— Aelya, three months later, King's Landing —

Spring came up out of the south first, the way it always did, but it came up gently this year, the way it had not in living memory. The maesters at the Citadel — who had been catastrophising in print since autumn about a winter that would last a generation and would empty half the Seven Kingdoms of population — had to publish a small embarrassed correction in the third moon of the year, in which they noted that the winter had broken at the equinox, in a single clean turn that seemed to date precisely from the eighteenth day of the previous moon, and that the realm had escaped the worst with stores intact and only moderate loss of livestock, and that the unprecedentedly mild conclusion of the season is most likely attributable to favourable atmospheric currents originating in the Sunset Sea, although other factors may apply.

Aelya, reading the correction at breakfast in the small solar she and Dany had taken over for the morning hour, snorted into her tea.

"Favourable atmospheric currents," she said.

"My love."

"Other factors may apply."

"My love. Stop."

"Other factors, Dany. Like — for example — a thirteen-year-old boy and a dragon and a grove —"

"My love. Eat your breakfast. The Citadel is doing its best."

"The Citadel is cowards. Tyrion. Tyrion, are you reading this?"

Tyrion Lannister, who had become, by long accumulated habit, a more or less daily breakfast guest in the queens' small solar, looked up from his own copy with the small dry smile he had been wearing more often as the realm settled. "I am reading it, Your Grace. I have already drafted a response on behalf of the Crown for your signature. The phrasing is — I believe the word you used, when you instructed me, was withering."

"Read it."

"The Crown has been informed of the Citadel's recent communication regarding the favourable conclusion of the winter," Tyrion read aloud, gravely. "The Crown wishes to thank the Citadel for its scholarly attention to the matter and to confirm that the explanation is, in the Crown's view, extremely interesting. The Crown looks forward to similar future communications regarding the favourable conclusion of all subsequent winters that may follow upon the timely intervention of unrecorded thirteen-year-old greenseers and their family members, and trusts the Citadel will continue to attribute such conclusions to atmospheric currents."

Dany was laughing into her cup.

"Tyrion."

"Your Grace."

"Send it."

"Your Grace, I had hoped you would say so. I have already had it copied and sealed."

"Send it. Send it under both queens' seals and Bran's personal mark. Bran will enjoy it. Has Bran been told he has a mark?"

"Bran has been told, Your Grace. Lord Howland drafted his sigil — a small black raven on a white field, three eyes — and Bran approved it last week. The mark is in use. The Citadel will recognise it within the hour and will, with any luck, develop a small institutional ulcer."

"Excellent. Sansa will be pleased."

"Lady Stark," Tyrion said dryly, "will be delighted, Your Grace. She has been waiting for a chance to publicly needle the Citadel for two years."

"Send it."

Tyrion gathered his papers, bowed — in the small unceremonious morning way they had all settled into — and went off to send it.

Dany set down her cup. She looked at her sister across the table.

"Aelya."

"Yes."

"You are happy."

Aelya considered this.

"I am," she said. "I am, Dany. I had not — I had not entirely expected to be. I had thought — I had thought we would win, and I had thought it would feel like a relief, and I had thought I would spend the first year afterwards being useful in a tired way. I did not expect to be — happy. Like this. In the morning, at breakfast, with Tyrion making jokes about the maesters."

"My love."

"I had not allowed myself to plan for it."

"I know."

"I had not allowed myself to picture — this. The breakfast room. The light. You across the table. I had pictured the war for fifteen years. I had not pictured a Wednesday morning in the third moon of spring with — with the sun coming up over the bay and you in a yellow shawl. I had not earned the picturing, before. I think I have earned it now. I am still learning how to look at it."

Dany rose from her chair. She came around to Aelya's side. She sat down on the arm of Aelya's chair, with one hand on her sister's shoulder, and she said, very quietly, into Aelya's hair:

"Then look at it slowly, my love. There is no hurry. The mornings are not going anywhere."

