— Aelya, fifteen years later —

She was thirty-five years old, and she was sitting on the warm flagstones of the high terrace at Dragonstone, on a quiet afternoon in the seventh moon of the year, with her bare feet up on the parapet and a cup of cool Reach white at her elbow and Ēdrugon curled along the bench behind her with his great horned head on her shoulder, and she was reading a letter from her niece.

The letter was from Sansa, who was thirty-one and had been Lady of Winterfell for sixteen years and was, by every reckoning Aelya had access to, the best lord the North had had since Cregan Stark a thousand years earlier. Sansa had married, eight years past, a quiet competent Royce cousin called Andar — Andar Royce, the Vale problem solved at last, exactly the way Aelya had been quietly arranging it for moons before the wedding — and Sansa and Andar had three children: a daughter named Catelyn after her grandmother who was seven and serious, a son named Eddard after his grandfather who was five and silly, and a small daughter named Lyanna after her great-aunt who was two and currently, by Sansa's report, eating dirt with great determination, Aelya, the whole household has given up.

The letter said:

Aelya, my dear,

The North is well. The harvest is excellent. Bran has finished the third volume of his book — yes, my brother has become a writer in his middle years; I will not pretend to be unsurprised — and is sending it to Tyrion at the end of the moon. Rickon, twenty-two now, has at last consented to be betrothed, to a sensible Mormont cousin who tolerates his moods; the wedding is in the spring; please come if you can. Hodor is well and supervises both the stables and a small flock of sheep he has acquired in his retirement. Catelyn is reading already — I have Tyrion to thank for the books he keeps sending — and has informed me, with great seriousness, that she intends to be Mistress of Whisperers when she grows up. I have told her that Missandei holds that office and is unlikely to vacate it, and Catelyn has replied that she will simply wait. I am — perhaps unreasonably — proud.

Tell Dany that Eddard liked her last letter so much he carries it folded in his pocket. He has demanded I tell her so. The pocket has worn through, twice. We have replaced the doublet.

Lyanna is — Lyanna. We will say no more.

I write because there is news. Jon has come back from his travels at last. He landed Rhaegal in the courtyard yesterday morning, with a large brown beard and a great deal of road on his cloak, and embraced his brothers and held his nieces and wept — not much, but properly, in the way he has finally learned to — and said, before supper, that he is done. Nine years of riding the realm with his dragon and the wolf and the small careful greensight he learned at Greywater is enough. He has, my dear, decided to stay. I do not press him. He knows I do not. But he has settled into his old chamber and told me, this morning at breakfast, that he is home. You should know.

Come north when you can. The leaves are turning. Bran says hello.

All my love,S.

Aelya read the letter twice, and folded it, and put it in the leather wallet inside her shirt where she still — sixteen years on — kept the letters that mattered.

She tilted her head against Ēdrugon's. The dragon, at thirty-three years of age and the size of a small ship, made a low contented chuff that vibrated through the stone of the bench.

"He came home, my heart."

Ēdrugon's tongue flickered against her ear.

"I know. I am pleased too."

She heard the soft scuff of a slipper on the stair, and she turned her head, and Dany came up onto the terrace.

She was thirty-five and looked it — the silver hair was the same silver hair, but there were lines at the corners of her eyes now, and a gentleness in her face that her younger self had been growing toward and had finally arrived at. She was carrying two cups, a small plate of figs balanced on one of them, and a folded shawl over one arm. She was barefoot. She had, in their middle years, taken to going barefoot at Dragonstone in summer, and Aelya — who had pretended for years to be exasperated by this — had begun, the previous summer, to do it too.

Dany set the figs down. She set the cups down. She kicked the shawl onto Aelya's lap and sat on the bench beside her, and pressed her shoulder against Aelya's, and looked out over the sea.

"Sansa wrote."

"Yes."

"Jon is home."

"Yes. Properly home, this time. She thinks for good."

"Good. About time. He has been wandering since he was twenty-two. A man can wander until he is thirty-one. After that he ought to settle."

"He is thirty-eight, my love."

"Then he is very overdue." Dany handed her one of the cups. "Drink. The Reach white is very good this year."

Aelya drank.

