By the ti Ser Manly Stokeworth arrived at the lavish estate beneath Aegon's High Hill, the weight of grief hung over him like a suffocating fog.
The cloak that once marked him as Commander of the Gold Cloaks—a symbol of authority and status—was gone.
Yet he no longer felt anger or regret over losing it.
He simply walked forward, eyes empty.
The estate's air felt stagnant, like a graveyard.
Only the wind moved, whispering through the neatly trimd hedges.
And—
"Oh, Falyse!"
"Seven hells, why did the gods take you from ?!"
The wailing voice of his wife echoed from inside the manor.
The sound pierced Manly's heart.
Hot tears slid down his face.
But he was the only man left in the household.
So he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, wiped away the tears quickly, and stepped inside.
---
"Seven above… my poor Falyse!"
In the courtyard, Manly saw his wife—Lady Tanda Stokeworth, Lady of Stokeworth—kneeling on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
Before her lay a body.
A dull gray sheet of linen covered it completely, forming the rigid outline of a human figure.
A few strands of gray hair peeked out from beneath the cloth.
Manly didn't need to lift the sheet.
His heart felt as though an icy hand had clenched it tight.
---
"My light… the only light in my life!"
"You were so gentle, so beautiful!"
"In all of King's Landing—no! In all the Seven Kingdoms—there was never a girl as wonderful as you!"
"That lowborn husband of yours had no right to treat you this way!"
"The one who deserved to die was him! Him!"
Her sobs gradually turned into venomous curses.
Her face twisted with rage and grief.
The distinctive triangular eyes of the Stokeworth family were now bloodshot.
She wasn't beautiful.
In fact, many would call her plain—perhaps even ugly.
Years ago, Manly, a distant relative of House Stokeworth, had married her largely because of her status.
Still, their marriage had been relatively peaceful.
Until today.
---
"Mother, please stop crying."
Beside Tanda, a plump young woman awkwardly knelt down.
She gently patted her mother's shoulder with her chubby hands.
"Even if sister is gone… you still have ."
"Shut up, Lollys!"
The words instantly enraged Tanda.
She shoved the girl violently.
Lollys fell to the ground with a heavy thud, her dress gathering dust and dirt.
But the girl didn't seem angry.
She simply sat there blankly, staring up at her mother with wide, confused eyes.
The dirt on her skirt appeared to bother her slightly.
She raised her hands and clumsily tried to brush it away.
---
Seeing this slow-witted daughter sitting there—
And rembering the elegant, beautiful elder daughter lying under the linen cloth—
Tanda's fury only intensified.
"Look at you, you stupid thing!"
She slapped Lollys hard across the face.
Then pointed at her nose and began scolding her rcilessly.
"Get up, you clumsy fat goose! You hopeless idiot!"
"Your very existence is an insult to House Stokeworth!"
"You're not worth a single strand of Falyse's hair!"
The insults continued, each harsher than the last.
"You filthy pig!"
"When you crawled out of my womb you nearly killed !"
"If it weren't for the fact you carry the na Stokeworth, I—"
Her voice rose into a vicious snarl.
"I would have thrown you into the Kingswood and married you off to so stinking peasant who's never even seen a gold dragon!"
"Let you taste the mud and pig slop those farrs live on!"
Tanda continued her tirade relentlessly.
It was as though she had never once considered what her daughter might feel.
Lollys' intellectual disability only made the confusion in her eyes deeper.
She looked at her mother.
Then at the linen cloth covering the body on the ground.
Finally, she lowered her head and began brushing at the dust on her skirt—dust that never seed to wash away no matter how many tis it was cleaned.
"I'm here, Tanda."
Seeing his wife berating their younger daughter again, Manly Stokeworth made no move to stop her.
He simply walked forward and gently embraced Tanda.
After all—
Falyse had always been their only daughter.
That had been the unspoken agreent between husband and wife ever since the maester had diagnosed Lollys as simple-minded.
---
"Oh, Manly!"
Once held in her husband's arms, Tanda's grief only intensified.
She beat her fists against his shoulders and wailed:
"My Falyse… my precious girl!"
"That butcher, Balman Byrch—that damned monster from the Seven Hells—how could he hurt her? How dare he?!"
Her voice grew hoarse with rage.
"Arrest him!"
Suddenly she lifted her head, hatred blazing in her eyes.
"You command the Gold Cloaks! A thousand of them, Manly!"
"You are the Commander of the City Watch!"
"In the na of the King and the Seven, issue the order and have him seized! Throw him into the Black Cells!"
She sucked in a ragged breath.
"No."
"I want him hanged—today! Imdiately! At the square before the Great Sept of Baelor!"
"I want him dead!"
Her furious roar made the younger daughter tremble in fear.
Lollys stumbled backward and fell to the ground.
