The Brave Danny Flint

Tyrion set the woods in motion with a great battle cry on his thick lips, urging every able defender left under his command to attack the great clearing around the lake, flooded by the Others who had pushed Jon and new men he brought north almost to the waterfront.

Men attacked the white walkers from all sides, with willingness yet unseen in the War of Winter. Fearless, by now familiar with the enemy, they suffered few losses, and flocked to Jon, separating him from the Night's King, interrupting their duel, preventing their king from vanquishing the Great Other only to take his place and sleep until the next Long Night.

The Night's King laughed hoarsely with the air of untouched superiority. Swaggering back at length, he mounted his remaining ice spider. The white walkers guarded his back, and even if they did not, no one but Jon dared attack him in person.

Always acting the stronger, Dany thought bitterly.

"None but your husband had faced him and lived," Tyrion whispered, as if he could read her thoughts. He had stayed behind, in the woods, with Daenerya, after leading the attack for her rescue, in which her old bear, Ser Jorah, was killed and rose as a wight, stung by the now dead ice spider so that Dany and Rhaegar could be freed.

Or, much more likely, Tyrion had guessed her feelings from the lifeless look of sheer hatred in her eyes. If they could burned the NIght's King, they would have, seven times over.

She had done nothing to this creature.

This man.

She had not given him the crown, murdered his wife or caused his misfortune. He had no reason to treat her like dirt after drinking her blood.

If dragonblood was what he wanted, before concluding it was useless for his designs, whatever they were, he could have disposed of her when he was done. Or treated his hostages with more honour. She had the feeling that any of his soldiers would have butchered her gladly, finishing what their king had so wisely started, should he not want to sully his own gnarled hands.

Now he remained prudently behind his first line of defence and did not seek to continue the single combat with Jon.

Knowledge one could die brought such caution, Dany guessed, with a small measure of satisfaction. What the monster yearned for most of all was to find his wife. He could not do that very well if he was killed.

Unlike men, the Others could not continue existing as wights.

And, for some reason Dany could not believe that the white walkers applied themselves very hard in the king's search for his queen.

She was only a wight after all.

A slave.

How could they ever look at her as their equal? Their queen?

She only differed from the other slain in that the Great Other chose to keep her in a lavish bedroom as his concubine, instead of sending her to war.

Or dragging her around naked on an ice spider, she remembered with blood-felt grudge that would not be easily forgotten or set aside.

But, the slain were not entirely enslaved anymore, not all of them. Some found strenght in themselves to disobey.

Rhaegar. Her brother now crouched at a marked distance from the living who gave him cold stares. Euron Greyjoy also earned those looks, but they didn't prevent him to run into battle with Jon. Maybe it was easier to ignore the glares of contempt if a man had only one crow eye before dying and being forced to open two unnaturally blue ones.

The wounded had stayed behind. The very old and very young. Some women to help them. A small bunch of fighters who could cover their retreat if the fighting ended in defeat and doom of men. Tyrion, following anxiously the course of the battle and calculating his next move. Gendry, holding Arya in a deep shadow of a sentinel, wrapped in furs, barely visible. Jon's favourite sister slept like a log. She did not look to be well, but still much better than Daenerys herself.

Is she wounded? She wanted to ask Gendry, but her voice faltered. It was robbed from her, the ability to speak and the command of her body.

Shall I be like this forever? A shadow of a woman?

Rhaegar brooded in silence, immersed in darkness, under a giant northern pine. His bright blue eyes glinted unnaturally in moonlight. Cold and dead and yet so awake. Attentively, he sniffed the air, looked to his left, and vanished into the forest, after his nose, before Daenerys could regain use of her legs so that she could at least hug him and thank him.

She did not know what he was up to, but she could swear it would be for the good. The Night's King had captured him sabotaging the Others' siege efforts under the Wall - a highly unlikely endeavour for a loyal wight.

Dany would not be here, alive and free, if Rhaegar did not carry her all the way south, from the Frostfangs to this lake, on his never tiring, undead legs. The spider was only the trick for the last league or so, used to impress her husband, after the Night's King had glimpsed Jon in the weirwood twigs he used to see events from afar, and his bright blue eyes shined with implacable hatred.

Jon now fought in his vanguard. Mance Rayder. Aegon. Obara Sand. Crippled Willas Tyrell on a tiny, sturdy garron from the Night's Watch, one of the few who clung to a horse as his only means to take arms. Euron Greyjoy. Val. Lady Reed with her knife and speer. More men and women from every corner of Westeros.

People who loved their king.

Dany could not go to him through the madness of battle even if she was more capable in close combat. Not in her condition. Not yet.

She gritted her teeth and tried to be patient.

And the blood of the dragon was never good at that.

Women disguised to look like trees rubbed her bare body with snow, and it took all her courage and remaining pride not to scream from the unpleasant, stinging sensation.

She would greatly prefer scalding water.

Suddenly, a light blue, crystal banner flew over the battle clamour in scarce starlight, for parley or truce, she could not tell, could not hear the latest words exchanged between Jon Snow and Jon Stark, if there were any.

Snow was in her body, cleansing it.

"They are retreating!" Tyrion boomed next to her, and began jumping on his stunted legs as enthusiastically as he could.

