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the long night
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She arrives to Westeros on the back of a dragon and burns men to the ground – to ashes and smoke and dust.
For him, she is a blessing, a distraction for the rest of the men. Robb is sixteen and he’s anything if not resourceful, so he takes advantage of the others’ dumbfounded surprise to take his place and his crown in the North of the country.
The Lannister armies shiver in the woods, torn between Daenerys in the South and Robb in the North, before switching down to pursue the Dragon Queen and protect King’s Landing, where Robb rallies his forces once more, gaining allies as it is clear that Westeros will not live under a Lannister reign with the last Targaryen present.
She takes her Dothraki and her Unsullied and the fighting companies from Lys and Myr and Volantis, breaches the shores, taking Dragonstone first and purging it of the Red God R’hllor. She moves South, sailing right up into Blackwater Bay, scouting and screaming orders as her armies slaughter the hastily gathered army and sellswords King’s Landing has to offer.
The city shuts its gates against Daenerys, but she flies overtop, dragonfire more potent as the wind scatters it amongst the wooden shacks and burns through the streets, reaching up to the castle itself. Men and women and children scream and burn and die as the Unsullied slam down the gates and everyone rushes inside, slitting throats of enemy guard wherever they go.
But this is Daenerys’ fight, and Robb is in the North.
Robb has allegiances pledged to him and instructs the replanting of crops. Though autumn breaches the horizon of Westeros, it is best to have unripe fruit and grain then no fruit and grain at all. His armies slide into Riverrun, slipping into the woods whenever he feels the itch of the enemy close by.
Soon, it becomes clear to him that he is a skinchanger, warg, wolf-boy. And Robb is resourceful, so he uses it to full effect. The nights turn longer and the lords of the North begin to flank towards Riverrun, seeing his victories, tasting independence.
‘You will not bend the knee,’ says the Greatjon, pride colouring his voice. And Robb smiles in turn.
He sends a crow to King’s Landing, where blood runs red and everything turns to dust. ‘I am King in the North. You may have your South but leave me this land and my people. If you refuse, we will march.’
Daenerys doesn’t care. The Usurper is dead and his sire impaled on spears of her darling Unsullied.
‘Take the North,’ she writes, and Robb can smell smoke on the parchment, ‘We will discuss after winter.’
And so it goes.
-
The winter creeps at five years, and Robb’s pans of hunger do not hurt as much as those in South, who struggle to find shelter and nourishment amidst a white-coated wasteland – the snow only covering ash instead of food.
She flies to him on her black-winged dragon, hunched low over its back with a cloak of heavy fur hiding her body. She lands in a flurry of snow, the gray sky blending with her white hair. She is young – young like Robb, but straight-backed and jaw-clenched.
‘King in the North,’ she says, loud and clear, voice chiming over the winter winds.
He nods to her. ‘Daenerys Stormborn, Queen in the South.’
‘Queen of Westeros, I would be,’ she says, walking past him towards his castle. The dragon huffs a breath of steam, flapping its wings and sailing out into the sky. Robb follows it until it becomes a speck of black in the sky, before entering the castle behind Dany.
‘How are things stocked here?’ she asks, a cool gaze upon the bread the servants chew on in the main hall during their break. The others – knights, women and children are up in their rooms. Robb doesn’t bother gathering a welcome squad of knights. They are equals – King and Queen. No deference to be shown here.
‘We have enough for five more years. If we ration, we shall survive for six and perhaps a quarter.’
She turns to him, quickly. ‘Then, we shall marry and I will have half this food for the South.’
‘Will you?’ laughs Robb. ‘My people take priority for me, not yours.’
Dany scowls, the severity of her face falling away to show her youth, her innocence. Robb wonders if he has that too – but his face is gaunt from winter. A summer child always suffers the worst in these ages Old Nan had said to him once.
‘Your people would be best off without an angry Dragon Mother on the steps to their homes.’
‘Threats, my lady, are beneath you.’
She turns away, walking through the main hall, along the tables. None of the servants move – silence drifting through the air. No one has ordered them out so they are fully available to stay, and Robb watches the Northmen in them straighten their spines, eyes sharp and watchful. He is proud of his people.
