Chapter 15 — The Deep Below
The sun broke over the Narrow Sea like a wound torn across the sky. Red light spilled over the waves, staining the morning with a quiet omen. The sea breathed slow and heavy, rolling beneath the battered, arrow-filled hull of the Boreal Star, and the deck creaked in rhythm with the water's sighs.
I stood alone at the prow, gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles ached. The salt wind lashed against my face, stinging the half-healed scratches on my jaw, cracking the dried blood at the corner of my mouth. I hadn't slept. Not since the boarding. Not since the shouting and the smoke.
The ship still smelled of blood and burnt pitch. Bits of torn sail fluttered from the rigging like wounded wings. One mast bore a splintered scar where a bolt had struck true. I could still hear the screams in my head, the clash of steel, the guttural cries, the sound a man makes when he's stabbed through the belly.
PTSD… No such thing as a psychologist in Westeros.
Behind me, the crew moved like shades. No shouting now. No orders were barked. Just the rustle of worn boots on wood, the rattle of chains and pulleys, the murmur of prayers half-whispered. Most of them hadn't slept either. Some hadn't even sat down. They'd spent the night clearing bodies, washing blood from the planks, patching what they could by lanternlight. Now they leaned against barrels, or slumped over coils of rope, eyes ringed in black. The younger ones looked like boys again. The older ones looked like they'd already died and hadn't noticed yet.
They watched the horizon more than they watched their work.
They are closing in.
Two black dots lingered there now. They'd been dots an hour ago. Now they were sharper, rising like teeth from the water.
Galleys. Sleek, lean, fast.
Stannis men. Red God fanatics. Melisandre must be the most charismatic woman of history to get them to do this so fast.
The ships chasing us now were coming for me.
Not for gold. Not for cargo. For me. Their oars gave them a thin advantage even if their men must be exhausted.
The wind tugged at my cloak. It smelled of brine and blood and ash.
Footsteps behind me.
Arren's voice was low, unusually careful. "Captains asking for you, milord."
I turned. His leg was still wrapped in bandages, but he stood straight, eyes clear. He looked older than he had a week ago.
So did I.
Captain Trell's cabin was thick with sweat and salt, the heavy stink of fear that men tried to hide with clenched jaws and straight backs. A single window cast light over the map table, throwing flickering gold across the charts.
Trell was at the window, his hands locked behind his back. His beard had gone silver at the edges, and his face was hollowed by more than just sleeplessness.
Myles stood nearby. Small cuts all over his body. He hadn't let the healer stitch it. Said it would slow him down.
Arren lingered by the door. He had the look of a man bracing for bad news.
Trell didn't turn when he spoke. "They'll be on us before midday."
"How many leagues?" I asked.
"Seven. Maybe six now. Wind's wrong for us. And we're half a sail down." He finally turned, voice hardening. "We've cut every spare line to lighten weight. Thrown crates overboard. Still won't be enough."
"We can't outrun them," Myles said bluntly. "And we can't fight them."
"How many of our men still able to stand?" I asked.
"Twenty-six unhurt enough to swing a blade," he replied. "Twelve more who'll fight if they have to—half blind, half bleeding. They fought like wolfs yesterday but wolfs die just the same when the odds are wrong, my prince."
Prince… he had taken to calling me that since yesterday.
"And the crew?"
"Exhausted," Trell said. "And not trained for this. They'll fight again. But they're spent. We all are."
I leaned over the table, letting my eyes trace the chart. The sea stretched wide around us. No rocks. No coves. No hiding place.
Arren spoke next, voice hesitant. "We could strike a flag. Pretend to surrender. Buy a few minutes. Maybe enough to close distance and strike first. We could sink one with some good shots from the scorpions."
I shook my head.
"They'd never buy it," I said. "They saw what we did yesterday. We lit their ship like a funeral pyre. Killed more than a hundred men. They'll come hungry now."
Myles grunted. "You are right, my prince. There's no mercy left in this sea."
Getting used to that will take a while.
Trell rubbed a hand across his face. "If we stand and fight, we die. If we run, we die tired. So what's left, Lord Stark? You've always had one more trick. One more card hidden up your sleeve, every man in the north calls you smart and cunning. Do you have one now?"
I stared at him. At all of them.
I was their lord, now. Their leader, their prince. It was my banner that had brought fire to this voyage, and it was my blood their enemies chased across the waves.
