**272 AC - Sunspear Training Yards**
The sword sang.
That's what it sounded like when Arthur Dayne moved—not the crude *clang* of steel meeting steel, but something higher, purer. A song that promised your death would at least be beautiful.
Kael Martell heard the song and answered with silence.
He moved like water flowing around stone, like shadow slipping between heartbeats. Arthur's blade—training steel, but deadly enough in the right hands, and these were absolutely the right hands—cut through the space where Kael's throat had been a half-second earlier.
"Too slow, Dayne!" Kael called out, grinning like a madman, and gods, he *loved* this. Loved the way his body moved without thinking, loved the mathematics of violence, loved the fact that he was alive and breathing and everything in his enhanced nervous system was singing *yes yes yes*.
Arthur didn't waste breath responding. He pivoted—beautiful footwork, really, the kind you got from drilling the same steps ten thousand times—and came in low with a thrust that would have spitted Kael like a Flea Bottom rat.
Kael's training sword batted it aside almost contemptuously. Almost. Arthur was too good for contempt.
"Seven hells," breathed someone in the watching crowd. "Did you see that?"
"See what? I blinked."
"Exactly."
The training yard of Sunspear was a great circle of packed sand surrounded by walls the color of old blood. The morning sun was climbing toward terrible, turning the air into something you could chew. Along the walls, a crowd had gathered—fifty people at least, maybe more. Knights in light linen, squires pretending they weren't staring, serving girls who'd suddenly discovered urgent business near the weapons rack, merchants who'd been "just passing through" for the last hour.
They always came when these two fought.
It was better than theater. Better than a tourney. Better than anything except possibly sex, and some of the serving girls weren't entirely sure about that last part.
"My coin's on Dayne this time," someone muttered.
"Your coin's wasted. The Echo's never lost."
"Everyone loses eventually."
"Not him. Have you seen him? It's unnatural."
Arthur heard them—of course he did, he had the ears of a hunting cat—and something flashed across his face. Not quite anger. Not quite frustration. Something deeper. The particular anguish of being brilliant and discovering there's something beyond brilliance you can't quite touch.
He attacked again, and this time there was no holding back.
The combination was spectacular—a high cut that flowed into a feint, into a thrust, into a spinning slash that came from an angle that shouldn't have been possible. Braavosi water-dancing mixed with Westerosi long-blade work, seasoned with something Arthur had invented himself in the small hours of the night when sleep wouldn't come and the training dummy was the only thing that would listen.
It was beautiful.
It was perfect.
It was exactly what Kael needed.
His body—enhanced, optimized, rebuilt by R.O.B.'s gift into something that exceeded mere human limitation—mapped Arthur's movements like a scribe recording scripture. The Taskmaster gift, the ability to observe and replicate any physical action, drank it all in. And by the third repetition of the combination, Kael wasn't just defending against it.
He was doing it back.
Better.
"Oh, *fuck off*," Arthur panted, but there was laughter in his curse. The kind of laughter that comes when you're too tired to be properly outraged.
Kael spun inside Arthur's reach—the boy was taller, had three inches of advantage—and his training sword came to rest against Arthur's ribs. Not hard. Just there. A period at the end of a sentence.
"Yield?" Kael asked, and his own breathing was elevated but nothing like Arthur's ragged gasps. The Super Soldier Serum saw to that—his cardiovascular system was efficient enough to make maesters weep with envy.
Arthur stood there for a long moment, training sword lowered, sweat running down his face in rivers. His violet eyes—the eyes of old Valyria, though the Daynes had been in Westeros since the Dawn Age—met Kael's brown ones.
Then he started laughing.
Not polite laughter. Not the kind you gave to be gracious. Real laughter, the kind that came from your belly and meant something true.
"You absolute *bastard*," Arthur said, still laughing. "That was my move. My *secret* move. I've been working on it for six months."
"It was very good," Kael said seriously.
"It didn't *work*."
"Well. No."
