[Kill The Boy] Chapter 75: Terms of the North (Patreon)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all rights for character, plots and settings belong to GRRM. I have no ownership.

A/N: With this, I can finally go to bed. Hope you enjoy the chapter! :D

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Winterfell, The North

Aemon stood at the foot of the stair and let his heart settle. Below his collarbone, the strange brand throbbed with a sharpness. He had no idea what the symbol meant, but it was permanently burned into his skin. He carried it out of the dark along with the image of Sennar's fading face. He squeezed the jagged piece of the Horn of Winter tight, needing the physical bite of its heat to pull him completely out of the vision. Once his head cleared, he took the first step upward.

The cold came down the stair and reached his skin. It went no farther. Something under his breastbone drank it before it found his bones.

He climbed faster than he had descended. The dark was still dark, but no longer blind. Stone edges showed themselves. Cracks in the wall. Old dust on the steps. The turn of the stair above.

He approached the alcove where his mother rested. Her statue stood a silent guard over her bones. In the past, flickering torchlight had always cast heavy, tragic shadows across her carved face. Tonight, his new sight stripped away the gloom. In the darkness, she looked entirely at peace. A faint smile seemed to touch her lips.

Aemon stopped.

The woman in the abyss. The voice that had told him to let the cold in.

Mother almost came to his tongue.

Instead, he gave her statue a nod instead and climbed on.

He crested the top of the stairs to find Bran waiting. His brother sat unnervingly still in a sprawling winter cloak, the dark steel of Blackfyre laid bare across his knees. Ghost stood up immediately at Aemon's approach, his white coat shining in the dim light. Next to the direwolf sat a folded pile of Stark-black clothing and a new pair of boots.

Bran parted his lips to speak. Whatever greeting he had in mind never made it past his throat. Aemon watched his brother retreat behind his knowing mask. Bran's gaze dropped to the skin beneath Aemon's collarbone.

Bran's gaze felt like a heavy weight pressing directly into the new mark. His brother was searching for answers, but the brand Sennar had left behind was a complete mystery. Bran stared at the unnatural shape beneath Aemon's chest, completely lacking the words to understand the power humming there.

Ghost padded across the landing and shoved his massive head against Aemon. The direwolf sniffed at the brand on his chest for only a second before giving his skin a rough, warm lick. Aemon smiled faintly and buried his hand in the thick white fur behind Ghost's ears.

Bran tilted his head back to take him in. Aemon stood completely bare on the stone steps, gripping nothing but a jagged chunk of bone. A faint smirk broke through the solemn mask of the greenseer.

"The dragon business never comes with trousers, does it."

"Give it time. I might stop bothering with clothes altogether." Aemon flexed his bare toes on the stone. "The cold feels… good now."

“A king choosing to walk nude, now I have seen everything.”

“I thought you do see everything. Shouldn’t you be used to it by now?”

“I see what the trees show me. Not all of it is pleasant.”

Bran offered the clothes forward, though his gaze remained locked on Aemon's chest. Aemon took the black wool with one hand. With the other, he opened his fist to reveal the horn's mouthpiece. Bran instinctively reached out, his cold fingers brushing Aemon's palm as he took the heavy, broken bone.

"His name was Sennar," Aemon said.

Bran's eyes snapped up from the horn. "The Last Hero. The weirwoods only ever showed me a shadow. Just a blank space in the bark."

"He had a face, and he showed me the truth." Aemon stepped into the breeches. "His uncle slaughtered the Amethyst Empress. His own sister. The killer wore a red jewel that drank the fire from her blood."

"Almost."

"Long enough to become what he is now." Aemon said. "Every pyre feeds him. Every child given to the flames. Every prayer whispered over a brazier."

"R'hllor."

"The Lord of Light. So he can be the only light for the darkness he caused. Just so he can call himself a god."

Bran's hands closed tightened "A parasite is all he is."

"And the Empress," Aemon said, pulling the dark tunic over his head. "Your singers are the ones who ruined her. Sennar brought them her corpse. They tried to heal her, but the wound already had his malice in it. Their song closed around the poison."

Bran looked down at the mouthpiece. "… I was told it was not their intent."

"Their intent or not," Aemon reached for his boots. "A monster was born. And our ancestors had to pay the price for it."

"I have seen Brandon weep," Bran said softly. "Never clearly. Who did he lose?"

