Several days passed before Corlys spoke of Dragonstone.
He rose before dawn each morning, broke his fast with little appetite, and spent long hours down at the shipyards among captains and master wrights whose skin had cured to the color of driftwood. Twice Rhaenys spotted him from the sea-gallery standing idle beside a half-planked war galley, breathing in the sharp, clean reek of hot pine-pitch and wet oak, saying nothing at all while the shipwrights hammered around him. At supper he spoke easily enough—of shifting autumn gales in the Gullet, of Vaemond's latest quarrel with the Spicetown harbormaster, of a spoiled cask of Myrish oil in the cellars.
Not a single word of Dragonstone.
Rhaenys let him keep the quiet. She knew the architecture of her husband's temper too well to mistake delay for surrender. Still, she felt the unspoken matter sitting between them at every meal, heard it in the careful absence of one island's name, caught it whenever his dark eyes lingered on her face a heartbeat longer than usual before dropping back to his trencher.
On the fourth evening, a wet gale blew in off Blackwater Bay, driving rain against the shutters of the eastern solar and creeping cold through the mortar. Lamps had been lit early, throwing warm amber light across polished oak tables, rolled sea-charts, and a silver wine ewer left half-touched on the sideboard.
Rhaenys sat in the deep window embrasure with a length of dark velvet draped across her knees, though her needle hadn't moved in half an hour. Below the cliffs, the narrow sea had turned to hammered lead.
When the door opened, Corlys stepped inside carrying a folded square of parchment in his left hand.
He closed the latch behind him and stood for a moment shaking the dampness from his wool cloak.
"You're late," Rhaenys said, not looking up from her embroidery frame.
"There was a squall off the Gullet."
"There is always a squall off the Gullet."
"A poor complaint from a woman who flies straight over it."
The corner of Rhaenys's mouth twitched despite herself. "And a poorer opening from a man who came in here to discuss something else entirely."
That drew the ghost of a smile from him too, though it vanished almost as quickly as it came.
Corlys crossed to the table and laid the folded parchment beside the oil lamp—carefully, almost deliberately—before taking the carved oak chair opposite hers. For three slow heartbeats neither of them spoke while the rain ticked steadily against the wooden shutters.
Rhaenys set her sewing frame aside on the window ledge. "Well?"
Corlys rested his forearms on the chair arms, his dark eyes fixing on hers. "I had thought that after four days, my lady wife might care to tell me why she flew to Dragonstone in secret, and landed back on my cliffs without a word."
Rhaenys folded her hands neatly over the dark velvet in her lap. "I had thought that after four days, my lord husband might care to ask."
Something shifted around his mouth. "So we are both to be rewarded for our patience."
"So it seems."
He leaned back slightly, his fingers curling over the worn oak. "You should have told me before you went."
"I should have."
The bare honesty of it checked him for half a beat.
"And yet I didn't," Rhaenys continued evenly.
"Why?"
She held his gaze without flinching, though her fingers tightened slightly over the dark velvet in her lap. "Because I had grown tired of waiting for the tide to turn on your timetable, Corlys."
Corlys went still. "My timetable."
"You counselled patience after Laena's funeral," she said evenly, keeping her voice measured—almost too measured. "And I gave you patience. Yet patience is an easy virtue when a man has already decided the matter is settled."
His eyes narrowed by a fraction, catching the unfamiliar edge beneath her words. "I never said the matter was settled."
"No," Rhaenys agreed softly. "You said nothing at all. And I had no wish to spend half a morning listening to reasons why we ought to wait another season while our daughter's children forget the sound of our voices."
Corlys studied her across the lamplight for a long, quiet beat—the look of a man hearing the right words spoken in the wrong key, knowing full well she had handed him the clean half of her mind and kept the rest locked behind her teeth.
"You think I would have forbidden you," he said at last.
"I think you would have reasoned against it so smoothly that surrender would have looked like my own consent."
Silence stretched between them while the lamp flame guttered once in a draft.
"That is unjust," Corlys said at last.
"Perhaps."
"Though not untrue."
Corlys's thumb tapped once against the chair arm, then stilled. "What happened when you landed?"
Rhaenys let out a slow breath through her nose. "Daemon met me on the terrace before Rhaenyra ever knew I was there."
Corlys's jaw tightened. "Of course he did. And the girls?"
"I took them up on Meleys. While Daemon trailed twenty yards off our wingtip on Caraxes, playing outrider to my own blood."
Corlys's hand closed hard over the carved dragon-head of the chair arm, his knuckles going pale. "That strutting cockerel."
A brief, genuine smile broke through Rhaenys's stillness. "A remarkably restrained description."
"He would have heard a far less restrained one had I been standing on that stone."
"Yes," she murmured. "Which was perhaps the one advantage of my going alone."
He shot her a sharp look that, though the heat in his eyes had already begun to cool, seemed deeper and far more dangerous.
"Baela and Rhaena were well," Rhaenys added more softly. "Thinner than I would've liked, and a little starved for air, but well nonetheless."
"And the boys?"
"I didn't see them."
The solar went dead quiet.
Corlys didn't move a muscle, yet the air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. "Were they kept from you?"
