Robert knew that strangers see nothing but coldness in Ned's long solemn face and disdain in Ned's grey eyes.
But Robert was no stranger. He knew the man better, had known him since Ned was eight, and Robert had come to understand that though Ned could be quite serious he was also just shy and awkward.
Right now was different.
The shell lamps were shining oddly in Robert's eyes. Blurring and bursting glows. Plumes of sweet smoke floated from Jarra's pipe. In the blurred edges of Robert's vision the smoke shimmied with the odd lamp lights, as if lightning had been poured into ale in the bottom of an increasingly putrid barrel.
Robert blinked. He wished he could hold onto something now. Perhaps his hammer. Smash that increasingly putrid barrel.
Barrel? There were no bloody barrels in this room. Were there barrels in Chataya's whorehouse?
Robert blinked again.
Through the glowy smoke, and across the lengths of expensive linen, and through the heavy smell of wine and sweat, Robert could see nothing but coldness in Ned's face.
Robert glanced away before he could see disdain flicker there. An invisible heel tramped on and twisted on his skull. He glowered, and reached down over the side of the bed to fumble for his breeches.
He could feel Jarra scuttling out of the bed, dragging the damp linen blanket with her. "I should tell the madame –"
Ned's voice was brusque. "I have already settled matters with the good woman Chataya. You may leave us."
"M'lord," Jarra murmured respectfully.
Robert turned around, pulling his head into his tunic. He glimpsed the whore's dark head dart out of the room. Before the door closed he also caught the glint of guardsmen's steel in the hallway.
And when Ned closed the door, there was nothing but cold silence.
Robert grabbed his boots and started shoving his feet in them. He needed something cool for his head. Preferably a handful or two of snow from the street. Piss on the barrel. He found his doublet slung over a table, beside an empty jug of Arbor gold.
He had never found Ned's silences to be uncomfortable. Ned was a quiet one even when they had been boys. Almost a calming presence.
"Say something." Robert's voice sounded gruff in his ears.
Ned said, "Lyanna is composing songs in her apartments with her ladies, Your Grace. She is trying layers of voices with Branda Cassel, Lady Jonelle of Cerwyn, and Lady Berena of Rogers. Lady Sybelle of Locke plays the Northern drum for them."
Robert let out a heavy breath through his nose. He swallowed, leaned a heavy hand on the table. The wood creaked. "Ned, I –"
He turned around to face Ned. Cold fury was all Robert saw.
"Your Grace?" Ned said, unfailingly polite yet each word pricked like an icy blade.
"It only happened once," Robert told him. Baldly. He appreciated that the two of them could be upfront with each other. Unadorned words. Open as an aurochs stripped of its skin.
They knew when the other was furious.
"Only this one night," Robert added.
For a long moment Ned said nothing. He stood there by the door with his frost-coloured eyes, his dark hair pulled back from his face. It was already past supper yet his doublet and breeches were still immaculate, the small council brooch gleaming just beneath the vair of his cloak. The brooch was the only thing that could pass for ornament or jewelry on Ned's person.
Master of laws.
Briefly Robert wondered if Ned would propose to ban prostitution. He could imagine it now: Ned methodically eradicating whorehouses, releasing warrants, personally beheading those who would break the new law.
Stannis would be pleased if that happened. Then Ned would do something quietly remarkable and pleasing, and Robert would be once again reminded that Ned was vastly different from Stannis.
Finally Ned said, "For Lyanna's sake I hope this is only an error of judgment, Your Grace."
Robert never got comfortable with Ned calling him that.
When they were boys in the Vale, Robert had only expected to be Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Oh, he had toyed with the idea of abdicating the lordship to stuffy Stannis and just ride around Westeros and Essos, but then he had been betrothed to Lyanna. And he had already promised Ned a place in Storm's End.
"Before I accept," Ned had replied, a boy of eleven, "I want to earn that place in your household." Ned had smiled one of his rare wide smiles. "You're a good friend, Robert."
He and Ned were meant to be by each other's side.
Robert waved away the remnant pipe smoke and shrugged into his doublet. "By the gods I swear it won't happen again. It's only – Ned. You know it's been five years."
Ned glanced away.
Robert adored Lyanna. He loved her wildness, her spirit. He loved how she insisted to train in arms and walked around the Red Keep in breeches more than half the time. He loved how the smallfolk fawned on her, and fawned on them both, their king and queen. He loved how she looked so free whenever she rode her horse, visiting forges and bakeshops and whorehouses and fishing boats. She was everything Ned told in his stories as a boy, and more.
