An hour later, the dining hall had settled into something almost ordinary.
Almost.
The table still groaned beneath more food than most northern keeps served during a wedding feast, yet the end surrounding Jinx looked as though an entire hunting party had spent a week trapped there. Platters that had arrived piled high with roasted venison, honeyed beef, smoked fish, buttered fowl, meat pies, dumplings, black bread, rice, cheeses, and sweet pastries now held little more than stripped bones, shining grease, scattered crumbs, and pools of cooling sauce. Empty blood vials stood beside Jinx's goblet like narrow red soldiers, while several more waited unopened near his elbow.
No servants ever entered.
Whenever one platter emptied, the silver tray slid soundlessly away and another appeared in its place, steam curling from the food as though it had only just left the fire. The first few times it happened, Arthur's hand had drifted toward Dawn. By the sixth, even he had stopped reacting, though Barristan still watched every dish arrive with the wary expression of a man wondering whether enchanted supper might eventually attempt to stab him.
Conversation had remained carefully, almost painfully harmless.
Elia spoke with Xuehara about Dorne and the exhausting task of convincing Oberyn that surviving a stupid decision did not somehow prove it had been clever. Xuehara, who had known Oberyn long enough to recognize the hopelessness of the effort, laughed more freely than she had since the letter from the Wall arrived.
"Oberyn once climbed out of my grandmother's palace window because the door was guarded," Elia said as she turned her wine slowly within the goblet, her dark eyes narrowing with the weary fondness only family could produce. "The window was three floors above the garden. When I asked him what he would've done if he'd fallen, he told me he hadn't fallen, so the question was pointless."
"That sounds like Jinx," Xuehara murmured as she looked toward her son, who had just finished an entire plate of roasted fish and was reaching for a meat pie without appearing to notice the attention. "He once disappeared from Winterfell for half a day because Rickard told him he couldn't climb the broken tower. We found him asleep on the roof."
"I proved I could climb it," Jinx said around the first bite of the pie, his voice far clearer now that the wounds in his throat had healed. "What I did afterward was my own business."
"You were four," Rickard muttered from farther down the table, though the memory disturbed the stern line of his mouth with something dangerously close to reluctant amusement.
At another part of the table, Brandon and Arthur had drifted into an argument over sword balance that neither man would admit was an argument. Brandon believed a northern longsword ought to carry enough forward weight to make every committed cut meaningful, while Arthur maintained that a blade which demanded commitment before the swordsman chose it had already failed its wielder. Barristan interrupted twice when their gestures began growing too broad for a table covered in goblets and knives, and once more when Brandon reached toward a serving knife to demonstrate his point.
"Put it down," Barristan said as he caught Brandon's wrist before the young Stark could lift the knife, his tone carrying the exhausted authority of a man who had separated too many proud swordsmen over too many years. "You're sitting beneath the sea, surrounded by blood magic, beside a prince who tore open the Wall's gate with his hands. I refuse to die because the two of you decided supper required sword drills."
Arthur leaned back in his chair, looking entirely too innocent. "I hadn't drawn anything."
"You were thinking about it."
"I often think about swords."
"Yes," Barristan said as he released Brandon's wrist and reclaimed his wine, "and that is why I've survived this long by watching you."
Rhaegar had tried twice to draw Gehrman into discussing the drowned ruins beyond the windows. The first attempt ended when Elia hooked two fingers into his sleeve and pulled his attention back toward his plate without interrupting her own conversation. The second failed when Gehrman stared straight ahead, drank from his cup, and behaved as though the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms had become completely inaudible.
The third question had made it halfway out before the Doll placed another blood vial beside Jinx and Rhaegar's curiosity shifted targets.
Rickard said very little.
Greatjon said enough for several men, though even he spoke lower than usual beneath the impossible blue darkness pressing against the windows. Each time something vast moved beyond the glass, his voice faltered for half a breath before he covered the unease with another drink or a louder insult toward whichever southern custom Rhaegar had most recently mentioned.
Jinx mostly ate.
By the end of the hour, the change in him had become impossible to overlook. The blood, food, and magic working through his body had done more than close the wounds—they had erased them. The ragged opening across his stomach had sealed without so much as a pale line. The torn muscle in his thigh had rebuilt itself, the burns across his back and legs had vanished, and the places where arrows or broken steel had been cut from him were now smooth, untouched skin.
His face had returned to the strange beauty that made people stare even when they knew better. The swelling around his eyes had gone down. His nose had straightened, the cuts across his lips and cheek had disappeared, and the missing teeth had returned so completely that no one could have guessed several had been knocked from his mouth only hours before.
Only his hair still carried the Wall with him.
Black and silver-blond strands hung around his shoulders in thick, blood-stiffened tangles, dried red-black clinging near the scalp and flaking occasionally against the loose dark robe the Doll had wrapped around him. It made him look like someone who had walked through a slaughterhouse, bathed everywhere except the head, then sat down for dinner and somehow decided everyone else was being rude for noticing.
Xuehara's patience held until Jinx reached for a third portion of honeyed beef.
"What happened?"
Her voice was not loud.
It did not need to be.
Arthur stopped halfway through explaining why a reverse cut failed if the wrist turned too early. Brandon froze with his goblet near his mouth. Rhaegar's attention snapped away from the ruins outside, while Greatjon leaned back and folded both massive arms across his chest, his chair creaking beneath the shift.
Jinx did not stop serving himself.
He placed two thick slices of beef upon his plate, poured honey-darkened sauce across them, then added buttered turnips as though his mother had asked whether he wanted more wine. His knife worked steadily through the first slice while the room grew quiet around him.
Xuehara watched him put the bite into his mouth.