Never very high.

"Regroup!" he cried with passion. "To me! To the trees! Take cover! Grumkins cannot be trusted to respect the peace."

"Jon!" she breathed out and marveled that she had her voice back after the long deprivation of her captivity.

At the Night's King's command, the ice spider had doused her with its venom, the slime that the women had by now scraped off from her with snow.

The poison had kept her mute, docile and limp. Sweet. A perfect victim. Forced to submit to the horrifying yoke of indignity.

Whenever she tried to stand against it, she would faint, losing herself to oblivion.

"Jon!" she called again. He would come to her if he could, at least for a moment, would he not? Despite that this battle was truly the last, and if she had learned anything about her husband in the too short time of their marriage, it was that he would see to it in person.

To the end.

Tyrion gave her a sad look. "Fear not, Your Grace," he murmured for her ears only. "He will want a luxury of bidding you farewell. I know I would, if it was me wielding Ice."

"Farewell?" She did not fully understand. "Jon does not mean to take his place!" she rebelled. "The Night's King just wants us to despair and lose the war!" she tried to explain the terrible certainty away and discard it as a worn dress. "He has been mocking us and misleading us from the beginning. There has to be another way!"

"Only one that I can see. Better for the realm, to be sure, but for the two of you?"

Dany could not possibly think of anything worse than Jon becoming the Night's King and leaving her to spend the possibly long remaining days of her life without him. "What-"

"I shall let His Grace explain," Tyrion hushed her with the expression of deepest respect. "The decision in this matter ought to be his, I reckon, not mine or anyone else's. The realm is big and needy, and yet every man is only himself."

"Dany!"

Jon was all over her, smelling of blood.

His own, spilled freely.

"Are you alright, my love?"-"Are you hurt, my love?" they spoke in one voice on each other's lips.

Until the women helping Daenerys began to pull Jon away without mercy.

"A moment, Your Grace! Lord Stark-Targaryen-Lord Snow!"

Only the last name, or perhaps the force with which it was uttered, made Jon listen, but still not release Daenerys from his arms. "What?" he asked irascibly. "She is my wife!"

"Take it easy!"

"Let her have enough air!"

"She is with child!"

"Your heir."

Daenerys felt her face burn from hope and shame. Could it be? A child?

A woman with child paraded naked from beyond the Wall to here, to this big northern lake, for all to see… The humiliation suddenly felt even worse than if it had been just her.

But just for a brief moment.

For Jon's hands were already on her belly, and hers were there too, and there it was, the smallest of swellings where her skin and muscles had been perfectly flat and tight for years, ever since her body recovered from little Rhaego, the monster, who had left this world as soon as he was born.

Too soon.

She often wished she could have at least seen him and held him in her arms, even if he had been truly born with wings, nails and claws, and she had never fully trusted MIrri Maaz Duur on her word that it had been the case.

A grey shift come from somewhere was blessedly pulled over her head, followed by a cotton peasant skirt, and a pair of long woollen socks covering her entire legs.

Smallclothes were apparently dispensable in northern fashion, despite the ungodly cold.

Heavy woollen dress followed, warm like life itself, for her and her child. And boots, ugly to look at, but even she could walk in them in winter, with her always freezing feet.

Jon helped dressing her. She smiled, remembering all the times when it was the opposite. She ended up seated next to him on a broad tree trunk, with many fine lines engraved in it in broad, irregular circles.

An ancient victim of some old war.

There was no settlement nearby where people would feed fires.

Finally, Jon placed a grey furry cloak over her shoulders, and even a few branches and leaves which served as a disguise to his latest recruits.

"They are from the mountain clans," he explained curtly. "It's how they dress to fight."

"They made us the king and queen of trees," she quipped, savouring the moment, forgetting how much distrust the great trees of the North had inspired in her when she first flew to the Wall and beyond it searching for Jon.

When she found him and thought of him as handsome and not much more.

He was her lifeblood now and his men were the forest.

Who would vanquish the trees here where they had always stood?

The Others camped in the clearing, guards patrolling the sinuous line of their defences. Their number stretched endlessly in the direction of the Wall, a great wedge of ice in the sea of surviving humanity.

"Why?" she asked Jon, gesticulating at the truce which still held.

"He raised a white flag and yelled his conditions at me," Jon said darkly. "I have leave to speak to the wolves and bring him back his wife safe and sound. If I do, he might discuss peace terms."

And you took his charity which insults you to see me.

"He must be lying," Dany judged, remembering all too well her captivity, "he doesn't want it."

The Others looked at humans as a lower race. Why would the Great Other hold talks with them?

"Perhaps they see peace as killing and enslaving us more rapidly, without further armed resistance," Tyrion observed coolly. "They would not be the first to hold this view."

"Well I don't have his wife!" Jon reacted impatiently. "But I am glad for the time given."

His arms closed protectively around Dany.

"It is more happiness that I could have ever asked for," he told her, looking into her eyes. "Promise me that you will raise our child as a good man."

She nodded stupidly, unable to say that he would be there as well.

And if it is a girl?

Yet she stopped dreaming out loud about their child, seeing that the news painted both joy and fresh grief on Jon's unshaven face. They had to stay calm, both of them, without delving further into the depths of their hearts. Her hands went to his temples instead, caressing him tenderly.

