— Aelya —

She left Eastwatch in the second week of the eleventh moon, with a hard cold wind at her back and a sky the color of old iron, and she did not look back at the Wall until the Balerion's Shadow had cleared the breakwater and the harbour was a thin smudge of slate and ice astern. Then she stood on the stern deck with both gloved hands on the rail and looked, for a long time, at the long white line of the world's edge receding behind her.

She had been there nine moons.

It felt longer. It also felt much shorter than that. She had grown up at Eastwatch in a way she had not grown up anywhere else, including Dragonstone — she had arrived a young queen with a plan and was leaving a young queen with a plan that had now been tested, which was a different thing — and she had a sense, watching the Wall recede, that she was leaving behind not a fortress but a self. The version of her that had stood on the parapet on the night of the three blasts, with Morghon hovering above her and the cold dry watching feeling pressing down out of the dark. That version was staying. Some other version of her would have to go south and be a queen-consort in a court.

She would, she suspected, miss the parapet version.

Behind her, on the lower deck, there were small Watch noises — the tramp of boots, the cough of a sergeant, a dropped bucket — and louder than any of these, the regular rumbling snore of Morghon, who had taken his now-customary spot on a heated platform built specially for him at the base of the mainmast and was sleeping off a pre-departure goat. Ēdrugon was on the foredeck, alert and awake, his great head turning slowly to follow gulls. Sōvegon, somewhere overhead in the iron sky, was hunting. Aelya had not bothered trying to keep track of Sōvegon for a year now. Sōvegon would turn up.

She had with her: three dragons. Eight hundred Unsullied, withdrawn from Eastwatch in shifts over the past moon and embarked on the cogs that now followed her flagship. Ser Barristan, beside her at the rail, still in his white cloak, looking thinner and steadier than he had a year ago. Ser Elinor and Ser Daemon. A small staff of clerks. Three Watch officers seconded to her by Mormont, whose task on the southward voyage was to brief Dany and her council on the state of the Wall in detail. A handler for Morghon. A handler for Ēdrugon, whom Ēdrugon had never quite warmed to and tolerated on a basis of you are convenient when she is busy.

And Jon.

Jon was below decks. He had been below decks since they had cleared the harbour, which was not seasickness — Jon had proved a good sailor, to his own surprise — but quiet. He had been very quiet for a moon. Since the news of the Red Wedding he had moved through his days with the closed careful stillness of a young man holding something that was too big to set down, and the work of preparing the journey south had been his anchor. Now they were at sea, and there was no work, and Aelya had given him three days of being alone before she would go down and find him.

It had been two.

She would go down tomorrow.

Mance Rayder had not come south. Mance had stayed at the Wall to oversee the slow continuing settlement of the free folk in the Gift, and Aelya had thought that wise — sixty thousand wildlings did not, this winter, require their king to attend a coronation in King's Landing. Mance had given her a long laughing send-off at the Eastwatch gate. You'll come back, Targaryen, he had said, gripping her forearm in the wildling way. You'll come back when the dead come back, and we'll fight them together, and afterward I'll come south to your queen's court for one banquet just to see the looks on the lords' faces. Just one banquet. She had promised him the banquet.

Tormund had given her, at parting, a small bone amulet on a thong, carved with a face she did not entirely recognise but which Tormund insisted was the old one of the woods, who keeps an eye on those who keep their word. She had hung it around her neck under her shirt. It pressed cold against her sternum now, with the wind off the Wall, and she found she liked the cold of it.

The voyage south to Dragonstone was twelve days.

She slept most of the first three, and the headache she had been carrying for moons — the small persistent ache she had got used to and stopped registering — went away on the second day at sea, and she had not realised until it was gone how heavily it had been sitting on her.

She missed the Wall already.

She was going to her sister.

She did not, on the deck of a ship with a Watch sergeant within earshot, allow herself to think about her sister in any great detail. Twelve days. Twelve days. She had waited twelve moons. She could wait twelve days.

— Jon —

He came up on deck on the morning of the fourth day, and Aelya, who had just finished her writing for the morning, set her quill aside and went forward to meet him.

He was leaning on the foredeck rail with Ghost beside him, and the wind was moving his dark hair, and Ēdrugon, on the foredeck behind him, was watching him with the slow yellow patience the dragon had been extending to her nephew for a moon now. Aelya had noticed this. Ēdrugon did not patient many people. Ēdrugon had been, in his own quiet way, looking after Jon.

"Aelya."

"Jon."

She came and stood beside him. She did not, immediately, speak. She had learned, with him, that the silences were as important as the words.

After a while, he said: "I am going to meet her today."

"You are."

"My — my aunt."

"Your aunt."

"You will be there."

"I will be there. So will Ghost. So will Drogon. So will, almost certainly, Missandei, who will love you within five minutes; and Khorane Sathmantes, who will assess you within five minutes and decide you can be trusted; and a good Dornishwoman called Arianne Martell, who will probably flirt with you because she flirts with everyone, and you should not take it personally. Drogon may try to land on you. Do not flinch. He respects flinchless people."

