BRAN
The sea turned to blood and a castle upon the shore crumbled in the storm. The wolves of the Wolfswood cried out and gorged on horseflesh, black soot on their claws as they scratched and bit through the skins and leathers of the man with the sword. He stared into the yellow eyes of the wolves, small and ragged and starving and fell upon his knees.
Bran opened his eyes.
The bells at the gates were ringing.
A man arrived on foot, in a brown fur and sheepskin cloak, grown ragged against the blistering cold of a winter night. Bran shivered as the wind bit hard at his cheeks. Hodor wheeled Bran's chair, a sturdy but heavy contraption of oak and iron faster into the yard to get a closer look at the man who stood in the frozen mud.
"Please, m'lord, I'm a smith. I can work," he rasped at the point of half a dozen swords, breath misting white in the light of the torches.
"Lord Stark, we have few rooms as it is and even less food," said Alysane Mormont. Bran tugged his cloak closer about his shoulders. The ragged man's face was dirty and along his brow was a smattering of crusted blood. He had no horse and no food. Beneath his matted hair, in dark and hungry sockets, his storm blue eyes burned.
He was not the first to come through the gates like this, and would not be the last. The urchins and the ragged mothers with their children begged with red rimmed eyes, watery with hunger. Ned Stark would not have let his own people be left to waste away. A man could not be the warden of graves and bones.
"Put your swords down," commanded Bran, wary but resolute. A gust of wind blew true and cold through the yard. Bran's eyes watered and the torches roared and sputtered. "We can find him a room somewhere. If it has to be the stables, then it must be so."
One by one, the swords lowered. Bran could see the whites of the smith's eyes, wary, terrified. Alysane came to him with an open hand. The smith stumbled backwards and nearly fell, but she hoisted the strange man's arm about her shoulders with ease.
"Come on boy, we can find you a warm bed of hay, at least."
"What is this?" a clear voice called. Bran turned his head and saw Sansa step through the archway. Her hair was in a single plait, a gleaming rope of copper against her thick ermine cloak.
"It seems a traveler, my lady," said Alysane, bowing her head.
Sansa was followed by the Maid of Tarth, hastily clad in boiled leather, who inspected the traveler without taking her hand off the hilt of her sword. Her eyes met Sansa's, and Sansa nodded. Bran was not privy to what had come to pass.
"It's the middle of the night, Bran. You should be resting," said Sansa, coming close enough to flood the man's battered face in light from the torch in her hand. The wounds were worse in sharp relief. He was bruised, bloody, and gaunt. Like Bran's dream.
"He came," said Bran to Sansa, who looked to him sharply. "I dreamt it."
"You have only come home and should be resting." Her mouth was a grim line.
"My lord, perhaps it would be best if you went inside, the chill is bitter," said Lady Alysane.
"Then we will all come inside," said Bran firmly. Sansa had never felt real cold. She'd never been North of the Wall.
"I'll have someone find a room, my lord," said Brienne, "You can manage with him, Alysane?"
"He's heavy for a starving lad, perhaps you should take him."
Brienne did, easily trading the smith's arm from Alysane's shoulder to own, which was taller and broader.
"Do you have a name for us to call you by?" Sansa asked politely. The man, gripping Brienne's cloak, gave a weak cough and lifted his head to look at her.
"Gendry, m'lady," he said, confused.
"We ought to get out of the cold, Gendry," said Sansa. "All of us." She let Alysane lead the way, and Brienne followed with Gendry leaning heavily on his shoulders.
"Come on, Hodor," said Bran to the stable boy, "Follow Sansa."
"Hodor," said Hodor.
Alysane Mormont was with Maester Samwell when Bran reached the servant's quarters deep within the main keep, far behind the others, who were uncrippled and had no need of a chair.
"It's no bigger than a cupboard, but it's the only lone room we have left. I'll be leaving you; my youngest is running a fever."
"Maester Samwell will see your boy when is done here," Sansa smiled gently, and Lady Alysane bowed.
"Lady Alysane, Calon locked the gates already," said the serving boy.
"You tell Jacks and Quent they need the good gloves for the watch tonight on top of the wool ones. Wool ones inside, no matter how hard those boys think it is to hold a sword. Shadd lost three fingers last week."
Alysane Mormont left them at the door of the empty room. The quarters were small and sparse, with a single cot pushed against the wall, at its foot a pine bench, and a rickety chair by the door, but warmer by far than the stables. No more than ten paces in either direction, the room was kept warm by the faint halo of heat from the walls and the brazier in the corner of the room.
