After they had all left, silence returned to the room, leaving only Rhaenys and the steady crackle of the fireplace.
She remained seated on the bed, motionless for a long time, her gaze fixed on the dancing flames. In their orange-red glow, she seemed to see the noisy, crowded city of King's Landing in the south, the cold outline of the Iron Throne, and farther north, the army of pale dead gathering silently on the endless ice fields.
Suddenly, the gaunt, pale figure at the very front of the army of the dead raised his eyes toward her. His pupils, burning with eerie blue ice flames, pierced the swirling snow and fixed directly on Rhaenys.
In an instant, the dancing flames in the fireplace abruptly shrank back. A bone-piercing chill swept through every part of Rhaenys's body, and she instinctively gripped the linen sheets beneath her, her breath catching in her throat.
Then the gaunt figure slowly raised a pale, withered hand and pointed a finger toward Rhaenys from afar. Indistinct, low sounds rose through the howling blizzard. Countless shambling dead stirred their frozen limbs and, following the direction their king indicated, began their slow march south across the eternally frozen ice.
Rhaenys shuddered violently. A dragon's roar startled her out of the vision. The same orange-red firelight still danced before her eyes, and her body was still warm, yet she could not shake the memory of that marrow-deep cold.
She pressed a hand over her wildly pounding heart, her fingertips already slick with cold sweat. Rhaenys could not help wondering what had just happened to her.
*Could that have been the Lord of Light's prophecy in the flames, the kind High Priestess Kinvara had told me about? Will I face that terrifying being in the future? Was he the