# Riverrun, Guest Chambers
*Meanwhile*
The chambers that Lord Hoster Tully had set aside for his Dornish guests were large enough by Riverrun's standards, their stone walls hung with faded banners of leaping trout and antlered stags from past tourneys. Yet they felt crowded—stuffed to bursting with trunks, travel-chests, scattered children's toys, cloaks flung over chairs, and two imperious cats who ruled the chamber as surely as lords on their dais.
Balerion the Black Cat had claimed a mound of cloaks near the hearth as his personal throne, his broad frame draped across the pile like some small dragon dreaming of conquest. His golden eyes tracked every movement with predatory patience, as though the children's games were prey worth studying but not hunting.
Crookshanks, meanwhile, had made a project of the carved bedposts, his claws rasping industriously as he worked his way around the oak, leaving curling splinters in his wake. He paused only to twitch his bottle-brush tail in evident satisfaction.
"Two cats," Elia remarked from her cushioned seat by the window, where she cradled baby Aegon against her shoulder. Her voice was warm but threaded with amusement. "Two cats who appear to believe themselves kings of men. Or perhaps lords of Riverrun, given how they've claimed every surface for themselves."
Ashara laughed softly, arranging her long legs beneath her as she lounged upon a scatter of silk cushions. The Dornish sun still clung to her, violet eyes gleaming in the dim chamber light. "Fitting, don't you think? Our little court of exiles deserves its own pair of monarchs."
"Monarchs, is it?" Elia arched a brow. "I would say usurpers. They've not paid me fealty, though they do eat my fish."
Their jest was drowned out by the serious tones of Princess Rhaenys, who was busy directing the construction of an elaborate fortress in the center of the floor. Cushions had become walls, cloaks a moat, wooden soldiers defenders on the battlements, while books pilfered from traveling chests stood stacked as towers.
"No, no, no," she insisted, sweeping a dark curl from her face with imperious command. "The walls must be higher here, where the land slopes down. And we need a tower here—see?—so the defenders can look out and spot raiders before they reach the gates."
She spoke with the calm authority of one accustomed to command, her gestures decisive, her voice carrying the weight of certainty.
Cregan, kneeling beside her, considered her words with ponderous seriousness. He was broad-shouldered for his tender years, with a gravity that made him seem older still. Carefully, he positioned two carved knights along the ramparts.
"Good walls," he said gravely, as though giving judgment on some ancient matter. "Strong walls keep the bad men out and the good people safe. Like Uncle Arthur's sword—but bigger. Stone instead of star-metal."
Both mothers shared a look at that. Uncle Arthur's sword, their eyes said together, as if such a thing as Dawn were an ordinary tool of household defense.
Arthur himself stood not far off, tall and motionless, watching with the quiet intensity of a man who wasted no words. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, deceptively at ease in simple travel leathers, his every line a study in contained power.
"Strategic thinking," he said at last, his voice low and even. He inclined his head toward Jaime Lannister, who lounged nearby with a cup of watered wine in hand. "Already they grasp that true defense lies in foresight, not mere steel."
Jaime smirked, green eyes glinting. "Aye, look at them. She draws the plans, he lays the stones. The little princess and her little lord. A natural partnership, wouldn't you say?"
Arthur's lips curved in something like a smile, though fleeting. "As though they had worked together years instead of weeks."
"Years, or lifetimes," Ashara murmured from her cushion, her gaze lingering on the pair. She watched as her son frowned in concentration while Rhaenys corrected his placement of a book-tower with all the imperiousness of a queen.
"Careful there," Rhaenys chided him. "If you place it crooked, it will fall when the wind blows. And what good is a tower if it tumbles down before the enemy even arrives?"
Cregan's jaw set with stubborn determination, a miniature echo of some great knight sworn to uphold vows of stone. "I'll build it straight," he promised, adjusting the stack of books with the deliberation of a mason.
Elia's lips curved as she stroked Aegon's dark hair. "Listen to her—already giving commands as if she were sitting the Iron Throne."
"Best she learns to give good ones," Jaime said idly, swirling his wine. "Bad commands get people killed. Ask my father."
Ashara shot him a sharp look, though her smile betrayed the amusement beneath. "And yet you follow them, Ser Jaime."
"I follow them," Jaime replied with a shrug, "but I reserve the right to complain about them. That's the true mark of a knight."
Arthur snorted, a sound as rare as snow in Dorne. "A true knight does not complain."
