The yard of Ashford Castle lay in frost, each stone etched with silvered ice, the air sharp with smoke and wet earth. Bare branches scraped the gray sky like brittle fingers. You crouched near the low wall, knees drawn to your chest, fingers clenched until the skin ached, as though grasping could anchor you to something still alive in the world.

Baelor was gone. Your father. The man whose life had been the measure of justice itself, whose courage had once made the world feel steady. And for what? For a Trial that should never have been. For a cousin monstrous in ambition, for a council blinded by fear and duty. For a choice no one should have been forced to make. He had volunteered to stand beside Ser Duncan, not out of pride, but because he saw the kingdom straying so far from the values he had held sacred. And yet that righteousness had cost him everything.

Ser Duncan appeared at the edge of the yard, large and hesitant, his shadow long across the frost. “Princess…”

You did not look up. The cold gnawed at your fingers, yet it was nothing compared to the fire of grief and anger coiling in your chest. “Go,” you said. “I do not need company.”

He froze, uncertain. “I… I cannot undo this. I cannot bring him back. But I…” His voice faltered under the weight of the day. “…I wanted him to live.”

You laughed, hollow and brittle, the sound slicing the quiet. “You wanted him to live? My father? Do you know what is left of me now? Do you understand the Trial—the Trial that tore him from me?” Your gaze found his, sharp as winter steel. “You, Maekar, for fighting your duty to the crown. Aerion, for suggesting this madness. My father, for standing beside a knight he trusted more than his own blood. And my uncle… for the hand that killed him, however accidental. Tell me—who is to blame?”

Silence answered you, heavy and unyielding. Duncan knelt beside you, careful, deliberate, as if proximity could honor your sorrow without diminishing it. “I know,” he murmured, voice low, “I know that no words can fix this. I can only… remain. Stand by you. Guard you from the edges of this grief, even as it consumes us both.”

You flinched, bitterness spilling over like poison. “Guard me? What can guard me now? My father is gone. Justice is hollow. Honor is meaningless. Nothing you—or any of them—do can pull him back from the void.”

Duncan’s shoulders stiffened, the truth of your words striking him. “I will not leave you,” he said finally, quietly, stubbornly. “Not while this wound is raw. Not while the world has taken him. He… he would have wanted you safe, even if he could not be.”