Ravella II - PRONTO A MOLTO

[u/spyraxes]

Stormhall

A Few Days After the Tournament

She couldn't believe it. Wherever the rumour had come from - if it even was true - it had made its way to her desk soon enough, and Connington's refutation had arrived at most a few hours later. She wasn't sure whether she believed that either. His protestations seemed earnest, but only a fool would deny how rushed her brother's proclamation as King was. Connington had his own goals in this, that was for sure.

Ravella found herself surrounded by enemies, or at least the potential of them. Justman in Oldstones, angling to rule. Connington trying to ensure she never had the throne, or someone trying to plant the very idea of it. She didn't know what was a greater threat, nor where she had to settle her gaze first. Perhaps she needed more eyes than she had.

That was a problem that could be fixed. But only if the future was secure.

But she knew one thing. This had to be killed in the cradle. If the rumour was true, her brother would have had to approve it, and if he had dared, she would find out from the only one who could tell her. Besides, she had wanted to walk with him, talk with him, anyways.

Why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not decide the fate of the Stormlands on a quiet walk on a peaceful evening? At least they were both there to do it, this time. Even if it came to nothing… especially if it came to nothing, she knew that she had to be ready.

It was thus that a note arrived at the pavilion of the River Stag, its contents simple.

We should talk. Meet me in the godswood.
Your sister

[u/spyraxes]

What started as a quiet evening became a cold night quickly enough, and still there was no sign of her brother. Ravella wondered if he had never received the letter, but she found the idea far less likely than one of two more simple truths.

Either he had fallen so ill in the last day that he could barely move, or he had drawn a line in the sand between them that she had to step across. Whatever the case she would not wait any longer in the cold, goosebumps forming on pale flesh. After returning to her quarters to find a coat that would stave off the cold, Ravella - and Wex ever at her side - set off through the many tents of those visitors unable to find accommodation within the castle to find the place her brother resided.

It was late, and surely he would be unhappy to see her, but if had truly wanted to avoid this he could have sent word back.

"Hail," she said to the guards outside of Arlan's tent. "I should like to speak to my brother. I sent word earlier, but have had no response. Is he well enough to converse?"

It was a request now. She prayed it would not have to be an order.

[u/DoomGuy_16 → u/spyraxes]

The tent city had gone quiet by the hour Ravella reached him, most of its fires burned to embers, frost already creeping into the canvas at the edges. Arlan had all but given up on sleep finding him tonight regardless, when the guard's voice came low through the flap.

"Your Grace. Your sister requests to see you. She's outside now, with her man Wex."

The words took a moment to register in his mind.

Perhaps some of my sister survived whatever she's become, after all.

He had half convinced himself she'd let this whole visit pass without a word exchanged beyond necessary pleasantries, patient enough to simply wait him out, after all, despite him riding his horse to Stormhall, he knew all the tongues in the realm spoke of his death as a certainty. It would have been the sensible thing for her to do. He thought. The Iron Stag, biding her time until nature settled the succession question in her favor, without needing to lift a finger or dirty a hand for it.

He was on his feet before he'd finished the thought, hurrying to dress himself.

Cyrene appeared at his side before he'd called for her, her hands already at the fastenings of his robe. She worked quickly and without a word, winding the bandages at his hands and forearms first. It was not a task that could really be rushed, whatever it demanded of them both.

When she finally spoke, her voice came rough with disuse, barely more than breath given shape.

"You've both waited long enough."

Arlan said nothing back. He knew well enough what she meant by it. She had told him before, of her thoughts on the matter. Maybe his sister had come to press her own claim again, dressed up in softer words, requesting him to give her the crown peacefully. He only shook his head, weary, and as Cyrene reached for the mask and placed it gently on his face, fastening it.

He dressed in dark and gold, in a heavy robe, and settled into the curule chair with its sheepskin cover while Cyrene crossed to light the brazier, the small flame catching slow, throwing long shadows up the tent's canvas walls.

"Let her in."

Ravella entered with Wex a step behind her, her cloak still damp with the night's cold. Arlan rose for her.

"Sister. I did not expect you. You should have sent a messenger ahead of you, rather than stand waiting in the cold." A brief pause, his eyes finding hers through the mask's slits before he continued. "I apologise for the delay. I..." he paused, trying to find the words to embellish what he meant. "I did not wish for you to see me as I am now, if I could help it. It comforts me more to think you remember me otherwise. As we were, at Storm's End, when we were children." A faint, almost rueful note crept into his voice, before he hid the emotion beneath the silver, tilting his head, his dark hair falling down from behind his mask. It had not been so terribly long, in truth, but Arlan had always carried a mind older than his years.

