The days passed as quickly as the changes in the weather, from the warm summer sun to the cold, endless nights. Tommen never wrote like he promised to, from wherever her once kingly brother was. After the Mother of Dragons had taken King's Landing, they'd been thrown in the black cells beneath the Red Keep until Myrcella had almost lost her mind to the never ending darkness. When they finally brought her forth, alone and bound in chains, the new queen had stripped her of her name and exiled her to the North, newly freed and under the rule of wolves. Myrcella guessed the Starks had more to avenge upon her than the Targaryens.
She never found out what happened to her younger brother. Perhaps that was why he never wrote.
But exiled wasn't quite the right word, turned over worked better. She'd been dragged to the border by men in red and black cloaks, then dragged over it by more in grey and white. The journey didn't stop until she was back in another cell, this one below Winterfell and much, much colder, as if the ice of the North had seeped into her very bones and bound her to her destiny.
The first time the Wolf King visited her, it had to have been moons since her arrival. He had simply glared at her with his Tully-blue eyes from behind the bars, his face barely visible in the light of the torch he held. He had come alone, sending away the guard that stood at the end of hall with a low grunt. She thought maybe he'd come to taunt her, relish in his victory over her family and his hand in her new life. But the King in the North didn't say anything, just glared.
Myrcella had stared back at the man who slew most of her family in defiance until he finally sighed and left. She may have carried a bastard's name now, but she was still a lion. It ran thicker than his own wolf blood in her veins.
She remembered his sister, Sansa, describing her eldest brother as valiant, a man true to his word and fair in his decisions. Much like his father, she thought. Myrcella could see it as he visited more often. They never said anything, not a word, but they didn't have to. He had stopped glaring after the first visit, and it was enough. For what, she wasn't sure, but it was.
On the third visit he brought her food, on the fifth a blanket. On the eighth visit he came inside her cell and sat with her. In his rich robes he had kneeled down on the opposite side of her in the dirty straw and leaned back against the stone wall just to simply be there with her.
Myrcella hadn't known what to think of it, but it was enough.
For three more visits he continued his actions, bringing food and warmer clothes and sitting with her. Myrcella hadn't had the courage to look at him as he did. It was strange, she thought, that a man who came from a family her's had ruined and she, who was probably the last of her own that he had made sure of, would come and bring her some semblance of comfort. A King no less, a man who probably had better things to do than visit a fooled woman born of incest in his dungeon.
On the ninth visit Myrcella couldn't take it anymore. Why was he coming? Why hadn't she been executed yet? Surely that was why Daenerys had sent her there, as some kind of payment to him for helping her secure the Iron Throne.
"Why?" she finally whispered, voice hoarse as she finally met his gaze once more.
She remembered visiting Winterfell as a child, many name days ago, before everything had happened. Before everything was ruined. She'd had a small crush on him then, the heir to the North with bright blue eyes and curly red hair who led her to feasts and asked for her hand during dances. Looking at him now, she could see the child there again, and it ignited the child within herself.
He hadn't answered, but his eyes suddenly moved over to where she knew the scar that marred her face lay. He looked at her as if the river blue of his eyes would fill the jagged lines in her skin and repair the damage that could never be undone. She supposed that was his answer, and it was enough for her.
The next time he showed up outside her cell, his hands were shaking and his eyes had a hooded darkness to them. "I'm sorry," he started as he pushed past the bars. "I'm sorry that you're here."
For a moment Myrcella wasn't sure how to respond. Kings shouldn't apologize, the man she'd been raised by surely hadn't. He had made awful ruling decisions, sworn in front of his children, hit his wife, and strayed from the marriage bed. But never once had he apologized for any of it.
She wondered if he would now, if he could see all that had happened because of his choices and regretted it. If he would tell the kingdom he was sorry for destroying it, if he would tell his best friend he was sorry for tearing apart his family.
"Me too," Myrcella finally murmured, thinking of Robert Baratheon.
She reached a hand forward, fingers scraping against the namesake of the man she had once called her father. At first Robb flinched away, but when their eyes met again, he reached forward and pulled her to him, their lips meeting in a crushed frenzy.
Myrcella gasped and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue past her open lips. She hadn't kissed anyone since Trystane, and before that there had been no one else. A princess wasn't to be soiled with such actions. The feeling was a surprise, but a welcome one. She had forgotten what human interaction could make her feel. Robb was warm and comforting, and she supposed they'd built a sort of kinship–
Then almost as suddenly he was gone, his black cloak billowing behind him as he rushed from the dungeon, leaving Myrcella alone and confused again. For once, it wasn't enough.
He didn't visit for a long time after that.
Myrcella wondered if he was married. Her thoughts strayed to his life above the ground, where he played the role of king and took care of his people. Did he retire at night to a loving wife, Queen of the North? Did he have as many children as he once had brothers and sisters?
She hoped not.
After what must have been a moon, he finally returned. Myrcella could tell by the pounding of his steps in the stairwell that it was him. He was rushing back to her with a determination she supposed she had the first time he visited. When his face came into the light of the torch, his expression said everything, and perhaps hers did too. But as he let himself past the ever locked bars, over to the mess of straw she was sat down in, and crouched beside her, she found that maybe she hadn't been determined enough.
He pushed her onto the floor and she fell back with a strangled gasp, cut off as he followed her down into the mess. Myrcella couldn't keep track of his hands, one moment they were in her rags and the next they were on her cheeks, but his lips never wavered. The only time they did was when he removed her shift, which in reality didn't surprise Myrcella in the slightest.
If she really focused, it was almost like they were children again, meeting under the veil of the night in Winterfell's dungeons, away from their prying fathers who would've surely made the match between themselves rather than their siblings.
She almost wished it had happened like that.
Robb picked her up by the waist and brought her onto his lap, moving his lips down her jaw in a line of sloppy kisses. Myrcella tangled her fingers in his unruly auburn hair and moaned quietly as he came back up and shoved his tongue down her throat, his fingers like ice as they moved down her chest and stomach to the heat between her thighs.
When it was over, and they were filthy from both their actions and cell's floor, Myrcella pressed her back to his chest and he buried his face within her neck.
"You're free to leave, at the first light of dawn," he whispered into her hair.
The declaration didn't even faze her.
"What if I don't want to?"
She supposed it was enough for him too.