31. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 814-834

The Sacrifice

The storm has not abated, and Stannis's troops are snowbound on the edge of a pair of frozen lakes in which they have not even been able to catch fish through holes cut in the ice. Now the followers of R'hllor have determined that a sacrifice needs to be made to the red god and are erecting stakes for "An offering of blood and fire, the queen's men called it." The victims are to be four starving men who had turned to cannibalism.

As he is led to the stake, one of them men begins to hurl obscene insults at his captors, but is finally silenced by having his throat cut. Asha Greyjoy realizes that the man intentionally brought about his death to be spared the torment of burning.

Stannis arrives for the burning, accompanied by Arnolf Karstark, who had joined them with his own small army eight days earlier. He is expected to hold Winterfell once it is taken. Stannis gives the word for the sacrifice to proceed, and Asha forces herself to watch. When the screaming has stopped, Stannis withdraws. One of the queen's men, Clayton Suggs, approaches Asha and threatens that she'll be next to burn: She has "king's blood" that will please R'hllor. Justin Massey approaches as Asha is responding to Suggs, and laughs at her suggestion that the red god might prefer "one of his own. A faithful man who will sing his praises as the flames lick at his cock." Suggs smirks at the burned men chained to their stakes and leaves.

Massey invites Asha to share some horsemeat with him, noting that it may not be available much longer: "We had eight hundred horses when we marched from Deepwood Motte. Last night the count was sixty-four." She accompanies him to the longhall, where she takes a look at the men: The southerners are pale and sickly, obvious victims of the ordeal, while the northmen are healthier, better prepared for the cold. One of the men says they will resume the march in three days, but Massey replies, "If we march, we will die by the hundreds." And assuming they reach Winterfell, the men are too weak to mount an attack.

An argument arises, "the same argument as last night and the night before. Press on and die, stay here and die, fall back and die." Arnolf Karstark, at the high table, proclaims that they will take Winterfell and "be bathing in the blood of Freys and Boltons," which gets a noisy assent from the northmen, but only silence from the southerners. Massey is having none of it: "Gods be good, are all you Karstarks mad?" He stalks out.

Asha decides to follow him, as one of the few who would defend her if they took a mind to burn her at the stake, but when she gets outside she finds herself lost in the snowdrifts. She makes her way back by accident to where the men were burned, hearing only the sound of a frightened horse somewhere. There she is accosted by Clayton Suggs again. He threatens again to burn her, but as they are exchanging words she hears the sound of the horse. She asks him if he hears it, and he says, "Bloody hell. Riders," and draws his sword.

Suddenly the riders are on them. Suggs stands his ground and tells her to run and warn Stannis, but she notices that two of the riders are wearing the black of the Night's Watch. She calls out, "Who are you?" and a voice she recognizes answers, "Friends." It is Tristifer Botley, who says, "We looked for you at Winterfell, but found only Crowfood Umber beating drums and blowing horns." The Maid is with him, along with others from the dungeons at Deepwood. They had been ransomed by Tycho Nestoris, the representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who needed a guide to find Stannis.

The banker then tells Asha that he has "brought a gift" for her. "A girl and an old man, thought Asha, as the two were dumped rudely in the snow before her." She is disgusted at the sight and smell of the old man, until he speaks and she recognizes him as Theon.

Victarion

Victarion's ships capture a Ghiscari galley whose captain has the latest news from Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen is dead, he says. But Moqorro assures Victarion that she is alive; he has seen her in his fires, so Victarion has the captain's tongue cut out. The galley is renamed Red God's Wroth and added to Victarion's fleet. Three ships go missing in a storm that comes up, but they capture another one a few days later and change its name from Dove to Shrike.

The crew fears and hates Moqorro, but Victarion has anyone who speaks against the wizard flogged, and increasingly relies on Moqorro's visions. Sure enough, his prediction that they will encounter and capture two more vessels comes true. They also learn that dysentery has been widespread among the troops besieging Meereen, but the story that Daenerys is dead persists. This time Victarion has the storytellers beheaded.

The hand Victarion healed feels stronger than ever, though it looks like "pork crackling from elbow to fingertips" and sometimes gives off smoke. Then the three ships that had gone missing are found, as Moqorro had predicted they would be, so Victarion's faith in him grows. "Two gods are with me now," he boasts to the dusky woman -- his own Drowned God and the red god R'hllor.