Bran reached out for a moment and touched the wall, glad the stone still pulsed with warmth and gladder still the walls of Winterfell still stood. There had been a time when the halls were filled with the echoes of laughter, but upon Bran's return they were nothing but a ruin with snow falling through the eaves and dusting the burnt remains of beds and tables, beautiful bookcases and desks as if they were nothing more than the charred bones of another life, another Winterfell. The rebuilt stone where the walls had caved in were warm, but ghosts lived there.
"Come on, Gendry, we need to get you out of those wet clothes before chill gets into your bones," said Sam, helping Brienne hold him steady upon the bench.
"S'not so bad, m'lord," he mumbled in return, and winced as his cloak was unbuckled and fell heavily to the side. Small, with skinny arms, the boy was nonetheless strong. He dragged Gendry's muddy cloak from the thin rushes without even turning his nose up at the blood. Even Sam, hardened by the Wall and trained by the Citadel, would have hesitated.
"Fetch broth and warm wine, and my supplies for treating wounds," ordered Sam, and the boy skittered away. Gendry flinched often as Sam and Brienne toiled to remove his soiled and tattered outer clothing, but he furrowed his brow and sat through the pain, glassy-eyed and tired.
"I've no need of a featherbed, m'lord," he mumbled, leaning heavily on the fat maester as he was settled on the bed, sitting against a few pillows. He looked larger than he had leaning on the Maid of Tarth, or limping towards the gate.
Sansa stood behind Bran, her hand resting on Bran's shoulder. Sam fed the man and made sure he took only measured bites and sips. He was more compliant as his lips began to lose their bluish tinge, but he fussed as Sam tried to sink his weary feet into a pail of warm water.
"Do you want to keep your toes, or not?" the maester said.
The smith glared as Sam shoved the soup spoon in his mouth, equal irritation in his dark blue eyes. Silent as ever, he relented and let himself be taken care of, but a few moments later he was overtaken by a fit of wet, rasping coughs and fell back onto the pillows from the effort. His eyes fluttered closed and he turned his head away from the next spoon that was offered him. Sighing, Sam put aside the half empty bowl of broth and called a servant.
"I'll have to clean and wrap those cuts now you're finished eating," he said reluctantly to Gendry, who only nodded in return. It was not Sam who was wounded, but the pinched look on his face belied the fact.
"Come on, Bran. We will leave Maester Samwell to his work," she said.
Her grip was a vice on Bran's shoulder and he reached up to place his own atop hers. At the touch of his hand, she let go and folded her arms neatly upon her fur shawl.
"I will stay," Bran said solemnly from his chair beside the bed, "It would be poor hospitality to leave him."
"Bran."
"Sansa, I would stay with him." His dream would not leave him; when he closed his eyes he saw wolves and the sea.
"If it's your wish, brother," she said after a pause, tight lipped.
"It is," Bran lowered his voice, "I want to know he lives."
Sansa stared at Bran before glancing at the guest, examining his large and bony frame propped up by several pillows and the sharp hollows under his cheekbones and ribs. Sansa sighed and gave a curtsy to the maester.
"Maester Samwell, thank you for your help."
"Thank you, my lady."
"Goodnight. Bran," she said, turning to him anew, "I trust you know what you are doing."
"I do, Sansa."
She nearly left, but stopped at the door.
"I pray for your health, Ser Gendry."
She gave him a queer look and left the room, her fur lined skirt swishing behind her softly. They had once shared a love of stories and talked for hours, eating lemon cakes and humming Florian and Jonquil, but now he could not say with certainty that he knew her. It had been years and years since they shared a fur blanket by the hearth, Sansa young enough to not care about drawing her knees up in the chair with him and listen to the tales Old Nan told of gallant knights and noble deeds done long ago.
He would pause sometimes on his way past her solar and listen to her play the high harp; a towering creature, carved of mahogany wood from the forests of the Reach and gleaming ivory from across the Narrow Sea. A flower with a serpent beneath it, Sansa called it — a gift from the Dragon Queen to warm Sansa's heart to relinquishing her late husband's claim to the Vale. The rare chords of Jenny of Oldstones lingered in the halls and her high, clear voice held him fast outside her door. She never sang any happy songs.