"Raya," Aemon said. "His sister. Sennar loved her. She died to make the Wall hold."

"All for one man's greed."

Bran turned the mouthpiece over in his fingers, examining the break. "Did you receive anything else? Down there."

The mark Sennar had burned into the skin above his heart carried the distinct, heavy ache of a buried edge. Low at his back, something was pulling the cold of the air into him, swallow by swallow.

"I told you," he said. "The cold has no bite anymore."

Bran's eyes narrowed.

Neither brother moved. The tension finally snapped when a gray blur darted down the steps. Summer bounded onto the landing and nipped playfully at Ghost's ear. Ghost snapped back with his tail wagging, and soon the two massive direwolves were rolling over each other on the cold flagstones. The sudden burst of noise drew both brothers' eyes, pulling them away from the heavy truths they were carrying.

Aemon broke the pause. "You never planned to teach me, did you? You planned to take the burden entirely on yourself."

Bran pressed his lips together. The warmth drained out of his face until only the eerie calm of the greenseer remained.

"I am tired of watching," Bran said.

"You are nine. You are still a child, Bran."

"I was a child before the cave."

Aemon knew that tone. He had heard it in his own voice at Castle Black, before the knives.

"Another wall does not end him," Aemon said. "It only shuts her behind ice again. He remains. He waits. When his strength returns, he wakes her."

"It buys us more time." Bran's voice did not waver. "I am ready to pay the toll to give us a true chance. The same price the next greenseer will pay when the cycle comes round again. I have decided so please do not lecture me about it."

Aemon let the argument drop. He knew exactly what that stubbornness sounded like. He had used the exact same tone at Castle Black, insisting he alone knew the right path right up until his own men put a knife in his chest.

At the top of the stair, where daylight spilled across the stone in a grey wash, a figure appeared. Bark-skin, darker than any human complexion, ridged and rough as old oak. Leaf stood at the entrance, silhouetted against the pale morning. She made no move to come down the stairs.

Leaf spoke from the threshold, her voice dry as old leaves scraping stone.

"We are already a dying race. Our end has been written in the rings of the heart trees for a thousand turns of the seasons." Her dark eyes, deep-set as knots in bark, held no sorrow, only a kind of patient certainty. "With our passing, we will right the first wrong. We have already accepted our fate."

Her people had made the mistake that started the Long Night, and now they stand ready to pay for it with their lives.

Aemon glanced at his brother on the landing, then looked up the dark stairwell to where Leaf stood in the grey morning. He was surrounded by ghosts who were still breathing.

He answered them in the only way he could.

Aemon reached up and covered the mark Sennar had left on his chest. Closing his fingers over the shape, he drew his hand away. A stream of cold, silver fire poured directly out of his chest and flowed seamlessly into his empty grip. In a heartbeat, the light hardened into the undeniable weight of a sword. Aemon kept his grip relaxed and the blade lowered.

The Dawn-fire steel made no sound. The eastern songs would have called it Lightbringer. The Westerosi tales would have called it dragonsteel. Sennar had carried it before either name was sung.

Bran stared at the glowing metal. The baffling mark on Aemon's chest finally made sense. It was not just a scar, but a sheath for a weapon older than the Wall.

Aemon nodded toward the bone in his brother's hands. "There is another way."

A profound relief washed over Bran's face, cracking his solemn mask. They were no longer just building another wall to delay the inevitable.

"He means for us to end it," Bran whispered.

"He does," Aemon agreed, the silver-white light reflecting in his dark eyes. "So tell me how much time I get. When you sound the horn the second time, how long can you wait to sound the third beat."

"A quarter turn of the glass," Bran said, his voice dropping to a murmur. "Maybe a little more. Then the magic shatters."

"A quarter turn will be enough. This is our chance to end this for all future generations. And if I fail…"

Bran looked away. "Then we fall back on the original plan. The Children and I raise another wall and The Long Night gets pushed back."

Bran turned to hold his brother's gaze. "We agree."

Aemon let the blade vanish. It sank back into his chest, the wanting muted but not gone. He asked the next question. "How do we repair the horn?"

Bran looked down at the broken bone. "It was made on the Isle of Faces. The Children used their oldest magic to shape it. But putting it back together requires a massive toll."

"Name the price, and I will pay it."

Bran shifted uncomfortably. "The cost is already paid, by the Riverlands. We only need to gather it. The slaughter at the Twins, the battles on the Trident, the starvation. There is enough death down there to fuel the binding. That is how the magic works. The horn demands blood, and the South have rivers of it."