And I did have one last card.
But it was one I didn't want to use unless there was no other choice. It might stain people's perception of me.
"Maybe we can use the armor." Arren said already knowing what I would try to do, he was one of the few people in this world that knew.
Wearing armor at sea was madness, everyone knew that. A man in full steel was a stone with a heartbeat the moment he hit the water. No sailor worth his salt wore plate on a ship, not unless he wanted to drown like an anvil. The men's breastplates, gauntlets, and greaves were stowed deep in the cargo hold, lashed tight beneath tarpaulin and hemp, far from spray and salt. Only the Ironborn marched around on deck clad in iron, proud and stupid in equal measure, daring the sea to take them, as if drowning was some badge of honor. Let them rot in their heavy coffins. We were no drowned fools. We had a war to survive.
"No armor," I said. "We have a few hours before they are in arrow distance. I do have one last weapon."
Trell raised a brow. "What kind of weapon?"
I hesitated. And shared a look with Arren.
Trell stepped forward. "If you have anything that gives us a chance—any chance—you'd best use it. Because we're out of wind, out of tricks, and out of time. We are outnumbered five to one."
I nodded.
"I'll make ready," I said.
And I left the cabin before they could ask anything else.
The lower decks were cold and quiet. Down here, time moved differently. Wood groaned under every step like the ship remembered every weight it had carried. The wounded lay in shadowed corners, some fevered, some muttering to ghosts. I passed them like a shadow myself, cloaked and silent.
Past the mess, past the stores.
To my quarters.
I took the key from my neck.
The lock turned with a click like a sword leaving its sheath.
The quarters were dark and close, thick with salt and the smell of old wood and lamp oil. I bolted the door behind me and let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My gloves came off first, fingers trembling slightly as the sweat cooled on my palms. I dropped to the floor cross-legged, the boards creaking under my weight.
Ghost padded silently to my side. He didn't need calling. He never did. His fur was coarse under my hand, dense and warm as snow layered on pine. I let my palm rest there, breathing in through my nose. The ache in my limbs was a dull background hum, but I focused past it, toward the slow rise and fall of Ghost's chest.
We had done this before. At the Wall, in the dark of night, when silence stretched for hours and wind moaned over stone. I'd felt him dream, the flick of an ear in some remembered forest, the scent of hare and blood and frost. It had been easy then. Simple. Like slipping a hand into cool water.
But other times, I had reached too far.
In the Wolfswood, I tried birds first, sparrows, crows, and even an owl. Their minds were alien, fast and cold, full of sharp instincts and colors that weren't colors. I'd nearly lost myself once inside a hawk, forgetting what it meant to breathe. Another time, with a stray hound at Mole's Town, I had broken the link so abruptly I'd woken vomiting, blood leaking from my nose.
The deeper I went, the more the line blurred. The more I felt something watching back.
But here, now, the sea itself felt alive beneath us, as if something vast and slumbering rolled in its depths.
I closed my eyes.
Darkness. Breath. The slow beat of my own heart.
And then, like a thread drawn tight, a pull.
It was faint at first. Distant. A pressure at the edge of my senses, as if something massive had stirred in the water miles below. It was not a shape or a thought, not yet, but an awareness. Alien. Immense.
I leaned into it.
Salt. Cold. Pressure.
Then, a sound. A pulse.
It was not made for ears. It echoed through bone and blood and thought, resonant and slow. A song without words. A mind without borders. Somewhere far beneath the Boreal Star, beyond the reach of oars or sun, it moved.
The bull whale.
I couldn't see it, not with eyes. But I felt it, a titan gliding through blackness, longer than our ship, heavier than any animal. Its thoughts were simple and vast: hunger, migration, mating calls that carried across leagues and leagues. The memory of currents. The grief of solitude.
I reached for it.
And it noticed me.
The whale recoiled. Its mind slammed against mine like a storm against a cliff. I gasped aloud, body jerking. Blood dripped from my left nostril, warm on my upper lip. My skull burned.
The whale pushed, confused, defensive, angry.
I was not part of its world. I was a parasite. A fleck of ice trying to root itself in a volcano. I saw flashes through its thoughts: sunrays broken on the waves, calves swimming beside their mothers, the rip of a harpoon and the scream of another dying giant. Blood in the blue. Screams in the deep.
