smoke and mirrors

[tooktheblack]

Jon had remained on Dragonstone while Daenerys had flown among the vanguard with Drogon to meet Cersei's campaign on the fields of the Reach. The ravens he'd received from the war camp had indicated the battle had gone well for House Targaryen - all of Cersei's troops had been cowed, the food destroyed, the gold taken or melted by dragonfire. For his part, he'd sat on Dragonstone and mined dragonglass with Davos and received ravens from Bran and Sansa. Sansa's had been an update about the goings on at Winterfell, the arrival of Arya, her concerns that his doings in the south were taking too long and that the North needed their king.

Bran's, however...it brought new meaning to the term dark wings, dark words. He'd had a vision of wights amassing at Eastwatch-by-the-sea, the Wildling line barely holding. The Night King was there and he meant to take the castle, take the next, take the Wall; it wouldn't be long before wights were knocking at Winterfell's door and there was precious little dragonglass at Winterfell and while Arya seemed to be a capable fighter by Sansa's writing, Arya and a garrison could not take on an entire horde. He needed to return. He needed to be at Winterfell with his people and to amass troops to hold the Wall and hold the line so that the dead did not overwhelm the living.

He needed to convince the capricious, hot-blooded Dragon Queen to fight with him for some reason other than his bending the knee. He wouldn't bend the knee to her, not to an unproven queen who'd ruled over nothing in Westeros and knew nothing of its people. He couldn't entrust the North, hard-won, to a woman who had only set foot on the continent a few moons past. He couldn't. If the Lords of the North and Vale didn't behead him as a traitor for it, his own sister would. It wouldn't do.

Her armies had suffered heavy losses, though, and to take King's Landing and oust Cersei, she would need more than Dothraki and Unsullied. She would need the support of houses that were tired of war and wanted a new queen and wanted peace. So far, having lit the breadbasket of Westeros aflame, Daenerys wasn't proving much different than Cersei. She'd spared the people, sure, but she hadn't spared their food. She hadn't spared their soldiers.

When she returned on Dragonstone, Jon bid his time in greeting her. He wanted to come to her after she'd had a chance to speak to her advisors and consult with them before waving a raven's scroll beneath her nose about how much he needed her. Let her need him, for once and let him have something he could provide. His avoidance only worked so well, though, and he accidentally found her on the battlements, watching as Drogon and the others flew over the sea. Jon could see the largest dragon didn't fly as well as before and he tilted his head a bit, assessing the pattern of his flight.

"He's injured, isn't he, your Grace?"