"Jon Stark and the brave Danny Flint!" a bunch of tree-like men rumbled at them with wonder.

"Shut up, Flints," one of the women tending to Dany replied. "Danny Flint was black-haired in all songs."

"What wouldst you know, old Wull hag?" one among the Flints retorted. "Her hair was the silver hidden in the break of dawn. Every babe in our clan learns the true tale in cradle. She had dark blue eyes, almost violet, before the treacherous men of the Night's Watch put the light out of them." He looked at Jon as if he knew him, and then continued, bowing with respect: "May you both fare a hundred times better than your famous ancestors."

"Stop the nonsense, Flint, and tend to your father while you still have him," Jon pronounced calmly, "I am not him, and she is not her. We are who we are."

"Of course, Your Grace," the man nodded respectfully, the branches of his war attire rattling like broken teeth in a gust of winter gale.

Jon's arms were warm like coals in comparison with Rhaegar's dead embrace, despite that they were always colder than hers. From the ice in him. The secret of his survival and resistance to wounds and cuts, in her opinion.

"It is too much joy," he said, his face sad, awkward.

"He has to be lying," she tried to say about the Night's King terrible truth that the man who killed the Great Other had to become him. That the damnation of men would never end because they brought it upon themselves by a terrible sin.

"I don't think he is."

"But you can't take his place-"

"No I can't," Jon agreed wholeheartedly.

She was relieved. Until she looked at his face again. Grimmer than before.

"What do you mean to do?" she asked with dread, sensing unknown doom which would hurt only her. Break her heart in two or in as many pieces as her chest could hold.

So he told her, and tears streamed down his handsome face.

From polite distance, Tyrion looked to the ground as if he had always known.

The sacrifice.

Jon would take the Night's King accursed life and let himself be killed by him to end the war.

The horns boomed from the Others' camp, rousing them to stand against men.

The truce was over.

The weak slid silently and meekly deeper into the forest.

Tyrion, no longer the commander in the king's absence, spoke out of turn as the men grouped around Jon, "Your Grace," he began, "for what is worth… you may not think much about it... you might not have listened carefully to all the gibberish coming from Jon Stark's mouth during your duel, but… How come that he has never referred to your sword as Ice? I was glad for the standstill to have some time to think and advise you on a wiser course of action, but it is all I could think of. Very little, I know. The name of your ancestral blade must be obvious to a Stark. Why should it be mentioned? I had not heard it from Ned Stark's mouth either when I first visited Winterfell. Lord Stark was merely carrying and polishing his sword. Please forgive me for not thinking of something better."

Jon nodded and answered sternly, "Thank you for your counsel, such as it is, and for your loyal service,"

It sounded like a farewell, if Daenerys had ever heard one. Her heart sank so low in her chest, and yet she stopped her tears from falling.

Tyrion, on the contrary, cried as he took his place next to Jon. "A dwarf is as brave as any man, Your Grace" he commented through his tears. "Might be I shall serve you still."

He looked determined to not stay in the back.

And neither would Daenerys.

The blood of the dragon had no fear.

She would be there to whatever end.

A treacherous, terrible thought crossed her mind.

At least to close his eyes.

Dragonless, the Mother of Dragons marched next to her husband. To her surprise, he did not even try to stop her, for all that he had made her swear that she would live on for their child.

All her calls to Drogon have been to no avail. By the Seven, he had even returned to save Sansa and her husband, but not her.

That had hurt tremendously, glimpsing him as he lurked behind a dark cloud outside the Night's King second castle, without ever flying into it for her and Rhaegar, just picking the prisoners tossed out to be executed. Surreptitiously. So that the Others could not see his intercession. How come that he could now fly beyond the Wall without harm to himself? And why did he then not simply burn the white walkers if the magic of the Wall had let him through?

It must have all been some terrible command of the red woman who had bewitched him.

And her own fault, to be sure.

For using blood magic without knowing. For giving Drogon Khal Drogo's soul. For making a dragon love her and long for what could never be. For making him jealous and easy victim to sorcery.

Would Melisandre treat Sansa and Sandor any better than the Night's King? What did she want with them? And why would she ever let Drogon return to Westeros? Why would she command him to bring her anyone? Had she seen some evil need for it in her fires? She seemed to have wanted Drogon only to fulfil her own dreams of power.

As anyone else greedy to have dragons that Daenerys had ever encountered.

Volantis.

That's where Melisandre was headed to, and Daenerys would go there one day with fire and blood, if she survived this war.

Drogon, why?

She called for her dragon even now. To her surprise, instead of Drogon's great, black soul, she sensed very clearly Viserion who slept in agony because his rider was severely wounded and needed dragonstrength to survive and maybe, just maybe recover. The dragon wept for his rider's pain as some insipid woman pitying the dead lambs in high, grassy pastures of a faraway land.

And then Rhaegal who was waking very slowly after- after helping her to stay alive because she was his Mother and Jon's sister, no, she was Jon's love. And he also he waited and brooded because… because... He could not help Jon with this deed. Dragon talk became angry, unintelligible. The animal did not want to lose his rider, but neither would it obey him, if it judged his rider's wishes and commands deprived of all sense.