"No," Jaime countered, flashing a grin, "a true knight drinks, fights, and complains while doing both. It's what keeps us honest."
Rhaenys looked up from her fortress just long enough to give him a regal scowl, the very image of a Targaryen princess in miniature. "Ser Jaime, you are distracting my commander. If the walls fall, it will be your fault."
Jaime lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Seven hells, she sounds just like her uncle."
"Which uncle?" Elia asked, her tone deceptively mild.
Jaime wisely took another sip of wine rather than answer.
Arthur, however, had not stopped watching the children. The harmony between them was uncanny—her quicksilver command paired with his steady strength, her vision with his discipline. As though something deeper bound them than mere childish play. Something older. Something that had always been.
"Books," Rhaenys declared, placing a fat leather-bound tome squarely in the heart of their fortification. She spoke not as a child at play but as a young queen issuing royal decree. "Every proper castle needs books. Lots and lots of them. Without books, how is anyone supposed to learn the important things—healing, farming, how to build bridges, how to keep everyone safe and fed?"
Her violet eyes, so uncannily old for three years, lifted to the adults as though demanding their acknowledgment.
"All the songs are wrong," she went on mercilessly. "They speak of tall towers, knights in shining armor, and treasure rooms. But never of libraries. What good is a throne room without a library to teach you how to rule?"
Ashara Dayne, lounging on a scatter of silk cushions with her chin propped elegantly on her hand, gave a low laugh. Seven save us, she thought, violet eyes dancing. The child dismantles a thousand years of Westerosi pageantry as if it were so many dolls' clothes. A three-year-old demanding educational infrastructure.
Elia cradled her infant son closer and studied her daughter with that mixture of wonder and worry that came when a child revealed more than the world was ready to hear. "And what would your library hold, sweetling?" she asked softly. "Maesters' scrolls? Ledgers of harvests and trade? Books of songs and histories?"
"All of it," Rhaenys answered without hesitation. "And books about letters and numbers, so everyone can learn them. Not just lords and ladies. Everyone. Because the more people who can read, the more problems can be solved. And ruling is mostly solving problems, isn't it?"
Arthur stirred from his lean against the wall, tall and spare as a tower himself. His voice carried the calm certainty of a man who had spent his life honing edges. "A ruler without knowledge," he said, "is like a sword without an edge. Looks impressive, until the first true blow."
Rhaenys beamed at him, pleased to have won such approval. "Exactly! Knowledge is sharper than steel, Uncle Arthur. And if everyone is given it, then everyone can help. Farmers, crafters, fishers—all of them. Problems are lighter when many hands lift them."
Comprehensive public education, Ashara thought, torn between admiration and dread. And here I thought her greatest concern would be which doll had the prettiest gown.
Cregan, who had been arranging toy soldiers with painstaking care, looked up. His curls shadowed his brow, his little mouth set in the grave line that so often made him seem twice his age.
"Books help," he said simply, with a gravity that belonged on the lips of men at council. "When people read, they can make things better. Grow more food. Build stronger houses. Keep sick people from dying."
He gestured to the fortress they'd built, his tiny hands surprisingly eloquent. "Books know how to make life good for everyone. Not just lords. Everyone."
Elia blinked down at him, then looked at Ashara. "Your son has the soul of a septon," she murmured, "or a philosopher. And paired with my daughter, I am not certain whether to be proud or afraid."
Ashara's lips curved in that dangerous half-smile that had charmed and unsettled so many in her time at court. "Both, perhaps. Pride for what they are… fear for what they may become."
"They speak like maesters," Jaime drawled from his chair, boots kicked up on a trunk with insolent ease. His green eyes sparkled with amusement as he swirled his wine. "Or kings' councillors. Gods, listen to them—planning libraries and schools while the rest of us worry about which lord is sleeping with which lady, and who's sharpening daggers in the dark."
Rhaenys fixed him with a regal glare that would have done her grandsire proud. "Ser Jaime, you should be helping, not making jokes. If you had read more books, perhaps you'd understand the importance of good planning."
Jaime barked a laugh, nearly spilling his wine. "Seven hells, she scolds like Cersei."
"Which uncle, though?" Elia asked sweetly, her dark eyes full of knives.
Jaime wisely decided that silence—and another swallow of wine—was the better part of valor.