Robert thought he was happy with Lyanna.
He was happy: Lyanna was his lady wife, and he managed to win a crown along the way. The business of ruling might be tedious but he had Jon Arryn and Ned by his side, men Robert respected and trusted and loved, and who had proved to feel the same way for him.
Yet in the five years since Robert had been crowned and wed to Lyanna, the gods had not seen it fit to bless them with heirs. And not for lack of Robert and Lyanna trying.
"You could set me aside," Lyanna had suggested. "I see how you look at other women. I won't mind. I could return to Winterfell."
Robert did mind, though.
When the lights seeped out from the sky and darkness bled through, and the lengthened shadows of the Red Keep grew eerie, Robert found himself fretting about it.
He did not fret, for gods' sake.
But he paced and paced. He would find himself wishing for his destrier, for its hooves to trample on the lengths Robert paced on. He would find a tightening in his chest which he grew to hate. He hated those moments. He'd rather not think about it.
He often reached for his wine cup, just to stop himself from pacing and thinking about it too much. Fighting would settle his restlessness but because he had already won the fighting, Robert let the wine mingle with his blood and settle him.
Robert favoured Arbor gold these days. Sweet as Lyanna's kiss, thick as the flesh on Lyanna's hips.
There was a time when, in the midst of swirling the wine in his cup, his tipsy mind would dip into a dream he'd had for a smattering of nights: of Lyanna. Of blood flowing from between Lyanna's legs. In the dream the blood flowed on and on. In the dream Lyanna did not seem to mind, for she was smiling at the blood. In the dream the flow of blood would then turn into drifts of snow, and still Lyanna kept on smiling.
But it was only a dream. Robert had begun to worry that it might mean Lyanna's barrenness, but it was only a dream. He might merely be exultant at having Lyanna as his queen. She was of the North after all, that land of snow and blood, of weirwoods with blood-red leaves and bone-white trunks.
After all, Robert once dreamed of a house made of basted boar and lemon chicken which he happily devoured in the dream. He just really loved good food.
Only fanciful half-wits put too much fretting on dreams.
Eventually the eerie glow of the Red Keep's lamps and shadows would mellow. Sometimes, deep in the clasp of the humours of wine, Robert would wonder if everything would be vastly easier had Ned been a woman like Lyanna.
Robert ran a hand through his hair, scratched his scalp, and flapped away the remaining smoke from Jarra's pipe. He dug two fingers on the mild twinging on his temple.
At the knock Ned slightly opened the door, keeping Robert out of sight of whoever it was and from the hallway.
"Lord Eddard," a man said. He deposited articles on Ned's arms. "The skin of water boiled clean, and the wash basin."
"My thanks." Ned gave a curt nod. "Clear the street for the king. Tell the Commander of the City Watch to light the lamps after we have passed."
"Should I have a wash, then?" Robert said with a chuckle.
Ned remained frozen-faced. "Best drink all of the water in the skin, Your Grace. It would also be prudent if Your Grace applied the washcloth to Your Grace's face and neck."
Robert sullenly followed Ned's advice. He let himself be escorted out of the whorehouse and down the dim and empty Street of Silk, and into Maegor's Holdfast.
He found Lyanna in her rooms. The singing had finished.
Lyanna was sprawled on the rug whilst she polished her shield. The weirwood on it was beautifully painted, done by the whore Lyanna had inexplicably befriended, the hand-shaped leaves red as blood and the trunk stark-white.
Robert always felt something in him settling into a calm whenever he entered her chambers. Everything in the rooms was boldly Northern: the carved ironwood chairs, the dark oaken bed draped in furs and snow-white sheets, the polished sentinel tables.
The sprawling tapestries of a Northern godswood, its darkness so different from the darkness of scowling storms and raging seas Robert had grown up with. Lyanna's tapestries of the godswood were a darkness full of brooding stillness, of sly skulking shadows.
Lyanna was sat there now, by the thread-woven weirwood, her dark head bent over her shield, and unperturbed by the weirwood's watching sewn eyes.
"Your Grace," Lyanna said, glancing up.
She was putting down her shield to stand so Robert held up a hand.
"No need to trouble yourself, my lady."