It was not what Viserys told her about dragons. They were servants of the Targaryens, the noble race with dragonblood. Her race. Not free souls to do as they pleased.

Not…

Not reasonable.

Not having a will of their own, which seemed to be the case of her remaining children.

It would seem that poor Viserys was wrong about the nature of the dragons as about so many things.

Last she sensed a young dragon's mind as blue and quiet as her children's thoughts were gloomy and angry. Beth flew carelessly alongside the deserted Wall, enjoying the cold, fresh air, trying out her wings, unaware of any war or trouble. Dining on seagulls and baby eagles.

Drogon!

Her desperate call was followed by equally desperate black dragon-silence ensconced in a very profound corner of her heart, refusing to answer any of her burning questions.

But at least he was there and she could sense that he has grown a lot. She could not see how much exactly behind that northern cloud.

Drogon please!

Because she was right in her worst expectations.

The Night's King did not seriously expect Jon to speak to the wolves or bring his wife. He merely regrouped in order to slaughter the people who still resisted with greater speed and continue the search himself.

One Drogon's breath would decimate the advancing company of the white walkers, the second would be their doom. The realm of men would have a chance against the great hosts camping between the lake and the Wall. And still more poured in through the gates of Castle Black.

More, but no no longer infinite in number.

Because the sun had set in the east and not in the west, burning the valley where the Others were waking to life. The mountains were blown in the wind by the sun's fall, and the seas had gone dry, washing the valley clean of the curse forever.

The Others had lost the homeland where they slept. Perhaps their loved ones as well, if affection existed within their race.

The victory was within their reach as they advanced like one, singing the doom for men.

It looked like Aegon would be the first of Jon's vanguard to fall, despite his white walker's body, and Mance would go down with him, or shortly after him- but then-

-then

- a dragon flew to the lake, emerging from utter darkness white and golden, the one Daenerys least expected, the one who had been sleeping and sobbing like a weak woman.

Impeccably beautiful, Viserion carried a new rider.

Brandon Stark sat on the narrowest place between the two spikes on his back, needing a firm hold for his poor legs. Dark Sister was in his wiry hands and he had to wield it with both. The great sword of Brynden Rivers and many famous dragons before him was far too heavy for a young man who only had use for half of his body.

Flying low, spinning, Viserion burned clear a stretch between Jon's men and the Others, saving Aegon and Mance from Ser Jorah's destiny.

And Bran bore Dark Sister down on the Night's King, burying Valyrian steel between his shoulder blades. The sword came out as easy as if it had cut soft butter.

But it did not cut, or hurt the enemy whose armour and skin remained unblemished.

The Great Other laughed with mirth unheard and unseen in the War for Dawn.

Viserions breathed at him angrily, living for the stream of fire from his maw and nostrils. Daenerys could feel the heat in her throat, and the dragon's immense joy at exhaling it. Searing hot like the furnaces in the mines of Old Valyria.

And very imprecise in its zeal, judging by heart-wrenching human screams.

The hoarse laughter of the enemy only continued through the night.

Not even dragonfire could destroy the Night's King. Only a sword reforged in the blood of the innocents. The blood that should have never been spilled.

Of Nissa Nissa.

Or Ned Stark.

The ice spider defended his rider, biting Viserion's crippled wing. The dragon soared up in retreat, taking Bran with him, while Jon's younger brother screamed to be brought back and continue his useless battle.

Viserion soon disappeared faster than he arrived, and Daenerys wondered if his coming had been but a comforting dream.

The Others continued what they started, new ones taking the place of those burned away. The losses would be heavy now.

Euron Greyjoy lost a dead eye to a crystal blade, maimed once more.

Dany wielded her dragonglass hairpin, the only possession that was not stripped from her in her captivity. It was the Night's King way to show her she was powerless against the ice spider venom: her weapon was always available in her hair yet she could never grasp it.

Now she kept close to Jon, holding her own ground, not wanting to cost any man his life, protecting jealously her own.

And of her unborn child.

Then, flutes and cymbals resounded in the night, wooden and hollow, from the seemingly empty boats anchored in the middle of the half-frozen lake. Drums joined in, steady and insistent against the shrill horn-blowing of the white walkers.

In the rhythm of the invisible players, another army came marching down from the woods beyond the battlefield, under a translucent banner. Large ice dragons flocked to it, gliding over the sky, shedding light on the army's path with shimmering, frozen breath. The fabled beasts looked stunning and innocuous. Not bred for battle. Unlike their fiery Valyrian brothers or the bloodthirsty ice children of the children of the forest.

The nightly sky became a great silver lamp above men.

Men and wights.

Led by the king with blue eyes who had somehow freed himself, and the slain, from serving the Others. Raising the banners of the dead next to those of the living, there came Rhaegar, under the sigil of the Ice Dragon, the grand northern star, the hope of travellers looking for their way. Jojen Reed was his standard bearer. The Others bit hard into the flanks of his army, dismembering their former slaves, punishing them cruelly for treason.

But its main body stood its ground despite tremendous losses, not allowing the Others to approach the men still drawing breath.