Arthur, however, did not smile. His gaze was fixed on the children, watching how Rhaenys's quicksilver words paired with Cregan's slow, steady weight. Vision and foundation, thought and stone. A partnership more natural than chance could explain.
"They plan as though the world were theirs to shape," he murmured.
"Perhaps it is," Ashara replied, her voice soft, her smile unreadable.
Rhaenys Targaryen cast a quick look around the chamber, her violet eyes narrowing as though she suspected spies lurking behind the bed hangings. Balerion the black cat yawned from his cloak-pile throne, but the little princess lowered her voice all the same—though every adult in the room could hear her perfectly.
"And we must make sure everyone washes their hands," she whispered to Cregan, her tone grave with the weight of command. "With soap. Not just when they feel like it. Always. And the water must be boiled before drinking. And the… waste"—she wrinkled her nose—"must be carried far away from where people live and plant their food."
The adults exchanged glances.
Basic sanitation, Elia thought, tightening her hold on baby Aegon as though the boy might somehow absorb his sister's wisdom by osmosis. She is laying out the foundations of public health, as if she were some seasoned maester rather than a child still young enough to nap in the afternoons.
"Clean water, clean hands, clean food," Cregan agreed with knightly solemnity. His small brow furrowed, curls falling into his eyes as he spoke with the tone of a man swearing an oath. "That way, people don't fall sick. Healthy people work better. Fight better. Love better. Live better."
Ashara pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at the sheer gravity in her son's voice. Henry the Greenhand reborn, and he can scarce tie his own sandals. Yet her violet eyes softened, full of a mother's pride.
Jaime Lannister leaned forward in his chair, green eyes alight with mischief and disbelief. "Seven bloody hells," he muttered. "I've sat in council chambers with greybeards three times my age who spoke less sense than these two. What's next, a treatise on sewer design?"
"Perhaps," Rhaenys said primly, scowling at him as though he were a wayward squire. "But first crop rotation."
She hopped to her feet, skirts swishing, and swept her little arms in broad arcs to demonstrate. "If you plant the same thing every year, the land gets tired. Sick. But if you change—wheat one year, beans the next, then barley, then clover—the soil grows strong again. And the people have more food."
Her hands chopped the air for emphasis, like a general outlining a campaign before battle. "So no one starves in winter. Everyone stays strong. And strong people are happy people. Happy people don't rebel against their rulers."
Arthur Dayne had drifted closer without meaning to, drawn by the cadence of strategy in her piping voice. He folded his arms across his broad chest, studying her with the intensity he usually reserved for opponents across a tourney field. Crop rotation, he marveled silently. Agricultural science. How in the seven hells does a child of King's Landing prattle of clover fields and soil renewal? Most knights barely know how bread reaches their plates.
"Your Grace," Arthur said aloud, inclining his head with mock solemnity, "if half the lords of Westeros thought as you do, we would have fewer hungry bellies, fewer wars, and fewer fools."
Rhaenys glowed at the praise, tossing her curls back with imperious satisfaction. "Well, someone must think of these things. Knights only think of fighting, lords only think of power, and singers only think of songs. Someone must think about feeding the people."
Cregan nodded as though sealing her words with steel. "Strong walls, strong swords, strong bellies. All three."
"Seven save me," Jaime said, shaking his head, though his smile betrayed his fascination. "Three years old, and already plotting kingdom-wide reforms. At that age, I was learning how to swing a wooden sword. Poorly."
"Perhaps if you had learned crop rotation instead," Ashara said sweetly, "you'd be less of a disaster with words."
Jaime raised his cup in salute. "A fair jest, my lady. Though I'd argue I've done quite well enough with words to get into the beds I've chosen."
Elia's dark gaze cut across him like a knife dipped in honey. "And is that truly the measure of a man, Ser Jaime? Beds and boasts?"
Jaime grinned, unashamed. "It is the measure of many men, Princess. The trick is admitting it."
Arthur's mouth curved in something dangerously close to a smile. "The trick, Jaime, is surviving long enough for your words not to bury you."
"And here I thought swords did the burying," Jaime shot back, green eyes glinting.
Ashara's dark hair spilled like midnight silk over her shoulder as she set aside her embroidery hoop, violet eyes narrowing with the sharp curiosity that made men call her both beautiful and dangerous. Beside her, Elia shifted Aegon against her breast, her gaze flicking to her daughter with that particular mix of maternal warmth and the steel of a woman who had been raised among the vipers of Sunspear.