He stood there wondering what to say. They were always stiff and formal at the beginning of every conversation, but eventually they would warm enough to call each other's names. Robert thought that it was only due to being newlyweds of five years.
Still he couldn't say that he had just come from a whorehouse.
What Robert settled on saying was, "Would you fancy joining me on a hunt on the morrow, my lady?" Lyanna loved to hunt and often joined him on hunts.
In their first year of marriage Lyanna had told him, "My lady mother loved to hunt as well. She was my lord father's Stark cousin, and they became fond friends and hunted with each other."
What Lyanna said now was, "Your Grace. Brandon is arriving tomorrow."
Damn the gods, it had escaped Robert's mind. "Oh yes, of course. There's to be a feast. Yes."
There was a small smile on Lyanna's lips. "I have arranged a hunt for the week, though. We'll have a bigger party. Won't that be lovely?"
"Very much so," Robert agreed.
He didn't know Brandon Stark much. He had last seen the man five years ago. But the new Lord Stark was of the same age as Robert, seemed personable by what Robert had seen at Harrenhal, and Lyanna was very fond of her brother judging by their frequent correspondence. Perhaps Robert would get along with him.
"Would you like to sit?" Lyanna said.
Robert seated himself on the carved chair by the fire.
Lyanna hastily stood up from the rug and gathered her shield and rag, and sat from across Robert. The cloth of her clean breeches rasped when she crossed her bare ankles.
They smiled lopsidedly at each other.
And then they were silent.
There was the beginning of a twinge in Robert's temple so he couldn't help how the room swam for a bit.
Swam and shifted and blurred to a memory from a year ago, when Robert had been touched by desperation to secure an heir for the throne.
Robert's hand was massive on Lyanna's shoulder, which she turned away.
"I'm rather tired, Robert," said Lyanna. She turned her back on him and started undoing her braids. "I've trained all morning. Then I was with the lance all hours before supper."
"No one said you had to do those things," Robert said, irked.
He followed her further into her bedchamber and put his arms around her. He dwarfed her like he dwarfed almost anyone else, and he always worried that he might crush her.
Lyanna did not turn to face him. Even when Robert thought that his embrace was tender and full of loving desire, her body remained unyielding.
"I love doing those things," Lyanna said in steely tones. "I'd love to be able to defend myself in a siege, for instance."
"You'd be suitably defended, you're the queen," Robert said, and thought, I would defend you. "And of course you can continue training in arms." He nosed her thick tumble of hair, which was so dark it seemed almost black. "Let me take care of you tonight, Lyanna. You only need to lie down and –"
"I said no," Lyanna snapped.
Robert's breath snagged in his throat.
They stood in a long silence.
Lyanna's nightclothes were satin, smooth under his fingers yet the muscles under them were stubborn and tense. Robert longed to crush the satin in his hands and ruck up the skirt, bunch it around her waist. He wanted her to discard it altogether and let him see her tits. He wanted her moaning for him.
Robert thought that she would be round with child by now.
Their wedding night had been magnificent. His blood had been hot with triumph after the rebellion. Lyanna had come to him astonishingly lovely for the bedding swept up in Brandon Stark's arms, made modest only by her rumpled and discarded smallclothes hanging from her fist.
When Robert bedded her for the first time Lyanna's eyes had been open the whole time. The sheets had been clean of blood. It was to be expected, they had told him, for Lyanna often rode a horse.
And throughout the following years she had proved to be hot-blooded as well, especially after a hunt, giving as good as she got, a wild wolf to the bone. She tore at his clothes. She answered filthy kisses with filthier ones. When he had come to her bedchambers she would often asked him to take her from behind, Lyanna meeting every thrust and coming apart with moans and snarling laughter, whilst Robert lost himself in her heady presence.
She never came to initiate things with him, though. Not once in four years.
"Lyanna," Robert began.
Lyanna started to twist away from his embrace. Robert tightened his arms around her. A sudden, inexplicable cold trickled down his spine.
"Lyanna," he said again, "my love. I understand you're tired. I promise to be gentle and considerate –"
"Let me go," she insisted. Her blunt nails started digging in his hands. "Robert, let me go."
He let her dart out of his embrace. There was a snarl on Lyanna's face that made something bang in Robert's chest. He could feel his anger build. She was often tired.
"I am meaning to take my rights," he rumbled, fighting to keep his voice level, "as your husband and king. My lady, I give you my word that I shall take into consideration your tiredness –"
"And I mean it," Lyanna's voice rose over his, "when I said not tonight."
