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Melisandre turned. Those red eyes, soaked in flame, held a calm that saw through everything.
Stannis slumped on the floor, feeling hollowed out.
Everything that had just happened felt like the most deranged nightmare imaginable.
His wife had "given birth" to a monster. Right in front of him.
A shadow creature wearing his face.
"What... what in the hells was that thing?"
Disgust and fear were twisted together in his voice.
Melisandre looked down at him. No sympathy in her gaze. Only the cool indifference of a divine instrument regarding something mortal.
"That is your will."
"Your sharpest sword. The most powerful weapon the Lord of Light has granted you."
Stannis looked up, his face written through with disbelief.
"What can a shadow do?"
A slow, mysterious smile moved across Melisandre's lips.
"You will know soon enough."
But seeing the confusion still etched on his face, she relented and explained.
"That shadow is a part of you. A manifestation of divine power made flesh."
"It is not illusion. It can wield a weapon. It can kill anyone you wish dead."
Her voice carried a pull to it, low and beguiling.
"It is you."
"It wears your face. It will carry out your most secret executions."
"Ordinary steel cannot wound it. Stone walls cannot stop it."
"It passes through any crack like smoke, appearing before your enemies without a sound."
"No matter the distance."
Stannis's heart lurched hard in his chest.
Pass through walls?
Without a sound?
If she was telling the truth, this was simply... the perfect assassin.
"It will go and kill Renly?"
He struggled to his feet.
"Yes."
Melisandre nodded.
"It will find Renly precisely and drive a dagger of pure darkness through his heart."
"Once the task is done, it will dissolve."
"As if it never existed."
A single-use, absolutely loyal, unstoppable assassin.
Stannis's mind raced.
He thought of Renly's impregnable Storm's End. He thought of those knights who called themselves the Rainbow Guard clustered around his brother. A direct assault would cost him dearly. How dearly, he didn't want to calculate.
But now, all it took was a shadow.
A shiver moved through him, fear and fierce exhilaration wound tight together.
He had made the right choice.
The Lord of Light had truly given him a path to victory.
"Once Renly is dead, his bannermen will have no one to follow."
Stannis began to pace, his expression twisting with excitement into something that almost resembled a snarl.
"They will bend the knee to me, the rightful heir. The entire Stormlands will be mine!"
"And then — Joffrey!"
He stopped dead and fixed Melisandre with burning eyes.
"We create another shadow. Send it to King's Landing. Kill Joffrey!"
He was already impatient for it. Already hungry to see that little madman's end.
Melisandre watched his fervour with an unreadable expression, then slowly shook her head.
"Miracles require payment."
"Joffrey is in the Red Keep, heavily guarded. And..."
She paused.
"There is another force inside King's Landing. One we cannot see through."
"To kill him there, we would need a stronger sacrifice."
"Stronger?" Stannis's brow creased.
"Shireen's life-fire has already been spent."
"We need another sacrifice. One that carries king's blood , and carries it with purer life force."
Melisandre's gaze settled on Stannis.
He followed it. Looked down at himself.
King's blood?
His own blood?
No.
A thought surfaced, and it turned him cold all the way to the bone.
He thought of another person.
Someone who shared his blood. Someone whose life force ran clean and unspent.
Princess Shireen.
His daughter.
That poor child, half her face hardened to stone by greyscale.
"No..."
His voice trembled.
"What are you thinking? What are you—"
Melisandre's face showed nothing. She simply said the name.
"Your daughter. Princess Shireen."
"Her bloodline is pure. Her soul is more devout still."
"She is the most suitable sacrifice we could offer to the Lord of Light. Perfect, even."
"If we sacrifice her, the Lord of Light will grant us a far greater miracle."
"We could summon two shadows. Three."
"One to kill Joffrey. One to kill Tywin Lannister."
"All seven kingdoms would kneel at your feet."
The world cracked open inside Stannis's skull.
Shireen.
She wanted to lay hands on Shireen.
His daughter.
He had already stood and watched his wife become a vessel for birthing a monster. Already watched his child's life-fire drawn out of her.
And now this venomous woman wanted him to sacrifice his daughter with his own hands.
"You're mad!"
The roar tore out of him, compressed and savage.
His face, contorted with rage, looked worse than any devil he could imagine.
"She is my daughter! My daughter!"
"I could never—"
"For the throne, every sacrifice is worth making."
Melisandre cut through his words. Her voice was ice. Utterly empty.
"The Long Night is coming. The White Walkers move south."
"Personal feeling is nothing against the great work of saving the world."
"A girl's life against the future of an entire kingdom , my lord, which matters more?"
"This is the choice before you."
"A true king must learn to give things up."
Choice.
Give things up.
Stannis stared at this woman in front of him, this woman with her mouth full of gods and destinies and great purposes.
He looked at her beautiful face.
He had never seen anything uglier in his life.
He thought of Shireen. That child who looked up at him with a smile even though greyscale had eaten half her face away. That child who held her sketchboard in both arms and read to him in her small, careful voice.
His daughter.
To hell with being king.
To hell with the Iron Throne.
A fury unlike anything he had ever felt before erupted from somewhere deep in his chest and burned every last scrap of reason to ash.
His hand came up.
The crack of the slap was sharp and loud, splitting the silence of the room as his palm connected hard with Melisandre's face.
The room went absolutely still.
A perfect handprint bloomed red across Melisandre's pale cheek.
She did not flinch. She did not show anger or surprise.
She only turned her head, slowly, and looked at him with those red eyes. Calm. Unrattled.
And in that gaze , a thread of disappointment. A thread of pity, the pity of someone who has already seen the ending.
"You dare tell me to sacrifice my daughter?!"
Stannis's finger was in her face, his whole body shaking.
"You venomous witch. Monster."
"Listen to me. Never. Never even think of touching Shireen."
"Never!"
He roared like a lion defending its last living thing.
Melisandre let him rage.
She waited until his voice had scraped itself raw.
"You are still too weak, Stannis."
Her voice was barely above a whisper. It went into him like a blade of cold iron.
"A man who cannot bring himself to give up his own daughter , how could he ever become a true king?"
➤ Next: The Temptation of the Stone Dragon's Awakening
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