Aelya closed her eyes for a moment, with her head against her sister's hip, and she thought: no. The mornings are not going anywhere. We are going to have a great many of them. We are going to have so many mornings I forget the count. That is the work now. To stop counting.

She had not, in her life, stopped counting.

She was going to have to learn.

She thought she would.

— Court business, the same week —

The court had — to her own quiet astonishment — settled.

The settlement had been Tyrion's work, mostly. He had been Master of Coin for nearly two years now, and he had, with the patient terrier industry of a small clever man who had finally been given a job that fit him, rebuilt the realm's books from the ground up. He had renegotiated the Crown's debt to the Iron Bank — at terms that had made the Iron Bank's representatives, when they had ridden up from Braavos to discuss the matter, leave King's Landing with the slightly stunned look of men who had been politely robbed by experts. He had reorganised the tax structure in a way that had increased Crown revenue by a third while reducing the actual burden on smallfolk by a quarter. He had funded the rebuilding of the Wall — which was being undertaken at a moderate pace by a joint Watch-and-wildling labour force under Mormont's senior officer's command, with stone hauled in by ship from the Stepstones and timber from the Wolfswood, and dragon-warmed quicklime brought up from a small operation in the Riverlands — out of a special fund Tyrion had created from the seized Bolton estates and the seized Frey estates and a one-time settlement levy on the houses that had been on the wrong side of the war. The houses on the wrong side had paid the levy without much complaint, because the alternative, in the realm's new mood, was being on the very wrong side, which had carried the example of Roose Bolton.

Missandei had done her work too. Mistress of Whisperers had turned out, in her hands, to be a very different office than it had been in Varys's. Varys — who had been pardoned, on Aelya's instruction, in recognition of his role in the night Sansa was rescued, and who had been quietly retired to a small good villa on the Stepstones with a maester and a household and an annuity — had run a network of boys. Missandei ran a network of women — washerwomen, kitchen-maids, midwives, septas, brothel-keepers, market-women, teachers — and the network produced a different quality of intelligence than the boys' network had, with the result that the Crown now knew, at any given time, what every village in the realm was eating, what every market town was complaining about, and which lord was beating his wife badly enough that the smallfolk had begun to talk. Missandei summarised the resulting briefings for the queens at the small council twice a week. Aelya read them with grim satisfaction. Three lords had been quietly stripped of their seats in the past year on the basis of Missandei's reports; one of them had, on the maester's evidence, been put to death; the other two were under household arrest with their wives quietly resettled in better situations. The realm had been a very dangerous place for a certain kind of small lord since the new Mistress of Whisperers had taken the seat, and the realm — Aelya had observed — was visibly improving for it.

Howland had drafted laws. He had drafted them slowly, the way he did everything, in a small office off the throne room with a window facing the godswood the queens had had planted in the inner Red Keep gardens at the start of the reign. He had drafted, in the past year: a comprehensive guest-right code with public penalties for violation; a body of law regarding the protection of smallfolk from lords' abuses; a body of law regarding the rights of widows; a body of law regarding the rights of lowborn women to refuse marriage; a small careful body of law regarding the administration of the freed wildling settlements in the Gift, drafted in consultation with Mance Rayder personally and with two wildling chieftains who had ridden down to King's Landing for the purpose. The wildling consultation had startled the court, the first time it had happened, because Mance and Tormund had ridden into the throne room in their wildling cloaks and had spoken in their wildling Common, and the lords of the realm had had to listen to two large free folk explain in plain unornamented language what they thought of certain proposed clauses, and the lords had, by the end of the second consultation, accommodated the change, and had even — Aelya had observed — begun, here and there, to quote Tormund Giantsbane in their own remarks at council, which she found enormously amusing.

Ser Barristan ran the Kingsguard. He had filled it back up to seven over the past year, mostly with Dornish women — a development he had, after some initial discomfort, embraced, on the grounds that the queens have made it clear, Your Grace, that the Kingsguard is for the best swords, and three of the four best new swords in the realm this year are from Dorne, and two of those are women, and that is mathematics, not politics, and I am too old to argue with mathematics. Aelya had patted his shoulder and told him he was the best Kingsguard the realm had had in three reigns.

