The horn's single note rolled across Castle Black and died beneath the Wall.
Jinx's head snapped toward the ruined main gate.
The fragile grey beneath the yellow vanished so quickly that Xuehara almost convinced herself she had imagined it. The red rings around his eyes ignited once more, bright enough to paint thin lines across the blood dried beneath them, while the low growl inside his chest deepened until the broken stones around his feet began to tremble.
Beyond the gate waited the larger force Rickard had ordered to remain south of the castle.
Hundreds of heartbeats.
Horses shifting beneath armored riders.
Men shouting after hearing screams from inside the walls.
To everyone else, they were reinforcements.
To Jinx, they were life.
Food.
Xuehara saw the change pass through him and closed the final distance, reaching desperately for his face. "Jinx, look at me. Do not listen to them. Look at—"
He recoiled before her fingers touched him.
Not far. Barely half a step, but the movement cut her more deeply than any blade could have. Jinx clutched the dragon egg tighter against his chest, his ruined body twisting so that he stood between it and every person in the courtyard.
Dark Sister rose in his right hand.
Eddard stepped beside his mother, both palms open. "Brother, no one is taking it from you. The men outside do not even know what you have."
Jinx's nostrils flared.
The distant army smelled of horses, sweat, fear, warm blood, and living flesh packed close together beneath armor.
His lips pulled away from his broken teeth.
Greatjon moved first, planting himself between Jinx and the open gate as he lifted his greatsword. "Get Lady Stark and the children behind the armory wall."
"I am not leaving him," Xuehara said, the words almost lost beneath Jinx's rising growl.
"Then someone drag her," Greatjon snarled without taking his eyes off the prince. "Because he is no longer looking at his mother."
Jinx was not looking at anyone in the courtyard.
His attention had settled entirely upon the army outside.
He lowered the dragon egg.
Despite the tension moving through every muscle, his left hand remained careful as he crouched beside a collapsed section of the gatehouse wall. He pulled loose the remnants of the black cloth wrapped around the egg and spread them over a shallow hollow between two stones, adjusting the fabric beneath the scaled shell so it would not scrape against the frozen ground.
Rhaegar watched with a terrible fascination he dared not voice.
Jinx touched the egg once.
A slow stroke across the fungus-covered shell.
Then he rose without it.
Arthur brought Dawn into both hands. "He is preparing to fight."
"No," Barristan murmured, staring at the gate while he pulled the damaged arrow from his shield. The old knight's arm still shook faintly from the impact. "He is preparing to hunt."
Outside, another horn answered the first.
Two blasts this time.
The signal for the reserve force to ready itself.
Jinx opened his left hand.
The air tightened.
Snow rose from the courtyard in a widening circle around him. Individual flakes hung suspended for a moment before racing outward, carrying blood and powdered stone with them. Broken swords scraped across the ground. Empty helms rolled from among the corpses, while timber creaked inside the burned galleries.
Eddard felt the pressure building and moved in front of Xuehara. "Down!"
Jinx thrust his open palm toward the gate.
The force wave erupted.
It crossed the courtyard without flame or light, visible only through the devastation it carried.
The remaining half of Castle Black's main gate exploded outward.
Ancient timber shattered into hundreds of spear-like splinters. Iron straps tore from the wood and twisted through the air. The damaged door still clinging to one hinge ripped free so violently that it spun end over end beyond the walls, crushing two mounted men before burying itself halfway into the frozen road.
The stone arch above it fractured.
Blocks large enough to crush horses broke loose from the gatehouse and crashed into the army outside. The nearest riders disappeared beneath falling masonry. Men shouted warnings that were swallowed by screaming horses as the invisible wave struck the front ranks.
Animals were lifted from the road.
Horses and riders tumbled backward together, armor colliding with shields, spears, and the men stationed behind them. Several warhorses rolled across the snow with legs snapping beneath their own weight. Wagons overturned farther down the column, barrels and bundles spilling across the kingsroad.
The force did not stop at the gate.
It carved a path through the small army.
The Umber banner folded around its pole before the wood snapped. Stark guards were hurled from saddles. A line of spearmen lost their footing together and crashed into the men behind them, turning the ordered formation into a mass of bodies, shields, and terrified animals.