"He's chewing," Elia murmured as she glanced toward Xuehara, though her own eyes remained fixed upon Jinx. "I'm not defending him. I'm only warning you that whatever comes out right now may be worse than usual."
Jinx continued eating.
The silence tightened until even the movement of the sea beyond the glass seemed loud. Schools of fish drifted past the windows in slow silver waves, their bodies turning together while warm candlelight trembled across the table.
Jinx finished the plate.
He did it slowly, not because he hoped the question would disappear but because hunger still controlled more of him than anyone at the table wanted to admit. He cleaned the last sauce with a piece of bread, swallowed, then set his knife beside the plate and wiped his mouth with a folded cloth.
His eyes settled upon his mother.
"I don't regret it."
The table erupted.
Greatjon's palm struck the wood hard enough to jump every goblet within reach. Brandon swore and shoved his chair back several inches, while Rickard's own chair scraped sharply against the stone as he leaned forward. Xuehara went so still that Eddard shifted toward Jinx before he had fully decided whether he meant to protect his twin from her or her from him.
Jinx lifted one hand before the shouting gathered enough weight to become useless.
"Wait—just stop." His voice remained quiet, but the strain beneath it cut through Greatjon's first curse and Brandon's angry demand. Jinx looked down at the empty plate, rubbing his thumb along the carved edge as he searched for words he had clearly been avoiding throughout the meal. "I didn't say I don't care. I didn't say they meant nothing. I said I don't regret it."
Greatjon stared across the table as though Jinx had grown another head. "You'd better find different bloody words, boy, because those are about to get you thrown through your own window."
Jinx glanced toward the impossible ocean pressing against the glass. "That would kill everyone in the room, so perhaps choose another threat."
"Jinx," Eddard warned softly beside him, one hand tightening around the stem of his untouched goblet. There was no anger in his voice yet, only the quiet pressure he used when begging his twin not to make a bad moment worse out of habit.
Jinx exhaled through his nose and let his hand fall from the table. "I've had time to think about the words," he said, no longer looking at Greatjon. "Not enough time, perhaps, but more than I wanted. Regret doesn't do anything. Never has."
Rickard's brows drew together as he leaned across the table, his voice controlled in the way it became whenever anger ran too deep to be safely released. "You slaughtered hundreds of men, Jinx."
"I know."
"You ate them."
"I know that too."
"You killed Lord Commander Umber, destroyed Castle Black, and left the Gift looking like winter itself had died there." Rickard's fingers pressed into the wood, knuckles paling even while he kept his tone level. "Do not sit before the families of those men and tell us regret is beneath you."
Jinx looked at his father then.
"It isn't beneath me. It's useless." His voice roughened as he leaned back, exhaustion beginning to show beneath the strength restored to his body. "It won't bring one of them back. It won't put Dark Sister in its sheath before I drew it. It won't rebuild the gate, or put flesh back on the men I ate, or take the memories out of Torrhen's head. Once something happens, it's happened. You can hate yourself for it. You can grieve. You can spend the rest of your life paying for it. But you can't reach backward and move your hand somewhere else."
Xuehara's fingers tightened around her goblet, and the crystal gave a faint complaint beneath the pressure. "That doesn't mean you speak as though none of it touches you."
"It touches me." Jinx answered too quickly, his gaze dropping toward the bruises still faintly visible around her throat despite the Doll's healing. His mouth tightened before he forced himself to look away. "I can smell them every time the food stops covering it. I close my eyes and I get pieces—someone screaming, teeth breaking, Rodrik's sword inside me, blood in the snow. Half the time I don't know whether I'm remembering what I did or what I wanted to do."
The anger around the table shifted, not leaving but losing some of its certainty.
Jinx rubbed two fingers against his temple, staring at the empty blood vial beside his plate. "That's guilt, I suppose. Grief. Horror. Pick whatever word makes everyone more comfortable. But regret means wishing I could crawl back into the past and become someone who never made the choice. I can't do that. I don't even know whether I would."
Brandon pushed his plate away hard enough that the silver skidded into a bowl of fruit. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he demanded as he leaned across the table, anger bright in his face because anger was easier than admitting how frightened he remained. "You're saying you might do it again?"
Jinx's jaw tightened as Brandon's accusation struck closer than the shouting had. "It's grief. Guilt, probably. I'll know what to call it when I can close my eyes without seeing pieces of people," he said, pressing two fingers against his temple while the first real fracture appeared beneath his composure. "But regret? No. I went beyond the Wall because I wanted Dark Sister, and I found it. Then I found the egg. Everything after that happened because the hunger rose faster than I could understand it, and by the time I realized what was happening, most of me was already gone."
His hand slipped from his temple and settled against the table, fingers curling slowly into the cloth. "If I could stand beside the Milkwater again knowing every corpse that would come after, maybe I'd turn around. Maybe I'd still go into the water. Maybe I'd take the sword and leave the egg where it was, or take the egg and put Dark Sister back, or cut my own throat before the hunger touched anyone else. I don't know." Jinx's voice roughened as his gaze moved across the people around him, refusing to pretend certainty simply because they wanted an answer that sounded cleaner. "That's the ugly part nobody likes admitting. Sometimes you only gain something because you made the choice every sensible person would've avoided. Sometimes the reward is worth what it cost. Sometimes it isn't. Most of the time, you don't know which until there's already blood on the ground."
Greatjon came out of his chair so violently that the carved wood overturned behind him and struck the stone with a crack that sent fish scattering beyond the nearby window. He planted both fists against the table, leaning over it until the candles trembled beneath the force of his movement. "What reward?" he demanded, his grief tearing through the anger in his voice until every word sounded half-roared and half-broken. "Go on, then. I want to hear this. Tell me what grand fucking prize you won by putting Dark Sister through Rodrik's heart."