‘You are not like the Usurper’s Hand. Your father, was he?’ Robb does not react because it has been years since Ned was murdered and the wound might still bleed but it is slow and aching and he can live with it now. Her voice resumes, ‘if I unite this kingdom, if we unite this kingdom – then we shall be safe from the creeping threats across the seas. You have heard the rumours?’
Robb has and he dismisses them as such – rumours. ‘I did not take you to believe baseless words.’
‘I do not.’ She smiles at him with something akin to warmth and he thinks, suddenly, that she is young and beautiful. ‘And you do not either.’ Pleasure in her voice. ‘However, we both believe in the creeping threat from the Far North. Do you need my sons? Does your brother?’
‘Dragon sons?’ He pauses. ‘Protection for food?’
‘An age old trade,’ replies Dany.
And so it goes.
-
They marry at Riverrun where the Neck of Westeros is the closest. The Tullys lavish them in fur cloaks and there is steaming hot soup and smoked meat. Fires blaze and the horizon is lit with bonfires taking place around the land in celebration. Winter weddings happen rarely but they are more joyous under the hostile snow.
Robb wears a direwolf skin over his shoulders and Dany embroiders the edges of her leather cloak with dragon bones – claws, teeth, the small pieces of a tail. She slides a hand through his blood curls, nails scraping along his skull and he can feel the force behind the hold, the way she brings his mouth to hers, and he smells the smoke in her hair.
-
Their wedding night has only Sansa waiting beside the door, her hair spilling over her shoulders and she is so young and so old that Dany pauses, only to lean over and brush Sansa’s cheek with her mouth, murmuring ‘sister’. Sansa smiles at her, a hand on the Queen’s arm, ‘it is a pleasure to meet you, Dragon Mother.’ Her voice is demure and soothing but Robb knows the steel that lies beneath.
Daenerys kisses her other cheek, a hand cradling the heavy sun-coloured hair, and pulls back, looking straight into her eyes, ‘is it?’
Robb wonders sometimes, when he looks at his sister, if he sees Alayne sweeping through his halls with a straight back and Petyr’s neck on a literal platter or if it is Sansa that is so beautifully chill in the haunted halls of their home. Here, now, with Sansa’s gaze on his new wife, he realizes they are both the same person – harsh and cruel like the North.
‘Enjoy your night, sister,’ replies Sansa smoothly, turning away and sweeping out of the corridor.
‘A cruel sister you have,’ remarks Dany, her face schooled to interest and no hostility present. Robb snorts.
‘My other sister is only slightly less dangerous, I would have you know.’
‘Then you have not met Viserys.’
And their wedding night is not spent with fumbling fingers untying cloaks. Robb builds a fire and listens to his wife recount stories of her brother and he reciprocates about tales of his childhood. It is easy and quiet – the words coming with a steady, even stream. Eventually, they drink wine and fall asleep – him in an armchair and her curled up underneath her dragon cloak. When he wakes, it is with the smell of ash slipping into his bloodstream like a prayer.
-
The year slip slides into King’s Landing where the citizens take their King as heartily as the food he brings on the backs of his wife’s dragons. They build greenhouses on the top of Hugor’s Hill and Dany enjoys her daily flights around them, making her sons breathe fire to warm the plants inside, growing and blooming.
Politics is at a standstill in the middle of winter where cold winds scream through the streets. Bonfires light the streets and the patrols cannot get through the many feet of snow. Dany lets King’s Landing’s doors open all the way through. They ration what they can. People die. Robb tries to be stone-hearted but he comes each night to a bedroom with a morose Queen, her eyes on the sky where flakes drift and wind howls.
‘It is Westeros’ way of ridding the weak and hardening the strong, is what Old Nan once told me.’
She looks at him but does not reply. He wants to touch her again – like on their wedding, her hand feeling like a scorching imprint as it cradled his skull like a jewel. When they sleep next to each other each night, he does not fuck her or make love to her. Physical intimacy is a distant thought when the citizens press against them with pleads and cries and illness and death.
He finds it easy to satisfy himself with the feeling of a warm body beside him under the furs, an ankle caught between his calves or her splayed, calloused fingers fitting around his ribs. Their marriage is not bad, but it is not what he would call happy. Despite this, Robb takes a breath and quietly slides his own fingers between where hers rest.
