Asha?

  Lordsport had changed in the year since she had sailed for Oldtown to meet a sorcerer, its harbor choked with three times as many longships.

  A few she knew. Her father's Great Kraken and her uncle's Iron Victory were as grand as any greenlander dromond, dwarfing lesser longships as Cleftjaw's Foamdrinker.

  Past the harbor she spied the smithies and foundries belching clouds of black smoke, all of them bent for war. If not for the wind put in their sails, they might have arrived to find the harbor emptied.

  One of Germund's lackeys spotted them, and it wasn't long 'fore Germund himself met her upon the pier. "The kraken's daughter has returned," he simpered, the sunlight catching on the gilded breastplate he'd looted off some Lannister or another. "The ironborn know a king of salt and rock again."

  A sharp smile took her lips. "And one day they'll know a queen of salt and rock also."

  "A queen," the bedamned gull repeated in a voice to curdle blood.

  A man like Germund Botley wouldn't dare gainsay her, and she was proven right when he only returned another simpering smile.

  "We heard talk you were reaving in the Stepstones."

  "You heard rightly. There's not a merchant from Braavos to Volantis that doesn't know my Black Wind now." Asha turned her smile on her men in black plate. "Isn't that right?"

  Their cheers cut across the harbor, and soon they scattered into the winesinks and brothels. They'd plenty coin to spend.

  "Watch your thralls carefully, Germund. I'll know if a single coin is out of place."

  "They know better than to try the iron price on a Greyjoy."

  Asha stalked past him with a sneer. Seeing his lickspittle of an uncle tugged her thoughts to Tris a moment. She would need allies more than the Reader if she were to succeed over her uncles.

  "I worry we've returned too late."

  She turned an eye on her kitten as she mounted a filly. "We could be later."

  They rode hard to Pyke, a treacherous thing sprawling across three islands that were once part of the same cliffside, all of it connected by a mass of rope bridges swaying in the wind. The sight of it was more green than grey from the lichen that bedecked it.

  Helya met her with a dour look after she passed a score guards bearing the golden krakens of Greyjoy. Across the long, smoky hall she spied a few of the lords of the isles, Gorold Goodbrother and his sons, Dunstan Drumm and his Valyrian steel sword, the fleshy Meldred Merlyn in his furs and velvets…

  Their eyes turned on her, drawing a smirk from her. The Seastone Chair however did not bear her father.

  "He speaks with your uncle in the Sea Tower," she heard.

  "I'll find my own way, Helya." Her kitten was watching the lords. "See what the mood is like," she whispered in his ear.

  The way to her father's solar in the Sea Tower saw the wind tugging at her black hair and the waves crashing against the rocks beneath her like thunder. Inside it was as damp and drafty as she remembered, the stench of the sea sticking to every surface.

  Her father she spied poring over maps of the north next to the crackling brazier.

  "Asha," he whispered as his hard black eyes fell on her. He was even gaunter than she remembered, bedecked in sealskin robes that hardly stuck to him.

  All that made him seem a king was the driftwood crowning his head and hair as white as snow.

  "Father," she greeted as she sauntered in the room. "Nuncle," she followed with a teasing smile, touching one of her new black claws to a cheek.

  Where her father and other uncles were all sleek as sharks, Victarion stood more like an aurochs, a frown staring down at her as if it was carved into his mouth. His black hair was flecked with grey, and his eyes caught on her with some confusion. "Niece."

  "I'd heard the stag king met his end at the bottom of the narrow sea."

  Her father's weathered features took on the shadow of a smile. "Struck down by the Drowned God. Now the greenlanders are at another's throats."

  Her eyes trailed across the maps. "And the north?"

  "The wolf pup has taken the Stark banners south. In his absence we will wash over the north as a wave washes over a beach and dare the Starks to return with the Neck barred to them."

  "I would think we are more served by ensuring that none of these greenlander kings win over the other," she voiced carefully.

  He leaned over the maps. "We will use the north to do it. Its lumber and its people will build us another thousand longships."

  A feat that will take years, she wanted to say, and a people that will fight them for every tree and stone. She knew he would not hear it, for it was pride that drove him north, not riches.

  "I heard stories of the Crow's Eye." Her uncle's frown turned even more sour for the mention. "They say he gathers warlocks and shadowbinders. If we scatter ourselves across the north, we might return to find him on the Seastone Chair."