"And now you can do it."
"Yes."
"Better than me."
"Possibly."
"*Probably*."
"Fine. Probably."
Arthur threw his training sword down—not in anger, just exhaustion—and flopped onto the ground right there in the sand. "I yield to the Echo of Sunspear. Again. As always. Until the sun goes dark and the seas run dry and I'm an old man with no teeth telling stories about how I never once beat Kael Martell."
The crowd erupted. Cheering, groaning, the sound of coins changing hands as bets were settled. Someone started clapping in rhythm, and soon half the yard had joined in.
Kael extended a hand. Arthur took it, and Kael hauled him up with the easy strength that still sometimes surprised him. In his previous life—fragments, memories, Mumbai—he'd been strong enough but nothing special. Now? Now his body was a weapon that happened to be wrapped in skin.
"You're getting better," Kael offered.
"I'm getting faster at losing," Arthur corrected, but he was grinning now. "One day, Kael. I swear by the Seven and the old gods and any gods who'll listen. One day I'll beat you."
"I look forward to it."
"Liar."
"Truth-bender."
"That's not a thing."
"It is now. I just made it a thing."
Arthur shook his head, still grinning, and grabbed for the waterskin being offered by one of the squires. He drank like a man crossing the Red Waste, water running down his chin.
"Your problem," Kael said, accepting his own water, "is that you telegraph. Just a fraction. Right before the spin-slash. Your shoulder dips maybe a quarter-inch."
"A *quarter-inch*?"
"Maybe less."
"And you see that."
"I see everything."
"That's unsettling."
"I've been told."
On the far side of the yard, Prince Lewyn Martell pushed off from the wall where he'd been watching. He was Kael's uncle—his mother's younger brother—and master-at-arms of Sunspear. Forty years old, with the build of a man who'd spent his life either fighting or preparing to fight. His beard was going gray in interesting patterns, and his eyes missed nothing.
He'd trained both boys since they could hold wooden swords.
He'd never seen anything like Kael.
"Martell!" Lewyn's voice carried across the yard, cutting through the crowd noise like a knife through silk. "Your mother summons you. Sun Court. Now."
Kael's eyebrows rose. The Sun Court was for formal occasions—announcements, judgments, presentations. Not casual "come say hello to your mother" visits.
"Did she say why?"
"She said—" Lewyn paused, and something that might have been amusement flickered across his face. "She said two years is long enough to wait."
Kael's breath caught.
*Oh.*
Arthur noticed. "What? What's two years?"
"My father," Kael said quietly. "Before he died. He said he'd commissioned something. A gift. For when I earned my knighthood."
"You earned that six months ago."
"These things take time."
"What kind of gift takes two *years*?"
Kael thought about Daemon Qoherys, his father who'd been born to old Valyrian nobility in Volantis and died falling from a horse in Dorne like some common farmer. Thought about the way Daemon had looked at him that last month, like he was seeing something in Kael that he recognized but couldn't name.
*The greatest swordsman in the world*, Daemon had said. *That's what you'll be. So you'll need a blade worthy of it.*
"The kind that matters," Kael said.
He turned to go, then paused. "Arthur. That combination really was good. The timing, the flow. It just needs—"
"—less shoulder dip. Yes. I hate you."
"No you don't."
"No," Arthur agreed, grinning. "But I should."
Kael jogged toward the Sun Court, and the crowd parted for him the way water parts for a ship's prow. He heard the whispers as he passed—always whispers when it came to the Echo.
"—copies anything he sees—"
"—unnatural, really, the way he moves—"
"—heard he learned High Valyrian in three weeks just from listening to—"
"—Prince Lewyn says he's never seen anything like—"
Kael let the whispers wash over him. He'd learned to live with them. The way people looked at him sometimes, like he was something other. Something not quite right.
They weren't wrong.
He'd died in another world and come back with gifts that made him more than human. And every day he woke up and pretended to be normal, pretended his reflexes were just good training, pretended his body wasn't optimized to the edge of human possibility.
