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He has been king for three years, and he still isn’t used to turning around and seeing knights and banners behind him. He expects that the thundering of hooves at his back means Black Brothers on garrons, men in tattered black cloaks on tired horses. But no, the men who guard him wear bright armor and white cloaks and carry the banners bearing his personal sigil: gray on a field of black, a three-headed dragon flanked by a rose and the heads of two wolves to represent the woman who bore him, the man who raised him and the brother he loved and lost.
“Here,” he says at last, after having been silent for what feels like days. There, glinting in the sunlight, is a heap of stones, charred and blackened like a bruised body. It looks as though the ruin is centuries old—nothing so cataclysmic could have happened so recently, Jon thinks, could still leave the scent of blood in his nostrils and the sound of screams ringing his head like a bell.
But it did.
The horses’ canters slow down to a trot at his command, and when they reach the ruins of Castle Black Jon dismounts. His queen and his maester climb off their horses behind him, but follow at a distance; something in the way he walks must have told them he does not wish to be disturbed, although he would give no such order to Sam or to Shireen, who are rarely anything but kind and careful.
He walks along the wreck of the Wall, like a row of broken teeth. It carries death and suffering within its stones the way it once harbored magic: layers upon layers of it, ordained by every god anyone had ever believed in. He remembers what it was like to be the dragon who did this, plummeting from a great height on wings as big as a castle’s fields to breathe fire onto the Others who marched through. He remembers his terror at seeing the men who had refused his orders to march to safety, who believed they could fight alongside a dragon.
He remembers how he had no choice.
He wishes he could outlaw all the songs they sing of the glories of the Dragon King, but sadly, he thinks, he has no gift for tyranny.
A white blur breaks him out of his reverie. Ghost, returned from wherever he’d been, scouting ahead of the party. He brushes past Jon and noses at his arm, then leads Jon on to a spot along the wall. He paws at the ground until Jon stops to kneel, and in an instant he is sure he knows why Ghost has led him here. This is the spot where Jon was stabbed by his own men. Where he was killed.
And it is the spot where Satin, his squire, fell, after trying to avenge him in his rage.
Only one of them rose again.
*
Melisandre had tried to bring the boy back to life, but her strength had failed her.
That was what she had said at first.
“Why did you save me first?” Jon had asked, still groggy, still exhausted. “Why didn’t you save him?”
“Because,” she had said, her voice unusually small and hesitant. “You are the one, born amidst salt and smoke. Azor Ahai reborn.”
“How did you save me?” Jon asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
Melisandre looked into her constantly-burning flame. “You have heard that there is power in a king’s blood.”
“Yes.”
“There is also power in the blood of the one whom a king loves.”
It took Jon a moment to understand what she was saying. He heard himself saying, No, no, please, no, but it may as well have been the dripping of an icicle or the crackling of the flames for all the good it did.
And Melisandre had stared at him, and when he finally had the strength to look at her he could have sworn her eyes were less red than amber-brown. Almost ordinary eyes. Had they ever been truly red, or had he imagined it because it was what he expected to see?
“Only death can pay for life,” she said.
If Jon didn’t know better, it would have sounded strangely like an apology.
*
Jon lays the fragrant roses down at the spot where Ghost stopped. Satin had always smelled of roses, although Jon doubts he saw an actual rose since arriving at the Wall.
He tries to say something light-hearted, but words fail him. All he can do is rearrange the roses, as if there’s some perfect configuration he has yet to find that will ease the restlessness in his heart. Ghost licks at his cheek, and he strokes the direwolf’s head, closing his eyes to briefly imagine that it’s Satin’s silky hair he’s caressing, although he never touched the boy that way.
Three shadows fall on the ground before him, and he pauses to straighten his shoulders before standing to face them. His wife, Shireen Baratheon; Ser Edric Storm of the Kingsguard, whose friendship with the Queen fosters whispers of cuckoldry which Jon steadfastly ignores; and Maester Samwell Tarly.
Shireen puts her hand on his cheek, and he embraces her.
“What now?” she asks.
“More dead to mourn,” he says, smiling grimly.
Donal Noye. Donnel Hill. Grenn. Deaf Dick. Dolorous Edd Tollett. Ygritte.
“Then I will mourn by your side,” she says, and holds his arm as they walk. His eyes threaten to fill with tears as Sam takes his other arm; he would feel like a poor excuse for a king, if he had ever felt before like a good one.
But he is lucky. He has friends, and he is liked by his people. His wife is gentle and good and sharp of wit, and he is fond of her; he tries not to think about another man who was fond of the woman he married, and how that turned out.
But no, he thinks wryly. I am not Rhaegar. Not my father.
The roses I leave to atone for this ruin are red.