A Feast For Dragons

Asha

Asha had received the letter a fortnight ago, and after telling her father the news and seeing his indifference, she had crumbled it up and tossed it in the fire and watched it burn. Her brother was dead and there had been nothing she could have done to save him. She had tried, the Drowned God knows she tried, but he was too far gone-he was scared and weak and they had broken his soul and body. There had been nothing she could have done, for he did not wish to be rescued in fear of punishment.

What could she have done? What could she have done differently? Should she have knocked him out and dragged him out of Moat Cailin? If she had, would that have saved her brother?

Asha Greyjoy, daughter of the self proclaimed King of the Iron Islands Balon Greyjoy, had no one anymore. All her brothers were dead and her father was a worthless heap of trash that did not deserve the air he still breathed. There had been a time when she had worshipped the ground her father walked--when she had sought to do everything in her power to make him smile, to make him proud. She had become the son he had lost to the Starks, so when Theon returned Balon Greyjoy could not see him, only a disappointment--because Asha had taken his place.

For nights she had cried alone in her chambers; for nights she had acted out, punching the walls and when she had the chance, the training dummies with her dirk. For nights she had sat on the rooftop of the The Bloody Keep, staring out into the ocean, and wondering how her brother had died. Had he died as Prince Theon of House Greyjoy, or as the lapdog to some sadistic Bolton Bastard?

When the escort arrived, she had them all killed on the spot. The Ironborn protected each other, and these men had belonged to a family that had butchered and murdered their prince. None of the ten escorts survived-three of them were sacrificed to the Drowned God. For another night, Asha sat in the room with her brother's body. The cold of the North had preserved him rather well, and he was only now starting to bloat and rot. She passed a hand through his messy hair and whispered soft words to him.

She missed her brother.

But now he'll know peace.

At dawn, Asha and a couple of her men stood at the shores of Pyke as her uncle started the ceremony. Theon's body had been cleaned with sea water, and dressed to befit a prince, with a crown adorning his head. His bow was placed on his chest, and his body was placed on a boat. All of his things that had remained in Pyke had filled the space around him. "Let Theon of House Greyjoy, your servant, be born again from the sea, as you were. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel."

Asha closed her eyes as she spoke the words that she had memorised as a babe. "What is dead may never die." She said, an echo repeating around her as the men that had accompanied her said the same.

"What is dead may never die, but rise again, harder and stronger." When Aeron Greyjoy finished his words, the boat was pushed out to sea.

Asha grabbed her own bow, dipped the arrow in fire and shot it once the boat was far enough away. She watched as it caught fire-watched as her brother burned and sank into the ocean, returning home at last.