Young Aegon drew his Valyrian steel sword, Blackfyre, and set its icy edge against Arianne's slender throat. He called down the slope to Quentyn in a voice like iron:
"Prince Quentyn, you don't want your own sister to die here, do you? Drop your weapons and surrender, now. Or you can collect her corpse!"
The cold bite at her neck made Arianne shudder. She turned her head in disbelief, staring at the man she had once loved, her voice trembling into fragments.
"Aegon… I'm your Queen…"
"You were!"
Young Aegon bellowed over her, his eyes holding not a trace of warmth.
"But not anymore. The moment your brother chose to betray the realm, you stopped being anything to me. House Martell has betrayed my trust!"
Arianne looked at his twisted face, heard the cruelty in every word, and felt the last fragile hope inside her break cleanly.
Tears slid down in silence.
Her heart turned to ash. She had trusted the wrong man.
Below, Quentyn saw his sister held like that and went white with rage.
"You bastard! Let her go! Touch a hair on her head and I'll tear you apart!"
Young Aegon didn't flinch. His voice rose, sharper and colder.
"Surrender, or watch her die! This is your last chance, Quentyn Martell!"
Daemon Sand rode close to Quentyn, his own face drawn with pain. His voice came out rough, heavy.
"Prince… stay calm. Think of Dorne. Dorne needs you alive."
He knew it. If Quentyn and this host died here, Dorne was finished.
Arianne heard Daemon's words. She saw the struggle tearing across her brother's face.
She sucked in a breath and shouted down the hillside with everything she had.
"Quentyn, don't worry about me! Live! Go back to Dorne! Father needs you. Dorne needs you!"
After that cry, she looked at Quentyn one last time, her eyes full of farewell.
And then, in the heartbeat where Young Aegon's attention wavered, Arianne Martell, Princess of Dorne, made the most final choice of her life.
She clenched her teeth and surged forward, driving her pale throat straight into the razor edge of Blackfyre.
Splatter—!
Blood burst out, spraying across Young Aegon's breastplate and his stunned face.
Arianne sagged and fell, limp as cloth. Her beautiful eyes stayed fixed toward Dorne as the light slowly drained away.
For a moment, it felt as if time itself stopped.
Young Aegon stood frozen. His hand slackened on the hilt. He stared at Arianne in the widening pool of blood, then at his own hands slick with red, something twisted and unreadable rising in his chest.
"No! Sister!"
Below the hill, Quentyn Martell's scream tore the night apart. Grief and fury swallowed what little reason he had left.
"Attack! For Dorne! For Arianne! Kill them all!"
Daemon Sand didn't say a word. There was only cold murder in his eyes. He dug in his heels, leveled his spear, and charged first into the enemy line on the hillside.
"For Dorne! Revenge!"
The surviving Dornish and Norvos soldiers, eyes burning red, roared like madmen and followed their prince in a do-or-die assault against a stronger, larger host.
Young Aegon snapped out of his shock. Their charge and killing intent lit something savage in him. He raised the blood-soaked Blackfyre and howled:
"Kill! No survivors!"
A brutal field battle exploded across the southern hills of Duskendale.
No tactics, no formations, just bodies crashing together in a frenzy of steel and screams.
The fighting raged through the night and on until the next dusk. The slopes were carpeted with corpses, the earth slick with blood.
In the end, Young Aegon's numbers, the Dothraki's speed, and the Golden Company's stronger fighting force ground Quentyn's army into nothing.
Daemon Sand died where he fought, riddled with wounds, cut and pierced dozens of times.
Prince Quentyn Martell made a last, desperate charge at Young Aegon to avenge himself, only to be swallowed by a sea of Golden Company soldiers. Spears struck from every side, and he fell barely a hundred paces from his hated foe.
Yet Young Aegon paid a terrible price as well.
After the brutal fighting in the town and the annihilation in the open field, the army of forty thousand was reduced to fewer than twenty thousand. Every man was wounded, morale was shattered, and the Golden Company had lost a great many of its most experienced veterans.
As Young Aegon stood amid a battlefield carpeted with corpses, savoring the thrill of victory even as his heart ached at the cost, a dust-covered scout rode in with urgent news from Jon Connington in the Riverlands.
"Your Grace!"
The scout dropped to one knee. "Lord Connington's forces have sighted Stannis's army on the open grasslands where the Reach meets the Riverlands. Their numbers are small, only a few thousand!"
At once, Young Aegon's tired eyes flared with light.
Stannis!
The brother of the "usurper," the defeated king who had lost everything but a remnant of his host.
He turned at once to the equally exhausted Harry Strickland beside him. "Captain Harry, Stannis dares to deliver himself to us. We should march immediately, crush him, wash away our weariness in his blood, and restore the army's spirit!"
Harry met the excitement blazing in Young Aegon's eyes, then glanced back at the scarred and battered troops behind them. Unease stirred in his heart, yet he could not deny the opportunity.
To defeat Stannis, the legitimate Baratheon, would do wonders for Aegon's claim, and the enemy had only a few thousand men.
He nodded. "As you wish, Your Grace. We should move at once and seize him before he slips away."
...
Far away on the open plains, Stannis Baratheon stood atop a low earthen rise, gazing into the distance with a face as hard as stone.
His army was small, yet it stood in an uncanny, solemn stillness.
Ser Davos Seaworth walked up beside him, brow deeply furrowed. "Your Grace, Jon Connington's scouts have already discovered us. Are we truly going to keep… patrolling here?"
Stannis answered slowly. "Ser Davos, I never intended to ambush Jon Connington. He is not my target."
Davos blinked. "Then what is your purpose, Your Grace?"
Stannis lifted a hand and pointed toward the direction of Duskendale. "I brought the army here so the Blackfyre would know we are present. We have only a few thousand men. Once he knows that, he will come."
Davos frowned even more deeply. "But Your Grace, what if he sends Jon Connington to deal with us instead?"
Stannis shook his head, a cold smile tugging at his lips. "He won't. As long as he believes himself a Targaryen, the true king, he will come in person. He will face me, a Baratheon, in a final reckoning. It is his best chance to prove himself. And with so few of us, he will see it as an easy prize."
He paused, his eyes drifting instinctively toward a figure not far behind him.
There, the red priestess Melisandre stood in silence, her voluminous robes still failing to fully conceal her swollen belly.
Stannis's gaze grew dark and deep.
"Once he comes, I will kill him."
The wind swept across the plains, brushing against his increasingly weathered face.
...