Pain bloomed behind my eyes.
But I didn't let go.
The whale's mind was not made for mine.
It was not like Ghost, sharp and familiar, wild but close. This was something older, slower, broader than thought. A continent of instinct and memory. It did not think in words, not truly. Its awareness was a long, continuous presence, shaped by pressure, darkness, and deepwater echoes. It remembered ice covering the world when it swam in the far north, and the warmth of blood beneath it. It dreamed in pulses, sonar rhythms and ocean tides, each beat a sentence, each current a question.
And it resisted.
Even after I had slipped through its defenses like a needle into flesh, it coiled and flexed around me, uncertain, probing. Its confusion grew sharp, sour. It knew I was not real. Not right. I was an echo in its skull, an intruder stitched from bone and heat and surface-light. I didn't belong in the sea. I didn't belong in it.
The whale surged sideways, not in body, but in will. It tried to cast me out, not with anger, but the way a body rejects a splinter. I felt its power then, the slow tectonic force of a being that had never known fear. It bore down on me like an avalanche made of memory, submerging my thoughts in an ancient weight.
My name flickered. My sense of self thinned. Jon Stark, Daemon Targaryen… who was that, to the deep?
It tried to smother me in its rhythm. To drown me. Not malicious, just instinct. A defense.
I clung to myself with teeth and blood and memory.
The smile of a woman whose name I didn't remember anymore.
Sitting in class.
Winterfell.
Ned.
Robb.
Ghost.
My mind rang like a cracked bell. Pain pulsed behind my eyes. A fresh trickle of blood slid from my left nostril to my chin. My limbs were numb, my spine cold. Somewhere, my body was seizing on the floor, lungs pulling shallow gulps of breath. But down here, I was still in the dark, drifting at the edge of being.
The whale's heart was a drumbeat.
Its brain a song in low thunder.
It tried again to push me away, showing me images not as symbols, but as truths: a stillborn calf; great sharks circling; a net lined with jagged hooks; the scream of a motherless song. Its pain was not rage. It was elemental. Deepwater grief.
And the whale did not understand. But it recognizedsomething in me, not kinship, but desperation. That we both moved with purpose not fully our own.
And so, groaning from the deep of its bones, it let me stay.
I could feel Ghost still, solid beside me, anchoring me, a tether to my own self. Jon Stark. No, not just Jon Stark. I was something else now. Warg King.
I reached again, not with force, but with knowing.
I offered not mastery, but purpose. Not hunger, but understanding. A shared enemy.
And slowly… the whale yielded.
The pressure relented. The mind opened — not wide, but enough. Enough for a thread of thought to slip through. Enough for me to wear its shape like a second skin.
I was in.
I didn't open my eyes. I couldn't. The cabin, the ship, the world of men fell away.
I was beneath it all now.
Water pressed against me from every side, impossibly cold but no longer painful. It was like wearing the sea. I was long, so long, my body swaying with ancient rhythm. My skin was thick, scarred, gray-blue. My mouth was a cavern, my lungs twin halls.
I dove.
Above, the Boreal Star passed like a child's toy, bobbing atop the currents. Below, I moved with weight and grace no man could ever know. My heart beat slow. My blood sang with age.
I turned.
There, the enemy ships.
Twin shadows etched against the seafloor. Their oars carved trails of white into the deep. I saw them not as threats but as disturbances, alien shapes pushing against my world.
I could feel the hum of their keels. The scurry of men above, their little movements, like ants on driftwood.
I surged upward, just enough to rise toward them.
No sound marked my path. No roar, no warning.
Only the song, still in me, my song now, echoing through the water. A note of sorrow and vengeance. A call that no man could hear.
Back in my quarters, my body trembled.
Sweat soaked my shirt. Blood smeared my upper lip and chin. My breath came in shallow pulls.
Ghost whined softly and licked my hand.
I did not move.
I was still with it, still part of the giant below.
And it waited for me.
I gave it a single command.
Rise.
The shouts reached me first, muffled, panicked, tearing through the boards like claws raking wood.
My eyes snapped open.
My body convulsed as I pulled free of the whale's mind, as if I'd fallen from a mountain back into flesh. I gasped, hands flailing, blood hot down my face. The wooden floor of my quarters felt wrong, too small, too dry, too real. My skull throbbed like it had split down the middle.