Jon almost smiled. It was the closest thing to a smile she had seen from him in a moon.

"What do I call her."

"Dany. Your Grace, the first time, in front of others, so the lords there see you do it properly. Then Dany, in private. She will tell you so within an hour of meeting you."

"And do I — do I tell her. About — me."

"I have already told her. In writing. Two moons ago."

He turned his head sharply. "You told her."

"I told her. Without details. I said: I have a nephew, I am bringing him to you, he has dark hair and grey eyes and a direwolf and you are going to love him on sight, and the rest of the explaining will happen the day I lay him in front of you. That was the letter. She has been waiting two moons. She knows. The details we will tell her together, the night we arrive."

Jon was quiet.

"You — " he began. "You are very confident she will love me."

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because I do," Aelya said simply. "Because I love you, Aegon Targaryen, and Dany loves what I love, and Dany has been wanting another family member for fifteen years. She has had me, and she has been very patient about it, but she has wanted more, and I have not been able to give her more, because most of our family has been dead for as long as we have been able to remember. You are the first person I have been able to bring her, in this life, who shares our blood. She is going to take one look at you and weep, and then she is going to feed you, and then she is going to ask you — gently, very gently, because she is gentle in a way I am not — every question about your mother that you have ever wished someone would ask you. Be ready for that. She has read everything I could find on Lyanna. She will know more about your mother than you do, by tomorrow. It will hurt and it will be a good hurt. Let it."

Jon did not answer for a while.

Then he said, quietly: "I have not let myself think about my mother. Not really. Not since you told me. I — I think about my father — about Ned — all the time. I think about what he gave up to keep me alive. I think about what it must have cost him. But my mother — Aelya, I have not even been sure how to start. The stories about her are all about how she was taken. There is — there is no one alive who knew her well enough to tell me what she was like."

"Yes there is."

"Who?"

"Howland Reed."

Jon stared at her.

"He was at the Tower of Joy with your father. He was the only one who came back besides your father. He has been at Greywater Watch for seventeen years and he has not spoken of what happened there to anyone, but he is alive, Jon, and he saw her at the end, and we are going to ride to Greywater Watch this spring, you and I, and we are going to ask him about her. I have already written. He is expecting us. He wrote back four words: tell the boy yes."

Jon turned and looked at her.

His eyes were very bright. He did not, again, cry; he had not, in the moon of his grief, allowed himself to cry once that Aelya had seen. But his face did a small thing that was the closest he had come to it, and he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, and his hand was steady.

"Thank you, Aelya."

"You are welcome, Aegon."

They stood at the rail in silence for a long while, and the gulls called, and Ēdrugon, behind them, made the small contented chuff he made when he was warm and the people he was guarding were not actively unhappy, and the Balerion's Shadow sailed on south.

— Dany —

She had been awake since before dawn.

She had told herself, very firmly, the night before, that she would not be awake before dawn. She had told herself that she would sleep properly, and rise at the proper hour, and dress without hurry, and eat breakfast, and walk down to the harbour at the prearranged time as a queen who was greeting the return of an honoured councillor and her own beloved sister, with dignity. She had even rehearsed it. She had practised a small composed expression in the silver mirror.

The expression had lasted approximately the length of time it took to see the Balerion's Shadow round the headland.

She had been standing on the high seaward terrace of Dragonstone with Missandei beside her and Arianne behind her and the entire honour guard ranged at a respectful distance, and she had seen the great green-and-gold sail come around the point with the morning sun behind it, and she had — without making a conscious decision to — picked up her skirts and run.

Not far. Just to the rail. Just so she could see it better. Just so the wind off the sea could hit her face.

Missandei had not laughed at her. Missandei was the kindest person in the realm.

Arianne had laughed — quietly, into her sleeve — and had said, in a voice pitched only for Dany, go on, cousin, do not stand on ceremony, your pride does not require it, and Dany had laughed back, half-embarrassed and half-glad.

Now the ship was at the harbour mouth.

Now the ship was tying up at the long stone quay.

Now the gangplank was going down.

Now the figures were coming off — Ser Barristan first, in his white cloak; then Ser Elinor; then a small severe Watch officer Dany did not know; then a great white direwolf the size of a small horse, which made the men on the dock take one collective step back, and which Dany registered distantly as that must be Jon's wolf, that must be Ghost, my sister wrote me about Ghost; then a tall lean dark-haired young man behind the wolf, who could only be the nephew Aelya had been promising, and Dany's breath did a small startled thing because gods, gods, he is a Targaryen face on a Stark frame, look at him —

And then, behind him —

Aelya.