The sheer scale of the blood magic made Aemon's blood run cold. Tens of thousands of sacrifices. The spell craved the exact same butchery that the red priests worshiped.

He had spent his life believing that a man's life was a price no one should pay for magic. Now he stood in the dark wondering if the sin vanished because the bodies were already rotting in the mud of the Trident. The ease with which he found that excuse terrified him.

Bran held Blackfyre out across his palms, horizontal, offering. Aemon took it, slid the blade vertical to his hip, and buckled it there. The ancestral sword came to rest against his leg, Targaryen steel on Stark wool. Aemon then swung the cloak over his shoulders.

Bran looked toward the grey light above. "Val waits too."

Aemon took the meaning.

"Not long."

Aemon turned and climbed the remaining stairs toward the light. The daylight hit him hard after the crypt's dark. He stepped into the courtyard and stopped, letting his eyes adjust. Winterfell was in motion. The evacuation, the work he had walked through with Wyman the night before, now visibly underway in the morning grey.

Wagons stood three abreast along the inner wall, beds loaded with grain sacks and bundled tools and the bedrolls of families riding south with the column. Ostlers worked the harnesses in the cold, breath rising in plumes. Through the propped gate the column was already forming on the Kingsroad, its carts and riders a slow river moving south. Across the yard near the well, Manderly stood beside a steward with a ledger and directed wagons into their places without raising his voice. He did not look up as Aemon passed. The lords by the granary saw him and turned back to their work. The wagons were the answer.

"Your Grace."

Satin stepped up beside him and pressed a waterskin into his hand. He had a way of moving that was almost too quiet, a remnant of a life spent slipping in and out of lordly bedchambers. He gave Aemon a long, searching look, his gaze lingering on the worn leather of his boots before moving up to his face. Satin cocked his head to the side.

"Less ghost-like today."

Aemon took the skin and drank. The water was cold and plain and he drank longer than he needed to, because the crypt had been dark and the stair had been steep and the body remembered thirst even when the mind was elsewhere. He handed it back.

"Where is Val?"

"Training yard, Your Grace. With the spearwives." Satin's mouth twitched. "And with your sisters."

Aemon paused. Val and the spearwives, fine. Arya made sense too. The wolf-girl went where the steel was. But Sansa. The regent should have been in the great hall on a working morning, managing ledgers, not watching Val correct stances.

"Sansa," Aemon said.

"Last I saw." Satin's expression was carefully void. "Lady Sansa was holding a practice spear. I didn't ask questions."

"Sansa holding a spear? She doesn't fight." It was a fact, like saying water was wet. Sansa stitched. She wore courtesy like armor. "Why would she—"

Sansa with a spear was a question. At least this one could be answered in daylight.

Aemon turned toward the yard.

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Dragonstone

The wind above Blackwater Bay bit at Daenerys's cheeks and tugged tears from her eyes. She rode the current astride Drogon's shoulders, legs clamped against black scales, fingers woven through the ridges at the base of his neck.

Dragonstone loomed over the bay in sharp spikes of black stone. It was the place where her mother had died giving her life while a legendary gale tore at the roofs. She had not known this rock since the night she was bundled onto a ship as a crying infant. Now, she breathed the cold salt air as Aegon had done centuries before, ready to plant her boots on the black sand as a queen ready for war.

Daenerys looked out over the water and saw six of her hulls bobbing beside the Arbor fleet. Aurane Waters's silver and grey whipped in the breeze, perfectly aligned with the burgundy and blue of Redwyne's. Two proud houses were moored in complete peace under one high mast.

A patchwork of rival banners and mismatched tents choked the rocky ground. Stiff grey wool from the Vale pressed tight against faded Crownlands shelters pitched near the sheer drop of the cliffs. The army was still incomplete. Olenna's promised diggers were still on the road. A host of miners from the Mander could only move so fast, leaving a noticeable stretch of bare stone waiting for the Reach to finally arrive and make their camp.

Down in the harbor, Doran's party was navigating the chaos of the docks. Samwell Tarly took up half the gangway, forcing the Dornish guards to carefully maneuver a heavy, canvas-wrapped shape around him. It had to be the Horn. Tyrion's crimson doublet stood out in the press of taller men, with Ser Barristan a half-step behind him, the old knight's white hair catching the pale light.