They capture more ships, and this time hear that Daenerys "flew away upon her dragon, beyond the Dothraki sea." Victarion demands to know where this sea is, and plans to sail it, but the fisherman who tells him about it makes the mistake of saying, "The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool." Victarion throttles him with his burned hand.

They continue to encounter and seize ships, slaughtering their crews and freeing the slaves who rowed them. One ship carries "twenty perfumed boys and four score girls destined for the pleasure houses of Lys." Victarion has the boys bound in chains and thrown into the sea: "They were unnatural creatures, and the ship smelled better once cleansed of their presence." He picks the seven most beautiful girls, and puts them aboard a fishing boat they had captured, cutting it loose and then setting it on fire, saying, "With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods."

That night he brings out the great horn inscribed with Valyrian glyphs, which had been sounded at the kingsmoot. He tells Moqorro,

"The sound it made ... it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one." 

Moqorro asks what happened to the man who blew it, and Victarion tells him that he seemed to have been burned to death from within. Moqorro says it is named Dragonbinder and reads one of the inscriptions: "No mortal man shall sound me and live." Another inscription reads, "Blood for fire, fire for blood."

Victarion mustn't sound the horn himself, Moqorro tells him, for it doesn't matter who blows it. "The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood."

13. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 332-371

The Wayward Bride

At Deepwood Motte, which Asha Greyjoy had conquered, she receives a message sent by raven from Ramsay Bolton. "A scrap of leather" falls out of it. Bolton has taken Moat Cailin, she reads. Bolton also warns her, "I send you a piece of prince. Linger in my lands, and share his fate." She burns the piece of her brother Theon's skin in a candle, and thinks, "If my father still lived, Moat Cailin would never have fallen."

Her uncle Euron is not interested in any of the conquests her father, Balon, had inspired. If Moat Cailin has fallen, Torrhen's Square will be next, and then Deepwood Motte. She takes her mind off of the problem by having rough sex with her lover, Qarl, but afterward the reality returns: "My father's dead, my mother's dying, my brother's being flayed, and there's naught that I can do about it. And I'm married. Wedded and bedded ... though not by the same man." The one possibility that comes to her is some sort of alliance with Stannis, who had conquered Balon during his first rebellion against the Iron Throne but is now the enemy of her enemy, Bolton.  

Euron had forced her to marry Erik Ironmaker, known as the Anvil-Breaker, who is ruling the Iron Islands while Euron went off on his quest for Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons. "With one stroke, Euron had been turned a rival into a supporter, secured the islands in his absence, and removed Asha as a threat." She had been married by proxy, and the union had not been consummated.

She leaves Qarl asleep and goes to the kitchens to find something to eat. The sound of the wind in the trees unnerves her -- she is used to waves crashing. Tristifer Botley, a former lover, finds her there. He had sailed away from Euron's fleet and followed her to Deepwood, which means he can never return to the islands. He urges her to run away with him and become a trader. She can't go back to the islands either, he tells her, unless she wants to submit to Erik.

She tells him she could return to Pyke and find her uncle Aaron Damphair, join forces with him and retake the islands. Her uncle had disappeared after Euron was crowned. But Tris believes Damphair is dead, killed by Euron. Erik Ironmaker is supposedly searching for him, and has imprisoned and killed the Drowned Men, Damphair's followers. Tris thinks "Ironmaker's search is just to make us believe the priest escaped. Euron is afraid to be seen as a kinslayer."

Tris comments that it's too bad Asha participated in the kingsmoot that selected Euron. Otherwise she could declare it unlawful, as an ancient king named Torgon the Latecomer did. He succeeded in overthrowing the illegitimate king and then ruled for forty years. Asha kisses Tris for reminding her of this, but then hears a warhorn sounded by the watch. "The Drowned God loves me after all," she tells him. "Here I was wondering what to do, and he has sent me foes to fight."

She finds the guards with two northmen, one dead and the other dying. The guards tell her they killed three others. She questions the dying man and he tells her there are thousands more behind him. She kills him, and thinks of what the maester at Deepwood had told her, that "the mountain clans were too quarrelsome to ever band together without a Stark to lead them. He might not have been lying. He might just have been wrong."

