The Eyrie towered into the clouds, lashed by bitter winds.
A message arrived from the direction of the Bloody Gate on the wings of an exhausted raven, shattering the false jubilation that had only just taken hold.
The Bloody Gate was gone.
Not breached, not burned.
Gone.
A Frost Giant had erased it from the map of Westeros with a single punch.
Then that Wildling army, with its unmatched power, had simply left.
As though they had merely been passing through and demolished an illegal building that happened to be in their way.
In the Moon Door Gardens, the Vale nobles who had been cheering moments earlier for their "certain victory in the duel" now looked like chickens with their necks in a vise.
Every face was deathly pale. Not a sound escaped them.
What exactly did that man named Lynn want?
He clearly possessed the power to crush the entire Vale with ease, yet he had chosen to toy with them, playing this game of a duel.
And they had actually believed him.
They had thought they had found a lifeline.
Little had they known it was merely the tip of a dragon's claw, extended to play with them.
"He... he's humiliating us!"
A young knight flushed crimson, his voice trembling with anger and fear.
"Shut up!"
Ser Grafton cut him off with a furious shout.
The old knight looked just as grim.
But his clouded eyes held a trace of something complicated that no one else could understand.
Humiliation?
No.
If Lynn truly wanted to humiliate them...
He would only have to let that dragon circle above the Eyrie and have that giant stroll through the Mountains of the Moon as though they were his own back garden.
*Their dignity and honor would wear away to nothing under