They sat in the late afternoon light. Ēdrugon, behind them, dozed. Down on the lower platform, Sōvegon was grooming herself in the brisk fastidious way she had been grooming herself for thirty years; she had not changed at all in temperament from the day she had hatched. Rhaegal was somewhere over the bay; he had flown out with a fishing-boat that morning and would be back at sunset. Viserion was at King's Landing this season, with the Crown's small council, where he had, in his quiet useful way, become a kind of mascot-and-guardian of the throne room. Drogon was on the parapet of the Stone Drum, where he had been sleeping for three days; Drogon had grown into a steady disciplined creature in the past decade, and slept long.

Morghon was at Winterfell. He had been at Winterfell for six years. He had decided, in the autumn of Aelya's twenty-eighth year, that he liked the cold; he had flown north on a particular afternoon without consulting anyone, and had landed in the Winterfell courtyard, and had laid down on a great heated platform Hodor had hastily constructed for him, and had — in his slow patient way — become a permanent feature of the keep. Aelya flew up to see him twice a year. He greeted her each time with a long contented chuff and went immediately back to sleep, and Aelya — who had been the rider of the largest living dragon in the world for fifteen years now, and who had grown gracefully resigned to her dragon's chosen lifestyle — would sit beside him for an afternoon with her hand on his great warm flank, and he would purr, in his slow underground way, and that would be the visit. It was, she had decided, exactly the relationship a Targaryen ought to have with a dragon the size of a building.

Dany leaned her head against Aelya's shoulder.

"Tell me about your morning."

"Tyrion's letter came. He has finished the second draft of the new tax code. He says it will reduce smallfolk burden another five percent and increase Crown revenue by two. Howland has approved it. Missandei has approved it. The great houses will object for form's sake and accept it within six weeks. I am going to sign it next moon."

"Good. And Cersei wrote."

"How did you know?"

"I saw the seal on your desk. Darry hen-and-fox, in red. What did she say?"

"She is well. Tommen visited last fortnight. Myrcella is expecting her third — a Tarth child, I will be a great-aunt-by-marriage again, my love, please be impressed — and Cersei is going to ride south to Tarth for the birth. With Kevan's blessing. She has — she has been very well, Dany. The last decade has been good to her. I am — strangely glad."

"Not strangely."

"Not strangely. Just — glad."

Dany was quiet a moment. Then she said: "We ought to tell you something."

Aelya turned her head. "Who is we?"

"Tyrion and me. We have been arranging a thing."

"Oh, gods."

"My love. Stop. Listen. Tyrion has been talking with Sansa, and Sansa has been talking with Bran, and Bran has — gently — suggested that we might like to consider, for the codicil, naming Sansa's daughter Catelyn as a future named alternate. With Sansa's agreement. The girl is seven and serious and reads books and has informed her mother she intends to be a great lady someday, and the codicil currently has Sansa and Jon and Bran and Edd Tollett and three of the Stormlands cousins, but no one in the next generation, and Tyrion thinks we should add one. Sansa says yes. Bran says yes. Catelyn herself, when asked, said yes please and went back to her book. I think we should add her."

Aelya thought about it.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, my love. Add her."

"Good. Tyrion will draft the amendment by next moon."

"Good."

"And — Aelya."

"Yes."

"There is something else."

"What."

Dany handed her a small folded parchment. It was sealed with the small Stark direwolf in grey wax — Sansa's private seal, not the seal of Winterfell, but the personal one Sansa used only for the queens and for her brothers.

"Read it. After Sansa's main letter. She told me she had sent both. She wanted me to give you the second one in person."

Aelya broke the seal.

The note was short. It was in Sansa's careful hand.

Aelya. One last thing.

Catelyn asked me last night whether she might be allowed, when she is older, to come south for a season. She wishes — her words — to stay with my aunts and learn how queens work. I told her I would ask. She is seven. I would not send her tomorrow. But in three or four years, when she is ten or eleven, I would let her, if you would have her. She is — Aelya, my dear — she is so much like you it is unsettling. The seriousness. The watching. She has been watching the kingdom around her since she could sit up, and I think she will be a great lady someday, and I would like her to learn from the woman she most resembles.