She sends for Lady Glover and the maester, then addresses the ironmen preparing to do battle. The warhorn sounds again. She goes to the watchtower and sees the woods moving toward the castle: The northmen have cloaked themselves with branches. Some of the men propose that they stand and fight, but Asha knows they can't win. She says, "Let the wolves keep their gloomy woods. We are making for the ships." Tris says the enemy may already have taken the ships, and Asha replies, "at least we'll die with our feet wet. Ironborn fight better with salt spray in their nostrils and the sound of the waves at their backs."

A battering ram attacks the north gate, so she orders the south gate opened and they ride out. She hears the sound of trumpets, which puzzles her, but keeps going. The ships are to the north of them, and Asha commands them to ride west, then turn north. She sends scouts ahead to find the position of the northmen. They find a place to camp and wait for the dawn, but the head of one of the scouts is flung into their midst before the northmen attack.

"Somewhere in the ebb and flow of battle, Asha lost Qarl, lost Tris, lost all of them." She is fighting with a northman when her feet get tangled in the roots of a tree and he lands a glancing blow on the side of her head. Before she passes out, she hears a trumpet. "She dreamt of red hearts burning, and a black stag in a golden wood with flame streaming from his antlers."

Tyrion

Tyrion's captor is, of course, Ser Jorah Mormont, who has lashed him to a saddle and ridden to Volantis. Mormont tells him, "I have done things I am not proud of, things that brought shame onto my House and my father's name ... but to kill your own sire? How could any man do that?" Tyrion shrugs the question off, however. He still has the poison mushrooms hidden in his boot, and thinks of eating them himself: "Cersei will not have me alive, at least," he thinks, still under the impression that Mormont is taking him back to Westeros.

As they ride through the city, they see crowds of slaves moving in one direction. When Tyrion asks where they're going, Mormont tells him that there are sunset services at the Temple of the Lord of Light, where the High Priest Benerro will be speaking. They have to pass the temple, which Tyrion estimates to be three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor. Benerro is on the steps, and the plaza in front of it is jammed as Mormont guides his horse through the throng.

Tyrion asks what Benerro is saying, and Mormont interprets: "That Daenerys stands in peril. The dark eye has fallen upon her, and the minions of night are plotting her destruction." Tyrion thinks that the prophecy doesn't bode well for Prince Aegon. They make their way to a stable, where Mormont sells the horse and saddle. Then he takes Tyrion to a smithy, where he is cut loose from his bonds and fitted with heavy iron manacles.

He clumsily follows Mormont across the Long Bridge over the Rhoyne to a place called the Merchant's House, the city's biggest in. Tyrion is glad to see this, hoping that he'll run into Griff and the others, who will set him free. They go to one of the cheap rooms on the top floor, the fourth, where Mormont chains him to an iron ring set in the wall. Tyrion takes this opportunity to tell Mormont that he knows who he is, and that they are both acquainted with Varys, who had sent him on this journey. Mormont doesn't care: "I took the Spider's coin, I'll not deny it, but I was never his creature. And my loyalties lie elsewhere now." He leaves to get some food.

When Mormont returns with a roast duck and two tankards of ale, Tyrion asks if some sort of festival is going on. Mormont says it's the third day of the city's elections, which go on for ten days. He tells Tyrion that he had spent most of a year here after he was exiled from Westeros, first going to Lys to please his second wife, who got so deeply in debt that he was threatened with being sold into slavery. She had taken a lover, and he fled to Volantis.

He tells Tyrion that he will look for a ship tomorrow, and falls asleep. Tyrion is unable to lie down on the floor because of his chains, but finally succumbs to fatigue. In the morning they go down to the common room, where Tyrion sees another dwarf. When the dwarf reacts with surprise, Tyrion realizes that he has been recognized. As they eat, Mormont says, "Last night the talk here was all of Westeros. Some exiled lord has hired the Golden Company to win back his lands for him." It is Tyrion's turn to be surprised, and he wonders if Mormont knows about Connington and Aegon, and whether Aegon has taken his advice about returning to Westeros instead of pursuing Daenerys.