Arthur shifted slightly in his chair, his attention moving from Greatjon's hands to Jinx's face, while Barristan remained still beside him, recognizing that any attempt to interfere would turn northern grief into another fight.
Jinx did not reach for a joke.
He did not smirk, shrug, or offer the lazy cruelty he normally used when he wanted an angry man to lose control. Instead, he drew the dark bottle closer, poured bloodwine into his goblet, and watched the thick red liquid settle before lifting it to his mouth.
Greatjon's nostrils flared. "Don't sit there drinking while I'm speaking to you."
Jinx drank anyway, though not to mock him. He needed the moment. When he lowered the cup, a narrow line of bloodwine remained upon his lip, and he wiped it away with his thumb before looking directly into Greatjon's furious face. "Dark Sister was part of the reward," he said, the blunt admission making Brandon stiffen beside him. "So was the egg. I wanted one, found both, and hundreds of men paid for something they never chose."
Greatjon's fingers dug harder into the table.
"I'm not going to insult you by pretending I didn't want them," Jinx continued, his voice quiet enough that the Umber lord had to listen rather than shout over him. "I did. I still do. The sword is mine now, and I would be lying if I claimed I wished I'd never found the egg. That's the selfish answer, and it's true."
Xuehara's face tightened, but Jinx did not look away from Greatjon.
"The other reward was time."
Greatjon's expression shifted.
Only slightly.
"What time?" he asked, the question coming out rougher and lower as his fists remained pressed against the wood.
"The time Rodrik bought when he chose to stand at the gate," Jinx said, leaning back against the carved chair as the memory dragged his gaze somewhere far beneath the Wall. "He was the finest man I fought from the Haunted Forest to Castle Black. Not the strongest. Not the fastest. The finest. The others came at me frightened, even the brave ones. Rodrik watched me tear through a gate built against giants, saw what I'd done to the men before him, and still stepped forward as though I was only another bastard who needed stopping."
Greatjon's jaw flexed beneath his beard.
"He cut me open more times than all the others put together," Jinx continued, his fingers closing around the goblet without lifting it. "He broke my face. Opened my thigh to the bone. Put steel through my stomach and beneath my ribs. Every time his body should've failed, he found something else to stand on—anger, duty, spite, I don't know. Probably all three."
A faint, painful sound escaped Greatjon through his nose.
"That sounds like him."
Jinx inclined his head once. "At the end, he knew he was dead. I knew it too. He still kept both hands around a broken sword because he wouldn't let me watch him fall."
The underwater light drifted slowly over Jinx's face as he stared down into the dark wine. "I remember him clearly. Not flashes. Not blood and noise tangled together. I remember every strike. I remember what he said. I remember the way he looked at me when his heart stopped."
Greatjon's voice lowered into something more dangerous than shouting. "And you call that a reward?"
"No." Jinx looked up sharply. "I call what he bought with it a reward."
The distinction stopped Greatjon before his anger could rise again.
"If Rodrik had run, if the Watch had opened the road and scattered when I reached the Wall, I would've followed the largest concentration of life I could feel," Jinx said as his attention moved away from the Umber and settled upon Xuehara, then Eddard, Brandon, and Rickard. The steadiness left his voice piece by piece. "That would've been the road south. The survivors. The relief forces. The villages. Eventually Winterfell."
Xuehara's fingers tightened around her goblet until the crystal creaked.
"Rodrik kept me at Castle Black," Jinx continued. "He and those five hundred men gave the hunger enough bodies to remain there instead of driving me south while I was completely gone. They bought time for the worst of it to burn down. Time for Gehrman to reach me. Time for all of you to arrive after enough of me had returned to recognize my mother and my twin."
His gaze lingered on Eddard before returning to Greatjon.
"The sword and the egg were the things I gained because I made the choice to go beyond the Wall. Rodrik's sacrifice gave that choice one last reward I had no right to expect." Jinx's throat moved as he swallowed. "My family remained alive long enough to find me."
No one spoke.
Greatjon's fists loosened against the table, though his anger remained carved across his face.
"So when I say I don't regret facing him, I don't mean I'm pleased he died," Jinx said, quieter now, the words no longer directed at the whole table. "I mean I won't reduce what he did to meaningless blood just so everyone can hear me say the proper thing. Rodrik saved my family. He may have saved the North. I hate that his life was the price, but I won't pretend there was nothing on the other side of it."
Greatjon stared at him for several heavy breaths. "That doesn't forgive you."
"I know."
"It doesn't settle the blood between us."
"I know that too."
"And finding some ancient sword and a damned egg doesn't make the cost worth it."
Jinx looked toward the moss-covered shell resting within its padded cradle, then back toward Greatjon. "I haven't decided whether it was worth it."
Greatjon's mouth twisted. "You just said sometimes the reward is."
"Sometimes." Jinx's hand tightened faintly around the cup. "I didn't say this was one of those times."
That answer left Greatjon silent longer than defiance would have. He reached down, dragged the fallen chair upright with one hand, and remained standing behind it as though sitting might feel too much like accepting what he had heard.
"Rodrik gets no pretty lies," Greatjon muttered at last, staring at Jinx over the chair's carved back. "No song turning him into some smiling old hero pleased to die so a Stark boy could keep his family."
"He wasn't smiling."
"No. He bloody wouldn't be."
"He'll be remembered as he was," Jinx said. "Angry, stubborn, frightened, and standing anyway."