Maester Samwell unlaced the top of Gendry's tunic as much as he could before the cloth stuck in the wounds of his shoulder. On the rushes, a small pile of worn and stinking skins lay. The Maester sighed and rubbed his head.
"We have to cut your clothing off. Some won't give easily, and flesh may needs be removed. After there will be wounds that need stitching," the maester said to Gendry, who was shivering slightly. Sam looked green himself.
"Yes, m'lord," was all Gendry said as he squared his jaw, but the Maester gave him a couple of sips of warm strongwine. It is Sam who should have the wine.
Maester Samwell ran the small knife of his own design through the flame of the candle to prevent festering, as he told Bran the first time he had observed this sort of work. Tearing rough-spun cloth as gently as he could from half healed wounds, the maester cut away the tunic crusted to Gendry's skin with blood. Sam's face was pale and his hands trembled when he wasn't cutting, but the job was carefully done. Gendry grimaced and cried out through clenched teeth. His skin was pale, cold, and covered in sweat where it wasn't torn by claws or teeth, crusted with dark blood.
"Wolves?" Bran asked Gendry, who hissed at the sting of the knife.
"My horse looked worse," was all he said.
The servant came back with a bucket of hot water, lightly stinking of sulphur, from the spring in the Godswood, freshly boiled water, strongwine, clean bandages, and a poultice made from a mixture of several herbs and honey. Maester Samwell wiped the wounds with a square of cloth, boiled in water and dipped in strongwine.
"Will they heal?" Bran asked.
"If they don't fester, or if his fever doesn't take him. It's probably the only reason the cold didn't kill him."
He has to live. He is strong, he has to live.
As the grime from his body was washed away, older scars surfaced. Running from under the hinge of his jaw to the hollow of his throat was a particularly nasty one, shallow and jagged, as if someone held a knife to his neck and Gendry only narrowly escaped. His ribs, when the maester reached them, were revealed to be a mess of green and purple, the skin hard and hot to the touch. Nearly passed out from weariness, only the wasted muscles along Gendry's chest twitched when Sam poked at the mottled flesh. The smith fell into a pained sleep once the washing was finished entirely.
"Those are probably bruised ribs. He couldn't have walked any ways with broken or cracked ones," said Maester Samwell frowning as he pressed the back of his hand to the bruising and to Gendry's forehead. Sam made a disapproving noise, and pressed the bruised skin again. "He may be bleeding inside."
"How could you tell if he were bleeding inside?"
"There would be blood in the vomit or urine. He has to be watched carefully in the next couple of days. That he survived this long is a miracle."
Bran turned to Gendry once again. He considered for a moment, what to do with him, watching Maester Samwell continue to attend to his wounds, before making a decision.
"Summer and I will watch over him for a few hours. You have Lady Alysane's boy to see."
"My lord, are you certain?"
"Hodor will come find you if something is wrong while you are gone, won't you Hodor?"
"Hodor," agreed Hodor.
Sam fretted for a moment, clawing a bit at his neck where the chain rested heavily against his skin.
"Check his breathing, and his fever. If it rises, call for me immediately and place cool cloths on his neck and forehead."
"Thank you, Maester Samwell."
The Maester left the room and Bran was alone with Gendry and Hodor, who let Summer in a few minutes later. Gendry slept deeply, his eyelids flickering with dreams as the candle burned down another notch in the wax.
The night wore on, and Bran found his lids growing heavy and soon they closed despite his protests, followed by deeper sleep and dreams. He dreamt of blood under a dim gray sky and the stench of still water in the summer time, he dreamt of whispers in the dark; a wolf howled in sorrow and fear as she ran across the hard snow but wasn't heard. My sister, he called in his dream but no one answered. He dreamt of the clang of steel and storms upon weathered rock and fury. A small black haired boy cried silently with his fist wrapped in the golden tendrils of his mother's hair as she lay dead upon a bed of straw. Bran dreamt of sorrow and it pulled him under the crashing waves, tossing him against the rocks as he screamed and a hand dragged him under the surface. He looked down and found green eyes staring back at him.
I died for you, Bran, and you can't even open your eyes. Open your eyes!
Bran woke up with a start, his heart pounding and on his brow a cold sweat. He felt Summer nudging his hand with his large wet nose, whining softly.
"What is it, Summer?"
The large wolf turned his head towards the bed and Bran sat up, dread and surprise sinking into his stomach. The smith was shivering, white as his bandages, and trying to get up onto his elbow. His naked chest shone with glossy sweat over the bones of his ribcage, and heaved quietly.