High above the commotion, Rhaegal shifted his bronze and green bulk along the cliff face, lifting his great head to watch his brother descend from the clouds.

Drogon descended with a deafening roar of wind. When his massive claws slammed into the cliffs above the harbor, the heavy impact traveled straight up Daenerys's legs. Sliding down the curve of his fever-hot shoulder, her boots finally hit the ground, crunching hard against the coarse black stone.

Ser Barristan appeared at her side a moment later. The old knight had hurried up the steep incline from the docks, his white cloak whipping fiercely in the salt wind. He took his rightful place at her right hand, his grip resting easily near his sword hilt as they started toward the fortress. Missandei came with him, smaller in the wind than the white knight and steadier on the black stone.

Aurane Waters intercepted them on the trail leading up to the gates. The young admiral shifted his weight heavily from side to side, his sea legs still adjusting to the unyielding black rock. He skipped the courtly pleasantries entirely, smoothly matching her pace and joining the climb.

"Redwyne's galleys remain in harbor under my command, Your Grace. Four hulls, full crews." His voice was salt-rough and clipped. "I found the Vale and Crownlands men already making camp near the mine shafts. Word from the Arbor men is that Olenna's diggers are still a few days out."

He paused half a stride. "The Painted Table is yours again. I had the ledgers carried there within the hour."

Daenerys looked past the galleys in the harbor to the tents crowding the cliffs. Diggers from the Eyrie and King's Landing were already tearing into the earth. Seeing those disparate banners pitched together on the cold stone removed any lingering doubts about the state of the realm. The Vale and the Crownlands belonged to him completely. He held the entire continent firmly in his grip.

"I will see the throne first," Daenerys said. "Then the Painted Table."

Aurane bowed his head. "As Your Grace commands."

The gates opened onto shadow. A steward trailed behind her at a careful distance. Daenerys passed beneath black stone arches and through corridors that swallowed the afternoon light. Her boots struck floors Viserys had crossed as a small prince, before exile and years of borrowed roofs.

Some chambers still carried the ghost of Stannis Baratheon. A crowned stag was carved above a doorway, and her stomach turned in anger looking at the stag. But the deeper chambers hummed with fresh life. Wooden crates overflowing with dragonglass crowded the stone corridors. Lamps burned bright over trestle tables where overseers from the Vale and the Crownlands tallied the day's yield. Daenerys took in the staggering scale of the work.

The throne room waited beyond doors banded in black iron.

The chamber felt suffocating compared to the vast, sunlit heights of the Great Pyramid in Meereen. Narrow slits choked the daylight down to pale, dusty beams across the floor. Black volcanic rock swallowed the rest of the light. The air carried a heavy mixture of sea salt and stale woodsmoke. At the far end of the hall sat the high seat of her ancestors. A brutal, jagged chair, hacked directly from the island's jagged bones.

Ser Barristan stepped to her side, his voice low enough for her ears alone. "Your Grace. The seat awaits you."

Daenerys drew a slow breath and walked to it.

She refused to rush. She let every footfall ring out against the cold stone, demanding the quiet respect of the room. Ser Barristan stopped at the threshold, leaving her to walk the aisle alone. The men working in the chamber immediately dropped their gazes to the floor as she approached. Daenerys kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead on the dais.

The seat was cold beneath her hand.

Daenerys turned and sat.

The entire chamber fell perfectly quiet.

Then Aurane entered with Marwyn and another elderly maester.

The faint rattle of interlocking metals announced the maester before he stepped fully into the light. He approached with his head bowed and his hands clasped firmly together. He looked ancient enough to have served Robert Baratheon, and perhaps even her own ancestors before the rebellion.

Archmaester Marwyn planted himself at his side.

She looked at the grey chain and felt her jaw tighten. Her father and Rhaegar had allowed the men of the Citadel to whisper in their ears, completely blind to the true danger they posed. She had not forgotten the warning Marwyn gave her at Sunspear. Looking at the old man bowing before her, she saw no wisdom. She saw only a quiet, patient enemy.

"Archmaester. Brief me."

Marwyn shifted the glass candle under his arm. "I asked him many questions. The sort a man close to Ryam's table would know."

"And?"

"He plays the dullard," Marwyn said, grinding his teeth against the red leaf. "He gives nothing but simple words and pretends to be entirely harmless. That can be innocence, or a practiced fool's mask.."