"When did we last made love?" Robert demanded.
"It's only been two weeks, gods."
"It's been ages!"
"Two weeks! You'd think your cock would dry up and fall off if you don't get it wet every hour –"
"Mind your tongue."
"Then I can mind my cunt," Lyanna shouted, her face twisted in anger. "And right now I say nothing goes in it."
"I am the king!" Robert thundered. "I am your lord husband!"
"And I don't fucking care!"
But gods, Robert remembered being besotted by Ned's stories of her wild temper and when he witnessed it when he met her before the war. But it was different in the face of it. Lyanna's anger was no different from a crashing avalanche of snow, and in Robert's banging chest came the rumbles of an answering storm.
"You will hit me?" Lyanna's voice pierced through the rumbles. There was mocking laughter in her voice. "So you will hit me?"
Robert blinked. His breath was harsh in his ears.
When he blinked again he saw his raised hand.
His hand twitched. There was a leaden heaviness in it as he lowered it.
What had come upon him? It wouldn't be kingly to hit his queen. Not Lyanna, not his love. Gods. Ned would be furious. Ned would loathe him.
"Hit me," Lyanna bit out, "and I will gut you. I swear to the old gods, I will gut you."
The little she-wolf, Robert thought with fondness as they stood in the entrance hall of the Throne Room.
It was Ned who had been able to smooth tempers after that row, already a year ago. It was because Robert and Lyanna had such strong tempers, Ned had said. It couldn't be helped if such tempers clashed, Ned had said. And Robert thought that perhaps he and Lyanna were really made for each other.
She was standing beside him now as they waited for the Winterfell party. Lyanna chose not to wear breeches for such a formal occasion. Instead she was clad in a gown of dark grey velvet and white pearl-studded brocade. Her hair was done in Northern braids, and a ring in the shape of a wolf's head gleamed on her finger.
Lyanna was, as always, a vision.
Robert bent towards her a little and murmured, "You look beautiful, my queen."
Lyanna tilted up her head, her lips twitching into a smile. "And you make a dashing figure, my king."
Sounds of hooves came rushing and clattering from the yard.
The assembled party waiting in the hall stirred themselves to alertness once more.
There were Jon Arryn and Ned on Robert's other side, and beyond them stood other members of the small council: Ser Kevan the master of coin, Grand Maester Pycelle, Stannis, and Lord Varys.
Jon Arryn's lady wife Cersei was in the Eyrie, but Lyanna's ladies were all present. All of them were from the North with the exception of Lady Berena whose mother, Lyanna's maternal aunt, had married into House Rogers from the Stormlands.
Ser Barristan was the first through the doors as part of the honour guard Robert had sent to the kingsroad. He bowed to Robert and was just resuming his place amongst his fellow council members when more guards entered.
And then the man who strode in next couldn't possibly be anyone else but Lord Brandon Stark.
Robert loved Ned with all his heart, but it couldn't be denied that beside his brother Ned was plainer of face. Lord Stark was taller than Ned as well, and broader in the shoulders, charm and confidence firmly tucked in his grin even after what must surely be a wearisome journey.
"Your Grace," he said, sweeping into a bow, "I am at your service."
"And I am pleased to see you well, Lord Stark," said Robert.
"Your Grace honours me." Lord Stark's eyes were glinting. "I must add that it does please me, to know that snows here in the south are warm enough to make me remove my favoured furs. That, and perhaps a desire to display my well-fitted doublet."
Robert laughed with those gathered with him. Lyanna's laughter was the brightest.
When Lyanna and Lord Stark flew to each other's arms, laughing wildly, Robert was struck by how much Lyanna looked more like Lord Stark than she looked like Ned. Their dark brown hair were darker than Ned's, so dark the hair was almost black like their dark grey eyes. They both had long handsome faces. They even had the same grin, wild and wolfish, and the same charismatic air. And Robert knew that they were both exceptional riders.
Robert watched them now. Lord Stark had an arm around Lyanna's shoulders whilst his other hand was comfortably on her waist, one of its fingers glinting with the silver of a ring in the likeness of a wolf's head. Lyanna was curved towards him, radiant and laughing.
Robert watched Lord Stark pull in Ned with a laugh, watched as Ned let himself be bundled into a hug of three, a pack of wolves, his solemn face melting into a soft smile for his brother and sister.
