Daenerys did not look at him as she spoke, her gaze fixed on the children splashing in the sunlight.
"I do not want them to see me with this face," she said softly.
Brynden turned to her. "What face is that, sister?"
"The face I wear when I speak to a kinslayer," she answered.
Without another word, she turned and walked away from the fountains, her steps as silent as wind through silk. Brynden followed.
She led him through winding arches and sun-dappled paths, past pools of still water and shadowed alcoves of lemon trees, deeper into the gardens. Here, the laughter of children faded behind them, swallowed by rustling leaves and birdsong. The air was cooler beneath the trees, and the sun shone dappled on the stone tiles underfoot.
At last, she stopped beside a low wall that overlooked the sea. The Dornish coast stretched endlessly beyond, blue and gold.
Then she turned to face him, the wind catching strands of her silver-gold hair.
"I should have known it would be you," Daenerys said. "Not Baelor. Not Maekar. Not even Daeron himself. It had to be you. You who spilled their blood."
Brynden did not flinch. "Daemon raised his banner against the Crown."
"You slew him," she said, her voice like cold steel. "And his sons. Young boys. In the heat of battle, with a bow from a thousand paces. Spying, scheming, and killing from the shadows. Is that what you call loyalty now, Bloodraven?"
"I did what I must," he replied. "To defend the House. To defend the realm."
"The realm," she spat the word like venom. "A fine excuse for bastards who kill their kin."
Brynden's voice was as steady as the cliffs behind her. "Would you have had me spare Daemon? Let him win the Redgrass Field and ride to King's Landing to mount Daeron's head on a spike and call it justice?"
"He would have yielded," Daenerys hissed. "If you'd let him. Our brother would have shown him mercy."
"And if Daemon reached the city first?" Brynden asked. "Would he have shown the same to us? Or to Daeron's sons? Would he have spared Baelor's babes, or burned the Tower of the Hand with every loyalist inside? Ask yourself that, Daenerys. Ask it, and answer not with a sister's love, but with a Princess's sense."
Daenerys stepped closer, her lilac eyes blazing.
"You speak of sense. But you know nothing of love. You never loved any of us—not truly. You only loved the idea of duty. You loved the Crown, the throne, the realm. What brother lets his blood spill for politics?"
Brynden's voice dipped, soft as embers. "I did love Daemon. As I loved you. As I loved our brothers, all of them—trueborn or bastard. But when one of them raises a sword against the peace of the realm, I cannot see a brother. I only see a traitor."
She stepped forward again, now mere inches from him.
"Then tell me, Lord Hand," she whispered, "would you see my husband dead too, if Dorne ever rose again for one of Daemon's sons? Would you loose your arrows from a hill while his blood soaked the sand?"
Brynden said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Her hand flew up—open, swift, trembling with rage—but stopped midair, inches from his face.
She held it there a heartbeat longer before lowering it.
"No," she said through clenched teeth. "I would not shame myself before my husband. Nor would I give him cause to wonder why his Princess strikes her guest like a common washerwoman. Even if that guest is her brother."
A silence stretched between them, taut and brittle.
Brynden's lip curled in something like a smile.
"I've had worse," he murmured. "Daeron once struck me harder. After Redgrass. The bruise lasted a fortnight."
Daenerys did not smile.
"Leave, Brynden. Take your red eye and empty socket and your shadows with you. I will not look upon a kinslayer again."
Brynden dipped his head in a low curtsy.
"As you wish, Princess."
The Dornish sun began to dip below the mountains as Lord Brynden Rivers rode from Sunspear, his small retinue trailing behind him. Ser Donnel of Duskendale remained ever close, white cloak fluttering.
But something had changed.
Brynden's black leather eyepatch no longer veiled his left eye. Where once he wore it to hide the wound, he now let the wind and sun touch the empty socket, letting all who dared to look upon him see the cost of war, of loyalty, of blood betrayed and blood defended.
Behind him, the Water Gardens receded into haze and gold.
Ahead, the long road to King's Landing awaited.
And with it, the long shadow of the Blackfyres still lingering across the sea.