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Melisandre's words dropped the temperature in the room by several degrees.
Stannis stared at her, those dark, brooding eyes filled with confusion and a fury he was barely holding in check.
"Flames?"
"I have already sacrificed Shireen! What more do you want?!"
He had made the greatest sacrifice he could make. He had given his only son, that poor child, as an offering to her god.
And still this woman was not satisfied.
"That was merely the kindling."
Melisandre shook her head. Her face held sorrowful pity, the kind reserved for mortals too blind to see past their own ignorance.
"Prince Shireen's life-fire was only the candle that lit the miracle."
"The true power , the power to make the flames burn, to transform them into a fire that consumes everything , that comes from you, my lord."
She stepped closer. Her red eyes blazed with a fervor that was almost its own kind of madness.
"I need your life-fire."
"The king's seed."
Stannis went completely still.
The king's seed.
He was no fool. He knew exactly what those words meant.
For the first time, his rigid face cracked , not with anger, but with pure, raw shock. He took a step back without thinking, as if the woman standing before him were something venomous.
"You want me... with you?"
The disgust in his voice was absolute.
He had placed his faith in her sorcery, yes. That was not the same as accepting this.
"No."
Melisandre's expression didn't shift in the slightest.
Her body belonged to the true prince foretold in the Lord of Light's prophecy. Stannis was not that man.
"My king, you misunderstand."
"It is not me with you."
She continued as though she had read the thought before it fully formed in his mind.
"The descent of the miracle requires a vessel. A crucible that can receive the king's fire and nurture it into form."
She turned toward the door, toward the woman standing there , stern-faced, eyes already burning with devotion.
"Queen Selyse. She is devout."
"She is willing, for you and for the Lord of Light, to become that crucible."
"She is willing to conceive for you... the child that will kill all your enemies."
The revelation hit like a physical blow.
Davos, still kneeling on the ground, felt his mind shatter.
Madness.
These people had all lost their minds. To have the queen conceive a , a monster? What kind of vile, twisted ritual was this?
"No! My lord! You cannot do this!"
He scrambled forward on hands and knees and threw his arms around Stannis's legs, holding on with everything he had.
"That is your wife!"
"How can you let her—"
Stannis said nothing.
He only looked down at his own hands , at the knuckles gone white, the veins raised and rigid from the force of his grip.
Selyse.
His wife.
He had never loved her. Their marriage had been a political arrangement, nothing more. But she was still his wife. She was the Lady of House Baratheon. And now he was supposed to stand here and watch her take part in something this obscene.
"For victory."
Selyse's voice carried clearly across the room.
She walked toward him. There was no shame in her face, no hesitation, only the wide, shining ecstasy of someone who believed they were about to touch something divine.
"For the Lord of Light, I will offer everything."
"My body. My soul. All of it belongs to the great flame."
She met his eyes. Whatever had once lived in her gaze, whatever small, private thing they might have shared as husband and wife, was gone now. In its place was the absolute surrender of a true believer.
"Come, Stannis."
"Let us together welcome the descent of the miracle."
Stannis closed his eyes.
He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff with nothing behind him but empty air and a very long fall.
There was no path back.
"Davos."
His voice was slow. Deliberate.
"Get out."
"My lord—"
"Get out."
Stannis's boot caught Davos in the side and sent him skidding across the floor.
This time, Davos didn't get back up.
He sat where he landed, watching the scene unfold before him , this grotesque and terrible thing that no man should ever have to witness , and the tears came without any effort at all, mixing with snot, running freely down his weathered face.
His king. His king had been utterly destroyed by this red-robed witch.
Melisandre nodded, satisfied.
She crossed to the plain, narrow bed in the center of the room and gestured for Selyse to lie down.
Selyse didn't hesitate. She lay back without a word, loosened her own robes without prompting, and spread her legs with the calm composure of someone completing a sacred duty.
Melisandre didn't look at her.
She simply turned and extended her hand toward Stannis.
"Now, my king."
"Infuse your fire into the crucible."
Stannis walked to the bed.
Stiff-limbed. Empty. Like a puppet with the strings cut, moving only because something else required it. He followed Melisandre's direction and completed the ritual , grinding through it, every moment of it a humiliation he would carry for the rest of his life.
There was nothing human in any of it. No warmth. No desire. Only cold, and wrongness, and a darkness that pressed against the skin.
Melisandre stood at the bedside with one hand on Stannis and one hand on Selyse. Her lips moved. The ancient words rose and fell, that incantation he had never been able to understand, rising from somewhere far older than any of them.
An energy that could not be seen was drawn from Stannis's body. It passed through Melisandre's hands and poured into Selyse.
Every candle in the room turned black.
Not snuffed out. Black. Their flames burning wrong, dark instead of bright, casting shadows where there should have been light.
A cold that had nothing to do with temperature settled into every corner of the room.
Davos couldn't watch.
He clawed his way out into the corridor, moving like a man with something terrible at his heels. He pressed himself against the wall beside the door, chest heaving, and after a moment he couldn't stop himself , he looked.
Through the crack in the door, he looked.
Melisandre's chanting had grown faster. More urgent. The words tumbled over each other, breathless and relentless.
On the bed, Selyse had begun to convulse.
Her face was contorted. Her whole body shook. And her belly , her flat, empty belly , was rising. Visibly, undeniably rising, swelling outward at a rate no living thing should be able to manage.
Like a woman nine months gone. Then ten. Then beyond any natural measure.
"No... no..."
Davos was shaking so badly he could barely hold himself upright. His teeth knocked together. His hands found the doorframe and gripped it hard.
What in all the hells was this?
Then Selyse screamed.
It wasn't a human sound. Nothing living should have been able to produce that sound.
And from between her legs, a thick column of black smoke came erupting out , violent and sudden, roiling upward and outward, filling the air above the bed. It twisted. It churned. It writhed in on itself, bending and coiling, and then it began to solidify.
A shape. A human shape.
A shadow. Wearing the face of Stannis Baratheon.
Davos's eyes went so wide they ached. His mouth hung open. His whole face had stopped working.
What was he seeing?
A shadow.
A shadow that had just crawled out of the queen's body.
"A devil," he whispered. Then louder: "It's a devil!"
He genuinely believed his heart had stopped.
Inside the room, Melisandre gazed up at the shape drifting in the air above the bed. A slow, satisfied smile spread across her face.
She raised one finger and pressed it lightly to the shadow's brow.
Her lips moved , fast, precise, quiet. A command being given.
One name repeated in her mind like a drumbeat.
Renly Baratheon.
The shadow seemed to receive it. It turned its head toward her , that face, that impossible borrowed face , and gave a single, small nod.
Then it dissolved into a thin curl of smoke and passed directly through the wall, and was gone.
On the bed, Selyse's belly went flat.
She lay soaked in sweat, trembling, her strength entirely spent , and then she simply stopped moving. Unconscious. She'd gone under like something pulled beneath still water.
Stannis was on the floor.
He hadn't chosen to sit. His legs had simply stopped holding him. He was the color of old ash, every last thing drained out of him, staring at nothing.
Melisandre stepped to where he sat and looked down at him.
"Congratulations, my king."
"Your most powerful warrior has been born."
She turned toward the window, toward the far-off direction of Storm's End. The smile that curved her mouth was not a warm one.
"Go," she said quietly.
"Bring Stannis his victory."
Then she looked back down at the hollow wreck of the man at her feet, and her voice dropped softer still.
"Lord Renly's time has come."
A pause.
"Now — it's Joffrey's turn."
➤ Next: We Still Need a Shadow Assassin
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