Despite that it was common knowledge that the wights felt no pain, and could fight on even in bits and pieces, as loose arms and legs, until an ordinary fire put an end to it, Dany hoped that Ser Jorah was not among those chopped into pieces.

So many things happened at once that it was impossible to tell.

The battle was a great wave and she was in the middle, next to Jon who was now aggressively cutting his own way open towards the enemy.

Two heavy sword slowed him down. So he turned, and handed her Blackfyre.

"It's too heavy for me and I never learned the sword," she tried to object. In truth, she wanted him to keep it, hoping that the magic stirred by dragons would awaken when least expected, and break the vicious circle of one Night's King replacing another, by one strike of the fabled weapon of Aegon the Conqueror.

"Just stick them with the pointy end," he yelled through the winter wind, and left her with the sword in hands, continuing his advance.

She followed closely after him. One touch of Valyrian steel made the Others dissolve much faster than her hairpin. In Jon's vanguard, she didn't have to be a master of arms to touch them once, and always keep her back next to Jon or Mance or Aegon. Obara Sand, Or Lady Meera.

Or Tyrion's dwarf back.

But never near Euron, the former dragonstealer. She could tolerate him, but not trust him.

Mute and stubborn-faced, Jon looked like a man who had already waited far too long for a deed that ought to be done.

His vanguard was armoured in blue crystal of the enemies they vanquished. Only Dany's cloak was clear of them. The pretty remnants of the foul white walkers vanished in smoke as soon as they touched her so she had clearly not lost all of her dragonblood and her body was beginning to recuperate.

For the little dragon who was part wolf.

She held her ground, yet the despair kept growing in her.

After Viserion's bravery, one thing was certain.

Not even Drogon could have killed the Night's King, even if she could call him back in her dire need.

It was Jon's lot, a bitter destiny. Why did good men always have to die? And the bad men, and all men, in the end.

Please no.

Khal Drogo's loss was a terrible tragedy in her young years, but this one could utterly destroy her.

"Your little brother was almost impressive, playing at the Last Hero," the Night's King mocked Jon as was his wont. "Braver than you. Where is he now? Fallen off the dragon? Was it not so easy to fly as it looked? Did the beast betray him? That animal has the soul of the woman who committed high treason against your lovely wife, after all. Did she ever tell you?"

Jon was utterly unimpressed, grinning. "My wife has no secrets from me," he retorted. "And my own dragon has the soul of a horse, but the rest is himself. He does what he wants, I think. And what I want, but not all. I am certain that Viserion is the same."

Before finishing the sentence, very suddenly, Jon stabbed the remaining ice spider through the heart and shouted, "Shut up and fight!"

The spider evaporated into thin blue air.

"Or are you a coward who shall fall behind your most noble grumkin bannermen? How can you even tell who is who? They all look the same. Are you afraid to die?"

"Last chance to present me with my wife," the enemy squeezed out of blue lips with poison, rising on his feet between his steed's last remains. "Or there will be no more respite until you and all fools who acknowledge you as their king lay destroyed before my feet."

Instead of answering, Jon attacked him with force that almost brought him down. Yet at the last moment, the Night's King regained balance and parried, pushing Jon back with tireless power.

"Here she is!" A young woman's voice screamed in the wind.

Dany could not understand how she came all the way from the forest to the thick of the battle without being seen, but somehow she did.

Calm as still water.

Arya, wide awake, dragging the Mermaid Wife in her cloak of velvet, with dead black hair hanging to her waist, falling from strange looking braids that became undone after a long ride. Gendry trod a few steps behind Jon's favourite sister, unable to catch up.

Fast as the wolverine.

Gendry carried after Arya, almost as her faithful servant, a horn that could have only belonged to Joramun.

Simple, unadorned, modest, broken and made whole by the late Lord Reed.

The last greenseer of his people.

Jon used to sleep-talked about it in his dreams of waking the giants from earth as Joramun had done, ending the previous Long NIght and bringing the dawn.

It has come and gone before, he would say very often, turning in their bed..

Hope budded in Dany's heart. Perhaps the horn would help where Blackfyre and the Warrior could not.

She was on the verge of kneeling and praying to the trees.

Direwolves arrived with Arya, three of them, the great she-wolf with bright yellow eyes, as large as a small dragon, and two lesser ones who looked equally savage.

Daenerys was told their names a hundred times over, by different Starks. Nymeria. Summer. Shaggy.

"I can't kill you with a whisper," Arya hissed at the Night's King, sounding almost as dangerous as a white walker, with the difference that the meaning of her hisses was plain. She held dragonglass pressed neatly against the Mermaid Wife's slender throat. "But I can kill her. With this or… or with a song! It shall not be a lady's verse or a pretty tune like these cymbals in the lake, no, my lord grumkin. But a song it shall be, such as only I can intone. Best believe it, snark! Put them all to sleep! Now! Lay in bed! I bid you sweet dreams!"

"But the wights die when the Others start dreaming," the Night's King retorted with emotion. "So tell me, lady, how could I ever possibly agree to your terms?"

"Enough!" Jon hammered with rage. "My sister acted on her own. I had not kn kaown. I swear it on my honour and everything I hold dear."

With that, he forced the enemy to continue their duel, lest he cut him in pieces where he stood.

