Watery Halls. Asha turned the words over and over in her mind until she almost no longer recognized them. That was the resting place the Drowned God, whom the Ironborn worshipped, had promised them.
The elders said that Ironborn who died in battle would drink there, sitting beside their ancestors at long tables. The sea winds would cease, broken ships would need no more repairs, wounds would ache no more, and everything would be more plentiful than in life.
Yet in all her years, she had never felt as keenly as she did now that it was nothing more than a hollow promise, utterly worthless, like foam on the sea that scattered with a gust of wind, without the slightest weight.
Once people died, they were dead. Longships, too, would burn into ash floating on the sea, and a single wave would wash away every trace of what they had once been.
People would sink into the pitch-black depths, deeper and deeper, until the silt below buried them and darkness swallowed them. All that remained were names that had yet to fade from the mouths of the living.
And after tonight, after she too was dead, the sea would still ebb and flow. Their names would grow utterly cold amid the sound of the tides, as though they had never existed.
"Cole." Asha suddenly repeated the name, her voice low and thick with a bitter, salty edge.
She did not raise her voice, as though merely speaking his name had exhausted what little strength she had left. "He was the man I loved most. He had been at my side since I was sixteen."
She paused, her gaze fixed squarely on Viserys's face. Those blue eyes were frighteningly cold, so cold that Viserys almost thought he was looking at one