"Hodor," called Bran, "Hodor, wake up and get the bucket please."
The stableboy woke in time. Gendry finally summoned the strength for a proper heave as Hodor stuck the bucket next to him. Out spilled out the broth and strongwine he drank only an hour ago, but strongwine was brown, not bright red. Bran paled, silent.
"Hodor," said Hodor.
"It's blood. Give me the pan and fetch Maester Samwell," Bran said as Gendry coughed weakly and spat up more blood. He placed the bucket in his lap and reached over to the sideboard where the wet cloths lay and wiped the man's neck and head as he shuddered. This man had to live. Bran didn't know why, but the smith couldn't be allowed to slip away in the night.
"You did not come all this way to die," said Bran. "And you have still a long way to go."
Sam came as quickly as he could, and took over for Bran. Gendry continued to shiver with his eyes shut together and teeth clenched. All Sam could do was mop his brow with care and give him a few drops of milk of the poppy and warm honeyed water. Gendry stopped shaking a little later, but his skin was still burning hot and his abdomen spasmed and clenched with coughs and heaves every few minutes. Summer sat by Gendry's bedside and whined. Gendry noticed the wolf through the daze of his fever.
"No, no," he mumbled, "Not you. I'm sorry. Don't. I never. Please, no."
Bran chastised himself soundly for forgetting to keep out Summer when the man had been attacked by wolves.
"Go, Summer. Get out," said Bran, but his wolf refused to leave. He slipped into Summer's skin and willed him to go, but he was overwhelmed by heavy scents on the air. He smelled sick and blood and funny herb smells, but underneath was a scent so familiar he nearly reeled. Sister. It was enough to pull Bran back but it took him a moment to get his bearings once again.
"I let you go," said the smith, "Please."
"Summer won't hurt you. I promise he won't hurt you," said Bran.
"Lord Bran, he's shaking something awful," said Sam. "Get Summer out of here." He shooed the wolf away, or tried.
"No, no," Gendry rasped between shudders, "He can...he can stay."
"You are not afraid?" Bran asked, frowning as Summer laid his large head in Gendry's calloused black hand.
"It's only...the hungry ones...you have to worry about."
Gendry's eyes closed as the milk of poppy took hold, though he continued to mutter the same things over and over again in bouts of fevered wakefulness.
"How bad is it?" Bran asked the maester in a low voice, not wanting to break Gendry's fitful sleep.
"If he survives tonight, he may have a chance."
"But the blood in his vomit...He is bleeding inside?"
"I'm 'fraid so. The bruising on the left side of his ribs may have damaged his stomach and other organs. We can only give him water and honey and a paste of whatever greens we have in the castle. Beets would be best. We'll have to replenish all the blood he has lost. There is only so much I can do for the fever. If it turns, there is a chance he will live."
Live, Bran urged the smith silently. Live.
On the morrow, Gendry's fever broke.
"You may live now," Bran said when the smith woke. "You rode a long way."
Gendry nodded.
"Riverlands," he said hoarsely. He winced. Maester Samwell peeled away the stinking bandage from across Gendry's chest slowly, but the ragged edges of the wound stuck to the linen. Gendry looked at the deep scratches without seeing them. The stench of pus and blood did not affect him as much as it did Sam, who did his work green-faced.
"A craven might have waited until spring to make the journey," Bran said. Sam's hands stilled. The stitches he'd made the night before had unraveled.
"Weren't as if I'd much of a choice," he said. He coughed.
"You've opened your shoulder again," said Maester Samwell to Gendry, "I need to stitch it before it festers."
Sam handed the smith a cup of cloudy water and grudgingly Ser Gendry took it.
"Is the worst over?" asked Bran.
"Yes, my lord," Sam replied.
Bran left the room with a weight in his heart and made his way across the keep to the dining hall, cursing the route he took with his chair. There were so many repairs to be done, more important things than ramps for his chair, but he was glad there were walls and a roof to house the people remaining in Winterfell. He was glad too Sansa's glass garden had been built before the heavy snows came again. Through the stone archways overlooking the yard, Bran could see a few men and women laying stones at the parapets of the First Keep. A few more walked by in thick cloaks through the snow with baskets of potatoes and beets. Deep beneath the stone, in the stores of Winterfell, there were rows and rows of nuts and dried berries, but only fiftyfold what the Liddles had given them so many years ago. Bran would keep his promise, and he promised a hundred nuts and berries for every one they had been given.