"Which do you suppose this maester wears?"

"If I could prove that with a few questions, Your Grace, the Citadel would have long disappeared."

The elderly maester held his tongue. He had heard Marwyn name the Seneschal's Court aloud. He knew what scale weighed him.

Daenerys looked at the chain, then at the rookery keeper's hands. Ink stained two fingers.

"How many ravens have flown since Lord Waters took the harbor?"

"None, Your Grace," Aurane said. "I set guards on the rookery when my men came ashore."

Daenerys looked at him. "Good."

The old maester lowered his eyes.

"No bird flies from Dragonstone without my leave," Daenerys said. "Archmaester Marwyn will take over the rookery while I am here."

The old man swallowed. "Your Grace, I have served the crown faithfully."

"Then you will have nothing to fear."

A low rumble shook the dust from the rafters. The old maester practically jumped out of his robes, his chin snapping up toward the heavy ceiling in sheer panic.

Aerys stirred in her thoughts with wildfire at his back. The Citadel had poisoned dragons in their eggs. Its ravens had flown through every lord's roof while her house withered.

Daenerys closed her hand on the arm of the stone seat, then let go.

"Send for Lord Tyrion to the Painted Table."

Aurane bowed his head.

"As Your Grace commands."

She rose from the stone seat.

The twisting stone corridor outside the throne room led toward the stairs. Ser Barristan kept close to her shadow, his voice a quiet murmur as he reported on the placement of the Unsullied and the security of the heavy gates. Daenerys let his words wash over her. Her attention had already drifted to a thick wooden door left sitting ajar, drawn by the muffled sound of men arguing in the chamber beyond.

The Painted Table waited, but the castle had one more truth for her. Samwell Tarly's voice came soft through the gap of a half-open door.

"Jon promised," Sam was saying. "Winterfell is held by his brother and sister. Val has him with the spearwives. He will be warm there."

"Being warm is not the same as being full," a woman wept. The thick, wet sound of her crying carried the rough vowels of the Free Folk. "A fire has no milk to give. A hearth cannot hold him when he wakes. I need to know if he takes the breast. I need to know if he screams for me when the sun goes down."

Daenerys stopped with her hand against the wall.

A child made a small sound inside the room.

Sam said something low that she could not catch. The woman answered him with a heavy reply.

"I can't help it, he is my blood, Sam." Her voice cracked on the word. "No matter what Lord Snow says, I cannot help but worry."

Daenerys pushed the door open.

The room was small, a side chamber given over to travelers during the stop. Samwell Tarly sat in the corner, broad and pale, his mouth open on a sentence that died when he saw her. The woman beside him turned without haste. She was young, but her hands were older than her face, knuckles swollen, palms mapped with calluses.

Samwell Tarly went pale and scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair. He fumbled into a deep, wobbling bow that looked as though it might tip him onto his face. "Your Grace," he stammered, his voice jumping an octave. He reached out to pull Gilly up beside him, urging her to show respect, but Daenerys raised a hand to stay them both.

"There is no need for such ceremony," she said softly.

A pale-haired boy sat huddled on the floor against the woman’s hip, his small fingers white from his grip on a crude wooden horse. Daenerys looked at the child and then up at the mother’s tear-stained face. "Your son?"

Gilly’s mouth tightened into a hard, bitter line. "No, Yer Grace. This one is Mance Rayder’s," she whispered.

Daenerys looked at the child, then at Gilly. The woman had spoken of a boy in Winterfell. Yet a boy sat beside her, pale-haired, clutching a wooden horse in both hands.

"… But you have a child with you," Daenerys said.

Sam shut his eyes.

"My own boy is at Winterfell," Gilly said, her voice breaking as she looked at the child on the floor. "Lord Snow took him and gave me this one instead. He told me he had to do it. To save Mance's babe from the red woman and her flames."

Missandei, standing next to her, drew a sharp breath.

Daenerys stepped fully into the room. "Tell me, everything."

Missandei had entered behind her and stopped beside the door.

Sam filled in what the corridor had given her in pieces. The Red Woman. King's blood. The child in Gilly's arms. And her real child in the north.

The fury that rose in Daenerys was quiet and lethal. She had spent her life being traded and used by men, and she recognized the same shadow on Gilly’s face. Jon had stripped this woman of her motherhood by force and then expected her to be grateful for the survival of a prince she never asked to protect. It was a cruel, bloodless choice disguised as a duty.

