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Her alarm starts shrieking at five o'clock as it has every morning for the past five years. Mya reaches over to the nightstand without even opening her eyes, silencing the noise and climbing out of bed. By the time the sun starts to rise over the mountains, she has already been on the elliptical for an hour; she'll be the first one in the office regardless. She likes when there is no one in the studio, when the newsroom is silent instead of borderline cacophonous as they try to put together the best newscast Eyrie Entertainment ever has. But most of all Mya likes to stand before the thick door of bright corner office and run her fingers across the engraved nameplate there: Mya Stone, Vice President. It's a far cry from the girl who grew up in foster homes wearing clothes from Goodwill and sneakers held together with duct tape.
Mya doesn't remember much of her parents. Her mother was a teenager when Mya was born, and her father not much older. She dimly recalls him tossing her into the air, making her laugh until she wet herself, and Mya cherishes that memory in the part of her heart she rarely allows herself to feel. Robert Baratheon hadn't been much of a father; her mother had said as much dozens of times, usually when the child support checks didn't come or the electricity was turned off for non-payment. When Mya was ten, her mother dropped her at a babysitter's house and never returned; for the next eight years, it was foster homes and group homes, strangers who kept her for the check until it wasn't worth the effort anymore. A few times Mya reached out to her father; she knew from searching his name on the computers at school that he lived in New York City with his wife and three children. Robert returned a few emails, even sent her a check for a few thousand dollars for her sixteenth birthday, but he never came for her, never offered to help her.
She went to UC Denver on an academic scholarship supplemented by a scholarship for foster kids, majoring in communications. Her sophomore year, Jon Arryn, head of Vale Communications, spoke in one of her classes, and, when Mya introduced herself, he offered her the chance to intern at the studio. After graduating, they hired her on as a copywriter, and the rest was history. A magazine profile referred to her as “a self-made woman,” and Mya has always liked the sound of it. God knows her parents can't take credit for her success; it is Mya's and Mya's alone.
Once, when she was in Manhattan for a conference, she stayed at Casterly Rock, the grand hotel owned by her stepmother's family. It was the finest place Mya ever slept, and it made her incredibly angry. The next morning she marched straight to King's Landing, the shipping company owned by her father, intent on giving him a piece of her mind. Only then did Mya find out Robert Baratheon died four days earlier. The official cause of death was heart attack, but Mya knew her father's business wasn't simply shipping; it seemed suspicious.
It took two weeks for the medical examiner to release Robert's body, and Mya flew back to the city for the funeral. Mya sat in the back of the cathedral, and she could make out the golden heads of her half-siblings in the front pew. The tightening of her throat at the sight of her father in the casket startled her; she hadn't thought she cared anything about him anymore, that all of her feelings for her absent father dissipated years earlier.
After the service, she was halfway down the block when someone caught her elbow. Whirling around, prepared to fight off her mugger, Mya froze at the sight of a boy who was easily no more than fifteen; his hair was the same thick black as her own, his eyes a familiar blue. Behind him stood a girl about the same age, her loose hair attempting to hide a patchwork of scars across her cheek. His posh British accent surprised her but not nearly as much as being told he was Edric Storm, her half-brother, another of Robert Baratheon's many bastards. The girl was their cousin Shireen, and Mya found herself sitting in a Starbucks making awkward conversation until a gruff, balding man came to claim Shireen and Edric.
It was after that Mya did some digging. At one time or another, sixteen different women filed paternity suits against Robert Baratheon, and each one was mysteriously settled out of court. As far as Mya could tell, only Edric had ever been claimed officially by their father, and that was only because Shireen's aunt was his mother. Mya hadn't thought much about her scattered half-siblings until she received the letter from some man named Cressen telling her of an inheritance. Her heart nearly stopped at the amount in the letter, but by the time she flew to New York, the will was already in probate court, Cersei Lannister contesting its contents. She never knew for sure what happened, but Mya knew she never received a dime of her money and neither did the other Baratheon bastards listed in Robert's will.