But gods, it was exhausting sometimes.
The Sun Court of Sunspear was the heart of House Martell's power—a great circular chamber open to the sky, with walls of yellow sandstone that glowed like honey in the light. The floor was polished smooth by centuries of feet, and high on the walls, the sun and spear of House Martell hung in red and gold and orange.
His family waited.
Princess Neria sat in the Speaker's Chair—not quite a throne, because Dorne didn't do thrones, but a chair that meant *this person's word is law*. She was forty-one, and grief had carved lines into her face like rivers cutting through stone. But she was still beautiful. Still fierce. Still the woman who'd buried sons and miscarried daughters and kept breathing anyway because that's what Martells did.
She watched Kael enter, and her eyes were wet.
*Oh no*, Kael thought. *She's going to make me cry in public. That's not fair.*
Beside Neria stood Doran, eldest of her children from her first marriage. Twenty-four now, brilliant, patient, already showing signs of the gout that would eventually cripple him. His wife Mellario stood at his side—dark-haired, beautiful, pregnant with their first child and glowing the way pregnant women supposedly glowed but usually just looked tired. They'd met in Norvos when Doran was squiring there, and he'd brought her back to Dorne like a man bringing back treasure.
Elia was there too.
Kael's twin. His other half. Fifteen years old and still impossibly fragile, with lungs that struggled and a heart that worked too hard and a body that treated living like a daily negotiation with death.
But *alive*. Despite everything. Despite all the maester's predictions and the worried whispers and the way she'd been born too small, too weak, too unlikely to survive the night.
She stood with her lady-in-waiting Ashara Dayne—Arthur's twin sister, violet-eyed and dark-haired and so beautiful it was almost aggressive. Ashara had been looking at Kael with a certain expression for about a year now, and Kael had been very carefully pretending not to notice.
Not because she wasn't beautiful. Not because she wasn't clever or kind or funny.
But because his heart was still half-living in a Mumbai alley, and you couldn't love someone properly when half your heart was somewhere else.
"Kael!" Oberyn called out, because Oberyn was fourteen and incapable of inside voices. "Mother's been waiting for you! We've been here for *ages*! I'm aging visibly! Look—is that a gray hair?"
"That's dirt," Elia said.
"How dare you. This is distinguished dirt."
"It's dirt on your unwashed head."
"I washed three days ago!"
"Oberyn," Neria said, and one word was enough. Oberyn subsided, grinning unrepentantly.
Kael approached the Speaker's Chair and knelt. Old tradition. Old forms. The kind that mattered.
Neria looked down at him, and for just a moment, Kael saw her as she must have been at twenty—beautiful and fierce and unbroken by loss. Before Mors died. Before Olyvar died. Before the three miscarriages and the two stillbirths and all the small ways the world had tried to break her.
"Fifteen years ago," she said, and her voice carried across the Sun Court like a bell, "I brought twins into the world. I feared I would lose them both. The gods know I'd lost enough already."
Kael's throat tightened. He remembered his birth, somehow—not with clarity, but with feeling. The cold air. The bright light. Elia's tiny hand in his. The sense that he'd been given something precious and breakable to protect.
"My daughter lived," Neria continued. "Fragile as morning glass, but she *lived*. And my son—" She paused, and something complicated moved across her face. "My son was strange from the beginning. Too watchful. Too careful. Like he was seeing things the rest of us couldn't."
*You have no idea*, Kael thought.
"Your father loved you both," Neria said. "Daemon Qoherys was many things—sad, perhaps. Haunted by whatever drove him from Volantis. But he loved his children with everything he was. And before he died, he made arrangements."
Two servants entered from a side door, carrying something long and wrapped in cloth-of-gold.
Kael's enhanced hearing caught the collective intake of breath from everyone watching.
The servants placed their burden on a table before the Speaker's Chair with the particular care of people handling something both precious and dangerous.