Inside Castle Black, the blast struck everyone behind Jinx as well.
Eddard threw himself over Xuehara as both were driven to the ground. Rickard caught Lyanna around the waist and turned his armored back toward the flying rubble, while Brandon dragged Benjen behind an overturned cart.
Arthur planted Dawn into a split between two courtyard stones and used it to hold himself upright. Elia clung to the back of his cloak, her feet sliding through the bloody snow. Barristan dropped behind his shield and was forced onto one knee despite bracing with his entire body.
Rhaegar struck the wall beside the common hall hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
Greatjon remained standing longer than most.
The massive Umber dug his heels into the earth, both arms crossed before his face as broken stone battered his armor. The force pushed him backward one pace, then another, before a flying timber struck his chest and knocked him through the remains of a wooden railing.
The wave faded.
For a moment, Castle Black held only dust.
Stone continued falling from the gatehouse. Horses shrieked outside. Wounded men called for help through the grey cloud hanging where the main gate had once stood.
Xuehara pushed Eddard away and raised her head.
"Jinx!"
He was already moving.
He crossed the courtyard as a blood-dark blur, Dark Sister trailing beside him while his bare feet shattered the thin ice beneath each step. He did not pass through the ruined gate so much as launch himself across the rubble where it had been.
A northern spearman had barely risen when Jinx reached him.
Dark Sister swept once.
The man's spear split near the head, the same stroke continuing through mail, ribs, and both lungs. Jinx turned before the body fell and drove his shoulder into a horse trying to regain its feet.
The animal was thrown sideways.
Horse and rider crashed into three men attempting to rebuild the line.
"Form ranks!" Greatjon roared from the courtyard as he tore himself from the broken railing. Blood ran from his mouth, and half the fur had been ripped from one shoulder of his cloak. "Spears forward! Archers spread, you stupid bastards—do not stand in one bloody pile!"
His voice reached the surviving officers outside.
Training forced its way through terror.
Men crawled from beneath fallen horses and dragged shields together. Those still mounted pulled their animals away from the centre, clearing space for the infantry to form. Archers moved toward either side of the road, searching for angles that would not send their arrows into their own ranks.
Jinx struck the first shield wall before it fully formed.
Three men braced behind overlapping oak.
He hit them without slowing.
The invisible force gathered around his shoulder at the moment of impact, magnifying his charge into something no human body could withstand. Shields burst inward. One defender's arm folded beneath the rim, broken bone punching through his sleeve as he was thrown into the man behind him.
Jinx passed through the opening.
Dark Sister severed the second man's sword arm at the elbow. The return stroke opened his throat. Jinx caught the falling severed limb with his free hand, bit through the exposed flesh once, then threw it aside when a spear came for his ribs.
He turned around the point.
His left hand closed around the shaft.
The spearman tried to release it.
The weapon tore from his grip, spun in Jinx's hand, and drove backward through his chest. The force carried him off his feet and pinned him briefly against an overturned wagon before the wood split behind him.
"Loose!" an officer screamed.
Arrows darkened the air.
Jinx raised one hand.
The front of the volley stopped.
Not all of it.
Several arrows struck him from the sides—one entering his upper arm, another cutting along his scalp, a third burying itself in the burned flesh of his lower back. Yet those approaching from directly ahead slowed around his open palm, trembling in midair as though caught inside thick water.
Jinx's fingers twisted.
The suspended arrows turned.
"Shields!" Barristan shouted from the gate as he recognized what was coming.
Jinx threw them back.
Men fell across the road.
Some arrows returned to the archers who had loosed them; others scattered into the infantry, piercing throats, faces, and the thin gaps between plates. One struck a horse through the eye. The animal reared, throwing its rider beneath the hooves of the terrified mount beside it.
Jinx rushed into the chaos.
His movements no longer resembled the exhausted, uneven steps that had carried him from the gate. The stolen life gathered over weeks had not healed him properly, but it had repaired enough muscle and bone to turn his damaged body into something unnaturally fast.
He leapt onto the side of an overturned wagon, ran three steps along its angled surface, and vaulted over the spears waiting below.
Dark Sister descended during the fall.
A northern soldier raised his sword with both hands.