"Rhaenys," Ashara said, voice lilting and melodic, though touched with that half-feigned patience one used with children. "Tell me, sweetling, how is it that you speak of crop rotation and sewer channels? Little girls are taught their letters and their stitches, not the business of plowmen and masons."
Rhaenys looked up at her with those bright violet eyes that seemed altogether too knowing for her tender years. She was only three, yet her gaze had the poise of a queen and the mischief of a cat that had just stolen cream.
"Books," she said simply, as though the answer ought to suffice. Then, after a pause, she added with deliberate care, "And from listening. And from… remembering things."
"Remembering things," Elia repeated softly, her brows drawing together. The Dornish princess leaned forward, her gold-threaded braid brushing her shoulder as she studied her daughter's face. "From before? What do you mean?"
"Before we came here," Rhaenys replied, as matter-of-fact as if she were announcing what sweets she fancied after supper. "Before we had these names. Before we were born here. When we were… different people. In the place with moving staircases, talking portraits, and magic that worked properly."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to smother the hearthfire. Even Aegon, rooting lazily at his mother's breast, seemed quieter. Ashara's lips parted slightly, her eyes alight with a hunger for knowledge that reminded Arthur of a hawk sighting prey. Elia's gaze sharpened like glass beneath velvet, protective and wary.
"Magic," Arthur said at last, his deep voice even, the tone of a knight accustomed to battlefield strangeness. "She speaks of magic as a maester might speak of leechcraft. Technical, applied. Not fancy tales for children."
"She speaks of madness," Jaime Lannister said lightly, though his half-smile was a shade too tight, his golden hair catching the firelight like the gilding of a sword's hilt. "Next she'll be telling us she can hatch dragons from stone eggs with the right song and candle."
"Don't tempt her," Ashara replied dryly, arching one dark brow. "If she says she can, she very well might."
Rhaenys sniffed, crossing her little arms with the regal disdain of a queen correcting a jester. "Dragons aren't toys. And besides, fire magic is much more dangerous than sanitation. People forget that until their houses catch fire or their city floods with filth."
Arthur's lips twitched, though he said nothing. Jaime let out a short bark of laughter. "Seven hells, listen to her. Three years old and already lecturing knights on civic engineering."
Cregan, who had been carefully arranging stones into the walls of his makeshift fortress, looked up then. His violet eyes were clear and steady, but his words carried weight far older than his years.
"Magic here is… strange," he said slowly, the way a craftsman might explain a broken tool. "Like it's sleeping. You can feel it, but it doesn't wake easy. It listens when Rhaenys and I work together, but it's weak. Fading, maybe. Or waiting."
Ashara tilted her head, black hair spilling over her shoulder, her gaze fixed on her son with the rapt attention she had once reserved for rare manuscripts. "And what happens when it listens? What sort of magic comes?"
"The useful kind," Rhaenys cut in before her cousin could answer, her little chin lifting proudly. "Healing that makes maesters look like butchers. Light without candles. Water made clean without hauling buckets. Wards that keep the bad people out. And letters without ravens, so you don't have to wait half a year for a reply."
Jaime gave her a mock solemn bow from his seat against the wall. "A revolutionary and a dreamer, both. Gods save us all."
"Or gods help us all," Arthur murmured.
"But…" Cregan's brow furrowed, that habit of his when thoughts pressed harder than words. "You'd need tools. Wands. Or something like them. We don't know how to make them here. Rules are different. No phoenix feathers, maybe no phoenixes at all."
"Wands?" Ashara leaned forward, curiosity as sharp as the gleam in her violet eyes. "You mean true implements. Not fairy sticks in a child's toy chest."
"Wands," Rhaenys confirmed with regal solemnity, nodding. "Holly and phoenix feather worked before, but here… we might need different things. Yew, perhaps. Or dragonbone." She looked around the chamber, her expression earnest, searching. "Do you know anyone who studies the old ways? Someone who reads the forbidden books, the ones about the things that most people say aren't real?"
The room went quiet again, save for the crackle of fire and the deep purr of the two cats sprawled in the corner, who, in their usual feline fashion, cared nothing for secrets of rebirth or the nature of sleeping magic.
Elia exchanged a long glance with Ashara. Jaime leaned his golden head against the wall and exhaled like a man trying not to laugh. Arthur sat straighter, as if preparing himself for storms yet unseen. And Cregan merely returned to his fortress, stacking stone upon stone, building quietly while the world shifted around him.
