*STORM'S END TO MEEREEN — THE ABANDONMENT*
It took three days to kill a legend.
On the first day, they burned the banners. Stannis's burning heart, Renly's crowned stag — all thrown into the hearth in the great hall. Aegon watched them blacken. He did not speak.
On the second day, Ser Cortnay gathered the garrison in the Lord's chambers. Thirty-two men, some boys, some old enough to remember Robert's Rebellion.
"This castle is death," Cortnay said. His voice was raw. "Stannis will return. Or the Tyrells will take it. We have no food for winter. We have no lord that the realm will accept while we cower here."
Ser Harbert spat. "So we abandon Storm's End? Like cowards? Durran's walls have never fallen!"
"Durran's walls have never held dragons," Aegon said quietly.
He stood by the fire, Voidscale coiled behind him like a black dog the size of a horse, asleep, smoke curling from his nose. The other two were on the roof, screeching at the gulls. You could hear them from three leagues away now.
"The Usurper's brother gave me to you to keep hidden," Aegon said. "You kept your oath. Now I will release you from it. Any man who wishes to stay may stay. I will give him the castle. Any man who wishes to follow me to the real war — come."
Release the maids, pay them their wages and move out.
Silence. Then old Maester Gawen spoke. "Where, my prince?"
Aegon looked east. Beyond the sea. Beyond the Narrow Sea where his aunt had bought an army with fire.
"Meereen," he said. "My aunt has taken Meereen. She has Unsullied. She has ships. She needs dragons. I have three."
Cortnay stared. "You would cross the world to find a queen you have never met?"
"I would cross the world to stop hiding," Aegon said.
On the third day, they left.
They did not lower the portcullis. They left the gates of Storm's End wide open, empty, wind howling through Durran's ancient halls for the first time in three hundred years.
Thirty-two men, three horses, three dragons, and a prince with a red sword on his back walked down the causeway into the Kingswood.
Behind them, Aegon was on top of Voidscale, he turned. He looked once at the great, grey, unbreakable castle.
DRACARYS!!
And burned the Stag banner over the gate to ash.
No one would ever say Storm's End fell.
It was abandoned.
For the mother of dragons .
*DAENERYS V*
The walls of Meereen were more terrible than Astapor's. Not red brick, but baked brick of many colors, and each bastion was crowned with a bronze harpy. From them hung children.
She counted them as Drogon circled. One hundred and sixty-three.
They had made them face outward, so those coming to Meereen must see. A boy no older than five, his belly swollen, his eyes crows had taken.
"Take them down," Dany said. Her voice was small. "Take them down and wash them and bury them, Grey Worm. With honor."
The Unsullied did not question.
Meereen would not open its gates. The Great Masters believed their walls would save them as they had for a thousand years.
"They will not," Jorah told her. "We have no siege engines. We have no ships to starve them."
"We have shit," said Brown Ben Plumm, and laughed.
He meant the sewer. A great brick drain that emptied into the Skahazadhan, half-choked with nightsoil.
Barristan Selmy looked old in the torchlight. "I will go," he said. "I took Harrenhal once in such a way."
So they went — Ser Barristan white-beard, Jorah Andal, Grey Worm, and Strong Belwas and his arakh — crawling through filth while Dany prayed to gods she did not believe in.
She waited by the east gate with Missandei's hand in hers.
When the gate moved — when it groaned open from within — she almost wept.
Inside was fire and screaming. Not Drogon's fire. Man's fire. Pit fighters killing their masters. Freedmen cutting throats. The Unsullied marching, spears lowered, chanting.
At sunrise she entered the Great Pyramid. One hundred and sixty-three Great Masters waited, kneeling, their tokars white and fringed with gold.
"How many?" she asked Missandei.
The Naathi girl looked at her tablets. "One hundred and sixty-three, Your Grace."
Dany looked at the posts on the plaza. At the empty nails.
"Barristan," she said, and the old knight's face was stone. "Take them. Nail them up. Let every man see justice."
"Your Grace," Jorah said, "a —"
"They killed children," she said.
When it was done, Drogon landed atop the highest pyramid and screamed. The sound shook loose tiles from the roofs. The people of Meereen, freed and freeborn alike, looked up and saw him — black against the morning sun.
Daenerys Targaryen stood beneath him.
_I am queen here,_ she thought. _If I must be queen._
Below, in the dark where the light did not reach, a man in a golden mask sharpened a knife.