Ser Barristan's face, usually a mask of composure, had gone slack, the lines around his eyes deepening into gullies of disbelief.

“Burning children,” he said, his voice a low, grating rasp. The words sounded foreign in his mouth, an obscenity from a tongue that had only ever spoken of duty and honor. “How much more depraved can the Red Faith get.”

But the other side of Sam's story stifled the embers of her anger.

The Red Priestess burns children.

Daenerys had heard gods ask for children before. She had heard the old bargain in Mirri Maz Duur's tent, had woken to Rhaego gone from the world before she ever held him. Jon had seen the pyre waiting and moved the child beyond its reach. He had saved Mance Rayder's son. He had done it by making Gilly pay the price.

Both truths stood in the room. Neither bent for the other.

Gilly was young, and already the world had taken one son from her and set another in her lap. Her arms remembered Rhaego as a weight she had never carried waking. There were nights, even now, when she woke with the phantom weight of him and a song in her mouth that had no listener.

The boy shifted his weight, and the wooden horse knocked softly against his knee.

"My son," Gilly said. "My blood. He is at Winterfell. With Val."

"Val?" Daenerys asked.

"A woman of the Free Folk," Sam said. "Dalla's sister. Jon trusted her with the boy and the spearwives."

She looked from the boy to Gilly's face.

"I will send word to Winterfell so that this Val may receive it," Daenerys said. "Your demand will go under my seal. A mother has the right to ask for her son with her own mouth."

Gilly’s expression broke. The hard, bitter lines around her mouth vanished as her eyes finally softened with a sudden, wet light. She took the promise in like a person dying of thirst, her breath hitching in a way that was almost a sob. She looked at Daenerys with a raw, trembling hope that she was almost too afraid to name.

"Thank you," Gilly said, the words coming out small and raspy.

Daenerys nodded her head and left before her own tears of a child lost spilled through.

The corridor led at last toward the Painted Table, but she turned aside before the chamber doors. She went out instead, through a postern that opened onto the cliff above the harbor.

Drogon waited on the open ground below, smoke curling from his nostrils. Farther down, the Dornish party continued its disembarkation. The mixed anchorage held Sunspear and Arbor galleys in uneasy partnership.

Daenerys stood above the harbour with the wind tearing at her braids and turned to Missandei.

"I need a letter written."

Missandei stepped forward at once, the polished wood already held against her chest. "Your Grace."

The door opened before Daenerys could speak again.

Tyrion Lannister entered with the sea still on his cloak and the climb from the harbor in his breath. His mismatched eyes moved first to Daenerys's face, then to Ser Barristan's solemn one. Whatever jest had been waiting behind his teeth died there.

"Your Grace," he said carefully. "I was told I was wanted at the Painted Table."

"You are," Daenerys said. "But first we send a letter."

Tyrion's eyes sharpened. "To whom?"

Daenerys looked to Missandei.

"To Winterfell."

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Winterfell, The North

Winterfell’s yard was a mess of frozen mud and grey ice. Val had been in the yard since the stars faded into the dawn, watching the castle stir with the frantic business of counting wagons and packing crates for the trek south. Above her on the ramparts, the practice banners of the Starks whipped in the freezing wind, their wool snapping like the wings of a trapped bird. She stood with the two Stark girls, her hand resting on the hilt of her bone knife, waiting for the blood to start moving in her veins.

Her thumb traced the rough carvings on the bone knife. Jon had been down in the dark for hours now. He was a Stark, she reminded herself. He will be fine.

She kept her feet moving to stay ahead of her thoughts. If a woman stood still too long, the memories started to bite. The morning air was sharp enough to sting, but she found it a pathetic sort of cold. Beyond the Wall, the frost was a silent killer that took a man's toes before he even knew he was freezing. This air just hissed and complained without any real teeth behind it.

In the open dirt of the practice yard, Val had no equal. Arya possessed a cruel, darting speed, and Sansa held a surprising patience for instruction, but neither could match the wildling woman in a true melee. Tormund never bothered to dispute it. If anyone asked, he only drank his ale and cheered whenever she knocked another squire into the mud.

Val watched the sisters circle her in the mud

She knew the wolf girl could slip a blade into the soft meat of a man's neck before he even knew he was bleeding. Whoever had trained her had taught her to be a shadow in an alleyway. But an open field thick with screaming men demanded an entirely different kind of survival. It required footwork, stamina, and the grinding endurance to keep your boots in the mud when a giant with an axe wanted you on your back.