The Night's King became deadly focused, attacking with all his power: a man, a monster that could never become exhausted or slow down.

Dany's heart was in her heels.

Jon was clearly losing ground, backing into a clumsy defence position more worthy of a boy playing at swords that the blade master he had become.

Then, from that weak posture, he suddenly swung Ice to deal a killing blow.

He would lose his head in the same moment, he would let it roll down like Ned Stark's on the stairs of the Great Sept of Baelor -

- except that his would roll in snow-

-snow- snow-snow-

-Dany's heart hurt to the point of bursting-or was she the brave Danny Flint's?-

- and then the enemy found dragonspeed in jumping back and away.

"You would do that!" The Night's King yelled with superhuman strength, flushed dark grey and blue in the light of the ice dragon sky lanterns.

"What else?" Jon first matched him and then surpassed him in the shouting contest. "What would you do in my place?" He paused and continued in a black whisper carried forward through the whistling of the winter wind by its sheer charge of rage and contempt. "If you were still yourself."

"If you were still Azor Ahai and not an abhorrence to everything he had stood for as the Last Hero," Jon landed a mortal blow with words and not with steel. "I shall not take your place. Yes, I shall rather throw myself on your sword when I take your life. It should not last much longer. I'll find a way, you'll see. What a man truly has to do, a man always does."

There were only two men duelling left in the world, pacing around each other.

The battle stilled completely. The white walkers and the people alike observed how their king fared.

Arya never wavered in her hold on the Mermaid Wife… no… Nissa NIssa... Dany corrected herself with bile rising in her throat.

Jon's little sister's eyes promised murder to the wight woman before she would let the enemy have her back, no matter who she was and how she died.

Dany sank into snow and it seemed to her that the world stopped turning, and that the duel would never end.

The Night's King no longer fell into a trap of Jon's seemingly hesitant steps. The combat was a complex dance, a deadly one.

The Night's King exhibited wild passes, inventing them on the spot, perhaps, from some figures he knew. Dany had seen her share of men sparring but she could not be sure. Jon responded in kind,

A new dance, never seen before. An art.

In one of the elaborate clashes, the Night's King caught Jon on a wrong leg, attacking his left side.

Jon's hold on Ice wavered only so slightly. He yelled with surprise, and he would have gotten a good grip on it again, if only the enemy-

-the Night's King-

-Azor Ahai-

- did not throw himself on Ice-

-impaling his chest on the blade that killed Ned Stark-

- and remained prostrated in dirty, bloodied snow...

"This now?" Arya breathed out, stunned. Her hold on the lady wight wavered.

The Mermaid Wife… Nissa Nissa broke free, staggered to her husband and sat next to him, cradling his body as it changed, slowly losing the gnarled skin of the white walker, turning into a man he had once been.

Jon retrieved Ice and stood speechless, still alert and not believing in victory.

Dany found herself next to him, holding the elbow of his sword hand, holding Blackfyre in her own right hand.

The white walkers lifted their heads like snakes in a desert. Some hissed impatiently. Dany wondered how long it would take before they fell asleep.

The sea of humanity remained dead silent, not understanding what has occurred and what would happen next; brooding, waiting.

Azor Ahai's hair turned black and silky, without a single curl in it; his eyes became black and glittery like Drogon's scales. His face would not be old if it were not for his ancient eyes. His expression was flat, and his armour beautiful, intricate, grey, red and gold, of foreign making.

"I had thought you would never guess," he spoke with difficulty, addressing Jon, "obsessed as you were with the fate of your ancestor and namesake. It was the only significant advantage I had over you so I used it whenever I dared, always waiting for the day when I would commit a grave error of judgment and betray myself, and you would kill me, and take my place." He paused and crossed his arms on his ruined chest in an odd gesture of supplication. "I extend a plea of honour to you both, King and Queen of Westeros. I exhort you to show mercy to Nissa Nissa, should it be in your hands to bestow it." He nervously grasped his wife's hand and muttered. "She has no blame in anything I have done."

"But she will die when you die, and the Others fall asleep," Daenerys could not stay quiet. "As will my brother! And so many innocents! Or is that another lie?" She prayed it was.

"I do not know what will be," the dying king replied very seriously.

"I had to do all I could for her to wash my sin," he looked at Dany as if he was sorry, offering a silent apology. "I learned how to care for her on the side, all the while bowing to the demands of the curse that took me and used me for its own sake. Back home, in the wondrous city of Yi Ti, behind its unconquered walls, we believe that dragonblood is the only substance that can resurrect the dead. But that is not true, is it?" he concluded stoically. "I know now that our beliefs are rubbish. Every faith is."

"Nothing and no one can resurrect the dead," Dany retorted briskly. "And only the gods decide who lives and who dies." As she said it, she did not know if she believed it herself. But it felt marvelous to be able to say it, to occupy for once the high moral ground in relation to the moribund at her feet.

Azor Ahai's old, dying eyes centred on Jon. "This is like a new step invented in a sword fight. A man does not know where it will take him, before he makes it." He seemed dead honest.

"Why?" Jon had burning questions on its own, "Did you do it only for yourself and for her? Only to wash your sin in any way that was left for you?"