Greatjon's eyes lowered toward the table. His fingers stayed wrapped around the chair for another moment before he finally sat, the wood groaning beneath his weight while the others gave him the silence to collect whatever remained of his anger.
Jinx's hand closed slowly around the goblet.
"He died standing. Both hands on a broken sword because he wouldn't give me the satisfaction of watching him fall."
Greatjon looked away for the first time.
No one at the table spoke.
Jinx kept his eyes upon him. "I left his body untouched."
"I heard," Greatjon muttered, the words so low that the water beyond the windows almost swallowed them.
"I didn't understand why until I woke." Jinx leaned forward slightly, the looseness leaving his posture as the memory pressed upon him. "The hunger wanted everything else. Flesh, blood, whatever life remained. It went around him. I made it go around him."
Greatjon's head turned back.
Jinx did not look away.
"He'll be remembered," Jinx said. "Not as the man I killed. Not as another Lord Commander whose name gets cut into a beam until the wood rots. Every Hunter sanctuary will carry his story. Every northern hall I can reach will know that when the Wall failed and five hundred men needed someone to stand first, Rodrik Umber stood there and told death it would have to work for him."
Greatjon's breath left heavily through his nose.
"That doesn't forgive you."
"I didn't ask you to."
"It doesn't settle the blood."
"I know."
Greatjon remained standing for several long breaths, chest rising beneath his clothes while his eyes searched Jinx's face for arrogance and found none.
At last, he reached down and pulled the fallen chair upright with one hand.
He did not sit immediately.
"If you turn him into one of your pretty legends," Greatjon muttered as he kept one broad hand upon the chair's back, his voice rougher now than angry, "I'll come back from whatever grave they put me in and beat you to death with the headstone."
Jinx inclined his head. "Then I'll keep it honest."
"Better."
Greatjon lowered himself slowly into the chair. The wood groaned beneath him, but this time he rested his arms upon the table instead of crossing them, his gaze dropping toward the untouched drink at his place.
The silence that followed was heavy, but no longer moments from violence.
Xuehara broke it.
"What happens now?" she asked as she looked toward Jinx, her fingers still trembling faintly around the goblet she had never lifted. "You're coming home. You'll recover at Winterfell, and we'll find a way to manage this properly. No more hiding blood beneath floorboards, no more disappearing into caves, and no more deciding alone that you can handle something because everyone else might be frightened."
Jinx's eyes moved toward Rhaegar.
The Crown Prince noticed and straightened slightly. "Why are you looking at me?"
"Because word's reached your father by now."
Rhaegar's expression tightened.
No one challenged the assumption. Even if no raven carried the complete truth, too many men had passed through the Gift, too many villages had seen death spreading south from the Wall, and too many northern houses had begun raising soldiers. King's Landing would already possess several versions of the story, each less accurate and more dangerous than the last.
"My father will know that something happened," Rhaegar said carefully as his fingers closed around the base of his cup. "Whether he believes any particular account is another question."
"He won't care which account is true." Jinx reached for the bloodwine again and poured until the dark red liquid nearly reached the rim. "He won't care how many men died either. Northerners, Watchmen, free folk—it'll all be mud and numbers to him."
Arthur's gaze flicked toward Rhaegar, but the prince offered no defense.
Jinx raised the goblet without drinking. "He'll hear that I took wounds that should've killed me, ripped apart gates built against giants, drained life out of men, and threw an army around without touching it. He'll hear 'weapon' and stop listening after that."
Rickard's expression hardened immediately. "Aerys will keep his hands away from my son."
"I'm going to let him think he hasn't."
Xuehara moved before anyone else understood the sentence.
She caught Jinx from the side, one arm hooking around his neck while the other seized the back of his head and dragged him against her chest. His goblet slipped from his fingers and struck the table, spilling bloodwine across the pale cloth as she tightened the hold with the furious, terrified strength of a mother who had just spent weeks imagining her child dead.
"You are not going anywhere near that mad bastard," Xuehara hissed into Jinx's ear as he coughed and grabbed at her forearm. "I crossed half the North, walked through a castle filled with men you butchered, watched you wake up looking like death had chewed on you, and you think you're going to hand yourself to Aerys?"
"Mother—" Jinx managed as he wedged two fingers beneath her arm, his face beginning to darken. "This is—very loving—but I need…"
"You need sense."
"Air would help me find some."
Eddard nearly overturned his chair getting to them. He caught Xuehara's wrist and tried to loosen her arm without hurting her, while Brandon came around the other side and grabbed Jinx beneath one shoulder before he slid out of the chair entirely.
"Mother, let him breathe," Eddard said as he pulled at her arm, the urgency in his voice colliding with a laugh he was desperately trying not to release. "You can kill him after he explains."
Rickard rounded the table and caught Xuehara carefully above the elbow. "Ned, that is not helping."
"I'm not killing him," Xuehara snapped as the three men finally loosened her grip enough for Jinx to drag in a breath. "I'm reminding him that somebody already owns this neck."
Jinx coughed into Brandon's shoulder while rubbing his throat. "This family has become far too comfortable strangling me."
"You started it," Brandon said as he helped push their mother back toward her chair, though his mouth twitched despite the anger still visible in his eyes.
"That doesn't make it a tradition."
"It may," Elia murmured as she lifted her cup to hide a faint smile. "Northern customs are difficult for outsiders to follow."
Xuehara leaned forward again.
Jinx raised both hands immediately. "All right. Nobody touches anyone's throat. Can I finish before Mother sends me back to the gods out of concern?"
"You're not letting Aerys use you," Xuehara said as she pointed one trembling finger at him, refusing to settle fully into her chair. "That isn't something you explain until it sounds clever. You take it back."
