We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

(Virginia Woolf, The Waves)

"Why? Tell me the reason, at least. You owe me that much."

Once, he would never have taken that liberty. Not so bluntly. My shield, my stalwart, my right hand man, Aegon might have proclaimed of Orys, in the eyes of the world. My brother, he might have embraced Orys, in the privacy of his own solar. But Orys had known his place; he had never forgotten his place, back then.

But back then he had been a man whole, a warrior complete.

Only a hand, Visenya had said, only a small part of you; but she had missed the point, she who despised any sign of weakness and self-indulgence in anyone, even herself. The physical loss was the least of it. He had learned to take up his sword again, after all; had learned to cradle his son's head and bear its weight on his unfriendly arm, had even learned to bed his wife again without feeling like he was missing part of the necessary anatomy.

No, it was not the loss of his sword hand that he could not forgive. It was the loss of himself he would never forgive, or forget.

I am in mourning, Argella had said, early in their marriage, when the black dog would rise from the mist and come calling from time to time. In those times, her defiance would falter, her fury would turn to ashes. In those times, he feared for her, would have gladly traded her silence and her far-away, unseeing gaze for her customary pointed barbs and accusing stares.

I am in mourning.

For your father?

For myself. For the woman I used to be.

He had tried feigning understanding, but of course he did not understand at all. Not until Dorne, not until the Widow-lover.

Aegon looked to be in deep mourning himself. The mask - that face he put on for the world, to greet the dawn of each new day – it slipped, slipped and fell as it only ever did with Orys. And with Rhaenys, of course; with Rhaenys most of all, back when she was flesh and blood, not bones and ashes.

"It will not bring her back, to make peace with Dorne. Dead is dead and gone is gone. Fath – your lord father taught us that."

The mask slipped even further. There was such pain in Aegon's eyes that Orys had to steel himself not to look away.

"You no longer wish to avenge her death?"

We'll burn them down to the ground, to the last piece of brick and the last man and woman if we have to, until they submit and swear allegiance, Rhaenys had promised, after Orys and his bannermen returned from Dorne lacking their sword hands, despite all the gold Aegon had paid in ransom to Wyl of Wyl.

Her ferocity had startled him; she had been the most conciliatory of the three trueborn siblings. Rhaenys, who had once sincerely believed that there were ways to induce submission other than brute force.

We wait, Rhaenys had declared, after her terms were refused by the storm queen of Storm's End. There is no need to attack. The men in her garrison are not so eager and ready to be turned to bones and blood and ashes as this young queen presumes. I could see it in their terrified eyes, when she spoke her defiant words.

Rhaenys' prediction had proven true; they had waited not even half a day, and the defiant storm queen was delivered to her enemies that very night by her own men.

But Dorne was different. Dorne was not the stormlands. Dorne had proved to be Rhaenys' undoing, as it had proved to be Orys'. Dorne was where she had failed, in her own estimation, the first time around, and where she must succeed now.

The parchment was on Aegon's desk, flecked with his blood from the wound he sustained gripping the Iron Throne with all his might. The letter from Prince Nymor, read silently by the king on his throne, and the content disclosed to no man or woman.

"What's in the letter?"

Aegon eyes stared unseeing, into the distance.

"Why did you fly to Dragonstone?" Orys persisted.

"I cannot tell you."

"You will not tell me, you mean?

"I have signed the treaty. It is done. There is nothing more to be said." Seeing the look of undisguised fury on Orys' face, Aegon added, "You will want to burn them to the ground, down to the last man and woman. March an army across the Boneway again. I cannot have that."

"I am your man. I do your bidding. Do you think I would dare to presume, without your consent? Without your command?"

"You are more than just my man."

"Then tell me! Tell me the content of the letter."

"She wanted an end to it."

"She? Who?"

"Rhaenys."

Orys scoffed. "Is that the lie they're telling? That three years ago, Rhaenys wrote you a letter before she died, asking you to make peace with Dorne? What nonsense. Why did they not show you this letter back then? Why did they wait all these years? It is a forgery. It must be!"

"The letter was not written three years ago," Aegon said.

"I don't understand."

