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It is late and the moon is glimmering listlessly when Adela leaves her chamber, closing the door quietly so the guardsmen are not suspicious, and winding down the narrow staircase of Winterfell's northern tower. She drifts on bare feet a trail now so familiar to her, and ducks behind a thick blue-spotted tapestry adorning the rough stone wall as a guard strolls past with his pike. He does not see her feet; he is barely awake, lulled into a wine-fuelled stupor. Counting his footsteps as he ascends wearily, she exhales and emerges from the tapestry's sheltering warmth, and steps out of the ajar door at the foot of the tower, pulling her cloak tighter round her face, making her way across the narrow cobbled yard before her, and heading to the south of Winterfell, into the godswood. Now and then her ears prick at the howls of the direwolves out hunting in the wolfwood beyond the castle walls, their laments echoing across the cold stones and air.
The godswood is deserted by both man and beast as her soft feet mark the frosty leaves littering the earth. Her cloak snaps about her as a sudden gust of wind picks up and hurls itself, and she draws the ends of the fur-lined cape quickly back to shelter her legs, white and bare to the knee in the icy night air. Summer heat never penetrates so far north in Westeros, not even at midday: of course every night is freezing. She presses on, and soon finds herself beside the smooth surface of the deep black pool and beside it the ghostly limbs of the white tree, red leaves adorning its ashen boughs. She sinks to her knees before the gnarled face, her cloak billowing about her, and closing her eyes she prays. To the gods, perhaps, or to the crueller fates of men.
"Child, you should not be out your bed," carries a quiet voice on the wind.
Gasping, she wrenches up to her feet and spins in a whirl of fine black hair and sable cloak. Her pounding heart quietens as she recognises the broad-shouldered figure of her uncle, his boots tramping gently towards her over the leaf-mould. He pauses just before her, his breath a grey haze on the frosty air.
"I came to pray," she replies to his questioning eyes.
"For your father?" His eyes grow sad.
She nods, a tear running silently down her cheek. She wipes it angrily away, and raises her chin up as if defiance to her own heart.
"He's listening, I am sure," answers her uncle softly. "Benjen Stark's the best listener I know. Better than my other brother. Could never get a word against Brandon's thunder. But your father?" His eyes soften. "He never once complained, he only aided. He would've of been a better lord than I, had he not upped to the Wall and donned the black."
"I only met him a handful of times," whispers Adela, her gaze growing absent as she looks up at the curling leaves. "My mother was always so full of joy when she told me tales of him, though. He was the most valiant knight in her eyes. I can remember him, well enough. A tall man, like you, always in black even before he swore an oath to the Watch. So sombre, so serious, but often his brooding face would split open for a moment and that beaming smile told me truths I had not dreamed – and I understood all my mother had told me then, when he smiled like that one could well imagine him to be the most evergreen knight, lofting sword and battleaxe and spinning round his horse to fight in a tourney or a masque – yet now he is beyond the Wall, in a place of ice and fire, a place from where no man comes back." She closes her eyes swiftly, halting her reveries, and does not fight when Eddard Stark holds out his arm and clasps her to his chest, his hand stroking her long black tresses as she's seen him do to Arya.
"Aye, no men come back from beyond the Wall," he says softly in reply. "But Benjen is not a simple man, he's got more heart and courage than anyone I know. He'll come back, little raven, I am sure of it. Until then, I will keep you safe, and my wife will raise you right and my sons and daughters will love you evermore, I promise." He feels how weary she is and lifts her lightly into his arms, beginning the slow walk back to the castle. "You're my blood, Addie Stark, always remember that. You are a wolf, and you will always have your pack."
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