The only other half-sibling to show up at the court was a guy about a year younger than she; he was tall, broad through the shoulders with the arms of a weightlifter. He wore stained jeans, steel-toed boots, and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up; his eyes were the same as hers, as Edric's, and he looked like he wanted to rend the Lannister woman and her attorney limb from limb. When she offered to take him to lunch, he eyed her suspiciously before agreeing; if her conversation with Edric was stilted, conversation with Gendry was near non-existent. Mya swore off any more attempts at having relationships with her siblings after that.
And then a month later, $9,999 was deposited into her bank account from a bank in the Cayman Islands. Certain it was a mistake, Mya called her bank only to be told they had a wire transfer order. The same amount was deposited every day for months from the unknown source. Only after $1.5 million was in her account did an email arrive in her personal email: Don't spend it all in one place. - G
She emailed him back, wanting to know where he got the money, how he managed to get what would have been her part of the inheritance. Gendry didn't answer her for years, not until Ned Stark was killed. That was when he began to put everything in motion, when they all did.
When Mya returns from a conference call, her assistant has left her mail on the edge of her desk. She sorts through it quickly, barely paying attention to the envelopes until she reaches the small cream colored one made out to Mya Stone in unbearably neat script. Sliding her letter opener under the seal, Mya removes a generic greeting card with watercolor flowers on the front. Paper clipped inside is a one-way ticket from Denver to Miami.
I hear Flordia is nice this time of year. The Water Gardens Resort is exquisite. Ask for Tyene.
Mya does not know why Shireen is sending her to Florida, but Mya also knows by now not to ask questions. She pulls up her schedule, blocks out the next week, and tells her assistant to book the flight.
If it's time to move, Mya isn't going to miss her chance.
In some ways, Gendry has known a lot of girls like Arya Stark: privileged, feigning rougher origins, wrapping themselves in false names. The piercings, the tattoos, the terrible haircut, heavy eyeliner, downright surly attitude, it's all practically textbook in the Spoiled Rich Girl's Guide to Rebellion. Gendry isn't going to knock the stereotype; god knows it's gotten him laid enough. Before he was expelled from the ritzy prep school for hacking their system, his female classmates loved to stir up their absentee fathers and helicopter mothers by bringing home the scholarship kid who always smelled of cigarette smoke and grease from working part-time at the garage.
But the difference between Arya and all those girls is that Gendry knows this isn't some post-adolescent rebellion. What happened to her, to her family, it destroyed her or, at least, whoever she was before it all happened. He knows from the recon he's done that she was an average student, an exceptional athlete, and relatively liked by her teachers and classmates. For a family of gangsters, Gendry hasn't found many people who speak badly about the Starks. It's nothing like his own father; you can hardly toss a stone anywhere in the country without hitting someone who is quick to tell you what a drunken fool Robert Baratheon was. Catelyn Stark filed a missing person's report on her youngest daughter two years ago after she never came home after Robb Stark's sentencing, but Gendry knows the case is inaffective. According to the tracker he has on the Philly PD's system, only Officer Jon Snow ever accesses the file now. It's no wonder there aren't any leads; the photo in it – Arya at seventeen, dark hair flowing over her shoulders, a broad smile across her face – is nothing like the woman he knows.
It really was a coincidence he even met her. When Hot Pie brought her home, Gendry didn't think much of it; Hot Pie was always bringing home strays, and at least Arya hadn't robbed them while they slept. She lived in the pantry for nearly two weeks before Gendry finally recognized her and, when he did, he immediately contacted Mya, who told him to keep her close. Even then she was already taking out Lannisters, and Mya said it just made sense to monitor her, let her do the job so they didn't have to do it. “Be her friend,” Mya encouraged.
Easier said than done. “Arry” was hardly friendly in the beginning, carrying her duffel with her during the day and retreating to the pantry with her dog at night. It took patience to even get her to hang out and eat pizza with them, but Gendry was patient. Seemingly overnight, he went from receiving only grunts when he spoke to her to actual conversations. It surprised him when he realized he was attracted to her; he swore to himself he wouldn't touch her, that it was too fucked up and unfair to do that to someone as damaged as Arya.