In a plain dark riding-cloak. With her silver hair coming loose from its braid. With her eyes already on Dany on the high terrace, even at this distance, the way Dany had known Aelya's eyes would be on her — they had always known where to find each other in any room, on any deck, at any distance, since the cradle —

And Dany did not run, this time, because the high terrace had a long stone stair down to the courtyard and another down to the harbour and a queen running down two staircases through three crowds was not a thing even Arianne could excuse.

She walked. She walked very fast.

She walked the length of the terrace and down the first stair and across the upper courtyard and down the second stair and through the lower courtyard and out onto the quay, and the lords and the household and the Unsullied parted in front of her like grass in front of wind, and at the foot of the gangplank there was Aelya, dropping her saddle bag into Ser Daemon's hands, turning, taking three quick steps —

And Dany was in her arms.

She had thought she would not weep. She had told herself she would not weep. She was weeping. Aelya was weeping too, silently, into the hair at the side of her face, and they were not speaking yet, they were just holding, the way they had held each other in a tower in Volantis at thirteen, the way they had held each other in a black-sand cove on a beach at fifteen the morning after the dragons had hatched, the way they had held each other on a high terrace in Meereen on the night of their eighteenth nameday, the way they had held each other twelve months ago in a stern cabin on a ship with the wind in the rigging, before Aelya had gone north.

Aelya was thinner. Aelya was harder. Aelya smelled of cold and salt and woodsmoke and something Dany did not yet recognise, which was — Dany thought distantly — the Wall. The Wall had got into her sister's clothes and her sister's hair. It would take time to come out. Dany would help. Dany would help her sister come back to warmth.

Aelya pulled back enough to put a hand on Dany's cheek.

"Hello, my love."

"Hello, you reptile."

Aelya laughed. It was a wrecked beautiful laugh.

"Your Grace, the embroidery is very fine."

"My Grace was practising her composed expression and you have ruined it."

"I am sorry."

"You are not."

"I am not."

Behind Aelya the tall dark-haired young man stood with the great white direwolf at his hip and waited, properly, to be introduced. Dany became aware of him the way one becomes aware, slowly, of a large quiet animal in a room — and turned to him over Aelya's shoulder, still half-laughing, with tears on her face, and the words she had been practising, welcome to Dragonstone, my lord, my sister has spoken so warmly of you, fell out of her head entirely, because looking at Jon Snow she did the thing she had not at all expected to do.

She started crying again.

Properly, this time. Not the soft tears of reunion. The harder sort.

Aelya, beside her, did not interrupt. Aelya simply put her hand on the small of Dany's back, the way Aelya had been putting her hand on the small of Dany's back since they were children, and waited.

Dany walked the three steps to her nephew and stopped in front of him.

He was a head taller than her. He had grey eyes — proper grey, the Stark grey she had read about in Aelya's letters. He had Rhaegar's mouth. He had Rhaella's brow, faintly, around the eyes. He stood very still, the way young men stand who are not sure if they are about to be hugged or rebuked, and his hand was on the head of his direwolf, and the wolf was watching her with red eyes that — Dany realised with a small soft shock — had no aggression in them, only an old patient consideration, as though Ghost had been told, by Aelya or by some older voice he listened to, that this woman was family.

"Your Grace," Jon said. His voice was a young man's voice with the deeper register coming in. "I am — I am Jon. Aelya has — has told me — "

He stopped. He had practised something on the voyage, evidently, and the something had not survived the moment.

Dany took both his hands in hers.

"You are my nephew," she said, very quietly. "Aegon. You are my nephew, and you have my brother's mouth, and I have been waiting for you for a very long time without knowing I was waiting for you. Welcome home, sweet boy. Come inside. We will feed you. Both of you."

Jon's jaw worked. He did not, again, cry — Aelya had been right; he had not yet let himself — but he held Dany's hands very tight for a moment and he ducked his head, and Dany felt rather than saw him let some held thing out of himself, and Ghost made a small approving sound and pressed his great head once, gently, against her hip.

"Welcome home, Your Grace," Dany said softly, to the direwolf, and she put her hand on the top of his enormous skull, and Ghost's tail moved, exactly once, in the quiet dignified way of a wolf who did not approve of demonstrative behavior in himself but was making, in this case, an exception.

She turned. She put one arm through Aelya's. She put the other through Jon's.

"Come up," she said. "Come up to the castle. I have made you both a very large dinner."

Up on the high terrace, Arianne Martell, watching the three silver-and-dark figures and the white wolf walk together up the long stair, leaned across to Missandei and murmured, only half-mockingly:

"Mistress of Whisperers. I am going to need you to bring me wine. I am about to have feelings, and I do not have feelings sober."

"Of course, Princess," Missandei said gravely. "I will fetch the wine."

She did not, herself, go for the wine. She sent a page. She stood beside Arianne at the rail and watched the three of them climb, and she — Missandei of Naath, who had been a slave of Astapor at thirteen and who was now a Mistress of Whisperers at twenty — found that her own eyes were wet, and she did not, on this particular morning, especially mind.