Yet neither of the adults spared her so much as a glance.
---
For Manly Stokeworth, this had already been the most humiliating day of his life.
And now—
when Tanda demanded he use the authority of the "Commander,"
his dignity felt trampled once again.
He tried to speak.
But under his wife's domineering glare, his throat tightened.
His Adam's apple bobbed helplessly.
Not a word ca out.
"What are you standing there for, Manly Stokeworth?!"
Tanda, consud by grief, finally noticed his strange silence.
But instead of suspecting the truth, her anger only flared hotter.
She shoved him violently.
"Give the order, you coward!"
At last, he could no longer avoid it.
Lowering his head like a scolded child, Manly stared at the ground and muttered:
"Y-you… you don't know yet?"
Tanda froze for a mont.
Then she frowned sharply and glared at him.
"Know what?"
"What exactly am I supposed to know, Manly?"
Under her questioning gaze, Manly felt as if a thousand needles were stabbing into his back.
Finally, he clenched his teeth and forced the words out.
"I… I'm not the Commander anymore."
"What?!"
The sentence struck Tanda like lightning.
Her face froze in disbelief.
"What… what did you do?!"
After several ragged breaths, she shrieked again, trembling with fury as she pointed at him.
"I told you to teach that idiot Janos a lesson!"
"And now you're telling that instead of reclaiming the power that rightfully belongs to House Stokeworth, you've been dismissed from the command entirely?!"
"Seven hells, didn't I tell you exactly what to do?!"
"Why didn't you listen to ?"
"What idiotic thing did you do this ti?! How could things end up like this?!"
Each accusation lashed across Manly's pride like a whip.
He shut his eyes in pain.
His voice was barely audible.
"The… the Regent returned early…"
"He was… very dissatisfied with my actions…"
"And then…"
Manly swallowed hard.
"You know… everything I did… I only followed the plan you told to…"
His voice faded into silence.
Because the disappointnt and rage in his wife's eyes was already enough to drown him completely.
"Seven hells take you, Manly Stokeworth—you idiot!"
Tanda's face twisted with fury.
"I told you to seize power, and instead you lost the only office you had!"
"When I married you, it was because you fought bravely in the War of the Ninepenny Kings! You looked like a strong and capable knight!"
"But now?"
She looked at the man before her—disheveled, ashad, unable even to speak clearly.
Her noble composure vanished entirely.
"Look at you!"
"Pathetic. Weak. Useless!"
"You're not worthy of being my husband!"
"That Regent strips you of your office and you don't even fight back?"
"Why didn't you challenge Lance Lot?!"
"Why don't you dare fight him?!"
"Go on!"
"Fight him!"
Manly desperately wanted to shout back.
But he didn't dare.
He was only an ordinary knight.
His authority in the household had existed solely because he was Commander of the Gold Cloaks.
Now that the office was gone, the balance between him and his wife—an actual Lady—had completely collapsed.
The mont the Regent dismissed him, Manly Stokeworth ceased to matter.
He was nothing more than a knight in na, living off his wife's estate.
He lowered his head silently.
He might as well have carved the word coward onto his forehead.
"Hire the Faceless n."
After a long silence, Tanda suddenly spoke through clenched teeth.
"What?!"
"I said hire the Faceless n, you idiot!"
Hatred glead in her eyes like frost.
"Go!"
"What are you standing there for?!"
"My Falyse… my precious daughter…"
"She cannot die for nothing!"
"That bastard Balman cannot live another day! Not one day— not even an hour!"
"I've heard what those assassins can do. They're expensive—but no one escapes them."
Her voice trembled with savage anticipation.
Manly shuddered.
Instinctively, he almost agreed.
But then he hesitated.
"Well… the thing is…"
"Spit it out!"
Tanda snapped impatiently.
Manly hurried to explain.
"I heard Balman was badly wounded. Very badly."
"And poisoned."
"He might not even survive long enough for the Faceless n to find him."
"And…"
He shrank like a frightened quail under his wife's glare.
"The Regent said… if Balman survives…"
"He'll appoint him as the next Commander of the Gold Cloaks."
---
Silence.
The air seed to freeze.
Tanda's rage turned into stunned disbelief.
"What?!"
Her voice shot up again.
"You're telling that man killed our daughter—and not only does he go unpunished, he's going to beco Commander of the City Watch?!"
"What kind of justice is that?!"
"Is this the Iron Throne's idea of fairness?!"
"Is this the Regent's so-called justice?!"
"This is absurd!"
She raged like a mother beast whose cub had been taken.
Her expensive dress tangled under her own feet as she paced wildly across the stone floor.
Her jeweled necklace swung violently against her chest.
All the grief she felt for her daughter had transford into powerless fury against authority.
Manly shrank back nervously.