If you and Dany are willing — if it is not too much — we would send her. Eventually.

All my love,S.

Aelya read it three times.

Her hands, by the third reading, were not entirely steady.

"Dany."

"Yes, my love."

"Sansa wants to send Catelyn."

"I know. She told me last spring she would ask, when the girl was old enough to mean it. The girl is old enough now. I knew this letter was coming. I — I have wanted, my love, to ask you for moons whether you would want it. I did not know how. Sansa, blessedly, has done the asking for me."

Aelya looked at her.

"You want her."

"Yes."

"You want her here. With us. Eventually."

"Yes. Yes, my love. We had — we had decided, all those years ago, that we did not need a child of our own. The codicil was enough. The realm was enough. The court was enough. I — I have been content with that. I have not regretted it. But Sansa's daughter — Sansa's daughter has been growing up at Winterfell with Jon for an uncle and Bran for an uncle and Hodor for a steward and a direwolf for a pet, and I have been receiving letters about her for seven years, and I have been quietly — I have been quietly loving her by post for a long time. If she comes south to live with us for a season, when she is eleven or twelve — Aelya. It would be — it would be a great gift. To both of us. Without any of the things we did not want."

Aelya did not speak for a long moment.

She pressed Sansa's note against her chest and looked out over the sea.

She thought about Catelyn Royce-Stark, age seven, in Winterfell, reading a book that Tyrion had sent her, deciding she would be Mistress of Whisperers when she grew up. She thought about a thirteen-year-old version of that girl, sitting at this very bench someday, three or four years from now, with her own cup of watered Reach white, asking Aelya questions about the realm. She thought about teaching the girl the same things her sister had taught her, and the same things Sansa had taught herself, and the things Howland had taught all of them.

She thought, yes. Yes. That is the family. That is what we have made.

"Yes," she said quietly. "Yes, Dany. Write to her tonight. Tell her we would be delighted. Tell her — when Catelyn is ten, or eleven, we will send our finest carriage and our quietest Kingsguard, and the girl will come south for a season, and we will love her, and we will return her to her mother in the spring without any politics on her, and she will simply be a niece who has learned a few things. Yes."

"Yes."

Dany pressed her forehead against Aelya's. They sat like that for a long while, with Sansa's two letters between them on the bench, and Ēdrugon dozing behind them, and the sun beginning, very slowly, to lower toward the sea.

After a long while, Dany said: "My love."

"Yes."

"Are you happy."

Aelya thought about it, the way she always took her time when Dany asked her this.

She thought about Tyrion, in King's Landing, at his small council desk with his pile of ledgers, who had become — over fifteen years — the second-most-important man in the realm and the first friend Aelya had ever had outside her sister, and who would, when she sent him the new tax code for signature next moon, send back the same dry note he sent every quarter: Your Grace, the realm continues to function. I attribute this to favourable atmospheric currents.

She thought about Missandei, who had become, over fifteen years, the most feared and the most beloved Mistress of Whisperers in Westerosi history, who had married Grey Worm in the third year of the reign in a small ceremony in the godswood at the Red Keep, and who lived with him in a small set of rooms off the Tower of the Hand and who had, two years ago, quietly begun to take on as her personal apprentice a small Naathi orphan girl from the city she had named Talisa, and who was, against all the odds her own life had once predicted, content in a way that filled the corridors of the Red Keep whenever she walked them.

She thought about Howland, who was old now and had moved back to Greywater Watch the previous summer, and who wrote to the Crown twice a moon with thoughtful letters about laws, and who would, Aelya suspected, die quietly in his small hall in the Neck within the next few years and be mourned by the whole realm. He had, last autumn, told Aelya in a letter: Your Grace, I do not know what I did with my one good life to deserve having seen its end be the end I have seen, but I am grateful for it, and I sleep well, and the trees of the Neck are kind in the autumn, and my children are well, and I would not change the ending of my story for any other man's. — H.