Neria descended the three steps from the chair—she was small, barely five feet, but she moved like queens moved in stories, like the ground should be grateful for her attention.
"Your father had no great wealth," she said, quiet now, speaking just to Kael. "The Qoherys fortune had faded long before he came to Dorne. But he had small things. Heirlooms. Rings. A pendant. A bracelet. Bits of Valyrian steel worked into jewelry, passed down through his family for generations." She reached for the cloth-of-gold. "Not much. But enough, he thought, for something better."
She pulled the cloth away.
The world stopped.
The sword lay on red velvet like a god resting on clouds.
Valyrian steel. No question. The blade rippled with the distinctive smoke-patterns that marked true dragon-forged metal—the kind of craftsmanship that had died with Old Valyria and its secrets. The steel seemed to drink the light and give it back transformed, darker, stranger, like shadow given edge.
The crossguard was worked gold shaped like sun-rays, each ray tipped with a small ruby that caught the light and held it like captured fire.
The grip was purple leather—the color of House Qoherys—wrapped around some dark wood that might have been ironwood or ebony or something even older.
And the pommel.
Gods, the pommel.
A golden sun with flame-like rays radiating outward, and set in its center, a ruby the size of a child's fist. Blood-red. Fire-red. The color of things worth dying for.
Kael reached out with hands that were shaking—enhanced metabolism and super-soldier physiology be damned—and lifted the sword.
It was perfect.
The weight. The balance. The way it seemed to hum in his grip like it was pleased to finally be held by hands that understood it.
He gave it a slow swing, and the blade cut through the air with a sound like whispered promises.
"Valyrian steel," Doran said, and his voice was wondering. "Seven hells, Kael. Do you know how rare—"
"I know," Kael said. His voice came from somewhere far away. Somewhere that remembered Daemon's face. Remembered the way his father had looked at him that last week before the horse and the fall and the stupid, unlikely death.
*Be good*, Daemon had said. *Be strong. But mostly, be good. The world has enough strong men who do terrible things. Be the kind of strong that protects instead of breaks.*
"The blacksmiths of Qohor," Neria said, "are the only ones who still remember. How to work Valyrian steel. How to reshape it without breaking it. Your father sent them his family's heirlooms two years before he died. He commissioned this for you. For his strange, brilliant, impossible son."
She reached up and touched Kael's cheek.
"He knew," she said softly. "I don't know how, but he knew. That you'd be something remarkable. Something the world had never seen before. And he wanted you to have a blade worthy of it."
Kael couldn't speak. If he spoke, he'd cry. And he was fifteen years old and the Echo of Sunspear and he had a reputation to maintain.
"What will you name it?" Oberyn demanded, because Oberyn had the emotional intelligence of an enthusiastic puppy. "All great swords have names! Ice! Blackfyre! Dawn! You need something that makes people soil themselves when they hear it!"
"Oberyn," Elia said. "Please stop talking."
"But—"
"*Please*."
Kael turned the blade, watching the light play across the rippled steel. Watched the sun-rays catch fire in the rubies. Felt the purple leather grip against his palm—the color of his father's house, the house that had nothing left but pride and old blood and bits of Valyrian steel jewelry.
He thought of Daemon Qoherys, who'd crossed the Narrow Sea to escape something and found love instead.
He thought of Kunal Marathe, who'd died in an alley saving a stranger because it was the True Thing.
He thought of the promise he'd made to himself every time he looked at Elia—that he wouldn't let this world take her the way it had taken everyone else.
"Solemn Vow," he said.
The Sun Court went quiet.
"Interesting choice," Doran said carefully. "That's... heavy. That's a heavy name for a blade."
Kael looked at his older brother. Doran was watching him with those too-clever eyes, like he was reading a book written in Kael's expression.
"A sword is a promise," Kael said. "Every time you draw it, you're promising something. To protect someone. To stand for something. To be something." He looked down at the blade, at Solemn Vow, at the weapon his father had commissioned from beyond death. "Some promises are worth keeping. Even if they cost you everything."