He drank too much one night, getting his ass handed to him in beer pong by Tom and Lem, cursing Hot Pie for being absolutely useless as a partner. And when Arya came into his room, naked as the day she was born asking if he wanted to fuck, Gendry knew he should say no; in the morning, Arya was asleep on her stomach, sprawled like a starfish while Nymeria slept on the foot of the bed. There was something comforting about the situation, and he could never quite summon up the fortitude to stop it. And now he knows he doesn't even want to try.
She thinks he works at a smokehouse outside the city, hauling around sides of meat; the lie weighs on his conscience some nights until he remembers she spends her evening killing drug dealers and pimps instead of stacking shelves at a convenience store. While he's meant to be at work, Gendry retreats to his loft in Manayunk; he can't keep his equipment in the house on Venango, and over $20,000 worth of electronics would definitely raise some questions among his roommates.
He doesn't have much work to do tonight. As always, he checks Mya's and Edric's computers; he sees she has booked a plane ticket to Miami and a rental car for when she arrives. Edric's is full of assignments for his MBA classes as well as financial accountings from Cortnay Penrose; of all of them, only Edric's inheritance was left untouched simply because, at his birth, Robert had shares of King's Landing stock held in trust for him. While Gendry likes Mya, he is less fond of Edric; his younger brother is kind of an asshole who has looked at Gendry with nothing but disdain, and some days it takes all of Gendry's self-control not to massively fuck with him.
Only Shireen is smart enough not to keep anything of value on anything electronic. He still isn't entirely sure what to make of his only cousin; there is something undeniably sweet about her, but beneath the smiles and bright eyes, Gendry knows she's pure steel. Unlike Gendry and his siblings, Shireen has always been a Baratheon, has grown up watching her father run Dragonstone and seen the battle he's been waging against the Lannisters since Robert's death for control of King's Landing. Shireen is the only one who has actually met the children Cersei claims are Robert's, and she is the only one who truly knows the players in this game.
When he returns to the Brotherhood house, it is shortly after two in the morning. He can hear Harwin and Anguy shouting upstairs as they play Call of Duty, and he's tempted to join them until he hears the water running in the downstairs bathroom. As he flips on the light to the small room he shares with Arya, Nymeria pads over to him and he bends, ruffling her ears; even in the dim light, he can see the hint of blood still on her snout, and he knows tomorrow will bring another report of a murder in Lannister territory.
Arya comes into the room wearing nothing but a thin towel, her wet hair slicked back off of her face. She does not have any of her piercings in right then, and, without them or her makeup, she looks incredibly young. Her skin is pale, and he can make out the lacework of blue veins underneath. She pauses a moment when she sees him before dropping the towel, beginning to dig into her duffel for something to wear.
“You're home early.”
Gendry doesn't say anything; instead he stands behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist, the other across her chest, holding her tight against his body as he kisses her head. Instantly she begins to squirm like Nymeria.
“Knock it off, you're being weird.”
He releases her, and Arya turns so she's looking up at him; she is almost a full foot shorter than he is, and, when she hooks her arms around his neck and hops up, her legs wrapping around his waist, it is instinct for Gendry to catch her, his hands settling on her ass.
“How was work?” he asks her.
“Busy,” is all she offers before taking his mouth roughly.
She wants to be on top tonight, and Gendry obediently rests on his back, keeping hold of her hips as she moves a bit desperately over him. On nights she kills, she is always like this, half wild with lust until she comes the first time before becoming pliant in his arms. She is still shaking with the force of her orgasm when Gendry reverses their positions, pushing her back into the flat pillows, slowing his stroke into her.
Her eyes are big and grey in her face, her pupils blown from pleasure; her mouth is softer when they kiss, and it is in these moments he wonders if he's kissing Arya instead of Arry, if this is who she is when she forgets to hate the world.