"They were never offered," Rhaenys said steadily. "The boys were inside the walls, Corlys—behind the exact same locked door that has met every one of your ravens. I reached the girls because I went around the gate. For Luke and Jace, there is no path around Rhaenyra's skirts."
A muscle ticked once beneath his silver-streaked beard, and he let out a low laugh.
He reached across the table and laid one broad palm flat over the folded parchment beside the lamp. "This came off the evening raven."
Rhaenys's gaze dropped to the broken wax. "From whom?"
"Jacaerys." Something eased in Corlys's expression. "Though all five of them put their names at the bottom. Even little Joffrey, in charcoal that smudged half the margin."
Rhaenys sat up straighter, genuine surprise cutting through her stillness. "They wrote to you?"
"Baela and Rhaena sent thanks for the flight—and the ribbons," Corlys said, the corner of his mouth lifting faintly. "Yet the hand is Jace's, as is the request at the end. The maester's seal was on the outside, though I'd wager my flagship Rhaenyra never laid eyes on a line of it."
Rhaenys reached for her silver cup, turning it slowly between her fingers. "And what does the prince ask for?"
Corlys tapped the parchment once with his forefinger. "Me."
She waited.
"He asks what I think worth teaching a boy who must one day help govern men bound to sea and sail," Corlys said, his voice dropping lower. "He asks about Driftmark's tides, the Stepstones blockade, how command on a quarterdeck differs from command in a council chamber. He asks whether he might learn something of our house's strength from the men who actually work the rigging, rather than from dusty books in a tower."
Rhaenys sat silent for a long moment while the rain drummed against the shutters.
"That is a clever letter," she said at last.
"It is," Corlys said, his voice dropping lower as his gaze lingered on the folded parchment. "And a wounded one."
Rhaenys let her thumb brush the smudged charcoal at the bottom of the page.
"Yes," she agreed quietly. "That too."
"I mean to go myself to answer."
She wasn't surprised. "You already have a plan."
"A short cruise out of Hull," he said. "Nothing grand enough to smell of treason. Just enough to take Jace out onto open water—let him feel a deck pitch beneath him boots, see how a crew answers an order."
"And if Rhaenyra objects?"
"Let her," Corlys said evenly. "It would take a bolder princess than Rhaenyra to forbid the heir to the Iron Throne from learning the sea from his own grandsire. And if she means to have Lucerys inherit Driftmark one day, she might consider that his grandfather's counsel is worth having."
"When do you sail?" she asked.
"In three days, if the wind holds out of the west." He reached for his silver cup, taking a slow swallow before setting it down. "I'll take the Sea Snake with a light crew and give them no word of my coming. Let us see how the princess receives my arrival, and whether Daemon proves as bold in my presence as he was in my absence."
Rhaenys turned her cup slowly between her fingers, watching the amber light catch the rim. "Don't go hungry for a quarrel, Corlys. Daemon will feed you one far too easily."
Corlys's mouth twitched—not quite a smile. "You think me so easily baited?"
"With Daemon? At times, yes."
He let out a short, rough breath that was half scoff, half concession. Then he stood, smoothing the front of his damp wool tunic, already half-turned toward the door as though the conversation had reached its natural close.
It was a small thing—a silence where a question used to live. For forty years, whenever one of them crossed water into a rival's hall, the other's place at their shoulder had gone without saying. Tonight, he had laid his course, named his ship, and set his day without once glancing across the table to see if she meant to pack a sea-chest.
Not out of cruelty. Simply because he had grown used, over the last seven days, to keeping his own counsel.
Rhaenys stayed seated in the window embrasure, her hands resting lightly on the window ledge. "I won't come with you."
Corlys paused beside the table, his hand resting on the back of the carved chair. For a heartbeat, something flickered across his face.
"I hadn't assumed you would," he said carefully. "Two visits in as many weeks would look like a siege. Better one of us arrive unencumbered by the memory of your morning on that terrace."
"Yes," Rhaenys agreed softly. "Far better."
Corlys looked at her across the low glow of the lamp, taking in the rigid, composed set of her shoulders, the silver braids wound tight on her head, the dark fabric lying untouched over her knees.
He crossed the two paces between them and laid his warm, weathered hand briefly over hers on the window ledge. She didn't pull away from it.
"Next time you mean to cross water in anger, Rhaenys," he said quietly, "tell me first."
Rhaenys looked down at his scarred knuckles covering hers, then up into his dark eyes. "Next time I mean to cross water in anger, I shall at least consider it."
"Very well," he murmured, letting out a breath of mingled exasperation and fondness.
He drew his hand back and stepped toward the door, pausing with his fingers on the iron latch to glance back over his shoulder.
"Rhaenys."
"Yes?"
"When I return from Dragonstone," he said, "I'd rather not have to ask twice what passed in any room that concerns us both."
Rhaenys inclined her head once, keeping her face smooth as sea-glass. "That is fair."
Then the heavy door clicked shut behind him, leaving her alone in the warm quiet—listening to the tide turn beneath the cliffs, knowing full well that fairness, like every other bargain between houses, was only ever tested in the settling.