"I'm not giving him control."
"You said you'd let him think you're his weapon."
"Yes." Jinx straightened the twisted collar of his robe, keeping a careful eye upon his mother's hands. "Thinking he owns me and owning me are very different things."
Rhaegar leaned forward, concern overtaking his earlier curiosity. "My father does not handle humiliation well, Jinx. If he believes you've deceived him—"
"Then he shouldn't find out."
"You say that as though deception becomes safe if spoken calmly."
"I didn't say safe." Jinx reached for the fallen goblet, saw the bloodwine spreading across the cloth, and abandoned it for another. "Aerys wants a weapon. I let him believe he's found one. He'll want displays, threats, perhaps some outlaw dragged out of a hole or a lord frightened badly enough to piss through his silks. Something cruel enough that the court starts whispering whenever my name comes up."
Rickard's eyes narrowed. "And while you perform for him, what exactly does the North receive?"
"Leverage."
The answer came without hesitation.
Jinx reached for the bloodwine bottle, but Xuehara caught it first and slid it beyond his reach. He stared at her for a moment, realized that arguing would likely result in another headlock, and folded his hands on the table instead.
"If Aerys wants access, he pays for it," Jinx said as his attention shifted toward his father. "Better grain prices for northern houses. Crown coin for winter stores. Lower tariffs on food moving through southern ports. Roads repaired. Mills. Glasshouses. Mines. Ships. Whatever you can drag out of the royal treasury while he's too excited about his new monster to notice what he agreed to."
Rickard's expression did not soften, but calculation entered it despite himself.
Rhaegar noticed.
"You would bind your service to concessions," the prince said as his fingertips began tapping softly against the table, thoughts already racing through court factions, royal finances, and the ways Aerys's attention might be manipulated. "My father would never sign such terms where the court could read them."
"He wouldn't need to." Jinx leaned across Xuehara, reaching again for the bottle, only for her to push it farther away with one hand while continuing to glare at him. "Use merchants. Royal purchases at inflated prices. Quiet reductions written into unrelated decrees. Contracts through men he already trusts to steal for him. The court is full of people who know how to hide corruption. We may as well make them useful for once."
Elia rested her chin lightly against her knuckles and studied him. "You planned all this while lying half-dead on a table?"
"Gehrman mentioned the ravens had gone south."
"You were awake for less than an hour," Eddard said as he returned to his chair, though he remained closer to Jinx now in case Xuehara lunged again.
Jinx gave him a tired look. "I was hungry, Ned. I wasn't stupid."
Brandon glanced toward Rickard, practical interest beginning to break through his anger. "If he could secure grain before winter—"
"He could also place himself within reach of a king who burns men because he dislikes the way they look at him," Rickard said, cutting across Brandon without taking his eyes off Jinx. "Whatever coin we gain becomes meaningless if Aerys decides to chain you beneath the Red Keep."
"He won't burn me."
Rhaegar's face tightened. "You cannot possibly know that."
"He might try once," Jinx said with a small, careless shrug.
Xuehara began rising.
Jinx immediately lifted both hands. "That was a joke."
"No, it wasn't."
"It was mostly a joke."
"Jinx."
"Fine. It wasn't."
Xuehara reached across the gap.
Jinx pulled sharply with the Force, and his entire chair slid several feet away from the table, taking him, his plate, and his clean goblet with it. The carved legs scraped across the polished stone while Eddard bowed his head, caught somewhere between horror and laughter.
"You see?" Jinx said from the safer distance as he rearranged the robe around his knees. "This is exactly why I built rooms with space."
"You will come back to this table," Xuehara warned, already shifting her chair as though considering pursuit.
"I can hear you perfectly from here."
Rickard rubbed one hand slowly through his beard, ignoring the strange relocation of his son's chair with the determination of a man refusing to let family chaos derail a useful subject. "You mentioned funding."
Jinx's attention returned to him. "Yes. I need coin for the things I'm building, and none of them are cheap."
"What things?" Rickard asked as the lord in him overtook the father for just a moment, his voice sharpening with the practical interest of someone who had spent years calculating how to keep the North alive through winter.
The word building changed Rhaegar immediately.
His earlier concern remained, but curiosity pushed through it with embarrassing ease. He leaned over the table, violet eyes moving around the enchanted dining hall—the windows holding back an ocean, the self-replenishing feast, the candles that did not shorten, and the hidden mechanisms beneath the sanctuary.
"What have you made?" Rhaegar asked before Elia could stop him, the question escaping too quickly and carrying far more eagerness than a Crown Prince likely intended to show.
Jinx looked between him and Rickard.
His father watched with restrained suspicion, already sorting anything Jinx might reveal into questions of cost, labor, military use, and survival. Rhaegar looked almost feverish with interest, the possibility of unknown knowledge eating through every layer of princely control.
Gehrman lifted his cup and watched the two of them with dry amusement.
The Doll quietly collected the bloodwine from Xuehara's side of the table, walked around behind the chairs, and placed it beside Jinx in his new position.
Jinx glanced up at her, offered a small nod of gratitude, and poured himself another drink while his mother stared at the Doll as though recording the betrayal for later.
"That depends," Jinx said as he picked up the last meat pie from the tray that had followed his chair across the floor, turning it slowly between his fingers. "Father probably wants the answer that keeps people fed. Rhaegar wants the one that keeps him awake for a month drawing diagrams."
"Both," Rickard and Rhaegar said almost together.
Jinx stopped with the pie halfway to his mouth.
Elia closed her eyes.
Xuehara slowly turned from her son toward her husband, disbelief gathering in her face as she realized Rickard's caution had already begun losing ground to interest.