Valyrian steel split the blade, entered the man's shoulder, and cut diagonally through his chest until it emerged near the opposite hip. Blood poured across Jinx as he landed beneath the collapsing halves.
A second soldier struck him from behind with a mace.
The blow caved flesh across Jinx's shoulder and drove him onto one knee.
The man shouted in triumph and raised the mace again.
Jinx extended his hand without turning.
The soldier stopped in the middle of his swing.
His boots left the road.
The man flew forward into Jinx's waiting grip, throat slamming against blood-covered fingers. Jinx rose with him, lifting the armored soldier one-handed until his feet kicked above the ground.
For a heartbeat, he stared at the man's terrified face.
Then he threw him into the spear line.
Bodies scattered.
Dark Sister followed Jinx as he entered the gap.
He fought differently from how he had fought Rodrik.
There was no measured duel, no buried swordsman offering respect to the challenge before him. Against the army, skill and hunger blurred together. His cuts remained precise, but they served the instincts of an animal—removing whichever limb held a weapon, opening whichever artery offered the fastest blood, crippling horses so their bodies became obstacles for the men behind them.
He seized one soldier by the hair and drove Dark Sister beneath the man's jaw.
Before the corpse fell, Jinx opened his mouth against the torn throat.
Xuehara reached the ruined gateway in time to see him feed.
Her legs nearly failed.
"Jinx!"
The call crossed the fighting.
His head moved slightly.
Only slightly.
A spear entered his side during that hesitation.
The point punched through his back.
Jinx released the corpse and looked down at the shaft protruding beneath his ribs. Blood streamed around it.
The spearman who had struck him froze, shock replacing courage as Jinx slowly turned.
Xuehara saw the red light intensify.
"Run!" she screamed.
The soldier tried.
Jinx snapped one hand backward.
The invisible force caught the fleeing man around the body and dragged him across the road. His nails tore against frozen ground. He screamed, kicking at nothing, until Jinx caught him by the throat and drove the protruding end of the spear through the man's face.
"Mother, stay inside!" Eddard reached the gate and wrapped both arms around her waist, pulling her back as another volley passed overhead. "He cannot hear you through this!"
"He heard me before."
"He heard the horn!"
"And then that fool fired at him. He thinks we brought an army to take the egg!"
Eddard looked toward the scaled shape resting inside the courtyard.
She was right.
To Jinx, the sequence was simple: his mother approached, a Stark arrow came for his heart, horns called hundreds of men forward, and their weapons rose while his egg remained behind him.
The army was not rescue.
It was threat.
Rickard reached them with Ice drawn. "We pull the force back."
Greatjon limped to the gate, one arm pressed against his bruised ribs. "They cannot pull back while he is among them. Turn now and half will be cut down before they manage ten paces."
"Then we give him another target," Brandon said as he joined them, blood running from a cut across his forehead.
Rickard looked sharply toward his eldest son. "No Stark enters that road alone."
"I did not say alone."
Greatjon followed Brandon's gaze toward Arthur and Barristan.
Both Kingsguard knights had come through the ruined gate.
Arthur carried Dawn low beside him, choosing his footing among bodies and fallen stone. Barristan's damaged shield remained strapped to his arm, the arrow Jinx had thrown still lodged halfway through it.
Rhaegar appeared behind them.
Arthur turned so violently that anger replaced his usual restraint. "Remain inside the castle."
"I may be the only person here who understands even a fraction of what his power resembles."
"You understand nothing of what is happening."
"I understand that if he reaches the centre of the army and drains them as he drained the Watch, every wound they inflict will become meaningless."
Greatjon spat blood into the snow. "The dragon prince has a point."
Xuehara looked toward Jinx.
He had reached the mounted ranks.
A knight lowered his lance and charged.
Jinx met him head-on.
He stepped aside at the final instant, seized the lance beneath one arm, and used the rider's speed against him. The shaft ripped the knight from his saddle and sent him spinning across the road. Jinx planted one foot against the horse's shoulder, vaulted onto its back, then leapt from it toward another mounted soldier.
Dark Sister passed through the rider's neck.
Jinx landed in the vacated saddle.
The terrified horse bucked beneath him.