She thought about Ser Barristan, who had died three years past at ninety-four, in his sleep, in his small chamber in the White Sword Tower, with the small dignified Dornish woman Kingsguard he had personally trained sitting beside him reading him a chapter from a book of Stormlands knightly tales, and who had been — Aelya was certain, as she had been certain of nothing else in her life — happy at the end. She had wept for a week. She kept his white cloak folded in a chest in their chamber.

She thought about Mormont, also dead — a year past, of a hard winter — with Edd Tollett finally coming south afterward, with a small Watch escort, to take up the seat the codicil had been holding for him. Edd was, against his own predictions, a good Lord of Some Northern Holding (Aelya had given him a small good keep on the Stony Shore, on the grounds that he had earned a keep and the Stony Shore needed a steady man); he had married, the previous summer, a kind Northern widow with three children, and had written Aelya a letter that had said only: Your Grace. I am, against my better judgment, content. The small ones call me father. I have not yet decided how to feel about it. I will let you know. — E.

She thought about Tormund, who was an old red-bearded king now in the Gift, who came down to Winterfell three times a year to drink and tell stories and beat Aelya at arm-wrestling, and who had, at the previous Winterfell feast, told her gravely: Targaryen. I am old. The free folk are well. My grandchildren are insufferable. I am thinking of dying within the decade. Will you come and drink at the wake? Aelya had told him she would. He had nodded, satisfied, and had refilled her cup.

She thought about Mance, who was retired now — formally retired, of all things, the King-Beyond-the-Wall having drafted his own succession to a council of three free-folk chieftains and signed off on it himself — and who lived in a small cottage in the Gift with a wildling woman called Dalla and a small grandchild, and who had become, in his late years, a singer. He had taken up his old harp again. He played at small gatherings. He had, the previous spring, sent Aelya a song he had written about the long night, which the small council had wept through one by one when she had read it to them at supper, and which had become — within a year — the song every northern child learned at the breast.

She thought about Jon, now home at Winterfell, with his beard and his road-cloak and the small new careful greensight he had grown into, and Ghost beside him who at sixteen years was old for a wolf but still steady, and Rhaegal in the courtyard. She thought about Jon, finally, home.

She thought about her sister beside her on the bench.

She thought about the sun going down over the sea.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, my love. I am happy. I have been happy for a long time. I do not — I do not always remember to say so. I should say so more often."

"You say so often enough."

"I should say so more."

"Then say so, my love. Whenever you like."

"I love you."

"I love you."

They sat on the bench with their fingers laced, and the sun lowered, and Ēdrugon — sensing that the warm part of the day was ending — opened one yellow eye, decided it was not yet time to move, and closed it again.

Below them, on the lower platform, Sōvegon yawned and folded her cream-and-gold wings and settled. Rhaegal came in over the bay in the last light, with three small fish in his foreclaws — a habit he had picked up from his fisherman boat over the years — and dropped them, with great dignity, on the parapet of the Stone Drum, and curled up beside Drogon. Drogon, without opening his eyes, made a small approving rumble.

The sea ran on.

The sun went down.

Aelya Targaryen, at thirty-five, set her cup down on the warm flagstones. She tucked her feet up underneath herself. She leaned her head against her sister's shoulder. She closed her eyes.

She had been planning, since she was four years old, for an ending.

The ending — she understood, finally, with no further need to plan anything — had been there for years.

It was simply this. Two queens on a bench. Six dragons on a terrace. A realm at peace. A niece in the North reading a book by candlelight. A young man finally home. A small old crannogman in the Neck writing his last good letters. A red-bearded singer in the Gift teaching a grandchild a song. A Lannister in a cliff-castle long dead and another in a small estate in the riverlands choosing kindness. A small clever man in the Red Keep at his ledgers. A small dark woman in a tower at her dossiers. A wolf at a young man's hip. A direwolf-pin on a Northern lady's shoulder. A great green dragon snoring at Winterfell.

The ending had been there for years. She had simply — at last — sat down inside it.

She kept her eyes closed.

The sun finished going down.

Beside her, her sister's breathing slowed and steadied into the quiet rhythm of a woman who had — also — at last sat down.

The bench, of all the places in the realm, was theirs.

And the world was very quiet, and very kind, and very long, and there was nothing left to do tonight except to sit on the bench until the stars came out.

So they did.

‍

The End.