Jinx took a bite of the pie while he studied both men, chewing with deliberate slowness until Rhaegar's fingers started tapping again.
"All right," he said at last, settling deeper into the chair as the Doll began drawing fresh blood into his goblet. "We'll start with the useful one, because Father's less likely to interrupt if he thinks it might save grain. There's a way to heat soil through winter without burning half a forest to do it, but the first version melted the stone beneath the garden, so we'll need to discuss where you intend to test it."Barristan cut in before Jinx could say another word.
The old knight had remained quiet through most of the argument, watching Rickard begin calculating how much grain could be bought with royal favor, watching Rhaegar's curiosity swallow his caution, and watching Jinx speak of deceiving Aerys as though the king were only another merchant to be haggled with. He finally set his cup down, the quiet click of silver against wood carrying farther than it should have through the underwater hall.
"I will not pretend His Grace's mind is what it once was," Barristan said as he sat straighter in the carved chair, one scarred hand resting near the pommel of his sword without touching it. His voice held no pleasure in the admission, only the worn loyalty of a man who had spent too long defending a king from truths no sword could stop. "Nor will I insult Prince Rhaegar by dressing madness in gentler words. But Aerys Targaryen is not a fool, Prince Jinx. Frightened, suspicious, cruel—aye. Increasingly so. Yet none of that has robbed him of every scrap of sense."
Jinx stopped turning the meat pie between his fingers.
Barristan's gaze settled fully upon him. "By the time the accounts from the Wall reach King's Landing, they will have grown worse with every telling. Some will say you command the dead. Others that you devoured five thousand men, split the Wall, or called winter down with a scream. The details will change, but the part that matters will remain. You tore through Castle Black, survived wounds no man survives, and scattered soldiers without laying hands upon them."
The knight paused, jaw tightening before he forced out the rest.
"The king will not see a weapon waiting to be purchased. He will see a threat he cannot sleep beside. If he believes even half of what reaches him, his first thought will be to put you to the sword before you grow stronger."
Rhaegar's expression hardened faintly at hearing his father discussed so plainly, though he offered no denial. Elia watched Barristan instead, recognizing the old knight had not spoken lightly.
Jinx leaned back in the chair he had dragged away from his mother, the meat pie still held loosely between his fingers while he studied Barristan with a seriousness rarely shown to anyone outside his family. "You're right."
The simple agreement surprised nearly everyone.
Barristan's brows lifted slightly.
Jinx took another bite, chewed, then wiped a crumb from his lip with his thumb before continuing. "My only real measure of Aerys comes from Oberyn. Mostly stories from when the betrothal between Elia and Rhaegar was being discussed, along with the things he heard while everyone involved was smiling in public and sharpening knives underneath the table." His gaze moved briefly toward Elia, whose expression showed she knew exactly which stories he meant. "Even then, your king was already slipping. Angry over insults no one else could see, suspicious of every delay, convinced half the court was laughing behind his back."
"He often was not wrong about the laughter," Elia said quietly, her fingers circling the stem of her goblet as old memories tightened her face. "Only about where it came from and what it meant."
"A mad man can still notice when people hate him," Jinx said, nodding once toward her before looking back at Barristan. "That doesn't make him wise. But it does make him dangerous, and you're right—he won't hear the stories from the Wall and immediately start thinking about contracts."
Barristan's shoulders eased by the smallest fraction, though his face remained grave. "Then you understand why approaching him would be folly."
"I understand why approaching him without something he wants more than he fears me would be folly."
Xuehara's hand closed around the arm of her chair.
Jinx noticed and lifted one finger before she could stand again. "I am still outside your reach, Mother. Let me finish."
"You are not nearly far enough away," Xuehara warned, her eyes narrowing while she measured the distance between them and clearly considered whether maternal fury could cross it before magic moved his chair again.
Jinx wisely returned his attention to Barristan. "Aerys will want me dead when he first hears the reports. Then he'll hear Rhaegar personally rode north and remained here after Castle Black fell."
Rhaegar went still.
Jinx looked toward him. "Oberyn told me your father already distrusts you."
The Crown Prince's fingers stopped tapping.
No one at the table needed to ask whether it was true.
Rhaegar lowered his gaze toward his cup, his voice quieter when he answered. "My father has moments when he sees enemies where none exist."
"And moments when he sees them where they do," Jinx said. "By the time you return to King's Landing, he'll have had weeks to sit with the idea that his heir heard about a power in the North and rode out personally to secure it. He won't call that curiosity. He won't call it concern for the realm."
Elia's eyes narrowed as she followed the thought to its end. "He'll call it betrayal."
"Exactly." Jinx pointed the remains of the meat pie toward her before taking another bite. "He'll think Rhaegar came north to put a monster in his own pocket before the king could reach it. That fear will make him want me dead even more, but it will also make him hesitate. Killing me means destroying something his son might have wanted. Keeping me close means stealing it first."
Arthur looked toward Rhaegar, displeasure tightening his face. "His Grace may order you south the moment he hears Prince Jinx has awakened."
"He may order all of us south," Rhaegar said, though his attention remained fixed upon Jinx now. "And once there, my presence would not protect you. It may worsen matters exactly as you say."
"I'm not counting on protection from you," Jinx replied, so matter-of-factly that the words carried no insult. "I'm counting on your father's jealousy doing half my work."
Barristan frowned. "Jealousy may delay the sword. It will not remove it."
"No," Jinx said as he set the half-eaten pie aside and reached for the bloodwine the Doll had returned to him. "That's what the rest of the leverage is for."
Elia leaned forward slightly, curiosity overcoming the caution in her face. "What could you possibly offer that would make a king ignore what you did at the Wall?"