I pushed myself upright. The lanterns swung wildly above me. My palms were slick with sweat. Ghost whined low and urgent beside me, hackles raised, eyes staring toward the stairwell.
On deck, someone screamed: "There's something in the water!"
My legs barely remembered how to work. I staggered up the narrow stairwell, each step a battle. The door burst open to light, too bright, searing after the deep below. Men ran, shouted, pointed.
And then the sea exploded in the distance.
It rose with the sound of thunder made flesh, a massive swell surging upward like a mountain erupting from beneath. Salt spray burst high into the sky, shimmering in the blood-red dawn. And at the center of it, a shadow. Vast. Black. Writhing.
The nearest galley, sleek and armored, had no time to turn. The thing rose beneath it and shattered it like a child breaking a toy.
The ship snapped in two with a splintering crack, hurling men into the air. One half lifted into the sky, then was pulled down with unnatural speed. Oars snapped like twigs. The sea swallowed it whole. The second half spun in place, its mast broken, its deck a ruin.
Men screamed. Some tried to swim. Others vanished, yanked beneath the waves by nothing visible at all.
For a moment, the sea boiled with debris and blood. And then, stillness.
I dropped to my knees on the deck of the Boreal Star, chest heaving, arms shaking. My nose still bled freely. It dripped onto the deck like ink from a ruined quill.
Ghost's howl echoed in my mind, distant but steady — a thread anchoring me to myself. I clung to it.
Around me, silence fell.
Captain Trell stood frozen by the wheel, his mouth slack. Ser Myles had drawn his sword, but he lowered it slowly now, as if waking from a dream. Sailors clutched ropes and rigging, wide-eyed and pale. Salt clung to their faces like tears.
And the second galley, the survivor, had already veered off. I watched it turn hard to port, sails flaring, retreating like a whipped dog. It fled back toward the horizon, smoke trailing from its stern, men clambering frantically to gain speed.
Arren dropped to my side, catching my shoulder. His good hand gripped me tightly.
"Jon! Seven hells, you look—" He stopped. Swallowed. "What was that? Are you fine?"
I blinked up at him. His face was smudged with soot and salt, eyes bloodshot. He looked like every man here: exhausted, uncomprehending, afraid to speak the question aloud.
"I'm fine," I rasped. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Just… tired."
I pushed his hand off gently. He lingered, but didn't argue.
The others hadn't moved.
They stared at the sea like it might erupt again.
"The sea god's wrath," someone whispered.
"No god," another muttered, trembling. "It was the prince..."
"It came for them," said Trell. His voice shook. "Not us. It knew."
"Warg." The whisper echoed.
All eyes, slowly, turned to me.
I felt the weight of their stares. The men who had seen me bleed in battle, who had taken orders without question, now looked as if seeing a stranger. Awe in their eyes.
A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.
I rose slowly. My limbs felt wrong still, heavier than they should be, like part of me hadn't fully returned from the deep. The air on my skin was too thin. The deck movedbeneath my feet, though the sea was calm again.
I stepped toward the rail and puked my stomach out.
The water below had settled, though debris still floated in wide circles, broken wood, shards of hull, torn canvas, and here and there… bodies.
Some whole. Some not.
A severed arm drifted past the Boreal Star, fingers still curled around the haft of a spear.
The whale was gone now, sunk back into the deep. I could no longer feel it. But something inside me still resonated faintly, like a tuning fork struck hard and set aside. Its song lingered. A chord in the marrow.
I lowered my head toward the sea.
"Thank you," I whispered.
The breeze caught the word and carried it away.
Behind me, the sailors began to move again — slowly, carefully, like men waking from a dream. They looked away from the sea. But not from me.
Arren was still at my side, silent now.
"Well… you can use it in battle in the end, like the legends." he said at last, so soft only I could hear.
I didn't answer. Arren, Seren, Cort and Sam were the only people alive that knew of my experimentation with warging. I wanted to make sure it was safe before I told Robb, when I did he would stay more time a wolf than a man I was sure.
What could I say to them? That I'd stolen the mind of a beast? That I'd forced it to kill? That I had danced in its skin, worn its flesh, tasted the current on a tongue that wasn't mine?
That part of me missed the weight of the water already?
Instead, I said, "We're alive. That's all that matters."