Cersei Lannister, at Darry, was — by all reports — almost well. She had been allowed, six moons into her residence there, a single short visit from her son Tommen, who had been brought up from the West for the purpose; the visit had gone well; Cersei had wept for two hours after Tommen had ridden away and had then, by Kevan's account, slept for fourteen hours and risen and asked for her uncle to bring her the ledgers of the estate, because she had decided she would help with the running of it. She had been helping with the running of it ever since. The estate was, Kevan reported with the careful surprise of an uncle who had not expected this, materially better managed under her hand than it had been before. Cersei had not, since then, been a problem. Aelya had received one short letter from her, in the eighth moon of the previous year, in which Cersei had written: Your Grace. The realm under your reign is the realm I would have wished for my own children. I am told, daily, by reports from the village, that the smallfolk here speak of you and your sister with the kind of respect they have not spoken of any throne with in my lifetime. I am, in my way, glad. I am also writing to say: I have not forgotten what you did at the steps of the keep on the day the city was given. You raised me up. I was prepared to die. I did not. I have spent the year since trying to be the woman you spared. I do not know whether I have succeeded. I am trying. — C.

Aelya had read the letter three times and had folded it into the leather wallet at her chest where she kept the letters that mattered. She had not replied. There had not been a reply needed; the letter had been a thing Cersei had needed to write, and Aelya had received it, and Cersei had known it would be received, and that had been enough.

Tywin Lannister, in his cliff-castle, had — to the great surprise of approximately no one — written his memoirs over the past year. He had then, at the start of the third moon of spring, died in his sleep of an illness Maester Wolkan (consulted by raven) had described as a quiet failing of the heart, consistent with a man of his age and his particular history. Tyrion had received the news with composure. He had asked permission to ride west for the funeral. Aelya had granted it instantly, with two weeks' leave and a Royal escort and an instruction to take Cersei from Darry along the route, if she wishes to go and to be received at the funeral by her brother, and bring her back afterward. Cersei had wished it. She had ridden with Tyrion to the cliff-castle and had attended her father's funeral, and had ridden back to Darry afterward, and had, on her arrival, written Aelya another short letter which contained a single sentence: Your Grace. Thank you. — C. Aelya had folded that one into the wallet too.

Joffrey, at Winterfell, had been — Sansa's reports said — not well. He had spent six moons in the cells, and then, after Sansa had decided to take Aelya's letter seriously and look him in the eye and choose his fate herself, she had decided on something her aunt had not predicted. Sansa had sentenced him to the Wall.

She had done it formally, in her own great hall, under the new royal law, with Howland's guest-right code as the relevant statute (Joffrey had, at the time of his father's death, been Sansa's host in the technical sense and had betrayed that obligation by having her father killed; the precedent applied, though loosely). She had sentenced him to take the black, with the additional condition that the Watch was not required to accept his service. Mormont had, at Sansa's particular request, accepted him — we'll find work for him, m'lady, we always do — and Joffrey had been delivered to the Wall in the fourth moon of the previous year. He had not, by Mormont's reports, taken to the Watch. He had, however, been alive a year, which was, Aelya thought privately, the longest the boy had ever gone without doing something irrevocable. He was, in his way, being held alive by an old bear with no patience for nonsense, and the realm was the better for his absence, and his sister Myrcella — now sixteen, recently and happily betrothed to a Stormlands lord called Trystane Tarth, whom she liked — had sent him one letter on the anniversary of his sentence. The letter had been a single sentence: Brother, I hope you are warm. Try to behave. — M. Joffrey had not replied. Mormont had filed the letter in the Watch's records.