"Would you believe me if I claimed that the world as I used to know it was first and foremost in my heart? The world I came to save when I crossed the narrow sea and disembarked in your lands, from what you regard as the Far East of the Known World..."

"No," Jon answered flatly.

"No," Dany echoed.

Azor Ahai gave a short, dry laugh. Prideless. Mirthless. "I thought so. Yet it is true. What else did you expect me to do? They had seen us off from Yi Ti with flowers and music. The high priests had told us that we carried in our hands the fate of all men. And we have both believed it with all our hearts. No one has ever told us what awaited in Westeros or how it came into being. We both wanted to do what had to be done. And I only begin to hope beyond hope right now that my latest and last mad feat could mean a different destiny for Nissa NIssa. For what is a man without hope? Is he still a man? And if death it is, death it shall be. She wanted to die since we woke. Her condition is more unbearable than mine, with no ice in her veins give her purpose. I think she would have thrown herself into a fire if it was not-

"For you," Dany concluded knowingly.

Women were prone to all sorts of madness when they loved a man.

And the other way around.

She felt the urge to cry once more, but she did not. Instead she lifted her chin high and objected with pride, "You could have done something, said something!"

Azor Ahai shook violently his black head in absolute denial. "You do not know what the curse is. It walks over you. Now it took all of my old strength, all of myself that I had left... and the chaos of a bloody battle, stronger than any magic, to break free. I caught myself admiring your husband's courage and I grasped the only chance I would ever have to act at least once more with my own bravery, such as it was left to me. Drifting against the tide. Trying something genuinely new. A move, a step yet to be seen."

His body contorted in agony. His eyelids fluttered. Speech was gone from him, but there was still some life left, it seemed.

His wife took his shoulders and addressed him in a language Dany could not understand. Then she bowed deeply to her and Jon, and revealed her belly from under the cloak.

A wight child in a wight wife.

"How could you?" Dany uttered in disbelief. "To sacrifice not only your wife but also your child to the ideal of saving your world?"

Tyrion came in, "I believe that the lady is saying that it is the child they both killed, not knowing it was there until they… woke."

A sob came behind Jon. It was Arya, crying without shame.

The blood of the wolf could shed tears, it seemed, with far less scrupules than the blood of the dragon.

"Yin Tar from Yi Ti," Tyrion continued mournfully. "One of the many names in different lands for the Last Hero, Azor Ahai. The true one, it would seem. And this is his end."

His name had always been written on his sword, Dany remembered, the one she and Jon had found and taken from the caves beyond the Wall, under one of his castles. He had freely admitted it was his, and they had thought he was just bragging, as always. The sword now buried in snow behind Nissa Nissa.

"He didn't even realise that Arya was clearly my sister, and a Stark. To him she was just an unknown lady. He acted as a man who has never even seen Ice and much less known its name," Jon spoke to all and to no one, as a man who still does not believe fully in his own reasoning. "He had somehow learned every single swordsman trick in Westeros in addition to his own, foreign ones, except the way in which all northern boys defend themselves when they first pick up the sword." Finally he addressed Azor Ahai, "It just fell into place, every encounter we had. I had to guess loudly, or rather, I knew. I knew for certain, as I know myself now."

Azor Ahai averted his eyes from Jon and turned them to Dany. With a soft, pained expression, he murmured, "I saw the brave Danny Flint dying after I killed Jon Stark. She was a lot like you. Full of fire for a tiny northwoman. I understand she died an ugly death for it, and that Jon Stark took his revenge from the men on the Wall who did it, by becoming not only their justice, but their worst and cruelest doom. To simply kill them would have never been enough."

Dany wondered if he even knew that she was no northwoman. The people of Yi Ti might have never heard about the House Targaryen and Old Valyria.

Only about dragons.

Everyone had designs for the power or the magic they could bring. Even in the cold Asshai by the Shadow.

"Danny Flint's passing was the last event I witnessed with my own eyes before losing myself. Before waking to see my Nissa Nissa neither alive nor dead, kneeling next to my new throne. The ruin and the mockery of everything I lived for. Come to pass by my own design and hand. At least all my companions had died for good and they were not there with me to witness my shame."

With this, Azor Ahai looked at the ice sky lanterns, and then at his wife, murmuring a short, heartfelt sentence in a foreign language.

"It hurts, it hurts to see what I have done to you!" Tyrion translated with some hesitation.

Nissa Nissa could not cry.

The wights could not.

She pressed her husband's black head against her undead heart and gently closed his eyes.

Then, she faced Jon squarely, her gaze inquiring about her destiny.

Jon sheathed Ice, and took the Horn which was now in Arya's hands.

The Horn of Joramun.

Wiping a single tear of compassion from his eye, Jon blew it slowly and deeply, only once. A stark lament for the dead king.

"She is not dying," Dany dared say after a while.

"And they are not falling asleep," Jon murmured back.

The Others slowly rose and grouped, sounding their shrill horns, wide awake.

Kingless, they would continue their war against men on their own.

Sweat beaded on Jon's forehead. "It never ends," he said darkly, patting the Horn of Joramun. "No giants of earth for me, it would seem. The grief for the fate of Azor Ahai and Nissa NIssa is in my heart, but it can never be as strong as Joramun's. He must have lost a friend and an ally in Jon Stark, when the King of Winter changed sides. This man was a stranger and an enemy to me until today."