Neria made a small sound—not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.
"You're so much like him," she said. "Like Daemon. That's exactly the kind of thing he'd say."
"Is it?"
"He once told me—" She paused, collecting herself. "He once told me that every person stands at a crossroads every day. Between doing the easy thing and doing the right thing. And that the measure of a man is how many times he chooses right, even when easy is standing there looking so tempting."
Kael felt something crack open in his chest.
"He was a good man," he said quietly.
"He was," Neria agreed. "And you're his son. In all the ways that matter."
Ashara Dayne, who'd been silent until now, suddenly spoke up. "May I see it? The blade?"
Kael turned, surprised. Ashara was watching him with those violet eyes—Valyrian eyes, even though the Daynes weren't Valyrian—and there was something in her expression that made his enhanced reflexes kick into overdrive.
She wasn't just asking to see the sword.
She was asking something else entirely.
"Of course, my lady," he said, because what else could he say?
He crossed to where she stood with Elia, and held out Solemn Vow.
Ashara took it with the careful hands of someone who'd grown up around warriors and understood that blades were not toys. She held it up to the light, examined the craftsmanship, traced the sun-rays on the crossguard with one finger.
"It's beautiful," she said. "Your father had excellent taste."
"He did. He married my mother."
Neria laughed—surprised and delighted.
Ashara's lips quirked. "And here I thought Oberyn was the charmer of the family."
"Oberyn's a chaos demon in human skin," Elia said. "Kael's different."
"How so?"
"He means it when he says things."
Ashara met Kael's eyes, and for just a moment, something passed between them. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition. Or the beginning of something that could become dangerous if neither of them was careful.
"I believe that," Ashara said softly, and handed Solemn Vow back.
Their fingers touched.
Kael's enhanced nervous system registered the contact like lightning—the warmth of her skin, the slight tremor in her hand, the way her pulse quickened just a fraction.
*Don't*, he told himself. *Don't do this. You can't afford complications. You can't afford to care about anyone else when you're already trying to save Elia and Doran and everyone else who dies in the story you remember.*
But gods, she was beautiful.
And kind.
And looking at him like he was something worth seeing.
"Thank you," he said, and took Solemn Vow back.
Oberyn, who'd been watching this entire exchange with the delighted expression of someone witnessing excellent gossip being created, leaned over to Elia.
"Is it just me," he whispered, not quietly enough, "or is there a *situation* developing?"
"There's no situation," Elia whispered back.
"There's absolutely a situation."
"Oberyn—"
"I'm calling it now. Before the year's out, Kael and Ashara are going to—"
"Finish that sentence and I'll tell Mother about the thing with the serving girl."
Oberyn shut up.
Doran, who'd been quietly observing everything, cleared his throat.
"Brother," he said to Kael. "Might I see the blade as well?"
Kael crossed to where Doran stood with Mellario. Up close, he could see the tension around Doran's eyes—pain, carefully hidden, but there if you knew to look.
The gout was getting worse.
*I need to talk to Maester Caleotte*, Kael thought. *There has to be something. Some treatment. I can't save Elia just to watch Doran crumble.*
"It's magnificent," Doran said, examining Solemn Vow. "Father must have spent a fortune. Even for scrap Valyrian steel, even for small pieces—the cost of reforging this—"
"He spent everything," Neria said quietly. "Every coin he had left. The Qoherys fortune was already faded, but what remained—he spent it on this."
"Why?" Doran asked. "Why so much for a sword?"
"Because he knew," Neria said. "He saw what Kael was becoming. What he'd already become. And he wanted his son to have the tools to protect people." She looked at Kael. "That's what you do, isn't it? Protect people. You've been doing it since you were old enough to walk. Protecting Elia. Protecting Oberyn. Protecting everyone you think needs protecting."
Kael wanted to deny it.
But she was right.
"Someone has to," he said.
"Why you?"