He pressed one bloodied hand against its neck.
Magenta light rose from the animal's body.
The horse aged beneath him in seconds, muscle collapsing and hide drawing tight around bone. Jinx absorbed the life, then sprang from the dying animal before it struck the ground.
The wounds across his side tightened.
The spear hole beneath his ribs stopped pouring blood.
Rhaegar's face went pale. "He is healing."
"I can see that," Rickard growled.
"No. Look at what he chose." Rhaegar pointed toward the dead horse. "He took the animal because it was beneath him. He did not drain the entire formation."
Eddard stared.
Jinx had once pulled life from everything around him without distinction. Here, surrounded by hundreds, he had taken from one creature.
Control.
Crude and terrible, but control nonetheless.
"He is still thinking," Eddard whispered.
A broad Umber warrior charged Jinx with an axe raised over his head.
Jinx turned.
Dark Sister came up.
Greatjon's voice shattered across the road.
"HOETH!"
The Umber warrior hesitated at the sound of his lord calling his name.
That hesitation saved him.
Dark Sister struck the axe instead of his neck, cutting through the iron head. Jinx kicked Hoeth in the chest, launching the enormous man backward into a bank of snow, but he did not pursue.
Jinx's gaze had found Greatjon.
The Umber lord stepped through the ruined gate.
"Remember me, boy?" Greatjon shouted as he lifted his greatsword. "I am kin to the man who made you bleed!"
Jinx went still.
His yellow eyes narrowed.
Greatjon bared his teeth through blood. "There you are."
The hunger surrounding Jinx shifted.
Hundreds of soldiers remained around him, wounded and frightened, but his attention locked upon the giant northern lord approaching from Castle Black.
Eddard understood Greatjon's intention and grabbed his cloak. "He will kill you."
Greatjon ripped free.
"He is already killing my men."
He struck the flat of his sword against his shield and roared toward the army. "Withdraw in ranks! Wounded first! Anyone still able to hold a spear, keep it pointed forward and walk backward. Do not run unless you want the pretty little bastard to chase you!"
Despite the terror, several men laughed.
It was not amusement.
It was relief at hearing Greatjon sound like Greatjon while death stood among them.
Jinx lowered into a crouch.
Dark Sister angled beside his body.
Greatjon walked toward him.
Behind the Umber lord, Arthur and Barristan spread apart, preparing to strike from opposite sides. Rickard drew Ice completely from its sheath, the enormous Valyrian blade dark and cold beneath the grey sky.
Xuehara saw them forming around her son.
"No," she whispered.
Eddard moved before anyone could stop him.
He ran through the broken gate and placed himself directly between Jinx and the three men preparing to attack.
Jinx's eyes found his twin.
The red light flickered.
Eddard stood in the middle of the blood-soaked road with no weapon in his hands, chest heaving while the retreating army dragged its wounded south behind him.
"Brother," he said, his voice trembling but clear as he looked into Jinx's burning eyes, "you wanted them away from your egg."
Jinx's gaze moved past him toward Castle Black.
Toward the moss-covered shell resting where he had left it.
"They are leaving," Eddard continued, spreading his hands as Dark Sister slowly rose. "You won. No one is taking it."
A wounded soldier groaned nearby.
Jinx's head twitched toward the sound.
Eddard stepped into his line of sight.
"Look at me."
The blade pointed toward Eddard's heart.
Behind him, Xuehara screamed his name.
Eddard did not move.
For one agonizing moment, neither did Jinx.
Then another horn sounded farther down the road.
Men shouted.
A panicked horse broke from the retreating ranks and thundered toward them, dragging its fallen rider by one boot.
Jinx's head snapped toward the movement.
The red light flooded back.
He thrust out his hand.
The horse, the rider, and every loose weapon between them lifted from the ground.
Eddard had only enough time to see his twin's fingers close.
The world came apart.
Or at least that was what everyone believed would happen.
Jinx's fingers began to close.
The invisible pressure tightened around the panicked horse, its fallen rider, and every loose weapon scattered between the two armies. Swords rose from the bloodied snow. Broken spearheads spun in the air. Shields groaned as they were torn from the hands of wounded men, while the horse screamed and kicked several feet above the road, its rider dangling beneath it by one trapped boot.