  She hoped he might see a crumb of sense, but her father only endeavored to prove Solomon right instead. "Euron knows not to test me. My word is law. Kinship will not protect him if he steps foot on my isles again."

  Her tongue stirred to mention Theon, but she knew he would not listen there either. Her mother's words rang loud in her ear.

  "I have decided." His black eyes raked across the breadth of the north, shadowed by the tatters of his hair. "Command them back to the hall, Victarion."

  It left them alone in the solar. "Will you name me your heir?"

  His eyes would not even stir in her direction. "They must be whetted on victories first."

  It was all he cared to say.

  The smoky hall was more crowded when she returned. "They are weary of your father's crown," Qarl soon whispered in her ear. "That as they eye the green lands with hungry eyes. The old way sings to them."

  A sigh left her lips for it. She understood it, that allure of the time where their lands were everywhere the sea touched.

  Yet that dream had died 'fore Argon had ever come to Westeros. The Hoares hardly followed the old way. Harren the Black had ruled from Harrenhal as any other greenlander king, and died as one also.

  Her father soon sat the Seastone Chair, seeming even slighter ensconced in the arms of a kraken.

  "My daughter has returned to us from reaving across the Free Cities…"

  The throne black as sin drank in the light as much as Valyrian steel or the yellow Solomon had wrapped himself in. Though she had never put much stock into the thousand stories of the Grey King, she had seen a mermaid with her own eyes, and a thing so vast that even Saan's Valyrian seemed small as a rowboat.

  She stirred from her thoughts to hear that her nuncle would take the greater part of the Iron Fleet and take Moat Cailin, where she was given some thirty-five longships to reave across the breadth of the stony shore and take Deepwood Motte from the Glovers.

  It is from the wolfswood that her father would build his thousand longships, styling himself as the King of the Isles and the North.

  The night saw at least three offers for her hand, and three rejections. They only wished to wear her father's crown after him, where she meant to rule in her own right. The notion never even seemed to have crossed their thoughts.

  Her dreams that night were another horror.

  She had hoped they would have gone after she parted from Solomon. They had followed her to the isles instead.

  Asha sat the Seastone Chair in place of her father, the hall drowned in gloom. Yet her subjects were not men, but things from the depths. One had the head of a squid spewing black ink across the stones. Another stared at her with dead fish eyes and a maw like a shark's. A third skittered like a crab along the walls.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The black stone upon which she sat stuck to her skin like grease. Skin that crawled with a thousand black scales as they spilled the blood of thralls in her name.

  "Asha," she heard as her bones began to break and shift. "Asha."

  She rubbed the horror from her eyes to find her kitten staring back at her. The sun showed it was already noon as it brightened his sandy hair.

  She had torn her pillow to shreds…

  "Your father, Asha," he finally whispered. "He fell."

  The Imp?

  He went through the ledgers a second time, a golden dragon threaded between his stunted fingers. Waiting on one's sire to die was dull work, and so he had picked up a hobby, something to occupy his time that wasn't wine.

  It had been his sticking his nose where it wasn't wanted that had given him the idea. Littlefinger had his fingers in every pie in King's Landing, and he'd accomplished much the same in Lannisport, where being the son of the great Tywin Lannister, even a dwarf, opened every door.

  It had also allowed him to move coin around the known world with not a soul the wiser…

  "M'lord," he heard. "There's a knight here for you. Of the Kingsguard."

  Cersei…

  It was a pair of dead eyes that met him at the door. "Ser Mandon Moore," he greeted cheerfully. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" The matron had already made herself scarce.

  "Her Grace requests your presence at the Rock."

  A thoughtful hum escaped him. He had not heard anything that might prompt a summons. Or anything at all, a queer thing now that he put his mind to it. "And did she happen to say why?"

  "No." As verbose as he could have expected from a knight that aspired only to obedience.

  The pitter patter of rain outside his window had him reaching for his traveling cloak. "Then we shan't keep her waiting, ser."

  Their passage to Casterly Rock was as dull and dour as his knightly companion. Yet it would seem he wasn't the only one his sweet sister had summoned, the throne room thick with Lannisters. As for…

  He first pinched himself to make certain he hadn't fallen into one of the seven hells. When the sight stubbornly remained, it did not take him long to find an answer. The sorcerer that haunted his thoughts at times had made a move in the great game, for upon Cersei's head sat a crown of sorcery. It was as if the very sun had been plucked from the sky.