Because I died once and came back. Because I have gifts that make me stronger and faster and better than human. Because I remember things that haven't happened yet and I know who dies and when and how, and I can't let it happen again.
"Because I can," he said instead.
Doran handed Solemn Vow back, and his expression was complicated—pride and concern and something that might have been sadness all mixed together.
"Be careful, little brother," Doran said quietly. "The world doesn't like people who try to save it. It tends to break them."
"Then I'll be unbreakable."
"That's not how it works."
"Then I'll change how it works."
Doran smiled—tired and real. "You sound like Father."
"Good."
Prince Lewyn's voice cut through the moment. "If we're done with the touching family scene—and I say this with love—there's a feast being prepared. And I, for one, would like to eat something before I collapse from standing in the sun all morning watching you people have feelings."
"Uncle," Elia said. "That's not very romantic."
"I'm old. I've earned the right to be unromantic. Come on. Food. Now."
The family moved toward the doors, already talking and laughing and bickering the way families do. Oberyn was trying to convince Mellario that yes, he absolutely needed to hold the sword, just for a minute. Doran was telling him absolutely not. Neria was laughing.
Elia hung back, waiting for Kael.
When everyone else had moved ahead, she touched his arm.
"That name," she said quietly. "Solemn Vow. You meant me, didn't you?"
Kael looked at his twin—fragile and fierce and still alive despite everything.
"I meant everyone," he said. "But yes. You most of all."
"I don't need saving, Kael."
"I know."
"I'm not going to die just because everyone expects me to."
"I know that too."
"Then why—"
"Because I'm your brother," Kael said simply. "And because I'd rather die myself than watch the world take you. So yes, Solemn Vow. A promise. That I'll stand between you and anything that wants to hurt you. For as long as I live."
Elia's eyes filled with tears.
"You're going to make me cry," she said. "In public. That's not fair."
"Life isn't fair."
"Says the boy who just got a Valyrian steel sword."
"Says the girl with the most beautiful heart in Dorne."
"Oh, shut *up*."
But she was smiling through her tears, and when they walked to the feast together, she held his arm like she was afraid he might disappear if she let go.
Behind them, Ashara Dayne watched them go, and her own eyes were not entirely dry.
"They're close," Lewyn observed, appearing beside her like a ghost.
"They're twins."
"They're more than that. He'd burn the world for her if he had to."
"Would that be so bad? If someone loved you that much?"
Lewyn was quiet for a long moment.
"No," he said finally. "But it's dangerous. When you love something that much, you give the world a weapon to use against you. And the world is very good at finding weapons."
Ashara thought about that as she followed the family toward food and music and the kind of joy that's always temporary but feels permanent in the moment.
And high above the Sun Court, on a balcony no one was using, R.O.B. stood and watched and smiled.
The sword had been given.
The promise had been made.
Now came the interesting part.
Now came the breaking.
Or the becoming.
Time, as always, would tell.
---
**272 AC - Sunspear, The Tower of the Sun - Late Evening**
The wine was Dornish red, which meant it was strong enough to strip paint and sweet enough to pretend it wasn't.
Kael sipped it carefully, watching his brother across the low table. They were in Doran's private solar—high in the Tower of the Sun, where the heat of the day finally broke against cool stone and the evening breeze came off the sea smelling of salt and promises.
Solemn Vow lay on the table between them, still in its scabbard, catching lamplight and throwing it back transformed.
Doran hadn't spoken in five minutes. Just sat there in his chair—the one with extra cushioning for his joints—and studied the sword like it was a problem to be solved.
"You're doing the thing," Kael said finally.
"What thing?"
"The thinking-so-hard-I-can-hear-it thing."
Doran's lips twitched. "I don't do a thing."
"You absolutely do a thing. Your left eye does this—" Kael demonstrated, a slight narrowing. "And your fingers start tapping. Like you're counting something only you can see."
"You're observant."
"I'm annoying. There's a difference."