He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood to keep himself from saying her real name. As he buries his face in her shoulder, Gendry wishes for the day he doesn't have to lie anymore.
When he was a child, Edric took a great deal of pride in identifying himself as Robert Baratheon's son. His mother didn't take the same pride; Delena Florent was humiliated by Robert's refusal to leave his wife for her, and, as such, shifted her motherly responsibility straight onto the Baratheons. Back then, Edric thought it was exciting he was sent to England to live at Storm's End with his uncle Renly. Sometimes Robert came to visit, always bringing gifts, and those days absolutely thrilled him. Cortnay Penrose, the executor of the estate, used to warn him not to expect much from his father, that his focus should be on honoring the Baratheon legacy. It always made Edric feel as if he truly was a Baratheon.
It was not until Robert died that Edric had his bubble burst. Though his inheritance wasn't completely stripped the way the others' were, Cersei Lannister made it perfectly clear his presence would no longer be tolerated. The moment Renly was killed – a faulty brake line, they said – Penrose came to him and said they both had to leave. Storm's End now belonged to Joffrey Baratheon, he said, and Edric had no place to go. Stannis and Selyse offered to let him stay in East Hampton with them until the matter was settled; even now, nearly eight years later, the fight for Storm's End is still playing out in courts between Robert's heirs and Stannis.
Edric is not a Baratheon. He is a Storm, the name that used to be given to Baratheon bastards before they came to America. Penrose, who had been named his guardian after Delena refused to take in her adolescent son, arranged for him to attend public school in England and made certain the trust would pay his tuition while earning his business degree at Oxford. The decision to get his MBA was less practical as it was a need to remain in England. Gendry insisted they had to remain separate, that there could be no hint that they were interacting with each other. It is not exactly a hardship for Edric; he has no love for his father's eldest son, who acts as if he knows everything, and he doubts Mya's commitment to their cause. It is only the separation from Shireen which bothers him.
Shireen is the closest thing to a true sibling Edric has ever had. When they were small, Shireen would come visit at Storm's End, and it felt wonderful to not be so alone. The accident that claimed Renly nearly claimed Shireen as well; Edric still remembers with horrifying clarity the sight of Shireen's scarred face after the surgeries to reassemble her face. It looked like a patchwork quilt, and no one could scarcely look at her then. Edric thinks it is the accident more than anything which spurred Shireen into action; no one believes Renly's brakes did not work due to mechanical failure, and everyone knows what the Lannisters did to the Targaryens to help gain control of King's Landing.
Edric doesn't care much for his father's business. At least, not for the less legitimate aspects of it. But he does not want to see that fucking idiot Joffrey walking around wearing his father's name, sadistically destroying people in a way their father never would have done. He will go to war to preserve what his family worked for, for Renly who had never hurt a single person in his life, for Shireen who had dozens of surgeries to fix what they did to her.
This morning, as he waits for his train to come to carry him to Penrose's office, Edric scrolls through his emails on his phone. There, buried between questions from his partners for a group project and a headhunter expressing interest for a company based out of France, is an email from Project Patchface. Edric smiles as he opens it, reading through what is ostensibly a memo from a charity created to raise money for children who have been disfigured in accidents. There, at the bottom of the page in red block print were the words: Come to our investors' meeting at the Four Seasons Philadelphia! followed by a date and time.
As he boards the train, Edric is already composing the email to his professors explaining he will be missing classes due to a death in the family.
No one has ever paid much attention to her. Shireen does not take it terribly personally; her father is a busy man who has always had to clean up her uncle Robert's messes and her mother has thrown herself deeper and deeper into the church over the last few years. She thinks her father is a good man, honorable even, but Stannis Baratheon wanted a son to inherit Dragonstone Industries, the nearly worthless shell company Robert gave him when he took King's Landing from the Targaryens that Stannis turned into a reasonably successful business. Instead he was given a daughter, and, while Stannis was many things, progressive was not at the top of the list. In his world, women did not get involved in the family businesses; they married other powerful men and played wife and mother.
