AN: Inspired by chapter 7 of The Treachery of Beautiful Things (A Castle in the Snow) by starbursts and kisses, based on the Japanese legend of the Yuki Onna and with characters of George RR Martin. So, I didn't do much, actually.
Btw, English isn't my first language, so if there are any mistakes, please tell me.
Yuki Onna, the Snow Woman
Once upon a time, there was a Dragon Prince who lived in the kingdom where the sun sets. His father, the king, had died when he was just a child, leaving him under the care of his best friend, the Griffin Lord, until he came of age and could inherit the throne.
But before he became king, the prince wanted to know the world. He travelled south to the kingdom of the sun, where his mother was born; to the free cities at the east, and the lands of water, flowers and hills at the west of the capital. He visited the kingdom of storms and the hidden kingdom between mountains, and finally, he arrived in the Northern kingdom.
The prince and his retinue crossed marshes and hills, and arrived at a forest that echoed at night with the music of the wolves. It was winter; the landscape was covered in snow and the air was of ice, and the trees stood up straight around them in a silent waiting.
One day, the prince wanted to go for a walk alone and he left the camp without being seen. But he went far away, more than he wanted to, and he ended up in a place he didn't know, wandering about the ruins of a castle forgotten long ago, invaded by vegetation. The world had become white of snow and winter sky, and black of trees and stones. The wind blew stronger and stronger, a blizzard was growing around him, and the prince thought he wouldn't get out of that forest anymore, when suddenly the trees opened before him.
Snowflakes fell softly at the clearing. The evergreen trees were sentries dressed in green and white who kept the world away from that natural sanctuary. In the middle of the clearing there was a pool of still waters, as black as dragonglass, and at its side a tree with bark white as bone and leaves red as blood stood, with the solemn face of a ten-years-old boy carved on its trunk.
And kneeling before that face, there was a woman.
He took a step forward; the snow muffled all sound but somehow the woman felt his presence, and she turned towards him. The prince stared at her. She was beautiful. She had hair as dark as a moonless night, skin as white as snow and eyes as grey as storm clouds, and she was dressed in a gown of ice and moonlight.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude" the prince said once he composed himself. "I've got lost and I can't find my camp. Would you be so kind as to indicate me the path, my lady?
The woman said nothing, she just stared at him. Suddenly, a pair of golden eyes gleamed from the depths of the forest and a wolf as big as a horse leapt from the trees, getting between him and the woman, and it bared its fangs at him with a menacing growl. The prince moved backwards, scared, and he ran off to where he had come from. He heard the howls of a hundred wolves behind him and he turned to see if they were following him. So he didn't see the root that stuck out of the snow, he tripped and rolled down a slope.
He tried to grasp something in vain, and didn't stop rolling until he crashed into a tree. The snow accumulated on its branches fell over him, and when he ran a hand through his hair, he felt warm blood pouring from a wound in his forehead. He tried to stand up, but the world was spinning around him and his sight was blurred. Then he heard soft steps nearing him, and the snow rustled when someone knelt beside him. Cold fingers ran through his hair, and when he looked up he saw a pair of grey eyes looking intently at him.
"This time I'll let you live" the woman said, with a soft and musical voice. "But you have to promise me that you'll never tell anyone about what you have seen. If you do, I'll come back for you and I'll kill you. Promise me."
"I promise" the prince whispered. The woman ran her fingers along his eyelids, and he was plunged in a deep sleep.
When he woke up, he was in his bed again, at his tent, and when he brought a hand to his forehead, he didn't have any wound. It's been a dream, he thought.
But he couldn't forget the woman of the forest, and for the remaining of his travel around the North he paid an especial attention to the local legends. The most common ones were the stories about the White Walkers, ruthless monsters with icy eyes, who wandered the woods in winter to devour every hot blooded being they could find. However, the prince doubted that the woman of his dream were one of them. She let me live, he thought, and she had grey eyes, not blue.
Once, they slept at an inn in a little village, where there was a woman as old as time itself, almost bald and so tiny that it was a wonder the wind hadn't already taken her away. After dinner, the old woman started to knit beside the fireplace, while she related the story of a noble family which lord was betrayed and all its members were murdered.
"And since then their ghosts roam through the woods in the shape of direwolves, always hungry, always bloodthirsty, always searching for those who betrayed them to devour their entrails."
"What a nonsense" the Griffin Lord said. "There haven't been direwolves in those lands in centuries."