"Both can be true." Doran took a longer drink of his wine, winced slightly—the gout again, Kael noted, always worse in the evening—and set the cup down with careful precision. "That's a dangerous gift, little brother."
"The sword?"
"The sword. The name. The promise it represents." Doran leaned forward, and his dark eyes were serious in a way that made Kael's enhanced instincts prickle with warning. "Solemn Vow. Do you understand what you've done?"
"I named a sword."
"You made a *declaration*. In front of half the court. That you're binding yourself to something. That you're swearing yourself to—what? Protection? Justice? Saving everyone who needs saving?"
Kael was quiet for a moment, turning his own cup between his hands.
"Would that be so terrible?"
"It would be *impossible*," Doran said, and there was heat in his voice now. Frustration. The particular edge that came when brilliant people saw disasters approaching and couldn't figure out how to stop them. "Kael, you're fifteen. Fifteen. You've earned your knighthood, yes. You're the finest swordsman I've ever seen, yes. But you're still *young*. And you're talking like—like you're preparing for war."
"Maybe I am."
The words hung in the air between them like smoke.
Doran sat back slowly, studying his youngest brother with new intensity.
"Explain," he said.
Kael thought about how much he could say. How much Doran would believe. How much would sound like madness versus truth.
He settled for something in between.
"The world is changing," Kael said carefully. "King Aerys grows madder by the month. The reports from King's Landing—the paranoia, seeing traitors in every shadow. That doesn't end well. It *can't* end well."
"No," Doran agreed. "It can't. But Dorne is far from King's Landing. We have the deserts and the mountains between us and—"
"And Elia."
Doran stopped.
"What about Elia?"
"She's beautiful," Kael said quietly. "She's a Martell. And she's exactly the kind of bride a mad king might want to tie Dorne closer to the Iron Throne." He met Doran's eyes. "Have you thought about that? About what happens when Aerys decides he needs to secure Dornish support? When he looks south and sees an unbetrothed princess?"
Doran's face had gone very still.
"You've been thinking about this," he said slowly. "For how long?"
*Since I woke up in this world with memories of another one. Since I realized where I was and what story I'd been born into. Since I understood that Elia marries Rhaegar and dies screaming in King's Landing while Gregor Clegane—*
"A while," Kael said.
"And you think—what? That you can protect her? With a sword? Even a Valyrian steel sword?"
"I think I have to try."
"Why?" Doran leaned forward again, urgent now. "Why is this *your* burden? We have armies. Alliances. If Elia diwa marry Rhaegar, Uncle Lewyn would probably join the Kingsguard—he'll protect our interests at court. Why does my fifteen-year-old brother think he needs to carry the weight of House Martell on his shoulders?"
Because I'm not just your fifteen-year-old brother. Because I'm also Kunal Marathe, who died saving a stranger because it was the True Thing. Because I was given a second life and gifts that make me more than human, and what's the point of any of it if I just stand by and watch everyone I love die the way the story says they should?
"Because I love her," Kael said simply. "Because she's my twin and she's fragile and the world is full of things that break fragile things. And because—"
He stopped.
"Because?" Doran prompted.
"Because someone has to," Kael finished. "Someone has to stand in the gap. Someone has to be willing to do the impossible, even if it costs them everything. And I—" He touched Solemn Vow's scabbard. "I can. So I will."
Doran was quiet for a long time. Outside, the evening had deepened into full night. Somewhere in the castle, music was playing—the remnants of the feast, still going strong. Laughter floated up through the warm air.
"You sound like Father," Doran said finally. "Daemon. He used to say things like that. About duty. About standing between the weak and the cruel. He was—" Doran paused, choosing words carefully. "He was haunted by something. Something from Volantis. Something he left behind or ran from. He never spoke of it directly, but sometimes late at night, when he thought no one was listening, he'd talk about choices. About the weight of not acting."
Kael felt something tighten in his chest. He'd never known what drove Daemon from Volantis. The man had died with his secrets.