He nodded slowly.
They didn't understand. But they'd seen.
Night fell soft as ash.
The Boreal Star rode steady through calm water, her sails full and bellied, catching a wind that had not been there before. It was quiet, not the heavy, fearful quiet of men expecting another attack, but a deeper calm. Like the sea itself was holding its breath.
No sails chased us. No sign of the enemy ship remained, save for splinters in the wake and the memory of screaming.
I stood on deck for a time, watching the moon ripple across the water like silver scratched on slate. The sea stretched out in all directions, wide and still. Only Ghost kept beside me, silent, warm. He never looked away from the waves.
When I finally returned below, I found Trell and Arren waiting in the captain's quarters, lanterns burning low. The table between them held a bottle of dark Myrish wine, uncorked and half empty, and three mismatched cups.
I didn't speak at first. I just sat, slowly, like my body remembered it was made of meat again. Trell poured for me without asking. I took the cup, though I didn't drink.
Arren leaned forward, elbows on knees. His face was drawn, but steady.
"We've seen no ships for hours," he said. "Sea's empty. Wind favors us now."
Trell nodded. "We're four days from the Bite at this pace."
"We go back to White Harbor."
I sipped the wine. It burned. That was good. I needed to feel something real again.
"And what then?" Trell asked, eyes on me.
"We find out what happened," I said quietly. "To Lord Stark. To the King. To the realm."
Neither man spoke for a moment.
Outside, the hull creaked gently in the shifting water. Somewhere above, a sailor coughed and was shushed.
When Trell finally answered, his voice was low. "They're speaking of you. The men."
I looked up. That sounded bad. My face must have shown something because he explained further.
"Not with fear," he added. "With reverence."
Arren snorted, but it wasn't mockery. "Some think you summoned a kraken like they didn't see the focking' whale. Others say you prayed and the gods answered. One swears he saw your eyes go white just before the beast rose."
One of them was right.
Trell watched me carefully. "I served under your uncle once. Brandon Stark. He'd laugh at such talk, ghosts and giants and skinchangers. But not now. Not after today."
"I didn't ask for this gift, but I will use it to its full advantage. Even if they call me a sorcerer." I said.
"Use it as much as you want if it will save our asses," Trell agreed. "Shame the other galley scaped, there will be stories about what happened here."
"We killed three hundred men of the Royal Navy; we are so fucked..." Arren murmured.
I turned my eyes to the porthole. The sea beyond was black now, pure and deep and unknowable. A thin sliver of moon painted the surface in silver, but it reached only so far.
"I don't know what waits in White Harbor," I said. "But we'll not face it blind. We dock quietly. And try to find out as much as we can."
Trell gave a solemn nod. "Aye, my prince."
Another one calling me that, gods…
Arren poured more wine into his own cup, then gestured toward me. "And you, Jon? What if they try to seize us?
I met his gaze.
"I am a Stark," I said, the name still strange on my tongue, "by blood and by law. That hasn't changed. Even if my name has, no northman would dare stop us."
We sat in silence after that. No more talk of whales or battles, no grand oaths. Just three men in a room lit by oil and shadows, sailing through the night toward a land that might no longer know them.
Note to self, take more Whiskey in the next trip.
The candle guttered low, casting long shadows over the map of Westeros sprawled before me. Its edges curled with salt and damp, the ink of the rivers faded from long nights of study. But the lines were still there, every mountain, every coast, every keep I had once read about in dusty tomes was now a place I would have to reckon with.
I sat alone in my quarters, hunched over the parchment with aching hands. My gloves lay discarded beside me, and Ghost's fur pressed against my thigh, steady, warm, grounding. I needed that. I needed him.
Outside, the sea whispered of old things, but my thoughts were tethered to the land ahead. There was no time to drift.
I dipped my quill again and began the second of the letters. Coded, of course. We had prepared for this, a cipher drawn from old tongues and obscured patterns, a tangle of runes and glyphs that only a handful of men in the North could read.
To Ser Cort, acting Commander in Chief of the forces of Moat Cailin:
Raise the land to War readiness. Code Red.
You are to quadruple recruitment efforts immediately. Pull from all sources, landed knights, hedge knights, free riders, second sons. Offer land where needed. More coin and incentives and spread word all over the north. Do not turn away the desperate. Desperation makes men hungry, and hunger can be honed into discipline.