Elia Martell adjusted Aegon against her breast, her dark eyes never leaving her daughter. The boy nursed noisily, oblivious to matters greater than milk and warmth, but his sister's words carried weight enough to silence a room of adults.
"Rhaenys," Elia said, her voice careful, deliberate, as if she were choosing each word with the precision of a maester selecting leeches. "When you speak of before—before names, before this life—do you mean dreams? Tales you've overheard? Or…" She hesitated, maternal concern and political instinct warring within her. "Do you mean something else entirely?"
The little girl tilted her head, studying her mother with violet eyes that seemed altogether too knowing, too ancient for her years. She looked like a child playing queen in a court of dolls—except the dolls were men and women grown, and they found themselves listening.
"Something else," Rhaenys said at last, and the certainty in her voice was more unsettling than any childish fancy. "Real things. Things that happened when we were different people, with different names. We remember learning. We remember people we loved. Choices we made."
She reached across the half-built fortress of stones to take Cregan's hand. The boy, broad-shouldered even in youth, nodded with solemn conviction, his face shadowed with the gravity of a man speaking of wars long past.
"We remember each other," Rhaenys continued. "Always together. Always helping. Always trying to protect people and fix things, even when it was hard."
Arthur Dayne shifted in his chair, violet eyes narrowing with quiet thought. Ashara leaned forward, the lamplight turning her hair to a dark, shimmering cascade, her gaze sharp as a falcon's. Jaime stretched his long legs by the hearth, smirking faintly as if to hide his unease.
Before any of them could speak, Balerion chose his moment to intervene, the great black tomcat stretching luxuriously before padding toward the fortress. One casual flick of his paw would undo half an hour of Cregan's careful labor.
"Balerion, no," Rhaenys said, scooping him up with surprising authority for one so small. She deposited the heavy beast in her lap, where he immediately set to purring like a storm-laden ship's hull.
The cat fixed the room with eyes like molten gold, as if to say my comfort is law.
Ashara laughed, low and musical. "He has opinions, that one."
"Most cats do," Rhaenys said gravely, scratching behind his ears. "They understand comfort. Safety. Taking care of themselves. That's wisdom, even if they're terrible at diplomacy."
"Diplomacy," Jaime echoed, grinning. "Gods, listen to her. Three years old and already speaking like a courtier at council."
Rhaenys tilted her chin. "Better than some courtiers, ser. At least cats are honest about wanting comfort."
Even Arthur allowed himself the ghost of a smile at that.
Meanwhile, Crookshanks, not to be outdone, slunk across the rushes and wound around Cregan's legs with deliberate insistence. The boy bent, lifted the orange tabby in his large hands, and studied him with the seriousness of a smith examining steel.
"'Shanks builds too," Cregan observed. "He makes things better by… improving them. The bedposts. Now they're for climbing, and they smell right. Practical."
Jaime barked a laugh. "Even the cats here think like engineers. No wonder the children sound like maesters."
Arthur leaned forward then, voice low and steady. "These words of yours," he said, looking between the two children, "speak of knowledge and experience no child should carry. Dreams, magic, or some other mystery—it is genuine to you. I see that."
He rested his forearms on his knees, knight and scholar both, the weight of his regard the same he gave to kings. "The question is how to use it. Knowledge like this, mishandled, could topple kingdoms. Used well, it could raise them higher than ever."
"Very carefully," Rhaenys answered at once, stroking Balerion as though she were a queen soothing a restless court. "Start with small things. Things that help people, that no one needs to call magic. Cleaner water. Better harvests. Safer streets."
Cregan nodded, his young voice as steady as steel on stone. "Things that work whether folk understand them or not. Let them see results first. Explanations come later, when there's trust."
"Gradual introduction," Elia murmured, her dark brows drawn in thought. "Practical improvements, wrapped in reason. If it works, no lord will care how it came about."
Ashara's eyes gleamed with that dangerous curiosity she had always carried. "The North is ripe for such things. Northerners value results, not theory. Show them stronger harvests, fewer fevers, cleaner hearths—and they'll follow."
"And if it fails?" Arthur asked, always the pragmatist.
"Then we learn," Rhaenys said blithely, as though she were speaking of a misstep in dance, not revolutions of knowledge. "Failures are lessons. You try again until you get it right."