A serving girl comes to their table and tells Mormont "The widow will see you next, noble ser." When Tyrion asks, Mormont says she is "The widow of the waterfront," and points out a woman sitting in the corner of the courtyard. She has a "vulpine" and "reptilian" look to her, and thin white hair. Mormont tells her, "We need swift passage to Meereen." Tyrion is startled: "Deliver me to the queen, he says. Aye, but which queen? He isn't selling me to Cersei. He's giving me to Daenerys Targaryen. That's why he hasn't hacked my head off. We're going east, and Griff and his prince are going west, the bloody fools."

She comments that all the other ships are going west, and suspects that he is in quest of dragons: "I have heard it said that the silver queen feeds them with the flesh of infants while she herself bathes in the blood of virgin girls and takes a different lover every night." Mormont suppresses his anger and tells her she shouldn't "believe such filth."

Tyrion is distracted by voices behind him and turns to see two men and the dwarf, "who was standing a few feet away staring at him intently. He seemed somehow familiar." He turns back to listen to Mormont and the widow, but when he glances back at the dwarf again he has moved closer and seems to have a knife in his hand. The widow wants to know why Mormont is going to see Daenerys, and he says, "To serve her. Defend her. Die for her, if need be." She laughs at this, and asks if he is taking the dwarf to please her. Then she says she knows who Tyrion is: "Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, turncloak, Lannister." When she asks Tyrion what he offers Daenerys, he replies, "I will lead her armies or rub her feet, as she desires. And the only reward I ask is I might be allowed to rape and kill my sister."

She smiles at his honesty, but tells Mormont she has no help to offer him. Then all of a sudden there is a scream and Tyrion sees the dwarf rushing toward him. "She's a girl, he realized all at once, a girl dressed up in man's clothes. And she means to gut me with that knife." Tyrion grasps a flagon of wine and throws the contents into her face, then falls to the floor, where he rolls to avoid her knife. Mormont grabs her and lifts her into the air, and snatches the dagger from her hand.

Tyrion asks the girl what he did to her, and she says sailors from the Seven Kingdom had seen her and her brother jousting and they took him and cut his head off. Suddenly Tyrion realizes that she was one of the dwarfs performing at Joffrey's wedding. He asks if she rode the pig or the dog. "'The dog,' she sobbed. 'Oppo always rode the pig.'" He tells Jorah to put her down, but she continues to urge someone to kill Tyrion because of what happened to her brother.

The widow asks the girl what her name is, and she says it's Penny. Then she tells the landlord to take her to her rooms and find some clothes for her. And she looks at Tyrion and says, "I think I had best help you after all. Volantis is no safe place for dwarfs, it seems." She tells them to go to the Selaesori Qhoran which is sailing for Qarth by way of New Ghis. Mormont says that Qarth isn't their destination, but she tells him, "She will never reach Qarth. Benerro has seen it in his fires." And if they see Daenerys, she says, touching the scar where her slave tattoo had been removed, "Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon."

6. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 145-171

Sansa

Marillion, in one of the sky cells, is keeping everyone awake at night by singing, and she begs Littlefinger to make him stop. He assures Sansa that he promised the minstrel that he could sing, but it won't last much longer, because Lord Nestor Royce is ascending to the Eyrie tomorrow to investigate the supposed murder of Lysa Arryn by Marillion. Littlefinger has persuaded the singer to go along with the story.

Sansa is nervous about the possibility that Marillion will turn on them nevertheless, fearing that "if Lord Nestor looks in my eyes and sees how scared I am" he will suspect her. But Littlefinger tells her to "tell Lord Nestor the same tale that you told Lord Robert," Lysa's son. The problem is that Sansa (rightly) doesn't trust Littlefinger, even though he saved her from being pushed out the Moon Door by Lysa:

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too ... and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle ... but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

But on the other hand, he was the one who got her away from King's Landing, and she has no place to go and no one to turn to but him. So she resigns herself to lying, especially about Marillion, who had tried to rape her.