  The eyes of a cat turned to stare him down like a morsel. "Tyrion."

  "Cersei," he ventured faintly. "You seem… taller."

  His uncles and cousins all stared at her as if they were more deer than lions. All but his aunt, who seemed none too amused.

  "Have you gathered us here to put an end to this ruse, Cersei? You would think we were your prisoners with how you've kept us under lock and key. Your father—"

  "Cannot afford to be distracted," his sister almost purred. "Renly and the flowers choking his ears would see the Rock turned into a lichyard."

  "If the ironborn don't beat him to it," Tyrion happily reminded. His father had three of the servants flogged for but a mention of sorcery. News of this might have his heart give out.

  "Should we wonder if all the rumors are true?" his aunt followed more boldly, earning her a sneer that revealed a maw of daggers.

  "Solomon is more than what the words of some halfwit paint him as. Look how he rewards his faithful."

  He could have made a jest, but with how mad his sweet sister's eyes were, he decided he rather liked his head where it was. The rest of him also.

  "It is Solomon that will deliver us from the naked treachery that has stolen my son's throne and set the realm aflame." He had only now noticed his nephew on the throne, playing at a mouse as he watched his mother nervously. "Just as he had…"

  "The F-Faith will not abide by—"

  His uncle's words had died a swift death at the turn of her eyes. "The High Septon, Ser Stafford, names your king an abomination, and the Most Devout say much the same. Will you speak in their defense?"

  Whatever courage had fled him at her stare. Now he seemed ready to spit on the first septon his sweet sister pointed out.

  "From the Golden Tooth to Crakehall the men of the westerlands bleed in our defense. Many will even go to the Stranger." He could have laughed. For all the words passed Cersei's lips as freely as wine, they weren't hers. "We will not only honor their sacrifice, but see that it wasn't in vain."

  He would give it a moon before the news somehow reached their father at Deep Den.

  Her cat's eyes found his again. "I would have words with you, Tyrion."

  He slipped on a smile as he spied his aunt tugging at her golden braid, her eyes worried. "Anything for my sweet sister."

  Ser Fish Eyes fell in behind them while the Hound remained to guard her worm of a son.

  For her part, she did not so much walk as stalk through passageways of the Rock. The corset of spun gold made her look closer to Jaime in armor.

  He raised a brow at their destination. It was in this room that he first learned that his father loathed him, at the tender age of three. His sweet sister even took his seat.

  "Jaime smashed Mathis Rowan's host near Goldengrove."

  Tyrion poured himself a cup of his father's wine. "So I heard. Trust Jaime to cover himself in glory. I imagine he will seat his horse on the stretch of road between Crakehall and Old Oak next." He smacked his lips after he drained the cup of its wine. It might be the last he'd ever drink…

  "You've always been clever, Tyrion," she said instead.

  He toyed with the rim of his cup with half a frown. "That almost sounded like a compliment. But I must have misheard…"

  "It was worse than cruel what he did to you and Tysha. You were not the first or even the hundredth to marry a baseborn girl."

  The words amused him as much as they annoyed him.

  "…What game are you playing at, Cersei?" he cooly asked. "Or perhaps I should ask what game he is playing at?"

  He had once thought to become a septon himself, knowing he could never be a knight. This was like to see their line attainted.

  Her tongue had slithered between daggers in white as she smiled. "What need have we of Father? The realm cannot stand the sight of him."

  It wouldn't be Cersei not to see that she was similarly beloved.

  "It isn't only Father that should worry you, sweet sister."

  "The Faith is not what it was before Maegor humbled them," she returned as sour as the wine. "I admit I have not always treated you rightly," she continued more softly. "But it was for the prophecy spoken to me as a girl. A prophecy Solomon has vanquished."

  An exasperated sigh escaped him, even as he turned the thought over in his mind a thousand times.

  Had the sorcerer led him to Tysha knowing it would lead him here? And what did it matter if he had?

  He remembered every word his father had spoken to him as he demanded he watch. He remembered how she screamed. How her eyes had grown dead and dull with each coin a soldier left in her hands.

  A monstrous smile must have taken him as he found his sweet sister's eyes again.

  By the time he was done, there would be naught left of his father's precious legacy but an unmarked grave, and piss to water it.