Someone called, "my lord," from around the corner and he started. Bran turned to see Jaime Lannister leaning in an archway, clad in a thick wool cloak the color of Stark grey and boiled leather. Bran glanced around quickly and felt his stomach drop while the one-handed Kingslayer shifted to his other leg and crossed his arms. It was half repaired; the main floor and the ones below could be accessed, but the highest rooms, where he'd seen Jaime Lannister lay with his own sister, were now barred with wood.
"I only wish to go to dinner undisturbed; my sister does not like it when I don't come."
"I don't intend to disturb you; I only wanted to know how fares the smith. Brienne has been at Lady Stark's side, else she would have asked herself."
Maester Luwin's sage voice at the back of his mind reminded Bran not to snap or grumble.
"He is doing much better. Does Brienne know him that she worries so much?"
"We both do. Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill. Brienne owes her life to him, though perhaps he owes her a cheek. If he'd been a bit faster with a spear, Brienne the Beauty might still have half her face," said the Kingslayer gruffly.
"If that is all, you may go now. If Sansa has asked you to escort me, I won't be needing it."
"She did no such thing."
"Then why were you here?"
"A couple years ago I would have said to harass my little lord, of course, but time had made me soft and the north has cooled my temper and my Lady Sansa threatened very politely to send me on hunts where her men would inevitably leave me for the wolves should I ever speak to you in such a way."
"Should I have Hodor call on her then?"
"Hodor," offered Hodor.
"You ruin all my fun. She's at supper and won't like to be dragged away," said the Kingslayer. "You cannot hoard all the pain of this place. It's cruel. It haunts others as well."
"Perhaps the memory of your indiscretions brings you as much pain as it had given me, to wake up a crippled boy and live a crippled man," Bran spat, bristling, "I surely hope so, Kingslayer."
"I already know what it means to live a crippled man," he replied, raising his hand of gold where a flesh one ought to have been. "I don't ask for forgiveness. What I did, I did for love, no matter how misguided," Jaime said quietly, regarding the tower entrance with bitterness. He moved off the wall and walked past Bran's chair.
"Cersei was a monster," Bran called back, and he heard the footsteps behind him stall. "Joffrey was a monster. You fathered monsters and slept with monsters. You loved monsters. What does that make you, Kingslayer? You arrested my father in King's Landing. You killed Jory Cassel. You commanded the armies that took my uncle Edmure Tully, and you threw a seven year old child from a tower to keep a secret."
Bran hated himself for the flush he felt across his cheeks. Hated it, because the pain made him feel like a child, and he was once again reminded that neither his father, nor his mother, nor Robb, nor Arya would ever place a sure hand upon his shoulder and assuage the fear that sat in his stomach.
"Your sister said the same words to me."
"And what did you say to her that convinced her to trust you?"
Jaime took a deep breath, as though trying to refute the present, "Trusting me was her own decision. For me to live my life in the service of a Stark was a better way to pay my debt. That, and if I ever gave any hint of betrayal, any hint that I was still the man from King's Landing, she would take my head as she took Petyr Baelish's."
"My sister has grown claws." A year ago Bran would never have been able to imagine her taking a man's life so coldly, but the Sansa that had retaken Winterfell had a heart wrapped in Valyrian steel.
"Long and sharp, my lord," Jaime said, with a smirk.
"As long and sharp as yours," Bran returned, unyielding. He was a wolf, the Lord of Winterfell, and he would not be mocked by one of his sister's guards. Bran parted ways with Ser Jaime Lannister to join his sister at dinner. The Great Hall of Winterfell was decorated as it always was. The single banner of a grey direwolf upon a field of white hung on the wall behind the raised Lords table. Sansa sat in the middle, and though she was not wearing any attire more grand than that of the other few nobles seated, she looked like a lady from a song with her long copper hair shining in the candlelight.
Seated at her right hand, he may be have been taller than her, as tall as their Lord Father had been, but the difference was impossible to overcome when she stood and he remained the same height. Meera told him otherwise; that he was statelier and wiser than any lord, and that mattered more than height or strength. You remember Robert Baratheon, Bran. You remember what happened to him. He was one of the strongest men in the Seven Kingdoms, and all his strength couldn't keep them together. You're a better lord than he was king. He didn't see why she had to say those things, but it made his chest ache when she did, looking more and more beautiful each passing day, something he had not an inkling of how to tell her.
