— Aelya, the flight south —

The flight back took four days.

She had thought, on the ride up, that the flight north was the hardest thing she would ever do. She had been wrong. The flight north had been hard the way work was hard. The flight south was hard the way grief was hard, and grief was a different muscle, and she had not been using it for fifteen years, and on the second day above the white country it broke open in her chest in a way she could not, in the saddle, contain.

Bran lived. That was the first true thing, and she repeated it to herself every hour. Bran lived. He was breathing, against the hollow of her throat, in the small short shallow breaths of a boy whose body had been used for something larger than a boy was meant to hold; but he was breathing, and his small mittened hands had closed once, very faintly, around the inner edge of her cloak on the first night, in a small reflexive grip that meant I am here, and she had wept on him quietly and had then steadied herself and had not told Morghon anything except south, my heart, fast.

Morghon flew fast.

He had, in the four hours of the run on the grove, become a different dragon. Not larger — not yet; the growth of his bones was a thing of years — but committed. The lazy boy who had napped on flagstones for three years and had to be coaxed off with goats was not in the saddle behind her any longer. The dragon behind her had folded the two of them under his wings on the night they camped on a broken glacier, and had produced internal heat at a rate that warmed the cave they were in to the temperature of a Winterfell hearth, and Bran — who would otherwise have died of the cold in his condition — had survived because of it. Morghon understood. She did not know how a dragon understood things. He understood. He flew, and he warmed, and he did not sleep at the camps, and Aelya — who had been carrying Bran in front of her in the saddle for hours on end with her arms going numb at the elbows — found, when she reached down to grip Morghon's neck during a hard turn over the Bay of Seals, that the warm scales of him were humming under her gloved hand, the deep low hum he made only when he was content.

He was content. She did not, at first, understand how he could be. Then she understood: he had finally been the thing he had been built to be. He had killed the heart. He had been a dragon at the end of the world. He was — in his own slow patient way — proud.

She wept against his neck in the high cold air sometimes. He did not mind. He was a dragon. He kept flying.

She thought, in the saddle, about every person who would not be at Winterfell when she landed.

She thought about Robb Stark, whom she had never met. Catelyn Tully. Talisa. The unborn child. Eddard, again, properly, because the long flight had broken open a grief for Eddard she had not allowed herself in a year and a half. Lyanna, whom she had known only through Howland's words. Rhaegar, whom she had known only through books in another life and through scraps in this one.

She thought about the Watch, and how many of the Watch were still alive at Castle Black, and how many were not. She thought about Eastwatch, which she did not yet know about; the flight south had not taken her over Eastwatch, and the country there was the country where the Wall had broken, and the country the dead had come down out of, and Aelya did not yet know whether the men of Eastwatch had held their position or whether the wind that had taken the wights down at the moment of the burning had reached them in time. She would know within the week. The not-knowing was a small additional weight.

She thought about Mormont. Mormont had, on her last orders, evacuated Castle Black two weeks ago; the Lord Commander himself had been ordered south to the Last River with the bulk of the Watch's fighting strength, leaving only a skeleton garrison at the castles to burn the upper passes if the dead came over. He should be at Dany's river, then. He should be alive. Should.

She thought about her sister.

She thought about her sister mostly at night, in the camp, with Bran wrapped in three layers of fur against her side and Morghon's wing arched over them like a roof. She thought about Dany at the river, and whether the line had held, and whether — if the line had held — Dany was whole; whether the cut on the cheek Aelya had not seen but that she suspected, the way she suspected most cuts at most rivers, had healed clean; whether Dany had slept in the days since the wights had dropped or whether Dany had been holding the camp together for the surviving men and had not yet had a hour to set down what she had carried.

She thought, I want to set my head in her lap. For one hour. That is all I want when I land.

She thought, I am going to get it. We have earned an hour.

She fed the small private fire of that hour all four days. It kept her steady.

— Winterfell, the courtyard, late afternoon of the fourth day —

She did not fly directly to the river. She flew to Winterfell, because Bran could not survive a longer flight.

The keep was waiting.

Word had reached Winterfell two days earlier — not through any raven, because no raven had flown from beyond the Wall, but through Bran himself, through whatever small thread of greenseer's awareness still ran south to his sister. Sansa had woken in the dawn of the second day after the burning and had said to Megga, who had been sleeping on a pallet by the hearth because Megga refused to leave Sansa's side, the dead are down. The thing is over. My brother is alive. They are coming home. Megga had told Howland, who had told the captains, who had told the household. By midday the ravens had begun coming in from the south as well — Dany's dispatches reaching them through the patient relay system Khorane had set up — confirming the same news from a different angle: the wights have fallen. The line has held. The river is ours. We are turning south. Tell the keep.