"I… I'll go look for a contact…"
"I'll find a way to reach the Faceless n. No matter how many gold dragons it costs—we can gather the money…"
"Wait."
Just as he turned to leave, Tanda's voice suddenly beca quiet.
Calm.
Too calm.
Manly turned back.
The hysterical rage had vanished from her face.
Instead, calculation glimred in her bloodshot triangular eyes.
She slowly turned her head toward the garden corner.
There—
Lollys Stokeworth was crouching beside a small plant, absent-mindedly poking it with her finger.
She murmured to herself in aningless babble.
Her sister's death.
Her father's disgrace.
Her mother's fury.
She seed aware of none of it.
She simply existed in her own slow, simple world, occasionally sniffing and wiping her nose.
Tanda watched her for a long ti.
Disgust.
Disappointnt.
Then finally—
cold decision.
"Balman Byrch may or may not be the murderer," she said slowly.
"But he is still the son-in-law of House Stokeworth."
"He has our daughter's blood on his hands."
She turned back to Manly.
Her voice was low and steady.
"His fate and our family's are now tied together."
Manly frowned.
"What do you an?"
Tanda raised her chin with the authority of a Lady of the house.
"Bring Lollys."
"Right now."
"Take her with us to the maester."
"We're going to see exactly how our fortunate Ser Balman is doing."
Manly blinked in confusion.
"Why bring Lollys?"
Tanda's voice turned icy.
"If Balman dies from his wounds…"
"Then that is the will of the Seven."
"But if he survives…"
Her lips curled into a cruel smile.
"Then you will make him swear—before everyone present—to marry Lollys Stokeworth."
"What?!"
Manly sucked in a sharp breath.
He stared at his wife as if seeing her for the first ti.
Falyse's corpse was barely cold.
Balman hadn't even crawled back from death yet.
And she already wanted to force him to marry the dead woman's sister—an intellectually disabled girl.
"How could he possibly agree?"
Manly blurted out.
"That's ridiculous! He just killed Falyse—"
"Idiot!"
Tanda cut him off coldly.
"That's exactly why he will agree."
"He killed her. That's a fact."
"That's the weapon we hold against him."
"I don't care how you do it—threaten him, bribe him, beg him, use Falyse's death to guilt him…"
Her voice dropped to a chilling whisper.
"I don't care."
"Even if you have to kneel."
"Make him agree."
"If our family falls, we drag him down with us!"
"The command of the Gold Cloaks must remain in Stokeworth hands!"
"Now take that idiot girl and go!"
---
The cold wind swept through the courtyard.
Manly's lips trembled.
Before him lay his daughter's stiff corpse.
And in his wife's eyes—
there was no longer grief.
Only an obsessive hunger for power.
He glanced once at Lollys, still wiping her nose.
Then at his wife's distorted face.
His mouth opened.
In the end, he only said quietly:
"…Yes."
He walked over to Lollys, took her hand, and led her away.
The entire ti—
Manly never once looked beneath the cloth covering Falyse's body.
Outside the courtyard, he paused.
"Was there sothing I forgot to ask?"
He frowned toward the hall.
Then shook his head and continued toward the Red Keep with his daughter.
---
Watching them leave, Tanda finally exhaled slowly.
She sat down beside the covered body.
Then—
a cold voice spoke behind her.
"Your wisdom is truly admirable, my lady."
Two strong hands suddenly grabbed her from behind.
"Let go."
Tanda said calmly.
But the man didn't.
"I said—"
"Let go of , Euron Greyjoy."
She suddenly reached downward, aiming for his most vulnerable spot.
Euron reacted quickly, jumping back.
"Hey, hey… why so angry?"
He raised his hands with a grin.
His skin was unusually pale for an ironborn.
Black hair and beard frad a handso face.
And his bright blue eyes glittered with dangerous madness.
Even his lips carried a strange bluish tint.
"You caused my daughter's death," Tanda said coldly.
"If you hadn't seduced her…"
"Balman would never have killed her."
Euron smiled lazily.
He even bowed with exaggerated elegance.
"My lady, I can't help it."
"Your daughter was… irresistible."
"Just like you."
"As for Balman…"
"That was rely an unfortunate accident."
Tanda snorted.
"Then you'd better find a way to leave King's Landing."
"If the Regent catches you, the dragons will burn you alive."
"I've seen it myself."
Euron laughed.
"Are you worried about ?"
He stepped closer again and wrapped his arms around her waist.
His eyes glead with satisfaction.
"The safest place… is often the most dangerous one."
"So let stay in your estate for a while."
He leaned close and whispered:
"You've lost a daughter."
"You must be very sad."
Then his hand tightened again.
Tanda shuddered slightly.
Euron chuckled darkly.
"To make up for it…"
"I'll give you another child."
"Kehehehe…"
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