'If you've stepped foot outside King's Landing, you've heard the story of the Seven Devils. Some say they're gods, some say they died and were reborn in flame. But some see them for what they are.. a band of lying, thieving whores with little morals...
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Ten years before the storm that birthed Daenerys Targaryen, a different storm raged in the North.
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The handmaiden's silk slippers had fallen off long ago, the twigs and brush of the forest floor shredding the skin of her bare feet as she sprinted through the trees. She'd been running for so long, running until it was no longer air that flowed through her, but an icy hoarfrost coating the insides of her lungs like windowpanes in the dead of winter. Her arms ached and trembled, but she would not dare lose her grip on the small bundle in her arms.
The baby was fair skinned with hair of pale gold, her eyes such a deep blue, they were raging oceans flecked with stars. Take her to the North. There is a village west of Bear Island. Look for the dragon carved above the cottage door, her Queen whimpered in the handmaiden's ear. Her hands shook, slipping with blood and sweat as they laced through her Highness's. No one can see you. Aerys must not know, please Freya. Promise me you'll take her.
Freya would never betray her Queen.
The baby squirmed in her arms and cried softly, exhaustion and hunger washing over the two of them like a deep ocean current, pulling and pulling until there was nothing left. They had to be close, she'd been running for so long. The cold of the North had seeped in days ago, soaking into her very bones.
Though she was still drenched in sweat, the first sign of fever. She couldn't remember the last time she ate.
Finally, the dark canopy of trees thinned, revealing the sparse cottages sprinkled through the woods. In the year before the babe's birth, there was a fire in this village. The hungry flames destroyed everything in their path, licking the earth and reducing the crops to ashes. Every farm home was destroyed, lives were lost, fortunes turned. For everyone except the Dragen house. In the blink of an eye, their family became the wealthiest of their people's, and those few villagers left kept one wary eye on that cottage ever since. The cottage with the dragon carved into the wood of the threshold.
The light of a flame washed over the lowest window, the only light in the moon-lit forest. Freya threw herself onto the steps leading up to the cottage, barely feeling the shards of wood slicing into her feet as she pounded her free fist on the thick oak door.
"Please!" She sobbed, clutching the babe tight against her heaving chest. "Please, help me!"
A wolf howled in the distance, low and lonely, and the sound made her skin crawl.
The ancient carved door flung open, creating a tunnel of flurried snow and biting air that came barreling into the cottage. In the frame of that door stood a tall woman who at first glance looked beautiful, yet when Freya's gaze met hers, she saw nothing but her own fear. A darkness simmered in those eyes.
"Go away, girl," the woman sneered, one hand tipped with nails sharp as daggers on the threshold. "You will find no meal or hearth here for you."
"No, wait!" Freya ignored the jagged splinters that dug into her palm as she slapped her hand against the door, already closing her out. "Please, please you have to help us."
