Zhea POV
Zhea of Asshai stood upon the highest terrace of the Red Temple in Braavos, the night wind whipping her scarlet robes like living flame. The city below was a lacework of canals and torches, but her gaze was fixed westward, across the Narrow Sea, where the Lord of Light's fire showed her visions that would not let her sleep.
She was old—not ancient like some who served the Great Other in shadowed Asshai, nor withered like the tales told of Melisandre of the ruby throat—but old enough that the years had burned away softness. Her copper-bright hair had long since been shorn in the rite of passage; now it hung in a single braid of crimson silk threaded with tiny bells of brass that chimed when R'hllor spoke through the flames. Her skin was pale as milk-glass, marked with the faint ritual scars that every true priestess bore, and her eyes—once the dark of a Lhazareen girl—now glowed with the same ember-red as the sacred fires.
She remembered the boy clearly.
Edric Arryn, barely ten namedays, yet already carrying himself like a man twice his age. He had come to the temple with his lowborn wolves at his heels, curious rather than devout. When she had stepped forward and spoken of the Lord's interest in him, of the shadow that clung to his path and the light that might yet burn it away, he had listened politely, those fierce blue eyes weighing every word. Then he had refused her offer of a priest to travel with him—quietly, firmly, without insult, the way a man refuses a blade he does not yet trust.
She had accepted it then. Many great men spurned the flame until the darkness pressed too close.
But the Lord of Light is not so easily refused.
Night after night the fires showed her the same vision: the boy—no longer a boy, tall and scarred, standing atop a mountain of white stone beneath a blood-red sky. In his hand a sword blazed, not with ordinary fire, but with a cold, clear flame the color of starlight on snow. Around him, shadows writhed and died. And always, always, the great ruby comet streaked overhead like a bleeding wound across the heavens.
Zhea had taken the visions to Benerro, High Priest of R'hllor, whose tattoos of flame crawled across his shaved scalp like living things. The great temple in Volantis was a furnace of incense and chanting, and Benerro had listened in silence as she described what she had seen.
"I do not believe this falcon lord is Azor Ahai reborn," she had said, kneeling before the eternal flame that burned at the temple's heart. "Melisandre already proclaims Stannis Baratheon the Prince That Was Promised, the warrior of dragonstone and shadow. Yet the Lord shows me this boy again and again, with a sword of pale fire."
Benerro's eyes had reflected the sacred blaze. "Melisandre sees what she wishes to see," he said at last, voice like crackling logs. "The Lord of Light has many tools, and not all are princes. Stannis Baratheon may yet break before the Long Night comes. This Edric Arryn rules the mountains where the old blood still sings. The flames have marked him, whether he knows it or not."
He rose, towering in his scarlet robes. "Go to him, Zhea of Asshai. Offer counsel once more. If he refuses again, follow anyway. The Lord has work for him, and therefore for you. The night gathers, and the fire must be carried west."
Now, on the Braavosi terrace, Zhea closed her ember-bright eyes and felt the familiar tug behind them—the pull of destiny, sharp as a hook through the heart.
She had booked passage on a swan ship bound for Gulltown. The captain had taken one look at her robes and the glow in her eyes and asked no questions.
Westward, then.
To the boy who carried a sword of pale fire in the flames.
To the falcon who did not yet know he was chosen.
The bells in her braid chimed softly as she turned from the rail, the wind carrying the scent of distant smoke and coming winter.
R'hllor had spoken.
Zhea would obey.