Expand training. Wake the yard at dawn, run drills until night. I want every recruit able to march twenty leagues in full kit and form spear walls in wind and rain. Use veterans to instruct them, and pay them well. War is coming.
My hand ached. I rubbed my fingers, cracked my neck, then turned to the second letter.
To Seren and Chief Steward and Samwell Tarly:
Continue fortification of the Moat. The outer wall must be finished before the moon ends. Dig ditches and lay sharpened stakes in the skirts of the gate towns. Expand the storage vaults. Begin stockpiling salted meats, grain, rice, clean water. Double the granary space. Expect an influx of refugees from the Riverlands and the Neck.
You will receive men-at-arms from Houses Cerwyn, Tallhart, Manderly, Dustin, and perhaps others. Prepare for them. They must arrive to order, not chaos. Build tents, dig latrines, make organized camps for them.
You will hear things about me. I only ask you to trust me.
I pressed the signet stamp into the wax seal — not Three Headed Dragon, not yet.
I leaned back, closing my eyes.
Robert is dead, I was sure of that, Stannis was a dutiful man he would never declare himself if he were alive. The king whose drunken laughter once filled the Great Hall in Winterfell now lay cold beneath red cloth. I could still remember how his hand crushed my shoulder that day in the courtyard, rough and heavy, reeking of wine. I wonder how he died.
And if Stannis Baratheon was already chasing dragons across the sea, then the realm had begun to fracture. Melisandre must have told him somehow. Did word of me reach the capital? What the fuck was going on?
The candle on the desk burned low, a stub now, guttering faintly each time the ship rocked. I sat in silence, elbows on the wood, fingers clasped in front of my lips, staring at the map of Westeros that refused to answer the questions screaming in my skull.
What happened in King's Landing? I'd replayed the feast a hundred times in my head. Robert's drunken blessing, the wine, the crack of the stag's horn goblet hitting the stone floor when the king had declared me Stark. I'd thought I was buying time. I'd thought a legitimized name would shield me.
Is Ned alive?
Gods, if I'd been faster…
I leaned back in the chair, rubbing my temples. I could still hear Father's voice, Ned's voice, steady, quiet, honorable to the end. He'd looked at me that last morning with a weight behind his eyes. If he moved against Cersei without Robert's protection, the city would have swallowed him whole. If he had disregarded my warnings and trusted Baelish from the start he would be dead.
And the girls. Sansa, too close to the Queen, too soft for the vipers of court. Arya, sharp and fierce, but still a child. Bran, just a boy but so brave. Were they safe? Were they even alive?
I didn't know. And it gnawed at me.
I reached for the sealed letters again, running a finger along the wax, Moat Cailin, Winterfell. Orders for war, for caution, for silence. I'd given no name, only instructions. Recruit. Fortify. Be ready. Do not what you hear.
A bastard becomes a prince. The son of Rhaegar Targaryen, alive. One crushed in the Red Keep as an infant. Another alive, raised by the North, cloaked in a wolf's skin, hiding fire under ice.
Would Robb understand? Would he stand beside me, or stare across a battlefield, uncertain? Why had I waited so much to tell him, my reasons seemed so stupid now…
What of the lords of the North, the Vale, the Riverlands? Would they see a rightful heir? Or the second coming of the Mad King?
My blood was not just truth, it was a weapon. And once drawn, it could not be sheathed again.
I stood slowly, the wood groaning beneath my boots. The candle gave a final flicker, then went out.
In the darkness, I walked to the small porthole and gazed out at the stars. Calm seas. A quiet wind. Outside, the deck creaked beneath my boots as I stepped into the moonlight. Ghost followed, his white coat nearly glowing under the stars.
The Boreal Star moved like a dream now, wind at her back, sails full, keel slicing through a placid sea that seemed almost grateful for the blood it had taken. Not a ripple broke the dark. The waters held their breath.
Men slept below deck, but not easily. Some prayed. Some sharpened their blades, eyes haunted. I could hear them murmuring about sea gods and whales, about the thing that had risen from the deep. When they looked at me, they no longer saw just a lordling in borrowed armor. Word had spread of who I was and now they saw a prince, a commander.
And when I turned to the bed, Ghost at my side, I caught my reflection in the glass of the lantern.
My eyes shimmered violet in the moonlight.