Jaime leaned back, shaking his head with a soft laugh. "Seven hells. The maesters would weep to hear such words from their precious students. Hypothesis, trial, error, refinement—out of the mouths of babes."
The room fell quiet as the afternoon sun stretched long fingers of gold across the stone floors. Outside, Riverrun hummed with life—kitchen smoke curling, guards exchanging shifts, the ever-flowing river whispering against the walls.
"For now," Arthur said, his tone carrying that unbending finality of a man used to making decisions that others trusted with their lives, "we keep to the practical. Sanitation, clean water, improved crops. Changes folk can accept without asking where the ideas came from. The rest—the larger mysteries—we leave for later, when the North is our ground."
The words hung in the air, as solid as the white steel of Dawn resting in its scabbard against the wall.
Ashara, lounging with deliberate grace upon a cushioned bench, tilted her head, violet eyes gleaming like polished amethysts in the firelight. "One revolution at a time, then," she said, her voice equal parts wit and seduction. "First we keep children from dying of fevers. Later we may attempt to overturn the order of gods and men. A sensible ladder to climb."
Elia laughed softly at that, low and rich, the sound filling the chamber like a song from Dorne's warm gardens rather than a cold Riverlands hall. "I had thought motherhood meant worrying over teething and tantrums. Instead I find myself contemplating philosophy and the nature of memory, while a babe drinks himself into contentment." She glanced down at Aegon, who burped against her breast with perfect indifference to the high matters surrounding him. "A strange fate, but not without its amusements."
"Most things worth doing," Rhaenys declared, seated cross-legged atop her fortress of books with Balerion sprawled across her lap like a conquering king, "turn out to be more complicated than they look from the outside. That's what makes them interesting." She scratched the great black cat behind the ears, earning a thunderous purr. "Besides, if it were easy, anyone could do it."
Jaime, golden hair catching the firelight, leaned back in his chair, one leg stretched long before him, his smile sharp and mocking. "Gods save us from children who speak like maesters and queens both. Next she'll be drafting household ledgers and pointing out how badly most lords overspend on wine and mistresses."
Rhaenys blinked at him, perfectly solemn. "Do you spend too much on wine and mistresses, Ser Jaime?"
Arthur coughed into his hand, Ashara laughed outright, and even Elia had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. Jaime, for his part, smirked with the easy arrogance of a man who had been accused of worse. "Not more than I can afford," he replied smoothly, "and far less than my father fears."
Cregan, who had been arranging Crookshanks and the toy soldiers into some intricate formation, looked up then. His voice, deep even at so young an age, rumbled with the slow conviction of stone grinding against stone. "Wasting makes people weak. Better to use things properly—food, coin, time." He placed the last soldier with careful precision. "Waste makes you lose."
Arthur's mouth curved in something dangerously close to approval. "Out of babes' mouths," he said quietly.
The warmth in the room thickened, the hearthfire crackling, shadows dancing across carved stone. Rhaenys looked at the gathered adults, her expression suddenly solemn, violet eyes luminous in the dimming light.
"Thank you," she said, and though the words were simple, the weight behind them was anything but. "For listening. For believing, even when we can't explain it all. For helping us make things better."
Arthur inclined his head, knight to sovereign. "And thank you, princess, for trusting us. Power unused is wasted, but power misused destroys. That you seek only to protect—that is honor enough to serve beside."
"Honor, aye," Jaime drawled, though his eyes softened despite the jest. "Though it does bruise a man's pride to be lectured on statecraft by a girl still young enough to be scolded for skipping her naps."
"I don't skip naps," Rhaenys replied, indignant. "I reschedule them."
That brought laughter, rolling through the chamber, warm and unguarded—Ashara's musical and sharp, Elia's deep and fond, Arthur's rare and quiet, Jaime's edged with wicked amusement, and the children's high-pitched giggles bubbling over like river water against stone.
Outside, the sun dipped lower, the Riverlands awash in amber light as Riverrun prepared for supper. Inside, impossible truths had been spoken, impossible futures considered, and impossible children listened to as if they were queens and maesters both.
It was, all agreed, an interesting way to spend an afternoon.
Even if "interesting" was a woefully inadequate word for reincarnated babes, memory of lost worlds, cats with opinions, and knights and ladies deciding—half in earnest jest, half in deadly seriousness—how best to revolutionize civilization from the safety of a Riverlands solar.
Some afternoons in Westeros, it seemed, were destined to be remembered.
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