And as Robert watched Ned with his siblings he felt a pang in his chest. Robert was their good-brother now, but not really quite one of them. He briefly thought of his brothers by blood. But Stannis was insufferably staid, and Renly was only a boy.
Finally Lord Stark was able to disentangle himself from his siblings and properly greet the assembled court. By now the rest of the Winterfell party had entered the hall.
Lord Stark grinned. "My lady wife Catelyn cannot make the journey. She's not fit to do so. That is because she has just given birth to our second daughter. Our eldest daughter Sansa and my brother Benjen are with her."
Congratulatory murmurs swept through the court. Jon Arryn had an indulgent smile on his old face.
Lord Stark dipped a jaunty nod, then beckoned over two boys from the Winterfell party. They couldn't be more than five, Robert thought as he watched them walk on little legs and stand by each side of Lord Stark.
On the bigger boy with the mop of red hair and blue eyes of the Tullys, Lord Stark said, "My son and heir, Robb." He made a little bow to Robert, adding, "In honour of course to our brave king Robert."
On the other boy with dark hair and eyes so grey they almost seemed black, Lord Stark said, "And my son Brandon."
That was the bastard boy, Robert realised. Who was of the same age as little Robb Stark.
The sheer cheek of Lord Stark to flaunt his bastard boy in court, seven hells. And to name the boy Brandon of all things. The sheer bloody cheek. What did Lady Stark and her father old Lord Tully think of that? Robert wanted to roar with laughter.
Perhaps it was cheek but it became swiftly obvious, as Lord Stark put a hand on the boy's head and as the boy lifted his solemn little face to smile at his father, that it was also pride. Lord Stark was proud to have this bastard boy.
The winter snows the following days were the mildest yet. It had been like that for a few moons, which had prompted Lord Stark to ride south. The day had thus been perfect for the hunt Lyanna had arranged.
Their hunting party was larger indeed, and Lord Stark and his companions proved to be a skilled and merry lot that Ned frequently smiled beside Robert.
"You brother is a good laugh," Robert at one point remarked in a low voice, nudging his horse closer to Ned's.
A little ahead of them, Lord Stark was finishing Lyanna's hilarious hunting verses as one person would finish another's sentences, to the laughter of the rest of the party.
"He's always been." Ned glanced at Robert with a warm sidelong smile. Ned's soft unguarded smiles were rare, as rare as his wide bright ones, that Robert truly treasured them. "He and Lyanna used to be partners in mischief."
After the hunt Lyanna said, peeling off her gloves, "I shall pray in the godswood with Brandon."
Of course Lord Stark did not come to merely hunt boars and drink Arbor and Dornish wine. Robert found himself negotiating with proposed trading with the North. Horses, timbre, cultivating silver, and so on. Robert also found that he didn't mind, not really, because Lord Stark managed with each meeting to be personable and not as terribly dry as the topics.
So caught up in the visit Robert had been that he hadn't had a chance to spend some time with Lyanna, just the two of them.
Besides, Lyanna was preoccupied as well. Every day she prayed in the godswood with Lord Stark, rode outside the Red Keep with Lord Stark, took walks with him or her nephews, and had afternoon tea in the Maidenvault where the guests were staying.
One afternoon Lady Jonelle informed Robert, "The queen has just returned from riding with Lord Stark, Your Grace. Her Grace must be in the Maidenvault by now. Will Your Grace be wanting to wait in the queen's apartments?"
"No," Robert said. "I shall meet her myself."
He was halfway on the walk out of Maegor's Holdfast when he came upon Lyanna.
She was quite alone except for the bastard boy at her hip. Lyanna was drifting aimlessly along the gallery, chattering with the boy.
"And Father let me hold the baby before we left," the boy was saying. Brandon. "They named her Arya. She stopped crying when I held her."
"That's almost like your father and I," came Lyanna's voice, dipped in laughter and softness. "Old Nan used to say that only your father could make me stop squalling. The maids and our lady mother used to be so grateful that your father could settle down for stretches of time when he played with me."
Her arm which was holding up the boy seemed untroubled, and Robert knew that that was due to her passion for the sword and lance.
"And then Robb and I chased each other in the snow," the boy said. "And then Father went to the armory. He saw us. Father chased us both for a bit."
Lyanna laughed. "So you do have many stories."
Little Brandon nodded with some shyness.
"Do you know your letters yet?"
"Maester Luwin. He's teaching me and Robb to read and write."