"Did he ever tell you?" Kael asked. "What happened there?"
"No. But I gathered—" Doran drank again, deeper this time. "I think he stood by once. When someone needed help. And he didn't act. Or couldn't act. Or chose not to. And it haunted him for the rest of his life." Doran's eyes found Kael's across the table. "Is that what this is? You're afraid of being haunted?"
*I'm already haunted*, Kael thought. *By memories of a life I shouldn't remember. By a woman running down an alley while I bled out in the dirt. By visions of Elia's children murdered and her body broken and all the futures I'm supposed to prevent.*
"Maybe," he said aloud.
Doran stood—carefully, favoring his left leg—and moved to the window. The sea spread out below like spilled ink, dotted with lights from fishing boats.
"I'm going to tell you something," Doran said without turning around. "And you're not going to like it. But you need to hear it anyway."
"All right."
"You can't save everyone, Kael. No matter how strong you are. No matter how fast or skilled or gifted. People die. Good people. People we love. That's the bargain we make for living—we agree to lose things. And trying to prevent every loss, protect every person, stop every tragedy—" Doran turned, and his face was sad. "That's how you break yourself. That's how you become someone who can't save *anyone*, because you've spent everything trying to save *everyone*."
"So what do you suggest?" Kael asked, and he couldn't quite keep the edge from his voice. "I just—what? Accept it? Watch people I love die because 'that's the bargain'?"
"No. I suggest you be *strategic*. Choose your battles. Protect the people you can actually protect. And—" Doran came back to the table, lowered himself into his chair with a slight wince. "And for gods' sake, little brother, let other people help you. You're not alone in this. Whatever *this* is."
Kael looked at his brother—brilliant Doran, patient Doran, who would grow up to be the Grass that Hides the Viper, who saw ten moves ahead in every game.
Who was already in pain at twenty-four and would only get worse.
"What if I could help you?" Kael asked suddenly. "Your leg. The gout. What if I could—"
"You can't."
"You don't know that."
"Maester Caleotte says—"
"Maester Caleotte isn't always right. There are treatments. Things from Essos. The Citadel isn't the only place with medical knowledge. What if—"
"Kael." Doran's voice was gentle but firm. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. You want to fix everything. Protect everyone. Save Elia from whatever you think is coming, save me from my own body—"
"Is that so wrong?"
"It's *impossible*. And it will destroy you."
They stared at each other across the table, the Valyrian steel sword lying between them like a physical representation of everything they weren't quite saying.
Finally, Kael sighed.
"I can't promise not to try," he said.
"I know."
"I can't promise to be strategic and careful and measured."
"I know that too."
"But I can—" Kael reached across and gripped Doran's forearm in the old way, brother to brother. "I can promise to listen. When you give advice. When you see things I'm missing. I'm not good at politics, Dor. Not like you. I'm good at fighting. At moving. At *doing*. But you—you see patterns. You understand games I don't even know I'm playing."
Doran returned the grip, and something eased in his expression.
"We balance each other," he said. "You act. I plan. Together, maybe we can actually accomplish something."
"Together," Kael agreed.
They released grips, and Doran picked up Solemn Vow, turning it so the lamplight caught the ripples in the steel.
"This really is magnificent," he said quietly. "Father would be proud. Not just of the sword—of you. Of what you've become."
"I haven't become anything yet."
"You've become someone who makes solemn vows and means them. In this world, that's rarer than Valyrian steel." Doran handed the blade back. "Just—promise me one thing?"
"What?"
"When you do break—because you will, Kael, everyone breaks eventually—promise you'll let us catch you. Me, Elia, Oberyn, Mother. We're family. That means we fall together and stand together. Yes?"
Kael felt something crack open in his chest—something warm and painful and real.
"Yes," he managed.
"Good." Doran raised his cup. "To solemn vows. And to brothers who keep them."
Kael raised his own cup, and they drank together as the night deepened around them and somewhere in the castle, the music played on.
---
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