria were far beyond her training.
"What does it say?" she whispered, pointing a slender finger at a long stanza near the middle of the scroll. "That line there... with the mark for steel?"
Daemon leaned down beside her, his cheek inches from hers, feeling the warmth of her breath against the cool air. He traced the ancient red ink with his index finger, translating the ancient, melodious words into the common tongue as he read:
"The dragon sleeps in mountain stone,
The fire pales to grey and rust,
Yet steel remembers where it was,
Before the crown was turned to dust."
Daemon paused, his finger lingering on the word steel.
"Lord Aenar wrote that twelve years before the Doom of Valyria," Daemon explained softly, his silver voice smooth and rich in the quiet afternoon air. "He was talking about how true strength isn't in the grand palaces, the silk gowns, or the gold coins you hoard in a chest. Palaces burn, silk rots, and gold gets stolen by vultures on a wharf."
"Then where is the strength?" Sela asked, looking up from the parchment into his eyes.
"In the memory of who you are," Daemon whispered, his gaze holding hers. "In the promises you keep when everything else falls apart. That's why I kept the scroll, Sela. Not because my mother wants me to be a king, but because... when I read these lines, I remember who I am when the steel is put away."
Sela looked at him for a long, quiet moment. Slowly, her small hand reached out across the barrel, her fingers weaving through his, her grip soft, firm, and absolute.
"Then we will keep it safe," she whispered. "No matter how many Northmen join us, and no matter how dark the road through the Disputed Lands gets."
"We will," Daemon swore softly.
As the afternoon stretched into twilight, the landscape along the Rhoyne began to shift dramatically.
The wide, sunlit plains and green reed-banks faded into a low, marshy expanse of dark, twisted willow trees whose long, weeping branches trailed like tangled hair in the murky river water. The temperature dropped rapidly, a heavy, sulfurous chill settling over the deck as the setting sun painted the sky in bruised shades of deep purple and dark, blood-red.
Rising out of the river mists a mile ahead were the shadowy, jagged ruins of Sar Mell—an ancient Rhoynar city destroyed by Valyrian dragon-fire a thousand years ago. Broken stone arches, collapsed marble columns, and shattered aqueducts stuck out of the muddy water like the bleached ribs of giant, prehistoric beasts.
Standing on the raised quarterdeck near the tiller, the Lysene captain shouted a sharp command to his sailors in liquid Essosi Valyrian.
The sailors immediately began dousing the small charcoal brazier near the midship hatch, tossing wet canvas over the glowing embers until not a single spark remained. They moved with a silent, nervous efficiency, their eyes darting constantly toward the dark, weeping willow banks.
Ser Jonett walked up the gangway to where Daemon and Sela were standing near the bow, his heavy longsword drawn and resting across his shoulder. He had put his plate armor back on, the dark iron dull and unreflective in the dying light.
"Put your mail back on, lad," Jonett growled, his raspy voice hushed and grim. "And get the girl down to the hatch."
Daemon looked at the old knight, noticing the sharp, wary tension in Jonett's jaw. "What is it, Ser Jonett? River pirates?"
"Worse," Jonett spat softly, nodding toward the thick, creeping wall of grey fog rolling down from the northern river banks, swallowing the ruins of Sar Mell in a ghostly shroud. "The mist is coming down early off the Rhoyne. The river-men call it the Grey Veil. This is where the mud-thieves and water-rats set up pike-lines when the moon goes dark, looking for ships cutting north toward Selhorys."
Sela shivered, pulling her linen cloak tighter around her shoulders, her hazel eyes darting to the dark, weeping willows lining the shore.
"Into the cabin, Sela," Daemon commanded gently, turning to her. "Stay with my mother and the handmaidens. Keep the door bolted from the inside until I call for you."
Sela looked at him, her eyes wide with concern, but she saw the calm, firm resolve in his face—the resolve he had found earlier that morning in the bow. She nodded once, reaching out to touch his wrist. "Be careful, Daemon."
"I will," he promised.
He watched her hurry down the narrow gangway and disappear into the aft cabin, hearing the heavy oak door slide shut and the iron bolt drop into place with a sharp clack.
Daemon turned back to Jonett, stepping over to his armor crate. He pulled the thirty-pound dark steel mail shirt over his head, settling the heavy metal rings across his shoulders, and cinched his leather sword belt tight around his waist. He drew his sword halfway from its sheath, checking the smooth, clean fuller he had oiled that morning, before sliding it back with a faint, metallic click.
The Sea Foam glided slowly into the creeping grey fog.
The world vanished around them. The banks of the river, the pale stars overhead, and even the stern of the boat were swallowed by a thick, wet gloom that smelled of stagnant water, ancient wet stone, and decaying vegetation. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic slap-slap-slap of the black water against the hull and the deep, heavy breathing of the men on deck.
Daemon walked back to the bow, standing beside Ser Jonett as the skiff pushed deeper into the dark.
His boots were clean of blood now. His hands were steady on the wire-wrapped hilt of his blade. The phantom memory of Qarro's death rattle still lingered in the back of his mind, but it no longer froze his lungs with terror. He carried it now—a heavy, silent shield forged in the dark, ready to protect the few people he loved in the world.
Beside him, Jonett peered into the gloom, his hand firm on his longsword.
"Fear the dark, lad?" Jonett whispered into the fog.
Daemon took a slow, deep breath, feeling the cool, damp river air fill his chest, feeling the hard leather cylinder of Aenar's scroll pressing reassuringly against his ribs beneath his cloak.
"No, Ser Jonett," Daemon replied softly, his silver voice smooth as Valyrian steel, cutting through the damp quiet of the river night. "The dragon isn't afraid of the fog."
Together, in silence, they watched the dark waters of the Rhoyne carry them north, toward Selhorys and the distant, bloody horizon of Myr.