"Excellent. When you are able you can write letters to me, my little love," Lyanna told the boy. "If you like. Tell me all about your days."
Lyanna was still in her riding gown of midnight blue silks. She had no hat on, and a dark lock of her hair was twirled around little Brandon's fist. The boy's face was bright with something almost worshipful as Lyanna brushed away a tuft of hair from his forehead, the wolf's head starkly gleaming on her finger.
Robert thought he rather understood the boy.
Another thought touched Robert then, seeing Lyanna with tenderness for the boy. Perhaps she was also yearning for a child as much as Robert did.
"Lyanna," called Robert, and strode towards them.
Lyanna turned around to face him. She carefully set down the boy on his feet and took his little hand in hers. When Robert finally drew near them the boy was almost hiding behind Lyanna's stiff silks. Robert watched the boy with mild amusement.
"Robert." Lyanna smiled at him, then said to the boy, "Pay respects to His Grace, Bran."
The rest of the afternoon passed by with Robert and Lyanna grooming their respective weapons in their common sitting room.
Lady Jonelle had lighted the candles to keep away the winter gloom, so Robert could clearly note how radiant Lyanna was. How her spiritedness had something else about it, something warm and frothy, something palpably delighted. Lyanna was delighted.
She missed Winterfell, Robert thought.
"Brandon seems to love the boy well," Robert observed as he tended to the leather on his hammer's handle.
Lyanna glanced up at him, looking quite startled, before smiling back down at her sword. "It's comforting to know. He tells me that Catelyn has not warmed to the child, which is understandable."
Robert grunted sympathetically.
"The little one is quite lonely, I think," Lyanna murmured. "He was telling me in the gallery how his lessons with his maester have now touched the Northern heraldry."
"Ah," Robert said. The boy would have truly understood the name he bore, then. Snow. And with it his place in the family.
Lyanna flipped the oiled leather she was using for her sword. Frost, she had named the wolf-pommelled longsword. "The little one has no mother in Winterfell. But Brandon said he's already seeing to a keep for the boy to hold in Lord Stark's name, with its own lands and incomes."
Was it approval in Lyanna's tone? Robert wondered. Approval of Lord Stark's thoughtfulness and efficiency?
Robert shifted his hold on his war hammer as he shifted in his seat. He couldn't help but think of Mya Stone, his own natural daughter from the Vale. Perhaps if he and Lyanna finally managed to secure heirs for the throne, he could ask her what she thought about bringing Mya to court. If they had heirs perhaps it wouldn't offend her and Ned.
"Brandon best marry the boy to a trueborn Stark cousin," Robert contributed. "A younger daughter. Wasn't he closing on a Northern betrothal for Benjen?"
Lyanna reached for his hand then, which was new and so pleasing that Robert gaped at the sight: Lyanna's smaller fingers, callused and blunt-nailed, over his knuckles.
"That is a really good idea, Robert," Lyanna said with a delighted smile. "I shall tell Brandon that the little one has your blessing."
That night Lyanna was too tired again. Robert knew not to push her, but just as with her hand over his that afternoon, she gave him another pleasing surprise by putting him in her lovely mouth and somehow sucking his soul out from his cock.
Afterwards Robert lay blissfully running his hand through her hair.
Robert thought he was finally finding a balance with Lyanna. They hunted together, and talked about weapons, and inquired about each other's families. Robert rather thought they were becoming friends, a warm thought to have, and it reminded him of growing up with Ned in the Eyrie.
Lyanna was also adored by the smallfolk which she fanned by her frequent riding about the city, and so Robert felt that he ought to do his best to make her proud of him as well.
Robert wanted to show her that he was a thoughtful and efficient king.
He did his best to attend small council meetings, however dry as a prune and dusty as a Silent Sister's tits the meetings were. Robert tried to pay attention in audiences as well, to give his people food and land and happiness. Surely they would love him then, like they loved Lyanna.
During those moments when he succeeded in small tasks of ruling and Lyanna would make toasts in his honour, and Ned would give him a small smile like he had never stopped loving and believing in Robert and was always proud to be his friend, Robert felt like he had done something truly good. Something both magnificent and good. Something he could be utterly proud of, along with winning his crown upon the Trident.
On the night after the Winterfell party departed Lyanna's lips brushed against his ear, her voice hot and low as she said, "Let us have a fuck."
Robert almost tore down the door to the chambers in his haste.