Eddard stood directly before his twin, close enough to see the red light burning around Jinx's yellow eyes.
"Jinx," he whispered, though the force gathering around them stole the breath from his lungs. "Please."
Jinx's fist closed—
A whistle pierced the battlefield.
The sound was impossibly sharp.
It cut through screaming men, panicked horses, falling stone, and the distant groaning of the Wall with such perfect clarity that every living person heard it. There was something unnatural within the note, a second tone buried beneath the first that seemed to pass directly through flesh and settle inside bone.
Jinx froze.
Not hesitated.
Froze.
His fingers remained curled halfway toward his palm. Dark Sister stopped in the middle of rising beside him. The horse suspended above the road hung motionless for one bewildering heartbeat before the invisible power holding it disappeared.
The animal and rider crashed into the snow.
Weapons fell all around them.
Swords struck shields. Spearheads buried themselves in frozen earth. A heavy axe landed less than a foot from Eddard's leg, but he did not look away from Jinx.
His twin stood perfectly still.
The hunger remained in his eyes, but his body no longer obeyed it. The muscles in his jaw trembled. His shoulders jerked once as though he were fighting invisible chains, yet not even his bare foot moved from the blood-soaked road.
Everyone else turned toward the whistle.
The sound had come from farther south, beyond the shattered ranks of the small army.
Men separated hesitantly as two figures approached along the kingsroad.
The first was an old man seated in a strange wheeled chair.
He had only one leg.
The other ended beneath a ragged blanket thrown across his lap, while his remaining boot rested upon a narrow wooden platform between the chair's enormous wheels. A battered, broad-brimmed hat cast much of his face into shadow, though it did little to conceal his grey beard or the scars carved across his weathered skin.
His clothes appeared older than some of the men staring at him. A long coat of dark, cracked leather hung unevenly from his shoulders, layered over belts, cloth, and pieces of worn armor that belonged to no knightly order anyone recognized. Several strange weapons had been strapped to the back of his chair, their shapes half-hidden beneath wrapped cloth and blackened metal.
The road was uneven, buried beneath snow, bodies, and broken equipment.
The chair crossed it without difficulty.
A young-looking woman pushed from behind.
At least, she resembled a young woman from a distance.
As she drew closer, the resemblance became unsettling.
Her skin possessed the smooth, pale perfection of carved porcelain. Long silver-blond hair framed a delicate face that held no fear despite the slaughter surrounding her. She wore an ornate dark cloak over unfamiliar clothing, the fabric patterned with curling designs and fastened high around her throat. A deep crimson ribbon rested beneath her collar, the only strong color upon her other than the faint rose tint of her lips.
Her gloved hands remained lightly upon the chair.
She did not react to the bodies.
She did not flinch at the smell.
Her calm grey eyes passed over Rickard Stark, the royal party, Greatjon Umber, and the hundreds of armed men as though she had entered an untidy room rather than a battlefield moments from becoming a massacre.
The old man held a narrow metal object between his teeth.
It resembled a whistle, though no northern craftsman had made it. Dark metal had been shaped into a short, curved tube covered in tiny runes that seemed to shift whenever the weak daylight passed across them.
He removed it from his mouth and examined Jinx with weary disappointment.
"Dear, oh dear," the old man murmured, his voice rough with age and entirely too casual for the sight before him. "Looks like the little lord has gone and lost his mind again."
No one answered.
Greatjon slowly lowered his greatsword from above one shoulder, though he did not sheathe it. His gaze moved from the crippled stranger to Jinx, then back again.
"Again?" he repeated.
The old man ignored him.
Xuehara did not.
She stepped away from the ruined gate, her eyes fixed upon the stranger as grief and fury twisted together across her face. "Who are you?"
The old man's attention shifted toward her.
Recognition softened his weathered features by a fraction.
"His mother, I take it."
Xuehara's hand dropped toward her sword. "You will answer me."
"Eventually." The old man leaned slightly to one side in his chair, looking around Eddard to inspect Jinx's wounds. His expression tightened as he noticed the torn flesh, embedded arrowheads, broken bones, and blood still running from injuries that should have killed the boy weeks earlier. "Though I would rather settle him first. You have all done an impressive job of making him worse."