Lord Nestor arrives in the afternoon, and after greeting him, Sansa is sent by Littlefinger to fetch little Lord Robert. The meeting is being held in the High Hall, which Sansa hasn't entered since Lysa's death. She "could hear the wind rattling at the Moon Door. I must not look at it, she told herself, else I'll start to shake as badly as Robert." When Lord Nestor asks about his mother, Robert says, "Marillion hurt my mother. He threw her out the Moon Door." And when asked if he saw it happen, he says, "Alayne saw it.... And my lord stepfather." Lord Nestor looks at her, and she tries to keep from shaking. Littlefinger says, "She still has nightmares of that day. Small wonder if she cannot bear to speak of it."

But she does speak of it, telling him that she was with Lysa "when Marillion ... pushed her." Robert interrupts to say, "He killed my mother. I want him to fly!" and begins to have a seizure. When it ends, Littlefinger says he should be taken to bed and bled, and Maester Colemon accompanies him. Lord Nestor says he had never liked Marillion and advised Lysa to get rid of him, and others accompanying him recalled that he sang songs that mocked them. Littlefinger says, "I should have been with her, but I never dreamt ... if I had not insisted ... it was I who killed her."

Sansa is surprised by this statement, not realizing that Littlefinger is claiming guilt to remove suspicion from himself. And succeeding: Lord Nestor's son, Albar Royce, says, "No, my lord, you must not blame yourself." His father asks for Marillion to be brought before him, and soon the jailer, Mord, appears with Marillion. "White silk gloves covered his hands, while a white silk bandage spared the lords the sight of his eyes." He falls to one knee and begs forgiveness, saying, "If I had eyes I should weep." He says he loved Lysa so much that when he found that she was pregnant with Lord Petyr's child, "a ... a madness seized me."

Sansa stares at Marillion's hands. One of the maids had said that Mord had chopped off three of his fingers, but the gloves make it impossible to tell. She wonders if the story is true. Marillion says that Littlefinger had let him keep his harp and his tongue. "Lady Lysa dearly loved my singing...." Lord Nestor orders him taken away: "It sickens me to look at him." Mord complies, and when he speaks, Sansa is surprised to see that the jailer has teeth made of gold. (Tyrion had promised to reward him.) Littlefinger says he has been too gentle with him: "If truth be told, I pity him. He killed for love." Lord Nestor says, "No man lingers long in the sky cells. The blue will call to him."

Littlefinger has Lord Nestor's retinue shown to their rooms, but invites him to have a cup of wine in his solar, and asks Sansa to serve. Lord Nestor tells him that his cousin, Bronze Yohn Royce, wants to question Marillion too, and others may accompany him. "My cousin means to remove you as Lord Protector," Nestor says. Littlefinger says he accepts that fact and can't stop him. Then he opens a chest and takes out a document that he says Lysa wanted Lord Nestor to have. It proclaims House Royce the hereditary Keepers of the Gates of the Moon, and Sansa is startled to see tears come to Nestor's eyes. Littlefinger tells him it's "a token of the love my lady bore you." Nestor observes that the signature is Littlefinger's, though the seal is that of House Arryn. "Lysa was murdered before the document could be presented for her signature," Littlefinger tells him, "so I signed as Lord Protector."

After a good deal of wine, Lord Nestor goes off to bed, and Littlefinger asks Sansa if she understands what happened. "You gave Lord Nestor the Gates of the Moon to be certain of his support," she says. He did, he says, and he did it because Nestor is aware that he is considered inferior to his cousin, Bronze Yohn. "He wants to believe that Lysa valued him above all her other bannermen," especially Bronze Yohn. She observes that Lord Robert could have signed and sealed it, but that he did, as Lord Protector, and when prompted by Littlefinger she says he did it because if he's removed as Lord Protector.... "...Lord Nestor's claim to the Gates will suddenly be called into question." He compliments her on seeing his plan, though it's "no more than I'd expect of mine own daughter."

Sansa is proud of herself for figuring it out, but still bothered by posing as Alayne. He tells her that they must keep up the fiction even in private, lest they be overheard by a servant or a guardsman. "I am tempted to say this is no game we play, daughter, but of course it is. The game of thrones." She says that Oswell Kettleblack knows the truth, because he rowed her from King's Landing when she escaped. He adds that his captain of guards, Ser Lothor Brune, does too, but both have been in his service for a long time and each of them keeps watch on the other. "Trust no one, I once told Eddard Stark, but he would not listen."