Jinx poured slowly, watching the dark red stream curl inside the goblet.
"The one thing that would let Aerys claim something no living king has ever possessed."
The table quieted.
Even Greatjon looked up from his ale.
Elia's brows drew together. "And what is that?"
Jinx raised the cup, took a measured drink, and answered as though he were suggesting another road be repaired.
"A successful expedition into Old Valyria."
For one heartbeat, no one reacted.
The words were too large, too impossible, to be understood at once.
Then half the table came out of their chairs.
"You bloody idiot," Brandon shouted as his knees struck the table hard enough to overturn his goblet. Wine splashed across the cloth, but he did not notice as he rounded on Jinx with both hands spread in disbelief. "You nearly ate the whole damned Wall and your next thought is Valyria?"
Rickard rose more slowly, which made his fury worse. "No."
Jinx glanced toward him. "That wasn't a question."
"It was not meant to be." Rickard planted both palms on the table, his face hardening into the expression that had silenced northern halls for years. "No son of mine is sailing into a smoking grave because a mad king might find the tale impressive."
Xuehara did not bother with lordly restraint. "Have you lost what little sense the hunger left you?" she demanded as she pushed her chair back, one hand pointing toward Jinx while the other gripped the table to keep herself from crossing it. "Valyria kills armies. It kills dragons. Men sail close enough to see the smoke and come back screaming—when they come back at all—and you are sitting there speaking of an expedition as though you mean to visit a market."
Greatjon rose halfway, slammed his fist back onto the table, and added his voice to the uproar. "The place is cursed, boy. Not cursed the way old women use the word when milk turns sour. Properly cursed. Ships disappear. Stone moves. Men come back with things growing beneath their skin."
"That last account was probably greyscale," Jinx said.
Brandon swung toward him. "That is what you took from all of that?"
"I'm trying to keep the causes separate."
"Sit there making clever little distinctions while Valyria cooks you alive," Brandon snapped, dragging a hand through his hair as he began pacing beside the table. "You always do this. You find the one road every sane man avoids, decide that means it must hide something valuable, and then act surprised when everyone objects."
Eddard had remained seated, though only because his hand was gripping the table hard enough to whiten his knuckles. "Jinx," he said, his voice quieter than Brandon's fury but no less strained, "you've only just survived the Wall. Tell me you're speaking of something years away. Tell me you haven't already planned this."
Jinx's silence answered badly.
Xuehara took one step toward him.
His chair slid another foot away.
"Stop moving away from me."
"You become violent when worried."
"You give me excellent reasons."
The argument spread over itself after that. Rickard demanded to know whether Jinx had ships prepared. Brandon wanted the name of every fool who had agreed to follow him. Xuehara threatened to have every harbor in the North watched. Greatjon began listing three separate stories of men who had sailed near Valyria and returned as corpses, although the third tale involved a pirate whose ship had apparently returned without him and may not have been relevant.
Through it all, Rhaegar remained seated.
At first he stared at Jinx as though the words Old Valyria had reached inside him and seized something ancient. Then his gaze moved from face to face while the northern family shouted over one another, his own questions gathering behind his eyes until even Elia noticed the change.
After several minutes, Rhaegar raised one hand.
No one stopped.
He raised it higher. "Enough."
Brandon continued speaking.
Rhaegar struck his palm against the table.
The sharp crack cut through the overlapping voices with enough authority that even Greatjon paused. The prince rarely used command for its own sake, and the unfamiliar weight in his tone left the room abruptly quieter.
Rhaegar waited until the last muttered curse died, then looked directly toward Jinx.
"What are you talking about?" he asked as he leaned forward, both forearms resting against the table while the usual distant composure left his face. "Not the tale you intend to tell my father. I want the actual plan, and I want to know what other pieces of leverage you believe will keep him from killing you before you can offer it."
Jinx glanced around at his family.
Xuehara's fury had not cooled. Rickard remained standing. Brandon looked ready to climb across the table, while Eddard watched his twin with the expression of someone already preparing to follow him into whatever nightmare came next merely to keep him alive.
Jinx sighed and set his goblet down.
"When Oberyn and I travelled through the Free Cities, we passed closer to Valyria than either of us had planned," he began, leaning his head back against the carved chair while his eyes drifted toward the ocean beyond the windows. "Not close enough to see the inner ruins. Close enough to feel what was coming from them."
Rhaegar's brows drew together. "Feel it how?"
"The Dark." Jinx lifted one hand and turned it slowly, searching for words that would make sense to those who could not sense magic as he did. "Not one spell. Not a curse sitting in one place. The entire region feels soaked in it. The sea, the stone, the air—everything. It's like standing outside a room where ten thousand people are screaming, only the screaming happened centuries ago and never stopped."
Elia's face tightened. "And you wished to go closer?"
"No. Oberyn did."
"That," Elia said as she closed her eyes briefly, "I believe."
"He wanted to see whether the stories were exaggerated. I threatened to throw him overboard if he touched the small boat." Jinx's mouth twitched before the memory sobered him again. "At the time, I knew I couldn't survive the ruins. I thought I might need years before I could even approach the outer islands without the magic getting inside my head."
Barristan watched him carefully. "Yet now you believe otherwise."
"Now I have more options. The first came later, in Yi Ti."
Xuehara's anger shifted enough for recognition to enter it. "At my mother's court."
Jinx nodded. "Oberyn and I met a shadowbinder there. Not one of the painted frauds who darken a room and charge frightened merchants for prophecies. A real one."
Rhaegar's attention sharpened further. "From Asshai?"