Arthur Dayne took one step forward, Dawn remaining low but ready in his hands. "He has killed hundreds of men."
"And you brought several hundred more within smelling distance." The old man looked at Arthur as though the Sword of the Morning had just admitted to walking into a wall. "A brilliant answer to unnatural hunger. Perhaps next time you encounter a drowning man, you can throw him into deeper water."
Greatjon's grip tightened around his sword. "Watch your damned tongue, old man."
The stranger turned his head toward him.
Whatever Greatjon saw beneath the brim of that worn hat caused the massive lord to stop before advancing.
The old man looked back toward Jinx.
The boy remained trapped by the fading note of the whistle, but the effect was weakening. His fingers twitched. Dark Sister scraped several inches through the snow without his hand touching it, and a growl began building behind his clenched teeth.
The old man sighed.
"Doll," he said, glancing toward the pale woman standing behind his chair. "Get out the vial, would you? The large one. He has made rather a mess of himself."
"Of course."
The woman released the handles of the chair.
Her voice was soft and strangely warm, at odds with the near-perfect stillness of her face. She reached beneath her dark cloak and withdrew a glass vial nearly as long as her forearm.
Blood filled it.
Not the thin red of a recent wound. The liquid was unnaturally dark and thick, almost black near the center, though streaks of deep crimson moved through it whenever the vial tilted. Small silver markings had been etched into the glass, glowing faintly beneath her fingers.
The reaction from Jinx was immediate.
His head snapped toward the vial.
The last remnants of recognition vanished from his face.
His nostrils flared.
The growl stopped, replaced by one sharp inhalation as the scent reached him across the blood-covered road.
The Doll pulled the stopper free.
A sweet metallic smell spread through the air.
Jinx's entire body convulsed.
The pressure around him vanished and returned in the same instant, scattering snow outward from his feet. Dark Sister dropped from the air, striking the road, forgotten. His yellow eyes fixed upon the vial so completely that Eddard might as well have ceased existing in front of him.
Xuehara saw what was coming.
"Wait—"
Jinx ran.
He passed Eddard without touching him.
One moment he stood several paces away; the next he had crossed half the distance to the strangers. Men shouted and raised their weapons, only for the old man to lift the metal whistle between two fingers.
"Anyone strikes him," he warned without raising his voice, "and I shall let him wake back up."
Every weapon stopped.
The Doll showed no fear.
Jinx raced toward her with Dark Sister left behind and his bloodied hands open, moving with enough force that the road broke beneath each step. His face had lost every trace of humanity except desperate need. Teeth bared. Blood ran from his wounds. The strange light in his eyes burned brighter as he reached her.
The Doll casually tossed the open vial into the air.
Jinx leapt.
He caught it with both hands.
The glass should have shattered beneath the force of his grip. Instead, his fingers closed around it with extraordinary care, the same care he had shown only the dragon egg.
He landed in a crouch several paces from the wheelchair.
Before anyone could move, Jinx pressed the vial to his mouth and drank.
He did not sip.
He swallowed the blood in great, frantic pulls, his head tilted back while dark liquid ran from the corners of his mouth and mixed with the older blood covering his throat. His chest shuddered. His fingers tightened around the glass, and for several moments every person watching expected the hunger to grow worse.
Instead, the red rings around his eyes began to fade.
The effect moved through him in waves.
His shoulders loosened first.
Then his jaw.
The unnatural tension holding his ruined muscles together abandoned him so suddenly that his knees struck the road. He continued drinking from the vial while kneeling, swallowing every final drop until only thin crimson streaks remained upon the glass.
Jinx lowered it.
His tongue passed once across his split lower lip, catching the blood that remained there.
A soft, satisfied breath left him.
The expression upon his face changed.
Not much.
Only the faintest easing around his eyes and mouth, but after weeks of mindless hunger and empty violence it looked almost peaceful. The yellow receded enough for a trace of natural grey to show beneath it. His eyelids fluttered as though he had not slept in years and had only now remembered exhaustion existed.
The vial slipped from his hands.
The Doll caught it before it reached the ground.
Jinx swayed.
"Little lord," the old man said, not unkindly. "Sleep."