Sansa’s instincts ran the other way. The south had taught her to survive by going perfectly still. When threatened, she locked her joints and braced for the blow, waiting for the worst to pass. But a chaotic melee was no place for a statue. Val battered their heavy wooden shields until splintered pine covered the yard. She drove them backward through the mud, swinging relentlessly until Arya learned to plant her boots and Sansa finally learned to dodge.

Behind the Stark girls, six spearwives claimed the far end of the yard for their own drills. These were women who had hauled half-starved children over the freezing mountains and left their dead behind in the snow. They needed no lectures on survival. The biting air was filled with the harsh scrape of boiled leather on ice and the heavy, ragged breathing of veterans keeping their blood warm.

Past the working line, in the lee of the wagon-shed, the eldest of the spearwives had the boy.

He was small for three winters. The pelts draped over his shoulders swallowed him completely, leaving only a red-cheeked face staring out over the rim of a clay cup. The old crone knelt in the snow beside him, working a piece of cured venison over her own teeth to break down the tough sinew. When she finally handed it down, the boy took it without a word. He ate it in quiet, deliberate bites, his eyes tracking the movement of the soldiers across the yard.

Pink in the cheeks. Fair hair under the fur cap. Healthy.

Val spared the child a single, assessing look before turning her back.

Val made them run the drill again. Sansa raised the heavy ash shaft across her chest, but she held the butt of the weapon too high, leaving her ribs completely exposed. Arya did not hesitate. The younger girl lunged low and fast, aiming a vicious strike right at the opening. Sansa scrambled backward in the dirt, swinging the spear around in a clumsy panic to block. Val stepped in before someone got their teeth knocked out, physically grabbing Sansa's wrists and shoving her hands lower on the wood to anchor the weapon.

"You carry a weapon as if you are trying impressive a southern lord," Val told her, her tone entirely stripped of pity. "Squeeze it that hard, and the cold will freeze the blood right out of your fingers before the fight even begins. Grip it like you would hold a squirming rabbit. Firm enough to keep it from bolting, but loose enough that you do not crush its neck."

Sansa reset her stance in the mud. This time, she did not strangle the wood. Her leather gloves found a middle ground, gripping the ash shaft firm enough to guide the point but loose enough to absorb a heavy strike.

Val shifted her attention to the younger girl with a flat, unimpressed stare. The younger sister had been showing off since the third round, adding flourishes to her footwork, spinning the spear where a simple pivot would serve.

"You're dancing," Val said. "I brought you out here to fight. A man with an axe will look for your throat when you finish the turn. The flourish only makes it easier to find."

Arya bristled. Her grip tightened on the wood, and for a second Val could see the little assassin gauging the distance to her throat. A softer teacher would have offered encouragement after the previous drills. But praise only made Arya careless. She needed an instructor who was completely unaffected by her temper, someone willing to beat the arrogance out of her before the winter did it first.

Sansa half-smiled at the correction, a flicker that died when she remembered she was in the yard as well.

Val watched the sisters work through the drills in the mud. In a free folk village, the little wolf would have been a hunter, running with the vanguard and coming back soaked in blood. The older sister would have been the one managing the winter stores, deciding who ate and who went hungry when the deep snows hit. They were completely different creatures, yet they shared the same infuriating, unyielding stubbornness.

Arya caught Sansa's spear with a half-twist Sansa did not see, a move so fast it looked like sleight of hand. The shaft turned in Sansa's grip, and the older girl stumbled half a step.

"Reset," Val called. "Again. Sansa, guard high. Arya, stop playing with your food."

Val signaled for the next drill, and the girls readied their heavy ash spears.

Then Jon Snow entered the yard.

Val felt him before she saw him. The rhythm of the practice yard faltered. A spearwife near the armory lowered her weapon, and Arya's gaze snapped suddenly past Sansa's shoulder. Val turned to follow the little wolf's stare. Jon was rounding the stacked supply wagons, taking measured steps towards them. Every woman in the ring had dropped her guard to watch him pass. Val gave a quiet, private snort. He looked every inch a burdened ruler, but she knew perfectly well half the yard had only paused to gawk at a ridiculously pretty face.

She let the round finish.