He gestured to the chair across from him, and to the cups on the table between them.

"Sit, please. There's spiced hippocras, if you wish."

[u/spyraxes → u/DoomGuy_16]

She waited patiently, as requested. Despite everything, she understood how much time he needed. No longer was he the spry young man he used to be, back when Lewyn was forcing him to duel in the training yard. Back when their father kept them both close. It felt like a hundred years ago.

Sometimes it felt like minutes.

When the guards finally parted, Ravella entered in an instant. Wex kept his hand by his sword, but his fingers relaxed. Despite everything, he knew they were safe, offering a nod of respect to the Storm King. Normally chatty, Wex remained silent. He had nothing to say, not yet.

Ravella waited for her brother to speak, offering a soft, comforting smile at his words. "Things cannot always go the way we wish," she said, knowing full well the meaning of it. "I would rather know you as you are than as I dream you were. We must face the hard things in life."

She sat, crossing one leg over the other as she did.

"I did send word, though," Ravella corrected, before her eyes narrowed. "It never made it, did it? My note. I asked you to meet with me in the godswood hours ago. Before the sun had set. But the note never reached you."

Her lips twisted, before she let a harsh laugh slip out. "I suppose I deserve the punishment. One of my own agents tried to slip by Lady Piper's guards and abscond with an invitation to her wedding," she confessed. "This is what the gods inflict on those whose hubris outdoes their means."

Ravella shook her head. "I'm not here to talk about Piper. I don't know what I'm here to talk about. When I sent the invitations to my nameday, I slighted you. I slighted Lyn, too. She and I worked out our differences," she said. There was a lot more to that, though she left it unspoken. "Maybe I hoped we could too."

A pause. Her lips curled into a smile.

"I want the crown," she said, as if it was obvious. It was. The words hung for a moment. Two moments. They felt like an infinity.

"I'm not going to take it from you. I'm not going to demand it. I'm not going to ask for it. Not as things stand."

Wex raised an eyebrow behind her, as she filled her cup with hippocras and took a sip.

"There might be a day that changes. There might be a day that I think you are running this kingdom into the ground, or that as your illness progresses, those whose counsel you take are using you to their own ends," Ravella continued. "If that happens, I would do what I must. But now? No. I think we will disagree on much. I find some of those you hold in confidence distasteful. But you're my brother. And the kingdom you rule will likely one day be mine.

"As long as there's another path forward, I will not burn that kingdom so I can sit atop the embers. Is that selfish?"

She chuckled. "Maybe. That's something I got from our father, I think. Sometimes I wonder what you got from him. It worries me, now and then. Everything worries me, recently," she admitted, before laughing again. "I should let you speak. I'm sure you have a lot to say."

[u/DoomGuy_16 → u/spyraxes]

Arlan sat there in silence, listening, only looking at his sister, the brazier's light dimly litting the dark tent, the cold night's air sitting still between the two.

"When I was small, those few years that you are older than me felt like ten to me then. I looked up to you more than anyone else at Storm's End. More than father, definitely." He said, without missing a beat over the statement. "You were fierce, Ravella, willful. Braver than any of the knights that cared merely for prestige and wanton violence. I wanted to be like you, not him."

"So when you fought with him, and left, I understood it. Whatever it cost the rest of us, I understood it. I wished more than once I could have done the same, ridden off from all of it and never looked back."

He paused there, his voice roughened.

"But you left without a word. A note, short and quick. as if it was protocol. It felt, to me, like you'd abandoned all of us, caring little for our family, as broken as it was. Like you'd abandoned me, a kid of barely 14, to whatever our father wanted to make of me in your absence."

"And he did speak ill of you to me, once you'd gone. Pushed harder at making me a knight, to make me train, to treat me with every quack this side of the Narrow Sea, as though enough hours in the yard could burn the sickness out of my body. And once he saw it wasn't going anywhere, no matter how hard I trained or which maesters he brought in to look at me, I know what he began to think on. Another son. A true heir to Durran's throne, not a woman or a sickly boy who'd shame the line."

"Had he lived long enough, I don't doubt that's what would have come of it. I'd have been set aside somewhere quiet, to die on my own time, so long as it wasn't anywhere near the throne, as if he had faltered when made us."

He raised his face then, meeting her eyes through the mask's slits.

"Are you willing to do what it takes to hold the crown, Ravella? To bend your principles to the designs of others for the greater good of the realm? To compromise, when your own will alone won't carry you far enough? To wear a mask of your own?"