Tommen, eleven, was a small good boy growing into a small good lord. Kevan Lannister was, against odds, an excellent regent. The Westerlands were doing well. The Reach was doing well. The Stormlands were doing well. Dorne was doing exceptionally well. The Vale was a problem, because Robert Arryn was sickly and his mother was difficult and the Vale's politics were a mess, but it was a problem of slow decline rather than sudden crisis, and Aelya had been gently working on a solution for moons that involved Sansa's eventual cousin-marriage to a Royce, a long-game project whose pieces were already moving on a board nobody but Aelya and Howland was reading.

The Iron Islands were also a problem. Euron Greyjoy had crowned himself king the previous spring, and had begun raiding the western coast of the Reach within weeks of his coronation, and had — by all of Missandei's reports — gone visibly mad in the past six moons in a way that Aelya had been keeping a careful dossier on. She would handle the Iron Islands within the year. She had not yet decided how. Tyrion had drafted three plans; Howland had drafted one; Aelya had a fourth in her own hand that involved Asha Greyjoy (Yara, in her northern dialect), Euron's niece, who had survived the death of her father and who was in regular correspondence with the Crown and who had been, since the previous summer, quietly preparing to make a play for the Salt Throne with Crown backing. Asha was clever. Asha was tough. Asha had told Aelya, in their first letter, I am not a queen, Your Grace, but I am a captain, and the islands need a captain badly, and I will be one if you will back me. Aelya was going to back her. The plan was on track for late summer. She would have an Asha Greyjoy on the Salt Throne by harvest, with Euron's head on a spike on the Pyke seawall, and the realm would be the better for it.

Robb Stark was dead. Catelyn was dead. Talisa was dead, with the unborn child. The realm had not been able to give them back. The Frey trial had been held the previous summer, and Walder Frey, ninety-two and entirely sane, had been beheaded in the courtyard at Riverrun in front of three hundred Tully bannermen and the assembled small council, and the Frey lands had been split among four loyal Riverlands houses, with one small portion given to a single surviving Frey grand-niece who had not been at the wedding and whose only crime had been to share the family name. Brynden Tully held the Riverlands now. Brynden Tully was eighty-three. He had told Aelya at the trial, with the dry old Blackfish smile, Your Grace, I am riding out the rest of my run on stubbornness alone, and when I die I will leave the lands in good order for my niece's son, who is alive and fostering at White Harbor and will be seventeen by the time I am done. Aelya had inclined her head to him and had said, take your time, my lord. He was. The Riverlands were healing.

The North — the North was Sansa.

Sansa, sixteen, was Lady of Winterfell with Bran beside her as Lord (in their joint and unprecedented arrangement, which had been formally approved by the Crown), and the North was being run, in a quiet competent way, by a young woman who had spent a year in the Red Keep learning queens. She wrote to Aelya twice a week. The letters had begun, in the first weeks, as small uncertain things, and had grown over the year into long brisk practical letters about grain stores and fishing rights and a small dispute between two minor houses about a strip of pasture, and Aelya had — gently, by careful reply, never overstepping — taught Sansa how to hold a kingdom. By the third moon of spring, Sansa was teaching Aelya things about the North that Aelya had not known. Sansa had, in the past month, instituted a small new policy of having the smallfolk's grievances heard publicly twice a moon in the great hall of Winterfell, with Bran sitting beside her in his wheeled chair and the heart-tree visible through the open doors. The smallfolk had taken to it with great seriousness. The lords had grumbled and accommodated. Aelya had read Sansa's letter describing the practice and had immediately written back: darling, this is brilliant. May the Crown borrow it for King's Landing? With your name on the credit? Sansa had written back, of course, Aelya. Borrow whatever you like. It is your court too.

Aelya had instituted the practice in King's Landing in the fourth moon. The smallfolk of Flea Bottom had taken to it as the smallfolk of the North had. The lords had — predictably — grumbled. They had accommodated.