The men and women seated at the long tables laughed merrily, some already into their cups. The rich scent of roasting food hung in the warm air, paltry as the dishes were. Sansa chatted with Maege Mormont about building glass gardens in the middle of the winter town. Wylla Manderly gossiped with the Alysane, the Head of Household Guard while Brienne stood stiffly behind Sansa' chair. Asha Greyjoy laughed as some man pulled her onto his lap, a cup of wine in her hand. The sparse soup had been carried away and a dish of salted potatoes replaced it by the time Hodor placed him in the Lord's chair beside Sansa. He was grateful that today her smile reached her eyes.
"The cooks have done marvelously with tonight's dinner. I am glad to see you eating with us again; I have missed your company. Were you with the blacksmith the entire time? Is he recovering well?" Sansa asked.
"He is better. He tried to get up today and reopened the scratches on his shoulder, but other than that, he's making a fine recovery. We'll have an armorer before long."
"A good worker, I pray. We need all the help we can get, and the smith in town won't be able to keep up for long. Still, to sit all night and all day. You ought to rest. You're still far too thin." The scold was gentle, but he felt it all the same and he resented it. As much as he loved her, he did not wish for her to replace Lady Catelyn. He was a man grown now. "Perhaps now that he's better you will help me with the liege lords? The men are fewer, but the requests more taxing."
"I'll hear them on the morrow," he replied. He had the decency to feel sorry for her burden. She didn't like to hear stories of men and women and children starving, people being savaged by wolves, tales of bodies found in the hills and crumbling castles. Sansa, despite her hardening, would always be the gentlest, and her stomach the weakest.
His green dreams were not something he could escape, and this she did not quite understand. How could she? The ravens quorked and he knew their words. The trees whispered and he heard them, and when he dreamt he was whole because he didn't need legs, he didn't need a body at all. In his dreams he had wings. When he woke, he was home and he had Sansa and Hodor and Meera. It was a cruel choice that he made every morning. To wake, or to dream.
"Did you have a chance to look over the reports from the South yet?" he asked her.
"There were pages upon pages to look through. Mostly logging reports that would be better work for the steward, but there was a raven from Lady Roslin. Her boy, Brynden, has grown quite big, she says. Emmon wants to squire. She's thinking of fostering him here, though the Tyrells have extended their hands. She also says that there have been reports of bodies in the wood in the Riverlands. Some say it's a band of outlaws."
"It's not the Brotherhood, is it? Or that pack of wolves I've heard is roaming the Riverlands?"
"It could be the wolves," said Sansa worriedly. "If it is, they're moving north as fast as her raven flies. I left the Brotherhood intact but perhaps I was wrong about them. Mayhaps that's the reason Ser Gendry left them. But Lady Roslin writes that others say it's a monster, a giant. How silly," she said, laughing tightly.
"Wolves seem more likely than a giant," said Bran, "There aren't any giants south of the Gift and the Mountain was killed years ago. The Hound mayhaps? His brother? The one that razed Saltpans."
At the mention of the Hound his sister's fork paused on the way to her mouth. She set it down and stared at her plate. "The Hound is dead, Bran. He died only a little while after his brother," she said.
"Good riddance, I say. He was awful," Bran said, remembering his cruel laughter all those years ago, when he had dreams of being a knight and stared at the Kingslayer's gilded armor and white cloak with the lust of a child. Sansa had been afraid of him, surely. His scars had been ugly.
"No," she said softly. "He was awful, but he was not his brother. It doesn't matter now," she continued, "The Hound is dead."
Somehow, it did matter. It was a thing that adults did; they said one thing but they meant something else entirely. There were things a person would keep secret forever, and so he could not bring himself to ask. Broken birds, the lot of us.
She picked at her mostly intact slice of pie for the rest of the dinner, silent and not eating a bite. Before another round of wine was brought out, she excused herself.
"I'm quite tired. I think I'll retire now, if you please. The dessert was lovely."
"Yes, of course. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Bran."
The hall felt colder in her wake.
To Be Continued...
A/N: Please be kind and review.
Are the characters making sense? Or are they too OOC?
Is the setting and plot elements as they are presented in the story clear enough?
What doesn't seem to make sense when you read it?
Is the pace of the story too fast or too slow?