"She lives. She did not die when we believed she did."

"She lives? Is that the price for her return, peace without Dornish submission?" Orys paused. How could he blame Aegon for agreeing to the treaty after all, if it meant Rhaenys' safe return? "I have wronged you –" Orys began to say, but Aegon shook his head and said, "I misspoke. She … lived."

"You speak in riddles."

"There is no riddle." And Aegon told all, finally.

Orys raged and howled. "We should have rescued her. You should have sent an army, a bigger army than you have ever sent to Dorne. Princess Deria should have been held as a hostage, threatened with torture, until her father –"

Aegon interrupted, firmly. "She did not wish for that. Rhaenys was clear in the letter. She only wished for an end to her torment."

"Our maesters –"

"She had never been a fool. She knew what is possible and what is not."

"How do you know the letter is truly from her? Is it in her hand?"

"She was beyond writing."

"Then how do you know? How do you know those words are truly her words?"

"The jewel that is ours. She told me how to find it. Where she had hidden it in our old secret compartment, in a hole carved on a pine tree in Dragonstone's garden."

Aegon's Garden, Rhaenys had solemnly proclaimed it to be, back when they were children playing monsters and maidens.

"That's why you flew to Dragonstone."

"I had to check. I had to see for myself, if it is truly there."

"And it is?"

Aegon nodded. "Those are her words in the letter, there is no doubt about that. No one else would have known which tree, and what jewel."

Orys knew not what to say.

Aegon continued. "It has to end, she said. The cycle. Violence begetting more violence. The endless cycle of vengeance and blood feud. For the sake of the jewel that is ours. She meant Aenys. She meant our son. It was his lock of hair she had hidden in our secret place."

If you kill them all, then there will be no one left to avenge anything, Orys thought, in revolt.

"Tell me you understand. Tell me you understand, brother."

"I understand," he lied.

"I need you by my side."

No, you need the old Orys, your once champion and sworn shield; not this bitter wreck of a man.

He went home to Argella. "Aegon made peace with Dorne," he told her, summarily and without any preamble.

"Without Dornish submission, I hear." She watched him, steadily. "What happened to no peace without submission?"

That had been the rallying cry of the stormlords, Orys' own bannermen.

He sighed. "I shall have to quell their fury as best I could. You must aid me in this, my lady." She had influence still with the stormlords, even more so after his years of imprisonment in Dorne.

"Why the reminder, my lord? Do you fear that I plan to encourage their revolt instead?" She said the words mockingly, but there was something in her eyes alerting him that perhaps she had considered it.

"He had to do it, Aegon. There were … reasons."

"There are always reasons. For everything he wishes to do."

"He wants me as his Hand once more."

"He wants so many things, your king. And you will move the earth itself to give him his heart's desire."

He could not move the earth to give Aegon back his love, though. His Rhaenys.

"I have refused him," Orys said.

"Not for my sake, I hope?"

He closed his eyes, while she waited for his reply. He was tired. So very tired, down to the bones. He could sleep for days and days; it seemed so tempting never to rise from his bed again.

I am not like that. It is not the same, he had objected, furiously, in the dark days after his return from Dorne. There was no black dog rising from the mist threatening to swallow him whole, he insisted.

You are not like I was, you mean? Why? Because you are a man? Because you are strong and I was weak? Because it would shame the great Lord Orys too much to think that he might have something in common with -

No! Because you lost so much more. It shamed him, to be found so wanting, so weak and despairing in her presence. To flaunt his anger and his bitterness, his grief; they seemed so self-indulgent in the face of her own immeasurable losses, losses he had been partly responsible for.

And that in turn made him angry. At her, irrationally. At himself, more rationally.

It is not a competition, she had told him, cradling his head and whispering words of comfort in his ear after another bout of terrible dreams woke him up screaming in the long, dark night.

She could be tender with him, but only when he was at his lowest, it seemed.

Only when you truly need it, she would have said.

"Tell me the reason. Tell me your ki – your brother's reason." She would go that far, but no further. Aegon was still no king of hers, after thirteen years.

"Love," Orys said. "He did it for love."

She flinched hearing the word, and he could not help but wonder why.