Shireen has no interest in doing that; she never has.
After the accident, her father seemed even more at a loss as to how to interact with her. The twisted metal and glass had positively mangled the left side of her face, and Shireen hated the sight as much as everyone else. It resolved her father's desire to take King's Landing from the Lannisters and deepened her mother's religious fervor, but Shireen was left to heal in private, tutored in her hospital room while she recovered from surgery after surgery.
Her face is smooth now, only a thin pink scar remaining under her chin. Stannis paid a small fortune for the best surgeons in the world to make her whole again, and sometimes she still cannot believe it. She runs her fingertips over the unblemished skin, over the metal which has taken the place of bone, and Shireen knows she's pretty now, maybe even beautiful. And yet it hasn't changed the way people still don't meet her gaze, still act as if she is not really there.
It works to her advantage in so many ways. When people forget you are there, they forget to mind their tongues, and Shireen has learned so much of what she knows from men who forget she's nearby. The only one who does not slip up is Davos, her father's right hand man, who always looks pointedly at her until she leaves the room. Shireen likes Davos, but, like her father, he will never wrest King's Landing from her former aunt, from the man who claims to be her cousin.
Her father is an honorable man, and this business has no place for honorable men; what happened to the Starks has proven that. Ned Stark was a good man and Robb Stark as well, and their rewards for behaving as such lead to murder and prison sentences. The Lannisters have no honor when it comes to business, and you cannot fight fair against enemies who fight filthier than anyone else. Shireen has tried to impress that upon her father, but he doesn't listen; he pats her on her head as if she is a little girl and gruffly tells her to focus on her schoolwork.
Shireen likes Barnard, likes living away from the family home on Long Island. In the city, she can disappear in the crowds of people, and no one knows she used to be the girl who had to wear a mask to keep her face safe from infection. A few times she sees the people who actively work against her family; Tywin Lannister gives a speech at Columbia, and Shireen sits in the back, listens as he explains why he is a successful businessman. She spots Cersei and her brother Jaime in a restaurant one night while she eats with her mother, and, though Cersei does not see her, Jaime pauses long enough to smirk at her.
Shireen hates them. She despises them. But she also knows she cannot let that hate overwhelm her or else it will make her sloppy.
So long as her father will not listen, Shireen has to take things into her own hands. It is why she enlisted Edric to help her find Robert's other children. Mya and Gendry are the only ones who can truly help them; all the others are either too young or too unpredictable. Shireen knows for everything to go as planned, they need dependable people. Edric may not trust them very much, but Edric can be kind of an idiot when it comes to people; Mya and Gendry are the best parts of her uncle and they're just angry enough to want revenge.
Today she sits in a cafe, ostensibly reviewing her psychology textbook. After a half-hour, the limo pulls up in front of the building across the street and Cersei climbs out. Shireen writes down the time as well as snapping a photo of the people with her; she will get those to Gendry, who will put names and rap sheets to the faces. Ten minutes later, another car arrives and Shireen repeats the process. By hour's end, Shireen forwards the half-dozen pictures to Gendry.
She hails a cab to take her uptown, sliding quietly into the backseat. Her phone vibrates with a text from Gendry, who tells her Sansa Stark has booked two plane tickets from San Francisco to Miami. Miami can only mean she is going to see the Martells, and Shireen has the cab stop outside a drugstore, where she buys a cheap greeting card to drop into the mail for Mya. She quickly makes out before the cab drops her on campus, and Shireen goes to mail services, dropping the card off to be sent on to Denver.
The computer lab is busy tonight, but Shireen does not let it bother her. It takes a little time to make up the fake flier for Project Patchface; she sends it to the email address registered to one of Gendry's fake names, Edric's school account, and two dozen dummy accounts Gendry set up to form the Board of Directors of her fake charity.
Let her father be honorable; let him try to win this war in noble ways. Shireen has already been a victim of the Lannisters once; she is not going to become one ever again.