Sansa had spent the next two days calmly, methodically, preparing for her brother's return.

She had ordered the great hall warmed. She had ordered Bran's old chamber aired and the bed made up. She had ordered the maester, who had ridden up in the column from King's Landing two moons earlier and was a small careful Reach maester named Wolkan, to prepare every restorative he knew for a child who had over-extended himself. She had ordered Hodor to clean Bran's wheeled chair and have it ready in the courtyard. She had ordered Rickon, who at six understood very little but had grown quite attached to his brother in the past months, to wear his good doublet and stand with her on the steps when the dragon arrived, and not to run forward, because running at a landing dragon was a thing one could not do twice. Rickon, gravely, had agreed.

Howland had spent the same two days writing. He had sent letters out to every Northern lord, to Mance Rayder (still at the Wall with the rear formation), to Dany at the river with a request for a southern muster at Winterfell to receive the queens, and to King's Landing — to Tyrion, Missandei, and the small council — confirming that the realm was past the worst and that the southern reign would resume in roughly six weeks. He had written the King's Landing letter with great care. The realm had been holding its breath for four moons. The realm needed permission to breathe.

When Morghon came down out of the grey afternoon sky over Winterfell on the fourth day, the courtyard was full. Sansa stood on the steps in a Stark-grey gown with the direwolf-pin on her shoulder and Rickon at her right and Howland at her left. Hodor was at the foot of the steps with Bran's wheeled chair. Maester Wolkan was beside Hodor with his bag. The Northern lords were ranged along the inner walls. The freedmen and the Unsullied who had stayed behind to garrison the keep were on the curtain wall, watching.

Morghon landed.

He landed gently — Aelya, who had ridden him for years, had never seen him land this gently — in the very centre of the courtyard, on a pre-cleared circle the household had broomed clear of fresh snow that morning. He folded his enormous wings with a long care. He lowered his great horned head until it rested on the flagstones beside the steps, so that the slope of his neck was a ramp, and he held still.

Aelya unbuckled herself.

She climbed down, with Bran wrapped against her chest in her cloak, very slowly, one foothold at a time, with one hand on Morghon's warm scales for balance. The whole courtyard was silent. Maester Wolkan stepped forward at the last to receive Bran with both arms, and Aelya — who had been carrying him for four days — handed him over with the careful blank face of a person who could not yet afford to feel her arms emptying.

Bran's eyes opened.

He looked, briefly, at Maester Wolkan. He looked, then, past the maester at his sister.

"Sansa," he whispered.

Sansa was on the steps. Sansa was down them. Sansa, who had decided in advance that she would not cry, was not crying — Sansa Stark, fifteen years old, Lady of Winterfell, had a professional steadiness in moments of high family feeling now that Aelya privately considered formidable — and she came down to Maester Wolkan and put her hand on her brother's pale forehead and said:

"Welcome home, Bran. Hodor has your chair. Maester Wolkan has hot broth. We are going to put you in your bed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sansa."

"Good. Hodor."

Hodor, beside her, his great gentle face crumpled with feeling, said Hodor in a tone Aelya had not heard from him before, and he reached out with his enormous hands, and he took Bran from the maester, and he held the small boy against the breast of his enormous tunic, and he carried him — without using the chair, simply carrying him, the way he had carried Bran across half a haunted forest two years ago — up the steps and into the keep, and Sansa walked beside him with her hand on Bran's hair and Maester Wolkan a step behind, and they were gone through the great doors.

Aelya stood beside Morghon's enormous green-bronze flank in the courtyard.

She did not — for a moment — know what to do with her arms.

Howland Reed, on the steps, came down to her. The small old crannogman did not embrace her. He simply stopped at two paces, and bowed — properly, from the waist, the bow of a Master of Laws to his queen — and then he straightened, and he said:

"Your Grace. Welcome back."

"Lord Howland."

"He will live."

"You have spoken with him?"

"Through the trees. Yes. He has spent — most of what he had. But he is still here. Maester Wolkan is good. I have written to my own people in the Neck for certain herbs that will help. He will not greenseer anymore — that path is closed; the raven took it with him when he went — but he will live, and he will be Bran. Your Grace. You did the work. He will be home."

Aelya's throat closed.