Jinx collapsed.
Xuehara screamed his name and ran.
Eddard reached him from the other side at nearly the same time. Together they caught him before his face struck the frozen road, though the force of his falling weight drove both of them down onto their knees.
For one terrible moment, Xuehara believed he had died.
She rolled him into her arms, ignoring blood, dirt, and the half-closed wounds pressing against her clothing. One hand went behind his head while the other searched desperately along his throat.
There was a pulse.
Slow.
Steady.
Stronger than it had any right to be.
Jinx's cheek settled against her chest. His lips remained faintly parted, and his face held the same satisfied calm that had appeared after he drained the vial. For the first time since emerging from the Haunted Forest, he looked less like an old demon wearing her son's skin and more like the exhausted boy who had fallen asleep in impossible places throughout his childhood.
Xuehara bent over him.
A sob tore from her as she pressed her face into his blood-matted hair.
"My baby," she whispered, rocking him despite the arrows and broken steel still lodged inside him. "My poor, foolish baby."
Eddard remained kneeling beside them, one trembling hand resting upon Jinx's wrist. Tears ran unchecked over his face while he watched his twin breathe.
"He is alive."
"I know."
"He is really alive."
"I know."
Behind them, the battlefield had fallen into an uncertain silence.
Men stared at the unconscious prince. Some looked relieved. Others looked one frightened movement away from charging forward and cutting his throat before he could awaken again.
Greatjon stood over Dark Sister where it lay abandoned in the snow.
He did not touch it.
Rhaegar's attention moved from Jinx to the empty vial inside the Doll's hands, questions gathering so quickly across his face that Elia caught his sleeve before he could take a step.
"Do not," she murmured.
"This blood rendered him unconscious in seconds."
"Yes."
"He recognized it before—"
Elia tightened her grip. "You nearly died the last time curiosity escaped your mouth before caution."
Rhaegar glanced toward Xuehara.
Lady Stark remained bent over her son, but one of her tear-filled eyes had already lifted toward him.
The prince stayed where he was.
Barristan removed his damaged shield and lowered it to the ground. His gaze settled upon the old man. "You knew how to stop him."
"I knew how to feed him." The stranger placed the rune-covered whistle upon his lap. "Stopping comes afterward."
Arthur approached cautiously, Dawn still in his hand but pointed toward the ground. "What was in the vial?"
"Blood."
"We saw that."
"Then your eyesight survived the journey. Wonderful."
Arthur's mouth tightened.
The Doll stepped around the wheelchair and knelt near Xuehara without displaying any concern for the possibility that Jinx might awaken. Her pale eyes moved over his wounds with quiet attention.
"He is in considerable pain," she said.
Xuehara's arms tightened around him. "Do not touch him."
The Doll stopped immediately.
"Of course."
The absence of offence in her response unsettled Xuehara almost as much as everything else. The woman simply folded her hands upon her lap and waited, serene among the dead.
Eddard looked at the vial.
"What did you give him?"
The old man examined him for several breaths.
"The nearest thing his body recognizes as enough."
"That does not answer him," Rickard said as he crossed the road, Ice still held in one hand. His face had gone hard, though his eyes never left his unconscious son. "You know Jinx. You possess blood capable of quieting his hunger. You carry an object that stopped him while he was using powers no one here understands."
The old man smiled faintly.
"There is hope for the father after all."
Rickard's expression darkened.
Greatjon released a rough breath that might have become laughter under different circumstances.
The old man leaned back in his wheelchair and looked around at the ruined army, the broken gate, Castle Black, and the bodies spread beneath the Wall.
"We should move quickly," he said. "The blood will keep him asleep for some time, but not forever. When he wakes, he will be hungry again—less violently, perhaps, but hungry."
Xuehara looked down at her son.
"How long?"
"Long enough to remove the metal, close the worst wounds, and move him somewhere that does not smell like an open butcher's yard."
The old man nodded toward Castle Black.
"And before anyone asks, no, you should not take the egg from him. The last person who tried nearly lost his entire Watch."
Rhaegar closed his mouth.
The old man noticed.
His tired smile widened by the smallest amount.
"Dear, oh dear," he murmured again. "This is going to be a very long night."