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“I thought you were Azor Ahai,” Melisandre says, eyes swinging from the flames to the ruins to the whole wide world. “I would have been your Nissa Nissa, had the need arisen. I would have given my own heart to ignite the flame that will save the world.”
Stannis is bleeding from above his right eye, the blood black in the shifting light of fire and uncertain moon, and not smiling. Of course he is not smiling - why would he? What is there left to smile about, save his daughter’s survival?
Melisandre traces two fingertips over the hard line of his jaw, his cheekbone cutting the shadows into dark and darker. He is not at all beautiful, her King among pretenders, but he is strong. He has always been stronger than any of these flash-brights, burning hotter and harder than any other man she has known, even when his fires seemed dangerously dim.
“I would do my duty now, my lady,” he says, and there - something that might be a smile, were things not so utterly grim. The shadows have slipped in so far that her flames seem barely enough to waylay them, but even still, her King stands as a beacon of hope. “I have always sought to do my duty, and even the end of the world will not stop that.”
Above them, dancing dragons paint the sky in a fire alien even to Melisandre, showing the encroaching armies of cold and death.
Stannis unbuckles his chest plate while she’s looking around them, and it falls to the ground with a whisper, sinking into the snow. His doublet is stained with sweat and blood both, brown and grey where it ought to be deep gold, and it makes her sad, somehow. Stained and worn down, like his unbending honour, like his very will.
But not his heart. Not his soul. If those were eaten away, she could not use him for this.
His mouth, when she kisses him, is thin and cool, lower lip split and cracked from the cold, but soft - uncharacteristic, and welcome. He is telling her, I bear you no ill will. He is telling her, I am ready.
Daenerys Targaryen is Azor Ahai, her dragons her armies.
Melisandre will be her Lightbringer, a flame to wield against the endless darkness.
Stannis Baratheon, sometimes as cold and hard as the night they must fight against, will be Nissa Nissa, bearing his breast to save the very people he so disdains, because under his unintentional cruelty, behind his brashness and austereness, Stannis Baratheon is a good man.
Melisandre tears apart his already ruined doublet, touches his sinew-and-bone chest with the same careful gentleness she used to touch his face, and smiles.
“My King,” she says, spreading her hand over his skin, liking how much paler than him she is. She has always liked that, the contrast between them, all the contrasts between them.
“My lady,” he says in return, a proprietary edge she has rarely before heard creeping into his voice. “You have served me well.”
“And yet the last service between us,” she says, “will be you serving me.”
His smile in unmistakable now, the smile he usually reserves for his daughter.
“I can only hope to live up to the task,” he says, and the smile remains when she reaches through his skin to the brightness of his soul and seizes his strength.