"Really?" The old woman sent him a toothless smile. She had a mocking shine in her almost blind eyes that made the prince shudder.
"When did that happen?" He asked.
"A thousand years ago, or a hundred, or maybe it was yesterday" The old woman chuckled like a chicken. "Maybe it never happened and maybe it will happen someday."
The Griffin Lord muttered something that sounded like 'stupid crazy hag', but the Dragon Prince looked thoughtfully at his jar of ale. Outside, the blizzard was getting stronger.
The night before their return to the capital, one of his guards woke him up, saying that a young woman had been found wandering near the camp. It was a skinny little girl, a few years younger than him, with a dirty face and dishevelled hair, dressed in soaked rags, shivering of cold. He covered her with a thick blanket and ordered some broth and spiced warm wine to be served to her. Once she had got a bit better, he asked her why she was walking around all alone at that time of the night.
"My family died; my father was a stone mason and left me little money, so I decided to travel south to find a job" The girl explained.
"What's your name?" The prince asked.
"Arya."
Arya. The prince repeated the name for himself. Like the Northern warrior princess who died so many years ago. She was young and alone in the world, so the prince offered her a job at his castle. The girl accepted, although the Griffin Lord criticized harshly his decision.
"You don't know her at all", he said. "You shouldn't trust that little beggar".
But the Dragon Prince didn't listen to him. There was something oddly familiar about that girl, and he found her company very entertaining. He talked with her every day; he discovered that she was smart, brave and funny, and when they arrived at the capital he was already in love with her.
The Griffin Lord was furious with him, but the prince didn't care. Soon he'd come of age and he'd inherit his father's throne; no one could stop him from taking the girl as his wife. The aristocrats of the court whispered behind his back, but when he confessed his love to the girl and she accepted to marry him, he stopped caring about all those gossips.
The Dragon Prince, now king, and his young wife reigned together for many years and had several children. The aristocrats still despised her, but people loved her, and often she went out for a walk around the streets of the capital and talked with different people, though never when the sun was shining.
"I'm from the North", she told her husband when he asked about that. "It's too hot here at the south."
However, in the cloudy autumn days, the snowy winter mornings or the rainy spring afternoons, Arya went out to play with their children in the castle courtyards along with the wind, the snow and the rain, while the king observed them from a window, a smile on his lips.
One winter day, the strongest blizzard ever seen lashed the capital. The king and his wife were in their chambers; Arya was reading a book of almost forgotten stories, the Dragon King watched her from his seat near the fireplace, and intermittent gusts of wind struck the windows.
"You are as beautiful as the day we met", the king said suddenly.
"Don't be stupid" she smiled, "I'm not beautiful, you just think so".
"Yes you are" he insisted. "And you look as young as you were when I met you. You haven't got old at all."
"Don't be stupid" his wife said again. "Of course I've got old, it's just that you haven't noticed."
A strong wind made the panes tremble. After a while, the king spoke again:
"You know? I just remembered a dream I had many years ago, when I travelled North, during a blizzard as strong as this one."
"A dream?" Arya looked intently at him. She had closed the book in her lap.
"Yes. I dreamt I got lost in the woods, and I found in a clearing a tree with a child's face carved on its trunk. There was a woman who looked a lot like you kneeling before it, accompanied by a huge wolf."
Arya stood up. The book fell to the ground and the wind lashed the window panes with such force that they shattered.
"You promised me you'll never tell anyone!" She screamed. Tears shivered in her eyes and froze in her cheeks, shining like diamonds. The wind came in through the broken windows and shook her hair and clothes, forming snow whirls around her.
"It was you!" The king exclaimed, standing up. How did he not realize it before? I believed it was a dream, he thought. His wife's expression had become cold, merciless; she even looked taller. Wind and snow whirled in the room, with such strength that they extinguished the fire and scattered the ashes about the ground.
"I trusted you. We could have spent all eternity together, but you betrayed me. Now I can't preserve the human form anymore. I told you I'd kill you if you broke your promise, but I don't want our children to grow up without a father, so I'll let you live. However, you won't see me ever again. Farewell."
"Arya, wait!" The king screamed, too late. His beloved wife had already disappeared in a whirl of snow. "I'm sorry! Come back, please! Arya!"
But she didn't come back. In their beds, their children cried, because somehow they knew their mother wouldn't come back, and the king remained alone in his ice covered chamber, and the only memory he could keep of his loved one was the far howl of the wolves in the snowed forests.