"She had lived there. Whether she was born there, I never learned." Jinx rubbed his thumb against the rim of his cup. "Their magic is different from mine, but it touches the same current. Dark emotions, sacrifice, fear, death, the things left behind in places where too much suffering has gathered. Their understanding of the deeper structure was crude—"
Elia lifted one eyebrow. "You told a shadowbinder her knowledge was crude?"
"Not to her face. Oberyn was beside me, and I wanted to survive the evening."
That earned a small, unwilling breath of laughter from Elia before Jinx continued.
"She and the others around her knew one thing I didn't. They knew how to use the magic already present in a place against itself. That is what their shadow work does, at least in part. They don't always create power from nothing. They catch what already exists—fear, darkness, heat, death, whatever the place is full of—and force it into another shape."
Gehrman had gone very still at the far end of the table, listening without interruption.
"They couldn't explain much beyond the methods they used," Jinx said. "Most of it was ritual, old phrases, movements repeated because someone centuries ago learned they worked. They knew the act but not always why it worked. Still, it gave me a foundation. Enough to start thinking about Valyria differently."
Rhaegar's fingers resumed their soft tapping. "Rather than resisting the magic there, you would redirect it."
"Or drain it. Split it. Create paths for it to move around us instead of through us. Maybe bind it into objects built to hold more than a human mind can." Jinx's gaze briefly flicked toward the dragon egg near the fire. "At the time, those were only theories, and I still thought I needed several years before testing any of them."
Rickard followed his glance. "And now you believe the egg changes that."
"It gives me more choices."
"How?" Rickard asked as he looked toward the moss-covered shell with open suspicion. "For all we know, it's stone. A dead thing that has been sitting beneath frozen water since before your grandfather was born."
Jinx stared at him for a moment.
Then he smiled faintly.
"It isn't dead."
The dining hall went silent again, this time without shouting.
Rhaegar's head turned sharply toward the egg.
Elia looked from the shell to Jinx, while Arthur's hand settled against the table as though he expected the thing to move. Greatjon squinted at it with the distrust of a man who had already lost patience with magic, princes, and anything capable of making either more troublesome.
Rickard's expression remained hard. "What proof do you have?"
Jinx leaned forward, resting his forearms upon his knees as he studied the egg from across the room. "Me."
His father frowned.
"The whole time I was gone, there were moments when I knew what I was doing," Jinx said. "Not much. A face here. A name. The feeling of the sword in my hand. Most of it was hunger and noise, but pieces of me stayed awake beneath it."
Eddard did not move, though his gaze settled more intently upon his twin.
"Every time I fed, I should've improved," Jinx continued. "Not morally. Physically. The hunger should've eased. My body drains more than flesh and blood when it feeds—it takes magic too, whatever is inside the person or animal being consumed."
Greatjon's mouth tightened, but he did not interrupt.
"Most of the Watchmen were northerners," Jinx said, glancing briefly toward him. "The North carries more old magic than most Andal lands. Greater potential on average, larger natural reserves, even in men who never learn to touch it. The Andals traded much of that away when their faith turned against magic. They gained other things from the bargain—resistance to certain influences, a stronger separation between themselves and the old currents—but raw power isn't one of them."
Rhaegar leaned closer. "You were consuming men with more magic than ordinary food should contain."
"Yes." Jinx picked up one unopened blood vial, holding it between two fingers while the dark contents caught the candlelight. "Every man I ate gave my body blood, life, and whatever magic he carried. After the first few, the hunger should've dropped. After Castle Black, it should've collapsed completely. I had consumed enough life to remain sated for months."
Xuehara stared at him, horror moving slowly through her face. "But it grew worse."
"Every time." Jinx rolled the vial between his fingertips. "I fed, healed, felt clear for a few breaths, then the emptiness opened wider than before. I thought the hunger itself had changed. That maybe I'd finally gone too far into the Dark and broken something that couldn't be repaired."
His eyes moved toward the egg again.
"But something was taking the power from me as quickly as I consumed it."
Rhaegar followed his gaze.
So did Elia.
Rickard's eyes narrowed as the meaning began to settle. Eddard looked toward the egg, then back at Jinx, while Brandon stopped pacing altogether. Even Greatjon turned in his chair, his broad face tightening as the scattered pieces finally formed the same picture for all of them.
Jinx gave them several breaths to reach it.
"What was beside me from the Milkwater onward?" he asked quietly. "What did I carry everywhere? What did I protect even when I couldn't remember my own name?"
No one answered aloud.
They did not need to.
The dragon egg rested within its bed of furs, black-green moss and pale fungus still clinging to its scaled surface while firelight moved across the narrow ridges of its shell.
Jinx set the blood vial back beside his plate.
"The only reason my hunger became that bad," he said as his gaze remained fixed upon the egg, "is because it was feeding on me."
Xuehara's eyes widened.
Rhaegar looked almost afraid to breathe.
"It wasn't doing it to hurt me," Jinx continued before anyone could mistake his meaning. "At least, I don't think it was. Whatever is inside has been trapped for years—decades, perhaps longer—with barely enough life left to keep from fading completely. Then I came along carrying more Dark power than it had felt in…" He paused, considering the age of the thing. "Gods know how long."
Elia looked toward the shell, compassion and fear mingling uneasily across her face. "It was starving."
"Yes." Jinx's voice softened as he watched the unmoving egg. "And so was I."
Rickard slowly lowered himself back into his chair, though his eyes never left the thing beside the fire.
Jinx reached for his goblet again, his fingers closing around it while the others sat with the realization that Castle Black had not fallen because one hunger had awakened beyond the Wall, but because two starving things had found each other beneath the frozen water and neither had understood what the other was taking.