~~~ Artys Arryn personal tent ~~~
Artys Arryn POV
"Master, please promise me you will not drink," Soryn said, nagging me for what had to be the fifth time since the evening, repeating the same warning as though I were a child who might forget it the moment he stopped talking.
"What the fuck do you want, old man? You're annoying me," I snapped, my irritation showing as I stood before the mirror, fastening the last clasp of my robe.
Outside, the tent walls were already thin against the noise of the celebration, music and drunken shouting bleeding through the canvas.
Soryn sighed but didn't back down. He'd long since grown accustomed to my temper, which was probably the only reason he was still alive after years of putting up with me.
"Master, I merely need to remind you that today is the day we act on the Stepstones plan, and one part of it requires you to be sober," he said, then added, giving me a knowing look, "and we don't want you drunk while we implement it."
I stopped fastening my robe and stared at him through the mirror. "Yes, yes. I remember. You've already said it a thousand times."
He opened his mouth as though to argue further, then apparently thought better of testing my patience. I pulled the robe into place, looked myself over once, and turned toward the entrance. The plan had taken too long to prepare to let something as stupid as too much wine ruin it.
"Let's go to the party, then we'll act," I said, grabbing a few roasted, salted peanuts from the bowl on the table and stuffing them into my pockets before turning back toward Soryn.
He was staring at me.
"What?"
"Really?" he asked, eyes flicking pointedly to my bulging pockets.
"What? They're snacks."
Soryn closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Master, you just promised me you'd remain sober."
"I didn't promise anything about starving," I argued.
"Those are salted peanuts."
"Exactly."
He stared at me a moment longer, clearly weighing whether arguing over peanuts was worth the effort, then gave up with a quiet sigh. "Come on now. Let's go. There are people waiting for us," I said, waving him toward the entrance.
Soryn followed, though he didn't look particularly convinced, and he'd barely taken two steps before his expression shifted, the look of a man who'd just remembered something he'd been trying to work out how to say.
"Yes, but I have something to inform you of before that."
I stopped with my hand on the tent flap. "What?"
I disliked the sound of his voice immediately. Whenever Soryn spoke like that, it usually meant something had gone horribly wrong, and after everything that had already happened today, I really didn't need another problem landing in my lap.
He hesitated, watching me carefully. "Your childhood friend is on his way to crash your party."
Soryn took a small step back as he said it, putting a little more distance between us.
Fuck me. That shit.
For a moment I just stood there, staring at him. I swear to god, I might smash his head in with my bare hands if he keeps this up.
"Joffrey?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
Soryn nodded carefully. "I don't seem to recall you having any other childhood friend, Master."
I rubbed my face and exhaled slowly. Of all the people who could decide to appear tonight, it had to be him. My peaceful evening had lasted far too long.
"Why do we have to do it, Master?" Soryn finally asked, his frustration cracking through his usual patience. He stepped closer, lowering his voice as though the tent's own walls might be listening.
"You have two dragons. An army twenty thousand strong in Slaver's Bay. The Vale has ten legions under your command, and the Moon Knights number four thousand now." He counted them off on his fingers, growing more agitated with each one.
"Two of those ten legions answer to House Arryn directly, one carrying the old Arryn banner, the other raised from the hill tribes. Then there's our navy here, two hundred ships strong, without even counting what House Grafton and the other Vale lords bring with them. We have enough gold to fight an endless war."
He paced a few steps across the tent, the words spilling out of him now. "So what are we waiting for? Let us strike. Let us put that old pig to the sword, and every man who dared rebel against House Targaryen when it was at its weakest. Let the world kneel to dragons once more, as they did before."
He stopped and looked at me, breathing hard after the outburst.
I let the silence sit for a moment before crossing the tent toward him. "Well. That was rather a long speech."
Soryn's expression hardened, but I put a hand on his shoulder before he could snap back at me.
"I understand your anger, Soryn. I feel it too, more than you know. To be honest, I could do it. I could seize power tonight. I could march on the Crown and declare war on all of them."
His eyes narrowed slightly, some of the anger giving way to something more careful, more listening.
"But the moment I move, I hand them something far more dangerous than any army I could raise." I turned away, walking toward the table, my fingers trailing along its edge as I thought it through out loud.
"I unite them. Robert Baratheon would have multiple kingdoms standing behind him inside a fortnight. Even my own father would stand against me. And if Jon Arryn stood against me too, half our own bannermen would suddenly find their loyalties tested in ways they've never had to face before."
I shook my head. "Yes, I have legions loyal to me. But there are still plenty of lords whose household knights answer to their own banners first, not mine. That loyalty gets tested the second I turn on the Crown openly, and I'm not willing to find out how many of them fail that test."
Some of the fire had gone out of Soryn's eyes, though not all of it.
"Dragons don't make you invincible," I said, walking back toward him and dropping my voice lower. "They make you powerful. There's a difference."
Soryn didn't answer right away. He just watched me, waiting, the way he always did when he could tell I wasn't finished.
He was right to wait.
Because the anger hadn't gone anywhere. It never did. I'd simply learned to keep it somewhere colder, somewhere that didn't show on my face while I smiled at lords and kissed the hands of ladies who'd spit on me if they knew what I really was. But it was still there, banked low, waiting for the day I no longer had to pretend.
"When the old man finally dies," I said quietly, "I'm going to unleash hell on every single one of them. Every lord who laughed behind my father's back. Every knight who called my mother's people savages while they burned her family alive."
I let that sit for a breath.
"Especially Joffrey."
Soryn went very still.
"I'm not going to give him a clean death. I want to peel every fingernail off his hands one at a time, and I want him screaming loud enough that half of King's Landing hears it. Then I'll break his teeth in his mouth so he can't even scream properly anymore. And when I finally take his eyes, I want his mother sitting right there in front of him, close enough that she can't look away, watching every second of it happen to her precious little lion cub."
Soryn's jaw tightened, but he didn't flinch. He never did, not from me.
"That's not mercy," he said carefully.
"No," I agreed. "It isn't. I stopped pretending I had any left for that family a long time ago."
I let the silence hang between us a moment longer before my expression eased back into something calmer, something almost pleasant again.
"But we'll wait for the right time."
Soryn studied me for several seconds, then let out a long breath, some of the tension finally draining out of his shoulders. "You've really thought this through, haven't you?"
"Every day, for the last ten years." I reached for my cloak and swung it over my shoulders.
"Which is exactly why we're not throwing away ten years of planning tonight, just because you're impatient and I'm irritated."
He gave a short nod, accepting it, though I could tell part of him still wanted the sword drawn tonight rather than years from now.
I paused at the tent flap, my hand resting on the canvas.
"The realm should see me as their saviour, Soryn. Not their oppressor. Even if, underneath it all, that's exactly what I turn out to be."
"A saviour who tortures children," Soryn said dryly, though there was no real judgment in it, just the kind of dark amusement only he could get away with around me.
"Only the ones who deserve it." I glanced back at him with a faint smile. Joffery deservers evry pain i plan to give him.
"History doesn't remember the details, Soryn. It remembers the ending."
"I'm not Maegor," I said. "I never wanted to be him. All fire and no thought, dead within a handful of years for it."
If I'm going to be remembered as anything, I'd rather be Westeros's Augustus.
Not the maddest dragon who ever sat the throne, but the one who built something that actually lasted.
POV ends.