The Seven save him, Robert thought blurrily, but Lyanna was absolutely lovely. His little she-wolf. The gods were smiling down on him, Robert was sure of it.
He latched his mouth on Lyanna's neck, kissing all along her nape with teeth and tongue as she ground back against him and reached behind herself to urgently rub him through his smallclothes. When he found her tits and rubbed his thumbs on her nipples Lyanna favoured him with a little moan and a good firm squeeze.
Robert felt in love with his life.
He felt so alive as he gripped at Lyanna's hips, as Lyanna reached an arm behind her to hook it around his neck whilst he sunk into her, surrounding himself with Lyanna's relentlessly clamping heat. Lyanna's muscles were fluttering and milking him, and Robert had to pause for a moment, harshly breathed against her shoulder as she laughed and clamped and massaged around his cock some more. Then Robert rolled his hips, and gods was this all the seven heavens combined, and reached around her hips to rub her folds in the way she said she liked.
"That's right," Lyanna moaned, and Robert fervently agreed.
It turned out to be right indeed. So very right.
Robert had finally got Lyanna with child.
He wanted to be there for the birth, but this damned fool Greyjoy decided to uselessly flap his useless kraken bits. This greatly annoyed Robert and he took great satisfaction in crushing Greyjoy's little rebellion.
"A son!" Robert roared as the Iron Islands melted with the mists behind them. At the cheers from his haggard men Robert shot out his arm and waved Ned's letter in his hand.
From beside Robert, Lord Stark threw back his shaggy head and laughed.
"Congratulations, Your Grace!" Lord Stark yelled over the din.
His heart was full with victory. In a fit of goodwill Robert slapped Lord Stark on the back. Lord Stark's grin was wolfish and so very like Lyanna's, and he did not slightly lean on Robert's hand like Ned always did. "If you wish to write a letter to Ned and Lyanna, my lord, I am willing to deliver the letter personally."
"Your Grace is generous," Lord Stark said. "But I am not fit to write letters just now. After a rest, perhaps, in Winterfell. May I pass on a message instead?"
"Of course," Robert said. "Tell me."
"If it please Your Grace to tell Ned to take care of himself and Lya, I would be grateful." Salt-streaked spray and chilled wind blew past them, but Robert could still make out the glimmer in Brandon Stark's dark grey eyes. "And that I love her, for Lyanna. I love her. Please tell Lya that her brother Brandon loves her."
"I will," Robert obliged, and slapped Lord Stark on the back again.
Ned's letter was in his own hand. Robert read it again, carefully and rather gingerly holding it with his salt-sprayed fingers, on the way back to his cabin. He didn't want for the letter to grow so damp from the sea.
The babe was a boy, Ned said. Hale and strong of lungs. A little head of dark hair and Lyanna's dark grey eyes.
"I am certain it will warm you to know that Lya is overjoyed," Ned wrote in his steady hand. "She has been singing little songs for your son, and has asked Lady Sybelle to play the drum with the songs."
Robert let out a short laugh at that. Northerners and their drums.
"The babe has not been named yet for we are all awaiting your return. I am eagerly awaiting for your return, Robert, so that I may express my joy in person. Once again, I offer you my congratulations. As ever, your devoted friend, Eddard."
Robert could feel a faint smile on his lips as he surveyed the letter. A few more moments of nothing but the creak of the ship, the spray of the sea, and the low rumble of men, then Robert carefully folded the parchment and tucked it near his breast.
He pulled the jug of Arbor gold towards him in a scrape of metal on wood, and poured himself a cup. Sweet as the victory in Pyke and sweet as the birth of his and Lyanna's son.
On a spare parchment Robert took note of Lord Stark's message to his siblings.
Ned – take care of yourself and of Lyanna.
Lyanna – I love you, thrice.
Robert tucked the piece beside Ned's letter and swigged from his cup.
A name, though. He had a name or two in mind. Steffon, perhaps, after his own brave lord father. Robert rather liked the sound of Edric too, after Eddard, and wouldn't Lyanna and Ned love that?
Robert laughed again. The Arbor gold swished in his cup in rich fruity swirls.
As he drank the last of it Robert began to entertain thoughts of his son. His eldest and heir. His and Lyanna's. His son would have his courage and prowess in battle, and Lyanna's beauty and spirit, and Ned's steadiness and efficiency - Robert knew, and Robert hoped.
fin