She let it close, this time. There was no audience here that mattered.

"Howland."

"Aye, Your Grace."

"Take Morghon. There is a — a goat, a heated platform, something — please take care of him. He has been the heart of this. I cannot — I need to —"

"Aye, Your Grace. I will take him. Captain Brennan!"

A Reach captain Aelya did not know stepped forward with three handlers, and Aelya put her hand once, briefly, against the warm scales of Morghon's neck, and Morghon turned one yellow eye to her and chuffed, gently, and she said in High Valyrian, thank you, my heart, thank you, sleep, and Morghon, who had not slept in four days, allowed himself to be led to the great heated forge-platform the household had been preparing for him for a moon, and laid himself down, and put his nose under his foreleg, and was asleep before the captain had even finished settling the saddle off his back.

Aelya turned to Howland.

"My sister."

"Eight days south. The host is intact. They are coming home. She is unharmed. The line held."

She closed her eyes.

She let out a breath she had been holding for nineteen days.

"Good," she said. "Good. Howland. Please tell me when supper is. I am going to go and sit with my nephew. And then — please — I would like a hot bath, and a clean shift, and a bed, and I will speak with you and the lords properly tomorrow."

"Aye, Your Grace."

"And Howland."

"Aye."

"Send the rider south to my sister at her best speed. Tell her: Bran lives. The thing is dead. I am at Winterfell. Come home. — A. Just those words."

"Aye, Your Grace."

She climbed the steps slowly. The Northern lords on the inner wall, when she passed them, did not cheer; she had requested no cheering, by a small note Sansa had circulated the previous day. They bowed instead, in the Northern way, fist to chest. She inclined her head to them. She went inside.

She did not go to her chamber. She went to Bran's.

Bran was in his bed, with three furs and a bed-warmer and a clay cup of hot broth held to his lips by Sansa. Maester Wolkan was at the foot of the bed with a small array of dishes. Hodor was sitting on the floor on the far side of the bed, holding Bran's other hand in both of his enormous ones with the tender awkwardness of a man holding a small bird. Rickon was on a stool at the foot of the bed, his great shaggy direwolf at his feet, his small mouth pressed into a determined line.

Aelya stopped in the doorway.

She had a sudden wretched moment in which she did not feel she had earned to be in this room — it was a Stark room, full of Starks doing Stark things, and she had brought Bran back but she had also been the one to take him north — and then Sansa, without looking up, said quietly:

"Aelya. Come and sit with us. We have made room."

Aelya came in.

There was, in fact, a small cushioned chair pulled up to the side of the bed, in exactly the place where an aunt would sit. Sansa had arranged it. Aelya understood, with a small wretched gratitude, that her place in this family had been made for her by a fifteen-year-old who had decided, in advance, on the household's behalf, that Aunt Aelya sits here.

Aelya sat there.

Bran, between sips of broth, turned his head a fraction and looked at her.

He smiled.

It was a small tired thirteen-year-old's smile. The greenseer was gone from him. The boy was back. He had, in the four days of his rest, become someone Aelya had not quite met before — had only ever caught glimpses of, in flashes, before he had fallen from a tower years ago — and she found, looking at the small thin pale face with the quiet affectionate smile, that she had brought home a nephew.

"Aunt," Bran whispered.

"Bran."

"I am sorry I was so heavy on the ride home."

Aelya laughed.

It came out wet. Sansa, beside her, laughed too, into her sleeve, and Hodor on the far side of the bed laughed his great slow uncertain Hodor, and Rickon at the foot of the bed, who did not yet know what was funny but understood it was a moment to laugh, laughed too, in a small high six-year-old's bray, and Maester Wolkan, who was Reach-born and unaccustomed to the tonal shifts of Northern grief, looked extremely confused for a beat and then, with the patient professional face of a maester at a bedside, began carefully ladling more broth.

It was, Aelya thought, the best small room she had ever been in.

She sat with them for an hour.

She went and had her bath. She went and slept. She slept twelve hours straight — the deepest sleep she had had in five years — and in the morning a raven came in from the south, from the river, in Khorane's careful steady hand, and the raven said:

Your Grace. Eight days. I am bringing your wife home. — D.

Aelya read it, sitting in her chamber in a thick wool robe with her hair still wet, and she held the small slip of parchment to her chest for a long while before she put it in the leather wallet inside her shirt where she kept the letters that mattered.

Then she went to find Sansa, because there were eight days of work to do before her sister came home, and the realm — what was left of it — was waiting.