And so it goes.
-
‘I must return to Riverrun to hold fort,’ he tells her in the morning when they break their fast on a cup of wine and stale bread. Dany refuses to indulge when her children die in the streets, and she wraps a cloak of dried dragon hide around her shoulders for her customary flight around the greenhouses when he says this.
‘Will you take another to bed?’ Her eyes are wide and curious as if this is an everyday question one wonders. ‘I know that we do not keep it warm here.’
‘It is not a matter of significance,’ replies Robb, ‘there are more important things to consider.’ Her expression shifts and changes to something like pleasure. He sees a smile stretch over her mouth, revealing teeth as white as bleached sand.
‘You are a good man, Robb Stark.’ There is a pause. ‘I shall see you at the eve of summer?’
‘Perhaps sooner.’ He reaches out, hands touching the hide where it drapes over her shoulders. She does not move, but her eyes flutter from his fingers to his face before rolling her eyes. It is sudden and abrupt, the way she moves, sliding into the space between his arms and embracing him.
His arms feel long and lanky and he remembers that he is but twenty and three moons old before he manages to hug her back, smell smoke and ash. Her mouth is a brand when it tucks under his jaw, pressing chastely on his neck and he knows if he kissed her, she would taste like blood, because that is what they are made of – truly and absolutely.
He leaves soon after, with her touch and smell chasing after him on horseback, slip-sliding between the hooves of his small escort as he gallops on the Kingsroad back to Riverrun. Time eases and slips through his fingers, and he wonders when he truly will see her again.
And so it goes.
-
Jon calls for them – desperate, dropping all formality when his handwriting scrawls over the parchment in a clear state of emergency. ’The Others arrive. We lack dragonglass and Valyrian steel. Bring your men or face the consequences.’
It is a touch cold, but Robb has expected nothing less from a sibling he hasn’t seen in half a decade, much less exchanged letters. Rumours had drifted downwards through the heart of Westeros that a young Stark bastard had taken the seat as Lord Commander, but Robb had never taken the time to verify. Rumours come and go – endless and fluid, like the many rivers around the castle he keeps his host in.
Riverrun greets their king warmly – for Robb Stark never bent the knee, he took Westeros on equal grounds and will rule with the North in mind in a place where politics war over the wine and loveliness in the South. It is no question that they will march or sail up to the Wall, armed and ready.
Robb takes great pains rationing food and writing letters to his wife asking for her aid. Dragonglass and Valyrian steel would be nothing compared to dragonfire and dragonbreath. Robb decides to march instead of wait for an answer. She will come if she wishes. If not – well, then they will die protecting the country against the blue-eyed Others.
It takes a fortnight but an answer comes. She rides Viserion, flanked by her two other sons, as she sails overhead his troops, weaving through the treetops as her dragons drag steam through the air. They give breaths of fire that momentarily warm the troops as she nods to him and gestures that she will be going on ahead.
The Wall arrives ahead after a few more days of walking as the crow flies up the Kingsroad. It is imposing and Robb can see his wife circling around the towers, breathing fire beyond the giant ice barrier. The men in black seem like ants compared to the hulking forms of her beloved sons and Robb feels a rush of pride.
They win – as was expected, melting Others under dragonfire and dragonbreath, armed with dragonglass and Valyrian steel. Robb does not catch a glimpse of his brother until it is over and a week passes without a glimpse or sight of blue eyes. The sky is grey with ash as they burn bodies and let loose the errant spirits within – be it human or beast.
Jon looks gaunt and older, wisdom in his eyes and a hulking longsword strapped to his back. Ghost pads silently behind him wherever he goes, just as Grey Wind is a constant at Robb’s heels. Robb embraces his brother, despite any enmity that might hang between them, and Jon breathes out a long sigh before tightly wrapping his arms around the other.
Dany watches them as she feeds Viserion a chunk of meat from her hand. Her violet eyes track the length of Jon Snow in abstract curiosity, until he glances at her.
‘Aemon Targaryen died but a few years before,’ he tells her. Her eyes flicker with disappointment but she nods.
‘He was old and frail.’
‘But wise beyond his years.’