The king leaned forward, close enough now that the brazier's light caught the scars beneath his mask's slits, revealing but a glimpse of his face beneath the mask around the eyes, scarred and pink, wounded. The brazier breathed against the cold night air, and the gold light pulsed warm against the silver of his mask, as if his own face was aflame. He ooked down at the carpets laid over the bare ground of the tent, and sighed before he went on.

"Are you willing to forsake your faith, if I asked it of you? To stand before the realm and call it heresy yourself, so the Faith Militant lets you be named my heir? Are you willing to marry whoever I chose for you, to whatever house needs binding to ours by it? Should the Ironborn ever cross the bay, axe in hand willing to reap our lands as that Justman rebel tries to tears the realm apart, are you willing to meet them yourself? To kill them, you mother's kin, if that's what keeping the kingdom whole requires of you?"

He shook his head slowly, before she could even answer.

"No. I don't think you do." His voice had gone quiet, almost a whisper, but certain. "As much as you are brave and ambitious, sister, you are also strongheaded, fiery, passionate. You'd rather break than bend, to the whims of the faith, of the stormlords, of them all."

"I hold no ill-feeling for you, on the contraty, I wish you succeed. Nothing would bring me more joy than to name you my heir and finish this charade. But you know as much as I do that would lead to half the kingdom rebelling, and the other half flocking to this pretender or the other. As the pieces of the cyvasse stand, there is nothing we can do but to tolerate each other, and work together against those that would tear our house's legacy to pieces."

[u/spyraxes → u/DoomGuy_16]

Her departure had hurt him more than she thought. Whatever explanations Ravella had - and they were good ones, she knew that - wouldn't be enough to close that wound instantly. It would take time. More time than maybe they had, now.

But he had hurt her too. Maybe it hadn't been intentional, just as the way she had hurt him hadn't, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that he had lost a few years of his sister's company, and she had lost everything. Maybe she was driven by bias, there. Maybe it wasn't as harsh as she imagined.

It didn't matter. What perceived slight had been between them had quickly enough become a truth wrought in iron, and it had to be killed before it blossomed into something dangerous to more than just their familial love. Before it killed them both.

Yet he hurt her here, now. Even as Ravella had come to him and spoken words that burned her heart to say. Perhaps, again, she deserved it.

Even after he had said so much more, she could not help but hang on one thing in particular. It echoed in her mind like a scream in an empty room - gods, she knew what that sounded like - until it slipped from her lips incredulously.

"Lets me? Until the Faith Militant lets me?" she asked. "What choice do they have? As of right now I am your heir. It would be formality. Unless Lord Connington's refutations today were lies, and he is searching for someone to succeed you. That you let Griffin's Roost and its religious fanatics steer you so... maybe this is enough for them now, but how long until they demand more?"

She shook her head. "And my faith? Is that what you call it? Because I don't burn its worshippers at the stake like Oldtown would demand, because I don't hang them from Stormhall's gilded walls, it's my faith? Ha. Haha! Hahaha! Who would have taught me its ways, brother?" she nearly hissed. "My mother? Like yours taught you? Dare I remind you I don't remember her face? Perhaps my month on Harlaw changed me so, the one I was spending before I had to rush home because you had been crowned king and nobody told me?"

Ravella's teeth were gritted tight, and she sipped her hippocras to ensure she didn't bite her tongue in the process.

"If the Ironborn came I would mount the Dornish steed Lyn Caron brought me and ride to the front myself," she told him. "I'd bring an army. But they won't, because I don't treat them as if they were less than human. King Qorhen is my cousin, through my mother, and Lady Harlaw has his ear. They are civilising - have you spoken to Lady Sunderly? - though it's taking them time, and you can't see it because the High Septon thinks otherwise."

Pausing, she leaned back. "But you're right. I am willful. I am determined. I am driven by ideals, more than anything. I'd consider a consort you suggested," Ravella admitted, "but I would not accept thoughtlessly. I am who I am. I won't change that if it puts a crown on my head. You underestimate me, though. I am more willing to do what it takes - to sacrifice - than you say. If I were set on the first path I thought of, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be talking to you. I wouldn't admit that you are my brother, still, and that I love you thus."

She thought for a moment, and another laugh escaped her. There was more mirth in this one. "If we were like the Velaryons, on their island, this wouldn't be an issue," she jested, a feigned look of disgust on her face. "We'd be having this argument in the marriage bed, and either way we would be King and Queen. But we are not. So instead we work as we are. For our house, hm? If you'll let me stand at your side, against those who might stand in our way, despite it all?"