>>211848701The king did not speak.
Not today, not yesterday, not for many moons. When he did, it was with a voice thin as wind through dead leaves, and twice as cold. Some still called him Bran the Broken, but that name no longer suited him. There was nothing broken about the thing that sat the throne now—only something hollow, and patient, and watching.
Tyrion Lannister drank.
He’d told himself, for years now, that it helped him think. But he had stopped thinking a long time ago.
The goblet in his hand trembled as he stared across the Great Hall of the Red Keep—though little of the Keep remained, not after the dragon. Much of it had been left in ruin. And yet, the throne room had been remade, not in stone, but in root and vine and weirwood. White bark twisted like bone, red leaves drifting slowly to the marble floor, though there was no wind.
He’d once said they should choose the king as men chose a ruler in the Free Cities. Let the lords of Westeros decide. Let wisdom prevail.
What a bloody fool he had been.
Tyrion turned. He walked out of the chamber, out past the weirwood mouth and its silence, out past the knights who no longer guarded, the maesters who no longer spoke. The sun was setting over Blackwater Bay, and the clouds looked like bone.
The city was quiet now. Safer, perhaps. But not freer.
And in the heart of the castle, the trees kept growing.
Later, in a lonely chamber above the bay, Tyrion poured himself a final cup of wine and opened the drawer where his old histories were kept. Dust covered the pages. He read the name again.
Brynden Rivers
Hand of the King. Lord Commander. Traitor. Sorcerer. Dead and gone.
Tyrion dipped a quill, wrote one line beneath it, and closed the book forever.
“And king in the end.”