Robb can see how she looks up at the sky where soot falls onto her white cheeks and dirties her hair, wondering if he would smear them in if he tried to wipe it off. Dany shrugs.
‘Men die. But here, we have done well.’
‘That is so.’ Jon nods. ‘I thank you and my brother.’
They return back to their respective homes, covered in ash but with a smile on their faces, for, if nothing else, they have saved someone in this first winter.
(Dany presses her fingers against Grey Wind, her hot breath ghosting past his ears and Robb can feel it, like affection, and he thinks he could live like this – with her touch and smell and taste an anchor point to whenever Westeros becomes too wild and deaths mount up)
And so it goes.
-
The summer creeps upon them as a slow, hazy dream. The clouds roll in and out of the sky, spitting slush and rain and snow upon the ground before letting flashes of blue sky skim their sights.
The eight year winter comes to an end but it is an omen for an even shorter summer. Robb lives in Riverrun and Daenerys in King’s Landing. She has scars on her arms from the spikes of her throne but she does not cry out from any cuts. It earns grudging respect for her and he almost feels proud of her though he has no hold over her.
They take their respective regions and begin the preparation for crop replantation. Theirs is an agricultural society and it will not last without food. The strong push the snow into buckets and boil it and wash it through filters made of reed inherited from the bog people before adding it to the drinking water.
Robb feels the heat of the sun on the back of his neck but it is not match for the touch of her fingers against his skin and the way he thinks there should be a mark, just as the Iron Throne leaves its mark on her.
-
They meet in the middle of the first year of summer, his boots covered in mud as she descends from her pristine, cream-coloured son (the one named after her brother, he knows, because this is where they can see each other – in that intimate part of holding on to things that are long dead and buried) and she wraps her arms around his neck in some surprising physical gesture, her mouth hiding in the crook of his neck.
‘My people live,’ she says, and the words sink into his blood, wrapping around his ligaments, letting his arms come around her waist and hold her there. ‘Robb, Robb, my people - alive and working and – ’ her voice cracks and he thinks of how she must have felt when she came to burn King’s Landing to the ground.
‘You’ve succeeded,’ he says into her hair.
‘Yes. Yes.’ She pulls away from the embrace though she remains close enough for her fingers to cradle his neck, and he feels the nails digging in for a claim, a mark on him. ‘Thank you.’
It has been almost three years since their wedding night and he has bedded no one in that time – feeling some sort of fidelity to the Dragon Queen, because she has made her claim of possession on him since she landed in that castle, her mouth playing with words, one test, another, then another, then truth.
‘Marriage for success,’ he tells her. ‘An age old trade.’
Dany looks at him, eyes wondrously storm-like, an endless consuming tidal wave, and she grips tight and brings him towards her, teeth breaking open the skin of his bottom lip, lapping at the blood that wells. She is like the Iron Throne – lithe, wily muscle and a presence that commands, and he follows, helplessly caught, his hands gripping her hips as she tries to consume his soul from his mouth.
They part in a rush of breath, his face feels hot and she is not fazed in any way. Her grin is all dragonteeth and her eyes fill with something akin to danger and affection, the way it folds into the space between his ribs.
Oh, breathes Robb. Oh.
-
Happiness comes in the form of Dany sliding a hand through his hair as she cushions it with her thighs and sighs out lullabies her brother would sing her when she was just a small child. There is peace in the room where sunlight slips over the brick and mortar and over her dragoncloak on their bed beside the furs, the screech of dragon in the distance and laughter from the courtyard down below.
Peace in the way she sighs out his name, and he says hers in turn, as if this could work, somehow. Dany smiles, ‘the first winter is the hardest, as your Old Nan used to say.’
He hums in agreement, eyes half-lidded from the warmth seeping into his bones. ‘And that dragons do not die from heat, as Viserys told you.’
‘We are a good match,’ she remarks, light.
‘Perhaps.’ He licks at the scab on his lip. ‘Or perhaps we have learned to be so.’
‘Shush,’ she says. ‘I want to remain young a little bit longer.’
They laugh because it is a lie and truth is in the air between them – unspoken, fitting around their armour, running into the spaces where ribs wrap around hearts - thank you, thank you, you kept me alive.
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