A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jon III

In a hot spring cave beneath the earth, Jon breaks one vow to keep a greater one ÔÇö and learns, three times over, that he knows nothing.

The chapter retold

In a hot spring cave beneath the earth north of the Wall, Jon Snow breaks the vow he swore at a heart tree in order to keep the one that matters more ÔÇö the mission that sent him among the wildlings in the first place, and the harder, more human debt he has come to owe Ygritte for teaching him a world the Watch never let him see. Chastity is the vow that breaks; the cover story survives, deepened rather than compromised, and Jon comes up out of the cave a different kind of oathbreaker than the one who went down into it.

Ygritte's refrain that Jon knows nothing gets proven true three separate ways across the chapter ÔÇö about her people, about desire, about what loyalty is actually going to cost him when the wildling army reaches the Wall he has sworn to defend. The chapter is tender and ominous in equal measure: real happiness, on a clock neither of them controls.

This movement: The Bear, the Wall, the Bath

• In Harrenhal's bathhouse Jaime tells Brienne the truth of the Mad King and faints in her arms; later he turns back for her and jumps into a bear pit.
• Jon climbs the Wall with the free folk and breaks from them at Queenscrown, arrows in his leg.
• Dany takes Yunkai by night; the Second Sons change sides for a captain named Daario.
• Sam kills his second impossible thing rumor-wise; the Watch's remnants choose a fat man's courage at Craster's.