Dany felt that the final destiny of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa was to be trampled down under the feet of a horde of white walkers, and dismembered into pieces.

She never felt less like the Mother of Dragons."

Then her belly moved. Her child.

When your womb quickens, and you bear a living child.

The prophecy flashed in her mind, fast and clear as ever.

When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.

The words have lost their bitterness, and they have all been turned upside down. Everything prophesied had happened, since Azor Ahai caught her, but nothing in the straightforward way she expected, until this last, missing part.

My sun and stars!

My sun and stars! She called to Drogon in her mind, from Volantis or the end of the world. She had never dared address him like that before in the secret language of dragonkind, through the common space they all shared and inhabited in their souls - afraid of what it could mean for poor Drogo's heart. The space where the dragons fell asleep to help each other recover from deadly hurts.

The place where they could murder each other in their sleep if they started a brother's war.

My sun and stars!

She repeated it, needlessly, for she already listened to the flapping of his wings.

Moon of my life, Drogon responded to her, first time ever, picking both her and Jon on his back, blowing a very precise jet of fire that annihilated thousands of Others at once, without causing a single human cry.

Her grown dragon who could behave himself. Who would never eat a child again or burn anything by mistake.

Only willingly.

And, to her surprise, not Khal Drogo at all on the inside, just like Viserion was not Mirri Maaz Duur and Rhaegal not the horse.

In red and black flashes, Drogon showed to her in the malleable, colourful image language of dragons that he was Drogon, her son, her friend, her ally. Yes, he could dream of Khal Drogo's life, and it was a good life, but not his.

Not him.

He had fought so hard to grow faster so that he could return to Daenerys sooner, and he was so miserable because he had not yet grown enough to be able to burn the chains of magic around him by himself. He would, one day, or so he thought, but not just yet. When he grew still a bit bigger. He could now absent himself from the red woman's presence when he was done with fulfilling her orders. He could fly elsewhere, to a place where he could see or sense Daenerys, as long as Melisandre did not give him new commands. Yes, he was big enough to fly beyond the Wall, unlike Viserion and Rhaegal. Yes, he could have picked her if she was thrown through the castle's window, but he could never have saved her or Rhaegar on his own accord, without Melisandre's express orders.

He could either be involved passively in what he wanted, or not at all.

Until Daneerys, his Mother, his sister, his friend, had finally remembered the words of the blood magic that had tied them together from the beginning, and freed him herself.

His smaller brothers could now also fly as they wished, without being forced to keep in reserve some of their strength for the well-being of their enormous enslaved brother, the strongest living member of the entire race.

Viserion returned to battle with Bran, and Rhaegal with Lady Brienne and Ser Jaime. The Kingslayer was clearly wounded and hauled over a thornless spike like a sack of grain.

Rhaegal made certain to show to Jon, and to Dany, Viserion's memories of Brienne's and Jaime's bravery in the cave beyond the Wall, saving Bran from himself. In case they had any doubts left about Ser Jaime's loyalty. Dany did not think it was the case, but she understood Rhaegal's prudence.

The dragon knew his rider very well.

And then, magic must have stirred in the world from the presence of her three children. For a murder of dragons came to answer Jon's call, sent out earlier by the Horn of Joramun: stone dragons woken to life, hard like chipped granite in his heart, hundreds of them, growing larger as they flew.

Magic was a hiltless sword. Different men grasped it differently, to an end that could not be foreseen.

A red stone dragon brought Sansa and her husband, naked as their name days.

Sansa stayed on dragonback, covering herself with her hair, balancing not to fall as the beast twirled over the ice-lit sky, breathing fire. But her husband asked to be put off, and the dragon obeyed. In the bloodshed, the Hound found clothing and a sword from corpses, and went to fight on foot, near Rhaegar, or on his own, cutting the Others left and right. No one had more battle joy on him, except, of course, Jon, who had left Dany with Drogon, and seemed to be in all places at once, so fast did he move on his two feet, flying on the wings of hope for true victory as surely as if he were riding a dragon.

Drogon harrumphed, taking Daenerys where she wanted, or where he thought breathing fire would be due. Tied to her and free, both at once.

She flew over her husband many and smiled at him, dreaming with her eyes and heart wide open about their future together.

Jon and Dany.

Mother and Father.

Jon Stark and the brave Danny Flint.

The king and the queen.

Finally, the mammoths returned from beyond the Wall. In a great stampedo, stronger than a single jet of dragonfire, they crushed the remaining Others in their wake. An angry tribe of giants straddled them. Living giants, and not merely conjured from earth, finishing with clubs what the northern elephants had so aptly begun.

Look. Drogon said to Daenerys when the battle dwindled and was all but over, flying with her on his own accord far away, admiring a beauty such as he had never seen, not since he hatched from his black egg.

See.

The enormous dragon looped around a low cloud, as careless as Beth, the blue baby, making his Mother sick from being with child.

Easy, she sounded to herself like a woman from those mountain clans, admonishing Drogon.

In the wilderness, under a thin birch with its silvery skin, a blue rose grew from the chunk of ice, greeting the break of dawn.