#acokedit

[aegonvi]

For a long time the king did not speak. Then, very softly, he said, “I dream of it sometimes. Of Renly’s dying. A green tent, candles, a woman screaming. And blood.” Stannis looked down at his hands. “I was still abed when he died. Your Devan will tell you. He tried to wake me. Dawn was nigh and my lords were waiting, fretting. I should have been ahorse, armored. I knew Renly would attack at break of day. Devan says I thrashed and cried out, but what does it matter? It was a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean.” Ser Davos Seaworth could feel his phantom fingertips start to itch. Something is wrong here, the onetime smuggler thought. Yet he nodded and said, “I see.” “Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests? When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?” The king gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. “Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother’s peach.” — ACOK, Davos II

[girlknightswatch]

YGRITTE

‘You're kissed by fire, remember? Lucky.’

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Sansa VIII      It was a hair net of fine-spun silver, the strands so thin and delicate the net seemed to weigh no more than a breath of air when Sansa took it in her fingers. Small gems were set wherever two strands crossed, so dark they drank the moonlight. “What stones are these?”      “Black amethysts from Asshai. The rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight.”      “It’s very lovely,” Sansa said, thinking, It is a ship I need, not a net for my hair.      “Lovelier than you know, sweet child. It’s magic, you see. It’s justice you hold. It’s vengeance for your father.” Dontos leaned close and kissed her again. “It’s home.”

[daeneryssansa]

Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

[thebrightpreciousthings]

books i read in 2018: a clash of kings by george r.r. martin

“There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.”

[theonsource]

THEON MONTH 2022 || Day 3: Hostage Identity and Childhood

Theon could still make out the scars left by the stones of Robert Baratheon's catapults. A new south tower had risen from the ruins of the old, its stone a paler shade of grey, and as yet unmarred by patches of lichen. That was where Robert had made his breach, swarming in over the rubble and corpses with his warhammer in hand and Ned Stark at his side. Theon had watched from the safety of the Sea Tower, and sometimes he still saw the torches in his dreams, and heard the dull thunder of the collapse.

~ A Clash of Kings, Theon I

[theonsource]

THEON MONTH 2022 || Day 14: Guilt

They're dead, dead, I saw them killed, he tried to shout, I saw their heads dipped in tar, but when he opened his mouth only a moan emerged, and then something touched him and he whirled, shouting . . .

All his dreams had been cold of late, and each more hideous than the one before. Last night he had dreamed himself back in the mill again, on his knees dressing the dead. Their limbs were already stiffening, so they seemed to resist sullenly as he fumbled at them with half-frozen fingers, tugging up breeches and knotting laces, yanking fur-trimmed boots over hard unbending feet, buckling a studded leather belt around a waist no bigger than the span of his hands. "This was never what I wanted," he told them as he worked. "They gave me no choice." The corpses made no answer, but only grew colder and heavier.

The night before, it had been the miller's wife. He'd seen her die too. Gelmarr had cut her down with one blow of his axe as she cried to Theon for mercy.

~ A CLASH OF KINGS, THEON V

[stormborns]

I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

[stormborns]

mother of dragons, daughter of death...       ...mother of dragons, slayer of lies...             ...mother of dragons, bride of fire...

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Arya X      In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.      For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the long wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.      “But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”      “You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”      “The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

[stormborns]

A Clash of Kings - POV characters

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Sansa IV      Nightmares of the day Princess Myrcella had sailed still troubled her sleep; dark suffocating dreams that woke her in the black of night, struggling for breath. She could hear the people screaming at her, screaming without words, like animals. They had hemmed her in and thrown filth at her and tried to pull her off her horse, and would have done worst if the Hound had not cut his way to her side. They had torn the High Septon to pieces and smashed in Ser Aeron’s head with a rock. Try not to be afraid! he said.      The whole city was afraid. Sansa could see it from the castle walls. The smallfolk were hiding themselves behind closed shutters and barred doors as if that would keep them safe. The last time King’s Landing had fallen, the Lannisters looted and raped as they pleased and put hundreds to the sword, even though the city had opened its gates. This time the Imp meant to fight, and a city that fought could expect no mercy at all.

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV      Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo. Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman’s name...mother of dragons, daughter of death...Glowing like a sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire...mother of dragons, slayer of lies...Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice and filled the air with sweetness...mother of dragons, bride of fire...

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Theon VI      I have black garb aplenty, once I tear the krakens off. Even my horse is black. I could rise high in the Watch - chief of rangers, likely even Lord Commander. Let Asha keep the bloody islands, they��re as dreary as she is. If I served at Eastwatch, I could command my own ship, and there’s fine hunting beyond the Wall. As for women, what wildling woman wouldn’t want a prince in her bed? A slow smile crept across his face. A black cloak can’t be turned. I’d be as good as any man...

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Daenerys V      “We were told to find you and bring you back to Pentos. The Seven Kingdoms have need of you. Robert the Usurper is dead, and the realm bleeds. When we set sail from Pentos there were four kings in the land, and no justice to be had.”      Joy bloomed in her heart, but Dany kept it from her face. “I have three dragons,” she said, “and more than a hundred in my khalasar, with all their goods and horses.”      “It is no matter,” boomed Belwas. “We take all. The fat man hires three ships for his little silverhair queen.”      “It is so, Your Grace,” Arstan Whitebeard said. “The great cog Saduleon is berthed at the end of the quay, and the galleys Summer Sun and Joso’s Prank are anchored beyond the breakwater.”      Three heads has the dragon, Dany thought, wondering. “I shall tell my people to make ready to depart at once. But the ships that bring me home must bear different names.”      “As you wish,” said Arstan. “What names would you prefer?”      “Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And Balerion. Pain the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned.”

[stormborns]

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Daenerys III      “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”