"Guard," Val said, and Sansa raised the spear. "Hold."

The round closed. Val turned. She crossed the packed snow to where he stood at the rail, her boots crunching a rhythm she knew by heart. She stopped two paces from him.

She stopped two paces from him.

Jon Snow looked past her shoulder. Sansa still had the spear up, though her hands had slipped too high again.

"You put a spear in my sister's hands," Jon said.

"Aye."

"She does not fight."

"She asked for it." Val did not turn. "We both know winter does not care if you have a cock or not."

Sansa's chin lifted as if she heard them talk.

Arya's grin confirmed it.

Val pointed at the younger girl without looking. "Feet still."

Arya's boots stopped scraping.

Jon's eyes moved to the wagon-shed. The boy sat there in his pelts, red-cheeked, both hands around his cup.

"Gilly's son?"

"Aye."

"He looks well."

"He eats. Sleeps. Watches everything. Doesn't cry unless someone tries to wash behind his ears. An easy lad to handle."

Jon let out a breath through his nose.

Val looked at him then.

"What about Dalla's boy?"

"I saw the boy with Sam and Gilly," he said, keeping his voice low. "He is alive and loud enough to prove it. He already has a shock of pale hair coming in."

Dalla's boy lived.

Val let her gaze track past the wooden practice dummies to the small, fur-wrapped shape sitting near the armory wall.

"Good," she said.

The spearwives kept their drills. Arya and Sansa stood with spears in hand. The boy by the wagon-shed drank from his cup.

She turned back to him. "Find what you went lookin' for down there?"

"Yes," His eyes found hers and his dark stare caught hers through the falling snow. Strip away the heavy king's mantle and the whispers of a Targaryen name, and he was still just the same brooding crow from the Wall. "And more."

Val felt a sudden, irritating flutter in her chest. She swallowed it down and kept her expression perfectly blank.

"Val."

"What? And what's with the look?"

"I have been thinking how to say this since I came up out of the dark."

"Then out with it," she told him. She reached out and brushed a handful of wet frost from his fur mantle with a sharp, dismissive motion. "I have work to finish, and you are dripping all over my yard. Say what you came to say."

A breath. "Am I yours."

Val turned her head and looked at him plain.

"Jon Snow."

"Aye."

"You are slow as a kneeler."

"I know. But you have given me no answer."

"You already stole me, Jon Snow. Or Aemon Targaryen. Or whatever name you want to wear. I told you so once. The asking part is for kneelers. We are past that."

The harsh clatter of wood on wood abruptly ceased. Val glanced over her shoulder. Arya had completely abandoned her fighting stance, leaning her weight against her spear as she shamelessly tilted her head to catch the words over the wind. Sansa was trying to be far more subtle, keeping her weapon raised, but her eyes were fixed on the two of them.

The ghost of a weary smile brushed Jon's lips, flickering there for a heartbeat before the biting cold seemed to settle over him once more.

"Then, marry me."

Val let out a short, harsh breath that turned to mist. "The Free Folk have no use for thrones or the people who sit in them," she warned. "I have no love for your titles or your stone walls, and I will never be the quiet, smiling thing your lords expect. I am a spearwife, not a lady, and you will have to get used to the sound of me cursing your southern gods every single morning."

"Aye, I know. I expected as much."

To marry him before the weirwood was to surrender the last of her freedom to a world of stone walls and suffocating courtly manners. Jon Snow was a massive, complicated burden, but he was her burden. She had made her choice the day she let him lead her through the gate at Castle Black. It was too late to turn back now just because the road was turning south.

She stepped in and put her palm flat on his chest. "You're mine."

His breath dropped under her palm. "I am."

Slow fool.

"Aye, Jon Snow." Val held his eyes. "I'll stand with you at the heart tree."

Jon’s shoulders dropped as he finally let go of the breath he had been holding. The crease between his brows softened.

A voice came from the field. "I'll help her adjust."

Val turned her head a fraction. Sansa had lowered her spear all the way.

"Was someone asking you, Lady Stark?"

"The entire yard heard that speech," Sansa said, letting the butt of her spear thump into the mud. "There is no use worrying about southern fashion. We will have your clothes cut for the cold and the saddle, and not a soul will stop us. The maesters can be managed, or sent away entirely if they forget their place. You think those lords will judge you, but they are more afraid of a spearwife than you realize."

Arya found her voice from the field. "At least you picked one that can fight."