Jon was at Greywater Watch. He had ridden there with Howland in the autumn, after the long flight down from Winterfell, and had spent the winter learning his mother's family's small private gift of greensight from a certain old Reed cousin who had a touch of it. The cousin, Howland's report had said, was not at all the right teacher for a Targaryen-Stark of this temperament, but Jon had insisted on the lessons, and had been working through them with the careful patience of a young man who had finally been given access to a part of himself his foster-father had never had words for. He had not yet ridden Rhaegal again. Rhaegal had been at Dragonstone for the winter, with Sōvegon and Viserion and Ēdrugon, under the care of the handlers there, and was thriving. Jon would come south in the summer. He had written Aelya a short letter the previous moon that had said: Aunt. I am thinking. I will tell you what I have been thinking when I see you. Howland approves. Ghost approves. Rhaegal will approve. — J. Aelya did not yet know what he had been thinking. She suspected. She would find out in due course.

Bran, at Winterfell, was thirteen-going-on-fourteen and had become — to everyone's surprise, including his own — a slightly silly young man. His sister had reported it with great affection in one of her letters: Aelya, my brother has discovered he can make Rickon laugh by pretending to fall out of his chair, and he has taken up this pursuit professionally. The whole keep is suffering. Hodor has had to intervene three times. I am torn between scolding him and weeping with relief. He has not been silly since he was seven. Send help. — S. Aelya had laughed at this letter in her solar for ten minutes, and had then sent Bran a small package containing a wooden practice-sword carved by an Unsullied veteran who had taken up small woodworking in his retirement, and a note that said: Bran. Use this on Rickon if pretending to fall out of your chair stops working. Love, your aunt who knows him.

Rickon, at Winterfell, was seven and terrible. The household was managing.

Howland, in King's Landing, was Master of Laws and was the steadiest man in the realm.

Ser Barristan, in King's Landing, was Lord Commander and was, against all odds, content — a state Aelya had not quite expected the old knight ever to reach. He had remarked to her, over wine the previous week, Your Grace, I am eighty-three years old, and I am told most days by men I respect that I am useful, and I have more white cloaks in my Guard than I have had in my life, and three of them are women, and the queens of this realm love each other openly and the realm is the better for it, and I am, against all the predictions of my youth, happy. I had not thought I would be. I am.

Mance Rayder was at Eastwatch with Tormund, supervising the rebuilding of the Wall. Tormund had, the previous moon, sent Aelya a small package containing a single tooth of a polar bear he had apparently fought single-handed over a disputed fishing right with a Skagosi captain, with a note that said: Targaryen. For your collection. Tooth says hello. We are making good progress on the bricks. Tell your wife. — T.

Aelya had laughed. She had put the tooth on her writing-desk. It was still there.

The realm was — spring.

She had not, all year, allowed herself the word.

She allowed it now.

She set down her tea, and she looked across the small breakfast-room at her sister in the yellow shawl, and she said:

"Dany."

"Yes, my love."

"I am happy."

Dany, who had just picked up the second slice of bread — the last on the plate, which she would normally have given Aelya, in the small unconscious way she did — paused, with the slice halfway to her mouth.

She set it back down.

She got up, came around the table, and crouched in front of her sister's chair. She took both Aelya's hands in hers. She looked up at her face.

"My love."

"I am happy. I — I just thought I should say it. Out loud. Today. I have been carrying it for a moon and I did not know, until I just said it, that I had been carrying it as a secret. I do not want to carry it as a secret. I want you to know I am happy. We have done it. I am — I am here, in this room, with you, in the third moon of spring, and I am happy."

Dany, on her knees in front of Aelya's chair in the small solar, with the morning light coming in through the window, smiled the wrecked beautiful smile she had smiled at Old Oak's gate and on the steps of the Great Sept and on the road to Winterfell, and she pressed her sister's hands against her own cheek for a long moment, and she said:

"Sun and shadow, my love."

"Sun and shadow."

The bread sat forgotten on the table. Tyrion's draft response to the Citadel was already on its way. The court was settling. The realm was healing. The mornings were not going anywhere.

Aelya, who had been planning since she was four, allowed herself to stop planning for an hour.

She had earned the hour.