She goes off to bed, and in the middle of the night is wakened by Lord Robert climbing in bed with her. He asks if she is his mother now. "'I suppose I am,' she said. If a lie was kindly meant, there was no harm in it."

The Kraken's Daughter

Asha Greyjoy has just arrived on Harlaw, and is at Ten Towers, the castle of her uncle Lord Rodrik Harlaw, her mother's elder brother. "Lord Rodrik was seldom seen without a book in hand, be it in the privy, on the deck of his Sea Song, or whilst holding audience." And Asha finds him now in the Book Tower, which is "the fattest of the ten." He loves "written words, which so many ironborn found unmanly and perverse."

She gets quickly to the point: "Was my father murdered?" Her mother believes he was, he says, but all he knows is what they have been told: "Balon fell to his death when a rope bridge broke beneath him. A storm was rising, and the bridge was swaying and twisting with each gust of wind." She notes that her uncle Euron's ship had been away for three years and that it had returned on the day her father died. He corrects her: "The day after, we had heard. Silence was still out to sea when Balon died, or so it is claimed. Even so, I will agree that Euron's return was ... timely, shall we say?"

She had asked Rodrik to summon the ships of houses loyal to her, but there are only a few in the harbor. He says the rest have gone to Old Wyk: "I thought you would have heard. Aeron Damphair has called a kingsmoot." The other priests of the Drowned God have joined him. She asks if Euron has gone along with it, but he says Euron "does not confide in me." Nor does he know if Victarion, Aeron and Euron's other brother, has gone to the kingsmoot.

"I shall not go to Old Wyk," he tells her. "Nor should you." But she says she doesn't want to miss the first kingsmoot in ... "Four thousand years," he says, citing an old history, though another historian has said it may be half that.

"This dream of kingship is a madness in our blood. I told your father so the first time he rose, and it is more true now than it was then. It's land we need, not crowns. With Stannis Baratheon and Tywin Lannister contending for the Iron Throne, we have a rare chance to improve our lot. Let us take one side or the other, help them to victory with our fleets, and claim the lands we need from a grateful king."

Asha says she'll consider it, "once I sit the Seastone Chair." Her uncle gives a discouraging sigh and warns her, "No woman has ever ruled the ironborn." But the more he tries to dissuade her, the stubborner Asha gets. She wants him to come to what she calls "my queensmoot," and tells him it will be living history. "I prefer my history dead," he says. "Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood."

The conversation turns to Theon, and she says she isn't certain that he is dead. "We found parts of many bodies.... It seemed as though the northmen fought amongst themselves." He observes, "We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros." Once again, he pleads with her not to go to Old Wyk. If she stays, he says, he will name her heir to the Ten Towers. Ser Harras Harlaw will inherit the title of Lord of Harlaw, but he can rule from his castle at Grey Garden. "Do fealty to him for the castle and Ser Harras will protect you." But she persists: "It's my father's seat I want, not yours." He sends her away and turns to his book.

Outside, she is approached by a childhood boyfriend, Tristifer Botley, now Lord Botley. He tells her that Euron "has been buying friends at every hand" with the treasure he brought back in the Silence. And although Tristifer has the right to the title of Lord Botley, his uncle Germund calls himself by that name, with Euron's support. She promises to restore his lands when she takes the Seastone Chair. "He had not been the first boy she had ever kissed, but he was the first to undo the laces of her jerkin and slip a sweaty hand beneath to feel her budding breasts." He had been fostered at Pyke after Theon was taken hostage at Winterfell, but had been sent away when their maester "found them at their play."

She asks if he will come to the kingsmoot and support her, and he agrees, though Lord Blacktyde has said Euron will attack the people who attend. "I am your man forever, Asha. I would wed you. Your lady mother has given her consent." She tries to discourage him, but he swears that he has "never touched another woman." She tells him, "Go touch one ... or two, or ten. I have touched more men than I can count. Some with my lips, more with my axe." She tells him that she lost her virginity at sixteen and that he's "a sweet boy and always were, but I am no sweet girl."

When he pleads with her and seizes her arm, she pulls out her dirk and puts it at his throat. "I am your queen, not your wife. Remember that." And she leaves him "with a fat drop of blood slowly creeping down his neck."